Alson media.
Order in the court order in the court Justice Robert Evans presigning, I see we have a fine jury here to take questions from the audience of our of our daily news show, which is also my court room. Everybody, everybody get it because I'm a judge now, really, because that's how the legal system works.
All those rubers are partly have come true.
Huh No, municipal Judge Garrison.
That's okay, okay, let's get You're right, You're right, You're right here.
I will now for the rest of my life be able to say when people ask questions well as a man of the law, which I'm very much looking forward to.
No able to say, Robert quite likely to say.
Anyway, that's all I got.
All right, this is that you could happen here Q and a episode we've got. What are we calling you now, Robert Evans? What's your title?
The Honorable Robert Evans? And I actually dished. The judge who made me a judge sent me a gabble, but I didn't grab it for this one, so I just used I have a the the barrel and lower receiver from an antique sought off shotgun that belonged to a bootlegger and I just sort of slammed that into my table.
I'm sure our editor will love that.
Yeah, yeah, right, but before we broadcast, so you have a sort of shotgun.
It's not it's not functional. It's been destroyed.
I see, I see good. Didn't want to little rebe reach moment.
Yeah, we've got Mio Wong, Garrison, Davis, James Stout and the dishonorable Robert Evans.
And Sophy Lichterman.
Oh yes, it mean yeah.
We're gonna do the We're gonna do some questions. We posted it on our Blue Sky for not following us on Blue Sky.
We are on there Blue Ski.
One does not post on Blue Sky.
So if you want skeets, I really hope that's not true, because that's relliant, embarrassing.
Unfortunately, they really tried to get that off the ground. I don't see anyone actually using skeet.
I saw someone using it in French. Was a real moment A Garrison.
Instead of saying send a tweet, now, I just say send skeat in conversation. Everyone loves it.
M de reskeat Is that a thing?
Yeah?
I guess you do. I guess you do.
M hm, and we're moving on. I'm just gonna throw out some of the questions we received on online. I'm not even gonna say the name of the app again because I'm afraid being labeled as an old Garrison's embarrassed by me. I can tell I didn't say that, but you thought it.
But you thought it.
I didn't think that you did.
Any advice for someone with a desire to do some hobby or freelance journalism in the coming few years, I want to actively fight for equality. Also, thank you for your questions.
Everyone.
HM, I don't thank you for your questions. I'm actively angry at you for your question.
That's why you're the dishonorable.
Yeah, start rich if you want to be a freelance journalist, because you'll progressively become poorer.
I have funded my journal I get I love whatever people ask me questions like how did you convince Krack to send you to Iraq? I didn't. I bought plane tickets. Like being an entertainer has always been what's funded my journalist.
I guess my advice would be get really autistic.
About something oh problematic, just like one.
Thing, this one thing, I get like really into it to the point where it kind of takes over your life. Your your personal life starts fading away, it kind of blends into your whole state of existence. And only then will you actually get good at that that thing. Yep, that's my advice. And then you just take one thing at a time and every few years you kind of change the scope of the thing if you're getting really autistic about But that's kind of how I've rolled, and it's been it's been Okay.
Yeah, you just finished thirty six hours of digging into the life of a school shooter. And I also built the back of my career spending hours and hours digging through the online lives of mass shooters. And you don't have to do that, but you do have to do that thing, which is, yeah, exactly what Garrison said. You have to pick a very narrow thing and make it your life and not just a random thing, but like
a thing that you think is important. Yeah, and that people don't other people don't understand how important it is. And if you make yourself there's a fella. His blog is called We Hunted the Mammoth. Dave Foutrell, who's been covering what we call the manosphere for like more than a decade before anybody else in journalism was taking it seriously. Yep,
you got to do that kind of thing. If you do that kind of thing, you build a name for yourself, and that can allow you when that the thing that you're obsessed on becomes a big story, being first to have something meaningful to say about it can provide you eventually with the opportunity to cover other things.
Yeah, it's good advice.
I would say if you want to get started freelancing, it's a good idea to join that BW Freelance Journalist Union. You can learn a lot from people who are freelancing there. You can learn who not to pitch, which editors are toxic as fuck, which is a surprisingly large amount. Yeah, you can learn which email to send your pitches to and how to pitch if you're not familiar with how to pitch. I also teach sometimes journalism workshops at a community college, So if you have a community college.
Near you, you.
Might be able to get some either free or very cheap sort of advice and the real like nuts and bolts of journalism, like sending pitches and stuff like that.
Cool.
What is the consensus on what the next Trump administration will do on the first day or first week, all of us just look like we're in pains.
