Speaker 1: Is gonna co op. There we go. Okay, it's co operator.
Had a nice morning walk listening to shot Shod Day,
you know, took the dog out to take a shit,
got some coffee, and now we're back. Welcome to the
crime Page. But Bonnie does a podcast. I'm very excited
for today's interview because it's with a guy whose videos
I've been watching for quite a while. This is Raleigh
Williams from the channel Climate Town. And you know, I
got to say I've note about climate change obviously for
a long time. You know, I was really I was
a big fan of the geologic timeline. So I know
that this is obviously happened before, not quite at this
rate that we're doing it now. And I'm generally more concerned.
I mean, climate change is a big fucking deal. You
could see it. I mean I can see it firsthand
everywhere I go to look at plants and around the globe,
you see plants at lower elevations dying off and plants
at higher elevations still thriving, for instance, on Sky Islands.
It's one of many examples. I'm more concerned generally with
habit that loss and the growing tumor of human development
and just this like anthropocentric mindset we have. We're like, eh,
fuck it, you know, is it is that plant beneficial
to us? Can I eat it? Can I put it
in my ass and make a medicine out of it?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Fuck it, get rid of it. You know, that kind
of mentality. But it's been the last couple of years
have been mind numbing for me because it's undoubtedly, I mean,
it's just basic physics that CO two traps heat. You know, spectroscopy,
you look at an absorption band CO two. You know,
in the infrared part, the heat part of the electromagnetic spectrum,
there's black bands. It's which means that CO two is
absorbing right there, right, Like, this is just basic science.
And the amount of fucking propaganda that I've seen, I mean,
people just and granted this is mostly that I say,
it's people just blatantly denying that the sky is blue,
you know, or that oranges have vitamin C. It's like
that same kind of thing. You know, it's it's it's wild,
I mean, and you obviously this is what your whole
channel is about. It's got to be maddening for you.
So when I found your channel, I was like, this
is fucking Thank god, there's like a voice of sanity
that picks apart all this bullshit, which is very obviously
oil company propaganda. So anyway, thank you for coming on
the show, and now I'll let you talk. Sorry about
that ramble.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on the show, Joey.
This is a real dream come true. I really appreciate it.
And you're such a pro podcaster that I couldn't tell
if that was the intro before you you like sort
of brought the guests into the room, or if that
was like part of your pattern. It was. It was unbelievable.
I have no idea how you do this.
Speaker 1: You just put a claim on me. Man, You let
him go. He just rambles, He just won't shut up.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was listening back to your old episodes
to just sort of get a feel for what you
do on this podcast. I mean, I know you're I'm
familiar with your videos, but I didn't really realize that
you had a whole pod dynasty over here. And my god,
you know so many facts. Man, is fucking full of
facts that you are able to just call up in
a second. You could be a Jeopardy super superhero man
I gave.
Speaker 1: I get banned off the ship, you know, I let
a couple Yeah, yeah, but no, I'm the self described
daego windbag for sure. But but but yeah, man, I
mean you have I think the first I've been watching
videos for a while, but when I found like the
Landman episode, you know, the show Landman on Paramount Plus,
which I actually enjoyed, it's it's a good show.
Speaker 2: One show. That's the thing. It's fun. You know, it's
like it's a soap opera for men, and Lord knows
then needs some soap operas, you know, like we've been
buttoned up too long, we've been If you cram a
man up, he starts a war, you gotta let him have.
Speaker 1: It, exactly that those obsolete primate impulses to just go
out and club things, you know, and.
Speaker 2: Just focus them, focus them on the drama. Let the
man cry, for God's sake, let him cry, Bob Thornton cry.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But but it was you know, even I mean,
there's a lot of bullshit in that show. There's like
some really corny shit that are obviously very you know, cliched,
because some with cringey takes. But the main thing but
it's still an enjoyable show. It's when you want to
turn your mind off and you're like, I just want
to fucking I don't smoke weed, so I just got
to fucking turn my mind off. I should probably be
meditating instead. I just watched bullshit occasionally, you know, find
a friend.
Speaker 2: Funny that the two options for you are either meditating
an ancient Buddhist technique or watching fucking land and those
do the same thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I was right, well, I rewatched
episodes of The Sopranos for like six times, and that
hits me, you know, close to the home. It's like
a personal reminds me of my grandparents and my dad
and shit. So but but there was the one episode
on land Man where he's going on the fucking rant
against the wind turbines, which is, you know, I live
in Texas where those are like triggering for a lot
of people of a certain persuasion, Like when the Texas
freeze happened, they were trying to blame it on wind
turbines and you're like, man, come on, what the fucking
And just watching that, I was like wait a minute, no, no, stop,
like this, you're obvi Get this is bullshit like this.
Speaker 2: Do you have wind turbines in Antarctica? You know, like
it's it gets I'm gonna say it. It gets colder there
than it does in Texas, even in the winter, So
it's you know, it's Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just want to ask, how did we get here
like in this in American society at least, like the
rest of the world seems. And I traveled to other
places and they're like, oh yeah, climate change is real,
like Seal two traps heat, there's just basic fucking physics.
But here, how did we get here? What the fuck
is this?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: Is the propaganda just that good? Are the seal Are
the oil companies just so good at making us love
COEO two and get? I mean there's other reasons to
not to not like it too. It's fucking toxic. I mean,
you know, not.
Speaker 2: See brain off. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, there's
a lot of there's a lot of shit. My guess,
my best guess is that we got here from a
sort of combination of American exceptionalism as a philosophy and
the twenty four hour news cycle that had to just
like make content or else they would have their lunch
eaten by like TMZ or something, and just like running
that flywheel over and over again about like America is
great and everybody in America is like right, and everything
you do is okay. And then the fucking fossil fuel
industry in the automobile industry kind of just plugged right
into that, and uh, I think this is the logical
inevitability of that confluence. Is my guess. If you're if
you're gonna make me guess, that's that's it.
Speaker 1: It's just wild because I mean you look, you look
at you know ship Elon Musk of all people, was
saying eight or nine years ago and he's like, oh yeah,
I think I think climate Chrangeles are real, you know's
we need to be controned about it. Yeah, and now
it's just sane.
Speaker 2: That is an insane, uh interpretation of Elon Musk's ac set.
But I really love it, and I'm only going to
hear that from now on.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, he's just he's he's a he's
a fucking goofy guy. You know, he's a goofy, but
but like you know that guy. It was just I
mean honestly saying, yeah, like he's expressing concern, and now
it's like fuck it, fuck Earth, Let's go to Mars.
Fuck Earth, fuck Earth, like you know, Bill Gates other people.
I mean just not that I give a shit about
any of these people, but there are voices that a
lot of people listen to, unfortunately, and and they're just
there's no concern. It's just a gag. And like again,
there's other reasons to not like oil, Like cars are allowed,
for one, I mean not just cars, but other emissions.
Cars are a major source of emission. They're toxic. There's
other you know, combustible particles in there that are being emitted.
You know that besides CO two that just you don't
want to be breathing. I mean, that's why people it's
one of the main ways people commit suicide and check
out is I don't know if they do it anymore,
but you know, the old garden hose in the garage
to the tailpipe thing, you know, Uh, there's a lot
of toxic shit that's emitted from these two. It's not
just CO two, you know. So yeah, man, I don't know,
I guess I just you study this stuff and you
make great videos about it. It's just it's easy to
see what is your take on what's going on.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think there's a lot of different factors.
And part of what I like to do with my
YouTube channel Climate Town. If you're listening to this, keep listening,
you know, don't look at it right now, but if
you get a chance, if there's time, check it out
on YouTube. Yeah. I think part of what we do
is just kind of focus on any given topic that
interests us. I think climate change can really encompass quite
a wide breadth of issues, and so I think most
most recently we were covering some stuff about I mean,
I think this is how we I got on your
radar again with the lawns episode, where like, yeah, every
everything is a is a climate story if you sort
of look at what the outcomes are and what the
inputs are and which industries are are trying to forward it.
