It Could Happen Here Weekly 162

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.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to it could happen here. It's me James, and I'm joined today by Kevin McDonald, who previously served as a senior officer in the Irish Defense Forces with Special Forces experience and has significant experience working all over the world after that with United Nations and other organizations. And Kevin, welcome to the show. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, hopefully I've

Well, just I suppose as a brief reminder to your listeners, UNIFIL is the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, and it's been interim since nineteen seventy eight. What it started first, the Irish were one of the first countries to sign up to deploy a battalion there, and we had a battalion in Lebanon nineteen seventy eight until two thousand and In two thousand, the Israelis withdrew from what they called a security zone about like a ten kilometer buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

So when they did that and.

Retreat to the frontier between the two countries and a part of its battalion, it left a few staff officers there, but it didn't supply a battalion anymore. It was concentrating on the missions in Syria and other places. And then after the two thousand and six war they were asked to come back with a battalion and we've been there ever since with an infantry battalion. In relation to your question about it, is it a volunteer mission, it is

Happens to be.

If you know, if the army can't get sufficient volunteers, then they will mandatory select. But generally speaking, certainly in the early years, it was actually quite difficult to get to become a volunteer for Leblon because so many people wanted to go there because there is, you know, there's a bit of a financial incentive to do that as well. I deployed there as a private soldier in nineteen eighty four.

Yeah.

Plus you're exposed to other cultures, whether it be the Nordic countries or you know, you're exposed to different ways of operating and yeah, all in all, it's been it's been a positive experience. But I would find out that since we started there, we've lost far to get troops killed in Lebanon.

Yeah, it's because not an insignificant amount, especially considering like the Irish Defense Forces are much smaller when if people are more familiar with the US military, right, which is more than a million people, you know, forty eight is a significant amount. You talked about how it exposes you to look at other cultures, and obviously one of them is like the Lebanese people. But it's a very international deployment, right, It's you're not just sort of sitting there on your

When I went there in nineteen eighty four, there was a battalion from Fiji, Finland, France, Ghana, ourselves, the Netherlands, Norway and Senegal with a strength at the time of about six thousand. When I was there as an unarm Military Observer with UNSO, which is a different mission, the strength had dropped to two thousand in two thousand and six, which just two battalions, a Caname battalion and an Indian battalion.

In that area.

Now with the likes of unso that you're much more exposed to other armies, other nationalities because essentially every time you go patrolling, you can't, like two Irish officers couldn't patrol together because if they see an infringement, whether it's a firing clause, whether it's one side sending drowns into Lebanon an the other side sending controcial rockets in Israel,

Yeah, yeah, and there's certainly a lot of national I know, the Indonesians are there now and the contingent from India. When people talk about UNIFIL now a lot you'll see one of two accusations, right, You'll see that they're either like they're as allies of Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is not the case, or you'll see that they're there as

It's I think it's I think it's a fair assessment. And if you're if both sides are complaining about you, as you say, it probably does indicate that you're you're at.

Least doing something right.

So UNIFIL, it's it's a peacekeeper mission and they're there with the agreement of both parties. So, in other words, the Lebanese government and the Israeli government have agreed that UNIFIL be established in Lebanon. That's the first thing to point out. The second thing, which is kind of contentious now, especially with the extent of hes Budus Tunnels is being exposed. Is that there's a lot of generally misinformed chatter about

It's the other way around.

And one of the difficulties that you're always going to have is that Lebanon has a divided society. It's an extremely rich and significant society, and I've lived there quite a lot and have great respect for the people and their traditions. However, the sectarianism is kind of baked into how the government works, and that kind of works its way down. So the president has to be a Marianite Christian speak of the House has to be Shia, and

Their own ranks. Yeah, of course.

And also they have another problem in terms of equipment. They're sort of relying on other countries the UK, the US, France to supply them with equipment. But like they have no tanks, they have a few helicopters. They're very much like there's no way they will take on.

Has Bullet no way, right, yeah, or the idea and Uniful itself.

Is lightly armed, you know, it's not gone round in tanks anything armored carriage.

Yes.

The only time the last time UNIFAL had tanks in Lebanon was just after the war when the French deployed with the La Clerq.

Tanks, which did not please.

The locals because the Clerk tanks driving up and down the roads was nearly doing as much damage as the Marcava tanks during the war, and plus Lebanon isn't a very tank friendly area to be operation against what we.

Say, right, Yeah, was that when the IDF came in in then Macava tanks and the French like physically blocked them with their own tanks. I can't remember when that was.

And I'm not aware of that, but it could will happen because I know certainly back in the nineties.

That may have been.

When it was when Israel was operating the security zone. We the Irish and our colleagues from Finland and Norway had had numerous standoffs with Israelis trying to enter certain villages.

And yeah, but.

Yeah, I saw the day before yesterday the two I think two bulldozers in the Marcava or I said, yeah, two d nines broke down a U and watchtower and a un fence at the un had Unifild headquarters in the Cura, which is a few k from the from the frontier with with Israel. Yes, I should I note as well for your listeners that Israel and Lebanon have been at a state of war since nineteen forty eight.

Yes, they've never had a seattler or a peace agreement, and the Triparte Agreement is the only place where they actually meet, right.

Yeah, So there is a UNIFIL post a meeting normally right at the frontier where you can cross between one country and the other. And I keep using the word frontier because it's not a border. It hasn't been officially demarketated. The blue line which I mentioned earlier on simply verifies that the IDEF have withdrawn into Israel, but it's.

Not the border.

Right However, going back to your point about the Tripartheid Agreement, and that's where the senior Israeli officials senior Lebanese officials under the chairmanship of UNIFIL meet and they discuss items of concern that maybe UNIFIL can help or no between the two of them. And in twenty twenty two they managed to organize a maritime boundary okay between Lebanon and Israel, which was kind of fascinating because on the western side of Lebanon and the northwesterns coast of Israel, the huge

Yeah, yeah, no, I think it would be wrong to overlook these. We'll take a quick break for adverts, then we'll come back. We're back and Kevin, you'd mentioned that you were in Lebanon in two thousand and six. I think you said you're an unarms observer at that time. Is that right, Yeah, that's right.

Yet, so one of the oldest missions in the world is one so the United Nations True Supervisory Organization, and that essentially was established I suppose after the forty eight war, and it had well say, offices and observers in Egypt, Israel, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. You know that they were quite effective in certain ways, Like certainly the eventual peace agreement between Egypt and Israel was very much helped along by the

Down for four or five and then go back up again.

And each team had its specific area to operate with, and we say a specific battalion that we would interact with. And also quite importantly, we had liais and assistants who were locals, like translations, but they're a lot more important than that. And based on the sectarian nature of the area, you know, you'd always have a Christian, you'd always have a Shia, but you could have the Jews. If you were further up to the north, you could have Sunneny.

Yeah, as about someone in full battle rattle again. Now, we definitely were.

But the or kicked off on the twelfth of July two thousand and six and I was I had done on patrol to pick up or Christian liaison assistant in her village and literally we were heading off on patrol and over the radio, all stations go to the nearest uent position immediately. The nearest U went position tours at the time was an Indian platoon position on top of

The gate to let us in.

Yeah, and just as I had transmitted that, he comes up on the ear and said, don't come in, don't come in, we're getting hit up. So we at that stage we were restigate, and about maybe two kilometers away there was a huge IDF position and they were just banging with pine fives and gpmgs, not directly at us, but kind of in the general area.

Yeah, explain those weapons systems for people who aren't familiar, Like what's a GPMG if as somebody is.

Not, okay, sorry, So you've everyone's familied with, well, say in AK forty seven or and M sixteen, which would be known as small arms. In other words, that caliber is five point five six or seven point six two. Then you have medium machine guns, which are generally belt fed and there are seven point six two and then you have heavy machine guns again belt fed and they're twelve point seven or fifty caliber. So we were getting

So the reaction was was was fast and furious, and.

Yeah, it took us nearly six days to get our liais and assistant back back to her village. It took the un nearly two and a half weeks too, have actually with the families, because at that stage once it was a family mission. And where I was, I could see the jets dropping bombs into Tier, and my wife could look up on the skyline, knowing where I was, and see the same thing happening. I was sort of used to being under fire, but it's a different thing

A great way to end the family mission. Let me Retalia.

And then in the space of the next three days, we had a strength of fifty two officers and in about three days we lost over ten percent. We had one Italian captain shot in the back. He's now in a wheel chair. We had another Australian captain seriously injured when the convose she was in was I suppose target It is probably the way to explain it. But she she was thrown up against the inside of the armored car and essentially her back was broken. She was evacuated

Yeah, if you're comfortable, could we talk about that last one a little bit, because I think it's one of the ones that, like, there's no mistaking that un position, right, it's you don't and you don't accidentally disco dropping jadeams left right in center all over the place. Like.

The first thing I should say is that twenty one years previously, that observation post was completely destroyed, but there was no one in it at the time, so when it was rebuilt, it had the best bunker in Lebanon so that they dug down first and had like a lot of the the bunkers currently in Lebanar are overgrown to bunkers, but this this was dug down into the into the rock essentially and it had its roof was about a measure and a half of reinforced steel and concrete. Yeah,

Yeah.

So that on this this happened on the twenty fifth of July, and on that particular day we'd already lost the patrol base in Maruna Ras when when Roberto was shot and they had to I have to say in fairness, but on the are liais on branch that kind of liaises between IDF and UNIFIL okay, and UNIFIL couldn't launch one of the helicopters to do a medevac. So the decision was made that the guys would get into an armored land cruiser and follow Israeli tank tracks back into Israel.

Where they couldn't decafflict the air space to launch it or what was stopping them launching their helicopter to evacuate There.

Was too much kinectic activity at that we wouldn't have been able to land it like it was.

It was a battle long ago, okay, Yeah.

So they essentially followed Israeli tank tracks that had come into Leblon. They followed those tank tracks back into Israel where they were met by an Israeli patrol and Roberto was flown through Rambam Hospital. But yeah, gone back to going back tom on the twenty fifth of July, as we were all taking a fair bit of incoming where I was. It wasn't targeting. It was more sort of harassment fire.

Yeah, like that. The house next door.

Took three direct tank rounds and it was five meters away Jesus from our post, and our post was tiny. Yeah, but in the guys in Kam were taken a coup bit of artillery, but there was a lot of air strikes coming in close. And again for your listeners, the UN has a designation what it calls a firing close. So we'll say a firing close from a sixteen is I know, something like fifty meters or something like that.

First light the next morning.

And since the war started, we had all been on the twenty four to seven twenty minute radish, so every twenty minutes you had to respond to a radio check. So the last transmission from the post was from Canadian friend of mine x special for horse is really really cool and I could hear it in his voice. He was requested a luck in time for a firing close. It's danger close, it's danger close, get them to stop.

Of the building.

Yeah, so myself and an assie friend of mine requested permission to take our armored land cruiser and try and drive up and see what was happening.

That was refused by UNIFILM.