Yeah, I'm not for seeing good things. There'll be a lot of executive orders that are you know, probably bad, you know, things that aren't great.
Yeah. I think that he's going to try to do as much of what he's promised to do in terms of particular not in terms of everything he's promuded, but in terms of going after immigrants. Yeah, he's going to do as much of what he's promised to do as he possibly can't. Now, that doesn't mean he's going to
actually deport millions of people. There are like some just practical limitations based on the capacity of the institutions he'll be using to do this, and he could get there's a very good chance things will get bogged down and whatnot, but like he will try. Yeah, that's that's my take.
Yeah, I think I think the other thing that's gonna happen pretty quickly is I think he's gonna start moving on tariffs very very fast.
Yeah. If you're planning to buy a computer, go ahead and grab that fucker now if you can.
If you're getting anything from overseas, you should get it in the few weeks that you still can.
Yeah, it has a battery made here.
I had my annual physical today because otherwise our insurance screws us over. And my doctor was like, you should try to get as many prescriptions filled before the end of the year before things things come up, just in case.
There you go, and you.
Know that's not terrible advice.
Yeah.
I think in terms of executive orders, he will try and further restrict access to asylum, try and further change that. There are things he can do by executive order with ICE and CBP in terms of how they operate that he will try and do. It's not impossible that they will try and again immediately mobilize public health law against migrants like he did in twenty twenty. Right, Yeah, those
things could all be done without congressional support. We made a whole on us about this, but Steven Miller suggested that they might do some of those things.
So, yeah, not impossible. Probably won't be a great day.
Somebody's getting fired the first week, probably first day.
Yeah, I mean, I've seen the fact that the FBI director is stepping down pushed as like an act of resistance because it means that Trump now has to actually go through like Congress to get it done. I don't know how much I buy that, how much I think that.
I think a lot of what I'm seeing right now from establishment people And maybe this isn't true of Ray because I did find some of the arguments they're compelling, But a lot of what I've seen from establishment people in politics is they're scared and just really try and not to make waves. Yeah, and I think that's what you're going to see overwhelmingly. I think that he's going to probably probably will not immediately act against the press, and in a legal sense as the president, they will
do that. But I think he's he's going to He's already suing differently, and I think that that's going to be kind of his his focus there for a while, just because there's a lot on his plate. But I think he there there will be attempts like the fuck with libel laws and stuff, especially as things go on.
Okay, several of you have asked about the Android ad free version subscription channel, and I want you all to know that it will happen next year. I have been trying to get this to happen for two years now, and for unforeseen reasons, it just keeps getting roadblocked. But it is happening. We're just waiting on a couple final things to get into place, so that will be happening, hopefully very soon into twenty twenty five. I will update everybody as soon as that's possible. And I'm so sorry
it's taken so long. I want you to know. I have worked so unbelievably hard on this, miserably hard.
Yeah, we've seen it, Sophie has. It's been a nightmare, harder than I have worked on anything else this year. Like, it's been nuts.
Yeah.
And here's the thing that sucks for no reason, no reason, not that there's no reason to launch the app, there's a great reason. There's no reason it should have taken this long, correct, But we can't say anymore for reasons that are also equally frustrating. I'd like to say in general, folks, there's a few things that get brought up a lot. It's like, why haven't they done this yet? Why haven't
they've done this yet? We're talking like technical things or like you know, things like like a paid subscription, and they're like, why haven't they gotten around to it yet, and the answer is always some infuriating bullshit.
Based on some bureaucracy bullshit.
Some be rocks, some legal shit where you're like, you don't actually realize it's illegal to do this if you do it this way or whatever, like some sort of bullshit that makes it impossible. It's not that we want to make this is. It is easy as possible for people to have the best listening experience that we can afford to provide them. But there's a lot of annoying bullshit that exists for reasons beyond our comprehension.
Sorry, anyways, here's ads unless you have an iPhone and subscribe to color Zone Media on Apple.
All right, we're back.
How do you each motivate yourself to right or do your jobs? I get asked that question all the time, but I'll let each of you tackle it. While this is a communally hosted show, I feel like each of you do very different things, so your answers are going to be all over the place.
So Garrison, oh, well, I mean paying rents a great motivator.
Sure, yes, yes, understated this is this is a big thing that a lot of people who want to be writers but have never done it for a living. Miss is that all of your favorite writers who do it for a living A big part of how they get over fucking writer's block is they have to pay rent. It turns out that helps.