And I think what I like to do is just
like kind of get into that headspace and look at
where the money is and try to figure out what
the motivation for traditions and activities that were participating in are.
And oftentimes it comes back to like, hey, the automobile
industry is doing this thing, or hey, the fossil fuel industry,
the classics industry or the chemical industry wanted to like
sell an extra forty million units, so they put their
thumb on the scale in Congress and got something past.
And it's like every fucking episode has some element of that,
even when we're not trying to do that. It's just like,
oh shit, the fucking this this amendment got brought up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's it's really just money and politics.
It's just I mean, there is no democracy. It's just olagarchs.
It's corporations really guiding the light. But I mean, I
think you know, a lot of younger people know, you know,
have a nose for this bullshit now and know that
oh yes, really.
Speaker 2: People get it. They like they I think they're they're
like kids are incredible bullshit detectors. Like you go on
a plane or something and like the guy with his
kid is like, oh yeah, buddy, that's so cool. That's awesome. Man.
You're like this kid knows that you're bullshitting, Like you're
not making friends with his kid. And I think like
as gen Z and jen A are growing up and
they're like clocking that we have effectively stolen their productive future.
You know, I would be surprised if they didn't round
us all up and put us in some camps. You know,
like these are these they they maybe they they maybe
are would be right to do.
Speaker 1: That Children of the Corn or something, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you think kild you the corn is a
climate story. Yeah, that'd be kind of cool.
Speaker 1: You know, we're never going to own a house, We're
never gonna have healthcare. You guys are shoveling all this
bullshit down our throat. You know, it's everything's a con,
everything's a ruse, everything's a scam.
Speaker 3: So fuck you, guys, We're done. You know, it's just alsop.
You know, corn is a monoculture. We've we've like effect
actively forty percent or something of the corn that's getting planted.
Speaker 2: Is going to biofuels, which are not that useful to us,
these Children of the Corn, Like, hey, why are we
planting all this bullshit? This is destroying our ecosystem.
Speaker 1: I think this.
Speaker 2: I think we've got to rewrite Children of the Corn
as a kind of a vigilante esque gen Z Uprising video.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of corn, the ethanol thing, which we don't need,
it's crazy like that we don't is that basically just
to support the corn industry. Is that the whole reason
that ethanol is a thing or why is that?
Speaker 2: My understanding of why ethanol is a thing is that
back in like two thousand and eight or something, when
George Bush was president, we were going through some difficult
fossil fuel times, like oil was hard to come by. Oh,
I guess this was this was a little earlier. This
must have been like two thousand and four or something,
and we needed to make oil from more natural We
needed to be able to get oil from someplace that
wasn't the Middle East, because not because we were like
good citizens, but because you know, we weren't able to
control them because they had the oil and we were
diti oil. This is there's like a speech that he
that George W. Bush gives where it's like Americans are
addicted to oil, Like he straight up says it, it's great.
And I think that's like he made a mandate that
we were going to make biofuels, like some percentage of
our fuels were going to come from biofuels, and so
part of that was the part of that push was
to like comply with this mandate and so we just
made a ton of fuel from from corn ethanol.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it's really not a good It doesn't
make any sense when you look at it. You like,
it's a kind of a shitty fuel. And there's massive
amounts of land going to this and water and you
know all the shit they spray on those I mean
that I just through the Midwest like two months ago,
and it's like dust bowl like when they're plowing the
you know, you see all this. It looks like there's
wildfires out. There's so much soil in the air being
turned up from these machines, and you're like that can't
be good. Like that's just destroying, Like there's no soil
life like that fucking soil is dead and it's just
blowing everywhere. You're like, yeah, this is what I mean,
that's why the dustbeall happened. They tore up the prairies
and the agriculture was not sustainable and so you know,
get a couple of months of drought and suddenly your
soil becomes airborne. So yeah, the ethanol thing's really weird. Man.
I don't know, I don't know why we do. It
doesn't make sense. I mean what doesn't make sense to me.
And I think you've probably got a few videos on this.
It's just the extreme car dependence and it's something me.
It is just self describe way they go windbag. I'm
always ranting about is the car, Like everything is designed
for the car here, and it's it causes multiple health problems,
not to mention psychological problems. And it's it's also obviously
like a big scam because it gets people addicted to oil.
Like you're forced to have a car in many places,
especially in the sun Belt the lower latitude United States.
Speaker 2: Mmmm, yeah, yeah, I mean so I'm in I'm in Brooklyn,
and I think it's this weird trade off where I
don't have access to nature in a real way. Like
there's a couple of parks near my house. I have
a dog and I'll take her to the park pretty regularly,
and like that's my only little injection of nature. Like
you know, I like tie off my arm and put
a forty six seeds of prospect park into my blood,
and like that's got to sustain me. And I can
feel my I can fuel the depression set in when
I'm not around nature. But at the same time, I
haven't gotten into a car in two weeks, you know,
like I don't need to drive anywhere. It's like such
an amazing experience. And like I basically don't need to
go to the gym because I'm walking everywhere. I Yeah,
my friends that my friends came over this morning and
we like try to work out a couple of times
a week. Not we don't always do it. We did it.
We I don't know how it happened, but we did
an exercise that was just we just called it oops
all warm ups and we didn't do any real lift.
We just did all warm ups for an.
Speaker 1: Hour, you know, and then after had twenty minutes, we're
hitting the bong and pulling tubes and you know, it
was listening to the birds. But yeah, like would you
you know, I think about that, Like conversely, if you
lived in a place like Houston where you're trapped in
a car and there is no public transit and biking
is dangerous because the drivers are so oblivious or aggressive,
you know, would you I think you'd be more depressed,
Like would you rather live in Houston or Brooklyn? You know,
assuming like saying Brooklyn was affordable. I think many people
would choose Brooklyn. It's a denser city. You're doing what
humans evolved to do, which is move, not sit on
your ass in a car for three hours of day.
You know. Like that's yeah, man, I mean it's a
trade off. There's no nature. But that could be fixed too,
if people build cities with you know, like nature preserves
in them, that would serve multiple purposes, not just for
not just for places for humans to go enjoy and
birdwatch or whatever the fuck, but to actually filter the air,
to you know, help water infiltrate the ground, provent flooding,
that kind of thing. I mean, you know, the the
the pragmatic services, pragmatic services of plants. You know. But
I don't know, man, I just just spitball in here
and that's all, you know. I just I wonder about
that because it's the car dominance is such a you know,
and did you have you done videos on that on
like the National city lines thing of the nineteen fifties
buying up the bus lane or buying up the street
cars and turn them into buses and kind of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we had a we had a video about
I think the title is like how the auto industry
carjacked the American dream or something was back when we
were doing like real cute s quts titles. Yeah, but yeah,
it was. It was I mean largely about uh, General
Motors and Alfred Sloan and like the the guy who
ran General Motors left General Motors to become the Secretary
of State and then went back to General Motors. Oh God,
and this quote on the record, this quote on the
record that's like what's good for General Motors is good
for the American people and vice versa.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 2: So we just like, I mean, it was it was
like fucking crony crony capitalism from the jump, Like America
never had a chance because like we were a newer
country that was like coming of age right as automobiles
were just getting like trucked off the assembly line. And also, oh,
the fucked up thing that I always think about is
like any any money that's any like federal dollars that
go to transportation are allocated in a ninety percent to
automobile ten percent to public transportation ratio, Jesus, And it's
just like there's it's like trying to catch up with
the rest of the world by going attent the speed
is them and it's just like I don't know, man,
I don't. I don't understand how we're gonna, like we
keep on building infrastructure, and that's like the moment you
put a shovel in the ground to like expand a highway.