So they sent a patrol from the Indian battalion, which was kind of in fairness that it was nearer. So we switched on to their radio frequency to hear what they were saying. And so they approached the base. They had obviously had to break down the gate and said the base had taken a direct hit by an aerial bomb. And at that stage we were still thinking maybe they're

A large Christian town.

So the next morning there was I think five of us tasked to open identify the bodies.

Yeah.

So the first guy was Chinese, was over pressure killed him, so that that was an easy one to identify. The next guy had no arms, no legs, and we head Jesus and where his head should have been was the chain of a dog type and I went down into his his body Paris, yeah, and the other guy yeah.

Yeah, eventually be returned to their families, I suppose.

And that was a difficult procedure because where the IDEF said they could meet us, there was a minefield in front of us, and where we said we could meet them, they thought it was too exposed. So eventually we went into an old, small, tiny Indian platoon position and about one hundred meters away there was a gate that the Israelitis used to use to come in and out when the security's own was there. But the area between the UN position and the gate hadn't been mind swept in

Bodies because the marcher was full. Yeah, so there.

Was an IDEF company there under a I think it was a full brigadier, and there's a war going on naturally, Yeah, all the time, gunships and katouoscha's passing each other over

Yeah, yeah, that's rough. Sorry, that's terrible to think about.

So the obvious question is, I know, what the one you want to add? Why I should have said that at the start? Anything I say here, it's it's my personal opinion. So it can't be construed as being the views of the Irish Defense Forces, yes, of course, are certainly not the views of the Niger nations. Are my personal views. So you know, people should just take it that it's it's Kevin McDonald describing what happened to him and what his personal views on it are. So why did they do it?

Well?

I think there's a couple of things. Hubris is one. I think at that stage they were like a schoolyard bully who got better and wanted to lash out of anything and everything. A second, probably more tactical reason is that the village of kim Is on a ridge, would say, at the end of the Redge Ridge, closest to Israel, because it's only about four miles away, is where this op was. And that's the reason that was there. And between Kam and we say, the frontier with Israel is

For mility observers is you observe in your report. That's your task.

So was there Hesbola in the area around the around the op, Yes, there was, But as you probably know, if you want to attack true in the open, you use airburst artillery shells, which the Israeli is dated in nineteen ninety six when they fired fifteen of them into a UN battalion head quarters, killing one hundred and six eleven these men, women and children. See Conceultu shelter in the UN headquarters. Yeah, what you don't fire a bunk or bust and missile into a UN post to attack Hesbulla.

The's subtle difference. Yeah, there's a huge difference. Yeah. I suppose what people will ask is like it's I think it's important to explain this from the point of view of someone on the ground, it is obviously un troops are not there to fight, they're there to keep peace. But they are an armed presence, and so they'll wonder how or why the un can or can't defend itself

Okay, Well, the rules of engagement we said for a peacekeeper mission, like we pack on so to onside because they're unarmed, but for.

A peacekeeping mission.

So peacekeeping is generally based on three principles consent, impartiality, and the use of force in self defense of the mandate. So naturally, like the guys there at the moment aren't going to try and take on through or former KAFA tanks. First of all, they don't have the capability.

To to it. Yeah, that's an interesting Do they not have the guinances? That's fine? Do they have for instance, javelin and things like that? Do they have those weapons systems available?

I'm not sure what they have currently. Certainly we didn't have okay, and it wasn't ever going to be an issue because that's kind of not our job.

Like that.

The sole responsibility to protect the people of Leblon is the Lebanese government. Uniful is there to assist. It's not there to say, okay, you step back, we stemmed up and protect you. That's not what Uniful or any peacekeeping mission.

Yeah, So for those like the people on the ground then and now that's not a great deal. They can do, right, They can attempt to ask the idea have to stop, which they did, which has historically not work. And they can take shelter in their bunkers, which they did, which it's only helpful that they're not going to use bunker busting missiles to to des try that bunker. So, like it must be terrible. Like it's one thing to be engaged in combat with someone, especially if you're a soldier,

Well, it is, yeah, and of course you know that they're all conscious of the fact that their families back in Ireland are fully.

Aware of what's going on.

And yeah, shortly after the invasion, the IDEF decided that they're told usually for the want of them out essentially, and not just the Irish, but but what other nationalities that were not going, you know, So the idea if everywhere they go in Lebanon, the first vehicle is a dena in Bolthozer because that is more robust than a marcava and it can also very quickly throw up earth and ramparts to sort of you know, protect from direct fire.

Yeah, the idea of troops.

So they decided that they would literally conjoin an IDEAF position to the Irish position, hoping that they could intimidate the Irish into leaving. And the position's name was six ash five two, very close to the frontier. Ironically, when the Israelis withdrew in two thousand, they recognized that this particular area was what we in the minute would call key terrain because that area overlooked a vulnerable part of

Yeah.

Now, I would say in the case of Disposition six A five to two, if the ideas ultimately gain our goal was to take a major has been a stronghold which is called Binchabael, that's a good further north than disposition, so that the focus of attention would move on from with the our guys and go a wee bit further north.

Yeah, So that's sort of where they find themselves now, right, is these can you explain like you've got these positions along the frontier and then you've got the headquarters that you just mentioned two days ago have been infringed by a bulldizer attacked, depends how you want to say it.

Well, it makes a change from having a tankerun fired into an op which they didn't yeah a few days previously.

Yeah, and they've done consistently right for for a month or so. Now is firing directly into these observing positions? Are these positions that are now? Are they left isolated as the idef wull advance passed and around them and in addition to biring directly at.

Them, there's somewhat isolated. Now all these positions would be well stocked with water and emergency rations and stuff like that.

Yeah, it's real, stopped one of those at some point, didn't it, Like was it a resupply and movement.

The stop things that are on a regular basis. As I said, there is interaction, like nothing happens in the vacuum, like we said, Yeah, the Irish Italian headquarters would not send a convoy to Sixtas five two without it being communicated to the Israelis and saying we're going to go on three vehicles that or seven hundred hours blah blah blah, and and and get the confirmation back that yeah, that's okay, because you know, they mentioned the foul the war, and

It's a fairly real.

Thing that happens, you know sometimes you know, yeah, instructions don't get passed down, or sometimes instructions are ignored for whatever reason. So it's it's a bit of a delicate, delicate balancing act. But from what I understand, it's working well.

That's good. Yeah, yeah, And I think it's working well in terms of like what's happening in Lebanon is bad and it'd be better if it wasn't. But it's not at the same tier as it has been in Gaza.

No, you're looking at maybe three and a half thousand compared to forty three and a half thousand kild.

Yeah, and so many of those being civilians, right, people who absolutely no business targeting, and like that genocidal violence that we've seen in Gaza hasn't come to Lebanon, and in part I think we can attribute that to their being observed. Is there is that fair to say? I think it's a fair point.

Of course, there's no real the UN footprint in Gaza. My understanding is it's extremely extremely light. Yeah, and as you know that would say banished genre, Yeah, whereas I mean unifor the ten thousand troops in southern Lebanon. So there's very much more, maybe a more consciousness, but they're still flattin in the place. But it's in terms of

But they never controlled it. They were still getting.

Attacked, you know, days after they had seized it.

Right.

Yeah, they've never really established like control or like monopoly and on violence in the area. And yeah, they've not done that this time. And I think I suppose the last thing I wanted to ask about is like we've just talked about like why this mission is important, and we've spoken about for like you had your family there when they were being bombed, and like this investment in being there in Lebanon, being alongside the Lebanese people in your case with your own family, like it's it's one

Oh?

Yeah, oh, hugely proud.

And and you know, the Irish have always been extremely proud of what our defense forces have achieved, despite us being a very small defense forces. Like I think at the moment between the Navy, the Army and the Air Corps were probably looking at in total.

Total, well, yeah, very small.

And then we're overseas in a lot of places as well, so like the doc Dad from the nine, you're probably down to eight. Yeah, but we do tend to punch up over with internationally. We obviously had no colonial baggage, which affects some other countries. Yes, and I think generally speaking, we're seeing as a I'm not sure if annest Brooker is the right word, but certainly not as threatening and not.

Coming with an agenda, right yeah.

Whereas other other countries might have a certain agenda for whatever political reasons at home. And it's certainly in Ireland s caes As I said, we were there from seventy eight two thousand and now from two thousand and six to present day, and a lot of it has been in the same general area, so people would know Irish soldiers.

Some Lebanese talk with an Irish accent. I've heard that. Yeah, yeah, it's mad. Yeah, yeah, it's true.

And depending on what part of Ireland the troops were from, you could even go further down, like some of them talk with a very broad Dublin accent. Some of them would talk with a very broad Cork accent. Because of that interaction. And I know one of the first big projects the Irish did, certainly from the early yearies, was to build an orphanage in a provincial capital coll tip name, and they've been doing that even when we know troops there,

For Jesus An Orphanage. It's like storybook evil stuff, isn't it.

Like, Yeah, well, you know, it's just there's a lot of evil stuff going on in the Middle East at the moment, unfortunately.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I've personally seen hospitals bombed and all that kind of stuff myself, and it sometimes doesn't even make the news. I mean that Orphanage evidently didn't really make my news. Diet Kevin, thank you very much for sharing some of your experiences over there, and I'd love to have you on again to talk about the things you've the work you've done in Africa and the line after leven. And you've written a book right

Okay, So this initially starting off as a lockdown project during the COVID lockdown in the Central African Republican And initially it was just from my wife and family. But as it starts writing, you kind of started remembering and it's not just your typical military guy tell us about how Bravey was. I have a separate career in mountaineering and a separate career in archaeology. As well, So it's a kind of a much more different missimash of of

I m a y orb Orchas. Yeah, I like that balance. I've always thought that, like, I'll go somewhere and I'll write about the worst things I saw there and the worst days I had there, and that'll be my story.

I mean, like, I've lived a few times in Lebanon, and I've lived and worked in Jerusalem a few times, and it's a fascinating region. Oh yeah, and the people on in both countries some I have some really good friends in Israel and have some really good friends in Lebanon, and I've been treated extremely well by people in both countries. Certainly if you've an interest in archaeology to be else

Yeah, yeah, cratile of civilization there. Well, thank you so much for showing your experiences, Kevin, thanks so much. Okays, about twenty years ago, maybe thirty, a circus fitted to Majoro, the largest island on the Marjorro Atoll, in the capital city of the Marshall Islands. They came to Majoro, as almost everything that isn't breadfruit, pandanas or fish does on

I would say the word yuppet, yuppe, our greating word yaguey. There's a lot of several meanings, and you can't say when you meet someone first time, you say yagoehe when you greet someone, and when you also say goodbye, instead of saying goodbye, you also say yape, so you can instead. Also, like the weekend, there was a tournament, fishing tournament, and if you were fishing and you got it. You have a big fish on the land and you really you're

Say?

Oh, yeah, way and hello to the fish.

But you just say yeah, because you lost the big catch.

So it can't be used that way, like when you lose someone or someone passed away.

You've missed that prison.

Yup way, so and so he was here but no one could hear, so we can said yeh way.

So it has several meanings.

But the deeper meaning of yuppay is you are beautiful like the rainbow. Yeah means rainbow and ways, so we combine the two words, you are a rainbow and you are beautiful as a rainbow.