It's it's a quite compelling motivator, and sometimes it has required the assistance of you know, caffeine or other things. I have a variety of playlists to help me in when I'm in like different moods. I definitely will about you know, maybe twice a month, I just do a complete, like a complete body check to my sleep schedule to
get a special project finished. And that's just kind of part of the deal, at least in terms of how I work, and not everyone does it this way though maybe maybe people are more healthy than me.
Yeah for me.
Okay, So the easiest way something gets done is just pure rage. I get I can just do it like it.
Just comes out.
Yeah.
Anger is a great motivator.
The other fun one is pure joy as something funny happening, like this is the Shinzowabe Assassination. The easiest writing I've ever done in my life.
Sometimes it just flows.
Yeah.
Other times it's just like there's a deadline and everyone is counting on me, and I have to get it out, and I've gotten to the right level of sleep deprivation where I can.
Just do it. That's right, That's right.
Yeah.
But I also think, you know, there's obviously like health insurance, which is sort of a joke given our health insurance. But yeah, and the thing, and this is the sort of the serious one, is that like this, you know, I mean, I do some organizing stuff too, but like this, this is the thing that I have to do that can materially affect the world, which is a very very weird thing to say about a podcast. But I've seen it happen, right, I've seen all of you go and
do things that wouldn't have happened. And I've you know, it's it's a weird situation, right, because my motivation for doing this stuff is the chance that you will make the world better. But I've I've seen it happen, and I have to continue to believe that the thing that I've been doing for all these years, this project of building a very large hammer and deploying it against our enemies,
can work and will work. And that is you know, that's how I get out of bed every morning, is we're building the hammer and we're swinging it.
Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Very large.
Hammer will be a banging name for a podcast.
I agree, Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, there's a there's a great speech the comic series trans Metropolitan about how journalism is a gun that you wire up to your eyes and your ears and several other organs in order to shoot at the world. And that's I think a good way to keep yourself doing it when it feels like you're just shouting into a void.
Yeah.
I really like the process of writing.
I like telling stories like that makes me happy and I feel so lucky I can do it for my job. I don't particularly likely receiving trauma, which.
I also do for video, but like, really it sometimes I can't sleep.
So many people trusted me with their stories, especially this year, that they didn't have to and sometimes a great personal risk, and it's a massive privilege that they trusted me with those stories, and I think I owe it to them to do my best to tell those stories as well.
As I can.
Yeah, and like as Mia said, it has materially changed the world. Like the amount of people who listened to our podcast and came to the border to help last year when we really desperately needed help, people who just like on Sunday Night, gave their money, which I know none of us have enough money right now to help people who are displaced in Rushaba. Like, all that stuff really makes it feel like if you tell a good
enough story, people will care. That's always what I felt like, if you could just get people to see it, if people could be there, they would care, and if they care enough, they'll do something. Then I've seen that be true with people who listen to the show, and that really makes me happy, So I want to keep doing that.
Yeah, for me, it's two part answer. The first part is that I genuinely give a shit about everything that we put out, and what we do is not really while it is a job, it matters so much. And the second part is if I don't do my job, the amount of people's lives that that impacts.
He's a lot of fucking.
People, and I give a shit about each and every one of them. So I'm gonna keep doing my job so that everybody else can keep doing their job and maybe we make a difference in this world, this fucked up, crumbly world. Robert did you have anything to add. You were speaking, and then nice talked.
Did I already not give an answer?
You gave an answer, that's why, but you were starting to speak.
Oh yeah, I do it for the fame. Baby.
Great.
Next, What episode or episodes were your favorite this year to make or otherwise? Yeah, my favorite this year. We're definitely James's series from the Darien Gap. That was an incredible series. I'm so unbelievably proud of it. Yeah, James had been trying to do that work for a long time, and I'm happy that we were able to fund it and James was able to do the incredible reporting that he did. I'm also quite proud of Robert Garrison and I surviving the RNC and DNC and C was.
A good time, like legitimately.
Great time, pulling the worst people in the world.
It was the DNC that fucked me up. Yeah, yeah, same.
I was like destroyed emotionally after the DNC.
Yeah, the DNC was really a huge bummer.
And then MIAs covered some of the most important labor stories that like nobody covers absolutely yeah, and like without those genuinely like nobody covers like small labor stories or big labor stories and she's always on.
Top of that beat.
And yeah, I also really just like Robert's Don't Panic episode something some great writing, my friend, I answered, now everybody else has to I'll start with.
There's weirdly a few this year cool.
I normally isn't I like the Boeing ones?
That was fun.
Yeah.
The one that was most emotionally impactful for me was getting to interview doctor Julius Serrano, who if you haven't listened to that episode, go listen to it.