You're putting millions of dollars into this thing, and then
it becomes like a colossal failure if you don't use it,
you know, or like committing ourselves to continuing this thing.
And I don't, I don't really know what the what
the solution around it besides like somebody investing heavily in
like buses and then private I guess private companies coming
up with high speed rail between like Vegas and La
or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, just you know, the like where I live,
people don't even have the option to bike. It's fucking terrifying,
Like people biking is something that poor people do or
that like rich people do on like a bike trail,
Like poor people will bike, yeah, you know, on the
sidewalk here because it's too terrify find to bike on
the I t I'll tell you my solution to biking
here in a minute, because I still fucking bike, but
I go hyper aggressive with it. I carry a holstered
baseball bat that I've wrapped like reflective tape around. I
hold it in my left hand while I'm in the
fucking lane being like, come on, hit me, motherfucker hit me,
you know, like hit me. You could hit me, but
I'll take out a fucking fender, you know, headlight or something,
and it.
Speaker 2: Ultimate stand your ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it works. People stay the fuck away. They
keep a wide berth. They go right around me. And
it said like an orange aluminum bat too, so I
make sure they see it. But and I just I
just done holster when I'm on like busy roads otherwise,
and I could still bike pretty fast. But you know,
there's not even like if there were like a crosstown
bike path that people could actually use for transportation, like
i've I was in College Park, Maryland. I saw that
same thing, Like there was a bike path like kind
of uh parallel to the main road, but half a
mile inland and it's like nature natury area that was
still like trees and had never been developed, and it
went the same place the road did. So it was
for college kids, of course.
Speaker 2: I mean this is the thing like people people always
pine for their college days have you heard this before.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: People are always like, oh, I really liked it when
I was in college. Man, I wish I could like
be back in college. And it's like, well, it's not
you didn't like college because it was like college. You
liked it because it was the only place you've ever
lived that's been like a walkable, dense urban environment where
like you go everywhere on foot, you live near people,
there's like a couple of common spaces. There's grass for
people to hang out at, but you don't have to
like tend to fucking lawn all the time. I don't know.
It's just yeah, it's like this is the same thing
like people who go on vacation to Europe and they're like, wow,
I can eat all I want. I never get getting
any weight. It's like, yeah, because you're walking five or
six miles a day and you're feeling great and like
the air is kind of fresher.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, it's just it's it's it's weird how we can
constantly like have this realization but never come to the
conclusion that we could have that in our own country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't. It's it's called being bamboozled. It's called
not realizing like how all this should happen. I mean,
it's you know, I remember people talking about the obesity
epidemic here. I just remember reading like the comments section
on some fucking posts someone made, and it was like, yeah,
people are people are learning to give up seed oils.
Speaker 4: And it's not the seed oils. It's the fucking you've
turned ever, You've made walking obsolete. It's not the fucking
seed oils, pal, It's that you're stuck in a car
for fucking five hours a day when you're not at work.
Speaker 1: Like that's it's not the seed oils, buddy, You've got
to get out, you know. But when we need the exercise,
we just go to the gym and listen, you know,
listen to bad music and smell off gasing plastic. And
that's where you get your exercise.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: You don't get it just from your day to day life.
It's it's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like, heart disease is like mowing down wave
after wave of Americans and we're like, why are all
of our hearts not working that well?
Speaker 1: Well? You live on yeah, you live on Chick fil A,
Rby's and Burger King, and then you fucking don't move
so you know, like going to the gym for forty
five minutes is not going to cut it. Man, that's
you need more than that. But but anyway, okay, well
moving right along. There's another video you had recently, and
I feel for you because you had to watch Joe
Rogan to make this this video. Joe Rogan doesn't understand
grass is the name? What was tell us what this
video was about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this this this great, Like there's this great
podcast called the Joe Rogan Experience and it's really no,
it's yeah. I mean, he's he's the number one podcaster
in the world by a long shot, you know, Like
I think the next three podcasts underneath him added up
don't even equal as many listeners as Joe Rogan has.
So he's obviously just like insane voice to the masses
in the United States and abroad. And I guess I
kept on seeing these clips of like Joe Rogan pulling
up a graph from the Washington Post and like telling
people that, oh, yeah, this, did you see this Washington
Post graph that like kind of disproves climate change? And
I was like, what, the Washington Post disproved climate change?
Speaker 1: That's crazy?
Speaker 2: And so I excuse me, and so I like looked
at the article and it's it says the opposite of that.
It's like, yeah, actually, climate change is like really bad
right now. Obviously, like the carbon record of the history
of the planet is like interesting in spikes and drops,
but like right now it's spiking harder than it's ever
spiked ever in the history of the planet. We should
really be worried. And it's this giant like CO two
is the control knob. It like says all this shit
in the article, and Joe Rogan brought like just saw
the graph and because the graph has shows like times
in the Earth's history where carbon dioxide level were way higher,
he just looked at the graph and just look at
the title, which is like here's the surprising place we
are now about like global CO two or something. And
he just decided that the article said this because the
graph looked a certain way, and then he brought it up,
like honestly six different times to various people on his show,
Like anytime the topic of climate change came up on
his show, it was like, did you see that Washington
Post article that disproves climate change? Did you see that
Washington and it's like people aren't gonna like and you
have to sort of imagine what it's like to be
on Joe Rogan's podcast because he'll like say a thing
and then his guy will bring it up on the
big screen. But they don't then sit and read the
article together and like, oh yeah, let me look that
like citation up, or let me like read through this
text and see what the article says. They just take
Joe Rogan's work for it, and it's like.
Speaker 1: It's like anything that like the rate, like that's just
basic logic and that's that this has been explained many times,
like all the cloud, it's always changing, yeah, but it's
changing faster than it did like the Paleocene has seen
thermal maximum you know sixty sixty to fifty five million
years ago when they were alligators in fucking Wyoming, Like
you know, it's.
Speaker 2: Changing faster, thousands of times faster. Yeah, like not even then,
the fastest it's ever changed, Like and that's in the article.
And he didn't read down to paragraph two. He just
looked at the graph and was like, got it not
a problem.
Speaker 1: Like I grew up in Chicago, and I remember October
and November being really cold, and it was fucking sixty
five degrees five days ago. It's it's November twenty fourth.
I mean, it's weird. It's getting fucking weird. It's definitely
it's always more pronounced at the higher latitudes, further away
from the equator. That's where most of the warming is
going to be. Like we know, the jet streams destabilizing.
That's why I that's what was partially responsible for the
Texas freeze was that this stable you know, all that
polar era that's normally kept up top, all this up
up at the higher latitudes coming down because the jet
streams unstable because of warming at the mid latitudes and
high and slightly highlighted. You know. It's it's uh, it's
just nuts. It's like the again, it's it's the rate
in which is happening. Man Like life can't adapt, especially
when we've carved up all the land, the land, most
of the land masks into roads and cities and agriculture.
And I mean it's a mass it's a mass extinction.
Like so many things are imperiled right now. And imagine
you're just some kid, you're like twenty years old, maybe
you work in an auto supply store. You listen to
Joe Rogan and you hear that, and the takeaway is
without picking it apart of looking at you're like, oh ah,
climate change is in real fuck it? Who cares?
Speaker 2: You know, It's like and six times Like That's the
thing that really got me was like I went back
from the from the day the article was published. I
went back and like got a transfer of every podcast
he produced. And by the way, this motherfucker is making content.
