Listen to Episode

Read Episode Transcript

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 odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to betmgm.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. Live sports now and 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 from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1-888-532-3500. 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 sisters of the Underground is a podcast about fearless Dominican women who stood up against the brutal dictator Kapal Trujillo. He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. I am Daniel Ramirez, and as a Dominicana myself, I am proud to be narrating this true story that is often left out of the history books through your has blood on his hands. Listen to sisters of the underground wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Hello and welcome to. It could happen here, podcast about how the world is falling apart and sometimes about how people are putting it back together. What is today? It's me. I'm James. If you haven't worked that out yet, and I'm joined by screen. Say hi, shereen. Hi. This is shereen. Thank you. And I'm joined today by Vicente Calderon. He's a freelance journalist and the proprietor. Not be sure if tijuanapress.com and he's covered the situation on the ground in Tijuana for a very long time. It's an excellent work and we sent you. What should people know about you. Nice to have you here. Thank you for the invitation and in advance I have to apologize for my English because this is a mixture of Sesame Street and the Tijuana streets. Check. Excellent. Take a picture in the world kind of English. You're here. A real originally, I'm a psychologist. I graduated from the School of Psychology here, but I only worked for a couple of years, and then I got stuck with journalism, and I have been here for more than 30 years by now. I've been doing journalism from radio, and then I moved to television, and then I went to the US to work with Spanish language media twice in LA and then I came back and now I'm. I'm doing online or or or digital medium journalism so to speak. So I'm a native here. And again, I was just supposed to be working this for a while then, till I got old enough to look like a psychologist. We've got guard on the, on the. Addiction for journalism. Yeah, I understand. Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating. All right. So the reason we're talk to you today is that we have seen a dramatic increase in violence in Tijuana since Friday, right? We're recording this on the Tuesday, the 16th of August. So if people are listening to it later, they'll know. But can you explain a little bit of what happened over the weekend in Tijuana and then across Mexico as well? Well, the thing began on Friday here in Mexicali and Tijuana. Mexicali is the capital of the state of Baja California, which is in the northwestern side end of the US Mexico border. So we began seeing people burning cars on the road. They were just ordering people from public transportation to get off the vehicle, not in a very, so to speak, threatening matter kind of way because they said, well, the problem is not with you, but you have to get off because otherwise, because when are we going to burn this bus and and nobody was actually, nobody was really hurt intentionally we have. Just in Tijuana we have about 15 cases like that was mainly public transportations vehicles or some cases frogs, cargo trogs or private vehicles. But most of it were public transportation vehicles with people we're working and we're moving people from their homes to their works or to want to run 1 errand to and on the other side. So we began to see that this was in a very limited space of time. Happening not only in in Tijuana and in Mexicali, but also in five out of seven cities of Baja California. Nobody was claiming responsibility, but it looks like it was a coordinated effort in the basically the main cities of the state. We were very surprised because even though we have been dealing with drug violence for many decades by now, we never seen something who looks like the narco. It's OK lots or blockades of the streets with drug traffickers, which are unfortunately very common in other cities like Monterrey for example, recently in Jalisco. On the Pacific Coast, very in the central part of Mexico, but not here in Tijuana, I mean. I know it sounds rare or strange for many people who knows the one of our he's bad reputation. But no, we never had cases like this before. That's why it was so surprising at the end. That was on Friday. And then he immediately the local authorities began to display not only police from different, different agencies. For also soldiers who were coincidentally, so to speak, were here in big numbers, in large numbers. Because there's. Are really? The big push to put out more soldiers to help with public safety in Mexico, not everybody's pleased with that because it's they say that Mexico's becoming a militarized country and it shouldn't be because we have to. We are trying to be a democracy, and in a democracy is not the the military or the army in charge of so much responsibility. But that's something that has been changing, specifically with this new federal administration. The President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. So they sent out all of the soldiers and police officers and things basically diminished. But by that time in about in about less than two hours, people was already really scared. Obviously the news spread and social media and people began worrying also. They they began stating that the public transportation was not enough because many were just came to a halt. I mean and not just the public transportation, the officials of the city, but all the digital platform like Uber, DD or other services. We're just worried that it might be the next one. So and if I stay on the roads am I going to be the target of these guys? We were not sure what was going on. We I guess everything one has like a an idea that this was coming or linked to drug trafficking. But we were not sure at that time. So in a couple of hours every day, we didn't see more of these cases. But but at that time, the city was really disrupted, so they began closing. I mean the first thing affected was public transportation. So people was stranded without with no ways to go to back home and some schools were canceling classes and since the students were not able to find transportation. Some offer places to stay or spend the night on the schools also that happen in in. With other companies, with the maquiladora plants, the the manufacturing plants that are very popular, there's thousands of people here in Tijuana who work there, also in Mexicali, but here also they in some cases have to open spaces so they can spend the night there. And we went out and was a lot of people stranded with no place, with no way to move from where they were when this began. Yeah, I saw even like calimax the the supermarket was closed, right? Like. They did close early and they announced that the next day they will hold their operation, that they will not open. So they will not put in jeopardy to the safety of their workers. I mean, and they at that during Friday, we didn't know what really what was going on, how severe was this happening. And just keep in mind that on Friday, Friday was the end of the of a week of very violent scenes in different cities. It began in Guadalajara. When they were, the army was trying to capture a couple of drug Lords or chief of sales from the Halischuk Nueva penetration cartel or the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which is the score UN quote newest and strongest and most rapidly expanding drug organization in Mexico. And the problem is there the dynamic was very, very different again in Tijuana, even after the weekend nobody was killed. Just one person in Mexicali got injured due to burns when while they were burning his truck, but apparently nothing major. So in the case of how different they were at gunpoint pulling. People, families out of their private vehicles and also buses. And then there they were really actually blockading roads in an effort to disrupt the the operation from the soldiers trying to capture their their bosses. And so the violence well were way more strong, so to speak, there. And after that he moved to what Guanajuato, another state where where there's high presence of. Cartel Holliston new generation and two days later we saw the worst case in Sudan, Juarez across from El Paso, TX. So that's what this is also another border town or border city should say that has been dealing with a lot of drug trafficking case and in the things was terribly worse there. I mean they were there killing civilians randomly. They got to convenience stores like think about your. 1111 The The Charter party is called also. It's a very big change chain in in a in one of these cases they just went in, opened fire to the cashier and they killed him. In other cases a pregnant woman got killed and another one since they burned this this places. The one who there's two person who died due to asphyxiation because they got with cut out. They were not able to flee the the the place when this guys were were showing up there. Many of these guys were also yelling or screaming. Hurray for the Calis converter and Russian boss which is called. Well, say get out. And where he's not mention, mention, mention his nickname Mencho. Oseguera is the leader of Cartel Jalisco new generation. And they were just praising him and just saying that they were people from Mencho and this they were just celebrating him as they were doing all this destruction and terrorizing people. So the worst part was an insult. Juarez, sadly. I'm not saying that this was not bad, but just we have to put it in perspective and fortunately here. Sadly for the people of Paris, fortunately for the people here, nobody was injured in those activities on Friday that diminish on Saturday. But we got more cases on Sunday night in Mexicali and we actually have for about four cases on the 1st and the last hours of Monday in Ensenada, we are still seeing. If all of these have been related to the same. If we're due to organized crime or are just copycats because unfortunately, unfortunately, that also is happening. Some of the cases in Mexicali that happened in Sunday night where according to the chief of police there just copycats were just taken advantage of the situation, I see. Well, that's that's interesting because. Until someone takes responsibility, even if they do all the talks about like what cartels are, what, that's just like in theory, right? Because they're you don't know who's doing what I'm understanding correctly. Well, yes, because this is, it's not like when a terrorist organization claimed responsibility for a bombing on in the Middle East for example. But here the The thing is now the authorities are saying that it's one that was not just one but different organizations. They blame it mainly on Jalisco new generation because it's one of the along with the Sinaloa Cartel more broadly extended in in the state, different state. And in this particular case they can link it in the case of Kalisto and Guanajuato because. They got information of these two bosses getting into a meeting and that's why they reacted and in the case of Suarez was different because everything began there without dispute within inmates of the local jail. But they're clearly 2 factions from the the two main organization. Those who have been controlling turf in in the in place here we were not sure because unfortunately we have not just one or two. We have 3 drug cartels or trafficking organization who has been acting or delinquent for the several years right now which is the Jalisco new generation. The one we talked about which is the relatively newest organization, the Sinaloa Cartel who has been from the Cradle of drug traffic in Mexico State of Sinaloa. Expanding the roads that I'm sure they know El Chapo from the narco series. Very popular now has been the the Public Enemy number one according to Chicago for about 8 years ago and now in in a jail in New York. But their their sons and their associates are still operating their trafficking organization along different routes in Mexico and and Baja California is one of those. Routes where they have a lot of strong presence and also the Arellano Felix Drug organization, the so-called Tijuana Cartel that is very popular, has its own series on Netflix as part of Narcos, Mexico. This is the relevance of this kid who who grow up as as criminals at the border between Tijuana and San Diego. So we nobody has claimed responsibility as in other cases, but I think it's it's. It's safe to know that these are the main suspects in the case of Tijuana. It's also the possibility that the feud between. These reorganizations. Was an excuse for this level of violence. I mean, everybody's trying to be the strongest force, so they challenge themselves not on this, not only in the streets, but on social media. And this was also a way to challenge the authorities because even though the authorities reacted quickly in kind of should do more or or or frustrate more events, they were able to burn 15 cars at the end of the week and were 36 in different. Areas in different cities. So that is not something that you can say. Another priority is the military chief of the country saying, well, we're in Tijuana didn't attempted against the civilians. Well they did. They didn't kill them, but they burned their property and they disrupted the whole operation. So we are also seeing very carefully the way they local, the local and national authorities are reacting because. We were lucky now, but this is probably will happen again if there's not a really strong response from an intelligent response from the authorities. Yeah, OK, I'm sorry if I'm sorry if this is silly, but is there any deeper meaning to it being specifically public transportation? Like it just seems so specific to like target how civilians are like transporting themselves. It's just like a show of power to be like we're going to make everyone freeze or there is there any deeper meaning? They like what they're targeting. Not that I understand so far. I mean for me right now is because as they did, they were successful and and bringing the city to a halt. I mean we went out and just think this was a Friday summer night and we need a revolution. Who has seen a renaissance since the last I've been for the last 10 years. And there's a lot of people coming from the US side and from Mexico to enjoy the gastronomy local, the, the bars, the, the. The party scene. Was that the only people we were found we found there Friday night was. Workers that were not able to find an Uber or or the Uber was. I talked to some of the Uber drivers, the DD drivers told me it went from 1:00 to 7:00. I mean it something will cost you $10. We're we're costing the price was now $770 due to the high demand and poor offer. So no, I don't find another another explanation so far so far with the information that we have. Until now, that could explain, but they did reach a big impact with this relatively easy actions after the all these coordinated attacks. Yeah, it's probably worth mentioning the context of in one of Guzman's kids was arrested in I believe 2018. I'm not good at dates but around then and there was a huge huge increase in violence immediately following that right. And eventually AMLO the the president gave the order to release him and that was that was more recent was Ovidio one of the main sons in in. Something that we call the Culiacan, Culiacan is the name of the city, is the capital of the state of Sinaloa. As we said, I have family, my mother is from Sinaloa and and some people from Sinaloa get offended when we say that it's a cradle of drug trafficking in Mexico because most of the power that law, the drug laws come from from from Sinaloa. But yeah, you're right, you're right. And that's something that has become a big recurring topic when people criticize, especially the the political opposition. The current president, because they said this is the origin of these kind of demonstrations. So when, when, when the government wants to act now the criminals know that an effort, a coordinated effort to get out on the streets and to show their muscle could make the government to think twice to to hold their operation and to free in some cases, these guys, again in the case of. Lisco they were on the way, according to the official statement from the Mexican Army, to try to capture these two leaders, but didn't happen. I mean the, the they, they are criminals get organized to blockade the actions of the authorities. In the case of Tijuana, we were not, we didn't get to that point was more like there's also one theory which says that the local chapter, so to speak, of the cartel. I was just trying to replicate what happened there, just to to to show the force now to demonstrate the muscle as a as a criminal organization here in Tijuana. Basically 2 theories that this dispute between them and and the other one is that. They were just replicating a little bit in a in a in a different dimension, so to speak. What happened in in Mexicali, just to tell them. You know the same here. This is what you're going to be facing and that was a message for the authorities. A resident. Compare it to what it was like in the early stages of COVID, like how Ghost Town it was. And I mean, what do you think about it? It's pretty powerful if a cartel can have the impact of a pandemic, if not more so, it's it's it's terrifying. I can't imagine. I think what's worse, when we were now, when COVID first began in the lockdown, and this will be too silly, but there's the red light districts that never end. Sleeps here. We went to that particular corridor. Nobody was in the main drag there, but it's a reality. When we we we used, we went out and we got video of this streets basically empty your video on your Twitter, we'll we'll find a way to link to. It was incredible. It was just like, this is normally like at the strip in Las Vegas or something and it was just a ghost town. Again, the only people we found there was people looking for transportation. Yeah, it's crazy. So there's been a massive, at least show of state power in Tijuana in the last, I don't know, 456 months. Like, they're constantly rotating new troops in, they do the parades with the big flag, and it's like to to looking from the outside from a less informed perspective, it looks like there are these various actors written. Each of them sort of flexes their muscles in a different way, and it's that relevant. They have three army. They discovered a tunnel if I remember correctly. Have they done much else in Baja since they started these big deployments? No. That's one of the main complaints of the locals organizations, civil or civilian organizations here, because even though we have, I don't I make some notes and we have 5660 soldiers right now in the state of Baja California, most of them in Tijuana who have been deployed since August last year, which is when the nationalist. Quality strike your peace as they you government call it begun, but unfortunately I can give you another statistics. We have only just in Tijuana in the municipality of Tijuana so far this year almost 1200 homicides. I mean we as as a city, as a municipality, we have way more homicides than many Mexican states. This is the level of violence that we are dealing with in a daily basis basis and and this is when you hear the authorities talking about a reduction on homicides, which is true, probably true in terms of of the numbers of statistics, but still. 1000 we are we are a little bit past half the year and we already passed 1000 homeless. I mean when people get. Alarm in in Chicago is when you are hitting, I remember a couple of years ago like 500 and the whole year. We have this in three months and and and and this is the kind of of problems that we're we're dealing with. But you have to also keep in mind last week the DOJ of the US, the FBI, DEA, Customs and Border protection have a gathering to announce that San Diego became the epicenter for smuggling of fentanyl. 60% of the seizures of fentanyl in all the nation occur between San Isidro, the main port of entry here in San Diego. To collect Mexico and this there are six ports of entry in this stretch of land. And the end of the border, on the western end of the border, well, these places is where more than half of the fentanyl that is being smuggled to the US, it's going through. That will explain partly the level of violence that we've been dealing and how even though there's good efforts. By the local authorities, state and local authorities, I mean even given that there's cases of corruption as in any other agency, I would say that we have great very capable detectives and police officers in Mexico. But they're but in many cases there's no political will from their bosses who really act on on in the, on the benefit benefiting the public. So this is the kind of the problem. You know fentanyl is now the most lucrative drug to to transport or traffic in between Mexico and the US even with all the problem that is causing in the US with more than 120,000 people dying in the last year or overdoses linked to opioids. But also now we have a problem that is growing with people dying with fentanyl overdose. Besides the fentanyl the the methamphetamine problem that also has been increasing the traffic here and now we are seeing. The comeback of some drugs trafficking and and new levels like heroin and cocaine who came out of fashion for a while, but always. Doing like kind of a resurgence, at least in this corridor. Yeah, that's fascinating. Like there there's been an increase specifically coming through that that Baja California area. Maybe then we should explain a little bit about these three actors, right, the CJNG, we'll call them the cartel, the Sinaloa and the Arellano Felix or Tijuana Cartel. Can you explain a little bit about who they are and where they sort of fit into this or where they come from maybe? Well, I basically all come from the. People watching Netflix, Narcos and Netflix, they talk about this federation of cartels again. Everything the main power was from the state of Sinaloa and between 19, mid 90s, nineteen 94, mid 90s. When the rest of Felix Gallardo they restablished, they distribute the routes and one was the the one of the Pacific along the Pacific from Sinaloa to the along the Pacific and they basically. Caught the country in three different domain routes and then you have different organizations. Those organizations we used to be together became a powerful house on their own. And that has increased the violence from the 90s because now you have from the beginning. The the Arellano Felix who used to be partners with the Chapo. OK. Ended up in in disputes and feuds among them. So the the main one is was the main one and oldest is the Sinaloa Cartel head by the Chapo Guzman and now Ismael El Mayo Sambada. Which is still a gentleman's gentleman around probably getting to their these 80s when I'm not quite sure but but who has been on the run for many years but relatively calm and with big investments and with the high presence here and. In California, with that faction of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel also, when the after the arrest of El Chapo is, it's run. And the other big faction for the sons of El Chapo Guzman, Ovidio and and they call it Los Chapito S Little chapos, there's like 3/3. I can remember the name of the other one. So that's it. Sinaloa Cartel with with presence, but it mainly in the northern part and really mainly basic. Basically their thing is to manufacturing methamphetamine and now fentanyl and send it to the US. Then there are the yellow Felix drug organization, who became, as a result of that division, that distribution, that according to the most commonly known narrative about drug world. Delgado distributed after his arrest established themselves in in Tijuana. They are from Sinaloa too, but they established themselves from Tijuana in the actually in the 80s, but at the 90s they became powerful on its own and they due to the proximity of San Diego and to the fact that they missed mixed with many of the border lifestyle elite of Tijuana, they changed the image of the drug trafficker they make became. More entrepreneurs and they wanted to become the main the first Mexican Cartel, Colombian Pablo Escobar style, according to the narrative, no. And they did. They became the 90s. They were most one of the. The most powerful drug organization in the world for the amount of of not just marijuana, cocaine that they were moving. I mean this established relationships with