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It's autumn time to get cozy and nothing is cozier than one of Casper's award-winning mattresses. Of course, they've got their most popular mattress. The original hybrid, it's engineered for cool, comfortable sleep. You can get a more restful and more soothing night sleep if it's a little warm in your August with the wave hybrid mattress, which provides more support than foam alone. Or upgrade to the wave hybrid snow mattress with snow technology to give you a full night of cooler sleep if you need to try it to believe it, Casper offers free contactless delivery and a risk. Free Hundred night trial. Discover the Casper difference today at casper.com and use code here 100 for $100 off select mattresses that's code HERE 100. Thatcasper.com for $100 off. Hey there. I'm Scott rank, host of the podcast history unplugged. Now, it really is a dream come true to get paid to talk about history without all the stress while still being able to make a living. And I did it with Spreaker from iheart. Not only did they make it super easy to monetize my podcast, but ad revenue is 3 to four times higher with spreaker than with any other host I've worked with. So if you want to turn your passion into a podcast and give this a try, visitspreaker.com, that's SPREAKER. Dot com get paid to talk about the things you love. 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. Take it away, Robert Evans. Gosh, it could happen here. I did it. Brilliant. Thank you. Yeah, I love. I love that. Really. Thank you. You're you're Robert Evans. We also have Christopher Wong, Garrison Davis and we have Andrew here with us who will be leading this episode. Hi, Andrew. Hello. Hello, everyone. How's the weather? And in Portland, it is cold. Everywhere else in the continental United States, it is a boiling hell storm, actually to today. Today, today it's only 84. But yeah, we we we have three days where it's barely in the 80s and then it goes back to being like 97 again. It's very exciting. Stand your temperature measurements, but OHS Angeles, it's lovely today, we lovely for the next couple days and then we'll be burning. 30303636 is is 97. It's gonna be perfect here forever. Climate change is over in northern Oregon. I have declared it. Well, if you declared it, it must be true. Exactly. So today I want to have a bit of a discussion and open discussion about my. Favorite kind of discourse, and that is dead discourse. I wanted to talk about our discussion, quote UN quote, that people have been having a couple of weeks ago about restaurants. Ohh restaurant discourse. This whole idea that people heard about 5 minutes ago and got super riled up over and sparked a bunch of like drama because that's what social media incentivizes. But I figured, you know, we could have a nice round table discussion here about quote UN quote restaurant abolition and sure thoughts on the ideas presented in the scene that inspired it, for those of us who read it abolished restaurants by Paula and Fuu. But first of all, I wanted to share a bit about my experience in the food industry. It was. Quite brief, and by brief I mean like 4 days. Oh, I started looking at this this winery slash coffee that was owned and run by this trust fund baby and it was very clear that she had filled up for most of her life. It was very disorganized and very stressful experience. I quit like a few days after I got it because instead of you know, making coffees and. Preparing wines and stuff. I got a job pushing people in an office which is only marginally better. And I mean, I don't want to speak over like food service people or anything because like my experience is very limited, but in my own limited experience, it sucked. I mean, my blood too into water, trying to keep up with everything. It was one of those kind of under the table jobs. We do have a contract or a specific job description. It's just like you're doing everything. So you're sorting and taking out recycling, you're organizing stock, you're making coffee, bussing tables your cash and products, you're handling accounting. For some reason, like, Lady, I just got here, but I'm ready doing the content and so on and so forth. I didn't have an official break either, and I wasn't allowed to sit at all. I mean, my boss said that I could stop for lunch when I needed to, but because of this, these constant like responsibility issues piling on to me, I'd be asleep. Never got a chance to take a breather the one time I did take a lunch break. She rushed me out to the lunch break because I was taking too long. And she was busy. Taking care of her other real estate. I know only consistent customers with her friends. And yet somehow, you know, she kept. The doors open and the lights on because, you know, trust fund, baby. But yeah, to reiterate, it was a very sucky experience. I want you all. You all had any? Yeah. I worked at a restaurant for starting when I was in high school. I was 15 1/2. For three or four years, part of college. It made me learn a lot about how awful people are. But. It was like. You did learn how to work in a team, and things like that help helpful skills there, but management was terrible. Uh. Not exactly easy work. Not exactly fun work. Umm. Yeah. It was. Like I I honestly feel like a lot of people. Should have to do some type of job like that so that they learn you know how how to treat people who work in that in that kind of position. Because mostly my memories of it is terrible, horrible customers who just treated people like scum. Yeah, but I needed the job, so. Yeah yeah, my only experience in food service was working at a Sonic. Not for a crazy long time, but it was terrible and it left me with an abiding. Like respect for people who have to do that and. I I, you know, we can talk, we'll talk more about the restaurant thing, but I certainly don't think fast food restaurants are a thing that exists in my ideal future because I don't know how you could possibly. Operate those without a tremendous amount of human suffering and wasted potential because they're just they're bad things. Now, that said, any utopian society will have a way to acquire Popeyes, but perhaps not at, like, midnight in every city of the country, whenever you want it. My utopian society is a rule in which KFC has been abolished and everything else still exists. Well, yes, yes, well, I mean the episode, everybody. Yeah, that's the episodes again. This is it could happen here. Sponsored by Carls junior. Perfectly OK with imperialism. But like, I need someone, right? You know? So yeah, yeah, keep keep the KFC. Andrew, what, what kind of like, can I ask, like, what kind of restaurant? I know Robert said his was fast food. Mine was very like casual food. What what kind of restaurant did you work at? Right? It wasn't. It was like a winery slash cafe. And it also served food. It was like attached to a hotel. And the whole the hotel part of it probably made it even her parents owned the hotel and so she. Yeah. Alright, yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. Chris Garrett, are either of you either work in the food, Food, Food service industry at all? Yeah, I I worked at a bakery for like a year and a half, mostly back of the house. But I mean, I would, you know, would. End up washing, washing dishes and taking out recycling and all that kind of stuff. But most of my work was designing recipes because I was more on like the food science angle. I don't know. Yeah, I mean it's I have a complicated feelings, unlike cafes specifically. I mean I I love anarchist cafes and like the idea of anarchist cafe, I would love to love to like have one at some point. It's like operated by the workers who wouldn't quote owned by the workers. Eating range Outback, but obviously there's guns and buns. We call it guns and buns. You can get a croissant and you can shoot. Cafe by all means I guns and guns. Sounds like the name of like a gym or something. It it got you're right, guns and buns is a breakfast cafe, gun range, strip club. And apparently as long as as long as you fund it, you can have whatever you want. But people will fund it. Garrison, obviously the food service industry has. We'll just make it a cooperative that makes everything right. Sorry, please continue. Yeah, like the food service industry has a lot of problems, but if I were to go, if I were able to go into a bakery like maybe like two or three times a week to just bake food for people and that helps me live the rest of the week, I would totally do that, right. So like it depends on a lot of factors, but. It's like, there's ideas around like an anarchist cafe, worker owned cafe that'd be like totally chilled to work it to, to like be there a few days of the week making food because I enjoy making food, I enjoy baking, I like food science. But you know, when you start, you start tying that into labor and exploited the labor practices and the notion of like having to serve other people, then it gets a little bit more tricky and, you know, less, less, less good, less cash money. I understand. Yeah, exactly. You know, was, was was kind of funny about it. I would say it's like. Quite lost my train of thought. Quite Robert. I mean, just think for a SEC. Well, so I mean one of the things that. I have noticed over the years because I've had. A lot of friends work as bartenders, as waiters and waitresses. There are there's a chunk of people who really like the work. They usually don't like their employer. They often have issues with like their manager or whatever, but like they like their coworkers and they enjoy the the act of like. Doing restaurant stuff, yeah, I and I know that like, so one of the things that I did recreationally for years, I was go to, I would go to these regional. Burning Man events. And one of the rules there is like, everyone pays the same thing to get in. There's no like, there's no like talent, so there's nobody who's like paid to be there as an act and there's no like exchange of currency allowed. But there are restaurants, there are people who like bake food and and and get out and like make and give out coffee. There's there's multiple bars and a number of the people I knew who were like the most who would spend the most of their time, which is again totally their own. At these events, volunteering as bartenders were people who worked as bartenders and were like, look, I like serving drinks. They hate a lot of what goes along with being in a bar, but I enjoy making and serving drinks. Absolutely. There was this one really cool dude out in the middle. He was out because it's a spread out over acres of Woodlands. There's just this guy I found one night alone in the woods at like a podium sized little booth lit up bar heat made, and he was like, look, I am a very good bartender. What I do not like is making the same things every night for drunk people who don't know anything about a good mixed drink. So you and I are going to have like a 5 minute conversation and then I'm going to tell you what I'm going to make you. Based on like, yeah, and it was ******* dope. Yeah, it was really cool like that. Yeah, more stuff like that, more like restaurant pop ups that are like those types of things are are just are divorced from like this notion of like, you know? Being served by a lower class member of society. Instead, it's people like sharing actual interests that they have, and they're not obligated to be there or else they get, you know, or else they're not able to pay their rent. Right. There's lots of things like a utopian society or be like, yeah, I would totally be down with doing some, some kind of, you know, some kind of thing related to giving food to other people or preparing food or, you know, drink like mixed drinks. I, I, I, I like making coffee a lot, like espresso and ****. So, like, I can totally see that. But right now, you know, it's just a totally different field, by and large, for most people and, you know, the food service industry, and it sucks. By and large, it really sucks to work in the food service industry. Yeah. The food service industry is one of the most exploitative industries in the country. That said, the idea of gathering in public to consume food and beverages is fundamental to human beings, and we're never not going to have that as societies. So there has to be ways in which to have. Versions of that, and again, probably not the every 10 minutes you get the same 3 fast food restaurants that are open all night. That probably, that definitely does not exist in an ideal society, but in any any better society, human beings will gather to eat and drink around each other because it's something we've done in every civilization that has ever existed. So, Andrew, do you want to talk a bit more about the actual scene? Because I feel like a lot of people. Of course, around the scene is not about the scene itself, it's about what the title of the scene. Yeah. People should read the actual scene. If you read it, it makes very reasonable arguments. The titles just intentionally provocative. So. Yeah. And what I've realized about intentionally provocative slogans is that the people who who want to get it, you know, they they tend to be drawn into those kinds of things. And then there's some people who see something provocative, and it kind of shuts them down. Yes. Yes. Some people see something so provocative and see, it's like, I want to learn more and other people see it and they have like, kind of a gut. Reaction to it's like, it's like the backfire effect type thing, yeah? So I mean. To get into kind of the history of it and. Just the idea of restaurants as as the scene explores. According to the discourse, a restaurant is just a place to eat. If you sit down in the middle of a desert with a table and a chair, and you eat something that's apparently a restaurant. That's not a restaurant. That is not a restaurant. But OK, the definition of a restaurant is. A place where people pay to sit and eat meals that are cooked and served on the premises. OK. Commerce is a part of the definition of a restaurant. Why do we universalize and naturalize things that are neither? That is my question. It's like what people do with the state or capitalism with police or gender. I mean, just like those things, the restaurant is an invention. But it's been crystallised and and induced into our minds as something that is eternal, that is natural, that is universal. You know when when Cronk brought his buddy Brock. A piece of chicken that was a restaurant. You know, it's like we take, we take these things that come from very specific modern capitalist context, and we stretch them out over the entire human experience. If you look into the history restaurants, the first restaurants began to appear in Paris in the 1760s, even as leaders in the 1850s, majority of the restaurants that were located in Paris. And I mean. For those who know a little bit about history, Paris is kind of an interesting place where a lot of things happen. Especially during that rough time. A lot of stuff going on there. Exactly. I mean elsewhere on the world, communal meals were quite common. People cooked community in the eight community and they were new restaurants. Specifically. Before the invention of restaurants, and in Paris, around Europe at least, Rashpal had servants who cooked for them. Travelers had Inns where their meal was included with the price of the room, and they ate with the innkeeper and his family and peasants. They ate their meals at home. And of course, they will also caterers for events and special occasions. And there were Taverns and wineries and coffees and bakeries for certain foods and drinks. Of course, later on, all of those things, the Taverns, the wineries, the key, the cafes and the bakeries after restaurants came about, those other institutions that are to shape and bend into the sort of the mold of the restaurant that was established. Restaurant based on the name of it. Umm. Comes from this this idea that they were meant to restore health to sick people. Restaurant, restaurant, right? And they used to serve these small meat stews. So by that, by that metric, Taco Bell cannot be a restaurant. I I would argue that it is the only restaurant. It's well, it's gonna restore bowel movement. If you have any kind of blockage that that that it will restore that. But besides that, I cannot. I do not think it's going to restore any Taco Bell. It's probably something like a laxative. But yeah, so why France? Why Paris? Why restaurants? It kind of occurred after the food craft kills were abolished by the revolution. It was like this attempt to kind of democratize the food industry, you know, liberty, Egality, fraternity, Hong, Hong, all that jazz and so. So restaurants. And they began springing up because all these former cooks of the now beheaded king and aristocrats, they wanted to work somewhere, sure. And. So, you know, in a restaurant you get a meal at anytime, the business is open. Anyone with money could get a meal. The customers would come and they would eat an individual tables, eat individual plates and bowls of food. They get to choose from another option, a number of options, and they grew in size and complexity as they went along. They got a fixed menu. And eventually, one beautiful day, we invented the baconator. Yes, yeah, that is the end. That fun fact. The Baconator was the first book I had when I went and was wow. I would apologize, but this country's done so much worse than that. 7 fun facts about Andrew. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's another thing to tune in and you get a little new fact that you could, I don't know, add to my Wikia page or something. But yeah. Yeah, it was. It was. It was. It was mid. Honestly, my brother makes better bougas, but I suppose that's besides the point. Yeah, nearly every burger that you can get at a fast food restaurant is is mid. Yeah, tgi Friday's had some good guys though. TJ on Fridays to have a booger. That is the place when you're in a town you've never been before. That's where you wanna just show up and get absolutely ********* drunk until 2:00 AM with like a bunch of strangers at the tgi Friday's bar, which is the Boulevard of Broken dreams. Like it's only people who can't hack it in a regular bar and weirdos traveling through town. I'd love a tgi Friday's bar. OK, I was not aware of that stereotype. I mean, there's a TGI here in Trinidad and. I mean, last time I knew they had like some kind of karaoke thing going on, but yeah. It's probably the the vibe. I haven't been too many times. Anyway, I think this is enough product placement for for one episode. Like, well, it's a lot of different places, product placement. Here's ads? Sure, why not? So the growth of the restaurant? Came the growth of the market. With the growth of the restaurant came the growth of the market. Needs that will, you know fulfilled either through a direct relationship with domination, like between a Lord or a king and his servants, or a private relationship like within the family they would all being fulfilled on the open market. What was once a direct oppressive relationship now became the relationship between buyer and seller. Now became an indirect oppressive relationship. Exactly. A diffused, oppressive relationship almost because no one person, I would say it could really carry the blame. A similar expansion of the market took place over a century later with the rise of fast food, because as the 1950s housewife was on her way out, you know, being undermined and I seen a woman starts to move into the open labour market, many of the tasks that were done by women traditionally were being transferred onto the market. Not to say that women still don't do the majority of care work in modern society, but. As women started moving into the office, into the workplace. Things started to shift with regard to. Eating and eating patterns. Now the important point to note is that of course you know. The whole woman moving into the workplace thing is. Kind of a white woman phenomenon because, you know, people of color, women of color were in workplaces before then, in large numbers. Yeah. And there's a thing I think it's important to note here, too, which is like part of what's happening here is that. Like some of the care labor that white women were doing gets transferred onto non white women. And this, this is, this has been one of the things that like I, I think we talked about this a long time ago in an interview I did with it with a nurse. But like like for example, you see with healthcare a lot where like a lot of like union workers get these, get, you know, they get really good health care plans from the unions. But those health care plans are basically subsidized by not paying women of color like ****. And there's this whole sort of like. Trend around this of sort of like like you can, you know if if if you're which if you're rich enough you you can escape housework but you escape housework by essentially thrusting it on somewhere on someone else who's like further down the social ladder than you. Yeah yeah. It's kind of like a form of that that phenomenon people have been talking about the the idea of choice feminism, as in any choice that wants to make that a woman makes is part of the feminist sort of movement. So I saw some discourse happening recently people were talking about. How old? No one should have a, right? If she's a housewife that she should still be able to, you know, pursue her interests, which is of course, agreed. And the solution being proposed so that was that. The man, the breadwinner. Wouldn't pee for a domestic servants to come and work for the woman so that she