I don't know how often you're dropping episodes, but he's
doing like two three and a half hour episodes every week,
sometimes three. It's like unbelievable the amount this man can
crank out. But yeah, he's so he's like so so
he brought it up to Mel Gibson when mel Gibson
was like, yeah, they say that the ice caps are melting,
but if you put ice in your glass and it melts,
it doesn't overflow. It's just like these weird old like
many many generations disproved climate denial talking points that I
know for a fact, Joe Rogan has heard the answer
to you know, like he knows that it's about the
rate of change. He's had climate scientists on his show.
He knows that the pole like, it's not the sea ice,
it's the land. The ice that's melting that's gonna raise
sea level temperature, sea level heights.
Speaker 1: And he just I.
Speaker 2: Guess forgets or I guess he's just like whoever I'm
talking to right now, that's who I'm gonna believe on everything.
Speaker 1: Do you think he's getting paid? Like, do you think
it wouldn't be obvious? Of course it wouldn't be like
here's here's five million dollars talk about this, but it
would probably you know the way that the people lobby,
corporation's lobby, they kind of lobby pay you for your
time or they say we'll do this, and they kind
of it's soft, you know, it's not blatant. But do
you think he's getting paid.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I really don't. And I also
don't think Taylor Sheridan, the writer of Landman, is like
making any considerable money, if any, from the fossil fuel industry.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think this is the like kind of this is
the result of three or four decades of fossil fuel
industry propaganda. Yeah, tons of different places. Like I mean,
I'm in my office right now, and I have this.
This books is called Petro Pete's Big Bad Dream. So
it's called Petro Pete. It's from the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board.
It's about this little little kid who loves oil and
gas and it's created by an oil and gas lobby
and put in Oklahoma public schools for kids to read
and for teachers to read to the care.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a fucking like you could do a
hilarious spoof on that. God, that would be hilarious crazy.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like it's it's all the ship that
like real radical right wing lunatics are saying the left
is doing. You know, it's like they're in our schools.
They're brainwater. They're transing all the kids.
Speaker 1: And drag queens. There's a fucking blottom and drag queen
migrant tread. It actually sounds kind of fun, you know.
That sounds like a fucking party. Drag queens can be
real fun. Yeah. We used to go to the.
Speaker 2: Bottom all and drag queens. You know those are that's
gotta be the best car.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We I used to go to this drag bar
called the Aunt Charlie's Lounge in the Tunderloin and we
get fucking hammered. The only time I ever tried the
bike across the Bay Bridge, I got I was at
fucking I missed bart and I was pissed off, you know,
the rapid trans outing, and I was hammering and this
is I'm sober now you don't, thank God handy gun.
But back then I used to fucking really put them
down and I got hammered those fucking the bartender was
making these stiff drinks, not even charging at the end
of the you know, because everyone was fucking hammered, and
it was they were they were doing shot day covers,
they were doing everything. Miss Aurora Styles was up there
and I tried the bike across the Bay Bridge and
I didn't get arrested. The cops stopped me, but they
didn't arrest me. It was very kind of them, but
that was anyway. Sorry, but uh but yeah, the propaganda
level is it's nuts, man, It's crazy. It's just crazy.
Speaker 2: It's like that, I mean, and it's like soaked into
our lizard brain to the extent that you don't even
have to fucking pay Joe Rogan, he will just do
your propaganda for you, because that's like we've just been
marinating in it for so long. And also like there
there's obviously culture work going on and for for like,
for whatever reason, it just got kind of sucked into
the culture where I'm guessing that was not not zero
percent to do with some clever oil marketing about like
oil being manly and engines being loud and like freeloaders
don't know how good they got it, you know, all
this all this ship like that feels pretty oily. But
I'm not you know, I'm not positive about that. But
like once you get into that culture cycle and your
party gets in power or not even that, like I
mean the oil industry is donating to like every fucking
person in Congress. But yeah, I think like if you can,
if you can kind of catch a wave of like
toxic masculinity and like radical exceptionalism, you can really ride that.
And and they don't care like who they're they're marketing to,
like they just want to stay on top, you know,
Like I think this is this is the other thing
that I keep on learning, like this is a sort
of an evolution of a bunch of different people all
trying to get rich, you know, like this is not
it's like an hybrid kind of many headed monster that's
simultaneously conscious and just a figment of the imagination of
a bunch of executives. And it's like got a life
of its own well, and you know, it's not evil,
Like on its face, the result is evil, but it's
just self preservation oriented. And I think that's like that's
even harder to combat because it doesn't really have a
motivation besides like, oh, I've already existed, I want to
keep existing, and that scares me.
Speaker 1: The I think a lot of it too, is just
it's just cultural indoctrination. It's I mean, at the end
of the day, I mean people think humans have free
will and that we're all individually. We're not. We're not.
We're most of the people. But you're born the you know,
the human animal, the Homo sapings, this is a primate.
We're social animals. We want validation and you know, conformity,
and we want to feel a part of our peer group.
And so people don't think deeply about a lot of things.
They don't critically analyze things, they don't look at the information.
Most people don't, I mean ninety five percent of people
in my experience as a fucking forty three year old man.
They don't do that. They just my buddy said this,
that's what I think. You know, climate change is gay
the time, caring about caring about climate change.
Speaker 2: She's definitely gay. That's true. That's really true.
Speaker 1: Caring about climate change is woke and gay. I don't
It's just I don't care about it. I'm not going
to say that because I don't want to be viewed
as a pussy or what you know. I think that's
especially since moving to Texas. You know, uh, bless their
hearts here. But as they say, but that's just definitely
something I see people don't. You know, are you going
to think critically and say something that might upset your
social group?
Speaker 2: Fuck?
Speaker 1: No, left or right. You're not going. Yeah, no, left
or You're not going to do that. You're gonna go
You might might speak up and say something a little bit,
and then it gets shut down. You're like, Okay, yeah,
you're right, I'll toe the line. I want friends, you know,
And so that's the way it goes.
Speaker 2: It's and that's like I think that really is kind
of cutting straight to the heart of this where we
need to be accepted. We don't want to be kicked
out of the tree because then we're like die on that.
I don't, I don't. I don't quite know where my
metaphor is going, but like, yeah, we're like social creatures
and uh and we need to be liked or else
it could be the last thing we ever do, you know.
And so it is so coded for to just like
go with the flow, and sadly that's like that just
makes it easier to manipulate. Mass is like you know,
massive amounts of people, and I think, like, yeah, to
their credit, I'm not trying to like look up every
single thing I do to make sure it's the right
thing to do, you know, Like I don't when I
when I didn't when I got my dog, I wasn't like, well,
I mean, let me just double check that this kind
of breed of dog isn't like problematic in some way
or like doesn't like yeah, whatever, I like the dog,
and I'll like fucking walk this dog around.
Speaker 1: Well, it's probably going to report that to the chat group.
Now that's really problematic.
Speaker 2: Which you did.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna I'm gonna just your social life is
it's going to be destroyed. I'm gonna make sure, I
see you, but uh, you know, I think I think
what what scares me is that how easy it is
to sway public opinion just by politicizing something or making
it culturally charged. And for me, for the ship that
I do, which is killing lawns and getting people to
you know, embrace the plants where they live and stop,
you know, like where I live, stop planting fucking Washingtonia
palms everywhere, and embrace like the thorn scrub, the native
habitat here, or if you live in the Midwest, embrace
the prairie or the northeast woods or the fucking sonory.
Embrace those things, you know, and get rid of your lung.
