Also media, Hey.
Robert Ay, sophistophely soft damma rung the ring of the softer lung and nip. I was trying to do like the ring of the nibble lungen, But Sophie, I don't actually know how to how to make that work. Also, not really a joke, just me putting your name into things. How are you doing? Are you good?
I was doing well.
Okay, that's good.
I was doing well. Anyways, we're back with another Q and A episode. Thank you to those who ask questions on the Instagram. Robert, can you start the folks out with a nice, nice creatum lemonade recipe? People want to know.
I don't have a nice creatum lemonade recipe. I have been doing cretem so long that I don't give a shit. I just pour it in water, I poured it in soda, I mix it. I don't give a fuck. Don't do that.
It's gross, literally any liquid substance at the airport.
I'll say this, Here's what I'll say. I'm going to give you first the responsible advice, and then I'm going to give you the person who uses creative advice. Right, The responsible advice is that creatim is something that can and that in the vast majority of cases, will be used responsibly. It is not easy to become problematically addictive to for most people. If you are someone who is inclined to abuse painkillers, it is very easy to develop
a dependency on cretum. Now, a dependency on creatim is not nearly the monster that a dependency on opiates, especially heroin is, And if you are dependent on opiates or heroin, cretim can allow you to get off of that because if you stop taking heroin you get horribly dope sick. Cretim stops you from being dope sick, and it is I think critical to remain widely available largely as a result of that. However, if you start taking cretim and you take it every day, you will need to take
more and you will notice potentially. This has never really been my case because I take breaks regularly. I've never had any issue going overseas for a couple of weeks and not taking it, you know, taking three or four days off every week or two. Some people do. You should be aware that that's a thing, and that it
is a capital D drug. I would say it's not as safe as marijuana, although if you have a family history of like schizophrenia, it certainly does not seem to have any of the kind of like ability to incite
psychotic breaks that that does. But it's hard to run your body, you know, than particularly like consuming marijuana in a way that doesn't involve smoking, But it's not as hard on your body based on all of the evidence that exists as for example, drinking, particularly like, if you're talking about someone who's using kreatum daily versus drinking daily, you're almost certainly better off using creatum daily. I think
that's a generally responsible way to categorize it. The ways that you can do it is you take a powder that is just the ground up flower. It is very hard to hurt yourself with just the powder. You would have to take such a massive quantity of it. However, just like with marijuana, people now make extracts, and those extracts are extremely concentrated. It is much easier to harm yourself if you are using an extract or to take
much more than you want. Now, cretum an overdose does not tend to like if you take far too much cretum, it doesn't do what like heroin does and cause central nervous system depression that'll stop you from breathing at least not in any of the quantities that you know I've seen documentation on, but it can be really bad and unpleasant. So I would say, if you're going to do it, do something like get a t stay away from the extracts. Once you start going down that road, it's very easy
to develop much more of a dependency on it. That's my cretum speech.
Okay, Robert, what's one episode you really want to do? But require a fuck load of research and four million episodes to cover the.
Bush administration and the war on a rack? And part of why I haven't is just like it's been covered it. I do think maybe now because there's a lot of like gen Z people who listen who maybe went around for that, I'm probably overestimating how familiar people are with the shit around that. So maybe that is the kind of thing to get onto. Now. There's just so much to talk about in so many bastards. But it's one of those things I've gone back and forth. Should I
just do a John Ashcroft episode? Should I just do a Dick Cheney episode? Well, how do you do that episode? And then like not cover the rest of it. I just have it yet, contact I just have it yet, Like Nixon is the same way, and this was That's not really an excuse what I just said, because the same is true when talking about like Kissinger's crimes, because those Kissinger episodes were also like partly Nixon episodes, because you can't talk about what Kissinger did that was evil
without talking about a number of other evil guys. So I will and should do that. It's just all episodes like that are always so much work, and I've picked by battles. Usually every now and then I will based on like, oh, I think this is really important for a specific reason to get out at this time right, like a lot of the fascism focused ones we've done. But usually it's more like what do I want to
read it right now? What am I interested in? Because if I don't do it that way, if I don't let the primary thing that drives me week to week be what do I want to read about and write about, then I will burn out.