can? Pursue her other responsibilities, her other interests and desires. And so it's just kind of this perfect. What a close to lies in. Exactly, because then this woman is working. Are we from who? Family? And then, you know, it's just like. This is a messed up system. But yes, so as fast food restaurants began to grow rapidly, people began being paid wages for what used to be host work. And of course, as we know, capitalism couldn't exist without the. Billions of dollars of unpaid labor that women perform. On a yearly basis. Modern restaurants of emerged in the 19th century under specific conditions. They had to be businessmen with capital to invest in restaurants. They had to be customers who expected to satisfy their need for food on the open market by buying it. And they had to be workers with no way to live but by working for someone else. As these conditions developed, as capitalism developed, so did restaurants. And so at the root of this whole abolish restaurant discourse needs to be an understanding of where restaurants came from. The historical development you cannot. Take them in isolation and project them, like I said, across all of humanity. Because it's only through understanding, through its specific circumstances, that we can transform it as we transform society as a whole. As we were saying, you know, there's a lot of things that are hell about restaurants. The way that work comes in, like weaves and rushes, a lot of sloughs I'm in between. We either really stressed out, he really bored. I remember working they had the winery and like for most of the day I just have to be like. Shift in her own bottles on the shelves. I couldn't sit down and chill or be on my phone or anything. I just had to busy myself until a customer came and customers never came because it was a field business propped up only by her parents money. But did you ever get told the phrase if you can lean, you can clean? Not in, not in those exact words, yeah, yes, in those exact words. Words God, in every ******* manager who says it to you, thinks that like. It's their cool line of **** it. Anyway. Yep. Yeah. So you have to just, you have this, this constant thing of trying to look busy while having got nothing to do, while you're trying not to fall behind because you have 10 things to do. Yeah, everyone's always working harder and faster. And of course the boss wants to squeeze as much work out to the same number of people out as possible, you know? Like you pushing people to these ridiculous extremes, which is why it's a kind of stereotype now of like Restaurant Week is all being on drugs, you know? There's also this whole. Inhumanity to like. Employees being paid in tips. Now, as far as I know, nowhere is that as severe as it is in the US. But of course, around the world they are tipping cultures of varying degrees. And so when you have that sort of. Work with your. You're you're living your subsistence issue directly tied to, like, tips. Not only to you. Have this sort of divide being created between the workers, between like for example the waiters who make the tips. And the cooks who don't make any tips and they just, they sort of had to compete against each other because the waiter is trying to get as much done as possible so they can make their tips quickly so they could have their, you know, quicksilvers. Whereas the cooks, they have no intrinsic motivation to push themselves harder and just becomes stressful. I never got tips from baking in the back of the house unless some of the people in front of the House would like share the tips at the end of the day by their own. Like, yeah, and I, I know folks who worked in places. Where all tips were shared with the way the kitchen staff and it seemed to be a 5050 breakdown of this is really good and everyone gets paid fairly and this is actually some scam by management to deny people a bunch of tips by like pooling them and certain ******* that gets done. So like it's like any formulation of this inherently winds up being pretty abusive. Yeah, and dividing, you know? Another interesting and I mean as you guys mentioned stressful component of both, you know this line of work is of course the customers. Which? Customer service for in general tend to heat, you know, whether you working at a bar or you working at a, you know, a restaurant or even working in like sales and some sort of like retail store. The whole subreddit dedicated, the whole terrible customers are two workers and so that that sort of dynamic of service. It it it. Really. Changes people. I mean customers can just as easily be working class as the people working in the restaurant. But. There's still that dynamic that's created when you are the one being seated and served on the other person. Yeah, on their feet, soothing you. Some of the worst customers in America at least, are. Working class and poorer folks who it's like their chance to. Be above somebody. Like when they go out to a restaurant so they can be extra ******. Yeah, that is the thing that happens. Surprisingly, they even like restaurant workers who treat restaurant workers flatly when they go to a restaurant. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Like someone gets the opportunity to be to to exert the power and they're like, do it in the short, short, short, short amount of time. But I will say I'm sure those are also the restaurant workers who treat people badly at the restaurant they work at. Including like some of the coworkers. Some of the things that have ever been said to me were by customers at the restaurant job I had. Yeah, not surprising, no. And I was like. Not I was like, I was like in high school. I was a kid and these were like grown-ups being horrendous. So. Like I I think, I think it's like, I don't know, like when people talk about this, like when people talk about restaurants, like in the discourse, it it's it's in a way that's like, it's incredibly abstract and doesn't. Like it doesn't, it doesn't. Think about the fact that like the relationship between the customer and the people who have to interact with the customers, the House, etcetera. Like that. That is a social relation and it's a social relation that like that, like like the the. The power dynamic inherent to it ascribes, sort of. Different kind, like it inscribes different kinds of behavior to the people who are, who are like on either side of it. Like it it it it could, it controls like what you have to do as a server, like what the performances you have to give, like the smile you have to put on, which is actually like, that's the original thing of what emotional labor is, right, is like the the labor you have to do to make the person who you're serving like, think that you're like happy and enjoying it and like having a good time. But then, you know, like on on the customers end too. It's like you get this sort of, you know, it's like, oh, this is your one chance to to be on top of a sort of power relation and like that. Like that. Like that specific thing is so ******* evil. It's like that there. There's there's a story I think about a lot from reading Chuang originally was it was about. Like one of the last emperors of the Tang dynasty, like his concubine, like loved leija and like OK, I get it, it's lisha that it gets really good. But like leeches grow leeches only grown in this in the South of China you can't really grow in the north. It just doesn't like it's too cold, it's too arid. And so in order to get her leecher like every morning they would send like the fastest writers like in China would like be sent by horse like to southern China and then back so that he get the leecher there in time like for for it still to be like ripe and like edible and. You know that that's the kind, that's the kind of power that used to only literally the Emperor of China had this ability, right? Like the like the Emperor of ******* China could get this commodity inflict force everyone in a chain to go do something for them. And now like everyone has said it, like literally everyone has that power. Like every time you use Amazon, you have that power. Every time you go to a restaurant, you have the power to do this. And it it turns people into monsters because like, that's, you know, the Chinese emperors are like, these are some of the worst people who ever lived now. Like everyone, everyone like just like the fundamental basis. Of the society is there is a place where you can go and you can become the Emperor of ******* China. Maybe that's the problem with the idea of instant gratification, being reliant on the exploitation of other people. Yeah, and and like, yeah, that doesn't seem right, Garrison. Oh yeah, never mind. Don't worry. Now watch me as I order next day delivery on a $1600 drone just to just to **** around in my backyard like, yes, it's it's everything is fine in America. I I do. I am like of the opinion that the grocery store is like the primary artistic achievement of capitalism as a system. They are objectively marvels and they are, they're built on a river of blood deeper and wider than is is. It's like it's a hyper object, right? It's like impossible to to comprehend the full scale of cruelty that goes into being able to like, well, it is November 14th. I'm going to go get a fresh bag of grapes that have been genetically modified to taste like. Candy, yeah. Picked by people making sense an hour in, yes. In the country that's on the other side of the world. Yeah. Yes. Whose relatives are shot for attempting to scramble over the border. Yeah. Yeah. That the grapes passed through easily. Yes. And I think like like that. That points to another, like, I think part of the dynamic with restaurants that happens, which is that like. OK. Like cooking takes time, right and the the less and less time that you have the more like the the more reliant you become on like on these services and so you see this with like you know like China has like a. Like a particularly horrible, like delivery culture. Like, you can like, you can have someone deliver food to you. Like to the train. Like, like a like a train will stop at a stop and you can have someone run a bag of food to you and then like, leave and you just like you go to the next stop and you get off. And that happens because everyone's working 996. And I was like, OK, you're working, you're working 9:00 AM, the 9:00 PM, six, six days a week. And you know, you know, you literally do not have time to cook because you're working, you're working 12 hours a day. And it is like a good example of this is like restaurant. People who work restaurants like line cooks and chefs hardly ever cook for themselves. They always get food from other restaurants because they're cooking 8 to 10 hours a day. They're not going to go home then cook for themselves. They they. Yeah, it's it this this system, almost it makes it makes the things that prop it up become necessary to keep the whole thing going. It's all like balancing super, like precariously on its own weight. It's it's equivalent to like. If you're in a criminal syndicate making somebody you're working with tangentially shoot a man in the back of the head so that you both have blood on your hands like everyone is everyone's like, just by by virtue of existing under it. Like if you're working 60 hours a week, is a ******* nurse during COVID or as a ******* line cook dealing with this surge of delivery ****? And then on your way home you just want to pick up some like sushi from a ******* uh, grocery store that requires ingredients from all around the world and is made by people who are not getting enough money to to make it and is horrible for the environment and the fisheries and all that kind of ****. And but like, what are you supposed to do? Like you you just you just finished like a 10 hour shift. Like do you not deserve? Like 1-1 Nice thing at the end of the day. Like like so it's if you. People can't. Like either you become an A, like a a complete aesthetic, right? And and reject and go kind of Ted K and live in a shack in Montana and reject all of these these kind of modern conveniences. Or you accept that like you're going to spend some time waiting into the river of blood, because otherwise the things you have to do to stay alive in this society are completely emotionally unsustainable. Yeah, this was, this was the original, like before it kind of became this cop out for like, just doing whatever you want. Like this was the original. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism was about this was about like this specific problem that everything in this society, like even if you're ******* living in the woods and Montana, it's like, yeah, like where, where, where did where, like where did your cabin come from? Like where did your nails come from? Who made the hammer? It's like everyone's like completely dependent for everything on the exploitation of other people. And it it is, it is a. Yeah, I mean, the one thing that gives me a little bit of hope is when Andrew was explaining how, like, restaurants came arise because of people. People who used to like work for kings and **** who then started working at restaurants because they still want to make food. It was like that evolution. Taking it to the next step is people who work at restaurants now no longer having to work under capitalist exploitation and realizing, hey, I know how to cook well. I'll just set up like ways to feed the community outside of this system of commerce, right? That is the next. Solution if you start with people, people, people cooking for the king, people then cooking in places where you pay to eat in this exploitative system, and then people cooking for people so that there's food around in, like, a community setting, right. If you if you follow that trajectory, that's actually kind of hopeful. It's almost like we've come full circle. I mean, in some ways, yeah, like, right. It's if we just go back to like. Being community, yeah, like communicating if there's places around different communities, different towns, different like urban centers that have that have the capacity to feed people who are not able to cook for themselves that night or that day, that's something that if if it's there is ways of setting that up, which I can see being so much better than how restaurants work. You know, maybe maybe people wash their own dishes afterwards. Maybe people do something to help with like prep or something right like this. There's there's ways to make this that gives you the parts of restaurants that are actually really convenient without the exploitation. And so that that type of like community cooking is something, I mean, you know, that's even similar to like how like a good dinner party operates, just that kind of extended out across, you know, more like a pop up setting and say, hey, yeah, this this month we're using all of these ingredients that are grown in our general local area, right? We're not getting shipped, we're not getting like strawberries. In December, shipped from halfway around the world will make stuff that is available as a, you know, as it's growing. Or we can pickle, we can store food, right? And yeah and maybe we we've, we've turned the old defunct Walmart into a grow shelter. So once or twice during the winter there are some strawberries and everybody comes together and shares this marvel that the community came like worked as a team to ensure would be available. But you can't just go and buy 4 pounds of strawberries that are produced with their like twice the weight of the strawberries. Pesticide in order to keep them alive in fields that were never meant to grow. Strawberry? Like, maybe that's not available all year round. Like, Yep, yeah, yeah. Just get back to the point being raised, a vote about, like the ethical consumption of the capitalism, because that's a really important point. The whole purpose of that seeing has been bastardized, but it really is crucial to have nuance understanding of it. What frustrates me is that it's been TIKA and and it's been tuned into this justification and yeah, it's OK that I buy from shian. It's OK that I buy a $3000 hole from shian because no ethical consumption of the capitalism was like was where somebody goes and. They engage in something that is not. I mean, sexuality, that is. Andrew, you're talking around my 2 1/2 pound a day veal habit, and I don't appreciate it. Yeah, that sounds like a problem. Joe Rogan nonsense. Like I eat 2 1/2 pads of feel every day and that keeps my brain running smoothly. Caveman, I mean the real. Exactly. It did work for Jordan Peterson. He's doing great. Cries at the mirror notion of Antifa. I would do an impression, but it hurt my throat, so hang on. Thus I would say. I would say that. As we were seeing, you know that there really is is potential. We see even under these conditions that people find ways to survive. You know, they create like these informal work groups that are not only able to come together and push back against management. Were able to. Work together to to create trust within each other. You know, you have, like, for example, Waiters who would try a hand in the kitchen on a slow day or a cleaner, or who might pick up a thing or two a dishwasher was trying to move up to become like a a lion cook. All these different workers, they they. They do things subtly to try to undermine the unnatural divisions and hierarchies and between the skilled and unskilled. In the restaurant setting, of course it doesn't always work because. There are, you know, settings where in the manager successfully created divisions. You know whether it be. The branch of creating a division between. Teen different nationalities of, of, immigrants, or. You know, playing upon someone's queerphobia against like queer staff or. Someone's biases against. I don't know, I can't think of a through example, but there was advantages. Try to like Sue these divisions between workers. And there are ways that workers try to push back. There also is advantages. Try to do the opposite to create a community within the restaurant that includes themselves. So instead of fostering isolation and prejudice, they create a community that especially in small restaurants that involves them, that talks about that. You know, the boss might share with them how difficult it is working and organizing for the business of the restaurant and. Or they might create like a special kind of. Restaurant focus around their identity so they might create. A restaurant for for queer youth where all the staff for queer you know you have a restaurant for, you know, a black-owned restaurant where workers are black and try to create a community based on the site entity, but it kind of erases. The unavoidable. Class interests between workers and with and management. It smooths over that dimension so it becomes more difficult to organize and to speak up for your rights because you're aware that the managers are human and they too are struggling. Which kind of brings me to the idea of restaurants with no managers and the idea of cooperatives. The issue with cooperative restaurants is that. They basically have to collectively take on the role of managers managing themselves, creating. It was precious and pushing those pressures upon themselves. They enforce the work on each other and they they have to work longer in some cases and work harder in some cases. Because. The structure of a restaurant is designed to make money, and if it is not making money, then everybody loses their job. Sue. Due to this pressure. Of bosses in a position where they have to push workers to get as much out of the workers as possible. You reached the bottom you're occasion from the equation, but you keep the rest of the concept of a restaurant and. Line between worker and parts becomes blurred to the extent where. It's almost like that image of a person with a boot on their hand, holding a boot on their head. We had this. Oppression that was once external becomes internalized because. That is how a restaurant survives, through oppression, through exploitation. It's kind of like with how self-employed people are under capitalism. Yes, you will confer yourself and you have some freedom in that regard, but you're still. Restricted by the broader system. You haven't escaped it, you've just. Had to navigate it and I have to make quarterly payments to the IRS. Yeah, yeah, I mean. So I say I think work for ourselves in some capacity or office, certain level of freedom and it. You still have those pressures. On, on, it's just you have to inflict them on yourself, you know, we don't have like a. Break. That has been mandated. And so, at least in my case, I don't take breaks because that's just how I am. You know, you work longer hours here. Push yourself harder and harder. You work on days when you should be resting and it's just. It illustrates. The fact that liberation is not to be found under this system and it's something totally new. With a totally different metric of success. A totally different metric of sustenance. Totally different, bare minimum. And totally different motivation needs to be the foundation upon which society is built, because there's profiting now we can. Yeah, and and I think there's a like, I think the reason this debate happens like this, this whole discourse happened in the 1st place, was just that. Like, just like a lot of it really was just a complete inability to imagine. Like literally any other way of like, even just like any other way of getting food that does not involve you going to a place and telling someone to make it for you. And like that. I don't know like. Yeah, it's like. The the the fact that there have already been sort of seismic shifts in the way