Because the turf grass thing, which I want to talk
talk about to you had a video on that fucking
great video by the way, thanks for the shut up.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: You know, I worry that at some point that's going
to be politicized and they're going to come for that,
you know, and like wanting to kill your lawn is
going to be viewed as woke, and you know, like
I don't, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It is it already is? I think I think you're
like you're so early to the to the party that
it's probably not considered that woke, and I think honestly,
the service you are doing to prevent it from, you know,
like getting into the woke echelon by looking the way
you do and talking the way you do and being
the way you are and also being like and this
is bad for everybody. I don't know, I think like
it like just talking to you on the phone, it's like,
I I forget that you are so obviously on the
right side of this, you know, like you have such
an incredible accent and like, I don't know, you just
you don't you don't cut the shape of a radical
collogists that I think a lot of people think.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, I'm not an environmentalist. I don't identify as
environmentalist at all.
Speaker 2: That's not yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't know. I
think that certainly that term has gotten gotten charged. But
I do think that if you were to ask somebody like, hey,
you're a person in the suburb, do you want to
tear up your lawn because it's bad for you, know,
like you and the people around you, I think that
would probably be viewed as like a progressive, borderline environmentalist
thing to do. Yeah, I guess right, yeah, but like
and yet it's like, so it's so deeply backed up
by all the evidence, all the like the health benefits.
It's I mean, it's it's it's insane. How many signs
there are points into like don't plant this non native
monoculture all over your you know, where you live.
Speaker 1: Well, for me, it's well, I try not to moralize
it too, And that's what I tell people. You know,
It's like, this isn't like a feel good patch yourself
on a look at all the cool shit that comes
back to your yard, all the dope shit that comes
back to your yard when you get rid of this
boring desert that you're it's literally, yeah, like you said,
America's dumbest crappy. You don't get anything out of it.
It's not no one plays on it. It's a fucking
pan the ass to keep it alive in a lot
of places because it requires too much water, or it's
just a monoculture that's open to insects and other fungui
that will come exploit it because there's no diversity in there,
so they just come, you know, And and it's stressed
anyway because you're keeping this thing perpetually bonds eyed at
two inches of three inches of leaf blade whatever. You know.
So just and you know, I want people to just
connect with the life around them, like like I get
distracted walking in my truck. I see all kinds of
cool insects, cool birds, cool shit going on, like, and
that fulfills people. That's in our fucking genome. It's right
or left, whatever, it feels good. That's in our human
genome to have a relationship with the life around us.
That's what the way we lived for three hundred thousand
years as a species, and probably you know Homo erectus
before that, when we were clubbing each other and fucking
banging in caves whatever. So you know, well, but I
forget I fuck up sometimes too, because I like leave
it to Facebook. Of course I have this Facebook page.
I didn't create it. Some company created for me and
then they abandoned it later when they were making money
off of it. But I have got this Facebook page,
and it's obviously a different social group. It's a different
demographic that U just Facebook as opposed to TikTok or
Instagram whatever. And I put a drawing of Pam Bondy
I did, which I just I know nothing there. It
just said Pam. It was a picture of pambondy. She
looks kind of funny. I would do the same thing
to a Democrat that had a laminated face and so
and I put it up there, and I got like angry,
you know, from people you would expect, like boomers that
live in Florida being like yeah, I hear a fuck
you know, blah blah blah, and and I was like whoa.
It's like, damn, did I fuck up? Like cause this
is funny to me. But like I also, I'm trying
to recruit these people, Like I'm not trying to make
a stand for no, I'm trying to recruit these people
criminal mentality. Get them in there, get them into my
fucking cult so that they realize how much the lawn
sucks and it shouldn't be politicized anyway, and then they
can recreate the native habitat. Maybe they'll want to speak
up for a native parcel of habitat if it gets
destroyed near them at some point. Whatever. So I was,
I don't know, it just made me think. I was
like maybe I should there is a point to toning
down some of this shit. I don't even want to
wade into it. But whatever I mean it was, I think.
Speaker 2: That's I mean, that's really that's really salient. I think
the idea of you're trying to sort of radicalize people
who you wouldn't expect to be radicalized, like in sort
of in the way that you yourself are a radicalized
version of somebody you wouldn't expect to be radicalized, Like
you are kind of the perfect messenger to do this
because you're not who they expect, and so their their
guard isn't up and they're not like immediately ticking off
all the reasons why you don't know what you're talking about. Yeah,
so I don't know. I think I think, like, although
I'm sure it was a very funny picture of Pam
BONDI and I would really appreciate it. I think it's
probably not a bad idea to try to like temper
your you know, particular edges on various platforms.
Speaker 1: Well do and I'll do a drawing to Joe Biden
looking like a course, you know, I'll make him feel
better whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, the fucking met Joe Biden? Did you really
I got invited to the White House to do to
like they invited a bunch of influencers to the White
House who cover anything climate related or related. Yeah, and
so because they when they passed the Inflation Reduction Act,
so they like reached out to me. And I went
to the White House and I met Joe Biden. Damn,
that's hilarious, really fucking crazy he is. He was the
world's oldest man. I cannot believe that we let that guy,
you know, like run for a second term.
Speaker 1: You know, I watched that that debate and I was
just I was like crying, laughing and also and also crying.
I'm like, fuck, man, this is so it's over, Like
this is so bad. Uh Yeah, I mean, you know,
they couldn't come up with anything better. So anyway, but
tell me, though, did they have like a nice refreshment table,
Like was there a fruit spread with like the deli
trays and some coffee when you went? Did they have
stuff like that or No?
Speaker 2: There was nothing. I think the only food that we
got was a White House brand M and m's. So
every time you go to the White House, to give
you a little white box of White House M and ms.
And it's possible there was some kind of uh refreshment somewhere.
But I went there was like a ceremony in the
rose Garden, which I guess now is like not rubble.
That one is like a paved surface and then the
other part is all rubble. But then I went, I
just uh. I went to I think it was a
macaroni grill and got an espresso martini to like cheer
myself up from the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I went of the Netflix headquarters in La once
because they was trying to pitch some show. This is
like pre COVID. This some development or production company was
trying to like make some time on what I did whatever.
And I was like, it's good, it's not gonna work.
Good luck. But anyway, we went to the Netflix and
I tell you the fucking like little they have this.
They used to They probably got rid of it now,
but they used to have this. There was coffee, there
was all kinds of treats. I was like filling my pockets.
I was like, holy shit, and they were like it's
the guy was with who worked for the production compan
was like, Okay, it's time to go. They're calling us soon.
I was like, hold on, wait, wait, let me let
me fill up my central fuck this.
Speaker 2: Rob Netflix blind, but this is prime Netflix. This is
like Stranger Things. One was dropping and they fell on
top of the world. They're crushing network television like we
will never.
Speaker 1: Die, you know, post posting fliction. I'm sure they probably
don't do the little refreshment's table anymore.
Speaker 2: But well after you came through, clean the whole place out.
Speaker 1: But how did you? I was I was filling up
like that, was double handing cups of coffee, you know,
like one for the road type shit like this is hey,
this is free yo, Chicago, Chicago's we love free stuff.
We love free school.
Speaker 2: You said free, you said it was free. So I'm
not I'm not the weird one.
Speaker 1: I want to ask. I want to ask you, though,
so how how did you get into all this stuff?
Like you, what is your background? How'd you start down
this path?
Speaker 2: So weirdly? I got into it because I was a
Billiard's influencer. So my favorite fucking thing in the world
is pool. I love it. That's amazing, this is I
love it so much. I I moved to New York.
I was like doing improv and stand up and it's
doing comedy in Denver, and I moved to New York
to like to kind of like try to level up
to comedy in New York. And I somehow got a
job with this incredible billiards company based out of Japan,
and they let me like just make whatever videos that
I wanted for them. So my for a couple of
years was just like go to the pool hall, try
to recreate a famous shot and like do a comedic
breakdown of like what I learned and how hard the
shot was and all that stuff. Damn and so, which
was like, I mean, I don't know, it's kind of
the perfect job, and I like, why did I stop
doing that? But yeah, so I like learned how to host,
I learned how to edit, learn how to like you know,
like do kind of punchy editing and jokes and you know,
kind of tie it all together as a piece. And
then I was doing comedy on the side as well.