Sure, what episode are you most proud of from this year?
Uh? Probably the Lawrence of Arabia episodes.
Really good. I'm deeply proud of James Stout's series, and it could happen here.
From talking about my episode, so we are.
But I'm just saying, okay, I'm deeply proud of James's series that he did reporting from the Darien Gap.
From the Darien Gap excellent stuff. Yeah, yeah, some of the best work anyone's done for us. I love those apps.
Yeah.
I also they were the hardest for me. But your episodes on Troubled teen Wilderness Camps were.
Yeah, love me some troubled teen Wilderness camps. How did you.
Get from being a Texas rotc kid to an active war zone journalist to a gas station drug reviewer an avid podcaster? Wow?
Wow, people say I love that. I guess there's a few ways to talk about that. So, like the first thing, I'll just note on the war zone stuff, people make a much bigger deal of that, Like it comes up because war comes up, and particularly some of the wars that I've covered come up. So I bring it up when I think it's relevant. But like becoming a war
zone journalist, no one paid me. I just bought plane tickets to places and reached out to people who lived in the area on the internet before I landed like that's all. It was not like a I think people talk about it as if there's some like special forces training you've got to do, and no, I was just like a guy who landed with his girlfriend and a camera and that's how we did most of it until like, you know, outside of like Syria and mean mar that's
how I did most of my war zone reporting. In terms of like how I stopped being a conservative kid from North Texas who wanted to be in the military, I mean a lot of it was encountering drugs at age nineteen and then also starting to make friends with young women my age and slightly older than me, who I realized were much more fun to spend time around
than the army. Sure, and yeah, all of that, you know, kind of collaborated in a radicalization process, you know, not even much of a wret just like stop me from being like a proto fascist little kid. I was mostly just sort of like in terms of temperament, a libertarian, but I would always vote Democrat because the Republicans were
obviously maniacs. And I was just like, I don't agree with the Democrats about everything, but I guess I'll vote for them because these other people are crazy, and I didn't really think a lot about politics until I mean, it was Ukraine and following the Syrian refugee trail in twenty fifteen and then Iraq in twenty sixteen and Standing
Rock in twenty sixteen. You know, I'd been at Occupy in New York at twenty eleven for a little while, but it was really I mean, Standing Rock was kind of one of the most radicalizing single things I experienced where I started being like, I'm generally a progressive guests with some libertarian tendencies to you know, And I wouldn't say I was an anarchist at that, but I started like reading more and thinking more and recognizing the like, well, I agree with a lot of this analysis, you know,
more sure, it was still years before I really like identified strongly in that direction.
Yeah. A couple of people kind of asked me with my upbringing, how somebody said, like, basically, how did I become in chargical zone media and like leftist podcasts? And you know, the short of it is, I grew up with a Republican dad, a moderate Democrat mom, and I grew up in an area where most of the people were your standard libs with a lot of a lot of Zionism, honestly, and I think what radicalized me was my insane empathy. I'm like a very very empathetic person.
And so.
Consuming content and reading history and meeting people. It just the more that I consumed and the more people I got to meet, the more left I became. And I feel like we approach a lot of our content from a place of empathy, and that's the kind of things I want to put out in the world. I got deep. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I got deep.
Yeah, I just obviously the people with the most money in the world are the kind of folks who volunteer at food not bombs, and you know, for their local libraries. So I decided I wanted to really cash in on that demo.
You know, yeah, for sure.
Those idiots like Ben Shapiro trying to get money from broke oil billionaires, you know, it's the librarians who really have walking around money. That's how you get rich.
And speaking of getting rich, it's time for.