Great book.
Yeah, Whipping Girl is the book that literally created a bunch of the like like that the concept of misgendering is like from that book, right, like like the language that we used to talk about transnist today like is directly her. And so few people have ever read the book, so a few people even know who she is. And getting a chance to talk to her was like incredible.
And I'm also really happy about the organizing one that I did, because I've gotten so many messages from people who were just like, I, oh, wait, my knitting is useful to organizing, and I'm like, yes, yes it is, you're nitting. You're so incredible staggeringly useful.
Yeah, so I'm proud of that one.
Yeah, let's take a quick break then, Garrison, Robert James, you can answer that question.
And we're back. James, how about you.
I'm proud of doing the Darien once.
I think, like, I'm so happy that we finally got to a place where like we could do that, where we could find that like I've been trying to do that, like I said, for million, nearly a decade, and yeah, it's been it's been hard, and it continues to be hard. Like one of the people you heard from in those episodes got deported last week then, so like it continues
to kind of be emotionally difficult. But I really liked how many people messaged me and were like, I sent this to my father uncle, not just dude aunts and their mums too, I'm sure, and think non binary relatives, but like, well maybe not because they sent it to their right wing relati and they learned some compassion. That's always what you want to do, Like I said before, you want people to see it so that they care and so they understand it and they don't just get
this stupid Fox News bullshit racism stuff. And so yeah, that made me really happy. The reason we're all different on this, by the way, is because we have not done a Come twenty twenty four episode, and if we had, this would have been a much much shorter segment.
James, let me just tell you, I think we can all look forward to a white Christmas this year.
Jesus mother.
Set him up. It's my own fault.
Wow, I guess I'll go now. I'll just short clean out the aftertaste of that. So it's worse. I think I started out pretty strong with police drones, even more topical as we record this now as New Jersey is about to get completely abduct I think by alien aircraft.
Yeah, there's no one left in New Jersey now.
They've all been taken away by these unidentified drove That.
Actually happened three days ago. It just took a long time for the rest of the country to notice or care. Bruce Springsteen hasn't made a song of izon.
We have no way of known besides the mass hysteria of the New Jersey drone panic. Police drones are a real problem, and those are going to be increasingly so I was happy with my reporting on that at CES, and then I guess I mean to echo Sophie. I had a great time at the RNC. It's fun as sentence. I never thought I would say yeah, And particularly the R and C Grinder episode, I still think is Bruce pretty is pretty good.
It's pretty great.
The amount of places that Garrison and I snuck into at the r n C a time.
It was really dangerous too, because I was having to like do my rn C research next to Robert and Sophie the whole time. And oh boy, it's like a minefield scrolling through that app.
That's an experience, to say the least.
Any thoughts on the proposed twenty twenty eight general strike, how are people feeling about that?
I'll start with Mia, Yeah, I mean it's a pretty good idea.
Like, there's definitely sort of I'm immediately going into this nacaying a little bit. There's definitely problems with it. It's going to be extremely hard to execute because we just don't have a modern history of doing that in the US, and even some of the success ones in the last decade that people have pulled off haven't been that effective.
But on the other hand, as something that we you know, a concrete thing that we have to organize, towards that has a bunch of like pretty large unions behind it already. I did an episode about that a few weeks ago. I don't know, a couple months ago. I don't remember when I did this episode. I'm sorry, I can't remember
anything we've ever done. But I think, I think, I think it's a good opportunity to connect a whole bunch of different kinds of organizing together, both in terms of sort of labor and in terms of the support work you need for that. So, yeah, cautiously optimistic.
Anyone else have anything they want to add.
The time to start figuring out those logistics, like is now, it's not it's not waiting till twenty twenty seven.
Yeah, I agree, Garrison. I think that the fact that there are serious people who represent serious unions talking about it is part of way. It's one of the things that does give me a degree of hope. We're going to have to start working now towards it. It's not going to be simple in any way, shape or form. If they see it coming, they are going to start trying to criminalize things preemptively. If it is something that even looks like a real possibility, they're going to come
after it with everything they've got. And it's one of those things where maybe if the midterms go well for Democrats, maybe Democrats stop that, But it's just as plausible and probably more plausible that Democrats line up with Republicans to attempt to criminalize something like that.
Yeah, it's strained to be seeing something like this will going to I so far off, Like it's like, yes, it's not something where any of us are familiar with, which.
It has to be to be clear. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it.
Has to be barring, like an actual coup.