On the map, the Marshall Islands looked like the little dots that appear in my photos of the beach at Margie. But unlike there's little of dust that managed to slink their way onto my camera center, Marshall Islands belong here. Here is a pretty vague turn. The twenty nine coral atolls and five islands that allow fifty four thousand Marshalies to live on one hundred and eighty two square kilometers of land span an oceanic territory of two hundred thousand kilometers.

L or l.

N l o lpluck lap lap.

That's before it turned out turns into Marsham. Does this work Marshalls.

Capes from this bad oh A found these islands.

Captain Marshall undeniably, the Marshall Islands are not a bad place to find yourself on a summer afternoon, and in the time I spent there, I took several trips to the smaller islands around my dro atoll. They look like the Platonic idea of a tropical island, complete with coconut palms,

My name is Zakabekibion. I'm from the Marshall Ellen. I am a student at CMI College of the Marshall Ellen and I am currently the president for the CMI Nuclear Club, which we mostly work under National Nuclear Commission with with our director Mary Sock and now our Commissioner Arianna.

Allreat.

Yeah.

Well, once again, my name is Ariana. I work as a Commissioner and Nuclear Justice Envoy for the RMI National Nuclear Commission. Him once again, thank you very much for having us this afternoon.

Yael, Welcome to the Marshall Island.

My name is Evlin Ralpho.

I'm the director for Education and Public Awareness.

Once again, welcome, enjoy the rese of your days here. My name is sincerely in Pernet. I work with the National Nuclear Commission as an headman and physical officer. I'm not sure if it's necessary for me to come, but since the post that we all go so important, support the post go work on the same poet, Welcome to the Partial Islands.

She's from Mayatta, She's from Yeah. The three of us are all descendants of nuclear survivors. They were exposed to fall out. Her mother was exposed to fall out. Her mother, Grace's mother was also exposed to the radioactive fallout, as well as my great grandfather. I think that's what really drives us to share this with you.

Almost everyone in the RMI has a family member directly impacted by the testing and the decades of mistreatment that came after it. Although we know the name Bikini A Toll, the entire Republic was impacted by nuclear fallout, including Mardro itself, thanks to the elevised decision to drop bombs on a day when the populated atolls were downwind of the test site. In fact, right next to our hotel, showing the same parking lot. There's the US Department of Energy office. Hou's, Jeff,

The one in the next to the autel, that's the office where they do the radiation testing. And there's the one near the AMI. R. Marshall that's the planet for those survivors. Now, the survivors, there's few of them, like maybe less than fifty. Wow.

The RMI is saw fighting in the Second World War. It's memorialized in murals across Marjorro. In nineteen forty three and early nineteen forty four, the USA bombed and then fought the Imperial Japanese military who have been occupying the island since nineteen fourteen. US soldiers and Marines, along with marsh Lea's scouts, landed on Marjorro Quadulan in anywhere, took on Higgins boats that were virtually identical to the boat we took across the lagoon to Bocan Boten. The fighting

They had asked the people if they were willing to give up their homelands for the good of mankind and to end all wars. And because our people are people of faith in Christianity, they the and they were very afraid.

Following their removal, the testing began. The idea was to test nuclear bombs on ships, so the US bought ninety five ships fully loaded with weapons and fuel. At this time, this would have ranked the navy of Bikinia Toll just out there the top five biggest fleets in the world, but those boats didn't stay afloat for long. Now. You might think that, given the testing was on ships, the atoll's navy would be some kind of mid century Mary Celeste,

Within those twelve years, there were sixty seven known devices that were tested here. There could have been more, but all we know of is sixty seven. One of them was the Castle Bravo shat that yielded fifteen megatons, which, when scientists calculated the equivalent of the Bravo shat, would have required testing the Hiroshima bomb one and a half times every single day for twelve years.

That fifteen megaton Bravo shot yielded more than two point five times the estimated six megaton explosion. When it was detonated on an artificial island in the Bikinia Toll, the device's mushroom cloud reached a height of forty seven thousand feet which is fourteen hundred meters, and a dam of seven miles or eleven kilometers in about one minute. Eventually it reached a height of forty kilometers and a diameter

Some said it looked like the guy was changing colors from red to yellow to orange. It was just a very very bright morning and then they started hearing like thunderous roars a couple of minutes later, and it was just like roars after Wars, and it was a very frightening time because this was just not something you know, does not happen every day. And then around ten am, the fallout had started to arrive. And these are accounts from ronlap at All, which is the closest to Bikini.

Tomorrow we'll hear more about the consequences of the Bravo show for the people who, despite never having any quarrel with the USA, with the recipient of the largest nuclear bomb it's ever decimated.

Ho Ho, Merry Christmas. Robert Evans here, and we had been planning to make a Newcome episode to give you all a white Christmas this year. But you know what I didn't wind up wanting to do right during the holidays when we didn't have to work, is spend hours researching some other weird Come conspiracies on the Internet. So we're just going to play the old Come episode for

I love that. Yeah, I'm feeling not at all like I want to kind of shower.

Okay, can you can you can hear the moment where we're all simultaneously questioning every single decision.

We higher lives.

Now we're all bonded together. So how's everybody doing today? We've got Miil Wong, Garrison Davis, James Stout, and I should let people know I wasn't joking about the Come thing. So those of you who are too online will know this. Those of you who are not online enough. This is one of the online things that you will want to

So it's like a cow milka. The machine is very like milk.

This Twitter account put this up claiming that it was the Chinese government stealing the semen of young men, and Jordan Peterson shared it saying it was an unbelievable act of evil and then everyone had the best day of their lives and an hour of two later he deleted it. Now I have been continuing.

Coward, coward, coward. Yeah, so strange, so strange that he left the world of pay reviewed academia.

Yeah, it's wild that he's no longer professor. It's very funny. We're continuing to give him shit for it online. But it set us off down an interesting road. And because some other stuff fell through, we're going to talk about the wide world of weird right wing come conspiracies. Most of them are leased, are going to be right. There's a surprising number of semen based conspiracies. Everybody did research

It's extremely funny, and that you can buy on Ali Express. It's like, I personally, I'm not attaching anything. I bought an ali baba to sensitive part to my body makes thousand dollars.

It's not cheap. Now, the primary these are not being used for people who are coming too quickly.

Is like the worst every are to detwo this it is.

It is weird.

What's the orientation? Does it stand on the ground and you just approach it? You you have to stand up? Yeah? But what if you're a shot king.

I say, I'm sure they have options. It has like the rough shape of like by a handheld massage device, but it's kind of like formed like almost an art deco robot vagina And basically from what I've read. Kind of the reasoning is that, like, hey, we need people to donate sperm. Some people feel weird about just masturbating in a clinic, and we hope this is a more pleasant experience for them. So again this we're laughing because like, look, a machine designed to capture semen is kind of a

On the cosign account, do they have to like like like change like I assume.

They yes, the chang Yeah, you can't clean that. If you watch a video, there's like a there's a rebapod that like, uh, comes out like let's see it.

The thing that the penis goes in is also the captured device, so it is removed with the sperm donation when you take it out. So again this is you know, funny because come, but there's nothing sinister here. It's just in the same way that literally everything is. People have like spun it up into a nonsense thing. But because of this beautiful, beautiful story, which I hope we've all gotten to enjoy, I got to do a lot of

How could they get better? How could they get better than that?

It gets better because the second the second is spurgling.

These are like professionals who like come up with these terms. Huh, these are a genius.

There actually is. I did find in my research there is one actual Chinese based sperm conspiracy. It's just not a very sinister one. There's this Chinese businessman, Jesse jabet Zoo, who stole there. There's this I think it was a Canadian company. It was a US company who had So

He got checked down.

I hope, I hope it works out just as well as Jurassic Park.

Yeah, it's very funny. I will say there's a couple of really wild lines from this the CBC story I found. I'm just going to read one to you. Zoo's activities could best be described as machiavellian. At various points he outlined a plan to make x Y that's the American company. Quote feel all the time, the sort of damocles is on their heads and brag the law is strong, but

This man lives on an island with his cow raptors.

What a hero. There was also a case of a Japanese man who illegally took wagyu cattle sperm to China to try to give them sperm, and like the Chinese government immediately caught him and was like, no, this is actually incredibly dangerous, Like you're not allowed to just take animal breeding material into the country. Without because you know, there's a wide variety of reasons that that could be in horribly so he got in a shipload of trouble.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's my that's my stories. Everybody.

Thank you for rob.

Yeah, thank you, thank you for spurgling my knowledge. Garrison. Oh, we're back, and James is here to talk to us about the kind of sperm jacking that you do when you don't jack. I'm talking about jacking your own sperm by keeping it inside of you semen retention.

Yeah, it's how is that Jims beautiful? Unscripted? Did you just yeh didn't even write that, garrisons on the back of his hand. He had a brain wave at two in the morning and I got that down.

But those are the kind of things you can do when you've been podcasting as long.

As I cum space for several years.

I've been in those soggy trenches for a long time.

Yeah. All right, we are, after all at work, so let me continue. So I'm going to talk about what happens when you keep your home inside you. Uh okay, yeah, this is the thing. What are we doing today?

This is this is critical journalisten.

We are making content, doing talking of content. Let's talk about the content of some Reddit posters. So the what's called the seamen retention movement, and this will this will shock many of you began on Reddit dot com.

Oh my god, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah, like so many one.

I feel like on Reddit, I feel like if you type that endo your phone, it would have finished the sentence the same.

What has auto directed to Reddit? Believe me, we're gonna go there, Garrison, because when you google sperm retention, you do indeed find some stuff on Reddit. So now they've spun off from Reddit, right, they now have their own organization, which is no FAP dot com uh and No fat

That would be because I eat ratio and Jordan Peterson with the Yeah, the pornography video that he mistaking the post that's correct.

Yeah, yeah.

I just want him to respond so I can ask him, Jordan, tell me in your own words, what you thought was happening in that video.

I really hope he thinks it's like milking, Like they have rfi D collars and they get fed based on their production level. That would be great.

Yeah. And what did you you're you're medical doctor, did you think that cum actually worked that way? Just stick a sucker.

Anyway, Yeah, just get it out. Okay. So after after this movement began, I read it dot com. It quickly pivoted to kind of offering all kinds of weird physical and mental health benefits, and that's where it was adopted

Yeah's in there.

Yep, it's in the court record, buddy, because on the lawyers decided that it was.

To the case.

So a proud boy may not ejaculate alone more than once in every thirty days. That means he must abstained from pornography during that time. And if he needs to ejaculate, this is really weird, it must be within one yard of a woman. Fascinatingly spec yeah, yeah right, And I like that they've they've gone with imperial measurements with her consent, so that's nice. The woman may not be a prostitute, so that that's the proud poison nature. There no fat fairstuism.

Boy, yeah yeah, yeah yeah, him and some months off the coast of fucking lind Sparring.