A yeah, and we're back, Robert Zovie.
How you doing, Oh, you know, pretty good.
It's cool.
Do you think that most of the USA's divisive issues and over manipulated economy would be solved by breaking up into smaller individual countries by region example North South.
Nah, Yeah, that sounds like a fucking disaster. Look up the partitioning of India. Just look up the partitioning of India, and then think about the fact that India was not a massive part of the global economy as opposed to something going the way the partition of India went in terms of the violence, the death, the political upheaval, and also it being the entire center of the world's economy and a significant amount of it's like food and medicine, And yeah, seems like it would be bad.
Robert favorite Warhammer Legion Legions characters.
Okay, so if we're talking about like they use the term Legion, so I assume they're talking about like Eat Crusade through Horace Heresy era. Let's see. I really like the paint scheme and the look of like the Legion era Iron Warriors a lot, so I would have to say from aesthetics them, but I don't really find any of like the fiction that focuses on them particularly interesting. And I guess then i'd have to go with like Dark Angels or the Space Wolves yeah.
So when I asked the same person, ask my current favorite hobby that's just for fun, Well, it happens to be the NBA season, and I play fantasy basketball, and I take it.
Very far or hammer for nerds as I call it.
Sure, and I take it very seriously, and I love it. I fucking love it. It's amazing she does.
She's unhinged about it.
It frightens me, it does frighten him. And I got Lebron on my team this year. As he gets older. It just I needed him on my team one more time. Robert, what's a journalism story that you didn't have to do your day job that you would love to cover?
If tomorrow Aliens came down and said, we're getting rid of all of the fascism and authoritarianism and giving you all free energy, fixing the climate, making sure every refugee has food and water. There are no more problems. I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to kill Bigfoot.
This is not a question, but I've seen this a couple of times. People want to know if you're going to do any Australian bastards.
I don't think anyone in Australia's ever done anything bad. Yeah, seems like an island that never made a bad person, so not worth looking into. Probably, yeah, yeah, I assume we will. It's just like there's a lot of countries we haven't done bastards on sure, but definitely we will get an Ausie. Don't worry, folks. Part of why I haven't is the Dollup guys do such a good job of hitting Australian weird pieces of shit, So I do think there's a good place for people who like the
kind of thing I do to find that. The Dollup has a lot of great fucked up Australia stories.
Any plans to do an OPRAH series or episodes.
Yeah, working on them now.
Yep. That was asked a couple times, Robert, what's your favorite firearm?
I don't know, Like they all do such different things, like in terms of the one I own, I guess, the one that I shoot deer with, in terms of like from a I guess emotional standpoint. The very first gun I ever bought was a nineteen seventeen lee Enfield Mark three, beautiful old World War One era bolt action rifle,
just like an actually attractive, like piece of history. I have a Mouser C ninety six that is enjoyable for the same reason, although not a gun that can safely be used unless you are directly on a range, because sometimes when you attempt to take it off safety, it fires, so it is not allowed to be in the same room as bullets unless we are at a gun range. But is a very fun piece of history as well.
I really like the gun that I carry as he three sixty five XL sig sour great handgun, super comfortable, super easy to conceal. I shoot it almost every week and feel very comfortable with it. You know. I think I could handle most of its basic functions in the dark with my eyes closed, aside from aiming. I feel good about that. In terms of like what I enjoy shooting most recreationally, nothing beats in AK seventy four. I've got an AK seventy four with a wooden four grip
and a wire folding stock. That thing is a hoot.
The people want to know how did we start cool zone media? What's the cool zone media story?
Just kind of us constantly being behind on everything and then it happened by accident.
No, that's not true.
I said that part of the genesis of it would be that when a twenty twenty was going on, you and I had not really envisioned much beyond you know, we've got worst year ever, that's doing well, We've got Bastards that's doing well.
We'd finish the Women's War.