that like. Food production happens, right? I think is evidence like, no, we don't have to do it like that. Like we just we just do not. It wasn't like this for most of human history. We could do something better than whatever they were doing before it. Yeah. Let us. People might, you know, push for like. In this so this is a shift over into the abolition section of it, the restaurant abolition. A lot of people look to, for example, a union as a path by which in the short term, you know, we make certain gains and belong to reconquer for and radically transform it. The difficulty comes in. How unions have traditionally operated in the restaurants sphere. They tend to be significantly less successful. I mean restaurants usually have very high turnover people in the last couple of months. They often employ, like a lot of young people who are just looking for part-time or temporary employment, multiple do work. They are constantly looking to move on to better things and so it makes it difficult to create a stable union with a stable membership that can. Buckle down and. Reading, negotiate and push for the interests of the people working because people work in a constantly changing. I think one of the like, one of the really grim things that led to is that like. Like, especially with fast food took over like the the the major unions that even do exist, which is like that we like. We're just not going to bother even trying to organize these people because they just assumed it was impossible. And so, like there are there are very, very few fast food unions. I mean like I think one of the only like. Even sort of functional ones is the Iowa like organized burgerville. But that's that's been like it like like the the big unions when they've done campaigns for fast food workers, it's like. It'll be clean like 5:15, but it's like they're not actually trying to like form unions of the restaurant workers like they they're not even trying, they're just trying to, they're, they're using them for sort of like. Lobbying and advocacy. Yeah. And the difficulty also comes when you know it's established itself. You know because. A union. Structurally. It's not always. By all the workers you know, there's still sort of a hierarchy of bureaucracy that may establish itself and try to maintain itself, even if it starts off benignly. No, just for all of the radical history that unions do have, quite a few unions in the US, particularly the United States, have also been conservative bastions and bastions of different attitudes about like stuff like white supremacy. You know, there was there's a lot. The union movement is as much Blair Mountain as it is trying to stop black people from being able to work on trains. You know, like all of those things are part of the history. Yeah. I mean, I'll, I'll speak. Briefly on like the Union situation and in the Caribbean, particularly in Trinidad. The trade union movement was. Intrinsically, inextricably tied with the anticolonial movement and the movement for independence, your subie keen that the unions became tied up with the political parties that have rules after independence and well during the process of independence. But I know happening with the unions was that they end up being tied to deeply with the political parties. So that ended up being that. The established unions are, you know. The higher ups and those established unions, they have these relationships of fevers and obligations with the politicians. A lot of politicians come out of these union movements and end up establishing their own political careers. And because it's also tied up when, you know workers get into these industries that do have union, that have been unionized. There's a very clear separation between the Union and the workers. Because while the Union is able to, you know, push for the workers rights and. You know. There's still. Separate from the workers, the Union still exists as a new negotiator between the workers and the management. And so, even if the workers wish to go beyond just negotiating, the Union exists almost as a. Release valve for any sort of class antagonisms or any kind of pressure, any kind of real pressure against the status school. I mean it's not just unique to to turn that into the Caribbean, it means it's globally cross history. We've seen Union struggles kind of go over this same sort of dynamic, you know, new generations of workers that build up the movements, they build up the unions and the the unions begin to change. And. Perhaps new Union leaders spring up to replace the old union leaders. When put under the same position and the same pressures, the reaction the same we as the bureaucracy ends up being rejuvenated, unions are reformed and they end up going back to the same movies that they had been before. And in some cases, the fight to reform the Union takes the place of the fight against the boss because of all the bureaucracy and system of obligations and just deeply rooted ideas about the place of the Union. Because. Well, unionizing is a difficult process, union leaders. Do tend to enjoy sitting benefits from their position. And. As we are aware of, you know, sitting hierarchies. Self justifying. Those are the top 10 to 1 perpetuated. It's kind of like. And so this idea that, and this is kind of an unsettled thought of mine, but it's kind of like the idea of, you know, using the state to establish workers power and then abolishing it afterwards, you know, using. Union to. Get some measure of workers power, but then it's expecting this union of a certain structure. That. Exists. Toward negotiating and to somehow pushing these sort of more radical directions. There's a saying that. That that the scene. Right, so the since it's like restaurant unions need there to be restaurants. And we don't. I think that sort of applies more broadly because when we get into that the whole idea of like work application. It's just concept of. Workers are people outside of work. But it would cause union exists within the confines of work as we understand it. So I think that's really difficulty lies. This scene goes on to say later on that every time we attack this system that we do and destroy it, it changes and enter and changes us and the training of the next fight. Gains are tuned against us and we are stuck back in the same situation at work. The boss is trying to keep us looking for individual solutions or solutions within an individual work place or an individual trade. But the only way that we can free ourselves is to broaden and deepen our fight. We involve workers from other workplaces, other industries, and other regions. We attack more and more fundamental things. The desire to destroy restaurants becomes the desire to destroy the conditions that create restaurants. We aren't just fighting for representation in or control over the production process. Or fighting against the act of chopping vegetables, or washing dishes, or poor and bare, or even serving food to other people. Is with the way all of these acts are brought together in a restaurant, separated from other acts, become part of the economy, and used to expand capital. The starting and ending point to this process as a Society of capitalists and people forced to work for them. We want an end to this. We want to destroy the production process as something outside and against us. We're fighting for a world we are. Productive activity fulfills the need and as an expression of our lives, not forced on us in exchange for wage. A world where he produced for each other directly and I don't know where to sell to each other. The struggle of restaurant workers is ultimately for a world with old restaurants or workers. I mean. So I think people are still going to call. Someone identifies restaurants, restaurants anyway. Probably. But I hope this discussion has caused equals kind of. Deepen their proach to this. 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He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. Sisters of the Underground is a new scripted series about fearless women exploring the life and legacy of the Mirabal sisters, Dominican women who were brave enough to challenge decades of oppression. Together, they led their country toward a revolution against Rafael Trujillo, the brutal dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic for 30 years. Please, please help us. Do you has blood on his hands? From executive producers Dania Ramirez and Eva Longoria. That's me, comes the powerful retelling of this all too relevant narrative. Listen to sisters of the underground as part of Michael Toura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tiktok. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know. Now it's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Welcome to it could happen. Here. I am Robert Evans, and this is a podcast about things falling apart and sometimes how to put them all together. And, you know, today we're actually going to be talking more about the latter, which I know is revolutionary for us. We're usually just kind of like getting way more into the doomer stuff. But I think there's been more than enough of that, particularly in the wake of several horrific Supreme Court rulings, that I don't really need. Feel the need to go into detail on, but one of the things that has happened in the wake of these rulings is this like kind of liberal reaction to the fact that to the fact and the right to be angry about the fact that they're being essentially governed by a small minority of people who are very densely geographically located in the South. That is where like the bulk of the support for the the hard rights policies comes from and it's led to this like **** Texas, **** Florida, **** these these quote UN quote like red states, these regressive. States, which is this deeply problematic for a number of reasons, including the fact that, you know, if you just want to look at it in terms of party politics, there were more people who voted for a Democrat in Texas in the 2020 election than live in the either the state of Oregon or Washington. These are densely populated places with tremendous amount of people who are people of color, who are trans, who are, you know, in some way threatened by this weird christofascists ******** that is increasingly clamping down on the country. And so today I wanted to talk with some folks who live in and around the Dallas, TX, what we we call the DFW area, Dallas Fort Worth, and who have lately been organizing to kind of both confront this, this rising Christo fascist like the street aggression portion of it, and to provide support. In defense for people who are are being victimized by it. So I'd like to welcome some representatives of the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club to the show. Hey all, hello. Yeah, do you want to kind of introduce yourselves to to start however you'd like to be known on the show? I'm Satan. I'm bubble, Satan, and Bubble and I'm how long have you all been like doing? Because there's there's two specific things that kind of, I don't know I became aware of y'all and and we had some brief interactions. I had some brief interactions, some of your folks in in 2021 during the the snow thing that that destroyed everything. And so I've been kind of watching y'all's socials ever since, and there were a couple of things recently that struck me as very. Worth discussing actions that you all were a part of. One of them was there's a neighborhood in Dallas called Oak Lawn that is kind of colloquially known as the Gayborhood. It is like the the gay neighborhood in Dallas, obviously. And so it's a place that, you know, even before kind of things got a little easier after 20, you know, 142015, it was kind of a safe place and a little bit like of a of a of a fortress for like people who are not, you know, straight and cisgender, which is. And kind of are, you know, for, for some an idea of how aspects of the DFW area can be. The town I grew up in Plano had a condoms to go move in and within like two nights of it, setting up shop in Plano, somebody fired a 9 millimeter handgun through the window. Like, it's not a it's a place where it could be difficult. And so obviously repression and kind of violence and fears of vigilante violence from folks who are queer has is is understandably. Ramped up in the wake of everything that's been happening and you all carried out an action where a sizable group of leftists marched armed through the Gayborhood. The one of the there were a couple of different chants that that I was hearing. One of them was about bashing back something like that. You want to talk a little bit about, like that action and what actually went down. I'm sure so. At the beginning of Pride Month, we had a large group of fascists come to the Gayborhood. You know, they were shouting rumor. They were telling us the fist of Christ is coming down on you soon and, you know, making really out there threats. So we discussed what we could do to be proactive, to make sure that doesn't happen again. And we ended up getting together some groups who were interested in an armed demonstration, which even here in Texas is not something you see too often. And we decided to March through the Gayborhood, you know? I would say a majority of the people that we know are LGBT and. It's our neighborhood. So, you know, we put on this demonstration there and it was, you know, kind of incredible. We got some looks, but we also got a lot of support. We had a lot of great chance. You know, bottoms. Tops. We all hate cops. There we go. Yeah, yeah. He's gay. He's bashed back. Yeah, that was the that was the one that was in the video. And So what was the uh? I'm interested in kind of. Because I I think this is the kind of thing that is potentially very useful. We we have seen one of the things that I have personally observed and that has been observed by a number of folks is that when these kind of right wing mobs who primarily want people who cannot defend themselves, who don't have the numbers to defend themselves, they they want to like beat the **** out of people in a gang. Right. Like that's that's the the proud boy thing that's the Patriot prayer thing. That's all these weird little groups primarily what they want to do. They don't want a fair fight and. When they are confronted with organized people on the left who are armed, that tends to scare the **** out of them. And if I'm not mistaken, during that day where you had those Christian fascists kind of coming after. That queer family event, like one of the one of the live streams that one of the right wingers had people were, some of them were like commenting on the fact that there were people leftists open carrying and, like, how unsettling they found that. So I'm interested in kind of how the idea to, we're going to do this, have this kind of a March, you know, through this neighborhood, we're going to make sort of a show before us how that idea kind of came together. And then what logistically did you all like, feel the need to set up? Like, I'm going to guess it wasn't as simple as like, hey, everybody with a gun. Come, come meet here and we're going to have us a walk. So I'm interested in kind of what the logistics are because I think this is the kind of thing that people. Other people are going to want, like find useful to do like statements of we are here, we have the tools to defend ourselves and we're not going to just passively let you run through our neighborhoods ******* with us. I think logistically one of the big things was just making sure that, you know, everyone who was carrying was carrying properly. And then also to protect our own selves, making sure that whoever was carrying was also protecting our identity by wearing essentially full black bloc. Which that in itself sends a message, you know, a bunch of queer people marching through the streets of Dallas and full black bloc with guns. Sends a message like, we're not going to take your ****. We're done. You know, you're not going to mess with our bodily autonomy. That March happened. We had planned it to be on that day originally, and that happened to be the day that Roe V Wade was overturned. And it essentially just evolved that morning to a more intersectional body. Bodily autonomy March. But really, logistically, it was mostly about protecting ourselves. And making sure that people who weren't carrying the firearms were also protected from our firearms. Yeah, I want to dive into that a little bit because that's such an important aspect of it is the insuring say. I've, I have seen a lot of of marches and I I will be honest, I have seen a lot of people being armed on on both sides politically who have done things with guns that I would consider reckless. Probably the top moment in my mind is during a big March in Portland somebody leaned over and a Glock fell out of the front pouch of their hoodie. That they were just had loose in there. Yeah, so obviously it is not as it should not be as simple as like, you know, load up on guns and bring your friends, so to speak. How do you attempt to ensure? Like how, like how do you actually go about? Handling the safety aspect, is it like are you appointing essentially kind of like range officers before the March who are keeping an eye on **** like what does that actually look like? I wanna, I want to give two examples. For the March we did in the Gayborhood, it was different in that it wasn't publicly announced wherein it was gonna be. So it was kind of a by invitation only demonstration. So we knew pretty much everybody that was coming except for people in the neighborhood who kind of joined ad hoc. So that's one way that we've done things. When we do more of like protest security for other actions. You know, there are different people who will feel motivated to bring arms and. Usually they know what they're doing pretty well. In the couple of instances where someone is being unsafe, you know, one of us will just go over there and talk to them. You know, like. Hey, you, you you really need a sling for this. Or, you know, don't don't be pointing it in any way at a building. Just a little tips like that to, you know, resolve the behavior. So when it actually comes to like, uh, because because one of the things like whenever you have sort of a gathering like this is, is de escalation and even within people within the March potentially like dispute resolution and that sort of thing, what was the how, how did you kind of organize for that? Like what was the planning on that? And like I think that's a really important question. One of the first things that we decided pretty early on is that we are not there to police any protesters, so you know. If someone is is doing something illegal and no, at no point will we, you know, tell them to stop or try to make them stop. We may move away from the area or something like that, but we're not there to police our people at all. When it comes to like counters coming up in antagonizing, the main thing we do is try to put ourselves between them and any people they're targeting. And you know, we have cameras, we have less than lethal. We have different tools to try to deescalate. But yeah. And so when it comes to like, uh, I guess training on that end is, did you kind of, did you have any sort of like? Infrastructure, human infrastructure, whatnot, set up prior to this to like, make sure people who were like doing deescalation were folks that you knew, you know, had some level of understanding of it or or folks that you could trust. Like how was the actual, how do you actually? Because, I mean, it strikes me that there is a great deal of like, trust that's necessary to put together something like this. To be able to meet up with folks and and like March armed together requires probably a little bit more in in the way of of of trust than, you know, just showing up at a protest. That's kind of more conventional. Was there sort of some in any kind of, like, I don't know, system or or like, yeah, training or whatnot that you all had for specifically like how to behave, how to deescalate all that kind of stuff? Or was it just like folks that kind of you knew from, from prior events were good at that sort of thing? I mean, as far as our group goes, I can speak for myself personally and say that I trust each one of our people with my life. And I think because of that and because we were really the ones putting it on, like we knew that if something were to go down, one of us would get in the middle of it, and we all trust each other. I think that in any sort of organizing environment, trusting, trusting the people that you're working with, 100% is one of the most vital things that you can do, because they're going to be the ones beside you when a proud boy rolls up and you want the person beside you to be someone that you can. For us, and we do that, we do have, you know, we we do practice and we do train together and we also have fun together and having that certain level of trust. Means the world when you're putting yourself out there in that way and how long of the folks that are kind of like you're you're most affiliated with like making this happen. How long have you all been sort of organizing and and doing stuff together? Most of us met since 2020. A lot of us met in organizing different facilities during 2020 after the George Floyd protests and then through just a boom in mutual aid that happened in DFW. After that, whether it was through homeless outreach or you know, bail bonds or however we met each other, it was mostly through that mutual aid community and getting out in the our communities and organizing ourselves and. Trying to find like minded people who