That cannot be healthy. Yeah no, I don't think it is. There is I will get to this evidence that you shouldn't do this. Uh So, in his nine years of experience, he has experienced the following things. Semen, when retained in our bodies, has healing, rejuvenating effects. Loss of seamen has the opposite effects. This may not be scientifically proven, but it's proven by experience. That's a red flag. That's interesting

Oh no, wait, that's the layman's what's the non laymen term?

It's got even more. I have no idea spermozoic fucking fission. So for peak performance it's always necessary to be powered by semen. It would be best to use semen only for regenerating purposes, since nature originally intended it for regeneration, and not use it for sexual purposes apart from the create a child. If not serving that purpose, Master whatever teach techniques are useful in not letting the seed out while having sex. At the end of the day, don't

So excited for the next Marvel film where the where the superheroes.

Not come so he can get tiny.

No fat man. So yeah he didn't. I should add that this person confesses to having lapsed at some point in the nine years. Yeah it's.

Armstrong was on steroids. It's just disappointing.

No one would have seen it coming. See what I did there. Okay, So this person then urges other posters on the Semia retention subreddit to not use streaks to outperform others or look better about ourselves or bring others down. The battle with luster is a lifelong fight, and then we get better at finding victories. Yeah yeah, buddy, finding victories over internal battles, the better we become as high valued men.

Hell yeah, I've often wished that, you know, if the if the pandemic hadn't been a thing, and I could force you all to work in a central location, I could have like a wall of murals where I put under each of your faces a quote from an episode that you've participated in, and James that that would be your quote the battle it's lusts a lifelong struggle.

Yeah that, I'll get some T shirts knocked up and we can do a fund.

Would we eventually get the cools on media offices? But you have a portrait hanging on the wall if you one quote underneath.

Yeah yeah, yeah, on a plaque with a yeah, let me get the cools.

When we when we take over the meta offices three weeks from now.

Yeah, there is a marketing company that has been emailing me for about six months telling me how cheap it is to buy a billboard by the side of a road and send a message to a loved one. So maybe great, maybe doing bang array Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Well there will be until I put my positive messages about the controlling lust and holding semen inside our bodies

Which yes, yeah, there's there's and this is like pretty debatable, like most things that people talk about with in regards to coming and health, like you can find some studies, like the studies on testosterone. Some of them are kind of sketchy anyway, Yeah, I don't think oh, come or come either way, you know it's whatever, but if you do have a chance to fuck one of those Ali Baba robots, I recommend it keep out.

Let's talk about cum demons.

Hell yeah, wait, okay, okay, hard, hard pivot here from THESS.

So, okay, we we are not going as far afield from the no fat.

People as as as as you would think.

Okay, but all right, now, the year is twenty twenty. Everyone on Earth has collectively gone insane. This is this is this is the summer. This is the summer of twenty twenty. So this is the part of twenty twenty where fun stuff is happening. This is like late July, oh, Garrison, that's when we met.

So yeah, we were getting just incredibly poisoned.

Yeah yeah, we sure we're that'll be fun in like twenty years.

Well.

Well, while life or death struggle for the sort of the life for death struggle for the fate of the United States and whether or not people are going to be conducing murdered by the cops is being waged in the streets.

Uh, Donald Trump, but Donald J. Trumpron, Donald J. Trump, Wow, Donald Trump Junior. That one, that's that's that's the Trump little Trump here. Yeah, Trump we're you know, looking for looking looking for their their their their curre to COVID nineteen on Twitter. And okay, so as we probably all remember, right, the thing that they found was hydroxy. Okay, so one of the first ones that they found before before I've remact him, this is, this is before we found much.

Yeah, was it inside of them all along?

Mayn No, this is this is this is hydrogy chlorically the thing that was probable.

I hope they weren't full of hydrocic I thought it was. No.

No, Well we'll get to that where there there's a The road is long, but it ends with cum demons. We first must walk the road. So the road here is Donald Donald Trump Junior posts to tweet saying like this, saying this is necessary watching about this video from this doctor named doctor Stella Emmanue. Now, okay, who is this person? She she is part of ah okay, I say part of. She runs this thing called Firepower Ministries, which so you're going great, she's also part.

Of I know, broadly Yeah, okay, cool.

She's also part of America's frontline doctors who are yeah, yeah, I've forgotten. Yeah, these dipshits, Oh my god, Okay, so this is this is very very very much in the same vein as architect nine to eleven Truths. They found a bunch of people who technically have medical degrees or like nurses who were like, no, no vaccines are bad and hydroxychloricalleine contractor corn clean is we'll covid cork with that one. Yeah, it's it's, it's been, it's it's been

It's been.

Things are going, things are going great.

Fact, if you've taken some horse medicine first.

Quite possibly, I mean it's not like it could have gone worse, all right, right, So so that this person's from the very sketchy doctors who are trying to sell like a bunch of random ship to to cure covid. And okay, so who actually is this person? She is

You know.

It's just like sort of kind of Facebook moments Alex Jones, Shit, yeah right, okay, but okay, I'm gonna read this quote from will Sumner. This is a quote from one of her her sermons. They, which is, demons are responsible for serious guynecological problems. And Manuel said, we call them all kinds of names, and Tromesus and Travisius, we call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we call them cysts, but most of them were evil deposits from spirit husband.

God.

Yeah.

No, they are responsible for miscarriage's impotence men that can't get it up.

So all right, immediately we we have like we have there are.

Several kinds of cum demons here that we're dealing with. So there are like there, there's, there's there's Okay. So a lot of this is drawn from what is a very like a genu widely.

Unbelievably dubious piece of theology.

So when I was researching this, right, I saw, I saw, I saw someone there there was there was like a religious scholar who was writing this. He was like, oh, I immediately recognized the theology of this. This is from this is from Genesis six.

So okay.

So I was like, Okay, what what the fuck are they talking about? So I went back and I read. Okay, So I went back and I read the Genesis, and I'm going to read the two this is. This is from Genesis chapter six, verses one and two, and I am just going to read these two sentences, and I'm going to see if you two can produce cum demons from this.

Okay, happy, I.

Mean I could produce com demons from almost anything. That is that is the power.

With the right machinery.

You know what, I think we know exactly what the right machinery is.

Look, we know that we can produce com demons mechanically. Our challenge here is to produce them theologically. Okay, try I will, I will use all of all of.

My claim knowledge.

We must we must find a way to evacuate the vast deference of the soul.

Okay, so I'm using I'm using the King James translation because that's the translation that all these psychos use. And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born onto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of man that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose. Okay, so I I do know

Yeah, yeah, I think.

This ties into like the Book of Enoch stuff, which was made a little bit like after Genesis but kind of like retconned a lot of like the creation story. So I can see where they're they're pulling cum demons from. But it is it is a bit of a stretch.

Yeah, they're kind of you could say cum demons in the way that like God seed. Yeah, you could see it. Yeah, it's that's it is a stretch.

Now.

Okay, my my my analysis, because I I think I I think they're pulling this out of their ass.

And I think they're pulling this out of their ass. It's also about cum demons. So yeah, okay.

Like I I I have it is well known for people who follow me on Twitter that I have an immense and powerful disrespect for theology. But what what part of the sons of God? What what part of that gets you to demons?

And not?

Like?

Because again, isn't the whole point of Christianity that we are all God's children? Like, isn't it?

Is this not a thing that they tell you in every single fucking sir?

How do you read that and not think they're talking about people and immediately jump to come to you a bit like, here's what's going on?

I could, I could explain this because this is the King James version. So this was made in a post Book of Enoch world. Around the around the alleged birth of Jesus, the Book of Enoch got very popular and this this introduced the idea of a fallen angel. The fallow fallen angel isn't really in the Bible at all, It's only it's only in like non biblical Abrahamic texts. So this this idea then kind of got planted into

The sons are the daughters of men exactly, So the daughters are human, where the the the sons are like came from God.

So that is some type of fallen angel that has been asked down to earth. They are doing a specific thing, but it's it's it's it's a result of a whole bunch of like mistranslations and a whole bunch of various various like Christian and Gnostic texts that been that have been misinterpreted for thousands of years by the Catholic Church, and it creates a really weird theology that is indistinguishable from like Castlevania.

So yeah, I blame I blamed Martin lud This is Martin Luther's fault, like like, here's.

The thing, here's the thing. Keep it in high latins, understand.

This, this is this is this is what Martin Luther. I'm specifically because okay. So this was already happy. The cath the Church was already doing this right. But Martin Luther had a chance to fix this ship. And she was like, do you know what I'm gonna do and say, is that I am going to I am going to turn against the peasant revolts and I'm going to do a lot. I'm going to bring about a level of anti Semitism that is going to allow me to outflank

He was German, like, there's only so much you can ask.

That's true.

Yeah, well I'm happy that we can all go to sleep at night worrying about the sons of God implanting semen.

There's okay.

So that that's that's com demon type type one, right, That is okay. So though those are those are the demons that like they they have they have sex with women and they produce nephilim from or sometimes also nephelin. There's there's a lot of sort of conflicting sort of theology.

All that stuff comes from the Book of Enoch, All that stuff is non canon to the modern Bible, but it's where it's where it comes from.

Sucking Council of nicea.

Okay, but there's also there's also a second there's also the second kind of cum demon, right, which is these are the these are well okay, so so succuby and incuby are based here.

We go, I do it.

I was it was counting down the the other kind of of demon. So you have your incub by, right, who are another type of sex demon, and the incuby fuck men so they can steal their semen and they're they're they're you know, there's some statements are reasons that. There's another thing that she talks about, which is that there are witches who have like astral spirit sex with men in their sleep. And if you're like having a sex stream, it's because you're having actual spirit sex.

No.

No, yeah, I mean like I like Bill Murray, I've I've experienced that. Oh no, that was Bill Murray. Sorry, my mistake.

Oh wait, yes, okay, okay, the cloud the fog is clearing. I've I've had I've had sex with too many sex demons. It's it's a real issue.

Okay. So, so all right.

So we have the sex demons who are like trying to pregnant. You have the sex demons, you're trying to steal your cump. We also have the actual we have the actual projecting projecting witches, right, and the actual projecting witches are trying to steal people's come as part of an Illuminati plot to create like an even more powerful witch. And the even more powerful witch is going to use gay marriage and children's toys to like destroy the fabric

Honestly, Lan Witch meetings, Yeah, it is not as far from the backstory to Warhammer forty thousand as it should be.

That's very sadly true.

I didn't want Warhammer forty thousands coming to our com episode if I'm honahed, No, it's.

I mean, look, there's a lot of people who are interested in both Semen Retention and Warhammer forty thousand.

That's a tight vendram.

Yeah, yeah, they all play Ultra Marines. That was ah, that's yeah, pretty good Warhammer forty thousand joke for those of you who play.

I also learned a couple of days ago that I one of the many crimes of the Emperor forty K was passing off in a Miri Bakara quote as his own.

Oh yeah, that that is that was That was a good bit. That was a really good bit. It's little pieces like that that let you know that Dan Abnetz pretty bass. That was my favorite part of the book.

So funny. That's like, that's literally cannon.

I do have like three pages written on Tanning. So yeah, little bit. That's that's that's the end of the same stems go off. Well, okay, I The one thing I'll add on is that one of the more funny modern versions of these, if you go on the betted drill subreddit the recreational pedetul subreddit, you can fight pop who try to take enough beta drill to have sex with the hat man, which is another.