Yeah, we're going to keep doing probably every year, we'll do one or two Robert will go travel somewhere or two places, do one or two limited ten episode series, and we'll keep doing Bastards, and you know, that'll be it. That'll be good. Then the riots happened, and one of the things that occurred with that is, you know, I covered that very heavily, both in terms of articles that I wrote for a variety of publications, in terms of stuff for you know what was at the time our
regular news show, and in Bastards. And by the end of the year, I was absolutely burnt out, and to the extent that I became aware of like I won't be able to do this the next time something big happens, like enough of me has been spent, and also it shouldn't be me, like all go crazy, all develop even worse takes, like it's just bad, like one of the things I have an issue with, and I'm not going to like bring up names or critique people, but I think it's always a mistake when you build a news
network centered or like a news platform centered around a guy.
Yeah.
So what we were started talking, you know, late in twenty twenty early twenty twenty one, and like, we need to bring in other people and develop them and give them platforms so that whatever the next big things are, we have people who are able to cover them with the dedication they deserve without just burning me or another individual person out by putting, you know, too much on their shoulders at once. So that was kind of the thinking that led us there.
Yeah, and iHeartRadio asked us if we wanted to have our own imprint, remember yeah, yeah.
Oh yeah, I mean, And then the company was like, hey, we'll offer you more money if you do this thing that sounds like a nightmare and have a daily news show.
Hey, you want to make a daily show?
And we said I would rather kill myself. And then they said, but you can hire your friends, and then we said, well, actually that sounds a lot better.
They were like, hey, you've been pumping out content multiple times a day for the last year at was just like end of twenty twenty early twenty twenty one. They're like, hey, you've been doing this thing. Want to do it times a million? Yeah, that seems healthy. We did, but we got to hire a bunch of our friends and that's nice. And you know a lot of the people we love have salaries and health insurance. So a win is a fucking win. It's sun for fucking ads. Okay, we're back.
I've got a lot of people asking your how you approach research and how you format your episodes. If you have a template, if you put something into I know the answer to this, which is why you're half smiling. If you make some kind of a guide for your episodes, or yeah, your process.
The gist of it is, I have a doc I read through. So first, if there's a book, and they're usually are more than one book, I read through the
book or relevant portions of the book. Sometimes you don't have to read the whole book because you know, it just deals with your guy for a couple of chapters, and I highlight shit, I copy and paste the highlighted shit, and I organize it by generally, if I have my shit together, and I will have like a childhood, you know, young adulthood, early career, major crimes, YadA, YadA, YadA, and I'll paste in the different parts, you know, with a
list of like which source it's from. And I do the same thing with like highlighted and cut and pasted portions of articles, and I organize that by timeframe. And then I have that doc in one window and I have a word doc in the other, and I go through it and I like write it. I look through like, okay,
it's early life. Here's all the different sources on his early life here, and I look through them and I'm like, these are the different things that I find most interesting from every source, and I just kind of write them out in the way that makes sense. I try to make sure I quote every source that gives me a significant amount of info one or more time, so that I'm making it very clear this is where the original info came from, because I'm very rarely doing all of
the original research on these guys. So I want to make it clear that, like, you know, if i'm you know, this portion where I'm talking about this part of his life, it you know, generally came mostly from this source or for this source and this source right, you know, that's how I try to do it.
Robert, what's your favorite animal and or dinosaur?
My favorite dinosaur was always an iguanadon. Big iguanadon, guy, huge iguanadon fan. Love them, love them because like it's the dinosaur equivalent of like a fucking Guido pull in a switchblade in a New York alley. Like that's just cool that there were dinosaurs who had that vibe where they're just like, hey, motherfucker, I'm just gonna cut your ass. You know I love a fucking iguanadon. Look them up, big sharp knife thumbs, cool dinosaur.
Robert, what's your favorite part about working?