Sorry I am, I just housed an oat milk latte.
Sorry that's I'm burping. No, he doesn't doesn't like the
oat milk.
Speaker 1: I'm drinking green tea and pissing in bottles over here,
just to be honest with you, since we're putting it
on the table, so you know, go ahead.
Speaker 2: Can I ask? Are you pissing in bottles?
Speaker 1: Some times during podcasts, I will hit the mute button
on this little recorder and I will piss in a bottle.
I mean it's I drink a lot of fluids pail.
I got a lot of stuff running through me. I
got antioxidants, I got a lot of caffeine, you know.
And then I and then I take it as you know,
I'm gonna be such a good old to tell you man,
and I fill it the one gallon jug the rest
with water and use it as nitrogen the water my plants.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm out there. I'm out there,
fucking wear it on my sleeve. I got nothing to hide,
you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is this is we gotta just clone
you and just like sprinkle you out throughout the South.
We didn't let people know that this is what, this
is what ecologists look like.
Speaker 1: We didn't even talk about shitting in the compost yet.
You know that's really that's a little We're not there yet, pal.
You know, this is my friend, my friend Anna Maria
told me about She's from Chicago too. She told me
one time, this is years ago, about going to her
dad's house. He's like he speaks to Thinglis. She's like
from the old country and she was going to like
visit him. And in his closet, like one of his
like broom closets or whatever, he had like a five
gallon jug full of his own piss that he was
putting on. Yeah, this is fucking this is real, man,
It's just what happened. People need to hear this.
Speaker 2: Where no one can like stumble into it.
Speaker 1: Well, it wasn't like a shoe closet. It was like
a broom closet. You know, there was like waste basket
in there and stuff.
Speaker 2: But and he was filling runner your runner My ship
was not in a shoe closet, but he was in aroo.
Speaker 1: He was pissing in a five gallon buck and then
filling the rest of the water and then he would
go put on his basilin tomato plants. You know. He's
like this guy was saying, why let that nitrogen go
to waste? You know, this is where I'm probably losing listeners,
and there's probably some people turning turning this up in
the moment. Hey, that's okay, it's not for everybody anyway, Okay, Sorry,
where were we at? Where were we talking about?
Speaker 2: You were talking about pissing in a jug?
Speaker 1: No no, no no before that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I was I was doing I was, I
was making these these videos. But I was also like,
I moved to New York to do comedy, so I'm
doing comedy on the side. I'm adding comedy to these
Billiards videos. But I'm also like, you know, you're in
New York, you have like five jobs. My other job
because I'm a biology, chemistry, and mathematics tutor. That's middle school,
high school, and college.
Speaker 1: So you're a pool shark and then you're teaching chemistry
on the side. That sounds like a pretty cool, a
pretty cool gig, to be honest, it felt.
Speaker 2: Like a good combo. And also like tutoring. I don't
know if you're if you're in New York and you
want a pretty sweet gig and you can handle it,
tutoring is incredible. What happens is there is there's a
million really rich parents in New York, and they're so
good at controlling every aspect of their life, but they
can't control their kids, and their kids like rebel by
being shitty at school, and so their only thought the
only thing that they can think of is to like, oh,
I'll just pay a tutor like one hundred dollars an
hour to teach my kid how to do math or
like how which which elements are ionic you know, and
so it's like, yeah, it's a it's a great gig.
And you know, like you make friends of the parents,
you make friends of the kids. It feels like, you know,
you're you're you're in touch with the youth. You know
about like skibbity toilets and bullshit, Like there's there's a
there's a good element of like keeping in touch with
multiple generations, still friends with some of the families.
Speaker 1: I yeah, that's cool. Teaching is fun anyway. It's incredible
fun to like help people grasp things because it makes
learning fun. You can make learning fun. And I remember
like the dopamine I would get when I learned new
things or when I was like teaching myself botany or whatever.
It's like to get other people to get that. It's like, oh, yeah,
it's addictive, Like this is cool. I'm like understanding the
world around me. So but you're I mean, you obviously
have a bat you understand chemistry, and you've got like
a scientific You've got science, and you got some scientific
background in her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got. I got a biochemistry degree kicking around somewhere,
which is nice, and and I thought I was going
to try to be like a doctor, do something biomedical
engineering related, and then immediately moved to Denver and started
doing improv comedy, so like kind of that didn't quite
pan out, but but when I moved to New York,
that was like a good skill to have in the
in the chamber. Yeah, So I was doing I was
doing these these comedy billiards videos and then I got
a spot at a theater that was like, hey, you
can do your comedy show, but it's got to have
some kind of educational element to it. Doesn't matter what,
but like it's got to be educatment in some way.
And so I was like, okay, I'll pitch. I was
trying to think of shows to pitch because I was
just trying to get up and do stage time, you know.
And so the show I pitched them was like, Okay,
what if I am like a really strung out al
Gore and I'm hosting a talk show and that's like
the premise of this show.
Speaker 1: What fuck?
Speaker 2: And like and maybe it would be like an I
told just So tour, because climate change is real. And
at this point I wasn't like I didn't know, you know,
more than a lay person about climate change. I wasn't
like I didn't really clock it as like an existential crisis.
I think it was like probably twenty sixteen or twenty
seventeen or something, so like definitely behind the curve, Like
lots of people are like, hey, it's actually a big
fucking problem. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm doing
Billiards videos. I don't you know, it couldn't be about it.
So I'm doing this show. And the show kind of
was starting to do pretty well in Manhattan, and then
part of the show was we would have climate scientists
come on the show and like, you know, I'd be
in character as al Gore. I'd do my opening monologue.
Speaker 1: Wait, was he really strung out? Like you were pretending
to be addicted to opioids or what.
Speaker 2: The idea was like he had been talking about. So,
the two things al Gore is known for are the
Internet and climate change, and those are the two things
that are currently controlling everybody on the planet Earth's lives
in my opinion, and we couldn't find a way to
make that man president and that was such a bummer. Yeah, okay,
and imagine how he must feel where he's like I
called the internet from from like, you know, nineteen ninety seven,
I called climate change from the late eighties, and like
you know, and still people sort of see him as
like an alarmist or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nuts, man. Everything would have been so different
than you know, I'm not saying. I mean, George Bush
Junior has some wonderful paintings he's doing.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Have you've seen the portraits of dogs he's doing.
Speaker 2: It's really cute, man, But not gonna say that is
the most talented war criminal I think we've ever had.
Speaker 1: It. It's like, oh, by the way, I got you, guy,
I got the whole country involved in a bogus war
that killed you know, tens of thousands of people. But
I'm I'm making wonderful portraits of puppies now. So it
kind of it's a trade off, right, Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: Every you know, everything's trade offs. Everything's a trade off.
Speaker 1: How did we get here? How did we get Okay? Anyway,
so keep okay, so keep going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh so yeah, So I sort of I thought, like,
I guess the personality of al Gore would be that
he's a little bit frustrated that nobody listens to him.
And now we're in like deep shit, and that's like
kind of the strung out nature of him being not
not like not like necessarily has just done an eight
ball the night before and like is like sort of
starved for neurotransmitters but like mostly mostly mad. But you know, honestly,
it wasn't that well thought out, if I'm being honest,
It was like I want stage time, I have a
gray wig. Let's just make this al Gore and move on.
And so the show kind of got started to get
picked up and and like because we're in New York,
climate science is to live in New York. Are pretty
easy to contact, and they're like, hell, yeah, that sounds great.
Like I people don't really want to hear me talk,
and this is an opportunity to like come and do
a show and come and say talk about climate change.