Another form of trying to sum a shadow people. Maybe you have to you have.

To explain your terms for people here.

Yeah, I'm a man.

The man is a tall, thin man wearing a hat who appears when you take hallucinogenic doses of ben a drill because you can't afford better drugs because you're seventeen.

Yes, we're younger, and there's some people the hat man.

Some people find the hat man extremely attractive, or some of like the female shadow people variants and they try to I have read multiple reports of people explaining their sexual experiences with shadow people.

Anyways, the President of the United States and his son were promoting this, so this is great.

This website, by the way, absolute adventures on here. I'm just reading about how to use Christ's blood as a weapon. Amazing.

Oh that's good.

Yeah, yeah, no problems here. Yeah. Do you know who won't steal your semen? Everybody?

We can't promise that.

I can.

I can promise any advertiser on this show. I've personally approved to make sure they will not come into your bedroom and steal your semen.

Wow, how do you do? How's the approval? Press work is out of interest. I cannot divulge privately.

Since Garrison for.

We are we are going to close off by talking about a an testosterone, two of our favorite topics for this episode. For some reason, about a year ago, a trailer on Fox News dropped for a new batch of Tucker Carlson originals, titled The End of Men. It opens with the text that reads, in the current year.

The cycle continues.

Once a society collapses, then if you're in hard times, well, hard iron sharpens iron, as they'd say, and those hard times inevitably produce men who are tough, men, who are resource for, men who are strong enough to survive, and then they go on to re establish order, and so the cycle begins again.

Now there's a few funny things about this video, from the ripped shirtless dudes milking cows, to wrestling each other and shooting bottles of canola oil. There's had a hundred inche that is shooting like ten bottles of canola oil for some reason.

Maybe the Mussolini's leg there into the Mussolini staff.

He was bye by far the most bizarre.

I suspect they're shooting the canola because it's like a seed oil thing. They think that like a right wing thing. Oils are like sucking out your testosterone.

Anyway, it's something very silly, but by far the most bizarre thing in this trailer is a shot of a naked man with outstretched arms like Jesus on the Cross of style, standing in front of a lake at dusk, with a white machine shining a glowing red light on his Dick. What and again powerful image at the clibax of the music from two thousand and one Space Odyssey. Uh, there's this there's this man facing balls first in front of this large red light at the end of this trailer.

I there should never have been any cause on our podcast or on Fox News for anyone to save the line after the end of the climax of the music from two thousand and one a Space odysty.

Oh, that's the thing we're objecting to from this episode, that's the line.

Yeah, yeah, because it shouldn't a climax. It lost its power in that moment. Considering both like the No.

One second James, that was a very good joke.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for seeing me, buddy.

Yeah, So considering both like the text at the beginning and then some of the narration that we just heard in the trailer, they're kind of doing this weird like Cali yoga thing, right that is that is a bit of a bit of what's going on here.

Because again you can listen to our episodes on Savitri Devi for a little more information about this. But it's like this weird right wing con like quasi apocalyptic concept that evolved during an in between some of the early Nazis and some of the people who are currently behind the present leader of India. It's it's way too esoteric and weird to get into, but it's one of the things that.

Like, yeah, it's the real fun like it. We're not going to get into it too much. But I think the previous.

Wound up adjacent to at Tucker Carlson episode because it's some like weird esoteric Nazi wizard ship.

Yes, and that previous November, Joe Rogan posted a Cali Yuga meme which went viral. It's it's about how hard times creates strong men, which create good times, which lead to weak men, which create hard times. It's a fucking silly his, his, his, the h The accompanying text on the Instagram post that that Rogan did said, civilizations move in predictable cycles. We are in the Kali Yuga, the age of conflict. All of the chaos we're seeing right

Yes, yeah, yeah, one of his fucking sparring buddies is either friends with the Nazi or just stumbled upon a fucking the wrong podcast and then told him that when they were smoking weed. And you know, yes, I mean that's honestly to it's problematic because of his platform, but that's how I learned. Everything about esoterica that I learned when I was in my twenties was some I was smoking weed with some sketchy dude who was going places I shouldn't have been on the internet.

So a few months after Rogan posted this meme, we have Tucker Carlson making this whole mini series surrounding this Hard Times Creates Strong Men kind of trend. It's taking cues from the online manosphere, and Tucker posited that weak, unmanly men are leading to the collapse of civilization and a hardening of men is necessary to save it. According to according to Tucker, one of the one of the threats to manhood is a quote unquote total collapse in

God damn it, as advocated for by a quote unquote fitness professional named Andrew McGovern who touts that infrared light and testical tanning is this disex marketa for plummeting tea levels in men.

So obviously half the viewers right now are like, what, that's testical tanning.

That's crazy.

But my view is, Okay, testosterone levels crash and nobody says anything about it. That's crazy, So why is it crazy to seek solutions?

It's not crazy to seek solutions.

And I think I was recently exposed to a term called bromeopathy, and I think there's a lot of people out there right now that are don't trust the mainstream information.

This TV special is constantly referred to as a documentary, so surely you would expect Tucker to try and like interview scientists or like anyone with expertise on this topic. Of course, not actually not the case. Andrew McGovern are our bromeopathic hero. Works as a personal trader at Lifetime Fitness in Columbus, Ohio, and he hasn't even been a trader for very long. About a decade ago. About a decade ago, he was the manager of an Abercrobie and Fitch store in Miami.

Perfect now descriptions from works at the Grumby and Finish store.

Wait, but in Miami.

Hey, if you want to get trim that's where you get trimmed.

Yeah, that is That type of dude is emerging here. As of twenty seventeen, he was the director of operations for Petland retail stores.

He's getting funnier.

But this guy's resume is finally amusing.

But Tucker, being a competent journalist, did not just interview one person. However, Kid Rock was brought on to be the sole voice of reasons.

You know, Garrison, you left, But Kid Rock is the other person. I've gotten prescription drugs from so.

Real bastion. In the platonic cave of men stands Kid Rock and a guy from Abercrombie and Fitch. We must only beat their shadows.

Dude, stop testicle Danny, come on, I mean, yeah, I haven't heard anything, Bobby. I'm starting a punk rock band and it's called Testical Tanning.

That's the end of it.

I mean, don't you think at this point, when so many of the therapies, the paths they've told us to take, have turned out to be dead ends that have really hurt people, why wouldn't open minded people seek new solutions.

I don't know what the hell is going on in this world. I'm not even sure if I understood that question. But some days I just want to stop this planet, let me off.

Like Kid Rock was not did not buy into testical tanning the same way Tucker seems to.

How, oh God is kid.

What I said?

I said he was brought out to be the sole but we thought you were joking because it's Kid.

You were joking.

No, he's the only kid Rock stands with science.

It is indeed sweet Home, Alabama all summer long.

Tucker was not the first person to advocate for testicular tanning as the solution to an allegedly problematic dip in testosterone levels. Dating back to twenty fifteen, you can find articles online such as quote former MLB player Gabe Kapler says men who want to get stronger should tan their testicles from complex and quote I put a giant red light on my balls to triple white testosterone levels from a Men's Health twenty seventeen.

Is that written by Ben Greenfield Benny Johns because he normally pops up with these things, which one the Men's health one.

Me Let me see a guy who injected to have a dick to make it bigger. I have it in my show notes here. This was written by someone named Ben Greenfield.

Pot this balland has one games.

So proud of you today, buddy.

I'm so happy we have you on our team.

Dates are you taking? Are you taking performance enhancing drugs? For this podcast?

Should be Robert I'm not. This is so funny. We have stepped into a gold mind of contact with Ben Greenfield, the guy who injected his own dick with stem cells to make it bigger. That's so funny. Then you compel you. If you have any free time in your day, just google Ben Greenfield penis. There will be several articles. It's supposedly reptible outlets. It will just fucking make you unwell. Well, that's that is great to hear it.

But despite not being the first person to talk about testicular tanning, Tucker was certainly the most impactful. After the airing of the End of Men testicular tanning showed a seven thousand increase in relative search interest on Google and thirty five thousand increase in tweets on the topic. Now, surely some of these things are stuff like making fun of it right some weeks, I'm sure, yeah, but a lot of it also a lot of it's also people

To previt problems mankind has had on the whole, not enough seamen comshot.

It's not one of the yes and like compared to previous decades. There is this maybe like a twenty percent decrease in total testosterone levels amongst adolescent and young adult males, but that's highly fluxtual and it's packed it heavily by diet. It's suspected that pollution environmental degradation are also suspected of being contributing factors, with plastics like a thighlight being known to interfere with the production of hormones like distosterone. But

This is when you know it's a grift. If someone is telling you that they need to sell you sunlight, they are having a fucking laugh.

Our friend Ben Greenfield advocates a quote that advocates that you spend the big bucks on juve lest do you quote fry your balls to a crisp with a cheap knock off.

You wouldn't want to do that, would you.

Wise, Yeah, it seems like it's maybe a bad idea.

I can teach you how to how to how to cook your balls safely without spending any money at all. Get a pair of double A batteries, take them right out of your out of your uh, your your your your remote control. You stick the active in in a bottle of water, and then you put your hand on your testicles and you're a it'll it'll complete the circuit and power your testicles up with electricity, which you can then ejaculate instead of come.

They'll probably give you superpowers too.

Almost certainly, Garrison.

Legally, this is not a recommendation to do this. If you do this, that shit's not on us. You did that your olation yet, please do not connect batteries to.

You dick to quote that JMR study evaluating the public's interest into secular tanning quote. The interest in this topic may be partially explained by the men's attention and advertising men's of sexual health on hormone replacement or homone enhancing

Blast your balls with sunshine to increase the stosterone. Now, you can drop your draws and let your balls get kissed by the sun, or you can try one of these light panels to roast my nuts and be more manly. Nineteen thirty nine studies suggests that you UV light exposure to your testicles increases testosterone by two hundred percent. If you want to join me in this experiment, you can find one of these bad boys a Hoseyhealth dot com. Then just go to personal labs dot com, get your

So this whole idea goes back to this one nineteen thirty nine. Studies eighteen thirty nine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now let's of goot schied to nineteen thirty nine. Man.

And if there's one thing I trust, it's science from nineteen thirty nine.

Yep, got any comments on or on race in this study.

So this study was published in the journal ender Chronology, and it found that frequent UV irritation to the genitals increased urinary and drostererone, a metabolite of testosterone. It increases levels by nearly two hundred percent quote unquote. Now you'll be shocked to learn that there may be problems with this study. Guess how many test subjects were included in this In this study.

I'm gonna be generous and say eight. So Mia says eight. James and Green failed just one. One. You say one, Robert, how many? How many do you think you're in the study?

Geez I think like seven was sacred to the Nazis.

So I'm going to say that five, a grand total of five people are in the study.

Wow, I give the too much credit.

They had to pick this sacred discordion number. Bullshit.

Three of them are fifty four years old and have manic depressive psychosis.

The other two are twenty.

Honestly not a bad apparently representative sample for Tucker's audience.