So it's okay for me to say I'm a Guido. I think I'm allowed to say Guido. Yeah, I have no idea I'm allowed to say Guido, Robert. Look at how Italian I am. Look At how much of a unibrow I grow if I don't shave for a day and a half. Look I get to say Guido. Okay, I have to deal with all this grease in my hair. I get to say Guido. I'm allowed. You don't know me.
I have no sayas Robert, what's your favorite part about working with Sophie? That is an actual question.
Oh, you're my favorite part of it. I guess that you know what you're doing and handle all of the things that I would never be able to handle. That. Yeah, is that a sensible thing to say? So I have no idea.
I don't know the answer that question.
I only know how to do the one thing.
So I get ask all the time by people what it's like working with you, and I say, you are the best business partner that anybody could ever ask for.
Oh that's nice.
That's what you were supposed to say. By the way, Oh that I'm a perfect angel baby.
But I'm just trying to be specific about the nature of our working relationship, which is that I do one thing and you do many things.
So true, so true. Robert, would you consider doing more South Africa episodes?
Yes, I mean definitely sure, Yeah, we'll do more. I need to actually do probably before the next South Africa episode. I need to do like a maybe Ian Banks, like a more dedicated Rhodesia episode, Like Rhodesia comes up a lot. But I haven't just done a I mean, we did Cecil Rhodes but I haven't just done like a I think Ian Banks was his name, the last president dude of or Ian Smith? Sorry, Ian Smith? What would say? Ian Banks? Yeah? Ian Smith, the fucking yeah leader of Rhodesia.
We'll do him soon. Yeah, we'll do another South African guy too, but I think we're gonna do Rhodesha next.
First we got to asked if there was a guest we've had on that we'd love to have on again. Paul Tompkins, Paul F.
Tompkins. We'd love to have Paul back on. Would be happy to have Ed Helms back on for one.
That's I'd love to have Mosley back on too. So funny.
I want to say something about Ed because we get offers from like famous people a lot, and without like naming any names. Sometimes we make attempts that don't wind up as episodes because when they realize what the show is and how different this is, that they need to sit here for two our three hours, that we're going to be really going into detail. That often we're talking
about things from like a more radical political lens. They get uncomfortable because it's, you know, maybe something they view as dangerous for their career or whatever. And Ed Helms, who I don't think really knew much about us coming into the show, he said.
He said he listened to a couple episodes.
He listened to an episode maybe yeah, but he sat down and I've hume in with fucking a harder episode to be a fun guest on Curtis Yarvin and it is immediately down to clown So I was you know, I have respect for.
That, absolutely, yeah, Robert, what are your thoughts on the developments in Rajava?
It's too early to tell where thing's going to end, but obviously, I mean, it looks like the Turks are going to be allowed to continue to bomb as Israel has been bombing ro Java, and the United States isn't going to do anything. It's unclear if the US is going to even stand up for Cobani in any meaningful way. But it's also I don't really want to say too much because all of this is happening right now. I'm very concerned. You know, obviously there's no chance of things
getting better in Syria period without a sod gone. So I'm glad that he's gone, but what that means for Rojava is still very much unclear to this point, you know, it's it's a scary time. I would say the one thing that I can say that is comforting to those of you who are likewise scared is that it's really always been a very scary time. There hasn't been an easy or very safe period of the revolution, and they've continued holding on.
So what are some of the most impactful books that you've read that you think listeners should read?
The Dispossessed by Ursula k Legwin if you also haven't read it, The Ones Who walk Away from Omlas, which is a short story. Read that Parable of the Sewer and Parable of the Talents by Oh God. And I'm facing on a name right now. This is nothing against Octavia Butler. Octavia Butler. Sorry, I'm just bad with names, folks. I love Octavia.
I want to recommend Mia from Could Happen Here Show? She recommended reading Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano and oh my god, it's an incredible book.
Yeah.
Also, we both read this book. Who's the uh? I'm forgetting the author's named Cultish by I want to.
Coltish was quite good.