wanted to see the same change happen. Now, I think one of the one of the things that's been on my mind a lot lately, and that that y'all particularly bring up, is the challenges of organizing in parts of the country where not just, you know, the police, who are always pretty regressive, but the entire legal structure is is set up to as Florida has, increasing the number of states have done like punish protests, penalize activism, make things more dangerous for, for, for people who are like. Going out there in public in addition to doing things to try and criminalize, you know, people who are, are, are not straight, you know, white Christians. So when you look at like kind of the challenges of organizing in a place where it's more dangerous and obviously it's it's not particularly safe to be organizing against, you know, the LAPD. But the court system in California is, broadly speaking less stacked against you. So if you had advice to give to people who had don't have this group of friends and people they've been organizing with for a couple of years already, but they want to have that, they want to build that in their community, where would you suggest they start? I always tell people that it starts by showing up. There's all kinds of events, you know, supporting a broad range of groups, and. You know, if you're at the protests, if you are at the feedings, the distributions, you're going to meet people and you're going to build trust, mutual trust there so that when you want to start a project, you want to start a group, you'll have those people that know you. It is very dangerous. Uh, I think it's always important to tell people to watch your opsec, you know, don't be resharing all kinds of activist stuff with your personal profile that has your name and your birthday and all of that. But yeah, it really goes to meeting people in person, I think. Yeah. And I mean, that's such a difficult part of it because I think for a lot of people, particularly, who maybe are living in rural areas who are living kind of outside of places that have well. Formal protest communities, social media and the Internet is is a lifeline for them and often in a lot of cases, like how they came to a lot of the political beliefs and a desire to do something. But you're right, like you can't. You, you you have to actually get like face to face on the ground with people to actually build the kind of relationships that can lead to the sort of activism that y'all are doing. And that's that is a tough needle for a lot of people to thread, I think. And you know, in those more rural communities if there's not already. Those systems in place, you know, set up a monthly meal distribution with the local homeless shelter or the local homeless camp and if you, you know, can get a few friends, more people will show up and you can build that community yourself, even when where it's not existing already. It's more about just finding those like minded individuals that are already existing in your community and getting to know your neighbors. Yeah, I think that's a great as far as the plan of action goes, as good as you can get for at least starting down that road. Before we kind of move on from this specific action, I did want to talk a little bit about the conversations you had both with like people who lived in Oak Lawn and also with you know, passersby. I'm wondering like Umm, did you have any that particularly surprised you or that particularly stick out to you right now? I personally was a little bit more surprised with. The amount of support that we received just because while Oaklawn is the Gayborhood, it is generally more. Blue liberal town of Mary Anti gun, typically, yeah. To see, you know, people sitting on the patios at the bars cheering for us while we were walking by, especially as someone who has been, you know, grown up in that area. It it meant a lot. You know it. It really shows almost like the cultural shift that we're going as far as leftist politics go, if people are going to be supportive of us. Yeah, that's really interesting to hear. And I, I, I were there. Did you have any kind of interactions with sort of, I don't know, people who were who were more conservative or more on the on the center right side of things? I think we had a couple people who were kind of filming and frowning. It's always hard to tell. Yeah, in that case, but no one really said anything to us. That's interesting, I. Yeah. And now that was that. That kind of brings me to the next topic, which is how, how, how did Dallas, how did DPD handle this? Early out of our cars, yeah. Had multiple police cars surrounding us while we were just unloading. They were constantly trying to guess where we were going with the March by cutting off streets and trying to like, escort us and like, you know, blocking traffic and things like that. But but we were there less than 5 minutes before I would say at least four police cars. Were surrounding us, asking us questions. They were pulling out their guns like we were a threat. Geez Umm well I mean yeah that's that doesn't surprise me. Umm did you have any kind of like direct is did they send like the P I/O's up to try and you know talk with organizers or whatever? So they did right at the beginning. And I think that interaction went really well because they approached us as we were getting ready and they said, you know, what group is this? Who's in charge, who's who's leading, what are your plans? And, you know, every single person who was there was disciplined enough to either say nothing or say no plans. There's no group, there's no leaders. And after that, they kept their distance. They did not really interfere more. Yeah. I mean that that is one of those things. That police I don't know. I I've always found it useful to to when you are have it when you have to have an interaction with the police officer and. Sometimes it is unavoidable. Like, you need to kind of focus on, like, what are the things that they need to hear for this interaction to like end and end, you know, not in them getting violent. And I think it sounds like, yeah, you, you y'all handled it perfectly like that. That was the right way for everyone to react like you were. It is Texas. Like, it's not like it is at all illegal to walk around with guns. So yeah, I mean that's that sounds that sounds again you know I'm impressed by kind of both the the the boldness of the action but also the the discipline that that was required to actually that was required like from the ground up right not not because like the there was some sort of like Vanguard leadership exerting force downward in order to actually make this work safely and in a way that that left hopefully and it seems like this is the case people who live in the area feeling broadly speaking pretty good about it. I would say that, you know, since the March in particular, just in DFW in its entirety, the support that we have received has been almost overwhelming. You know, people now recognize the people in Black bloc as being safe and they're going to help us. If I need something, I can go to them. And that's the whole purpose of Community defenses having like, my goal would be to have everyone. See that person? Now the other thing I would wonder, because it's I, you know, I've spent a lot of time at Black Bloc protests, but generally in Portland, OR, where a hot day is like 80 degrees. Y'all are in ******* DFW. Those those summers are no joke. And wearing the gear that y'all are wearing is is a potentially dangerous thing, right? Like was there, was there, was it kind of individual or left up to affinity groups to like figure out hydration and stuff? Or did you have people who are kind of watching folks and reminding them and like trying to ensure that, like that part of it was handled? Because that does strike me as a specific risk in this case. Most of us do have at least minor St Medic training as well as. Their own hydration kits. And we all carry extra electrolytes and things like that for people who may not be part of our group, who may also need assistance. That's a big part of it here in Texas is that's that's the main risk with protesting in the summer is dehydration, heat exhaustion, heat stroke. Yeah. You know, we do recommend that the people who are in black bloc where, you know, moisture wicking, loose layers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Marino is your friend. If you can get it, yeah, exactly. But, you know, we all of us are, you know, at least trained enough to recognize those symptoms. We make scenes that we can pass out to people about how to protest safely in the summer in the heat specifically. That's great. So much more dangerous. Now one of the things I've been seeing recently, and this is I'm guessing from a more recent March, was that the the photo going around that's kind of viral on right wing social media of it's a black and white photo. There's an individual with a plate carrier and an AR and another individual with like a chest rig and what I think is a Beretta carbine. And both of them are are at a reproductive rights March and there's a a mix of really interesting reactions from the right like on this. And I'm, I'm interested in kind of, yeah. Your thoughts there. Yeah. So it's it's been really weird. We try to track whatever's being posted about us. Sometimes they can give us Intel on people who might want to target us, but we've been noticing it's like a solid third of right wing comments are kind of broadly supportive. I think it really throws them for a loop. You know, we we've even seen people saying actually bodily autonomy is a lot like gun rights and things like that. So that's been. Yeah, it's been really weird. I think being armed might kind of humanize us for some of those people. In a way, it's it's a been a weird thing. I have thought a couple of times that I mean a number of times I talked about this on the first season of it could happen here. I think that there is some like potential to bridge some divides there with kind of the existence of of an increasingly prominent left wing gun culture. I know one of the comments I saw was somebody like going through the gear displayed and be like actually no they're they're reasonably well set up and like everything seems like this is this is exactly how you'd you know want to have it done and just people being like actually appreciative. And I guess maybe there's a degree to which like if you're. If you're in that community from a right wing side, but not like a straight up fascist side, maybe there's a potential for like more commonality. And like you said, the idea that like, oh, maybe some of them will actually broaden their support for reproductive rights, you know, or at least consider it, you know, I don't know that that doesn't strike me as like a negative move, and it it is particularly. Yeah, in a place like Texas, you have to try to at least have some sort of common ground with people who are are more on the right wing side of things because there's so damn many of them. Yeah. So I think it's one of those cases where when ideological ideology gets atomized to just like guns, good. That is like a core belief for some people that can draw them to being supportive of pro-choice marches. In a weird way, it's kind of a. Pretty specific kind of brain worms, but, uh, yeah, seeing it a lot. Yeah, I wouldn't, like, call it necessarily a positive. Like, it's a it's an aspect of things that are negative, but it's something that also can be, like, useful and and potentially positive. Like, even though if you get into what's leading someone to like, oh, I read, I reexamined my beliefs on reproductive rights because I saw some people marching with guns. That's not like a sign of of of a series of thought process that I think is like, wildly positive. But at least somebody maybe came around on something. The right direction, yeah. It's better than them going the other way. You know, we've been talking about the effects of getting all this right wing attention and. In a way, that's what we want. We want to advertise that we have strong Community defense and on the flip side, you get all these supportive comments and hopefully those people don't want to kill me anymore. So it's just a net positive, we think. Yeah, you're. I mean, one of the ways in which these kind of protests can increase security for our community, like one way is that maybe there are people who will get scared off because they don't want to risk, like, getting shot. And the other is that maybe some people will reexamine their opinions on that community because it's now more familiar to them because they're probably way too into guns. But yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about the the there. There was a specific action that kind of the thing that was going around on Twitter was these proud. Always trying to get into. I believe it was a library and like a line of parents squaring off with them to like stop them. Can we talk a little bit about that? Yeah, that was in McKinney. It was the day after Roe V Wade got overturned and. We honestly didn't know what to expect when we got there. Because of McKinney, we were like, are we gonna be? Yeah, very much so outnumbered in this. And when we arrived, there was already about 30 to 40 people who were either parents or friends of the library. They're in support, and maybe only. 15 or 20 people in opposition, so it was, you know, a pretty good, welcoming, supportive environment. In about 30 minutes after we got there is when the proud boys arrived and. We just really only had to tell two people, hey, they're proud boys. And before I, before we could even get over there to like, block them off ourselves, there were like 8 to 10 soccer moms and their flip flops, Nike shorts and handmade signs standing in front of them and blocking them from coming any closer. And of course they did get closer as people were leaving the library and the event was ending and things like that. But. It was one of those things where it just organically happened and it was it was beautiful and that's awesome. And in a place like McKinney of all places, like, I grew up in North Texas, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I would expect find like a soccer mom and Nike shorts ask like, thanking me for bringing my gun to the library. Yeah, that's that's wonderful to hear. I mean, and I people who are not in the DFW area won't understand this, but like, yeah, I spent a significant chunk of my early life in McKinney and I would not have expected that reaction there. Yeah that's really, really good to hear and it it also is you know I'm I'm, I obviously have have been supportive of a number of tactics to confront fascism including people showing up in block and stuff and and protesting or or or confronting them physically. But I don't think there's any more durable kind of community self-defense than than that than than a then a group of people who are just kind of live in an area and around and curious realizing there's a threat and immediately acting against it. Right, that's such a. That's such a powerful thing. Yeah, saying no, not in my neighborhood. Yeah. And, you know, again, like, we didn't expect to have that reaction, which made it that much better when we saw it. And, you know, having those people for the first time in their life maybe even come face to face directly with fascists. Probably has a lasting impact on them as well. Like I hope that they keep going to more events like that and keep going and protecting their community from these people. Now let me ask you, when you have these kind of interactions with folks at and when you had these specific interactions with those specific folks, is there kind of, is there sort of an information spreading thing afterwards? Is there like, hey, here's who we are and like where you can find out more about us? Like kind of attempts to like let people know who you are and what you're doing and how they can. You know, follow you and and whatnot. Like, is that a? Is that a? Is that a a part of the activism? Or was it more just like we're showing up to kind of provide a barrier for these people? And like, that's not this is not the time or place for that. It's a little bit of both. A lot of these actions we are invited to. We have kind of made it a point to be known as we are here to help. So a lot of times we will get invited or people will send us an event and we will. We do usually try to get in touch with whoever's organizing the event to make sure that they are comfortable with us, either open carrying or what they prefer us to conceal carry and things like that. Because it is. No necessary to be polite, yeah. But then also when we do, we always meet people at these actions who are wanting to get more involved than just that one time. And we do have ways for them to get involved in their community and learn from us. Now obviously Dallas is it's nickname for a long time has been the city of hate, and it is a place that is. I mean, the city itself is fairly blue, but. There is, I mean even within the Dallas area proper, a tremendous amount of people who are like extremely conservative obviously. I mean we've, I don't want to be harping on this too much, but is there a degree to which you're concerned about like attempts at infiltration and whatnot or attempts to, yeah like kind of like you know, to do sort of the the fascist equivalent of what a lot of anti fascists do with right wing groups. There is a lot of concern about that. We just we do the best we can. We think we've done a pretty good job already. Clearly, yeah. Very careful with. You know who were who were in contact with who were working with. We've had to you know stop working with abusers a few times. That is a tough one. We don't expand nearly as much as we could given all the people who want to be part of this particular group. We believe more in you know many strong groups and. Try to help people do that. But yeah, it's a tough struggle. Yeah. I mean, that's a, that's an interesting, because I think maybe a better question for me to ask is is not, like, how do you avoid that, but how do you avoid? Like, because because the if you look back at the actual history of: tell Pro right? And the **** that, like Hoover and his, his goons were saying to each other. Like, the goal was not to infiltrate every left wing movement. The goal was to make people be so afraid of infiltration that they weren't able to effectively organize. And so that that is, I guess, kind of the real trick is this, obviously there's a degree to which you want to be on your guard. You need to be careful. It's it's it's important to be not just ethical but but like responsible in your OPSEC. But you also can't let like fear of that sort of thing happening just because you're, you know, kind of surrounded in a place like North Texas. You can't let that fear stop you from from trying, right. I think a big part of that is it goes back to the trust thing. You know, we don't really. Let people into the close folds until they've come to a few actions with us and they've, you know, proven that they're not, you know, spilling the beans all over Twitter and things like that. You know, we know who they are and know what they're about and then we involve them a little bit more. It's all about building that trust with the people you're working with. It just goes right back to that is, you know, trust is built over time and the longer. We all know each other. The more we trust each other. And then, you know, we are able to have those conversations about welcoming more people in and, you know, setting up the processes for that now has just on a logistical standpoint, the kind of notoriety y'all have have gained because of some of these actions. Has it sort of led to like difficulty in terms of we've, we're dealing with like so many much interest, so many people reaching out to us, like, how do you, how do you actually like organize? And of that, like how you how you respond to people when **** goes viral, you know, I I know how overwhelming that can be. Yeah, that's been pretty new to us. We've been more used to being kind of your local crew that does things no one ever talks about. And having a larger profile now is a challenge because we do know, you know. Attracting a lot more attention. You know, put some constraints on us, but I think that goes back to why it's important to have a lot of different groups doing a lot of different stuff. You can't just have one. A group doing all the organizing that needs to be done in an area. It's just a bad idea, you know? If a group gets taken out for a variety of reasons, you don't want everything to fall apart. Yeah. So I guess kind of as we come to probably close to the end of this were there were things that I didn't get into that you wanted to talk to about what y'all are doing and and kind of what you want other people know, particularly folks who I don't know, we're in in Louisville or in, you know, ******* Idabel, OK. And kind of want to feel, want to build or at least help to. Help to protect their community in a place that there's additional challenges in doing. So. Yeah, I've seen that recurring events, no matter what it is, you know, book club distribution, if there's a place that people can find you regularly, that's a great way to have the kind of people you want to meet just just walk up and talk to you. For me, what? You know, watching your OPSEC and also compartmentalizing your information. Like if I don't need to know something, I don't want to know it. And that's a good way to stay safe while also you know. Being able to organize and take action because, like, you, said earlier. It's the most important thing is the will to do something. If you're just you know the safest thing you can do is stay in your basement. But then no one will do anything. Yeah, exactly right was there anything else, either of you wanted to get into I guess. I also want to plug passing on training so whatever skills you have. We've taught medical stuff. How to do an oil change, how to fire gun stuff. Martial arts, you know, unarmed fighting is also important. Share knowledge with each other. You know make each other more powerful in that way. Yeah that is a I think a great line to end on thank you everybody else and yeah you can check out actually you guys want to plug your your your socials you can follow me at bubble break on Twitter and. It's kind of out now, but you can follow anarco airsoft test. We have training videos on there. Excellent. And then of course, comfort John Brown Gun Club on pretty much all platforms except for Tick Tock currently. Yeah, I never got into Tik T.O.K either one of these days. All right, everybody, that's the episode. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted. And specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to bedmgm.com and enter a bonus code champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000. The bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days. Permissions. Please gamble responsibly. 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But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know. Now it's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. What? Inspiring networks of violent accelerationism my nihilistic loss of faith in the possibility of human progress. And I don't, I don't, I don't know. That's probably not a good way to yeah, it'd be like that sometimes. Garrison, what are we what are we talking about today? This is it could happen here. Podcast. Bad things, world falling apart. There's just been a big shooting in Boston you probably heard about. Not Boston. Chicago, Highland Park. Highland Park suburb of Chicago. Not Boston. The Boston. Boston was not this. I was thinking about the Boston bombing. Ohh, there we go. It's also not really in Chicago. We should. No, it's like 30 miles away, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's it's. It's it's a it's a northern suburb. Yeah. It's like it's and it's yeah, because I I've heard a bunch of people say it's like a super rich neighborhood. And then I've heard other Chicago folks say they're like, no, it's like a an upper middle class neighborhood that used to be richer and anyway whatever, it's not like Chicago that and yeah, we'll be talking about it because it's. It is an incident that fits within a pattern of behavior that very few people understand nor really prepared to think about. And it part of why is because if you actually understand what's going on with this shooting, there is no political utility in what happened. And I mean that number of ways. There is no if you are someone who is supportive of more stringent gun control. There is not political utility in the shooting for a number of reasons, including the fact that Illinois has strict gun laws and while a lot of Illinois. Gun crime has to do with weapons that come in from other states. He bought his legally in the state of Illinois, and even though like this guy was on police radar, he had made threats before they had confiscated all of his knives and he was still allowed to buy guns. Even though Illinois has a red flag law that very easily. If you can confiscate a man's knives, that could have confiscated his, stopped him from buying guns or whatever. Plenty of laws on the books too have stopped this, and it's useless in a left right political sense of the word, because there are this guy does not graph. Into any of that I I have. I think it is there's a value and kind of putting out some of the Trump imagery he's put on only because the right has immediately leapt on calling him a transgender Antifa shooter. And I guess in terms of a social media thing, sharing him draped in a Trump flag is the quickest way to like, rebut that. But that doesn't mean he's not. It's not for actually understanding what's going on, right. Yeah. So let's yeah. There's very. This is it's it's in a pattern of shootings that are becoming more common. In the past few years, we saw it at the there's a school shooting last, like October or November that that the shooter had a very similar profile, and it's a part of this growing online trend. Using imagery related to mental illness to encourage and justify mass acts of violence in some rebellion from how our regular society is structured and how people usually think of reality. So it's it's something that we generally people who spend a lot of time researching this, myself included, try to be very careful about how we talk about this right, because we don't want the wrong things boosted, but also everyone just being in the dark. Isn't great either, right? That's that's frustrating, right? If people are curious, their windows start to look stuff up and it's better that they have someone who knows they're talking about, explain it to them then. Then just have them be in the Wild West of the Internet, on site image boards or forums learning about these nonsense propaganda styles. There's there's a few things that are unique about this guy. I mean, he was not only making the propaganda, but he also did. He also did a violent act, that is actually. More unique than usual, usually the people who are involved in making this type of propaganda that he was making. He made YouTube videos, music, he, he he was he was very prolific in what he was putting out content wise into the Internet. And usually the people who put stuff out in this style of propaganda and this style of like of of very, very like meme driven, violent, mental illness, fetishization, subcultures, they they don't. Generally, the people who make this stuff don't go out and do this stuff. This is what instance where, yes, this did happen. So that's actually unique for a few reasons. Yeah. I I mean, I think one of the things that's interesting about that is that, and this is something that has not been discussed nearly as much as I think it ought to have in the wake of the shooting. This guy basically released an Arg at the same time as he carried out his shooting. Like, basically we're going to get. Yeah. I mean, because in some ways this is a really good explanation, not explanation. This is really an example of. The post manifesto, like post manifesto terrorism, where there's not there's not a written manifesto. It's someones entire online presence and their entire online documentation is is that that serves as their manifesto. The whole image of them online, everything they put out, it represents the thing that they want spread. It's people. These types of people aren't are are less likely to write, you know. Like a 10 page thing about how about why they hate X minority instead, they're going to leave piles and piles of clues and puzzle pieces, music videos and content that lead people into what they want to project as their mental state to be. So it's like everything is in, everything is part of what they want to put out. Yeah, and I I think both you can see the ACT itself, the shooting itself as an attempt to spread the art that. He was making and to spread this like profile that he had built. There's a reason why that logo that he had for himself was all over everything. There's a reason. Pretty unique logo, very unique logo. He put out some of the videos 1 from 10 months ago showed the location he's believed to have started shooting from. It looks like. So he was planning this for a while and he, I think this was this was meant both as almost as like an advertising campaign for this guy's EP if you want to look at it that way, but in a broader sense. Like, like like, it's it's it's it's more circular than that, right? He wasn't just trying to spread his stuff, but he was trying to spread his stuff in this, this imagery and branding that he had created for himself and in order to put other people in that same mind state, it was it was also very personal to him. He is. I've spent the past few hours watching. Watching hours of the stuff that he's put out. And mean he's there is there is videos that he's animated of him doing a suicide by cop. There's there's music videos he's made about doing a school shooting. These are these are ideas and thoughts has been grappling with for a long time and he finally did the thing I'm I'm unsure currently if he always knew that he was going to do this or if he was actually trying to fight it. Now that's that's honestly not even worth debating because it's not useful to what's going on because he did it right yeah because. Because he didn't. But we've had, you can see the types of stuff he's been putting out like yes the the street that he did the shooting on. He has a long, a long zooming clip of that same St in videos that was posted like over a year ago. So yeah, he's been, he's been thinking in this way for a long time. This isn't like a fast radicalization. This is someone who has been heavily steeped in very, very small niche online subcultures for a long time. I mean like the guy who's 22 years old, he's he's had his Twitter account. Since 2011 he's been online so much. It's deeply online person, deeply alienated, socially isolated, deeply like dissociative. And this is, this is by the way consistent with what his friends have said. Consistent with what people who knew him and worked with him and put music and albums together with him have have repeatedly a number of them at this point come out and said variations of like yeah man, he he got like really weird. Like it was it not, not like and not in the way that, like, oh, he got super into Q or like, he became a Nazi, but like he got weird in a way I didn't understand and I stopped associating with he got he got detached from parts of part of, like, modern reality in ways that are really hard for people to understand. And I think it's it is important to emphasize just that the deeply online nature of this he had, he he made a whole music video titled I rely on the Internet, that you you you can't find anywhere, so don't even try to. For the love of God, you don't need to. 22 but like, but it opens it opens by him saying I get mad when other people are more popular than me on the Internet and the mass shooting is in line with this with this style of thinking, right he's he is. He is trying to reify himself into a into a memetic image to spread around the same way many mass shooters try to do the same thing. But he is doing this extremely intentionally. He wants to be the thing that represents a very specific idea, and I'm it's. And we are always trying to be careful, but, like, how much we get into this because you don't want to boost the wrong thing. But it's no one of the important to talk about because it's costing a lot of people in their lives and no one really knows how to deal with this problem right now. One of the beautiful things about our current age is that if you are someone, like, if you are someone who researches terrorism, extremism, violence, particularly in the American context, although certainly not exclusively, Christchurch and Halle, Germany, I don't need to go into it. But if you are someone who? Who? Focuses on this stuff. You will repeatedly have the experience of encountering a new subculture online or a new trend, a new like species of meme, and find yourself wondering, like when the first shooting's going to be. I made a significant chunk of my career because I was paying attention to one particular group of folks online when they did their shooting, and I am not primarily, I've not been in the, you know, we've talked a little bit about Schitzo wave, which is kind of, broadly speaking, the thing. That this guy most embodied, yes, that is. That is the propaganda style which has a bad name. Yes, it's obviously it's because he's schizophrenic. We're not endorsing its name. This is the style that people who are involved in this online community use. It's about fetishizing parts or. It's fetishizing media driven aspects of mental illness to encourage violence. It is, that's, that's what it's about. Obviously mental illness, yes, the aesthetics of mental illness, right? People who are who actually, you know, deal with mental illnesses are much less likely to commit violent acts. They're actually more likely to be the recipient of of violent acts. The documented so like, this is this is like, I think important to actually get people to like, understand. Because this is one of the things that if you look at like Tucker Carlson, for example, like how Alex Jones responds to all these shooters, the thing they pivoted, one of the things they pivoted to is, oh, it's because all these people are on antidepressants and it's like, no. No, I'm going to I'm going to talk about so there was there was this tweet. But I mean I I hate talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene. I think it's useless to talk about her and it only gives her inflates the thing that she represents but but but she had this tweet about a picture of of him that that that that he that he posted and she's asking is he in jail or a rehab center or psychiatric center in this photo that's not his bedroom what drugs are psychiatric drugs or both does he use and. The the image here is of an image very clearly photoshopped of this person sitting in like a it's sitting in like a mental institution holding a Bible. And it's part of this thing that is like, fetishizing the aesthetics of mental illness, right? It's like, oh, look at me, I'm, I'm so detached from reality. I be, I, I belong inside a mental institution. Six of Christian Fascism, which is also a weird part of it. There's a photo one of the like images he posted in 4 Chan. I think it was fortunate I may be mistaken about the exact location, but it was like it was a Catholic St with like the the the Sacred Heart like in her hands with the head replaced by like some anime girl. I have not seen that yet, but yeah yeah yeah this image that he made of of inside this mental hospital like that that. Is that is part of the joke to him, right? Yeah, the joke. Like, I don't think he would actually assume that someone would think this is an unpopped image. I think he would. You know, that's hilarious. So obvious. Like clearly like Marjorie Taylor is just like just like unable to determine the most basic Photoshop, but you can see the edge marks very clearly. So, but but this but like this is part of the joke, right? And everything getting into what he actually believes about reality and stuff isn't important because everything about this is has to do with like. Post to ironic violence and post ironic like comedy. Post ironic like ideas of reality. It's the difference between this what is sincere and what is real and what is ironic and what is fake don't matter. They as long as they're happening, that's what's happening. So it's all Israel's as anything else. So. Getting into specific ideas about what he personally believes doesn't actually matter because one, we don't know if that's genuine at all. He's he's putting everything out intentionally. And two, it doesn't matter on the actual material circumstances what are producing effects inside our world right now like these types of like acts of violence. But it's it's everything is put out should be, but it'll seem like contradictory, it'll seem confusing right he he he opened a video of his that he was like doing a live stream like like I think like over like a year ago. And he. He calls everyone who's watching his live stream of like, he calls them communists. He's like, hey, communists. And it's not because they actually communists, not because he likes communism. It's not because he's necessarily a fascist either. It's that all these things are so blurred and you use them interchangeably to produce this sense of meaninglessness and the reaction to this meaningless world that he's constructed for himself. And these types of online subcultures try to construct. The only sensible reaction to this meaningless world is for them. Do these types of acts of violence, that is, that is the point. So the actual details of what they're saying aren't important because it's all about constructing this world that is utterly meaningless and self contradictory and confusing and nothing makes sense. And the only way to respond to that is to get out of it. And that's part of what they're they're trying to do. And there are. I mean, again. Part of the frustrating thing is that there are all of these things that people try to kind of simply affix to this are pieces of it. Yeah, American gun culture, the fetishization of of violence as the way to achieve positive ends in our culture is a part of this. It's why. It's part of why the natural response to everything is meaningless and confusing is going on killing spree. Exactly. And likewise the the the fact that politics is where it is, where you have like, this one party, that's the Republican Party that is almost entirely dedicated to. Like owning the libs and just purely attacking people rather than trying to do anything because their policies have been unmitigated disasters for the country. And the other side just kind of blithely tells people to vote like that, hopelessness that, like that, that kind of nihilistic aggression on the right all feeds into this. And and you could say that like a great deal of right wing media, particularly right wing Alt Media, is kind of forms a heavy component of like the milieu that this guy was radicalized in, but it's more like that. Kind of stuff. Provided a language for him than it is that that kind of stuff was specifically, like, his motivating. I mean, same thing with like, Trumpism, right? Like, yeah, he he engaged with Trumpism only in a way that it helps kind of destabilize things. And is this, like, orbit of chaos? Right? That's that's why it that that that's why it's into it. Right. He was deeply into stuff around conspiracy theories, paranormal deep nihilism, getting cut off from consensus reality, getting awakened to some, like, greater truth. Everything that he's actually into is all just to serve, to serve those types of means. Politics aren't the core part of that, but it's a reaction to politics, and then he's going to use it as just as just another tool. It's. Because, yeah, many of them are racist. Maybe they can share racist memes, but that's not actually the the the center point of of what's going on. And, you know, in some ways it'd be easier if it would, because it gives you something actually easy to target otherwise. Right now, you know, when you're trying to address this whole propaganda style that is encouraging these things to happen, it's a harder thing to clamp down on because it's it's like an endless game of whack a mole trying to find out, you know, who is the big people pushing content like this right now and like these weird niche communities, how can we get them taken down? And there's always pop back up, right? It's always it's it's this endless game, so it's hard to target. And that leaves you with the feeling of like hopelessness on how this situation will be solved, which is like also part of the point of why these attacks happen is to is to get that reaction. But it sucks. Like it's, it's, it's it's always bad to just have the like only thing you think about is like, oh wow, I don't see a way to solve this. It's just terrible. But that's part of the intention here, and man, it's it's not good because you know, you this this isn't the first shooting that has happened from this ****** wave aesthetic. They're there has been other ones. But these things are normies are going to start hearing more and more about this and that sucks. It's going to become more of a of a thing that people are going to be aware of right as as soon as as soon as NPR starts talking about it you're like OK, this is this is fully, this is, this is fully escaped from the box. It's it's it's one of those things when. Because I was just, I I was saying earlier like what it's like when you finally, when you find yourself staring at it something that is going to blow up. In a violent way and just not knowing when you are. One of a number of of folks who I've known who are kind of particularly dealing with this space. And it's been like 2 years that folks have been saying like there is, there will a bit like. And the thing that is most almost as frightening as like anything else is that. And then ******* Brett Baer is going to be talking about Schitzo wave on the news like we're going to have to, we're going to have to deal with like, Joe Rogan trying to parse this **** out while stoned. While still dead and well talking about the Kelly Yucca and we're talking about the ******* Kaliyuga, which does lead us into the board a Yacht Club Garris. So are we gonna are we gonna segue so we're gonna talk about one thing that dealing with we finished talking about one thing dealing with ****** wave, then enter into other thing that the only accurate way I can describe describe this is that my, my dives into this, into this theory are the equilavent of what it feels like to have us psychotic episode. And that's not that's not disparaging at all. It's about the actual things your brain does when that happens, how you take one meaningless piece of information and project meaning onto it to make it super important, and how that kind of cascades down. Oh boy, so. The board. The board a Yacht Club, AKA now, I guess the board ape Nazi club because people online have decided