Colombian and after a while Colombians were not trafficking in Mexico, they were just sending the drug to the Mexicans. At the beginning they were Colombians were kind of leasing the routes in the Mexican territory to send the drugs into the US but then when this division of and and newcomers and the drug trade in Mexico. They they decide. And I think the the Ariana Phillies have some. Something to do with that they want to go and get the the drugs from Colombians in the South in South America and bringing and just take care of the whole thing. So become their own cartel and then then kaliz going is another option. Option is what you call it like, yeah, yeah, yeah, spinoff, spinoff. The way all of the of the Sinaloa because they used to have a presence in Guadalajara and the different factions were killing each other changing loyalties and then we can afford on on their own after a big division between the Beltran Leyva group and the Nacho Coronel Organization and they become their own cartoon on its own and and that's where according to the DEA and and also Mexican. Heard this is expanding more rapidly in very short period of time and then unfortunately have been moving not only to drug trafficking, but there's many small groups that now are making their money and they're all way of the mafia. The Cosa Nostra was doing their money in New York in the 70s or before. No, then they were just extorting money out of local businesses from a well established. Jane of stores do a little taggers down on the corner. There's also the trafficking of gasoline in Mexico and and has been doubling I mean anything that they once they get powerful they began to move to other activities, for example in the case of the Ariano Felix. He thought it wasn't a thing. Let's say before the 90, before the. The 90s in Baja California there were kidnapping people. Who owned who used to be their their associates is the the where's my money kind of thing no like you think about good fellows and and and they were killing each other. There is everything among themselves. But later they began that they were were they were acting with a lot of impunity that they had a lot of cops and 30s on their payroll. So they began to move to other ways to earn money and that's what we are seeing now that this expanding this little. As it in in Colombia they used to go to baby cartels. We now have like a new chapters, smaller organization that is powerful but as violent as as the original. I wanted to ask because I saw a lot of these, like supposedly like they come up on Tik T.O.K or Facebook right there, these little announcements from the different cartels. And they tend to say, at least in the context of Baja California, that, like, we don't want to disrupt ordinary people or good people or good citizens of our California, you know, but we need you to stay in your homes this weekend, right, things like that. But it obviously does have an impact on the people who are just sort of doing whatever they do, just running their business. And so I was wondering sort of how people get through these difficult times in Tijuana and Baja California. Well, times are becoming more difficult because many people believe this because they're widespread possibility of of disseminating these messages. No. And you never know which ones are real and which ones are not. I mean, you guys have the same with the gangs you remember, like tumbling your your headlines because then the gun will start. Telling people left and right, so just take that on steroids now with social media and and now everybody with a phone that can get that messages and that was that played a big role in what's happening on Friday here in Tijuana. They were recycling a video of three guys videotaping themselves in front of the Attorney General's office in Tijuana says, oh, Mentry is here, we're going to kill everybody and just being very loud. And and and and with a lot of insults and trying to scare the. Everybody. The rivals but everybody else. So during the the hours of Friday, somebody began retweeting that when it was at least a year old. Of them claiming that that they were they were already here. So some people think this all this commotion happening, all this cars burning, they didn't know exactly what was going on. So some people began to call in nautical blue chaos that just scare more people and then you see this. So the level of anxiety increased significantly. You have to be very careful and and there's also you have to also keep in mind the political feuds that we are seeing, what you are seeing between some people loyal to Trump. And they're really combining some people that are against Trump is the same here with Morena and non Morena actors, or people who likes the Morena, which is the the political party founded created by the current president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. All the ones who are against them and are very unhappy or angry with all these social policies. And and for example, we have here a television station run owned by the former governor of Baja California. It was. It's a very close friend of Andres Manuel Lopez, or the current president, who became a very powerful figure and and due to his proximity with Lopez Obrador, basically the current President revived this, this gentleman, which by the way lives in San Diego in Chula Vista in a big mansion because he exiled himself from about 30 years ago when he was associated with the last PRI government, the pre the. When you go to Mexico for the last 70 years in a row, he was a very close associate with he could think of Labor mortera, which was the the current governor who who didn't finish his his term because the and then President of Mexico, Carlos Salinas accused him of corruption. So he just removed him and this guy's hymen Bonilla. Became a pariah. So the PIN the new power basically mark him because also he has some previous. Suspicious relationships through the baseball team here in Tijuana and from other endeavors that makes them looks like very close to the Ariano Felix drove organization. The Ariano Felix drove organization has been linked for many years with the last administration because they claim that that last PRN strangers is the one who basically opened the door for the Ariana Felix to establish here in Bali fornia. So this is what we are seeing that that this message well now this guy. We just left the office the the Cameronia just finished his governorship on December last year, so there's a new governor, but he also owns a television station, so he who is always criticizing the current governor, which is by the way, the same political party. It was. Using some of these messages with no proof or no validity or very suspicious and he was saying in their newscasts were saying, well there's also this happening there's this threads and they know that this government is corrupt and they were just adding to to the fire and see the, I mean as an analogy you know the the real fight that, but to the concern of the people and in this term. Like saying that all we're going to start a lockdown and we'll be looking together, let's say. But for the expression for talking like that, you cannot go out, go out in the street. Yeah, yeah. Martial law will start at 6:00. If we see you out on the streets, we gonna kill you. That was a message that that television station was repeating once and again every day, so was just adding to it. So all these, all these new novelties sort of speak with the digital era, are also creating bigger fires in the political spectrum and in a place where you never know where exactly the line is between the criminals and the government. Yeah, I think that's a very good thing to highlight, actually, this idea that there's like distinct blocks, right, like, and then this applies in a I don't want to say, like, this is a Mexican thing because it's not. This is a global thing. But like, there's a distinct block between like, crime and media that you consume, and the government and the people that they're like are working for the state. Like, like, the the idea that these are very separate and then they're walled off, doesn't. It doesn't apply here. And I don't think we should see it elsewhere either. But yeah it's it's it's a problem he's becoming it's becoming worse and worse now because this faction now that these other arena I mean we are seeing it here also with the official statements from the authorities. I mean I was telling you earlier that that the the military had the the Secretary of the military says well in Tijuana they didn't win against the civilians and and the governor also repeated that so well here fortunately they didn't affected the the the life of the people of course of course they did. I mean we were lucky they didn't kill anybody but but no they they did. And so you have to also be fighting the propaganda from the government against the propaganda from the criminal groups and the different political legal factions in other quote UN quote non state actors, just to put it in a in a different context. So it's becoming very difficult not and you always say excuse me if I repeat this but honestly believe, I mean there's always great. Investigators detectives in Mexico willing to report put their lives on the line for the good of people. But it's not always in the best conditions. And and this is like just the character of traffic probably you were you guys were very young when traffic came across. I mean a very popular movie. She's about from the 90s and end of the 90s probably. Yeah. Where where the one of the three main characters is an. On this Mexican cups I I fortunately I met several of cases like that, but some of them have been killed due to the their honesty, but also others that learn to survive and play along and try to do as much good as they can within the circumstances they are dealing with. Yeah, I think talking of of of good investigators who are trying to deal with difficult circumstances, maybe you should touch on the violence against the press that we've seen in Baja California and in Mexico as a whole is something you're comfortable talking about. Yes, yes, unfortunately, and this is terribly sad. A couple of hours ago we just learned that the. One of the reporters who was reported missing in the. Neighbors in state of Sonora has been found dead. So we have another killing of a of a reporter. We also saw the thing the case of Suarez. They killed 4 employees of four workers of a radio station. Terrible broadcaster. Yeah, apparently randomly, apparently randomly. But in I mean we, I mean depending on which told you take you, you look too because there's like the official from the government, federal government from the. CPJ, the Committee to Protect journalists and or REPORTEROS in Fronteras the other organizations buried no, but there's about 10 or 15 between, I would say 10 or 14 or 15 journalists or media workers killed so far this year. We have two of those killings happening here in Tijuana in in January. One of them them I'm convinced by now, though he was killed for a the leader of a drug trafficking. Bell was operating in the east side of the city, who wasn't pleased with some of the stories that one of the media outlets his name is Margarito Martinez. One of the media outlets that Margarito was working to as a freelancer was was pushing very revealing stories about his the the operation of this drug trafficker. So he order and pay for some other people to kill Margarito. Because he in my humble opinion was the weakest link because he was living in the same neighborhood that these guys were operating working the night shift that this very. Someone that only a few of them are left to to do that shift, that bit he was. Easily identifiable, indentify able for the crooks because Margarita will show up, but they are the crime scenes. And in many of these cases, you have people who work for the same organization organization showing up to make sure that the guy was really killed and who showed up. And and I mean even when the killing is done, the criminals are still working the scene. And in some cases we met with these guys guys without knowing, I mean these guys were were even willing to go to the funeral of Margarito. The only reason they were not there is because they when they approached they saw a lot of military presence on during the funeral. So I'm convinced that Margarito was killed due to his work as a as a photographer. In the other case of my friend, all co-worker lured the Sandoval. I'm not sure what was the motive. In both cases are three people in jail. But the procedure is still on the beginning stages. We are not proved and the main thing is we don't know who order and pay for their killings. Well, we know our I think I have a big suspicion about which one is the guy who killed them in the case of Margarito, not in the case of Lourdes. And the authorities? I'm not confident enough that they're going to be able to solve the crime in this particular cases. The other one, there's two cases in Michoacan. There's other cases in Tamaulipas. I guess by now we have to count at least two or three in Sonora with the sad news that we got today. So it's difficult. I mean, not everybody is is risking their life when they are doing journalism in Mexico, but you never know when the danger will jump against you. I have a always tell this story about a photographer to what was called to cover a traffic accident. My minor thing. No, not. Well, the problem is that the, the guy who was involved in the traffic and the accident was a drug Lord, very, a very well known operator, very dangerous operator. And he kept taking pictures. Thanks to some of the officers, firefighters and ladies who saw that he was being treated not very nicely and the ladies that intervene, he was able to get away. He had to leave town for a while. That's it. But that's the kind of environment that we are dealing with. It's not that every story makes you put you in danger. But you never, I mean, you can do a lot of you can be a reporter and not be in danger, not really. You don't get into subjects that are tricky, you don't get too much in political corruption, and you don't. You got too much on on drug trafficking, on kill and homicides. You pretty much going to be able to to do fine. But but the problem is sometimes if you are doing a story, not unrelated. There may be some links to put you in danger, and that's the situation. And unfortunately the level of impunity and on crimes against journalists is even worse than the level of impunity of general civilians in Mexico. I will say that generally is about 90%, basically 98%. And 98% for for for cases of journalists, 90% of civilians. So our case is worse. The possibility of somebody will be punished for killing you. It's, it's very, very, very small. Yeah. I'm sorry, that's terrible. I don't know. It's again, like you said, it's not just a Mexican problem you see in so many governments across the world where press are targeted specifically. But yeah, and I appreciate your work even more. Knowing that the percentage of of cases are just violence against you, so against you as a journalist is so high. It's very sad and it's very discouraging, but. I always, I mean, I mean my. I have family who is now, can't be because I'm still working. On Friday they called me. They want they want me to stay at the office. They don't want me to get out. And I understand, I understand perfectly, and it's one of my main concerns. But also, and the other hand, it's, you know, this is important information. Even when we are dealing with an avalanche of information that is not necessarily well treated, we need to have good information so people will make good decisions. We are in the very small, young democracy we just began to make inroads on. Electoral democracy is relatively recent began basically at the end of the 90s here in Baja California and has been moving to the twenty 2000s and and now we are unfortunately back back in many ways but but now you can rely now on who is running the elections to get that information was very important now we need to be also very make a lot of big efforts to explain people that. You can make progress, Mexico is making progress, even this in this dire conditions, but you have to pay attention and also try to to learn where the information is coming from that not all the media is the same that we have. We come from a big tradition of government controlled media and now media control or subdue trafficking organizations and in some cases both are linked. And and working to to give you trouble and also there's a lot of press that has chosen to just go with the flow and just leave out of propaganda. And sometimes they do good things like they go and give voice to the people and their local communities. So the the water is established or there's more there's more need for to fix a park or or to public transportation and they do do good. It's important all the. The job of the reporters is good, but in the in the bigger dimension of the bigger problem, they tend to be on the side of the government, because the government found this way to give you. A lot of public advertisement and to have you under their control. And many reporters want to be good journalism with journalists. But their editors of the owners of the companies are not willing to risk that easy way to get a lot of money from the government, and more easily than to start putting themselves on the risk which implies when you do heavily digging or criticizing the powers of being no. How? How would someone know that they're getting accurate information? In that case? This applies to like every country in the world. You have to really be conscious and, like, seek out particular sources. But like in this case, what do you recommend for people? It's difficult. You're right, there is this important everywhere. But I guess the same recipe works here. I mean, just double checked, double checked your their sources, tried to convert several media outlets and to see where it's reporting. Whether each of them is reporting. The same way that you find the the way they are leaning in the US is the what you find here. But the problem is the established media or the, how do you call it the the traditional media is becoming less relevant because most of the main good journalism is done by small rebels who they began, their own entities, their own platforms. I mean, some cases there's good reporters working for good media. Well, let's normally those are not local. I mean when you see the big media companies don't they don't have which some exceptional but they don't have many people doing with generalizing at the local level. You will find good local journalism with this Renegades or rebels that have people have been fired from the big larger organization and you have to be looking for those options. I mean that doesn't mean that it's a guarantee that they're going to going to be independent. Baby are you also learn how to read them. For example, there's a good case of two reporters with just where they resigned or were fired. We don't know exactly, but they from a well prestigious publication locally, they began their own operation. They have. They are good, proven track proven. As a reporters. You know what I'm trying to say that. They have a. Yeah, I thought that was what it was. It was just like, I don't, I actually don't know. I don't know phrases either. Yeah. Yeah. They they they made a name for themselves doing good journalism with other publications. So they have their own media outlet. And some people was complaining about they were too close to some. State agency with the new government. And they have great information, they do good, good reporting, but you have to look curve carefully and which, which type and where are they leaning to. So I always read them. I just take it with a grain of salt that you will see, say in English to try to balance my intake of information from different sources. It's difficult to tell the people because they are not general. The general public is not as involved or interested in media. On and on the newspaper or on the news we are because we live out of it. But people is doing their life and making the the, the will to move around, not for all of us in different fronts, as a doctor, as a housewife, as a teacher, and they don't have enough time to. To analyze media the way we do so we, I think we need to do a little bit of that try to tell them this is for this reason we believe this media outlet is leaning in this direction. This is subsidized or is getting we do that this is getting this amount of money from the government and and not this amount of money from the government that will give you a hand to take it and and to see who are they dealing with. I mean there's guys who have been working for the government now are back to reports. I mean there's cases like that. In the US Stephanopoulos used to work for the for the one of the Presidents on the guy for of hardball from MSNBC used to work for Nixon now. So, I mean I we see this, but in this environment is more difficult to to live out those connections and it's always tricky to be moving from government jobs to to journalism jobs because it's not. I mean, you have to some, I mean when in my perspective I never work for for. The government, I hope I would never have to do it, but I respect the ones that they do. But US, we need to be more transparent, transparent in that sense to be able to be fair with the people. Yeah, that makes sense. There's this interesting development in in Mexico that I've seen in some areas like if I want to learn about like what's happening in the Yaqui Pueblos in Sonora or in Chiapas, like these people who will just be like citizen reporters on Facebook doing very local reporting that there seems to get really popular, but they'll sort of. Grow up really quickly doing this. Like Facebook only reporting. It's really interesting. Because there's a big need of information and they know many people in Mexico have learned to be distrustful of the quote UN quote legacy media. The expression I was looking for legacy media, not the big companies. And and the problem is there's this risk that many of those media, new media outlets which is basically Facebook accounts or Tik T.O.K accounts now the people doesn't know how to deal with. I mean they they they are they have good intentions but but they don't really know how journalists should work and in some cases they think like some for example, that they they can take money for different actors. And that will help them to grow. And, and I guess you can, but but you have to be very careful. And this has been a big problem that I'll try to emphasize every time I talk about our situation for many years. The government was too close or the reporters were too close to the government. The government will make easy with a lot of privileges for the reporters. So they learned to deal with this, to work in this scenario. So if I was close to the government, they will expedite a lot of things for me, so to speak. I can get the money, I can get probably a license to up for a bar way quicker than somebody who is not doesn't have that access to the government. I can probably get like. Taxi licenses, for example, because I'm a reporter, because I'm, I'm close, I can get close to the movers and shakers in the political arena. No, but you. So they did that and when the drug trafficking they with the narcos became another power. Many, many reporters began to see it in the same way. So they were closed with the government, was empowered and then we're cozy with the businessman and they were cozy with the with the unions because they were giving them handouts or or treat them them preferably. Or they were able to do some traffic of influence. Who will give them some benefits when they're Narcos became a problem, a regional power on their own. Some of the reporters didn't see the different or getting too close to that. Hour. And that has put a lot of the reporters in danger. I think the reporters are learning a little bit more to stay away from those. But there's also, with the advancement of of social media, many people who are really crooks or that they were not very interested in doing things ethically from the beginning, that now see that with a Facebook account, with a tick tock account or Instagram or any other platform, you can pass by a reporter. So there's this need of information. But also is is filled with. With good and bad people as in any other case, and I always thought, I mean it's just the old analogy of of a gun. Is the gun bad or or good will depend on the circumstances you are using it, no, I wouldn't think. No, I'm not a gun guy, but. And I don't, I don't want to get into your, your, your political discourse about your First Amendment. Which one is this? Yeah, that's a whole other episode. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. Alright. Did you have anything else? No. That was awesome. Thank you so much for all that information. Yeah. And talking of reliable media, where can people find you online? Where can they find your work? Where can they find your social media? The main thing is tijuanapress.com that's our main platform is just an online native media outlet is not a newspaper. It's just when we we have been changing our way of work because we began as a daily, we no longer do that because we don't have enough resources for that. But also there's plenty of daily media outlets, digital media outlets for the daily stories. We want to do a little bit more in there, more investigative, more give you context of what the is going on, where we are. In Spanish, but you can follow us on Twitter, on at Tijuana press and because we tried to with our poor English, tried to do some some tweets on English with the help of Google Translator or other help guys who other colleagues that will correct or or spelling. But that's the main way to get a hold of us. I think your English is great. You talked to us for an hour and I understood everything, but yeah. But thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. Thank you, Vicente. No, thank you, guys. I always help us spread the word and we to be able to put ourselves to be judged by the public. This is what is more important for for us. But we don't invest and and algorithms from any social platform because we believe in and and that the people will be willing to find us if they are really interested and you guys help us. In that sense, yeah. Thank. Yeah. Thank you so much for giving us some of your time. We really appreciate it. Thank you. We'll be here. We would be a big help. Thank you. Thank you so much. 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 odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to bed. Gm.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 from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1888. 532-3500. Anderson Cooper earlier this year, while packing up my late mom's apartment and her things, I felt isolated and alone. Weighed down by grief, I began recording a series of deeply personal conversations with others about their experiences with loss and helped me and I hope it'll help you. Whatever you're going through. All there is with Anderson Cooper listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your miraval mate courage already runs in your blood. 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. No, please, please help us 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 Dura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Acadia in here, a podcast about things falling apart and how to put them back together again. Now, a thing that has fallen apart that we have talked about at length before is the protection of the right to abortions previously enshrined in Roe V Wade and are no longer enshrined in that. And we've come at this from a number of angles, but one angle that we've neglected. So far is is the labor angle. And, you know, OK, so for reproductive autonomy to exist, right, you need healthcare. And healthcare, especially under capitalism like requires labor and and that labor isn't done by, you know, abstract organizations. It's done by workers who are facing not only sort of the ball of the death of row, but the intransigence and often the belligerence of the room bosses. And here to talk with us about that is Crystal Grabowski and. Elizabeth Villanueva from the wonderfully named Hue Local 696. You know, I'm gonna, I'm going to read a pseudo legal disclaimer here, which is that they are not representing Planned Parenthood. They do work at Planned Parenthood. They are not representing Planned Parenthood. They are there representing themselves as individuals. And our local union, yes, proud members of Local 696, impeccably named Union. Chris Farley named for. Yeah. Well, they they were like, you have to choose a a number that starts with six and then we just like looked at each other and we had that moment where it's like, yes, and then we can add another one and and it'll be a good time. A little threesome of numbers. Be safe was good. Alright, I've round one of pro Union propaganda joined the Union and you 2 can be in Union Local 69. Or what if they told you the number could start with four? Like, you know, yeah, yeah, boom. There's just so many options. I'm sure there's other fun numbers that besides those, but you have the entire world in front of you. We could have done 60. We could do like, Boo. Can you imagine if we did 660? My God. We could have we we had that choice and we went with 696. Sexual Health Organization is to prove that workers will always make the right decision. This is the power of the Union. We can evaluate these decisions when. When it's important and do the right thing. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for for coming on the show. Thank you for having us. We're both super excited. Yeah, of course, they're fighting us, us lowly abortion workers, so. I I'm. I'm. I'm gonna. I'm gonna dispute heavily with the the term lowly like you are the people who make all of this possible. So. Yeah, and. Thanks. Yeah. And and now, now having said all of this, I'm about to, I'm going to ask you a very depressing question, which we have. We've asked a lot of the people who've talked about abortion access. Like who? Who work in worship access stuff this question, but I think you two had a very different experience of it. What was it like on the day when Rowe died? Do you want to go first, crystal? Yeah. I've talked about this a lot because I'm getting asked a lot and it's I'm happy to talk about it, which is I'm actually like, it's been hard to listen to other people talk about it because then I start getting in my feels. But like, when I'm talking about it, I'm kind of like just processing it. It's probably healthy for me. Somebody would say, but it was incredibly traumatic, and it's been incredibly traumatic since the fall of Roe V Wade. And the Dobbs decision, and I'm saying this well, like, while knowing that we all knew it was coming. It was. It was a given. And it wasn't surprising. And there's just something about knowing that it's been coming for months and years that, like, just it just did nothing to actually inform you. Like, what would it be like? But it was like a it was like a tidal wave crashing and just like sweeping you away. And we're still swept away. The only language that I can find that's appropriate is like natural disaster language and I just, I keep repeating it and saying like, it's like a hurricane, it's like a tidal wave. But that is the the, those are the words that are most fitting to me, like emotionally and just in terms of like the violence and the that is that you that people are experiencing. And just the the the emotional and mental and bodily harm. Is equitable to a natural disaster. Yeah. And I think during one of our debriefs during a particularly difficult day, this was pre. Row we were talking about how sometimes it's really hard for us when we can see these things coming, and yet there's nothing we can really do about it. And I know that we talked about how it felt like we were just tied to a train track, watching and waiting for that train to just come and hit us. And then when it did, it was just. It's just not, I think, the wind out of all of us. I think we all cried for sure that we all cried. Yeah. And and I'm not even like. I don't know, like. I feel like I am. I'm emotional and I am a crier, but a whole. I didn't think that I would *** immediately the second I saw the news. And then I always knew we were going to get a lot more calls because Elizabeth and I also answer phones and the abortion clinic, and I was OK, we're going to get way more calls. But like, if you don't know what that feels like or looks like or sounds like, like, what does it feel like to have 100 people calling you pretty much at the same time? What does that look like now? I know, and it's traumatic and it's awful and it's a natural disaster, but it's a man made disaster, actually. It's not a natural disaster. We've there are people who have inflicted this upon us. And now we know what it feels like and it's ******* awful. Oh, I should have asked if I was allowed to swear. Oh yeah, I swear all the time, OK, because, like, I've been on podcast before where they were like, oh, we got to edit that out. Which. Cool. Well, it's a ******* nightmare. We work in healthcare. I think we swear more than the average layman, because they keep saying somehow. There's so much more to say like, yeah, no, please don't even know where to go from there. It's just, yeah, it's like a never ending nightmare because like the the call started and then it's just like just just person after person after person. They driving, driving 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours coming from states that are like 3 states away, coming from like states in the South, people taking planes and. People staying in hotels and we've had people pay like hundreds of dollars for an Uber. And. And then just like bringing in the labor angle to as like unionized abortion workers who, you know, we have been vocal and we've been rallying and making our demands like publicly known, but we are doing this while under staffed like skeletal crew staffing. We didn't have enough staff before ROFL and the Dobbs decision and now we just, it's bare bones and it's like we are. So we're taking on this tidal wave, this like man-made tidal wave. While. Just giving every last ounce of our energy. Umm. And doing multiple roles at once, yeah. I don't know if you were able to tell from the fact that Crystal and I both work directly in the clinic, but we also answer calls when we signed up for our job. We knew that we would be doing multiple things around the clinic and it's just. It's funny. To not really know what that means until you start doing it. So one day you'll be holding a patient's hand while they're having this procedure done, like giving them a little baggie in case they feel sick. You'll be talking to them on the phone. So some there are days where I will meet people who I've spoken to on the phone when they called to book their appointment. And it just hits me like a tidal wave because I'm like, that's the person. Like, that's this person specifically. I remember because I remember hearing the sound of their voice and every single time they call in, they are sobbing. This is a horrifying moment for them. This is a moment where they feel like trapped. They feel like they can't share with their family, with their friends, depending on what state they're from and the legalities of that state. They are even afraid to make these phone calls like. Some of the first things that patients say to us when they call it is in my is this OK? Like, am I allowed to call you? I'll nyla to talk to you. Am I allowed to book an appointment? What's going to happen next for me and my appointment? Be cancelled? Yeah, because we're not lawyers, because we everything is so fluid right now. We don't have answers to give them. We can just say, well, you're coming to Pennsylvania and it's still legal in Pennsylvania, so. Umm. And just to like paint the picture a little more to about like. Both the skeletal staffing and the emotional turmoil and the emotional weight of it. So the Dobbs decision happened on June 24th, which was a Friday, and we're in Pennsylvania. And that evening of the evening of June 24th, a trigger ban went into effect in in Ohio. It was a it's a a fetal heartbeat bill, which is a deceptive language because it's not actually a heartbeat, but I'm. But it's a it's technically a fetal heartbeat bill. And so people after six weeks could no longer access abortion services or once any sort of like electrical impulse was detected and everyone had their appointments canceled. So we were actually at a protest, like the staff was like at a protest that evening with our with our doctors, our abortion providing doctors. And the news came out like, yeah, shout out to them. We love them. And we got the news that Ohio had just did this and we were just like, Oh my God, tomorrow because we knew the second our call center and our phone lines opened, everyone who's appointment was canceled going to be calling us. And then we we pull up the staff schedule and we're like, standing in the middle of the street at a protest. We pull up staff schedule and we're like, Oh my God, there is one person scheduled to answer phones right now, and it is an older woman who's been doing this since, like, the 70s or 80s. And it's like, we cannot like and we were like all as a Union, like you return to each other and we're like, Oh my God, this is the situation. We cannot leave her alone. We've already worked our five days. We already worked our 35 hours, but we are going to call ourselves into work. And we just, we were like, we've notified our managers, like, we're going to come into work and we're going to help to. Answer the phones for these cancelled Ohio patients like that was a decision that we made to work those extra that that extra time on our weekend off because it was a Saturday. But this ties into what Elizabeth was saying where. When you hear the person on the phone and then they come to you and like, it's very emotional because like you're doing your best as a healthcare worker to get them the health service that you have been trained to provide and that you know is very important. So. Knowing that we were understaffed, knowing that we're not making that much money and then just being like I have. To go in and be there. I can't leave my coworker alone because I love my coworker. And we can't and like somebody has to be there for these these patients when they're calling. And if it's not going to be the employer and the bosses, then it's going to be you and they and then we we all just. We did that and then there was another clinic day. We a lot of us arranged to come in for an extra work day because we were like, we we have to be there for these patients. So we're really giving. All of our energy and. It's exhausting and traumatizing. I can't. I feel like I can't say that enough, but. And we we need more staff, we need better wages, we need better working conditions because it's so it's like when the end of some of these days, it's like, how am I going to keep doing this? My body hurts, my brain hurts. I started having, like, issues with my memory where, like, I couldn't remember anything because my brain just gave up on retaining information. And I'm like, I think this is like a trauma response. Like, yeah, I'm overwhelmed. System shock. I think this is one of the things you get with with working for NGOs, which is that like for doing something like this is like there is work that needs to be done. But you know the employer is not giving you the resources that is necessary to do it right. You have one person on a call line, like the day after a fetal heartbeat bill goes goes into effect and and it's. I don't know. It seems like one of the one of the things that's. That that these NGOs do is they they were, you know, they they make, they make a mistake or they do something deliberately because they don't want to pay people and then they don't want to pay other people and they make you go deal with it because you know it has to get done because these people need you. And that somebody has to do it. Yeah. That's so gross. It's disgusting. So for me, I like to equate it as kind of like being emotionally gaslit because the whole point of healthcare, and I've said this to other people in different healthcare roles that I've worked before because as we know, Healthcare is chronically understaffed. Like there's so many like nursing shortages, like and things is that Healthcare is designed to draw people who want to help to have. He's like very strong moral and emotional beliefs and we are paid to care like it is our job to care. And that is how they can get all of these things out of us, is because it's very easy to feel emotionally manipulated when somebody's like, well, somebody has to be there for this patient, this person, this, like thing that can't wait. And so a lot of us even, like I said before, I worked here at like different positions that I've held. I've been like, I will take an extra shift because somebody has to do it. And I love my job so much. I love working in healthcare. It's something I've been very passionate about since I was a small child. So I for years would burn myself out and be like, I'll take the extra shift at a different position. When I used to work at a care, I worked at an intermediate care. Facility for adults with intellectual and physical disabilities for a couple of years and I remember routinely working 16 hour shifts like day in and day out. I think there was like 6-7 days a week of just double s where I would work, like 16 hour shifts. I don't think I like slept or ate or did anything. And then at one point I was so burnt out that I just couldn't do it anymore and I started to get frustrated with the people that I worked with and like the patients that I cared about. And this one particular day I, like noticed myself getting incredibly annoyed with everything that was like happening. Like sounds. Patients like. Just being themselves, like, I didn't, you know, take it out on anything or anyone. I just like, noticed myself getting like slightly more irritated and then I was like, this is not sustainable. I keep doing this. And I compared this like recent change. Posted up the Dobb's decision to what it was like when I also used to work for distributing medical equipment to hospices. It felt like. Every single moment was an emergency that I. Just did not have the resources to be able to. Help with because on one end of the line you have somebody that. Is having this emergency and then on the other end of the line, there's another person pulling you because they're also having an emergency. And so you have to kind of weigh which one of these patients. Like needs you the most right now. And which one of those can you reasonably help? It's like that psychologic like psychology puzzle where they're like if you move the thing on the track. Problem, yeah, the trolley problem, where like one of these people will die, or seven people will die, and you have to decide which one of those. You're going to pull because there's only so much that we can give as healthcare workers, as abortion workers, as reproductive health workers. There's only so many hours in a day and as much as we want to keep giving. For us to keep pouring out of an empty cup, it's just not sustainable for ourselves. Like, I know many of us have lost sleep. Many of us have stopped, like being able to focus on anything outside of work because as soon as, like, you turn on the news, or you open your phone, or you, like, open up Twitter, there's more and more and more information because everything is consistently changing all of the time. And like West Virginia is currently having like their. Umm. Charlottesville clinic, yeah. So that's new and we had a couple of calls come in from. We had Kentucky, yeah. So that was new. And we're just starting to like really have a good pattern of resources for patients coming in from like Ohio. And now we're like, OK, well, what about Kentucky? So we just like. We feel like there's just one like hole in the dam that we put our finger on, and then another one shows up and at some point. We just have to know that we've done our best. And that it's OK to take a second to rest and and. To, you know, go home and maybe, like, watch TV or listen to a podcast. Not about abortion, yeah. Forget about abortion for two seconds and because we will inevitably have to do it again tomorrow. Gives me a lot of. I did an interview like, I don't actually. It'll be a couple of weeks, I guess, by when this comes out with some organizers who were like trying to do like relief and aid for the the migrants you're getting bussed to DC from Texas. I think Utah too. And it was like they were talking about exactly the same thing, where it's like, we have to do this, we have to do this because otherwise no one's gonna help these people. But like at a certain point, it's like everyone has COVID like, we just can't. And it. I don't know, it's. I think it's especially frustrating that this is happening. Because, like, those people were just like, they have no resources, right? It's just a bunch of people who drink Michelle thing. But like, this is Planned Parenthood. Like, they have resources and they're not, they're not doing this, and they're doing this. I I talked to a nurse who's a friend of mine a long time ago on this show, and he talked, you know, he was in during COVID. He's gotten COVID twice, I think. And like, you know, he was talking about how like, yeah, he he, he said this be like thing I've always remembered was like, I've seen people die because of. I've seen people die because of staffing decisions. Yeah. And it's like it's this, it's this moral blackmail thing where it's like. In in order to expect this thing needs to be done, we're not going to actually provide you with enough resources to do it, and we're going to make you responsible for the consequences of our actions. And. Yeah, it's, it's grotesque. I yeah, I think that. Really it's just kind of like part of the trauma for the workers and and and honestly for the patients and for everyone in our communities because this impacts literally everyone is. Just like turning like we do turn people away because pregnancy is a time sensitive issue and you know, you have to get in, in a certain number of weeks in order to get, you know, the type of procedure that you want in order to get a procedure at all. And these are people that are often parents. The majority of people who have abortions are parents. They have children and they have jobs and or they don't have like PTO and they live 4 hours away. So it's like, how am I going to get to this appointment? So there's so many people that we have to refer. So it's it's so much on your soul to be on the phones and you speak to mother after mother like a single mother or somebody who lost a partner or they are, you know, they got evicted and you're referring them. To Detroit. Which isn't also four or five hours away. And just to refer people to say I can't help you, try calling this place and to do that like multiple times in a row every day and then you're like you're working 7 hour days. It is really soul crushing because it feels like and like you tell yourself like it's my, you know, we don't have the resources, we don't have the staff. We weren't prepared for this crisis. It's not on me, but it's very hard not to feel awful when you are turning people away because you don't. I don't know any. I probably turn. Like probably over 100 people away on the phones and told them who to call. I don't know if they could reach those places. I don't know if they called those places. For all I know they continue to high risk pregnancy and they might suffer health consequences or just things that debilitate them for the rest of their life, things that make the children's lives worse and I have no way of knowing. So it's just very traumatic to constantly be hanging up on the phone with people and just like sending them into like. Just a desert. I think the hardest part, too, is that these phone calls aren't like 2 seconds long. They're not 2 minutes when we tell when we answer the phones. Abortion appointments take about 15 to 20 minutes to schedule. So this is 1/2 an hour that you are getting to know an individual, a person. They tell you everything about their lives. They tell you exactly what they're feeling, what they're afraid of, what they're going through, what their families like. With our financial situation is like and then at the end when you tell them or at the beginning, which I do often just to let them know what they're getting themselves into. When you tell them that you're booking like three weeks out, four weeks out, you can just hear it in their voice. That they are so scared. And so desperate and. There's nothing you can do about it because there's just. Not enough of us. There's not enough clinic days. There's not enough hours in the day to see all of these patients. There is so much red tape that these patients have to go through to even get to this appointment. There's a 24 hour phone consent in the state of Pennsylvania. If they miss that, they can't be seen. And these are often like. Depending on like the time of the phone call, some people work multiple jobs. They're like sleep. They can't make the phone call. Sick. They don't have