So like I'll definitely go. Yeah, And so we got
like some fucking hot shit. We got the director of
the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Like we got
doctor Kate Marvel, Like we were getting really good gets
because they're like New York based and they have nothing
else to do on like a Friday night. Yeah and
so and yeah. So the show is like going good,
and I'm talking to these climate scientists and kind of
like starting to form more of an accurate picture of
the reality of the climate crisis. And so I was like, well, shit,
it's about time to quit my internet job. I had
a different internet job at this time, and go back
to grad school and get a climate science and policy degree.
And so I did that and was doing the show
at the same time. And then twenty twenty happened and
everything shut down and the University of Columbia became a
seventy thousand dollars University of Phoenix, which was kind of
fucked up because it's, uh, you're paying, You're paying all
this tuition money and the teachers are like trying to
figure out how to use zoom.
Speaker 1: University of Phoenix. I haven't thought of that in fourteen years.
When I got a locomotive license working for the railroad,
that was we would sign into like our law our
accounts through like University of Phoenix.
Speaker 2: It was oh, for real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got experienced. It's hilarious. Yeah, totally, man, holy shit,
that's that was a good I'm sorry. I just just
made me remember like the fluorescent lights and like the
fucking you know, plastic tables and shiit that we anyway, sorry,
go yeah.
Speaker 2: That's you. You're getting PTSD.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's bringing me back to the ugh yeah anyway,
okay sorry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So COVID hit and I pivoted everything to YouTube,
and that's when I started Climate Town. And because I
had already been youtubing and been like hosting my own
shit with this Billiards channel that was still going on
at the time, I kind of knew the ropes and
I knew like packaging and editing and jokes, and you know,
I was in school at the time, so I also
had access to like some of the world class researchers
in the energy system and climate policy, and you know,
I just like had a lot of help from people
who were sort of motivated to help students. And also
I was the only student who was like not the
only student, I won't say, but like it was a
traumatic experience for everybody, especially in New York, because like
there's truly nowhere to go in New York City. You know,
like the car park trade off really was in everywhere
else's favor during the pandemic when there was just no
parks and it didn't make sense to go anywhere, damn.
So I was like, you know, getting a ton of
help from my teachers and able to like write scripts.
And then my buddy Matt Nelson, who is to this
day a co writer and the director of the channel,
he started helping me work on them. And he's like
this engineering genius. He was like a mechanical engineer and
worked for a PG and E, so he knew the
ins and outs of like the pipeline world. Yeah, and
then yeah, and then we and then this guy Ben
Bolt joined up and we've sort of been kind of coasting,
not coasting, but like spinning ever since.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Man, the topics that you guys pick are great,
And yeah, they're not just about I mean climate related stuff.
It's about I mean a lot of different things. You've
got you got a video on water, got a video
on fast fashion. What's that You're getting screwed by free
returns thing? I haven't seen that one? What is that?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, that's a good one. So so base. And
this is actually relevant to like the holiday season. Basically,
if you buy something online and it comes to you
and you return it, most of the time that item,
even if you didn't use it, will go into a landfill.
Speaker 1: Jesus.
Speaker 2: You'll get the money back, but it will not get
resold to another customer because it's just like so much easier,
I mean, and it actually like if you really tease
it out, it makes sense, like they don't know the
quality of the return that you're you know, you're like, oh, hey,
this is actually too big. I'm sending it back to
like LLBean or whatever, or maybe maybe like you bought
it on Amazon and you're like returning it. So Amazon
gives you a refund immediately, and then that item goes
back to a returns center. So like a giant warehouse,
like a low roofed warehouse, it's like stacked stacked of
returns and somebody has to come aroun and analyze every
item because it can't just go back because what if
like somebody wore it and it's called full of cat hair,
and then somebody tries to buy it, They're like, this
is full of cat hair. I'm never shopping with you again,
they lose a customer that like will will destroy value
for them. So it's just simply cheaper to just eat
the return cost, throw it away or like try to
donate it, and then whoever it gets donated to eventually
ends up throwing it away and just making a new one.
Because and this is part of the in shitification of everything.
You know, everything's made of plastic now, and it's just
like easier to just spin up a polyester shirt than
it is to look at another one, maybe clean it,
repackage it. Just like every extra step costs another couple bucks,
Like you're employing a person to do this, and soon
it's just not worth the cost of making a new one,
very very soon, like if it's if it's under thirty
five dollars or something like, no fucking way.
Speaker 1: I got a was this one. So basically what you're
telling me, there's there's basically a river of garbage and
effluent just coming out of like this whole system just
going into the ocean in the ground. Like it's you know,
it's gonna add to that stratigraphic layer of plastic that
some semi sentient species might dig up in one hundred
and fifty million years. That's fucking crazy, man.
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, we're doing a huge favor to that
semi sentient species, but we're giving them an incredible mystery
to uncovered in you know, like a million years or something.
Speaker 1: Plastic think of all the dumb shit too, that's gonna
be fun. I mean, just like my kid, Like my kid,
my daughter's got this. She gets so much plastic shit
that just like little bit like these. I don't let
her have these toys anymore where it's got like seven
eight different plastic tiny pieces because she loses all of
them anyway, and they end up pull over the floor
and then I just throw them out. And I live
in Texas, man, I've been throwing out aluminum cans for
the last two years.
Speaker 2: It's like, sh is there no aluminum like recycling in Texas.
Speaker 1: They've got a bin you can bring it to, but
uh but like no one does it and it's like
out of the way and halftime you go there, it's
not there, and like you know, you've got to like
drive to this like like dusty vacant lot on a
fucking on the edge of town, and it's just like man.
Speaker 2: Doing a drug deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then they're probably just like throwing it out anyway.
It's like it's you know, it's it's fucking insane here
and like no one thinks about this stuff. I mean,
you know, obviously I didn't move here for culture necessarily.
I moved here for family and for the plant life.
We started this non profit thing. But it's nuts. I mean,
I I look at that, I'm like, I'm throwing out aluminum.
Like I get the plastic recycling plastics kind of a scam,
you know, but but like, aluminum is not that hard
to recycle.
Speaker 2: Why the fuck, dude, aluminum is like if the fact
that we don't recycle aluminium is crazy. It is such
a valuable commodity. It's got to be mined out of
the ground, often by children, you know. I mean, just
try explaining to somebody like, hey, yeah, we actually need
you to risk losing another finger because we couldn't be
bothered to like figure out a way to collect these
after we've slammed a bush light. You know, it is
so wild.
Speaker 1: Where does where does most of it come from? Like?
Speaker 2: Where?
Speaker 1: What country? What region?
Speaker 2: Do I know it? Now? Well? I mean I can
look it up, like Joe Rogan's Little guy.
Speaker 1: Ja we looked that up. Yeah, man, I mean it's
it's you know, it's I think a lot of especially
where I live, a lot of people just don't think
about shit like that, Like they don't really Like when
the electric grid here failed, it was like, oh, it's
this and the electric system in this state is crazy,
Like it's a fucking scam, Like there's so many middlemen
involved because I mean there's no public utilities really, I mean,
there is one, but then they sell it to I
forget how exactly it works, but they they sell it
the private companies. So you know, when you put a
middleman in, of course, just like with healthcare, you're it's
just becomes a scam. It's a fucking shakedown. It's like
a you know, mafioso is in the middle, like you know,
skimming off the top. So I don't know, man, it's
it's a it's a weird it's a weird place, but
this is I mean, it's like that in a lot
of the Southeast. I think these like privatized schemes for electricity,
for public utilities for whenever.