that they're really good at researching Nazis. I guess somebody hop into the ******* subreddit and tell us that we we needed to be. Need to be dealing with this. Yeah. I like, I I was like, like randomly I like, visited some of my friends in Chicago who are like normies and like, they were telling me about this video and I was like, Oh no, yeah, it's it is it is again. It is fully escaped the box now. And that's part of the problem. So there is this YouTuber who made a video in partnership with a quote UN quote Internet artist about how the board a Yacht Club, friends of the Pod are secretly this Nazi. Pop to troll everyone into spreading esoteric Nazism. That's that's the claim. Now, first I'm going to say that the guy who made this video was in partnership with this Internet artist who at the same time launched a rival ape based NFT project, and this video served as an ad for his rival Ape NFT project. And his to be clear, his ape NFT project was taking the art that the board a Yacht Club used for their apes, making no changes to it. And just selling it to people on a different platform, which is like intellectual property theft, right? Right. Like I never would have be the guy saying the board apes are legally in the right here, but they sure are. I can't believe. Like we are not defending board a Yacht Club. It's stupid and I want them to be hit with a brick. But like talking about this because people are appropriating the term, appropriating the almost like the aesthetics of anti fascist research, they start selling their own products. They are appropriating the aesthetics of anti. Of scholarship focused on extremism in order to sell an FTS that's what's happening with this the Board app Yacht Club are Nazis video so it got. So all the information comes from this from this guy whose arrival arrival NFT Internet artist what's his ******* name. Hi writer rips, I think. Yeah writer rips. Yeah because he's being sued now by the board apes or whatever and like good God I mean everything. I I I, I, I, I I'm not. If you watch the video that we're referring to, I'm not disparaging you in case you thought it was convincing, because, I mean, that was part of the editing. It was trying to make it seem convincing, but every every single thing is like cherry picked and squished together to resemble meaning. But once you actually opened it up, you're like, oh, this is actually nothing. The whole 30 minute section on the cipher is about them doing ciphers badly to get a result out of the clues that they were given. They're looking for specific results to match whatever they want to see. And everything else is the connections are so tangential. And it's. It's like synchronicity gone bad, right? It's people who take these things and project meaning onto them, when in reality that's just how everything in the world works. And it's not actually meaningful or important. It's just because you're focusing on it, so you're going to see it everywhere. This is the same thing we were talking about in our food factories Conspiracy video podcast. Sorry. And it's basically one of the things that has made this, I think, spread so virally is that there's a germ of not truth, but there's there's a single convincing point that it all starts from and the single. Convincing point is that the board API club logo was like it very was ripped from that other Nazi logo. Absolutely. Yeah. Very is very much patterned off of like the the old S deaths head because I shouldn't. Yeah because a number of things going on there because the Nazis were really good at graphic design and and because also that's not originally a Nazi thing. It has its origins in a Prussian military unit. And there's a reason why the deaths had went so far. And it is generally like, for example, when you see a death set on in the Ukrainian soldier in like, Ukraine. That dude's probably got some pretty Nazi ******* beliefs. Yeah, it's not a it's it's not a again, so the fact that you see something that looks like it may have an inspiration in that, but, like, how is it worthwhile point to start looking at stuff? Absolutely. But once you go at it with the conclusion in mind, then find things just to back up your own conclusion. That's not how you do good research. Because, man, like, one of the founders is Jewish. Not saying Jewish people can't be fascists or whatever, but like, half the people who started it are ethnic. Minorities, they're really bad writers and they put together this thing that's complete nonsense. And people are now assuming it's this, yeah, mega conspiracy. And it's not. It's just bad. So, and I think part of why people are so so, I think part of why a chunk of the people who hate it want there to be a conspiracy is because this thing has made so much money and it is utterly banal and and idiotic, and it is utterly banal and idiotic and part of the thing a lot of this comes out of and a lot of the strength that kind of this individual, this thing has this, this video. Has comes out of the fact that years ago a number of folks, some of whom are present company here, started warning people about the ways in which fascists would hide things like fourteens and 80 eights and yeah, all of all of like dog whistles, hidden imagery, all that kind of stuff here is and and so people started to get primed to the fact that that happens, that that Nazis hide **** and that that that you should be on the lookout for it. But one of the things that has been forgotten, I think in kind of the rush to do that for **** like this is that. It's not just the fact that they're hiding like and in the in the specific case of people are putting 14 and 80 eights and **** when I was discussing, that was nearly always in the context of like, members of Patriot Prayer and the Proud boys and affiliated groups who were beating people in the streets. Right. So you're not, you don't just have the imagery, you have someone going out and doing things that like they are claiming have nothing to do with fascism. But like, no, you can see if you haven't and they're yeah, if you have an ape that's numbered 1488, which is a funny video. Because there's like 10,000 of these apes and they're all numbered in numerical order. Yeah. It's like the fact that in a group of a set of 10,000 apes, one of them is a number of 1488 is not Nazi dog whistling even anymore than it would be satanic dog whistling. But there's going to be a 666 in there, you know? It's like, just like there's one that's 6969, just like there's one that's 2347, whatever. Yeah. It's like that thing people used to do were like, I don't know if people still do this, but like there when I was like. That people would, like, you'd get someone you'd like, pull out a grid of a city and they start drawing pentagrams on it. Yeah, exactly. And it's like, well, yeah, there's a bunch of random lines if you can draw anything you want. Yeah. But the other thing that's that's a really, that's a big problem about this. It's not only it's passing off bad extremism research to sell their own NFT product, which is bad in and of itself, it's also saying the stuff that doesn't need to be said out loudly to a huge audience, all while using the fashwave image style. And that sucks because it's talking about things like Traditionalism, it's talking about types of esoteric Nazism that usually we don't want to put a giant megaphone on, because when people get really into this, you get stuff like this shooting that happened. A few days ago that's that's those are the same Internet communities that this stuff is really fostered in. So we don't like to amplify it, because the more people who are in these communities, the more their brains still get chipped away at by these people, making this, making these types of like hypnotic propaganda. So when we have a YouTuber that has a video with millions of views talking about the Kaliyuga, talking about Julius Evola, talking about a whole bunch of stuff around like extremely niche occult naziism, that's not great. Especially when they're using the fashwave style of video editing to make it seem really cool and scary. And when they're doing it ultimately to make money in an NFT scheme, right, it's it's it's more than just, this is not just somebody did research that was like, bad. This is somebody crafted a viral thing using the aesthetics of research and dropping some really dangerous **** into the consciousness in an irresponsible way to sell the same ape drawings they were attacking. Extremely frustrating because yeah, even the whole cipher section of the video I'll still real against, because it's about people using a bajillion cypher methodologies to get specific results out of it that they want. And all the results they get out of it also are like not problematic and are kind of explainable. Like all of them refer to something about monkeys anyway, so even if they are true, it's not, it's it doesn't necessarily need to be referencing this obscure thing in traditionalism. It's like, Oh no, that's because it's the name of a ******* monkey and. I don't. Again, I don't have any actual opinion on whether the board of Yacht Club has someone working for it that is hiding in secret references, because honestly, I don't care. Because all because what it's viewed publicly as is a stupid NFT thing. I mean, it's not, it's not viewed publicly. People who use it as a secret Nazi conspiracy. Because if it is, what's the impact? What's what's the impact that it's had? Like, how how would it matter if it's a secret Nazi conspiracy theory? What's it? What's it doing? It's it's telling. Bad pictures of monkeys. When we when we talk about the first wave of this and like the need to explain, you know the symbols that people were hiding in these like right wing St movements, a bunch of whom wound up feeding into Jan 6th. It's easy to say, well, what the harm was. They were going out, they were beating people, they were planning terrorist attacks, right? Like that. Yeah they do. It's doing terrorist attacks. I have I again. I ******* hate these board 8 *************. I think this is the stupidest ******* I don't know trend I've seen in my entire *** **** life. I cannot point to anything even vaguely Nazi they have supported or done like. Among other things, if you want to know if something is a dangerous conspiracy or a stupid grift, the one question you should ask yourself, and this isn't always relevant, but one question you should ask yourself is, is Jimmy Fallon involved? Because if Jimmy Fallon is involved, it's probably just a dumb grift. Whole the whole the watching this guy break down how you get secret messages out of these ciphers is it's it's the same. It's the same thing as like Q Anon ****. It's people wanting to get an answer out of numbers and things and then pushing that answer as truth, even if it's like not not based in any form of reality. Yeah it's it's so it's really frustrating to watch people basically start using Q Anon style research tactics to justify their hatred of an NFT project, which is like. No, you can just dislike it from being an EFT thing. You don't need to wrap it in a in this package. That is just really bad extremism research. Part of one of the things that scares me about this attack and about like what's going to happen kind of in the media after it is that I think kind of inevitably these aesthetics are just going to get Co opted on a wider and wider basis. That's what's happening on Tik T.O.K right now is that these, these types of fast Ravens get to wave aesthetics are just becoming a core part of the Zoomer Online aesthetic, and that sucks. The the other point I wanted to mention about the Highland Park thing is like this. This guy that did this is such. A perfect profile of this type of DE attached like Gen Z like almost I I I like like post politics, terrorism. That like he is such a perfect example of someone who's been online since he was a very very little kid trying to make content online right everyone in Gen Z needs to be performing all of the time. Right at your whole life is a performance for the Internet. He was doing that same thing he's been making the making music and. Videos and **** since he was, since he was like younger than me. Like he's been doing this for a long, long time. And the types of like, you know, like nested communities that you get, like that you like fall into. It's such, it's such like a clear example of the very types of things that you know me and others have been talking about and warning about for a while. And it's. The whole, like, muddle edness of reality that we even get with this, like, board ape, Nazi club video, right? They're all part of this same problem with the Internet. Like our brains weren't designed for this much information coming at us. At the same time, we cannot sort it all out. And it's. Not ideal of I it's not it's not great. I would rather it not be like this. I don't know how to like come at people with a solution to this because it this is an unsolved problem. It's like come up with a solution for the ******* the the fact that emissions like are not going to be reduced because the world, because the world does suck. But the very be very cognizant of video propaganda styles and anyone that. This is flashing like classic or Catholic like imagery. Be very, very careful. Be very careful of people who fetishize these topics of mental illness. Be very careful about, about people that that you rap these aesthetics of, of mental illness and like a very violent package because like that's what we get with, with, with the shooter he was like doing, doing videos about, about, you know, these types of mental illness that end with him just like a picture of like a drawing of him. Holding a gun, you know, way before he bought a gun, he was making art about about this. Yeah. I think the one that stuck out to me most was him repeatedly referring to himself as a sleepwalker. Yeah. Which which I don't know, like, obviously that is very much in line with the the schiza wave esthetic stuff that like you have been talking about. It also kind of makes me think. I mean it, it it it brought me to thinking about, uh, Barbara Tuchman, who is a historian who wrote a book. All the guns of August, that's a history of World War One that that describes kind of the machinery that got set up and marched everybody into that situation exploding like sleepwalkers, right, like this system has been set up and the. People are kind of so unwilling to see where it's leading that everything's just kind of marching with a with a sense of inevitability towards a worse and a worse endpoint. And that's that's what scares me most about this. I've I've listened to many of his horrible songs, and there's and there's lyrics very similar to that idea. About that kind of inevitable, like faked driven nature of our current situation and how reality has become so muddled with the Internet. And like we there's been an intentional, top down effort to destroy any nature of consensus reality and make everything up for debate. Of there's there is, there isn't facts no longer our thing, like they just don't exist and this is the world that results from that happening. When those people in power who put are pushing for this, like you know, like Steve Bannon is among you know, one of many people who are pushing for this type of world, this is the result that we get. And this is the result that they kind of want us to get. It's it's it's. Yeah. I mean because if everything is true and that's fine, fundamentally like what they're going at for is this idea that, like everything's true and nothing is everything. Yeah. And if every like and if you hit that state, you can do anything, right like to to steal a quote. Who was that? Was that ******* Crowley? Umm. The but but, like, that's very much. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that goes all the way back to the assassins. The yeah, well, allegedly goes back to the hashishin. Yes, sure, sure, sure. Uh-huh. But no. But it is like, that is that is the thing, right? If you even this. Even the shooter Guy had numerous Discordian references in in his ****. Yep. But yeah, it's all about the same stuff. It's all it's all dealing with these same problems. And right, obviously if if you know, if you deal with dissociation, as I sometimes do, if you, you know like parts about the Discordian aesthetics and like, like the kind of ideas they play with, that does not make you an inherently dangerous person. That's that's not the problem here. The right, like, you could like, I'm, you know, in some ways, but like I I think about a lot of a lot of these same topics because I look at all of this. I'm I'm I look at all of this research all the time. So my brains in a similar is is in is in a similar place that's that's that doesn't make you a bad person. That doesn't make you dangerous. But I think it's important to be cognizant of the type of propaganda that people are pushing, the types of propaganda trends and styles that are producing material effects in the world. Like these types of shootings. Yeah. And so I don't know what else to say honestly. Because it's bad. Yeah, it's it's a problem I would say if anyone. They ever tells you about something they saw on the Internet, hit them and run away screaming. That's a good that's a good way to move forward. And please don't don't start other things like, you know, we're going to, we're going to the right is going to have two possible reactions to stuff like this, right? They're going to one, do a satanic panic and be like, oh, look at these people doing a cult **** let's do another. Let's do another satanic panic, which would suck there. There's, there's, there's, there's that option, obviously, that would tie into, like, transphobia that would tie into a whole bunch of whole bunch of ********. The other option is that people start, you know, using mentally ill people as a scapegoat and start saying we should lock up people who deal with mental illness. That is also, that would suck. Wouldn't solve the problem either. Wouldn't do it. Like that's the thing. I've actually been seeing this in the last really like probably 3 months is there's been a bunch of people who've been calling for like bringing like bringing sort of old school asylums back. That's that's exactly what the people, the people who make this propaganda, that's exactly what they want. That's. They they want you to have that reaction that would make things so much worse. If you put people like this in an asylum for 10 days, then they get out there. They are so much more likely to to do these types of things. Not because actually, like, not because like nothing to do with their actual whatever, like, mental things they have going on. It's because of the the aesthetic stylings, right? They want to be a character in a story. If they feel like their life is going in a direction, that they are a character in a story, they're getting put in these situations that they've memed about, right? This guy is pictures. He's photoshopped of himself inside mental institutions. I mean it's it's a character in the story. If you do that, you're playing right into their hands. It is that is not what that that should not be the focus of what we are doing in. Like carceral problems are not the solution to these types of things, especially for people who are, who are like just making music online. Like what are you going to do? ******* arrest people for the like, for the music they make? Like that is not the solution. Don't let people turn this into targeting people who have. Actual like mental like mental things that they deal with. Don't make them the scapegoat of this and be very careful. If anyone tries to do any kind of satanic panic and nonsense about secret occultists who are trying to alter your kids reality or whatever. Be very careful because anyone who uses that type of framing for this problem is not genuine. They do not actually care. They are pushing something that they want. Yeah, I mean and I think one of the reasons why. The idea that these people are kind of seeing themselves as part of a narrative is important is because it represents a discontinuity with the way mass shootings have worked for most of the time that people listening to this have been alive in the United States prior to a couple of years ago. Really, 2019 was the big break year for this. The vast majority of mass shooters were also committing suicide. That was part of the goal. That was what happened. And if you are an individual with a gun who has just committed a series of murders, it is very easy to make sure you die. In that attack, it's extremely easy. That is why so many of them did it. That has that has stopped being a given in the way that it used to be. The change, I think was Christchurch was the main inflection point for this, but a lot of these guys go down alive. The the the Buffalo shooter taken alive the last the last wave shooter from a few months ago was taken in alive. Just intriguing, because if I was to watch all this video propaganda beforehand, I would have assumed that this guy wanted to die within the act. A lot of the stuff was written about him doing this to kind of end his life and escape into whatever is next. That that's the kind of feeling I get that's interesting a lot. A lot of his writing and yet he didn't. It's interesting trend of the imagery he was putting out particularly the **** with him in in the asylum as kind of evidence of of where like part it was part of why I suspected like he had he intended to get taken alive. That is that is that is very possible. I mean, like, yeah. Because in some way, yeah, I'm not going to speculate. This is not necessarily the most useful. I'm not going to, I'm not going to speculate further, but there's a lot of a lot of possible things to to to think about there, which I will do. So because I have all the stuff, don't no one else, please. It's you don't don't look at this stuff because it's like forbidden. Right. Don't, don't don't seek it out because it's like, oh, it's forbidden knowledge that they they don't want you to see. It's dangerous. Oh, that. That's that's not the point. The point is it's bad. And now it's also like, hard to find. So like. Like, don't watch it. Like it's not, it's not, it's not worth watching. It's not like it's not watching much of this stuff, like, like in the immediate wake of it. And like my what happened to me was I got a ******* headache. You get a headache bad, you feel bad. These tears and waste your time. Like if if, if, if you want to get this, like the experience of this without having to like do this **** like ******* eat a bunch. Like eat a **** ton of candy. Watch, watch Pink Floyd Ship, watch, watch Pink Floyd's the wall. Jesus Christ. Except except I think if you're eating a bunch of candy you're watching the ******* wall like it's actually better, actually good. Whereas this is just like it's it's only the bad parts of that. But I only look at this because it's my ******* job and. It sucks. Yeah, all right. Well, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to say we're probably done here. OI don't know until next time. Again, if anyone tries to tell you about something that happened on the Internet, strike them and flee. 