working cell phones. Or they're in a yeah. Or they're in a situation where they're like, have intimate partner violence, so they can't be on the phone for that long. Without risking their personal safety. And it's just really traumatizing. And I know that it's really common on the left and with like pro abortion people to say, like, you can't stop abortion, you can only stop save abortion. And I I totally support the sentiment behind that because people are going to get abortions no matter what, but people also need to think about. The people who give up because I have, when I have been on the phone with someone and heard them give up and it's. It's it's it's traumatizing because, like, you know that you gave them the information that broke them where they were. Just like when I'm like, OK, you have to wait four weeks, you have to drive 4 hours. You have to do this. You have to pay this. You have to do that. And then just for them to say, I'm sorry, I don't want to waste your time anymore. I just can't do this much right now. It's just too much. And just to hear their just resignation because, you know, I think I feel like. You know, working in jobs, you might have heard people just, like, reach that moment where they hit their point, whatever their breaking point might be, whatever the context is, whatever the topic is. But like, when it's your life and it's your health and it's your family, and they're just like, this is my breaking point and witnessing in that that does happen. And it's a tragedy every time that somebody abandons. What they really want and their health and their well-being and. And it does happen, and that's why this is a tragedy that needs to stop. And I don't know when it's going to stop because it just kind of seems like it's going to keep happening and keep going and going and going. In which case the trauma is going to like move like right now we're like bearing the brunt of it, but it's going to like radiate from us and our patients and we're going to see the ripple effects. Generational trauma that's going to continue for multiple decades. Yeah yeah and and it's I mean just on on on a basic like level it it it's not fair that even you have to deal with this like this this shouldn't be happening at all like and and it's it's that it's that like. Like all of the evil of the American settler state falling on like a bunch of people who have nothing. And then a bunch of workers who are expected to show up and have to deal with all of their all of their trauma too, every day. And it's just. Like a trauma palooza. Yeah, and it's like flags and T-shirts. Yeah, and then we had a union rally recently and. We were very open and talking about how a lot of us work two jobs and and we have staff members who donate plasma, so it's like we're doing this on top of a second job and donating our like. Bodily fluids. I spoke at this rally and I was like, we're literally giving our flesh, blood and tears to this whole thing because it's just we love it. We love all of our patients, we care about the work. We really want to make sure that our patients are going to be OK. And I think that's why. We. Do it and also how we can justify. Feeling this way day, day in and day out. I I wanna, I think, move from this to talking about. The contract negotiation process because like OK it it is not OK for anyone to have like a 14 month long contract negotiation process. It is especially not OK for you to have to do this. So yeah, can we talk about what plant like what planned parish has been doing and why would be better at answering the question. She's on our bargaining committee. Team Jamie, I've been doing this for 14 months and like, just oh God, I'm so sick of these meetings. I'm so sick of them. So, so sick of them talking to their lawyer. It's been long. They've been just really just dragging themselves. It's like carrying a dead body, just like, like, it's like, oh, come on, come on. Are you are you OK? We're going to get there, you know? Like, we're just, like dragging them and. They are afraid of everything. Everything is we gotta see. We got a check, we gotta, we gotta look into it and then you never hear back. Or maybe you hear back like 3 months, four months later. They constantly want to bring in a mediator constantly. And it's like, there's nothing to mediate. Like, what are we going to mediate? You telling us that you got to get back to us, like, what's their immediate there? And they're like, it will move it along. And it's like, yes, because they're doing the job for you. We want you to do it. We want you to have answers. You to figure it out. You're the bosses. You make the money. You're the one running the organization. So I start getting salty. Bargaining team has has. Being on the bargaining team has really nurtured my rage. It's been very exhausting and I know we're going to win a good contract because we are *** ***** and I think we're really strong Union and really strong team. Umm. And we need. We need a livable wage because we're. We're getting pummeled, so it's been really frustrating. I guess it's like in short. It's really drawn out, frustrating, disrespectful. I feel like my time's been disrespected, you know? I turned up every day for for my employer in the clinic. I'm an excellent worker and and they just waste like 2-3 hours of my evening constantly. I could have been on my porch drinking tea or something. I don't know, something relaxing. Yeah, and I guess like any I guess the other part is like every, every day that they don't like sign a contract is another day they get to get away with not paying you. Not bringing more staff and it's and they're constantly trying to get delay contract negotiations too. And they're like, oh, if you do this we can, we'll give you a couple pennies and then we won't make any, you won't be able to make any economic changes until the next fiscal year. And it's like you think I want to wait till next July. I have a life. Yeah, plans. Yeah, I mean, I think we've talked about on the show before that like one of the one of the most common ways that one of the most common ways that unions fall apart and one of the things that corporations do and NGO's do to crush them is by trying to make sure the first contract fails. And yeah, it's it's a union busting thing and it's grotesque. It's especially that. And it's like, OK, like with capitalist firms like, yeah, you expect them to be union busting, right? Like that. That's their job. Their job is to ruthlessly spatially. But it's like, this is an NGO, like their job is to provide healthcare for people. They're supposed to be a progressive organization. They're still doing this. And it's. I don't know it. It seems just really grim. It is grim, and it doesn't give a lot of hope to. I think just everyone living in this in this country because it's like, OK, so there's been a, a, a I was going to say attack, but like attack doesn't feel appropriate. Like they have gutted abortion access, hurting everybody, causing like violence to people and who do you look to? So you would think that you would look to these progressive abortion related organizations like Planned Parenthood, National Abortion Federation narrow. But all of them. Have nothing to give. And nothing. They're they're you. You you only hear bad news. You hear them shutting down. You hear them. Union busting, you hear them. Requiring ridiculous regulations that aren't even necessary and. It is. There's no, they don't do anything to inspire hope. So it's like, well, you need, you know, like prison culture. And Mary McCabe says, like, you know, hope is a discipline. So I feel like a lot of us are like always looking to like a place to exercise our hope. And you're you're not going to get that here with, with some of these organizations. I think you are going to get it in, I think the repro unions because I think there's a lot of us and I think there were. I think that we are working our little hearts out and I think you're also going to get it with some of these other organizations like. The abortion like abortion funds and some of the practical support organizations that are really like getting on the level of patients who are patients or former patients and are like, we're going to get people abortions. I think that's where hope is right now, but not with our employer. Yeah, I wanted to. I guess some of the things I wanted to ask about was sort of on a macro level. I mean, basically everyone we've talked to has talked about how. Like? The ability to get an abortion. Is based on like a pretty small number of people who are like some, you know, people who are abortion, who are escorts, who are, who are like a lot of time volunteers or it's people who are like you two are being like horrifically underpaid to do the actual work of this. And I was wondering what you two think that like the like the the the way this like. I don't know, I guess like the way everyone has sort of been run ragged even keeping the system, how it was like what role that played on a sort of macro level in terms of why Roe was like destroyed in the first place? And what that's done to sort of the broader movement? I mean not. They didn't do anything to prevent it. Like, yeah, like it's just. What have we seen? What show of force or strength or commitment to abortion access? Have we seen in ever? Honestly? Like, yeah, I can't even think. Other than like some loss or some legal wins, we've celebrated like I do. Remember whole Women's Health V Hellerstedt. What was that 2016? That was like a win and we were excited and we were like. This is good news, and that's honestly the last. And now again, that was just a court decision, so it was like not in our hands really anyways, so. I just either so little. There's so little to work with and so little to look at outside of I think just some really excellent organizing from workers and practical support groups. And I I really think that our community has been fabulous this last whole like month we all of the support that we've gotten. For our like, personal morale has been through like friends or local businesses, or like people who know people who. Like? Are there to offer us like an ear, a hand, a cup of coffee. We some of our doctors bring in bagels, and this is like from their own pockets, we'll bring in bagels. We've had, like, people donate and organized to bring in like coffee and stuff. I know that Crystal was receiving a lot of like, donations to herself that we all use to buy ourselves like food, drinks, stuff for our people were just like sending me money. For the staff, yeah. And I thought that was really great, but I also noticed that it came from outside sources and not. From internal sources, these are all other people outside in our community who understand and value the work with that we're doing and like actively listen for what we need and what we're asking for. And I think that there's a lot to be said about that. Yeah, honestly, the the, the most hope and the most support has come from just like regular people you don't really see it from. Anyone with anything? Any actual money or power. And on that note, this has been naked happened here. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at happened here pod and you can find Crystal and Elizabeth Union at W Union on Twitter. Off for Part 2 of this interview. And until then, goodbye. 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 odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to bed. Mgm.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 from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1888. 532-3500. Anderson Cooper earlier this year, while packing up my late mom's apartment and her things, I felt isolated and alone. Weighed down by grief, I began recording a series of deeply personal conversations with others about their experiences with loss. It helped me and I hope it'll help you. Whatever you're going through. All there is with Anderson Cooper listen on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your miraval mate courage already runs in your blood. 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 Tura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to decode aid. Here, a podcast about NGO is portraying the working class in casting reproductive autonomy to the wolves. I'm your host, Christopher Wong, and this is Part 2 of my interview with Crystal and Elizabeth from Hue Local 696. They are once again representing only themselves and the Union and not Planned Parenthood. Yes. So let's get back to the interview. OK, should should I, should I do a incredibly long and drawn out metaphor about migrant workers in China? Go for it. It's your podcast. Yeah. OK. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a metaphor. OK. So. All right. All right. So one of the one of the sort of engines of Chinese economic growth for a long time is that China's economy is built on background labor. There are, I think it's like 250 million migrant workers. It's like, like if if if you put them together as a country, I think, like on 290 put together as a country and be like the 4th largest country in the world. And this was able to happen, you know, and like. Of the sort of like the secret of the Chinese miracle is that it was a bunch of workers who were exploited horribly and. They also had a lot. A lot of these workers are coming from the countryside, and they're still sort of like kinds of forms of, like communal land ownership that are leftover from the socialist. There. And So what happens is you have these sort of like. I don't know, like kind of socialist collective error, like collective land ownership, stuff that's like basically subsidizing these workers so that they can move into the cities and this means that their bosses have to pay. Like their their bosses can pay them less because part of their income and part of their support network is coming from something that's outside of the outside of the system. And that's what this reminds me of where it's like this stuff is happening because of this incredible community mobilization. And like, that's where the support is coming from. But that also means that like the actual like the organizations who are getting the most money in the most resources and who are like, you know, who are your bosses don't have to do that because it's it's, you know, and this is the same thing with with your labor too, where it's it's. You have these, these like, there's this way in which solidarity is mobilized as a way to sort of like stop gap. The fact that these groups don't want to pay people and don't want to give people the resources that are necessary. And so because it has to get done, people will like, people will do it and people will. People will donate stuff, people will help support. People will do this work. But. The thing that it winds up doing is that these people are never actually forced to see the full consequences of their actions. They're never, never forced to like, actually see what what the staffing decisions like does what what the fact that they don't pay you anything like actually does. They don't. They never have to face it because people are like desperately trying to to patch the boat together so it doesn't sink. Yeah, I've been thinking a lot. Like, what would it be like if? You know, one of our higher up managers turned away all of these patients. And it was them, yeah. What if they knew what it was like? They are picking up the phone a couple weeks ago and the only thing that I heard when I picked up that phone was a blood curdling scream. Like this was like a scream out of a horror movie. And then there were two thoughts. And then dead silence. And I don't know. What happened to that person? I don't know if they were able to call back. I. Didn't call back, because if that person is in danger right now, I'm not going to subject them to any more danger. There's a reason that when we dial out, it's through restricted or blocked numbers. But it's. Moments like that, that stick with you. And the fact that we're having more and more of these moments where, like, every other call is not like, exactly to that level, but like emotionally still sticks with you. And just for some additional just like to kind of, like, build out this kind of, like misogynistic. Context that we're working in, it's actually super common to get people calling in for abortion services, like in the middle of a fight with their partner. I have had like men, like actively obstructing. The caller and, you know, I'm trying to schedule them and they'll have me on speakerphone and everything. And I was when you were training me too, and I was like, are you able to get to, like another place? Because I can't hear you over him and, you know, and he's like, I'm not doing anything and I'm like, I just need to be able to hear you and like. Yeah, so you do. You get that because that's, you know, because there's people want abortions for every reason under the sun, and it's totally fine. And people get abortions for lots of different reasons. But a very common reason is because their partner sucks and he's a ***** ** ****. He was abusive and they got to get away from him, and that's unfortunately common. And we're on the phone getting that. Sometimes we get to meet them in real life, too, and that's always super fun. I always say that. I say to patients constantly that boyfriends either go only go one of two ways when we meet them in our clinic. They're either wonderful and fantastic and very supportive. Or they're just the worst end. I've had patients boyfriends who literally while this person is mid procedure will be like you're being dramatic and you need to stop and take a phone call. Or something. We'll be playing games on their phone and they won't look at anybody. Or they'll actively leave their partner there, and these are people that like were their ride. Oh yeah, we've had people get abandoned. Yeah, yeah. They'll just be like, I'm done, I'm bored, and then they'll just leave. And it's just so frustrating. Lot to deal with. We have a lot to deal with the staff. And I always tell people because I, I trained staff at the clinic and I'm always like, we see everything here. And when I say I say that, I mean it. We see literally everything like you just. And I'm sure there are other similar health. Provisions like health services that it's kind of similar. We just kind of see everything, but yeah, we we literally see everything because people when people come in for an abortion appointment. Yeah, like we don't just talk about the procedure. You know, we do birth control counseling, STD screening. We provide resources for housing, legal support, therapy, finding therapists and we just we we do so much because we're providing a comprehensive healthcare service. And again, like something that we tell patients is that they could expect to be here for like 4 hours, 6 hours, yeah, it depends on the individual patient, their individual needs. And and what services we can provide for them and sometimes patients need a lot of TLC and we're not going to rush that. Umm. They're going to get the services that they need and they want. And we're going to do it on their time because they're very, they're very fragile and that's not the time to run through. They're not always so. Sometimes they're fragile and like, sometimes they're like, let's get this done, you know, I just, Oh yeah, I just wanted the whole range of we get, we get. But sometimes they're very fragile, yeah. We have had some really confident patients that I really like talking to though that they're very. Like, ready to get it over with and are like, thanks for being here. And they just make my day. I love it when we're like, oh, how did? Because we have to, you know, we have to do, like, make sure that they're not being coerced and everything. And it's like, so, you know, how are you feeling about everything? And they're like, I feel great. I can't wait to not be pregnant. And they're like, dancing. Obviously. That's nice. But, you know, in reality, a lot of times when we ask someone how they're feeling and what's going on, we're like the first person to have asked them that in, like 2 years. So then we're like opening up a a space, which I'm so glad we get to do. I love working with patients. I love the services we provide. But it it's it's what what sucks and what's a failure is that I'm like a first healthcare provider to like ask them how they're feeling and like and actually care and like years like, we really get some. We get some patients who have been like chewed up and spit out by the healthcare system and no one's ever given a ****. And we all, we all are very good at giving a **** so. Yeah, it really seems like. Just like everything that's wrong with this country gets thrown at like you. Specifically because this is like, like, every every sort of like, every bit of racism, every bit of sexism, like every like failure of the healthcare system. Like, every every like. It's not even like everything on a political level and on a social level that goes wrong with people's lives. That good old abelism too, yeah? I think it comes up a lot with stigmatized healthcare like abortion. And then also hormone therapy I imagine was pretty similar as you're facing a lot of obstacles that are put up by the communities, the institution and the healthcare system, the employers, like your family. There's a remember we we did an interview with a promotion activist from Mexico, and one of the things that she was talking about was she called it social decriminalization. Oh, is it kind of like destigmatizing? Like, yeah, yeah. But it's like, like, I I think she didn't talk about it a huge amount, but it seemed like the concept behind it, it was like, OK, so you have legal, you have like, legal criminalization. But then, yeah, like, social stigmatization means that it's still not really legal because there's there's like, you know, there's like social laws against the rights. You have to, like, deal with both. And that that struck me as like, a really, I don't know, is a really powerful, like way to think about it, I guess. Is it kind of like a moral thing where people think? But it's not OK to get an abortion. So you get like that pressure and that. Yeah. And and I think and also, I mean, like, it's not, it's it's it's the pressure like applied on a person from just like, you know, like, I mean in Mexico is a lot of like people growing up Catholic. Right. But also like it's the pressure from your family is pressure from your friends, so pressure from everyone around you and you have to like. Socially like. Legalize it, because Crystal's been doing this work longer than I have. Like I said, I've only been working at our current shop for a year, which I love, but definitely when I started. There were people in my life that I didn't think were going to get weird about it. You know, a lot of liberal people, most of all of my friends are very liberal, very open, pro-choice. Like. Very union friendly and immediately I noticed that when I started talking happily about abortions. People would get really quiet and really awkward. And there would be like, that's great, I'm happy for you. But then that was like it like I couldn't. And I'd be like, no, but like abortions and then they're great, they're great, people need them. It's an essential service. And so I just upped up the ante more and I said about it a lot more. So that is. That's what I got to do, got to weed out the week. Like, if you're uncomfortable with my job, my job, I'm not going to not talk about it with you. But yeah, that is a component to like also on top of literally everything else, like, you know, like how hard the job is and how then we got to like rally as a union and get better wages and we and then we like, can't even sometimes talk about it because, Umm, because of stigma, like with friends or family. Like I can't talk about my parents or I can't talk with my parents. Got my job. So it's just like this whole big part of my life because I'm pretty much like an abortion access activist and I just can't talk about it. And with them, which is just, you know, it's it would be nice if I could, but I can't and I just kind of deal with it and then also. Even tiny, normal situations like getting a haircut or getting an Uber, it's people ask you what you do all the time. I lie every time, but that's a decision you have to make because sometimes I lie and sometimes I don't know what it is. I'm having to tell the truth. And it's like a gamble because I've told the truth before and then an Uber driver starts praying for me. And then I've told the truth before and had someone like open up to me and we have a real conversation and then I've told the truth before and. Had really awkward conversations like, I support abortion. I think some people have