I was about to say the same thing, is actually who watches his show?

The other two are twenty eight and forty five and have a quote psychopathia with depressive features.

Which is a very old timey term everyone on Twitter, et cetera, et cetera.

But I think what actually and is I think they did this study at an asylum. I just found people with depressive psychosis to do the study on it. It's just these five, these five rand people. No, no individual graft results were produced. It only showed the quote unquote typical reaction and there wasn't even a control group for the study. That not to mention, there's many problems with like measuring distosterone in the first place, because it changes broadly day to day and by age, and it's very

You know what why everybody go to go to go fund me, help cool zone determine whether or not testical tanning works and we'll get that control group.

Okay, so what my my other question about this, aren't aren't all these people getting fucking ball cancer?

We are? We are. Okay, we are about to get to that.

Because yes, you may think that shining you for you lights on your balls might have some long term problems.

Yeah, it's great, a lot of sound. Sturt's come back to the episode again.

So uh Vice interviewed Seth Cohen, a urologist and the director of the sexual Dysfunction Program at n y U Langdon Health.

Quote.

I'm not aware of any science or data or any journal publications proving that red light therapy improves male testosterone. End quote, we change recommendations on medical therapies based on a double blind, placebo controlled randomized trials, large studies with

Of course it could.

Unquote so and as Mia mentioned, we have not really

Yeah, don't stop them.

Yeah, I you know, there was a period of time in my life when I said where I will never rich cancer on anybody. But if you are deliberately exposing your testicles for the sun, to the sun and the hope of getting superpowers because of Nazi science, it's okay. It's it's okay, Like I'm not going to warn that.

To be fair, the nineteen thirty nine study was from the United States, so it.

Be talking about the other Nazi science.

Yes, yeah, yeah, well yeah, And I think I think a part of this whole narrative of like the total collapse of men's to stosterone levels, as as Tucker puts it, man, I fucking wish.

Yeah, it's so much easier.

But I think this is more about men in power feeling that their position of assumed superiority is being threatened. Really, all of our quack science and conspiracy theory stories today all revolve around this like subliminal dog whistle. It's no mistake that Tucker titled his program the End of Men. In all the stories we're covering today, it is the fear of emasculation that is the hook used to drum up fear and anger about how liberal feminism is eroding manhood.

Yeah, I might add, because I think you're missing one aspect of it. I think you're identifying what he's signaling to his listeners and what they get out of it. But I also think that what he and the other folks who are kind of in positions of power and influence in the right get out of this because they're not they don't believe this, they're not actually motivated by that.

Right.

And so if the aspect the things that are horribly unhealthy about the society that we have built is causing men to suffer consequences in their bodies, the thing to do on the right is to blame that shit on

Yeah, exactly, and so is that is most of the of the Testicular Tanning Fund that I got into.

We haven't covered all the things that bank Greenfelt did to his dact in twenty seventeen.

We'll get back on this subject, but it is time for us to end. This is already over an hour, so I want to leave you all, all of you, all of you beautiful. First, I want to thank all of our beautiful correspondence for their research, and I want to leave all of you with this simple piece of advice. If you feel like your testicles aren't getting enough solar radiation, simply purchase a glass cutter in an old microwave, cut a circular hole in the microwave, and you bag it

Yes, I'm here.

So what are we what are we talking about today? And who are we talking with?

Yeah?

So we are talking about stalker wear, which is the sort of broad name for the category of software that Robert's been talking about. And we are talking about someone who hacked well a stalker where stalker Yeah, one of the stockerware companies my arison Crime, the Fame Hacker, the No Fly List, yed returning guests, always happy to.

Have you on, Yeah, always happy to be on. Yeah.

So I think I think, I don't know. I think there's a real tendency among and I see this among leftists a lot, for kind of good reasons and kind of not good reasons, to really only focus on state and like large corporate actors in terms of surveillance. And that's a mistake. Yeah, totally yeah, and so I guess I guess the place where I want to start before we get into the specific company that you do do.

Is it still called owned?

I kin't.

It's fine to call it owned or pond or whatever. I still do that sometimes people get confused.

But yeah, yeah, But before we get into that, I want to I want to ask you a bit because you've done a lot of sort of I guess you could call it research, both actual research wise and then in terms of poking around their servers.

Research and journalism and whatever you want to call it.

Yeah, yeah, So I wanted to just start off by asking if you can give sort of like a brief summary of what stalkerwaar is.

Yeah.

So stalkerware, like as a category, encompasses like a number of different types of apps. Most of them, like on the service, advertise themselves as like parental control software, which is.

Already bad enough.

Just to be clear that there's like advertised for like spying on your children's phone, like seeing their location in real time, seeing their messages that they receive, any photo they take. Ostensibly this is to like prevent bullying and help with them when they get depressed because they don't trust you. And talk to you for whatever reason. But obviously a lot of these are then furthermore, because that's like that, sure, that's a like target audience, that's a

And yeah, that's pretty fucked up if you ask me.

Yeah, yeah, one of the things that's interesting too. It's also in a lot of cases illegal. This is going to vary, you know, from country to country, in state to state, but in the US there are states like California, which gets pointed out in the very good tech Crunch investigation on truth Spy, where there are really strict laws that journalists like you have to abide bias to when you can record someone that these these apps absolutely break.

Yes, it's specifically a thing that doesn't. Most of these app will have like a disclaimer at the bond that it is like this might be legal in your jurisdiction and please ask for consent before doing this, And then they have lots of tutorials on how to install this

The difference is that, like the with the gun industry, it's a product where there is a legal and an illegal, like clear way to do it.

The thing with Stocker we are as well is that like a lot of them will also explicitly say the only real use of this we allow you to to use it for is to surveill your child, which unfortunately is legal in most jurisdictions because children are property of their parents.

Yeah quo, it's because I do not agree with that.

But yeah, it's one of those things where people using it, like someone installing an app on their exes or their their partner's phone or whatever without consent, could very easily would lose any court case, whether or not the company would get in trouble. I think is going to rely a lot on the stuff the videos they're posting about, like how to put how to get these apps on people's phones without them knowing, but like they do have that out with like no, it's just for surveilling children.

Is green for anyone else you need consent or whatever. But I think it is important, yeah, to point this out very early for anyone who's listening to this because they think they might have stock Aware on their phones, or because they know they have stock Aware on their phones.

It's easy evidence first off, like you can prove they're spying on you, and second, if you are in one of the states where that violates the law, then you can immediately say this person is breaking the law like this is we don't have to debate whether or not they've they've crossed the line.

Yeah, and even if it doesn't directly break the law to spy on someone on a partner like it, depending on the on the on the region, it can be kind of a hazy like thing, especially if it's a device you might co own, if it's like a state where you were with like cod possession or whatever. In the US, I do not know US law very much

Help, yeah, and I think people. One thing we should note is that if you're kind of curious, has my device been infected by some of these tools, the one that we've been talking about most truth spy. If you go to that tech Crunch article.

Or to my article that also has a link yet.

Or to you to your article on your website, there's a tool you can use where you it'll tell you how to get your IMSI I think, I am I yeah, which you just dial a thing on your phone and it gives you that number. It's basically how you identify specific bones and you plug that in. It will let you know if your device has been compromised.

Now like December last year, up until there is the data and if you yeah, it can pretty much tell you if you've been spying on using this specific tool

Yeah, yeah. One of my questions about truth Spy that I'm hoping you can answer is, I know that you can like text messages get transferred via it, your call records, all that kind of stuff, get and who you were calling. Does that include messages for like encrypted apps like Signal or is that not accessible through this?

It depends, Like for some of these, it will like get signal messages, what's the messages and everything, generally by reading the notification content because like from notifications, you know, like what messages are have been like received. Sometimes it will only then have the received messages and not the send messages. Often these also include like a key logger

And it seems like based on that, one thing people can do outside of checking to see if their device has been compromised, is do stuff like turn off notifications for apps sling signal, right, like, and that's that's actually just generally good advice. Notifications are a compromise of the security that that signal offers. Don't have them enabled, you know, yeah, or.

At the very least disabled them on the lock screen on Anthros. Yeah, I don't know how. I think that's also possible on iOS, but I think I doesn't show message content on the lock screen anyways. I'm not sure anymore,

You know what else complicates the situation These ads and we are back.

So when it comes to the actual fight against this stuff, obviously what you're doing is a big part of it. Getting inside these companies and finding out like what they're doing and their capabilities is huge for in terms of like what regular people are people who are interested in becoming activists about this can do? What is the what is the struggle to actually fight this stuff? Look like? Like how do we how do we put a bullet in this industry's head?

I think one of the biggest things. And also like why I do the work I do with like hacking and with encouraging others to like send me data, be that insiders from these companies sending it I do to me or like tech Crunch specifically currently because like me and tech Crunch are like the only people really doing like journalism on this like regularly. And the important thing with like journalism and all of this is like awareness.

Yeah, of course, but like, yeah, you got to get paid and that's yeah.

And that's like why I think making it more scary to operate in this industry is like, yes, the way to go, because like with just like these like four hacks that have happened against these companies over the last like half a year or so, two of them, three of them, three of them have shut down completely. Others

Yeah.

I think a lot about like strategic thinking, which I do believe is kind of often in part because of how rightfully negative most people on the left think about

Right.

It's making sure that they're not able to operate without being seen. It's basically cutting down their area, their space to maneuver, their ability to profit, which cuts down their money, their access to people, their ability to actually operate.

Right.

Like, that's what we're looking at in terms of how do you kill this stuff. It's not one single really. I use the comparison of like a bullet, but it's never going to be one bullet. These things are too durable. There's too many countries in lay to do that.

Yeah, that's also why I put so much emphasis on doing media work about this and getting more people to talk about this and getting more awareness of this out there, to the point where I'm willing to work with more conservative newspapers on this because everyone needs to know about this. At the end of the day, this is how we like stop people from falling victims to this. Most people who are a victim of stocker apps have never heard of stocker apps before, and I think that's like one

No, no, no, of course not. Yeah, and they yeah, I mean it makes sense that like an app dedicated to violating people's privacy for money would also basically violate the privacy of the people using it.

Yeah, and also they don't care. Like I said, of course it's a cash crap. It's nothing else. There's a few apps that are like a little more than a cash crap, but it's usually just because they're made, Like there's still a cash grap, but they're like more well made. But it's because they're a cash graph from a company that has better developers or more money to do the initial investment. The thing is also like most of these companies don't have a lot of initial investment, And I

We need to do more ads. We will be back shortly, and we are back.

Well that's all I had, Miya, What do you got?

Yeah, I guess there's there's another thing I wanted.

To ask a little bit about, which Zach Whitaker, who's been one of the journal journalists at tech Crunch doing a lot of the research, is great. One of the things that he brings up that I think is another I don't know. It's kind of a plane with fire angle on them. But one of the issues that these companies seem to have is payment platforms, because a lot of payment platforms look at this and go wait, hold on. Yeah, so that's yeah, we've talked about that a little bit.