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So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tiktok. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know. Now it's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Alright, podcast. It could happen here. It's a podcast about the terrible things that are happening all around the world and the wonderful people who are trying to fix them. What it is today is a podcast with Tarek Libani of Glia, and what really inspired me about this story, made me want to share it with you, is that it came out of a really dark place. Tariq was on the ground in Gaza treating gunshot wound victims and a lot of gunshot wound victims. Like I remember reading his field testing of the device and just being appalled by the number of people who have been shot, lots of them children and some of the the reporting he was doing right. Like, oh, I had this, this tourniquet and we were reusing them and they don't work very well on the pediatric application because kids shouldn't be shot, right? But instead of getting. Down he was able to make a solution, and I think that's really important and I really like that. Even through like this dark and terrible stuff that we've all had to experience and he experienced in Gaza, he was able to see a positive solution, a way to look after people, to move forward in this case to prevent death. And preserve life. And I think it's easy to focus on the dark stuff. There's enough of it happening. But I think it's important to focus on the great people who are doing great things to protect and care for other people as well. So that's a little bit of what we got today and I hope you enjoy it. So I'm here with Tarek Nubani. He's from glia. They're a company I came across when I was writing about 3D printed tourniquets. And would you like to introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about Glenn. What? What you do there? Thank you so much for having me. My name is Terra Kobani. As you had mentioned, I'm an emergency physician. I work in Canada, in a city in Canada called London. And I also work in the Gaza Strip as an emergency physician as well. Glia was really an answer to a problem. The problem being that when I see patients in Gaza, they don't get the same quality of service that I can give to my patients to. Of course, that's multifactorial, but a big part of that has to do with the way in which we, as the medical profession have medical devices that we don't release, that we don't give access to other people to use. And so glia's purpose was to take the most medical devices that doctors use. And to make sure that they were accessible and available to doctors all over the world. OK. Yeah. Yeah, that's very cool. And you make a number of devices, right? Like, I know that I first talked to you about the tourniquet, but you make also a stethoscope, is that right? The stethoscope is the calling card of medicine. And so it was the first project that we started working on to test out the theory. I mean, we started with the theory that, hey, we can probably make a device that's just as good as a $300.00 device, but the costs, let's say, three, $3 or even $30. And that was the stethoscope. We tested it, published the results, we proved it was as good as the gold standard, the LITTMANN cardiology 3 at the time and offline using it both in our own practices also making it available other people to make for theirs. OK. Yeah. And so that's what's really interesting about your company as opposed to other companies, right? You're not necessarily like manufacturing and distributing. You are providing the designs that allow other people to make them, right. And so can you talk about some of their like? I know that you use 3D printing and I want to talk about that, but also, like, I remember seeing that the tubing and the Cesar scope comes from like a Coca-Cola machine, right. So some of those considerations, yeah, absolutely. The purpose is to make these devices available to other people for the lowest cost possible, but also like actually be available. It's no good if you can make it for $0.20. But partly required are nowhere. So that's why we went with a basket. Of items that are more or less easily available, and we made the stuff scopes out of that. For example, you can probably get the very specific kind of earpieces that most stuff stethoscopes have, but they are naturally going to be less available and less abundant than if you were to use regular earbuds that on headphones. There are way more headphones out there than there are stethoscopes, therefore those parts are more available, even if of course they're they are less expensive, but even if they were slightly more expensive. It would be worth it. What we really take away is the monopoly and the profit motive. And so by doing that, or rather, let's say the exorbitant profit that medical device companies are making, and by doing that we're really able to to realize the promise of patents. All of the devices that we make were patented at one point. The promise of patents is that when the patent is over, you'll get a cheap device. Without promises not realized, the stethoscope is a 300 year old device, basically, and the fact that it is not available at the highest quality except for $300.00 is kind of nuts. So that's why we started there and of course moved on to more and more complicated devices, much more complicated even than the tourniquet by now. OK yeah can you I remember reading because you had you you kept A blog. I remember on like medium where you talked about testing the tourniquet when when you were in Gaza and it just. A like, you know, if you read medical literature, then it did it. This was just the shocking. I remember being absolutely shocked by the number of casualties you ring counting, encountering. And then also like you were saying like the the lack of available tools. So perhaps you could explain like a little bit of of what you saw there and then how these tourniquets have been able to help you address that like massive disparity and access to care. The Tourniquet project really started in Gaza because we noticed that after one of the wars, the war in 2014, that we had a particularly high casualty rate, of course. But of that, there were many deaths that we would classify as preventable deaths where we felt that had tourniquets been available, those patients likely wouldn't have died. When we started working on it, of course, we knew at some point there would be another war. It is it is very common in Gaza for there to be attacks by the Israelis we didn't anticipate, for it to happen so fast and for it to happen in a way where the tourniquet was so necessary. That, of course, was what's called the Great March of Return, where Palestinians protested on mass and one of the Israeli responses was to shoot live fire at the protesters, often targeting about 80% of the hits were targeting the arms and the legs. Which is where traits are the most effective. So the high number really is owing to the way in which the Israelis decided to deal with this protest and the fact that it was a protest rather than a specific war. And that meant also that we could predict with the relative degree of accuracy where the injuries would be, which meant that it was even more important to have the right equipment and the right training. It was part of an overall strategy. So of course, it's not like tourniquets were the thing that saved lives. Tourniquets were part of a campaign to train paramedics and to train doctors in how to stop bleeding in these kinds of injuries. And they were one of the most important tools in that campaign, but only part of that campaign. Yeah, of course, of course you need other tools. And obviously the education and the you can't just slap it on and then the person's fine. Obviously, there's a lot of care afterwards, which is important, too. Can you maybe talk us through? And you talked about like, the promise of patents, right? And I think this is important in in exactly what we're talking about in tourniquets because it's a little different to like medicines, right? It's a little different with medical devices. So there are existing tourniquets on the market, right? And I think they're sort of market leading one is it's the cat. Can you explain, like, why are those not getting to people who need them? Desperately in these areas, the problem with the trinkets that are available right now kind of falls into a few different categories. North American rescue, the makers of Cat, have two key patents on the cat. And as far as we can tell, just based on the posture of the company, if anybody else were to make exact cat replicas, they will be sued. The people who are willing to then make exact cap replicas tend to be people who are unaccountable and largely have not much to lose. And so that's why we saw a glut initially, for example, with the Ukraine campaign of tourniquets that that were relatively low quality. And so you can't just make the device. You also have to know that the device will work because you don't want to discover that when you put it on ARM or leg and then it fails. Gaza is an acid test of all of these things because not only are devices generally not available or expensive, it's kind of at the bottom of any purchase list, for example. But also in Gaza there is a complete international blockade, Israeli led of course, but there are other countries that are that are contributory, and that blockade means that equipment can't get in so long as the Israelis deem it to be of of military value. This is where things like dual use devices and so on. Come into play. The tourniquet is a medical device. It is. It can only be a medical device. There is no second use and so it should be exempt, however. Even if the Palestinians could afford 50 U.S. dollars per unit, which should be the cost to get one in. The Israelis won't let them in, so de facto, even though they shouldn't be banned, they are de facto banned. And that means that not only can we depend on cheap Chinese retailers, let's say, to give us replica tourniquets, we actually have to manufacture them ourselves. When we open sourced our designs, it was with an eye to two things. One, making it available so that the replica makers can make higher quality replicas. They're already making replicas. We may as well give them a legal replica rather than a patent brick busting replica. Not that I think there's anything wrong with that. These cases where there's emergencies, but. Just the same, glia's tourniquet doesn't break any patents. And at the same time, in addition to giving them the ability to make high quality tourniquets, we can also make high-quality tourniquets locally and domestically, because of course. National Liberation, as it were, in the medical device space, can't come if you can't make your own devices. We discovered that during COVID. The Palestinians have known that for decades now. And we're kind of rediscovering it in Ukraine, where there just aren't enough tourniquets. And so they they are forced to improvise or acception against that they don't want to accept. Right? Yeah. Like, I think, I think COVID was this great example that we can't continue to rely on the sort of whims of global capital. To provide things that we need to survive. And I think your manufacturing is fascinating. So because you're using essentially commonly available materials in a 3D printer, is that right? Yeah, that's correct. I mean, we're not against using other things. They just have to be very simple. For example, our electronics use PCBS. You can't 3D print electronic circuits just yet. So we use PCB's. But when we design our PCB's, there are a couple of ways to design it. You can design an 8 layer board that can only be manufactured. And one or two places in the world. Or you can design a board that's three times the size but can be manufactured anywhere in the world. And when you're talking about credit card sized devices, if it's notebook size instead of credit card size, it doesn't really matter that much. For example, the example I'm thinking of here is an electrocardiogram where we took a a device that had failed in the sort of market that they the makers open sourced and they had intended it to be a fitness device. And then it didn't work. Their company went bankrupt and so they open sourced it. So we looked at their schematics, all of the problems that they had already solved. We said, OK, the problem we're going to solve is to make it so that this can be manufactured in a high school electronics lab. And we were able to achieve that. It was bigger. It was twice as big, but who cares? The old one was half the size of a credit card. You know? Who cares? You make it a little bit bigger, but at the same time you make it much more accessible. Twice as big, 20 times more accessible. I know some of your stuff, like you're 2, indicates it's really there's not much or any really of a performance trade off from what you've seen, right? Indeed, there might be better for some pediatric applications, if I remember correctly that. That's right. So when you think of the way in which corporate devices are made, they are made to the specifications of particular buyers, and the buyers are the people who have the money. Who's the buyer for tourniquets? When you think about who needs tourniquets consistently, who do you, who has money to give you? And it gets who should you market to? There's only one sane answer, and that is first world militaries, especially occupation militaries or militaries that are engaged in ground level warfare, who are expected to take small arms or IED. And so. There are not many children who you have to sell to in that particular market. There aren't many small women, or even women at all they have to sell to in that market. So I don't think that North American rescues engineers would have any trouble making sure that their tourniquets worked amazingly well for children. But why? Why would they spend one to twenty $30 million doing that work and research when that's not their audience and that's not their buyer? For us, the normal person, the civilian, is the in quotation mark Spire. They're not the ones buying, but they're the ones who are the main consumer and so they're the ones who we target. In Gaza specifically, 45% of the population is under the age of 14. You'd have to be crazy. To go out there and put a tourniquet out. That only works on big, burly men. So that's that's why we were we were driven to do that. And As for the performance tradeoffs, yeah, you're right. The the What we learned about spec sheets on lots of these devices is that they're made-up. There isn't really a great way to know how well a tourniquet works. Unfortunately, there isn't a really great way to know how well a staff scope works. And so some of the first work we did was actually designing some tests so that we can say, OK, well here's how you prove that the stethoscope. Looks as well as that stuff oscope or. Here's how you prove that. You know this works. As well as that. And those testing protocols, we made them open source and easily available, too. For example, if you want to test a stethoscope, you can do that with a pair of headphones, a microphone, and the Hello Kitty balloon. That's how we did it originally. Could we have spent $10,000 making that test, right? Yeah, we could have, but that wouldn't have helped us in terms of helping other people make stethoscopes wherever they are. Yeah, that's very cool. And then by open sourcing that test, you allow for other people who have ideas or sort of models for their own improvements or different designs that they can then use that test, right? And then continue to improve and share their improvements with others. I do not want to work on stethoscopes anymore. I want people to take it up. It doesn't mean that I won't. Of course I will. But my favorite thing is when somebody sends a message and says, hey, I like what you've done, here's how I think it could be better. I love those messages. I love them. And you know what? Nine out of 10 of those ideas? Don't work out. They don't pan out. But 10% like it. Our stethoscopes since 2017, all of the improvements have been from other people because we haven't had the time and money to work on it. But we have been open minded having corporated lots of design changes that other people in the community have suggested. That's a good thing. It's good for everybody. And I think it does an excellent job at getting at the like, the fundamental conceit of our drug and device development model, right? Which is that which isn't true. Actually, there's massive R&D costs, and those R&D costs have to be recouped by charging a massive amount for a period of time and making access to that medicine or device a privilege, not a right. And then eventually the cost will come down, but they often don't, and then everyone will have access to the sink. And it like, it's been my experience, it doesn't work that way. But what you've shown is an alternative, right, that people want to help and that that they don't. There's not a need for this, like price gouging to facilitate the improvement in this technology. Is that fair we're not taking? A purely altruistic model. Here people are generally improving the stethoscope for their own uses, so there is a self interested aspect if you want to present it that way. What we realized is that actually the most useful way to develop a device is to make it as good as possible and release it, and then have other people who want to improve it have a capacity to share back to you. So. As much as I I believe in altruism and I do think every time that I've seen people collaborate I've seen a tremendous amount of it. This more resembles the open source software model where which is actually the world I came from. I came from the free software model where yes, you do things just for the fun of it, but also very large corporations are involved. For example, some of the stethoscopes improvements happened because the lab needed to use it for some experiments on animals. And so they made modifications and they fed them back amazing, that's fantastic and but that that was totally self interested that they knew that it would cost them significantly less to build on our work and it would cost them nothing to share back their their contributions. So it's. You know, we're not going out there trying to to prove that everybody is good at heart, even though I do actually think that's fundamentally true. What what we're doing is showing through this model, the devices can advance with relatively little upfront costs and with the contribution of many, many members. Yeah, yeah, that's a rephrased it really well. I think that people have the self-interest, which also serves other people's interests. And and it's like, yeah, I've seen it in all kinds of open source communities like we've reported before on 3D printed guns, which is obviously a kind of a different end of the spectrum. But. It it's fascinating to see this global exchange and I'm sure you have people, you've mentioned that there are people in Myanmar who are who are printing your tourniquets, right. We were amazed when people from Myanmar had reached out and said that we've seen your tourniquet and we want to implement it. We have situation that's very similar to Gaza. We thought that's exactly what we want. What they did was two things. One, they took our instructions and they used them. But then they also fed back to us how those instructions were incomplete, how they could be better, and some design changes that made their lives better. Again, amazing. By them using it, by them taking. They also. Gave and that's the sort of relationship, the kind of solidarity that we've seen whenever other people have used our devices, we've noticed that they take and it's it's not a problem. If people in in Myanmar had just taken and not given anything back, that's fine too, because it doesn't take anything away from us to share. This is this is a kind of sharing where the more you share, the more there's potential for