too many. It's like, why are you telling me to get out here? But. Yeah, this was a decision that I made for myself personally because of this one time I took an Uber to work and I mentioned what I did, and then that guy started like, talking about me to the antis in front of our job. And they were like talking about it was, it was actually, it was a woman, it was a, it was a female Uber driver. I mentioned this to her and she went up and was like, I think that like what you guys are doing is like. She was talking to the anti specifically. She was like, what you're doing is too aggressive. You need to buy the building next door, Oh my God, set up shop there and make it less antagonizing so people want to listen to you. And then immediately in the group chat, everybody was like, who's talking to the antis? And I'm like, I just mentioned that I worked there. It was just a lot. So after that I was like on my way to work. At the very least, I'm just not going to talk about it. I'm gonna be like, I work at a doctor's office downtown. I know. It's like risk assessment. Yeah. I feel like the antis learned my name by listening for the Uber drivers. And I've got an Uber drivers. They're like, who are you? What's your name? And I'm like, I'm not going to tell you because there's a dude standing there that wants to follow me. So. You're going to deal with that as a driver. We got to switch up patterns when we come into work sometimes too. And I do what I actually started when I call an Uber to work because I don't have a car all the time, because I don't get paid that much. But. When I have to Uber to work. I've started getting dropped off like somewhere else and just walking because. It's just too too many problems, too much like it's I got. I got dropped off at like a different location, like a couple blocks away from work at a different spot usually, and then I just walk in. Like, if you you might just want to go to work and drink your coffee and you have like, your Uber driver joined in, the protest outside looks like ridiculous. Then it's worse because they know they picked you up, they know where you live and they know your name, your name. They want to shout your name out the door. It's like. ****. Because yeah, the protesters learned my name and they like, chant my name and we're like, I'll walk by and they'll be like, the whispering my name. I'm like, what is this? This is kind of, this is kind of ***** but like, yeah. And we decide that they don't actually know who you are. They just think everybody with banks is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for the listeners, I have like pretty blunt big things, but I'm not the only worker in the building, obviously, who has bangs, but so everyone in the building is like crystal. Everybody with bangs question worker named Crystal. I guess that's reassuring, but also bad for other people with banks because they might get killed. It's like funny but not funny. I'm just you got we tried to like, make light of it. We all we have to. Yeah. So the other thing I wanted to ask about was crystal. Yeah, you've had like the bosses doing disciplinary action for stuff that you've been doing in terms of union stuff. We talk about that a little bit technically pre disciplinary, but I mean like what does it matter? Because like the point is the same is, is intimidation. Yeah, it's very easy to do is to get your lawyer, get you HR and have them talk to someone and then everybody knows about it because everybody talks at work and bad gas travels fast. And then they and the whole idea is to and to scare people into not talking to reporters, not talking to. People about what's going on and I feel like it's difficult. To talk about what's been happening like this is, like, I keep saying it, it's a it's a National Health crisis, it's a disaster, it's it's a tidal wave, it's a hurricane, it's generational trauma. We're using all of these words and then, like, I feel like I'm pressured into not even talking about it because I'm talking about everything. I'm talking about how we're understaffed. I'm talking about how we're seeing patients from all over. I'm talking about. How how traumatizing it is, and for whatever reason, it's just more comforting for some of these organizations to. Hide under the table with their lawyer. And just like shaking their boots and say, like, we could be sued for this, we could be sued for that. And what if that happens? What if this happens? And like, for me, it's like, well, you know what? What, what if someone dies because we can't get them in and they can't get to us because of legislation and there being no healthcare infrastructure, because part of Healthcare is also getting to the appointment. So if like, none of that exists and, like, people are suffering because of it, like, I just can't keep my mouth shut about that. And I definitely feel like as like somebody a member on the bargaining team and I also emceed our rally. I feel like there's been a lot of pressure on me and my big mouth. I feel like I've, they were trying to intimidate me and scare me. And I'm blessed for a couple of reasons. Number one, my dad, who is otherwise conservative and doesn't support anything that I do, but he was a union steward and growing up, I would see him resolving conflict as a union steward. And that was very influential and inspirational to me because it really instilled some good values, even though we don't have the same values, obviously. But, and you didn't, but there's that. Like I I developed like a strong sense of Labor rights and labor activism from him. And then two, my first career choice was a middle school teacher, so I taught 7th and 8th grade for about 7 years. So like, literally nothing scares me because after you've talked to. That the cafeteria full of 100 and 2013 year olds. It's like, that's it. That's like the scariest thing ever. So I'm not really afraid of. The bullying and the intimidation, which is good because it definitely is very effective and I'm sure a lot of people would be. ******* themselves but. I'm testing myself a little bit, but all I'm fine. I have a second job after all. But you that like, that's like, **** the fact you have to work another job. Like wait. They're like one of the things I notice is they're they're doing, they're doing the working you for 35 hours and not 40 because yeah, yeah, they have to pay benefits. I don't know, like the impression that I get from this. The thing that makes me really angry is like. It really feels like, like the like how worried they are about being sued. It feels like like the fact that that's sort of like the basis of all this and just like. They. The, the, they're behaving as if they've already lost and they're trying to just sort of like, like claw and hold on to whatever they have. But it's like if if if if you're if if you're fighting from the position of we have already lost you're you're just going to keep losing and it's like and and and and. You know, it's not just that. It's like, OK like if they were just doing that but then, you know, like not passing like not literally forcing everyone else who's working with them to also be in the same sort of defeatism. Like, you would be different. But it's like. Like, no there, there, there. Then inflicting that on you. And it's just infuriating. Yeah, I think this also to segue to something that actually had happened to me today as part of, you know, being in a call Center for an abortion provider is that we, I think this instills like. A sense of fear for providers as well, for their own personal safety. It just makes it feel bigger because you have all these other people. It would be like, well, it's. It's like, these are all these things that could happen to you. This is what might happen to you. And I think that it makes providers have to evaluate, you know, their own risks to what they do. And if you are somebody with not as strong values for this work like, it's not a strong opinion towards this work. It causes you to just neglect patients. Because I had an incident that happened today where we had somebody call from a different state where abortion is not legal, and they had their best friend in the car with them, and they were like, my friend is like actively hemorrhaging. She's been like bleeding for days. Do you have like an emergency appointment, like we can drive? PA like, what do I do? She's been to her doctor three different times and they refuse to treat her because the pregnancy is like, viable. And in my brain I'm just shaking because I'm like, this is a. This is your job like your. First thing as a doctor is to make sure that your patient doesn't die and they might die. And I'm not a doctor. And so I was like, if your friend is losing so much blood that. You are worried for her safety? I know on the phone they were talking about how she felt like she was like getting dizzy and like losing a ridiculous amount of blood. And I was like, I strongly suggest that you go to a hospital where abortion is legal, since you're planning on, you know, coming up for an abortion anyway, because in that case they would have to treat you. No matter what. And if you know. It's going to result in an abortion. Then at the very least you're protected because you're here, you're across state lines, and I'm like because any any hospital has to treat you. For something that serious and that's it's scary to think that there are definitely other other providers and other like places where this kind of thing. Is also happening. And I just worry that. You know. What if? I was 10 minutes late. What if I was two minutes late? What if I was 30 seconds late? What if I told her to wait like some places kind of have to, or I told her that I couldn't help her, like some places kind of have to with these laws. I don't think that I. Could live with the guilt of that. Yeah. It's just another another added trauma to the day. And I feel like a lot of people said and like, these people suck, but a lot of people were saying that, like, stuff like this wouldn't happen. I know for a fact that I had so many. I'm very vocal about abortion access in my work, and I've had people tell me, like, people won't be hemorrhaging and driving across state lines and I'm like, absolutely they will be absolutely. And this was like a month ago and then, well, more than a month ago. Time goes fast, but like, this was like, prior to Dobbs, I should say, but. And it it it it's just when they were telling me, like, I don't believe you and I'm like, what do you mean you don't believe me? This is the most believable thing. And then to have had people say that it wouldn't happen and to like, call me a liar and like a drama queen and then now she's like, I mean I wasn't, I didn't get a call like that but like to hear like my coworker. And like, and then just like hearing it happened elsewhere because like, you know, we have comrades and and union siblings in Ohio with other unions and they've talked about it happening. And just so hearing my, my, my peers talking about it and just knowing like, we knew this would happen and we I just, it feels like we just, like, walked right into it with no plan. There's still no plan. People are still in cars, driving across state lines while actively hemorrhaging. And I don't know. What it will be done other than? Us workers? Really? Stepping up and hopefully the community then supporting us. Because we can't do it without community support, like like Elizabeth was saying before, you know? Oh, and when Elizabeth was actually talking before about the food that we've been getting from the community, and this also made me think of what it looks like to turn up for workers in general. Because, you know, we're all workers here and, like, we know what it feels like. We're you're too busy to stop and eat and and you're just going through your day and you're running on fumes and you're exhausted. But the fact that our community was like, feeding has been feeding us and, like, turning up for us. We're to the point where, like, I was having good, healthy food. From day-to-day in that well since then and then it really got me wondering like is this is what it likes? This is what it's like when you have well fed workers and that are cared for. So you know, if the only people answering the call for these, these people who need healthcare are us, we're exhausted. We don't have time to go out and get food. Especially since we got people following us down the street and whatever while we go get a hot dog trying to bother us, but then to have like the community. Eating as food. And then being well fed, it was just like, Oh my God, what if all workers were well fed and all communities turned up for their workers? Wouldn't that be so nice? And it it got me thinking like. Like, wow, this is like a really positive thing that is. Not really. Talked about like, I mean, we talk about feeding people, but like what if workers were what were well fed? Like, I don't like healthcare workers. It's just it's been really nice and I love our community. I love our city. I love the organizations that have been organizing it. We're incredibly grateful. Yeah. They're fantastic. They're they're so good to us. I know that for those couple of weeks where we had food in our break room, I think we worked a lot better. Everybody was in like much better moods, shaky hands, you know? Yeah. We were all like really excited to like, see each other and talk to each other and talk about our days. Just over like actually good coffee. And it was just a huge morale boost to have the community supporting the workers. And then now we have the community coming to our Union rally saying we support you, we want you to get paid more, we want you to have better staff. And that is just like so necessary right now, because we need, we need the Community, we need everyone. What else can I listeners who are who are like want to help but are not in the industry do just to support you all? Well, I guess on on 2 levels like one is like like what can they do sort of in general in their communities and then two, specifically to help y'all with your fight with the hospital? We're not clinic. We're just a little clinic. Yeah, we're just a tiny little, tiny little guy. I know that for us specifically, I think do what you do best if you are a person who likes to make art. We love seeing your drawings. We love seeing like, your handwritten notes. If you're a person who makes a really good cup of coffee, or if you're a cafe who just wants to like, bring us coffee, we love coffee. If you're a bakery that wants to donate, like Donuts or, you know, cheesecakes, we will happily eat them. If you, yeah. If you want to like, send us a Bluetooth speaker so we can like listen to music during the day, whatever you do best. Is what we would love as long as it comes from like you, comes from your heart. Like we love weighted blankets and fluffy things and snacks and just. All of those things that come, like, from the heart make us feel like it's worth it, at least from the community. And things also that we don't have to think about because as beautiful as make your own Taco kits are, we still have to have time to make our own tacos. Tacos, yeah. So if if there's anything that you could just, like, throw at us and it's already, like, put together like, assembled has very little thought. Like a. A zombie or a toddler or a burnt out abortion worker can, you know, put two and two together. We'd love those too. And you could also follow our Union and there's actually a bunch of abortion care worker unions. We're not the only one. We are many. We are legion. So you could really follow any of us and just boost what we need because yeah, right right now the PFA Union like New York City, San Francisco is, is needing a lot of boosting with their what they're doing. Guttmacher Union needs a lot of love and support, but our Union, UE, Local 696, our social media. Is at PWP Union. Not to self promote but if you go on there there are videos of our rally and I need uterus shaped pinata if anyone wants to see us busted open. We busted open a uterus shaped pinata at our rally and as we brought up a a Union family child because it was it was the son of a local union member. We brought him up and we helped him smash the pinata, the uterus pinata and as he was swinging it was like, this is what we think about low wages. This is what we think about SCOTUS, this is what we think about understaffing and then candy just like burst out of it. It was like a normal birth, you know, glitter and candy pop out. Very realistic. Actually, abortions, too. People don't know this, but glitter always comes out during an abortion. Can confirm there's going to be there's going to be like three people who actually believe you. They're gonna they're gonna, like, tell their friend this and their friends gonna be like, what are you talking about? They're like, no, no, I heard it on a podcast and we're like, the cervix sprays glitter when you when you touch it. Dilating the cervix is really just opening it up so that it can have glitter come out. Yeah, I guess. Well, OK. So logistics wise, yeah, if you send me links, I will, we will put them in the episode description. Sweet. Yeah, and I. Yeah, I guess. Do you have anything else that you want to say? Umm. I don't think so. Other than like, thank you for having us. Yeah, of course. This is super fun. We had a great time. Yeah, me too. Yeah, it was good. I love talking about abortion. Oh yeah. Oh my God, me and Elizabeth on the phone, just gabbing away. And we'll we'll, like, be on 20 on a call 20 minutes, talking to like, someone who who needs help, and then we'll, like, get off and then we'll be gabbing about whatever for like 10 minutes and mostly tick tocks. But yeah, no, it's it's so important to that we can be platformed as, like abortion care workers, as union members, as people working in a stigmatized field during a crisis. It's very, it means so much. And it's meant a lot to me to see how many abortion episodes this podcast has. Like, you're really covering everything. Yeah, I was looking them up and I was like, that's that's it's every angle of abortion care, and I love it. We love to see my knowledge, too, and. Yeah, you're gonna run out of topics though, eventually, but you really should have an episode about the cervix glitter. So this will be our actually wait, are you full episodes actually booked? Maybe the 2nd April Fools episode? More people need to know about this phenomenon. I hate this. This has been naked. Happened here. You can find us in the places where you know where to find us, because we say this at the end of every episode. Yeah, thank you to you again. No problem. Thank you. 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 odd specials. Just download the beta MGM app today or go to bed. Gm.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 from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1888. 532-3500. Anderson Cooper earlier this year, while packing up my late mom's apartment and her things, I felt isolated and alone. Weighed down by grief, I began recording a series of deeply personal conversations with others about their experiences with loss. It helped me and I hope it'll help you. Whatever you're going through. All there is with Anderson Cooper listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your miraval matte courage already runs in your blood. 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. Oh, please, please help us 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. It could happen. Here is a podcast. Sometimes it's about good stuff and ways people can fix things. Sometimes it's about frightening stuff. Like today. Today's a scary episode. Joining me to scare everybody is Professor Calvin Norman. Calvin, how are you doing today? Oh, Robert, I. Do well some days but most days not. I work on climate change, invasive species, forest health issues that chronic waste disease. So more their problems with those things. OK well, actually last time we talked about climate change. Solve that so we're we're good there. That's all been solved. It turned that down, right? Yeah. We got the we got the eels fed. That was the problem. Oh yeah. Yeah. There's like a car company that's electric now. We're good. Yeah. When when nailing it. So I get we had you on the show once before to talk about. About the forest is bad. Uh, yeah, it's still bad. Still bad. Still a lot of problems in the forest, as the people who are watching their forests burn can probably say, although there's other problems than that. As we talked about in your episode, you didn't mean e-mail a while back. It took a bit for me to get my **** together, to have you back on, but it was a frightening e-mail about a disease sweeping through the country that could have massive effects on the lives of everybody listening to this. And it's not one of the diseases that you're all thinking about. I know there's a couple things that meet that decision rather than that. Like there's a couple of different diseases running unchecked throughout the United States at the moment and the world. We are not talking about either of the ones that are big in the news right now. We're going to talk about chronic wasting disease. Calvin, do you want to kind of introduce that concept to the people? Because this was not something I really I had heard of it, but I didn't. It was just kind of like, you know, animals have weird diseases, right? Cats get, you know, lymphoma or whatever. I never thought about it much as a as a thing that was a problem other than. A problem for some deer, but it is, it is quite an issue. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's if it stays in dear, I will be happy. Let's put it like that. Yeah. So we're going to actually like, do a little throwback to the past year. Watch, watch out everyone. Whole lot. So we're going to go back to the 90s. Alright, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get my shoulder pads on. I'm gonna get my X-Files poster stuck up on the wall. I'm gonna, yeah, vote for a serial sexual abuser. Well, that's that's every decade. OK. Sorry. So, so chronic wasting disease is a prime. And the reason we're going back to is a prion disease. And the reason we're going back to the 90s is to, to look at the the most, the biggest like reason anyone would have heard of a prion disease outside of like, you know, some like, you know, brain scientists and stuff and that's, you know, bovine bovine spongiform encephalopathy or more commonly known as mad cow disease. Yeah. So you know, Robert, I'm not sure how much you are aware of mad cow. It, it popped up in the US, in the. Mid 2000s. But it killed a bunch of people in England in the 90s. Yeah. Isn't there, like, there's still restrictions on, like, blood donation and stuff if you lived in England at a certain. Right? Like there's some weird **** like that. Yeah, you can't donate blood for that. It's a very good reason. We'll go into that in a second. Actually, I was in England not too long ago and I did not eat beef there because I've read too much about prions to mess around with that stuff. Yeah. I mean, thankfully here in America we have health Food Standards, unlike those filthy Brits, but yeah. Yeah, we had a scare. Canada had a scare. And we'll talk about the the repercussions of that later. But so the reason we're going back is we're gonna look at the most recent time prions have become mainstream. So what happened there? So let, let wait, let me just unfold this a little bit. That's a joke. You'll understand in 3 minutes, hopefully. So a prion, it's a protein in your brain. Now, I'm not a neurologist. I am a wildlife biologist at Forrester. So I'm not going to answer every question out there about. Brains and proteins and stuff like that. But what what the prion protein in your brain does is it moves copper around, which is important for cell stuff. I personally think that mankind should have never looked through a microscope, and everything at the cellular level is just heresy. We we shouldn't look at it all. No, I'm, I'm. I'm. I'm completely on board with you there. There's certain things we never should have studied in. Anything that involves a microscope is one of them. Oh yeah, you lost me there. A hand lens I'm good for. You can, like, see, like, small stuff, but microscopes. Audi 5000. OK. So, so in your brain you're moving around copper and stuff and it's important for like cell stuff. So we're gonna go back to high school biology for most folks. You know proteins building block of life important. So you your protein structure is dictated by the elements in it and how they're like arranged, you know, like stacked on top of each other. So that's that's basic, you know, high school biology, but then you know. As you get a little bit further in biology, you find out there's a little bit more complex. So proteins like, you know, all things in our real world are unfortunately not like in the textbook, and these are 3D and so they have like shapes and folds now. When folded correctly, it just prion protein operates normally. It just moves copper around, unfortunately, doesn't always, you know, sometimes it doesn't fold correctly. And when that happens, it doesn't move copper. And so brains have a little bit of an issue because they don't get copper to the right. And This is why all those truck stops sell those copper bands that you can put on your wrist to solve diseases. Right? It's to deal with that, yeah. You just keep that copper band on your rest. Sure. Solve that problem. Yeah. So. So what happens? When that happens, you get prion disease. There are some that evolve in that, just like they don't evolve because they're living. Yeah, they just pop up in nature. So like a sponge of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, mad cow graphics a little bit earlier, talk about in a second scrapy, feline spongiform and sephy, which comes from cats that ate meat that was infected with mad cow. And then there's couru. I think, yeah, that's the one cannibals get, right. Like this is famously why cannibals quote UN quote. Go crazy. Actually, a lot of cannibals were well aware that you don't eat meat from certain areas. But it is a thing. If you're going to eat people, be really careful about the spine. Don't eat brains and spines. Yeah, that's it. That's exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There's an in humans. It's called the spongiform antipathy. I'm going to explain the big word one second. It's called krumholtz yakov's disease. It was, yeah. Two Germans. Really neat stuff. Yeah. It's one of my favorite disease names because you just know you're in for some, like. Horrifying ****. When you when you see the, the that spelled out, you're like, well, that's got to be something bad. Yeah. Well, yeah. Luckily, like, you know, for two German guys like alive in the 30s. Yeah. Did good stuff like they do with before German doctors who weren't Nazis in that. Yeah. It seems like one of them died right before things like the, you know, things went out there and what great timing. Yeah. Yeah. OK. So, so I've been throwing around this word spongiform. Step allopathy. Mm-hmm. And then like you know, I change like the, you know bovine, feline, whatever. So it a spongiform means something looks like a sponge and it's apathy means brain. So your brain turns into a sponge and that's because you're not getting copper and so cell cells are falling apart and it your brain just doesn't work to be real simple. It's kind of like Alzheimer's. That's how like presents in humans, which is why it's really hard to figure out. And then when you want to determine that something has spongiform, it's apathy. You gotta cut the brain open and look at it. Under a microscope? Hell yeah, you do. And as you can imagine, that doesn't usually happen in people. You don't usually cut their brains open. And also in a lot of animals, you don't usually cut their brain open. Look at under microscope. Well, it's bad for them, right? Like, that's not. Yeah, it's always lethal, always a lethal sample. So that's the basics of what a prion disease is. And then when we saw it in England, what had happened was I got into cows. Cows got it from eating other cows that were fed back to them. And then it got to humans because we ate what we the Brits and the third. And that the 30s, in the 90s, eight cows that were infected with bovine spongiform antipathy, and you had to eat a good amount of it for it to build up in your brain. So, and what I mean by that is that we are Americans, right? Right. So not a problem for Americans, right. I just want to kind of like lay a foundation so we all understand what's going on. So what I mean by build up in your brain is like, you know, you get like 1-2 proteins in there, you're fine, it's OK proteins miss all the time it takes. You know, brains are big, especially in humans. So it takes a while for this to become a problem. But what happens is over time is 1, once you build up enough, you're get exposed to enough prions that are misfolded, like the prions in the brain start misfolding and then slowly your brain just starts, stops functioning correctly. Yeah, you know, it's like a chain, like a slow chain reaction. So that's the basics of of prion diseases and spongiform encephalopathies. Now we're talking about chronic wasting disease, which can be easily described as the deer equivalent of mad cow disease. And like, when you see a lot of stuff about it, people just, it's like called like zombie deer because, like, deer get weird when they are like, dying from chronic wasting disease like the name chronic waste disease comes from because they like wasting away. They're like drooling and also drinking a lot. They act weird, they look dumb, they just do weird stuff. And so people call it zombie like deer, but they're not. They're just infected with a prion disease in their brains falling apart. It's like, it's like a person getting Alzheimer's. Like, you know, they do weird stuff. My grandma has Alzheimer's is terrible. Awful. Don't get it. Yeah, yeah. My grandma had the same thing that Robin Williams got, the Louie body dementia. And it's pretty much the same thing, right? Like, you can just see somebody kind of falling apart piece by piece, but that probably does make the deer easier to hunt. Yes. And it also makes it really easy to identify what it's an. It's advanced stages in deer. So we got kind of an understanding of about it. But like, you know, why do we care? We are people we are not, dear. Right. Robert, are you a dear? Not right now. I mean I have been to a furry convention, but but I didn't commit. So we we all got our things. Well, so I I hunt deer. Robert, I think you hunt. I don't know. I'm getting. I'm getting ready for for hunting. Season as we as we speak. Yeah. So, so. Lots of people hunt deer and they eat deer, which is which is cool and it's fine and it's important to do in, you know, certain ecosystems. I mean, in most of the US, like deer have been haunted by various, you know, humans for as long as people have been here. Yeah. So, you know. It's it's a natural thing to do. Yeah. It's very normal for people to hunt deer and it's very normal. And also there are areas where we killed everything else that hunts deer. Yeah. So there's, there's anyway, whatever, we don't need to defend deer hunting here. I I've done that. Hours of webinars on the importance of deer management. It's it's a real fun subject to go into, but we care about that. We're talking about chronic waste disease, fun stuff. So we care about that. We care about chronic wasting disease because it impacts all members of the servant family or deer. So that's, you know, elk, moose. I just learned the Europeans. Moose, European elk. Wild. Arrogant. Arrogant. Yeah. Look at a moose. Look at an elk. Super different. Wildly different animals. Like, they're both very big, but they're also different sizes. It's like the difference between, like, an armored car and a tank, like a ******* moose is like, it's basically an elephant in terms of its footprint. Like, Oh yeah, they're so cool to see, but so enormous. Yeah, yeah, the impact it can get in all. Service that we know of. It's. And, you know, people like people like to see servants. They like to hunt servers. We'd like to do it in different countries. They're delicious. They have the best meat. Yes, absolutely. So much better than ******* beef. So much better than pork, in my opinion. Like, I ******* love venison. Oh yeah, moose. I don't know if you had moose. I've had it once. Moose and elk. Wonderful meats. That's actually a big thing. Joe Rogan and I talked about when we were hanging out is alchemy. He's a big elk meat guy. That's good. I I've, I've never, I've never haunted an elk. I've put in for the lottery every year. But it's hard to get hard to get elk tags in Pennsylvania. I know it's a real surprise. Yeah. You know what? I'll go ahead and reach out now. It's easy to get the tags here, but it is hard unless you have a friend with land that Elks are on to actually hunt them as as much as. Yeah. Anyway, if you've got land in Oregon and you want me to hunt. Hulk on it hit us up. Yeah. Yeah, so so, you know, as we could see, this is a clear demand for services and different products. And so in like the 50s and 60s people started, you know, they're like, well, you know, sometimes you're not always good at hunting and not everyone wants to hunt. So they start trying to domesticate and farm them, right. Servants famously like running away. I've seen a lot of deer tails, Robert. You hunt. I'm sure you have. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of, like, tracks that you can tell in, like, with **** or something near them that like, oh, man, I ******* missed that *** ** * ***** by like, 30 seconds. Yeah, yeah. And if if you even if you drive around, you'll see just, they're like, oh, car, I'm out of 5000. They don't need to be here. Sometimes they go across the road and hit them. That's the story. Good for you, mate, in some states. Yeah, you know, sometimes it's Bruce to heck, but yeah, that is how I get to eat some moose. Someone hit it with a car? Hell yeah. But so they don't like being in captivity at all. Not a fan, not a fan. And so they're very, they're very stressed in captivity and then like in the 60s in Colorado. On the Colorado University of Colorado, on their deer farm, they noticed like the deer were getting skinny and weird. And that's how that's where chronic wasting disease was discovered, because we tried to ******* farm an animal. That's not OK. Awesome. Love it. Yeah, yeah. There there are some folks who think that it's a natural thing, but doesn't look like it, doesn't look like it. No reports of it being around from before the 60s. And as we laid out, lots of people ate a lot of deer and saw a lot of deer. For the 60s, so probably came from farming servants. So then since then there's the deer. Farming is not really regulated. And also deer are not really easy to keep in captivity. They like to jump and like when fences blow down, and so they'll get out of captivity. And like also other deer they like come up to, you know, captive deer. And they're like, yo, what's up with you though? You're in a cage, huh? And so you can actually see him. They interact through the fence, and that's probably how it got out of containment is through. Interactions and you know, services being spread around the country and so now chronic waste disease is found in 30 states, I think 4 Canadian provinces, Scandinavia and Korea. So I think it's four or five countries. So, so it's out there, it's out there and it's infecting served populations across the US and across the across Canada the world. It's real bad. It's real bad. So if you're seems like a problem, yeah, yeah. So if you're a deer, what happens is you either interact with to pick up chronic wasting disease, we'll go through the deer kind of the progression and deer. To pick it up, you either interact with the deer that has chronic wasting disease. So you go up and smell them. You look them a little bit like deer groom each other. You know they the animals. You eat a plant that another deer pooped on. Now doesn't have to have pooped on that plant. So, like, this is a deal. It's affected with chronic chronic waste disease, can poop in the soil and the plant will pick up the prion from the soil. And then. Yeah. And then another you can come in. It can just spread. Yeah. Cool. That's some real scary ****. Yeah. Yeah. And it can also, you can also pick it up from water, but it has. Spreading in water is really tough. So those are your main. Factors, as you know, deer to deer and environment to deer. And that's why it's pretty tough to control once it gets into a state. Because to destroy it, you have to dig up the soil and you have to burn it at 1000 degrees for an hour or you have to expose, expose it to bleach for an hour to destroy the prion because it's not a living thing, it's a protein. Yeah. I mean, and there are a couple of towns that I would be OK doing that too, but on a nationwide scale that seems difficult to pull off. I could think of a state that starts with an O in an age that I wouldn't mind. Are you saying, you know, if we just, we're like, you know, we're just trying, why not give it a shot, right? Yeah. It's just Ohio. Come on. It's not, it's not a real estate. So in deer, what we're going to, we're going to say just in the deer world, we're not going to get scary yet. So in in deer this slowly builds up throughout the population and you get worse case scenarios like in South Western Wisconsin where like 50 to 75% of the deer harvested bucks harvested a year are positive for chronic wasting disease. And because it's an always fatal, you know, brain disease, you're looking at population collapse and extinction. Great. Yeah, because it remains in the soil. Like, yeah, it's it's around for at least two probably more years. But the studies we've done only two years because these are not fun things to study. Yeah. People have died studying these diseases from prions, like when they, when they've done work on like, BSE lab tech actually pricked herself with the tool and got CJ CJD and died from it. So, Oh my God, yeah. They're not fun to study really, you know, that's this is like we're talking like Martian suit style. Study stuff. It's not fun. Cool. So like this. Yeah. The stand level ****. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, so like, you know it without, you know, when chronic waste disease is not addressed into your populations like in Southeastern or southwestern Wisconsin, you're looking at extinction level stuff. Because all of the deer that are out there are most, you know, 75% of them have chronic wasting disease or at some point in getting chronic waste disease, which just means that they're putting more and more of in the environment and they're more like. If you're not infected deer, you're, you know, 3/4 your buddies are infected, so you're going to get chronic waste disease and be dead within two or three years. So you're looking at extinction of all services in that area for some amount of time until it comes out of the soil. That's bad. That was a problem. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. As we have established, neither of us are deer. So why do we care? I mean, outside of, like, the fact that deer are pretty important to the ecology of local areas and that that collapse is bad. Yeah. Why? What is what is the like, what is the risk to human beings beyond that? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We put it all aside all the time, right. This is like, this is the world. We don't really care about that. Yeah, I I deal with. What happens you pretty college aside, so I'm super used to that. That being done. So the risk is if it jumps into humans. Because all of a sudden you have a disease that's really hard to detect, that can live in the environment, that can be transferred from not just spinal fluid, but like if you eat a lot of infected meat from deer, if you eat some of the organs, you can get at a high risk. So, so. You know. All of a sudden you you have a large portion of the population that could be exposed through, you know, direct consumption. But the other thing is, is brians are really hard to kill. I said. They live in soil. They also live on steel surfaces, glass surfaces, every like surface that they've tested, like trying to kill prions, like putting prions on, seeing how long they live there, hang out there. There was some surgical equipment that was infected with a prion gave someone chronic wasting chronic CJD three years after using it on someone who had CJD. Great. Yeah. And that's like you know surgical grade stainless steel stuff so like not supposed to hold things gets like cleaned but not like super like not prime level clean because I didn't know at the time. So there's, there's the risk is. Is is it good potentially develop into a human is something that impacts humans. Like right now it hasn't. We do have eight different variations of it out there in the landscape, and as more and more do you are exposed to it. What happens? We get more and more variations of it because that's just what happens in nature. Yeah. But as we're all becoming familiar with, with COVID, yeah, it keeps changing because it nothing has been done to stop it from spreading. Yeah. And like the only thing you can do to stop it is just like, reduce deer numbers you can't really eliminate out of the landscape because it's in the soil. Yeah. Yeah. And it right you can't you can't test live deer for it. You gotta kill him to do it. There's they are developed, there are some tests being developed to determine if animals are infected that are faster. But I, you know, it's still, it's still in progress. So that's called RT quick. It's a protein test that's that's much faster than current testing, but it's still in progress. So the thing that really scares me is the other. Well the other thing about the mixed chronic wasting disease is different from, you know. BSE mad cow diseases mad cow was in cows that were in, you know, captive spaces, right? And. You know, you know where the cows are. Yeah. It's a problem. But it's a problem that you can like, with enough fire and or other tools eradicate. Yeah. Yeah. And it didn't, it didn't seem to be very president soil. And it was like you had to feed dead cows to dead cow or to get the live cows to get infected. Chronic waste disease is a different beast. O the real scary potential here is that it's in soil, so it can get into plants. And we know that plants get transmitted chronic waste disease, other deer. So it could, you know, transmit it to other animals, like things that eat plants. You know, for example, you and I eat plants. If you're an American, you eat corn in a couple of different forms. Deer love hanging out in cornfields. Oh yeah. So there is an exposure vector right there and it's, you know. When you're when you're processing corn and corn syrup, let's say you take a bunch of corn from a bunch of places, smush it up, grind it up. You know, you do a bunch of stuff to it in on steel surfaces and you don't get to 1000 degrees for an hour, so all of a sudden you have like a case of soda that could be infected with chronic wasting disease. Oh cool. There's the potential, the big potential damage if this **** jumps to people, which it hasn't yet. I want to be really clear about that so we're not causing it, but if it does, the containment thing is like. Then an order of magnitude beyond ******* COVID **** right? Like it's because it's spread through the soil, it gets into the ******* basic ingredients of food, and we we simply the way that we process that stuff isn't set up in a way that will eliminate it right now. Yeah, and I would tell you, you really can't on a large scale like. Process anything. That and make it safe from, you know. Right. Like chronic wasting disease. You have to like you know if you if you like cut up like let's let's let's go back to like assuming like you know it's just in the you you're handling an affected dear. If you cut that deer up, you use your knife, you got to put it in bleach for an hour and then you can come back to it. Bleach is really corrosive. So eventually destroy your knife. So there's there's your end thing there. But you can also go through your hands, you know, touching it, you can get it. Yeah. So this is the scary part there. I mean like you as you pointed out and I start. I really totally failed on my part dimension. It hasn't jumped to humans. Yes, you're not we are not saying that you are going to get the disease tomorrow. That is not the but it also like isn't like there's nothing that says it can't jump to humans. Right, right. Right. Exactly. So there have been a number of like three or four. There are two studies. I know there's a third one I've heard about looking at if you know human like animals can get chronic wasting disease. So that's macaques, which are kind of monkey. Uh, and when they have been fed chronic, you know, meat infected with chronic waste disease. They were exposed to blood, they were fed it, they were exposed to blood and some of it was just injected right into the back of their brain stem. The monkeys got chronic wasting disease. So it looks like it's possible. And then also hamsters which are also used as a human stand and have also been fed meat infected with chronic wasting disease and they were able to get it and they really get it from a number of different sources. There are some really like fun and by fun I mean scary papers out there about like all the ways you like chronic wasting disease moves around and survives and the the studies about like using human standards are not always fun. To read, I know, and this is. This is definitely one of those things where it's like. Yeah. What is the other option other than. Yeah, you have to try it on ****. That's. Yeah. That's that's very unsettling. But like, yeah. What else are you going to do? Like, have you. This is something you do have to know. Yeah. Yeah. And the other problem with prions is detection when it comes to, like, you know, different species because it presents, like, Alzheimer's. And so the only way you know that something got a prion disease is if you cut their head, you if you cut his head open, you look at its brain. So when and in humans, it can take a long time for these symptoms to present. I think, like, if you look it up on Wikipedia, it says, like the average, like, age detection is 60 years and then we're good. Fine. Yeah. Yeah. The researchers that I've spoken to say it takes like 40 years for enough friends to build up on in your brain for it to like, you know, start to show symptoms. So it, you know. If it is to jump, if it jumps the species barrier, the first time we detect it will probably not be the first time anyone has been infected. Yeah, it will already have spread quite widely and then people will. Yeah, hopefully not. But yeah. So that's the scary part. That's the human side scary part. But, you know, we don't always have to get human side scary sometimes. You know, things work in, you know, monkeys and hamsters that don't work in humans. And we've cured cancer, you know, hundreds of times in mice, right? Yeah. And in humans, it's a lot harder to do. Is we're not mice, we're not monkeys, we're human. So it doesn't always work like that. But the the other scary part is when it comes to agriculture and the impact on agriculture, so pigs can pick up chronic wasting disease there, what's called a prion amplifier. So they can pick it up, they can in like, you know, hangs out in them just finally doesn't kill pigs at all. But they can. Nothing kills pigs but people. Yeah, it's true. That's the truth right there. That's the truth. Yeah. So, so, you know, if, if it, you know, as people, you know, governments become more aware of it and more concerned about it there. There's the real possibility of, you know, agricultural exports getting hammered. And, you know, exporting it because, you know, other countries you know are concerned about spreading it. So right now, you know it's pretty hard to well, it's getting increasingly harder to export. Live, dear, is it? Probably should be. Probably. Farming service is not a great idea for their health and ours. But, you know, also there's the concern about spread. So if if chronic wasting disease is, you know, crosses from humans to cows like we've seen, you know, like if, you know BSE just pops up in some cows, yeah it, you know, that might be from chronic waste disease and the impact of that is going to be huge. I mean Canada, they were shot out of the Japanese market for 14 years, like Japanese beef market for 14 years following a case of mad cow disease in 2006. I got left back in two years ago and the the studies and that was like a couple of billion dollars in damage. To the Canadian beef market, so you know. And that was BSE, which does not do it doesn't transfer via plant. So imagine it's the US, you know, agricultural export market got shut down for plants. That, like economic damage, is incalculable, yeah. Yeah, so that's the scary part about chronic wasting disease. Those are all the scariness. This one keeps me up at night. This is frightening and important for people to be aware of because it's a serious threat. Are there things that can be done at the moment like is there a is there an actionable. You're not just like not on a what can our audience do? But like is there a thing that could potentially be done by, you know, states or