Coltish was quite good. Anything written by Margaret Kiljoy ever heard of her?
Oh?
My God, God, And you know there's so many feet questions here.
Here's here's one I haven't brought up. In terms of books, read The water Knife by Pallo Batcha Galupi. I'm saying his name wrong, I know, but The water Knife is just excellent, excellent book.
I just want to say, there is an absurd amount of feet questions in here. Why do you want to know my foot size? You fucking weirdo.
No, don't answer those. Nobody who asked you questions about feet on the internet has a good reason.
What's wrong with you?
Don't do better? Jesus Christ? Just go to Wiki feet like the rest of the freaks. I will say, I do think Wiki feet is one of the last bastions of like intellectual honesty left on the internet.
Robert, how did you get into ska? People want and like, what's your favorite SKA?
Man?
That was asked a couple times.
You don't get into scat Scott finds you, baby, and Scott found me One beautiful day when I was nineteen years well, seventeen years old something like that, when somebody posted I had become a fan of the band Real Big Fish because of the movie Basketball, which I enjoyed as a kid, and I posted about it online and someone said, kid, let me show you something better, and they sent me a link to where there was a torrent for somewhere in the between. I think it was
somewhere in the We might have been keesby Knights. That was my first street Light Manifesto album. I don't know it was one of the two. But Streetlight Manifesto is my favorite band. Probably Thomas Kalknaki is probably my favorite songwriter. It goes back and forth between him and Warren Zevon, And in terms of bands, it goes back and forth between street Light and the Cat Empire. I don't know. It kind of depends on my mood sometimes.
What are the best non mainstream news sources fore or otherwise.
Non mainstream news sources for your other I mean, it depends on kind of like what you're looking for.
I always recommend jkn Rahan's Popular Front.
Yeah, of course, of course Jan Rahan's Popular Front. If you want to keep up with like the conspiracy right, you can't do better than Knowledge Fight the Q.
Non anonymous people are.
Good outside of obviously Ed Zitron's great tech journalism. The guys at four H four media do do really good stuff. The Defector I like as a I'm interested in a lot of these new you know, newer outlets. Yeah, that's some of what I'd suggest. Obviously, you know, there's certain things that like the BBC, there's certain things they do very well, war crimes in Africa you can often find
some really good coverage first, and like BBC's Africa. I there's certain things al Juiceia does very well, and obviously like certain things that they don't. So there's no like this is the best one place to go for all of the news in the world, because that really doesn't exist. It's more a matter of like coming to an understanding of like the shortcomings of and also coming to an appreciation of like which specific journalists are worth following from place to place, you know.
Yeah, and finally, Robert, what's cracking my peppers?
I don't have an answer to that. It's just a thing I said once on a podcast for reasons that elude me.
It was one of your best I have to say thank you. I really enjoyed that. One last question, Chapel Ron or Sabrina Carpenter, do you know who I did? Those people are.
I've heard of Chapel Rowan. People are angry at her for some reason.
She didn't she didn't endorse, she didn't endorse Kamal Hars.
Okay, because okay, she didn't. We are we reliant upon Chapel Rowan to fix American politics because I don't know here, but that seems like an unfair burden to place upon someone who I'm going to assume is mostly known for singing and dancing. Yeah, and my more or less what she does. I'm not saying that to be mean.
My answer to that question is, Robert, do you remember the concert I said I went to by myself like two days after the election results? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that was Sabrina Carpenter and that where you got sick?
Yeah?
I got. I got sick after going because you know, too many people crowd even with masks. That was Sabrina Carpenter and she was great and it restored my faith in girlhood. So okay, we'll take question good.
Yeah, I guess I'll say Sabrina Carpenter too.
Then sure, any final thoughts or should we get the fun fucket out of here?
Yeah, let's fucking bounce motherfuckers.
Okay bye friends. Robert loves forty percent of you. I love thirty two percent of you.
You can't prove either of those things, Nope.
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