benefit, but there's never a loss. You never lose. We share in that sense, we're not. Also trying to present it as though. We need people to share for us to feel that this model works. We don't, but we're already making it anyway. We're already using it anyway. We're sharing. Some people help out by contributing back, and some people don't. It's it seems to me to be the most effective way to develop devices for low cost and make sure that they get out to where they need to be. Yeah. Because they're kind of 21st century and people who need them can find them, as you found out, right. Like people across the world do, you know, have a sense of where else they're being used. The tourniquets right now are being used in Gaza and Ukraine and in Myanmar. If they're being used in other places, we're not really aware of it, but people aren't compelled to make us aware of it. And and all three of those locations have moved forward the project tremendously. For example, for Ukraine, the the Ukrainian support people weren't really able to contribute so much their own ability to construct and make, but they were able to contribute really important research, financial and testing capabilities. And so of course a project like this costs money. They're like, hey, look, you know, we don't have farms. Print farms. But we do have some cash that we want to put into it. And we were able to use that money very, very effectively, more effectively than if they would have bought the pieces to then create the capacity for them to go and make their own tourniquets. OK. So yeah, let's talk about that. That's fascinating. And and we could maybe contrast it to sort of. And another model, right? Like if, if, because you understand you're able to go to Ukraine and help them set up as opposed to. Yeah it would have taken months I imagine to do that with a I don't know how they make the cats but they they like they molded or something. But with with a non sort of with a non open source non printed model like to set up a tourniquet factory in Ukraine or Poland would take months right? Yes absolutely. But you're not going to. There's two reasons why North American rescue I'll just call them nor from here on out you won't do that. One of them is that that conflict at some point will end. It's very expensive to set up production lines. And the other thing is the more tourniquets you put into the market, the cheaper tourniquets get, you know, supply and demand. Like, we learned that one pretty well from capitalism. And so they have an inherent disincentive, whether they recognize it or not, whether it's conscious or not. North American Rescue and all these companies have an inherent disincentive in flooding the market with tourniquets, whereas we do not. For us, it's the opposite. The more people we lose, pretty much. Leo loses about 10 to $20 per tourniquet that we manufacture. We have no incentive to keep doing it, and we want other people to do it because we want as many tourniquets to be provided as possible. What we do then is we heavily subsidized the tourniquets using our own internal funds and and fundraising that that we do with the goal of getting them out there so that deaths can be prevented. And so we want other people producing, when I go there, every tourniquet. Nobody else makes instead of me, is less headache for me, is less pain for me, and is less financial loss for me and for glio, of course. So our incentives are different. They want a shortage. Consciously or not, and we want an abundance. We want everybody to have to get their pocket. That's that's our goal. Can you talk a little bit about your experiences in Ukraine? You were there pretty recently, right? Ukraine is a very, very complicated subject when it comes to tourniquets, because. The tourniquet wasn't this. Ah. I'm going to mine my words very carefully. I'm not Ukrainian, I'm not a Ukrainian Dr and my experience there is very limited. I am in solidarity with the medical community in Ukraine. And part of being in solidarity with a medical community is recognizing that. Even when there are weaknesses, it is not my place. To insert myself into their processes. And so the way that the Ukrainians have approached tourniquets is, at the outset, to ban all 3D printed tourniquets and to basically make it so that only what they consider to be high-quality tourniquets, mainly the cat and another another one or two models, were available in there. This, unfortunately, created a tremendous shortage. And the other thing that functionally happened was a disconnect between the policymakers within the medical community and the people on the ground. The people on the ground, of course, are doing whatever they can to provide care wherever they can, and the policymakers are a little bit more disconnected from that and so have different considerations. The shortage then. Creates this. Difficulty. You know, there are, of course, 3D printed tourniquets aren't accepted officially in Ukraine. But there are an abundance of 3D printed tourniquets in Ukraine because the people on the ground are accepting them. And what we see is a kind of grassroots experimentation with how it is that we can prevent deaths. The other difficulty is that tourniquets are a tool. And in bad hands, this tool isn't going to work, even if it's a great tool. And so one of the things that I realized, and I think everybody at this point, I'm not saying anything that's new or unknown to the community. We all realize that without appropriate training and how to use a tourniquet, they're not going to work. And so even high-quality tourniquets out there in the field are failing because they're being used improperly and it's causing unnecessary deaths. So I don't know how deep you want to get into that experience in Ukraine. But I think what we can say is that it's important to be in solidarity with that Community. And as such, we're providing them all of the experience that we have and all of the capability that we have to produce you tourniquets that the Ukrainians themselves both officially and on the in the front lines are able to use and and feel are actually safe for their patients. Yeah, yeah. That's a difficult situation. I think obviously a lot of what's happening in Ukraine has been necessarily like, like rushed and it's somewhat. Alright, perhaps chaotic isn't it's the wrong word, but it took a while for people to to fully sort of understand that the necessities of the scale and the scale of the conflict, or perhaps understand this is still the wrong word. But yeah, to to come up with the most of the way to do the least harm. I guess that's such a great way to to frame it. And I think even from your experiences you see that very often in these situations. That's the name of the game. It's not even doing what you know is best, but rather figuring out what the least worst scenario is. Yeah yeah so often I think and it's very easy I think to to look back seat drive these things right from from our positions of safety and and sort of plenty you know to say Oh well should they should done that which I think you did very well to explain that the 1st and most important thing is to be in solidarity with the people there and to hopefully allow their experience to guide us in how we can best help them to. To prevent death, prevent harm. And so can you talk about what you were able to do there? What sort of interventions could you make to hopefully help prevent more dying? The main thing that that we did in terms of, so I, I kind of was there in with two hats on one of them was the tourniquet manufacturing hat and the other one was as an emergency doctor. Because remember fundamentally what brought me to medical devices in the 1st place was that I was an emergency doctor having problems actually. Uh, caring for my patients? As a tourniquet manufacturer basically was about engaging with other people who are making and using tourniquets to understand some of the roadblocks and problems. One of the biggest ones is that there isn't a great way to test units of tourniquets. So traditionally, tourniquets are tested by design, Narr says. Here's our design and here's how we tested it, and then we accept that this particular company will make this particular device to this particular standard. But in the Ukraine, especially with the presence of replicas and 3D to tourniquets, there became a new problem. How do you test each unit rather than a specific line? And working on that, I don't know how into the lead you want me to get, but working on that is still a problem that is unsolved, but has been one of the biggest issues that we've been dealing with. On the emergency medicine side. Of course, when I provide direct care to patients, I was in a hospital on one of the communities on on the front line, on one of the fronts. And so providing direct care became important and working with the doctors, many of whom didn't really experience that much, have that much experience with trauma patients. So working with them to share our experiences from Gaza in low resource trauma medicine and also to gain from them their experiences because of course their scenarios and situations are different. It's more artillery based rather than small arms fire or sort of bombing based. So they're they're different scenarios. I had a lot to learn from them, and I did, and I tried to contribute some of our experiences as well. The training I think is probably the number one problem right now, but that's my personal opinion is 1. Doctor Who is there for limited period of time so that that individual unit tests that you're you're working towards is because I know in in theory at least, a cat is a single youth device, right. So in theory if you if you just slapped it on something that could measure pressure and tightened it, that device is then being used and and shouldn't be used again to provide care. Is that the? I've met your rank up against. Or is it sort of making a way to test things that's replicable and cheap and accessible? Reusability was the number one problem that we tried to tackle in Gaza because we couldn't print tourniquets as fast as they were being used, and so we reuse them up to 10 times. And when I was in the hospital, I walked by this IV pole with a bunch of tourniquets hanging from it, and I instantly recognized what I was looking at that. There's a tourniquet Rewash station in which tourniquets that came off of patients who were being re washed, dried and then sent back out into the field. Whatever you think the standards are for Tourniquet, when there's this level of of shortage, that's what's going to happen and what happened in Gaza and that's what happened in the Ukraine. That's what I saw with my own eyes. Of course, we don't need to stretch that far anymore to recognize this. What were people doing with 95 masks 2 years ago in my hospital? We were holding them, storing them, washing them, reusing them. So this is something that that we see whenever there's a shortage and it makes the unit testing. Not much more important, because if you could take an already used tourniquet and assure that it will succeed the next time it's being used, that is so valuable, so valuable, and it cuts down every tourniquet you can reuse as a tourniquet. You don't have to import, you don't have to buy, you don't have to package, you don't have to ship over all of these lines. Yeah, yeah, of course and I think it's probably, we should probably address like the the ways in which they can fail because I think look just people in the United States actually in an extremely like resource rich setting, right, we'll probably have knowingly or unknowingly acquired a tourniquet on Amazon or somewhere else eBay that that might not be a real one. So it's real but with might not be reliable one. Can you explain, like, like, how they fail and what the consequences of that failure are? There are two kinds of failures when we talk about tourniquets. One of them is what we would call a technical failure, and the other one is a clinical failure. A technical failure is the easiest one for most people to spot. The tourniquet literally breaks in your hand, and that's it. You hear a crack, you see something crack, you see a break. Things fall apart. The app. And so one of the things that we. We want as to minimize these by overengineering. So, for example, the first glia tourniquet was engineered to spec. You're supposed to be able to turn it three times, and so we made it so you could turn it three times. And then what I realized is that even I who is like super well trained, I would be in the field running while my eyes were full of tear gas while people are shooting. And I did, I'd forget that I turn it 2 * 3 times. So we over. We started over. Engineering the tourniquets. At a certain point, of course, every tourniquet is going to break. You turn it enough times, every tourniquet is going to break. But that's not necessarily going to be the case if you have even a moderate amount of training. I'm going to turn it four or five times, but I'm not going to train it 20 times. O. The technical failures are one kind of failure. The other one is clinical failure. Now, here's something that I wonder if you knew about. The 35% of tourniquets from the gold standard company fail. They fail an application and that number goes up to 50% if you were to check 60 seconds after application. So what does this tell us? What this tells us is that clinical failure is actually the important marker here. Because we know tourniquets break and we know tourniquets fail in general, especially tourniquets that have been in some GI's pocket in Afghanistan for six months. Those ones, their failure rate can go even higher. And So what we train people to do is to recognize clinical success, put on a tourniquet. Did the blood stop? No. Put on a second train again. Did the blood stop? No, try third one. If you have them, obviously. And so the routine training involves applying a second training kit and one of the like happiest moments for me. I mean this is obviously bittersweet, but was when I saw a a patient who was brought in by a medic who I had I been in the training for. And he had applied 2 trinkets to a guy who certainly would have died had he had he not had the tourniquet applied to him, you know, was exsanguinating so much injury, so severe? That he needed a couple of tourniquets to really get it under control. O. It's it's where we have to recognize that there is no magic tool. This is part of an overall program. There's no 3D printer that's going to train people. It's just going to make you stuff and then you have to do the rest of it, right? Yeah, yeah. So I think if we, we should look maybe at the fact that like. I live in the United States and you're in Canada and I think there were like 3 mass shootings yesterday right there. The, the, the threat of violence is certainly at a a high for recent times in for a more diverse range of people, right? There's always been violence in this country. There's always been violence against certain groups of people, disproportionally in this country. But people are probably more concerned with treating gunshot wounds and it would have been 10 years ago. So if someone was looking to make one of your devices, uh, how can they do that and ensure or do their best to ensure that they are doing so in a way which gives them the best chance of success at the moment, I would say to the individual maker, don't do it. Not for a life threatening situation. If individual individual makers want to make tourniquets, then they're going to have to be proficient at three big things. One of them is plastics, 3D printing. And shrink that. The quality of the plastic is good. The other one is sewing, that is to say, assembling sewed stuff. And the third one is is quality assurance, because even done perfectly, a certain number of tourniquets aren't going to make it. And that quality assurance is both at the moment of manufacture and then over time, because of course all devices deteriorate over time. But tourniquets have such an important role that you have to check them periodically and make sure everything is OK. So I would say to the individual maker, don't. Or if you do, do it as an exercise rather than as an actual tool. If somebody's in an emergency situation, there's nothing they can do except to do it, then be in touch with us. So, for example, there are makers in in countries that have been in touch and have said, OK, look, I have to do this because the situation here is bad. We support them as best as we can. We try to send people out to them or we try to have them ship units to us. We try to get them up and going. Glia is not a medical device manufacturer. Glia is a access to medicines and access to medical devices company and part of that is making sure that people who are making medical devices are doing them to the highest possible quality. So if. You are forced to make them be in touch with us. We will help in any way that we can. However, there's another category of people, and that is manufacturers who already know how to make medical devices. To those people we say take our stuff, please use it. Please. It is there for the taking and it is high quality. It works really well. And if it's missing something, tell us, we'll make it better for you and for us. Yeah, that's great. I think that's really excellent advice and perhaps a good note for us to finish on. Where can people find you? They want to get in touch if they, uh, if they want to look at some of the devices like making a stethoscope, I imagine could be like a fun project and a lot less potential risk there. So where can they find that stuff? Absolutely. The stethoscope is such a fun project. It's fun because any everybody has a heart in general and you can listen to your family and friends and loved ones. And it's one of my favorite things when I'm in practice and I listen for sometimes a patient will be there with their. Son or daughter? Or child, and I'll tell the kid you want to listen to Mommy's heart or daddy's heart. Oh, it's one of the best things. So the stethoscope is a great, fun, low risk project. Please go ahead and do it. Make it. You can find our stuff anywhere you can find printable stuff. It's on Thingiverse, it's on Printables, it's basically everywhere. Or through our GitHub or on the glia site. So that's glia.org. And if people want to participate, they are very welcome to. We always want, need and love help. And of course it's a community. You can never have too many friends. So we're always looking for more friends and love to see more people. We have a matter. Most obviously, it's not just our devices that are open source. We try to make our entire stack open source so people can join and chat with us and, you know, hang out with people who are doing really, really cool and super impressive stuff at this point. I love to recognize the fact that I'm one of the least productive, least impressive people at glia. Really. The work that's happening is amazing. And it's led by lots of smart, dedicated, visionary people. Yeah, that's great to hear. That's really cool that you can know. We can work with people as well. So hopefully people do get in touch. I'm sure they'll be someone who's interested in what you're doing but has something to contribute in some fashion. Yeah. Thank you so much for giving us some of your evening. Is there anything else you'd like to say before we finish up? I think. The most important thing to say is that there's this mystique that people develop. You alluded to it earlier. There's a mystique people develop around medical devices. Medical devices are solutions to problems, and they were made by people like me who don't know what the hell they're doing sometimes. And so let's not, you know, aggrandize or, like, separate ourselves from the people who are doing this work. Yes, we have to be cautious. Yes, we have to be rigorous. But at the same time, we can all contribute. To be part of this very cool. And it could people find you personally anywhere. Do you have social media that that people could follow if people look up? My name, Tariq libani, I'm on all the all the socials, as is glia as well. So you can contact me or glia and participate in, in anything that you want. And like I said, we we always welcome friends. Great. Wonderful. Thanks so much, man. Thank you so much. That was such a pleasure. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here as a production of cool zone media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for. It could happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com/sources. Thanks for listening. Hey there. I'm Scott rank, host of the podcast history unplugged. Now, it really is a dream come true to get paid to talk about history without all the stress while still being able to make a living. And I did it with Spreaker from iheart. Not only did they make it super easy to monetize my podcast, but ad revenue is 3 to four times higher with spreaker than with any other host I've worked with. So if you want to turn your passion into a podcast and give this a try visitspreaker.com that's spreaker.com get paid to talk about the things you love. It's Chuck Wicks from love country. Talk to Chuck. Where we bring you what's really happening in the country music family. We also if you love country, here's the deal. You love country music. You can be on the podcast. So if you're a fan, country music or you can call in anytime you like. I want to talk about this. Hulk Hogan called in. He's like Chuck the hulkster. I love your podcast, Jason Aldean, Jimmy Allen, Carly Pierce, Lauren Elena. 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