or the federal government over that would help this? Like is there actually do we do, do, do we have any ******* idea of like what could be done to make it less likely for the kind of nightmare scenarios that we've alluded to to occur? Here, yeah. So the best kit, you know, the best things we can do are to, you know, hunt deer, reduce deer population. So that way you're, you know, taking deer out that might be infected. And when you hunt deer in most areas that infected you, there's a you test them for free with your state or various authorities. And so then those carcasses are destroyed so you can remove, you know, disease off the landscape that way. And then by also just hunting deer, you reduce population levels. And so you make it, you make the disease loading in the landscape lower and it less likely to spread. You know, both to other deers and then potentially vector to other animals exposed to other animals. Excuse me, New York is a great example of this. They had a case of chronic wasting disease pop up, took it out really, you know, haunted that area hard. I think that they even brought in professionals and did some real serious deer reduction and they haven't had a case since. So, you know, in areas where it pops up, you can just hammer it with, you know, lethal removal of animals, harvesting, whatever, and you can prevent spread. And you cannot you can really not get back. The other thing we gotta do is we need to be very serious about. We need to take the the captive servant industry. So I've used the word serve a couple of times. I never defined it. My apologies. Servants are members of the deer family. So elk, moose, yeah, sika, deer, all those guys, red deer, fallow deer, whatever, bunch of them. We we need to make sure that we're very closely regulating that industry because of the potential spread. There was a farmer in Wisconsin that I sent like almost 400 different infected deer to like 197 different. Farms. Over the course of like 4 years. So you know, it's regulation is incredibly important and it's it's rarely you know, it's not really enough on most farms, my home state here we have, you know, if you make less than $10,000 from your service farm, you don't have to report it, you don't have to track it or anything. That's a real problem because we are experiencing expanding chronic waste disease. So regulation, you know, that's not fun. Maybe we just shouldn't be farming servants. Yeah, that's bad. Yeah. I don't disagree with you at all there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not not a fan. Yeah, don't ethical standpoint too. There's there's many. I I raise a several different I raise bunnies and chickens and goats and I help raise sheep, uh, for for meat, uh. There's plenty of different things that you can raise for meat that are used to it because we've been raising them for meat for like 10s of thousands of ******* years. Like the sheep I have are angoras, which I think go back like 20-30 thousand years. Like they're they're they're they're meant for it. We have changed them into animals that are supposed to be raised. For meat, don't take new animals and try to farm them like that because it seems like it causes problems. Yeah, well, this is a really neat there's some really neat work out there about the about domestication stress and like, you know, domestic kid sheep don't care about being domesticated, whereas, like they've compared like domesticated sheep to wild sheep. Wild sheep die really quick when you put him in domestication from the stress. But yeah, like you said, maybe, maybe we don't. We don't play around with some of these animals to try to force them to do human what we humans want them to do, you know? It's OK. Animals to just be animals. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah. So the other thing, there was a large amount of money set aside and I can't remember which legislative package was. They got defeated a while back. That put money towards chronic wasting disease research. So you know, legislators and states can be, you know, legislatures and governments be taken seriously. Putting money towards it right now, it's is not a lot of money going towards it because it's like, yeah, it says zombie deer thing. Who cares? Yeah. You could get into this is not just a problem for deer hunters. This could be a real issue for everybody. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I mean, it's kind of like a larger symptomatic thing, too. We don't really take environmental problems that seriously. No. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. The scary thing about this is we don't treat the environmental problems seriously when everyone saying, hey, the consequence is that, like, all of Florida will be uninhabitable, right? Like, we don't take that seriously. So when you're saying this is much wonkier, which is definitely a barrier to effective action, yeah, I did a legislative testimony about chronic wasting disease. Couple of months back, no one was paying attention, but, you know, it made me feel good. I was doing something. Ohh. He was a fun thing about Florida and chronic waste disease. So Florida, you know, full of invasive species. Yeah, obviously it has chronic waste disease. Yeah, that's. Come on. This Florida, obviously you pick up a new disease. Yeah. You know what else is in Florida, huh? Colonies of macaques. There's like 2 colonies of Wildcat. I was unaware of that. Yeah. Was it because people were on ill advisedly, keeping pets? I think one of them started that way and I think one of them was like some monkeys that would have been like kept protesting or zoo stuff escaped. But there are at least like 2 like colonies of like macaques in Florida, which also has chronic waste disease. So, you know, there's, I don't think the chronic, they're like near the Everglades. I don't think chronic wasting disease is made that far South of Florida. So there's a there's a fun possibility of the. Lab experiments under highly controlled conditions getting you know performed in in the wild setting. We could see if if macaques could pick up chronic waste disease in the wild. There's a there's a fun research project for someone who you know is able to handle dark sides of things. Yeah. Thank you, Florida. But more importantly, thank you Flo Ryda. And a lot of people are unaware of this was just a couple of years ago in the Eurovision Song Awards representing. San Marino so. You know, 22nd overall. Not bad. Yeah, that's pretty good. better than I can do. Umm, it is icing out of 200. Good day. Yeah. And also you are not technically a citizen of the Republic of San Marino. No, but yet they offered me citizenship. I would consider it. Absolutely. Who wouldn't want to be a citizen of the most serene Republic of San Marino? Yeah, I I I've looked at Andorra. So, you know, it would be a really, we're looking at European micronations. I mean, if Pandora came knocking versus San Marino, obviously San Marino is getting kicked to the curb. I love that. Like, dual like government between the President of France and like the Pope of or not the Bishop. It's like a Bishop of like somewhere in Italy. Yeah. It's very funny. Yeah, you gotta love those weird little micro republics. Huge fan. Yeah. So, OK, well, this has been great. Yeah, I'm glad this is happening. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool and fun. Yeah, I'm not usually fun to hang out with when I talk about work stuff. Yeah, I know. But it's like, it's again, people need to be aware of this. Like, this is one of those. Just in the same way that like, people were talking about for years prior to COVID. Hey, we we actually really need to be aware. Like a coronavirus could break out and it'll spread really quickly due to the way that global treffle and transit and stuff works, and it'll be almost impossible to control. You know, we should, we should build structures into our societies to make it easier for us to deal with a coronavirus, which we didn't do, but maybe we'll do it this time. Yeah. Well, what makes that really fun? I just got a bit of build off you for a second. You, you've fallen into my trap here. The same people who were writing about, like MERS and predicted, you know, I can't remember which came first, MERS or SARS. I can't remember which one. The same people who predicted that and then who are also predicting COVID are also talking about. Chronic wasting disease. So it's like, you know, I really hope you don't get to be right on this one. Yeah. There. I just want you to lose one of these times here, bud. You're a nice guy. Real smart guy. But can you be wrong occasionally just for just for like, you know, old time sake? Just be nice to me. Yeah. Well. There we go. That's been a fun episode. Everybody have a good time. Thank you. Calvin, do you have anything you want to like plug before we roll out here? Yeah, I would like to plug trees. Trees real neat. Try that. We are supported by trees. Not the plant, but a club in Dallas that I took ecstasy at once. That's all the primary sponsor. I'm physically supported by trees, might, might, computers on wood. So ohh excellent. Yeah. Is that also good? Yep. Trees like to plug. Also getting outside. That's good for you. Do that occasionally. Get outside for sure. Yeah. The tweet tweets from from birds. I I don't do the Twitter, so that's not from Twitter. Yes, definitely. Yeah, those are things I'd like to plug. Yeah, replacing the tweets from Twitter that you encounter with tweets from birds is probably among the best things you can do for your mental health. Unless it's this one bird that lived outside of my apartment in Los Angeles. But anyway, well, Calvin, thank you for coming on. I appreciate your expertise, even though it's always. Deeply unsettling. That's gonna do it for all of us here today. It could happen here, by which I mean you and me. Football is back, and better GM 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 odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to bed. Gm.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 from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1888. 532-3500. Anderson Cooper earlier this year, while packing up my late mom's apartment and her things, I felt isolated and alone. Weighed down by grief, I began recording a series of deeply personal conversations with others about their experiences with loss and helped me and I hope it'll help you. Whatever you're going through. All there is with Anderson Cooper listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You're mirabar mate. Courage already runs in your blood. 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 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. Oh boy, it is behind the IT happened could here. I'm Evans Robert podcast song hello. Who else is on the call? What are we doing? Where are we? It it it's it's it's me. It's Christopher Wong. I'm gonna talk a lot this episode. There's also other people here. You are. Now, before we get into that, I should note that we we're all just looking at the latest episode of Podcast Magazine, which of course we all read regularly. That's. Just I do like that to describe you as as. They they describe you in a few funny ways. Actually. Yes, they do. It's a list of the most powerful people in podcasting. It's got me, obviously, Trevor Noah and Joe Rogan, all the greats on on page 47 we have Robert Evans who, and they do say that he has also undertaken an ambitious daily series called it could happen here, that take us on some of the weightiest issues and problems facing policymakers around the world. I I I will say this. If you are policymaker and you have ever taken a policy suggestion from us, you have a legal obligation to like light your own office on fire with a Molotov. I do like that. Robert Evans. No, don't listen to Chris do it policymakers. I do like that Robert Evans is right above the serial creators. So that's that is nice. That is, I'm above Trevor Noah. I mean, I don't, I literally don't think it's like it listed because there is no way in in the list. Ben Shapiro is above Joe Rogan and that's just not, not accurate to the to the to the to the the way the industry functions. But it's a very silly list anyway. It's been fun. Been through our latest issue of our favorite of our favorite podcast magazine. Podcast magazine of course. Made by podcast News Daily where you can get all your news about podcasts, the thing that I I totally knew about. I've I've known about this clearly for longer than 15 minutes. Actually, that's not true. I've known about it for longer than. 8 minutes, maybe 12. Yeah. It's an amazing photo of Robert he was happy to get. Yep, it was happy to get in some fine reading today. So anyway, what's what's what's this? What's their episode actually about? That's a great question. Power rating episode. Yeah, yeah, we're, we're, we're, I don't even have anywhere to go with that. No, the thing the episode is actually about is heat waves and very specifically a heat wave in China that has been going on for why this is day seven as a recording. This is day 72, I think. By the time we go out, goes out, it will probably be like day 74. Yeah, and this is. And an incomparable heat wave. I'm just going to read this from Axios. The extreme heat and drought that has been most roasting a vast swath of southern China for at least 70 days straight has no parallel in modern record keeping in China, or anywhere else around the world for that matter. Now, OK. So that sounds bad, right. But it's actually worse than that because, OK. So if if if if you were to read that you, you you might believe that this heat wave is just affecting southern China and that's like not true. It's also affecting northern China. It is affecting like most of China. It's like affecting almost like most people alive like it is. It is 900 million people now which is like Chris, quick question is that a lot? So OK, so if if if you rank. All the countries in the world, right? The people affected by this heat wave would be the third largest country in the world, only behind China and India. OK, so that's it. That's several peoples. It's it's fun. Is it more people than the British people who have been logging on to post about it being like 85 degrees and then dying like I do love. One of the things that's keeping me alive during this ugly summer is like all of the photos of British people just getting as red as possible because they think that tanning means burning. 80% of the surface of your body you. It's hard for me to explain how difficult it was for me to comprehend that in California they won't serve you if you have your shirt off, because it is a national tradition in Britain to take off your shirt and get as much sunlight as possible in a few days, or if you're getting into a fist fight as well. Witnessed a number of folks pull their shirts off and fights in London. Yeah. It's it's part of our natural heritage patrimony. It's it's a beautiful country. But please continue, Chris. Yeah. OK. So so, you know, to get a sense of like the stakes of this. Right. So. OK. And like the just the sheer scale of this because 900 million people is an amount of people that like we like is incomprehensible. Like that's a number that's too large. So, OK, Sichuan province, right. This is this is. One province that is being affected by this this province has 83 million people in it. This is the entire combined population of California, Texas, Indiana, and New York City. Here's here's from France 24 about what's happening here. Since July this year, the province has faced the most extreme high temperatures, the lowest rainfall in the corresponding. In history and the highest power load in history, local authorities said. So it is hotter than it has ever been. It is drier than it has ever been except and and this is the fun part. This is the similar similar was happening in Texas and I think. Yeah, well, I'm Texas. Probably best example of this. So, OK, so it's really, really, really unbelievably dry, except for when there's giant flash floods and they've killed like 22 people already have died from the flash floods in different province. But. Yeah, it is unbelievably bleak. One of the big things that's happening is that the Yangtze River is. It's like the lowest anyone has ever seen it who's like if anyone alive has ever seen it, it's the lowest we have recorded measurements of because. Like, and this is everything that's happening here. Like there is no record of it ever being this bad. And this is a real problem because. Particularly in social one because. 80% of this province's power is drawn from hydroelectric. And, you know, it turns out I it's it's really bad if the rivers that you are relying on for your hydroelectric power are basically drying up. And like, there's there's pictures of like, like, you can go find pictures, there are pictures of the Yangtze that like, it looks like a riverbed on Mars. Like it is just just completely dry. Like it's like dry cragged stuff. It's. Really good. Again, this is just to kind of bring out how worldwide this problem is. We're seeing pieces of this everywhere else, right? Like Texas, which is also in a horrible drought, has been having flash floods that have been disastrous recently because when it's been super dry for a while and you have these, these heavy rains, it's it's a huge ******* problem. And you've got riverbeds drying up all across the southwest and things like Lake Mead getting low enough that hydroelectric power isn't going to be reliable in a huge chunk of it like this. Again, because it's important not to distract from like what's happening in China, but because it's important like this is this is everybody. This is everybody. It's happening industry, right? Yes. Yes. In India all over, yeah. Yeah. And and you know, OK. So the, the way from China, like there's been very, very little English coverage of it. And the thing everyone focuses on is the fact that like the the power outages, well, the, the, the, the, the reduced ability to generate power and the fact that everyone has to turn on the air conditions to not like literally die is, you know, it's wreaking havoc on China's. Productive capacity since such one has like. There, there. There's an enormous, like industrial base there that, you know, produces stuff from everything from like Tesla to Apple. And this is what the, the sort of the Anglophone media cares about, right? Like everything, almost everything written about the heat wave is about its effect on like supply chain disruption, disruption to like semiconductor production and like batteries for electronics and so on and so forth. And I do not give a **** about this, and the reason I don't give a **** about this is because the actual human impact of this is just sort of unfathomable and. Media outlets. We're talking about it like, don't. Seem to be paying attention to it at all. So what? While I was originally OK, so when I was originally writing part of this episode, I went and like looked back at weather data for Shanghai. And so, OK, when I was writing this on August 23rd, on that day it was 103 in Shanghai, like 2 weeks before that it was 111. And I found out that from July 30th to August 20th. The like the the the high temperature like the the daily high temperature like did not go below 100. On the 21st it finally rained and that dropped the temperature to merely 94. I think either tomorrow, today or tomorrow I think it it will go below 90. This is at night as well or no, this is, this is this is the temperature of the day, but the temperature in the night aren't going below like 70 either. Then a lot of times in the 80s or 90s and and you know the the temperature at night does just for people who are not aware of like heat. One of the things that's most important for like the survivability of a heat wave is whether or not it gets cool at night because you can survive pretty hot temperatures during the day if you're able to cool your body down at night. It's one of the like one of the saving graces the Pacific Northwest had during its heat waves. Yeah and and this is, this is a real like so trunking which is an enormous at each it has 9 million people like regularly in the city it's trunking, it's the city is also the municipal like government. There's a whole sort of complicating there, but like the municipality of Chongqing is 32 million people in it. They had a night a couple I think a couple of weeks ago that was 94.8 degrees. And which is again like that is a night that is significantly hotter than the average summer day. And you know, I mean, like, I want to go back to Shanghai for just like a second because like. Shanghai I I looked this I I looked this up. Shanghai has not had a day where the high has been below 89 degrees for two consecutive days since mid June. It has been over 90 degrees every single day like without two days back-to-back. It wasn't that hot since mid June. Umm, and you know, OK. So like, the, the effect, this is having enormous effects. One of the big ones, this is the most notable ones, is like basically like any excess power usage that a city can have just getting shut off. There's been a lot of, there's been a lot of stuff where, like, businesses aren't allowed to open before like 4:00 PM because it's literally just too hot and you can't deal with electricity load. And yeah, like, you know, the other, the other problem here, again, is like it's not cooling off at night and if it's not cooling off at night. Yeah, like this. Is this the thing that kills people? And so I was one of the things I want to talk about this is just like looking at this, looking at what this looks like on like a very, very granular individual level. Because this stuff also just. Sort of gets ignored. There is a really horrible story in six tone, which is like. It's hard to describe them, so 6 tone is a state media outlet, but. They're like, I don't know you. I guess you consider them like they're like the left wing state media outlet. Which means that like they they have somewhat more like editorial independence than like something like China Daily or like a lot of the other state-run things. And they like they criticize the government a lot more than most of the sort of state-run outlets. And they did this story about a migrant worker who was working at a freight depot about like this is this is depot about like 2 1/2 hours outside of Shanghai. And OK so he he he's he's working and. It is, you know, it is. It is unbelievably hot. I think. I think the last day that he's working here it's 104 degrees and that night it only cooled off to 84. Here's from 6 tone about sort of just the conditions that people are working in here. On the hottest days, the temperature of the carriages is at least 50 degrees Celsius, which is 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Says you yet? Dong, a worker from Jiangxi and other inland province. It feels like you're on fire. Standing here around noon, his employer and outsourcing agency hands out heat stroke prevention drugs, which he takes twice a day. At the freight depot, managers sit in air conditioned rooms, but workers like him rest under trees. The office is not for us, you says. Now, OK, in theory, under Chinese law, if if it hits 104 degrees, outdoor work is supposed to immediately stop and you're supposed to move everyone indoors and like, give them water and stuff. Because it turns out if you're working like a hard manual labor job outside and 104, you might die. But you know you're and you're supposed to get paid heat breaks and like, you know, as as anyone who is familiar with, for example, how American farm labor works. You know what happens about to happen next. It turns out that you know, OK, so you can take a break, but your employers won't pay you for it because, like, they don't like who's who's who's going to, who's going to actually force them to do it. Jeong who stood the the the work of the story is about. You know, is extremely poor. His family is poor. He's trying to support a family like back home because again, he's he's a migrant worker and he you know, he he can't he can't afford to take a break on his shift. He doesn't die. And so he he literally collapses on the job and then gets back up and finishes his work, and he tries to cool down by, like, laying in his tiny, young unairconditioned apartments with, like, an electric fan pointed at his head. And he died on a bed that was held up by two broken cinder blocks, making maybe $4.00 an hour. Ohh. Yeah. And you know there's paradise. Yeah and and I mean the you know the thing about this right is so in theory he's working for a for a state owned company, right. But you know as as we talked about like a little bit in the sort of quote earlier, she's not actually working for the state owned