That's an angle. We've also been fighting on a lot. Like me and Sick, we work on most of these stories together. Like it's kind of funny. We both got each other into the stockow thing back in twenty twenty. As I mentioned, that was the first time I stumbled into a stockerware app with a security issue. I reached out to some random journalists that tech Crunch about it.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's just like same with EO hosters. Like the few companies that we've seen that were on Headsnerd, they immediately react because it's like yeah no, like under EULO, you don't want to like risk that, and also just because you don't want to host that, like there's no reason for you to host shit like that. It will have like image consequences, and that's an important thing that is maybe also something you can do as more like

Yeah.

Yeah, that's something that's been used really effectively by right wingers to target sex workers.

There's been a huge.

Thing, there's been a bunch of campaigns to get platform companies and yeah, so it's.

It's interesting that for once we can use the very restrictive and conservative rules of payment providers for our good.

Yeah.

But yeah, basically, any of the big payment providers will not respect something like this. Some of the small regional odd ones probably won't really give a shit. They have no reason to. It's like revenue for them. But yeah, it's generally worth trying. And I'm always glad like if someone just reaches out to these companies and we don't have to do that ourselves. I think me and second to few other people like actively working on this are

Might just give up.

Yeah, And I mean, like in cases like the truths by, they are willing to do extreme amounts of fraud to get to money easily because they like started with like mostly just in like with the market they could get with their Vietnamese payment providers, right, Eventually they realized, well, the US is like this really big market, right, but for really easy like US stuff, we need like a paypoal thing, right, So they might like over twelve fake

Yeah, no, this is like critically bad. I agree entirely.

And also like that the whole thing with like all of this data being so easily accept your data can end up getting sold on some dark web forum. You're both as the abuser and that's the target, right and the corter government can find these like I have no

And it's it's one of those things where there are laws, Like technically, if I if my understanding of the laws around this are correct, it is illegal for an organization like the FBI to utilize these apps.

But yes, but we have an organized and called the NSA who.

And it is it is on paper illegal for them to do this with a third party app. But one thing that often gets done, particularly by the FBI, but but you know, not just by them, is it's not illegal for law enforcement agencies to contract with private agencies. And if those agencies you don't you just don't check in on what they're doing, you know, what they're using.

But like, yeah, or like if an inform or like if an informant like sends you to state that, like you're not going to say.

No exactly exactly.

And also you don't really need to disclose that because it's information from an informant. You do not need to disclose an informant in court ever.

So yeah, it's.

It's it's very there are there are ways around you know, the laws that we put up, not that we shouldn't continue to extend those laws, but you shouldn't like just because well they're not allowed to use this doesn't mean they can't get access to the info.

Yeah yeah.

And also there's all this important thing like there's more like also globally, like there's other governments that can just be using this. Like for one of the apps I.

Got, the government, the Russian government doesn't give a ship.

That was also like another thing where I's like for one of the apps I got data for. There was some indication that at some point the Colombian National Police did a bigger evaluation of using commercials spyware for their use. Because you're in the country with not that big of a like police budget in comparison, you cannot afford like all the coolest Raeli tools everyone else has. So what

Yeah, yeah yeah yeah Ali baba spyware, right, yeah.

I don't think most of them moved forward with this because these apps fucking suck, Like they're bad, Like that's that's the other thing, Like they don't even really do their jump. Well, they're bad, and you don't know who is behind them. You cannot even go up to someone and be like, yo, don't do this. You also kind of go to the cops and be like, this company is scamming me, because yeah, I assume some people have probably done that before, but it does involve admitting to

Yeah, yeah, well I think that's that's all we had. Thank you Maya for both the work you're doing and for talking to us. Yeah always, is there anything you wanted to plug before we roll out here?

Just just my blog I think where we're like, I do this journalistic work and also more, there's about to be another cool investigative piece out soon which tincantually involves more tracking and whatever and also involves like Hollywood and more. It's it's it's it's a crazy big story. I promise that will be out like hopefully in a month or so. But yeah, my blog at Maya dot CRIMEU dot gay crime, you as in crime w yeah and kay yes and

Yeah for now, for now, that's for all of us these days.

That's always like now this point.

But yeah, I am back on twether. I'm posting there sometimes yeah m hmm.

All right, well, thank you and thank you all for listening. We will be back tomorrow, unless this comes out on a Friday, in which case we'll be back at some other point but soon.

Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh.

If Robert can do his atonal shreaks, then I can sing off key yo, I'm back. Help me all up in your feed. Wat these raps get all up in your feed. That's a wu tang reference again to the Black delegation. Shout out y'all showing up on the in the subreddit. You feel me, Black folks showing up and showing out. I appreciate y'all.

I was wrong. It's more than five of us. I shout out to you, man.

I love y'all.

Thanks for showing up, and shout out all the Latinos who tapped into and le puez.

Hey, gontodo me hint ben at guy When.

Valilo listen, we gotta really invite our Latino brothers and sisters, our Theos and diaz and also our Asian black people, the penoise and pen eyes, our athes and Quias. You're all a part of our delegation here, all of our usos. We love y'all, the whole diaspora of people who seizing their chicken and wash their legs. I love y'all, and to this whole delegation. Once we add it all together, it is about twenty of us to you. I say, y'all want something from the gas station. I got you

Y'all.

Y'all know I'm playing right.

I mean, this is why I while I slowly wink at brown folk, I'm just playing, y'all. I'm sorry, I'm messing around. It's called opening. You know, you guys got a great sit to you right here, all right, let's get to it. Festivals, like, am I right? You know, if you're anywhere within a five to ten mile radius of my age, I mean, festivals is like these are like a write of passage. You know, I am not only a goer but a festival performer and as an artist, it was like festivals were kind of in a lot

Bring anything else in there.

But man, that's probably a euphoria, especially if it's a group or a band that you really like that you saved up all year to go see. You know, some people were like festival operas, like that's their thing. They spend their summer going to music festivals. Since twenty twelve up to twenty fourteen, like the music fest has been guys, we've kind of been on borrow time. We've we lived

It was like this never.

Ending flow of amazing, amazing events, and you know what, they were kind of affordable. In the next five years, you had things taken forth like Pitchfork in Chicago, Hangout Music Festival on the Beach, and the Gulf Shores, Outside Lands, Bali Music Mount o Asis Electronic Music.

Festival, Forecastle Festival.

Right, and I'm even gonna add in this before all this for hip hop stuff.

Dude, we had rock the bells.

Like we lived in a time where you could see all of your favorite artists in the most epic locations. You'd see people who if you were to try to buy their tour ticket, it would cost the same amount if they were headlining the thing. But you could see all your favorite acts. Part of this was because we

Now.

In twenty twenty four, more than half of them across the world were canceled. I lost count on this page. I'm about to read to y'all from musicfestival wizard dot com. Festival's canceled so far in twenty twenty four. Okay, you're ready for this. Shindig twenty twenty four, Melt twenty twenty four, Sideways Festival, Nostock, Field Maneuvers, Tower z The Quintinine, Big Slap,

The UK alone canceled.

Ashley King wrote this article on August twenty third, twenty twenty four for Digital Music News, and in that she says the United Kingdom has lost one hundred and ninety two music festivals since twenty nineteen, according to the Association of Independent Festivals the AIF, which is a not for profit trade festival association that represents the interest of over two hundred independent UK music festivals that range from five

Number one and number two.

I don't know if there's anybody more free, anybody more comfortable in their own skin. Listen, this might sound like a joke, Okay, I'm dead serious. It's like the white guy with dreadlocks. I mean, white people with dreads are just most of the time. Okay, Like this may sound like a joke, I'm deadly serious. They be so okay with themselves and will do whatever they got to do to continue to stay present and be cool with themselves. No notes, it's the guy doing hypostatic breath work, freestyling

It's like camp for like your twenties.

You know, you get to wear your dumb ass outfits, right, You get to stand out in the sun, You get to drink, you get to day drink, and you get just lose your mind for a little bit.

This might be the end, the endling.

You may have attended your last music festival as we know it. So the question is why who killed the music festival? Why is the festival not festiving? Why is it not festive? Why can't y'all sell no tickets? Do we not like music anymore? Do you like music still? I thought I still like Do you like music still? What the hell happened in y'all?

Oh oh oh oh oh oh.

Weird back back back back yack back uh uh. To understand the future as to what the hell happened, we have to ask ourselves how we.

Even got here such a nerd?

I am.

I don't think I need to tell you what a music festival is because I mean, I think you know what it is. It's an incredibly overpriced concert that features maybe four groups that you like. Where you are going to stand outdoors somewhere brave the weather day, drink and then get to lose your mind for the last like three hours and just really enjoy, you know, a moment that you'll really never forget. Depending on how nasty and ratchet you are, how outside you are, you might look up.

You know what I'm saying. I don't look.

It's none of my business. I suggest you don't. That's just me being an old head. But either way, man, they're a great time. But please understand that festivals. Music festivals go like back to get this five eighty two b C. At least according to white people's history, because you know, silly you, nothing happened anywhere else except for Europe. There was no music festivals in Africa, Central South America, Asia, no nowhere else.

You don't history started in Greece. We were too busy building pyramids.

Right anyway, I'm gonna lead out put oh what every crack of you up. They'd be like the first music festival on record in ancient Greece. During the Pytheon Games, which is fine, it's it's fine, it's fine, but understand, ain't no way in the world, just the only one that ever happened anyway, So five eighty two BC, right, And like the Olympic Games, the Pytheon Games took place every four years and included poetry reading, a speech, right,

However, here's where it starts coming in a focus.

The wealthcat was widening across Europe, so festivals gradually became kind of like out they are where they're a little bit exclusive, catering primarily to more higher educated upper class, and the shift became apparent as events became more exclusive and had increasingly restricted access. This is from ndlbeast dot com. They have a whole section on like the history of music festivals. One could argue like this like the prototype

Died in the nineties.

After this all can be explained in when they tried to redo Woodstock just a shit show with like Limp Biscuit and all them you a shit show. There's a documentary on Netflix about the absolute disaster that that new Woodstock was, y'all. I'm talking like y'all thought Astro World was bad where them kids was raising so much and people die. You talking about understaffed y'all think Firefest was a disaster, my nigger, Well, nah, I don't think anything was worse than Firefest, so far a good thing. It

An artist, you have to play one of these festivals.

No matter how much money you don't make at these things, you have to do it because this is where not only do you get the necessary co sign, you also get discovered. Like as far as fans like, you make new fans, you sell merge people, walk away with the T shirt. You're on the T shirt that says Bonnarou twenty twenty one and your name is so like even if you're way down on the bottom, grab your little screenshots, take your little Instagram photos, because now you're in the game.

Are y'all ready for this? I don't think you ready for this?

In the boom years, According to an analysis done by a Finance Buzz, in twenty fourteen, general emission prices for major and music festivals increased by fifty five percent. That outpaced just inflation period. Y'all jacked up the price.

So listen.

So if your jaw rule head ass, of course I'm gonna build a festival. You're looking at Burning Man, You're looking at Bonnarou, You're looking at all these things.

You're like, bro, let's just get an island and make a festival. There's so much money to be made.

But you know what, capitalism being a capitalism, it's gonna keep capitalism.