That's the only way you get a general strike, right, Like, either something so earth shattering that everyone so everyone's ready to risk it because they're already in danger, or you take the time and you plan that you do it properly. But it's just not something we're familiar with it. I love the general strike. I'm always going to support a general strike. I'm excited to see a general strike. But yeah, we have to put in the work now.
Yeah. The only responsible way to characterize the organized Left in the United States is a complete and utter failure like it is. It has been a calamity for the causes that it seeks to represent and a lot of that is because of like fucking bullshit online clicktivism. You know, we're all going to do a general strike. Everybody get ready next week, We're going to do it.
You know.
Shit like that is is it's just so deeply unseerious. And if we're going to take the momentu and the energy that exists in the number of people who are angry and who you know, and that number of people will be increasing as the consequences of conservative policies hit home by twenty twenty eight, like it has to be something taken deadly seriously by very serious people who are thinking through the consequences and what's necessary in order to make this feasible, you know.
And lastly, do each of you have you know, a movie or a book or something you would like to recommend.
In twenty twenty five, when I finished my books, you should buy it, yes, but read General Strike. I've been reading a book called Pretent Tape, which is in English, but it's about how San Francisco doc workers block to a shipment of weapons to El Salvador and it just seems a very relevant book. And they did it to Pinochet as well. It's easy to read and like. It just reminded me how important labor organizing is going to be and then four years and how powerful it could
be too. So I'll give that one a little plug.
Excellent.
There's a film called The End Will Be Spectacular which is about the Kurdish use movement in Northern Kurdistan in Turkey.
It's a really good film.
I think of understand to help you understand the Kurdish freedom movement, and it's worth a watch. It's not like a necessarily a happy, feel good film, but I think it's worth a watch. Is fifty if you've recently become interested in that because what you've heard on the podcast.
Yeah, yeah, I have a couple. So I'm trans fiction pilled right now. Given you've given you fiction for trans authors.
Would you say you're transfixed? Wow?
I walked.
I walked right into that one, like drove directly into it, like JFK's head into that bullet.
Oh my god. Wow.
We spent a lot of time with each other.
Yeah.
The first one I wanted to talk about is The gun Runner and Her Hound by Maria Ying, which is the pen name of a couple of authors. Okay, so this is a This is an absolutely unhinged lesbian book about a lesbian crime lord and her new bodyguard who is also a lesbian, and it rules. Uh, there's a whole sort of like post apocalypse US thing going on, but they're still in like civilized Hong Kong. It's awesome, it's great. It's you need war on hinge lesbians in
your life, go read this. The the other one is one of the boys. This is forthcoming is we want to release May thirteen, twenty twenty five by Victoria Zeller, and it's about a trans girl who's like the kicker on her football team and she has to like leave the team because she transitions, but then the team needs her back they don't have a kicker. And it's it's fun, it's it's a good time. So you should you should get that when it comes out.
Yeah. So I'm actually right now in the middle of a book that I found myself surprised by how much
I've liked. It's called When Paris Went Dark and it is a history of the occupation of Paris under the Nazis That is a really fascinating social history by Ronald rose Bottom that I found very like emotionally affecting, especially in light of you know, some things going on, and yeah, just kind of a fascinating look at the psychology of a people of like a of an entire people kind of grappling with what's about to happen to them in the wake of the failure of the French army and
then what happens next. And then I would also recommend Setting the Desert on Fire by James Barr, which is one of the books about te Lawrence that I cited in the t Lawrence episodes, if you are at all interested in the realities of needing to fight an insurgent war.
Here, I guess just two recent things I've enjoyed. Finally finished The Steppenwolf by Hermann Hess. Yes, I enjoyed that deeply. It kind of it kind of picked my picked my twin peaks the Return Brain. So that was that was pleasant. And for a more recent release, Luca Gudaghino's a new movie Queer, adapting the short story by William S.
Burrows.
I found this movie to be utterly fascinating and transfixing, to use the term from me Robert. I don't have much else to say about it because I would rather people just watch it and take away what they want to themselves. But it got me thinking a lot about the lack of meaning inherent to identity and why I hate the term queer bodies.
So yeah, good.
Movie, awesome. I just have one movie to recommend it. It's one of my favorite movies of all time, the original nineteen seventy three seventy two, so seventy three seventy three, The wicker Man, not the fucking Nicholas Cage version, the original version. And if you have a local theater that plays old movies a lot of times, they'll play it in theaters. I highly recommend that experience. It's really fun, especially at the end. I see it in theaters or watch it at least once or twice a year, and
vibes are good. Yeah that's it for a Q and a episode. Thanks for submitting, and goodbye.
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