firm. What he's working for is one of these like labor agencies which are these like sort of contracting things that allow you to actually get a job. But you know what happens is that the state owned firms like outsource labor to the to these contracting firms. And the contracting firms just like pick people up and bring them to the site. But this means he doesn't have a contract. And the problem is if you don't, if you don't have a contract, right, you can't get any government benefits. You can't get insurance. And it turns out this matters because, you know, China, China has like a payout, right? They're supposed to pay to families when you know if if if someone dies in the job. But, you know, it's almost impossible to collect, especially if you don't have a contract. It is. It is almost impossible to to get this thing. And, you know, like this is this is how like most of the Chinese economy works. The Chinese journal Chuang calculated that in. Dunk one, which is one of like China's big industrial cities. If if companies actually paid out the insurance benefits they were legally required to payout, it would cut corporate profit by 50% and bankrupt like most of the companies. Working here so you know the entire economy is based on this. And. John's family drives like 350 miles to the city where he died and starts like harassing government officials and bosses for like literally weeks. They are trying to get people to like, hey, you know, will you pay out the insurance money you're legally required to pay us and they refuse, like. The local officials were like won't even give them like, surveillance footage of like, what? Like of of him on the job dying. And, you know, after after like several weeks of this, like four or five weeks, they're finally able to get 1/6 of the money they're supposed to get if you die. If someone dies under sort of like they're able to get 1/6 of the money that you're supposed to get a Chinese law if one of your family members dies in the workplace. And, you know, I'm focusing on this story because it's it's one of the few stories that we have directly about sort of the sheer magnitude of the suffering this heat wave is is is causing. And part of part of what's going on here is that we don't know what the death toll to heat wave is. There's there's nothing about it, right. You'll you'll see a couple of reports I'll talk about like two or three heat related deaths, but it's it is literally impossible that there there are that few deaths. There, there there was a study in the journal Lancet that was looking at uh, heat related deaths in China over the last 30 years and it showed that like heat related deaths have died, have increased by a factor of four since 1990. And you know, so there was another heat wave in China that was like pretty bad in 2019 and they they calculated that 26,800 people have died from heat related deaths. Jesus. And you know, and again that that that heat wave, the 2019 heat wave was pretty bad this heat wave. Like? It has just utterly destroyed every single record that heat waves set like it. It is in like its own universe of heat waves. So it has killed it like probably by the end of this it will have killed like 10s of thousands of people. Yep. And yeah, which which is really bleak and you know what I mean. I think like part of the reason also I wanted to talk about like this specific story is that like. You know, so the weather itself, like is trying to like is is enough to kill you, right? But like. OK, so. Like this, like this kind of heat is survivable if like, you know if if if, if you're in a situation where you can be inside and where you can be hydrated and stuff like that. But you know, hey, capitalism exists means you have to keep working during this **** and that's just going to keep killing people. I I wanted to sort of also look at sort of some of the historical heat waves to to to also to get a sense of how many people like probably died in this one. I think like maybe the most famous heat wave like in in my lifetime. Well until this one I guess was the heat wave in Europe 2003. And that one killed something like 70,000 people. And and there's a lot of very interesting stuff that we learned from this heat wave about what heat waves do is sort of in general the the United Nations like environmental program like released a report about this and there's a lot of really interesting stuff in it. I mean, OK, so the the obvious one is that this has a massive effect on agriculture. Which, OK, yeah, like you could ask a four year old and they will tell you that I this is bad and this is happening, this is affecting China right now too because this drought is hitting like right in the middle of a lot of Chinese bread basket, so. Yeah. There's all these sort of like downstream effects that we'll see later. One of the other fun parts about this this is she doesn't three heat wave. I'm just going to read this quote. Massive Alpine glaciers decreased by 10% in 2003. And yeah, OK. So you know what you're seeing here, right, is this sort of sickler thing where each each heat wave, you know, does things like melt glaciers, right. And that makes the next heat wave worse because when when you when you lose glacier mass, you're losing surface area that reflects light, which increases level of warming. And this is sort of, you know, this is one of the sort of feedback loops that. Where we're dealing with? You know, another thing that we've been seeing a lot in the US 2020 had this like pretty badly. And I mean, I guess like anyone who lives in the Pacific Northwest, like understands this, I there's just, there are just fires constantly because it turns out that when it's really hot, things just lit on fire. In the 2003 one, there were 25,000 fires. And they burn something like 650,000 hectares of forest. And even the places that didn't burn it, it it causes sort of like severe. Severe ecological damage to these forests because, like the. The heat leaves trees for example, like. A lot weaker than this supposed to be. This leaves them vulnerable to things like plagues. Is it like into the waves of insects? And this, you know, like everything that's happening here with these heat waves, like we weakens the environments that are supposed to be sort of like mitigating the effects of climate change. Umm. So we also like on the sort of like human front we we talked about how heat waves can knockout. Key ways can knockout hydroelectric power. It turns out they can also knock out nuclear power plants. Because nuclear power plants rely on like dumping their cooling water back into rivers. Now there's like there's there's legal limits on how hot, like, the water that you can dump into these rivers is supposed to be. Because it turns out, you know, OK, if you dump a bunch of boiling water into a river is going to kill everything in it, but as the sort of cooling process, like. Gets more difficult because the water levels are lower. You have to take power plants offline, because otherwise you're going to just kill everything in the river when you're venting your sort of exhaust heat and into it just three. It gets bad enough that, like, a bunch of companies get exemptions, right? They're like, OK, it's an emergency, we can turn this on. We can like, we can vent all this hot water back in the rivers. But, you know, you can only do this so many times before you irrevocably **** ** the ecosystem of the river. And again, this is, this is, this is the problem, right? Like you, you're getting into these feedback loops. Destroying that you're destroying the ecosystem you're showing the river ecosystems. This also again has problems with. Like, it reduces it's it's it's the river's ability to serve as a carbon sink. And but it's like, you know, what choice do you have, right? Because you're entered the energy consumption treat heat waves massively increases because you need to cool yourself down, you need air conditioning, you need things like fans or people are going to die. And so like every single one of these, like heat waves, just sort of spirals. Yeah, I guess the last thing I wanted to talk about is something that we haven't. I we talked about this in like the very, very early episodes of the show, but like haven't talked about much sense, which is wet bulb temperature. Oh yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. So for, for for people who don't remember what this is. I mean, we were talking a little bit about it earlier in that when you can't cool down at night, like, yeah, the big things about a wet bulb temperature. But yeah, it's it's more complicated than that. Yeah, so like, I guess the basics of it is that, OK, so your body like cools itself down by sweating and when when the water evaporates off your skin, it cools you off. And this is one of the big ways that your body sort of keeps your internal temperature under control. The problem basically is what if your sweat can't evaporate? And that that brings us to what? What web wet bulb temperature is here. Here's NASA. Quote web bulb wet bulb temperature is the lowest temperature to which an object can cool down when moisture evaporates from it. So what is measuring for us is how cool our bodies can actually get from sweating. The problem is that at a wet bulb temperature for about 97 degrees Fahrenheit, your sweat soft evaporating and you can't cool yourself and this kills you really really fast. Here's NASA again talking to Colin Raymond. She's from she's I think he just climbed his stuff at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Once wet bulb temperature exceeds 35 degrees Celsius or 95 degrees Fahrenheit, no amount of sweating or other adaptive behavior is enough to lower your body to a safe operating temperature, said Raymond. Most of the time, it's not a problem because the wet bulb temperature is usually 5 to 10 degrees Celsius below body temperature, even in hot, humid places. But you know, it's important to note here, by the way, that like the wet bulb, wet bulb temperature is like not the same thing as regular temperature. It's it's measuring something like that's different from how hot it is. And and it's worth noting that like the current heat waves like. They're really bad, but it hasn't. Really been hitting the web. Temperature hasn't really been hitting the place. Places where they just are absolutely lethal and start killing hundreds of thousands of people. But that is going to happen, right? Even even in sort of like even, even even even in the even in the climate models where. You know, we we keep emissions to like 2 degrees, right, which which at this point is looking like some of the optimistic models like this stuff is going to happen in that 3050 years. And unless something drastically changes, like we're we're we're we're going to watch this happen, we're we're gonna watch countries, these temperatures, we're going to watch enormous numbers of people fall over dead. And yeah, this is this. This is where climate change is heading. And it sucks. And the heat waves better that are hitting China. The heat waves are hitting India. The heat waves we've seen here are. Like this is this is as good as it's going to get. It's just going to keep getting worse. I I guess I should back up one second and talk a bit about the Chinese heat wave, which is that like? The Chinese heat wave isn't just like A is it just a climate change thing? There's other stuff going on here. There's there's there's like a very specific like confluence of. Like? Weather phenomenon like Linda India and stuff like that that like. Cohen had to coincide to make heat wave this bad, but the problem is like that stuff is all going to happen again. And you know, so we're, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna get like. Yeah, we're going to keep getting heat waves like this and. Yeah, unless we do something differently. Yeah, I mean, we won't. Uh, I mean, well, you know, we'll twiddle around the edges. The Biden administration snuck some language into the the the inflation bill that might allow the federal government to regulate CO2. Still after the Supreme Court said they couldn't. But maybe not. Could you, Chris? Would you why don't we send a message to the people in Shanghai and let them know that that'll. That'll help. Policymakers, you're listening to the podcast, yeah, policymakers who listen to the podcast. I don't know like it this is. It's one of those if we were to take. If all of the policymakers who listen to our show were to take all of our advice immediately, and we were to transition every city away from being vehicle centered and like effectively cut our emissions by 7080% or more, we would still be locked in to escalating heat waves like this all over the world for the rest of our natural lives because of the way the carbon cycle works. Not that that wouldn't help in the long run. But it would certainly not like that's one of the things that's so scary about this is we're all girding ourselves for the inevitability that this will just become more common and more devastating, so true, and for everyone that has a hard time breathing. There is always, always the hope that via geoengineering we can just pump more pollution into the air to reflect more sunlight, which will increase a whole bunch of other diseases. Because I watch the 1st 7 seconds of the movie Snowpiercer and that does seem like an idea that would work. That's funny. When I was in school, I read, like, I read one of the first papers that was talking about this. And like, the guy in the paper is like the opening of the paper is him literally going, this is a bad idea. We should only do this if there's literally no other choice. And then also like, this is a thing we do for like 10 years to buy us more time to deal with regular climate change. And then as the years have gone on, it has nothing has happened. You just got to watch, like. Well, yeah, there's Barack Obama's favorite book, ministry for the Future, which is legitimately very good book. It's just funny that he likes it because it absolutely embraces terrorism into it embraces like killing politicians. It embraces sneaking into the House of Oil and gas executives and murdering them in the night like half, as well as a wonky carbon crypto ******* investment portfolio. But like, there's a lot of different ideas. Yeah, like, like a lot of the characters in that book. Would have killed Obama like it's yes, it's a very like. But one of the things that book deals with, so the, the inciting incident of that book is a horrible wet bulb moment in India that kills. I think it's millions of people and just like a nightmare disaster. And one of the things the Indian government does as a result, against the express wishes of the global community is start like essentially like an atmospheric seeding program in order to mitigate how bad the heat waves are. And like, there's a bunch of consequences to that. And I kind of think one of the things that's most realistic about that book is as we have more **** like this. Happen you will have nations on their own. Carry out climate mitigation efforts that could have serious effects on other countries because any of this stuff you do like if you, if you, if you seed clouds in the southwest or whatever in order to increase rain to raise the level of Lake Mead that will like you can't **** with the water cycle like that and and not have impacts other places. And and this is a thing that certainly global law like like the international legal system is not ready to deal with and it's certainly something that our media ecosystem is not ready to deal with. And it will happen. This is an inevitability, in my opinion. I mean, yeah, one of the things that we do want to talk more about is the the reaction to this type of thing is going to be by capitalist countries and like the climate leviathan model is going to be to basically privatize the atmosphere and privatize the sky and different ways that. Sure. But in terms of pure hate in your face there, Gary? But between all of like the corporate, like space projects and then stuff, with geoengineering it's just going to be renting out sections of the atmosphere that people can pump things into to for whatever, for whatever kind of carbon neutral thing they want to do. Or pumping **** into the atmosphere is what got us into this problem and it's what's going to get us out. So true, make money somehow. It's a it's kind of funny that in the US, which I don't know if you saw this, but like this month, which we're recording this in August, there was a discussion about how the water was going to be used in the Colorado River by the various states that I did. I did read that. Very depressing report. It's it's ****** ** yeah. Yeah, I just, I ended with like basically each of them chest thumping at each other and being like, no, **** you, I'll take as much water as I want. I'm upstream of you. I think Utah were the ones particularly belligerent in that case. But yeah, it it is the opposite of what we need to do. But here we are doing it. I was in Utah last this month looking at new Golf courses being built by Fisher Towers out in the desert there, and it's great. That there's a fun OK, so, uh, Andreas moms last book before we kind of went off the, like, weird eco Leninist rails? It was called fossil Capital and he he is a really interesting argument that like one of the reasons that we got into this mess in the 1st place. One of the reasons like country companies started adopting coal was that even though coal was less efficient as like a source of electricity than having like water mills, water like having a succession of water mills going down the same river requires a bunch of different corporations to like coordinate with each other. And they don't want to do that. And because sort of like, the, the, the, the, the laws around who controls rivers is really sort of unclear. Like they were just like, now screw this, we're going to use coal even though it's worse. And the fun part about this is now we get to get this again with, like, River Law, where it's like, oh, hey, it turns out that a capitalist and capitalist states are just utterly incapable of, like, sharing resources with each other. And they're just going to try to section off increasingly large parts of it, which is going to go increasingly badly. Yeah, I mean it's like one of the things you're the failure to be able to imagine anything that exists outside of a profit and loss kind of mentality is, is one of the major problems that we have like all over with this. Like there's right now one of the big stories coming out of the UK is that as a result of the war in Ukraine and gas prices, the cost of heating is has risen ******* massively. This is a problem for all of Europe and a lot of families in the UK are looking at the numbers. Seen anywhere from like 4000 to even six, £7000 to heat their houses during the winter, which is like 10 to 15,000 real dollars, it's a lot of money and it's substantially in excess of of what they have been paying in the past. And it's like, that is enough. I mean, imagine yourself how many people live, I'm going to guess it's a small fraction of people listening who could afford an extra 10 to $12,000 in bills this winter and not have it completely **** their lives up. So obviously people cannot. A for their heating this winter. And like, if you can't pay a bill, you're not going to pay a bill, right? That's one of the laws of the iron laws of finex bills that can't be paid won't be paid. So the state is coming in, but the state is not. Again, these companies, basically all of these companies are would be essentially insolvent, like if things were allowed to proceed naturally. So the government's going to have to do something, but the thing the government isn't going to do is like actually nationalize any of these heating companies. It's it's just going to like pump. Or tax, anyway. It's it's it's it's the same thing. It's a failure to kind of imagine anything outside of this. Well, maybe if capitalism has broken down around this issue, this isn't an issue that should continue to be in the hands of corporations. Yeah, well, but the fun part about this too, is that like, OK, it's like, well, OK, well, OK, we'll nationalize this and that will save us. And then you look at like, what do act, what do most of the world's nationally owned corporations look like? And it's like, well, OK, so the government owns it like 51% of the stock, but then it functions. Actually like a normal company. Well, right, it's like the the solution is is not. Sorry James, you're you're the actual Britain in this room. Yes. Uh, yeah. It's kind of funny because in Britain people living on state pensions or certain other like state programs, state disability and stuff, get a winter fuel allowance normally, and the winter fuel allowance is scheduled to go up like less than 1/10 of that. That that amount that you just said would be the the increase in the cost of heating, right? And it's still sort of, it's just so funny to see, like in theory, Britain has several political parties, all of them, especially with labour under Kier Starmer. Like a clustered under a neoliberal consensus and kiss that like, rather than considering doing anything they are bickering over, like how much of a pittance they want to throw to poor people. Yeah, I mean, yes. Yeah, it's also very funny that Britain did build a desalinization plant in the Thames Estuary. And forgot to account for the fact that due to it being an stree, the river coming in and out, the levels of salt in the water would change and that would make the desalinization God. And it's *******. I think it's biodiesel fueled. It's just awesome. It's magnificent. Yeah. We've got great leaders over there and we don't need to change. Yeah, no, you, you you seem to, whenever I think of countries that have their **** together, I think the UK, yeah, you've got to remember that. Nazis. These bicycles when you're considering. Your options for transport and climate change in the future. Deranged British tweets of the day. Yeah, I mean, hey, OK, look, look, the, the, the the one, the one very dim silver lining is that maybe this will cause the British, the entire British political system to collapse. Like, I've never done like twice a year, right? Well, no, but. But. But I mean, like, these collapse here. Well, like, OK, here's the thing, right? If if if you have enough people who the government is trying to pay their bills, they start throwing Waltons at stuff. Like, this is a it's like this. This is actually a pretty reliable. Like what? One of the very reliable things that gets people to go fight police is like you've suddenly increased the price of gas that you need to drive or need to, like, heat their houses. So maybe. I don't know. But then British people will also be barking for us to send the troops against the people who are protesting for the right to live with dignity. That's one thing we love to do. It's a, it's a. It's a fun. It's a fun country. Yeah. Yeah, it's a fun tree. That's cool, man. All right. Well, are we? Are we? Are we good? Have we? Have we solved this one for all the policymakers who listen to our show? Yeah, you're sheriff. Yeah. Hit me up ******* Lindsey Graham. A huge fan of the pod. Lindsey Graham. 12 year old, yeah. Lindsey Graham's actually just voted to subsidize Molotov cocktail production. So thank you. Thank you, Lindsay, our our based fan of the policymakers who listen to our show. He must have been looking at a research. The only way. It's the only real way to stop climate change. Little legitimate use of fossil fuels is in yeah, cocktails. Yeah. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe, it could happen. Here is the production of cool zone media. For more podcasts and 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, sisters of the Underground is a podcast about fearless Dominican. Women who stood up against the brutal dictator Kapal Tojo. He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. I am Daniel Ramirez, and as a Dominicana myself, I am proud to be narrating this true story that is often left out of the history books through your has blood on his hands. Listen to sisters of the underground wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Do you love movies? Well, I have the podcast for you. Hey there, this is Mike D from movie Mikes movie podcast your go to source for all things movies. Each episode explores a different movie topic plus spoiler free reviews on the latest streaming and movies in theaters. You'll also get interviews with actors and directors to take a look behind the scenes of your favorite movies. Listen to new episodes of movie Mikes Movie podcast Every Monday on the Nashville podcast network available on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.