Let's talk about what killed the festival?

Oh oh.

Oh, you see, I just did my own fade out and fade in music. Y'all see that. No, don't ask me what note that was? So what killed the festival? There well number of things. First of all, yo, ask for not going I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. We're not blaming the victims here. Some of these answers are pretty obvious, like again, you know Astra World like, but astral World is just a good picture of everything that went wrong in the concept of a music festival.

So the first problem is, yeah, capitalism.

Sometimes you are led to believe that what is will always right. That's what a stable economy lulls you into believing. But anybody that knows how money works, it's booms and busts. The bubble will pop, and how a bubble pops is almost always our own fault in this sense. The housing bubble, you know of two thousand and eight when your mama and him lost their house because the reality was they shouldn't have never got that loan in the first place. These people knew good and well that you was not

You know what I'm saying.

When Fader was like a thing that you would want to go suit.

So like it all kind of worked together around this time before all these spots got bought out hip Hop d X, like all these pages.

Got bought out.

Like I said before, it was like this boom in twenty fourteen of a trillion festivals that started happening. Now what happened was ticket prices. This is the first one. We're making so much money. You realize, Dang, if I charge a hundred, I bet you I could charge two hundred. If I charged two on it, I bet you I could charge foe hundred because if you charge foe hun

No oh, I'm raping y'all.

Do you know that Burning Man costs five hundred and seventy five dollars to go to If you was going, you was probably gonna make some sort of like art installation to destroy you doing that all your own money, which meant what.

Same thing happened in the seventeenth century.

It just becomes a place for the elite because can't nobody else afford to go. You know what else happened to a lot of festivals is corporation's bottom. You know who bought complex BuzzFeed, and you know who bought it from BuzzFeed n Work nt WRK.

It's an investment firm.

You know who owns the Pitchfork festival, condy Nast a media company. They bought the blog and folded it into GQ.

It's just a corporation. Capitalism.

Capitalism broke the festivals under the banner of capitalism, not so much the cost of the ticket and the soaring cost of living. It also costs too much to make the festival. According to John Roston, he's the CEO that AIF, the Independent Association of Festivals. He says, the toilet higher I just need to buy Porter potties. In twenty twenty one was twenty eight thousand dollars for the exact same amount of toilets at twenty twenty four is fifty four

You don't had him experiences.

You ain't played shows when it's more people at the bar, or it's more people that work there then come to see you. You're not ready for no festival stage, so it's just not fun for the concer.

So I'm not gonna buy it. You can't justify this price.

If I'm gonna spend that much money, I need to really, really really.

Really like this man. This need to be my favorite artist.

I'm not gonna stand around twelve hours pay this much money to really only see one act I like.

That.

Don't make no damn sense.

And we'll talk about why they only like that one artist a little bit later.

So remember this point I'm making.

The second and most obvious one is COVID, which leads into the third and fourth. You had to cancel stuff. Nobody knew this was coming. Like the el's companies took, I took person answer the tour. Not only I canceled the tour, I released the poetry book that I couldn't tour. I mean I personally lost tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars in touring revenue, in book sales, in merch sales, and all of it. Like I lost so much because you just had to, and I'm still

Right.

If I were to ask you, what's your favorite area of music?

Most likely it's not always, but most likely it was like the music you listened to in the eleventh grade, it's probably your favorite era. Whatever you was listening to the n is probably still your favorite era. Now, obviously that's not true for everybody, but hey, if you were seventeen, you were discovering new music, you want to go to like the Cornerhouse of Blues, right, you know this is obviously I'm California centric.

You wanted to hit the Glasshouse.

Man.

Could you just heard about this new band Little Stings like that, The Dragonfly Whiskey of Go Go the viper room. All these like smaller spots that when for us out of La these were like rights of passage.

This is how you get to say I.

Saw them win.

I knew who Will I Am was for the Black Eyed Peas because I saw him at the little temple which is now called the Virgil when he did a beat battle. They were at the corner. You know what I'm saying. And it was fun. I knew Foster the people. They're in San Diego. You would just drive down like just at the gas lamp, like Leon bridges Hell he opened for us, you know what I'm saying. Like again, like we said in the earlier these these bands that you was passionate about.

You was seventeen with your little emo hair swooped over your eyes.

This is you was crying over you understand what I'm saying, Like hugging onto your little iPad, you know, doing that MySpace picture when you looking down. You know it's the white people think like this is when you went to go see them. If that era for you was a pandemic, you didn't acquire a taste for going out like that. You saw concerts inside a fortnite. So what I'm saying is one of the biggest things about gen Z is they don't go out.

It's just it's just the reality. Not only do it. Ain't got no money.

They ain't got no money because again inflation and finances, the cost of living is insane. But look it, gen Z don't drink like we used to drink. They do fewer drugs, they have less sex. Part of that is because one they Hella anxious and I.

Don't blame them.

I'm looking at my daughter now and I'm like, I'm sorry, baby, you probably not gonna buy no house ever.

I don't even know when you're gonna move out. I don't know what to tell you. I'm not mad.

I ain't gonna push you out of this house because where you're gonna go, you're gonna get seven roommates.

I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry.

They do fewer drugs, they drink less, and they don't go nowhere because one, they anxious as hell. They nervous around being around that many people. And if they are gonna go out, if you ask them, the number one thing they say.

Is like, I ain't got nobody to go with.

I mean I could go I ain't got nobody to go with you, cause you ain't got no friends.

You don't go nowhere, right.

I've been looking at my own child, like why you here, Cuz, like don't you You're a go nowhere.

She's starting to now, but listen, you gotta.

Really really, really really really want to see this person that you're going to see.

She bought Billie Eilis tickets in February the concert next month. She decided, if I'm gonna spend this money this one, I'm gonna spend it on right, because it's worth her money. She loves them, she loves her. She got the album. She went to the listening party. She's like, this is who I'm gonna go see. They don't look and see who's playing, or just pull up an adult music spot and just be like, oh, Wane, who's play. I'm gonna

So they're like, oh, I don't understand what's going on with y'all festivals.

I know we doing all right, because if you are an industry artist with the machine behind you, number one, you don't need a festival. You booked the Greek Theater yourself. Why would I allow myself as an artist for you to pay me. Guess who turned down Coachella next year? Rihanna and Kendrick. Why would either of them play that when they know they can be the only artist and sell just as many tickets. Kendrick played Staples. I'm calling his Staples because I'm from La. I know it's just

This is the point I was making earlier.

Algorithm, you create music that works on TikTok so music has this formula. They did the same thing with coffee shops. You know why coffee shops look like brutaliss mid century modern, all of them Instagram. We're all looking at the same aesthetic, So therefore all coffee shops look the same. The same thing happened with music the algorithm. So you have these entire, very specific niches.

But can everyone in your weird niche?

Are there thirty artists in your very weird niche that can bring ten thousand people out to a field. No, because there's only forty of y'all that like this music that's online streaming. There's no human editorial, there's no DJ that's saying, yo, dude, lo, look at this.

No, look at this.

You're stuck to doing it yourself and hopefully you can climb out your algorithm.

Right.

J McDonald says, a genre unfocused festival poster lineup starts to just look like a playlist that has been made and personalized for somebody else. Okay, you want to do a genre specific one, let's just say, okay, k pop, you're finna fly on him acts from Korea? How much you're gonna sell all these tickets for? How many K pop acts do you get? You don't book nobody local? Do you how much money that would cost? Or you say I'm gonna do a K pop day?

All right? So you do a three day festival.

One day's k pop, one day's DM, one day's hip hop, Uh, nobody's boy a three day pass, so one day might be trash, And how do you build it? What does the flyer look like? I don't know half of these people. I ain't never even heard of that. No single act can sell a festival. And if you try to do a multi different act thing, it's just gonna.

Confuse the consumer.

So if you're putting on the festival, your only option is to just go big. This has to do with money, So you are going to overspend, right, because it's like, how are you gonna get people here? You you get Taylor Swift? Do you know how much money you got to offer somebody like a Taylor Swift for her to give her performance to your festival rather than just to do her own show. And the consumer says, again, is this worth

And lastly, climate change. It's hot as hell.

The last two burning bands poured rain and flooded. Before that, it was like one hundred and twenty nine million degrees.

It's hot. It's too hot to be out there like this climate, y'all. And enough water.

It's hot as hell. It's hot as hell, or it's floody. It's hot or its floody. Ain't no more nice days outside? I find the stand outside all day. You crazy? You gonna make me pay extra for shade. It's an extra one hundred dollars so I can have a humbrother.

I'm good. Just hold on.

We're staying home.

Staying home, Okay, now again, let's rebuild the world.

What can we do better? That's in our control.

So festivals might be done, but it doesn't mean we don't still love music. If you're a music lover, here are some suggestions I can give you that would keep your favorite bands in the game. The first is the easiest one for you, which of course is buying or streaming their music. If you're gonna stream, here's the thing, dude, I'm not an old guy to say that, like your release Radar or your New Music Friday, that algorithmic playlist that's like customized just for you, it's great.

My request that I think would help is this.

If a song pops on and you dig it, save it number one and then too, go to the album, go to that artist's page and give them a follow, and listen to the album. You heard the song, the song was dope, and if it really resondent, I'm not begging you to do something that you don't like, listen to that album, you know the whole Like artists blowing up on TikTok. That's why Universal was just like man

There's TikTok audios. You feel me.

That helps the artists know when they try to go get a show, that they can prove that, like, hey, listen, these are listeners. When you go to my Spotify page, we go to any Spotify page, the first number you see is monthly listeners. But that don't mean followers. I have this weird upside down thing. Most people have more monthly listeners than followers. I'm the opposite. I have three times more followers than monthly listeners, which means these people

You're right.

But when I drop an album, they know.

So my request as the consumer is follow that artist, like close to the album. And secondly, the most obvious one is like, dude by merch. Oh my god, y'all. I'm saying like merch has been the difference between car insurance and not. For me, merch has been the difference between can my daughter stay in her you know, dance class her after school, like ballet class. Merch Like merch is how we paid for our daughters. So during the

That's what I mean.

If your merch sucks that, I mean, it is what it is. I can't ask you to, you know, purchase something that's trash. Artists make don't merch. You know, I have vinyl. Vinyl costs a lot, but you can go to my website there's vinyl like that stuff.

Those make a difference.

And then I'd also ask, like, if you really dig an artist, this is on the artist's job to like sign up for their newsletter, find out when they're touring, and just and go to their shows. And when you get there like another game. I think I told this on the Politics podcast too, where it's like most of the time as the artist, I keep the door, like meaning the ticket sales, and then the venue keeps the bar. So their thing is like, well, they're gonna make a

Can I take my reputation very serious? We make sure.

That like the talent buyer, the venues, everybody taking care of. We're not yelling at the sound man, you know, we keep a clean green room. Like those are things you could do as an artist, but as a consumer, like I know, the algorithm's fighting against you. But like, if you really like a group, go out of your way, even if it's on the Discovery things. Again, the big people is easy. Beyonce's tickets are gonna come find you.

Oh oh oh oh oh oh.

Hey.

We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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