Speaker 2: Dude, Yeah, we're we're we're working on a video about
that right now. It's slow going, but that is the
utilities video is like you just keep uncovering more and
more ship like oh and and it shouldn't be a surprise,
Like the government hands a private ish company a monopoly
and it's like, all right, don't fuck this up, and
it's like, of course they're going to suck it up.
I just looked it up and it looks like alumitum
mostly comes from China, India, and Russia.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, oh yeah, oh countries with great labor laws.
Speaker 2: They're really countries. Yeah, just like send wave after wave
of our citizens that the illumined mind Jesus man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the but anyway, but going back to the
public utility thing, I mean, it's you know how this
public utility is turning private, other public services turning private
schools turning private you know, it's it really does just
reward this bottom of the brain stem primate hoarding complex,
like just greed, you know, like oh we can make money.
I wondered about people that live like that, like do
they what do they what do they enjoy doing? It's
just is it really just money? Like it's just having
as much as possible. Is there ever like do you
do you crave experiences? Do you crave fulfilling relationships? You know,
like does where does this come from? And you know,
you talk to people that know extremely wealthy people or
have worked with them, whatever, and they're always like, yeah,
they're fucking miserable. They're like they hate each other.
Speaker 2: That is wild, Like why do you rich people get sack?
Like stop stop doing the shit that makes you.
Speaker 1: Sad because they're dead inside, because they're empty. There's nothing.
I mean, you know, you got more shit people want
to take, get more stuff to worry about. It's just
it's your main motivating factor. I mean, it's it's never
just make a lot, stack it up and then then
just enjoy the rest of your life. That's never enough.
Like it becomes an addiction. It's a fucking addiction. There's
brain chemistry there fucking with you making it addictive. You know,
I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean I think that must be it where it's
like we just like lived so much of humanity on
outdated hardware that was just like, hey, if this happens,
get anxious and hoard so that you can survive the
winter or whatever. Yeah, and we just never like it's
We're just animals, you know, like we just have to
leap frog bad and I have no clue how we
do it besides like holding each other tight and being
just like constantly saying it's not your fault to each other.
Speaker 1: I mean that's what I always say that, you know,
we're animals. Man, the enlightenment's over, Like there's no like
it can It can happen, but you need a culture
that supports that kind of quote enlightenment or self awareness,
and most people aren't doing that. We're animals, like we're
semi sentient. I mean, people can strive to be people
can be more if they put their energy into it.
But as a large, unthinking group, that's what we are.
And it's just, you know, we just revert to those
bottom of the brain stem impulses like that's what you know.
I don't know, man, And I think, yeah again, like
taking the nature out of people's lives, like so many
people don't even realize, like man, that shit is not
it's not just landscaping. It's not just this this feel
good background sceneryef that looks good in wedding photos and
fucking you know, as a background for corporate events like
it's actually it's a fundamental part of you. And if
you don't have that, your psychology starts getting sucked up.
Like you start you're like the rat in a cage
with no toys, Like you start just getting weird nervous
ticks and whatever. So you know, people need to make.
Speaker 2: I am leaving group of this. I am currently not
having enough nature in my life. And like I'm going
back to Colorado for a couple of days for Christmas
to see my dad, and like I'm already planning, Okay,
I'm gonna take this hike. I know I'm going to
go out to like I'm gonna go up up Clear
Creek so to like you know, maybe I'll go out
to Elbert, Colorado or my own boy Scout camp was
and like I don't know, it's just like that stuff,
yeah you.
Speaker 1: Need, but New York Scott Parks. And then also, I
mean this is not everybody's cup of tea, but as
a young man, this is where I would go. It's
got places that trespassed, you know, Old Raiyards, Newtown Creek.
Like there's places where nature it's not I mean, it's
in mostly invasive species whatever, but they're not planted plants
where nature can creep back in and you can actually
like get some quiet. You can still hear the war
of the city, but you can get some quiet and
see some actual wild plants, uh taking over. You know,
there's there's places to get away fromtal That's where I
would hang out on it, Like when I was in Chicago,
Like I'd always look for like the abandoned lots and
train tracks and shit like that, old rail yards whatever.
But you know clearly understand the railroad Diamond at eighteenth
and Western, And I said, Wow, that's a real it's
a really special spot. The man we used to go
have fires there and drinking the cottonwood trees. But but anyway, Okay,
well I want to talk about one more video you got.
This is a actually I want to talk about too.
What's with Okay, the got milk scam? The dairy is
milking you re what's this about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this one is is kind of a look
at how the dairy industry got popular or got like
powerful really and so essentially you might be aware of
like stuffed crust pizza or like the triple cheese, quadruple chilopa,
and like this these are a combination of like fast
food restaurants trying to do their thing and and also
fast food restaurants working with the dairy lobby to figure
out how to increase the amount of dairy they're able
to add to people's diets.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's gnarly. The Triple Black pass, the Triple bypassed, Chiloopa.
Speaker 2: That's yeah, I mean really, and this is like this
is a fairly well documented thing. I mean, the dairy farmer,
Like you just kind of close your eyes and you
see an American flag and a dairy farmer walking in
front of it, like patting a cow, and like this
this was like a powerful political symbol for a lot
of years, and so politicians were really careful to make
sure they had the dairy industry on their side. But
then the dairy industry industrialized and mechanicalized and squeezed out
these little, you know, tiny dairy farms and and you know,
like created these massive mono farms that had like thousands
of cows and they were cranking out milk, and they
cranked out more milk than they could actually sell. And
like part of the bailout was the government guaranteeing a
price of milk, So a milk is a commodity. So
they would take the milk and turn it into cheese
and like give the cheese to people or discount the cheese.
And when they still had too much cheese, they had
to store it in these cheese caves. And you know
the term government.
Speaker 5: Cheese, Yeah, yeah, this is a literal term that refers
to the cheese that the government owns that they have
purchased the milk from the dairy.
Speaker 2: Industry at a mandated cost, So it's literal cheese. And
so the government, like during the Reagan era, the government
was like sick of spending all this money to like
subsidize the dairy industry, and so they were trying to
figure out a way to stop like having to buy
a ton of cheese, and so a they gave out
a lot of that cheese. That's that's what government cheese
refers to. Like like lower income people and elderly people
would get free blocks of cheese in these like cardboard boxes.
It's like really interesting to go look at. But the
other method for which they could kind of get the
dairy industry off of the government dime was to incorporate
the dairy farmers into a lobby group. So they called
this group that there's also there's both the milk lobby
and the larger dairy lobby, and they were sort of
jump started with government money as sort of a public
private partnership. And these two lobbies have been doing marketing
around getting people to eat more cheese and eat more,
drink more milk, and like eat more pizza and use
extra pizza, extra cheese on pizza.
Speaker 1: Damn man. This is so it's it's you know that
kind of annihilates the logic of the freedom of the
you know, the glory of the free markets, Like we
have too much supply, so we'll just manufactured demand. Now
that's is that's super gaming the system a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think like it's super feels communist dick
when it's the government like guaranteeing a price, and so
like I think the move from like, oh, it's not
the government anymore to it's the dairy loby just drumming
up demand, and it's like, oh, well, this is not
better than the government like guaranteeing the demand. It's the
government like financing another entity that's going to guarantee the demand.
The sort of like convincing people that the only way
to be healthy is to drink five cups of milk
a day, which there's zero science to support.
Speaker 1: By the way, I mean, that's what they did with oil,
and that's what they did with corn. You increase demand,
you make everyone completely same story, every.
Speaker 2: Story that I was, Yeah, the outline where it's like, Okay,
an industry got some money making a thing, and they
wanted to get more money because that's what capitalism demands,
and the best way to get more money is to
like trick people to buy your shit more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, whether it's putting excess sugar and food
and making it taste more and hyper. You go to
Mexico and the corner stores do that or the oxos,
it's all you can't get anything healthy. It's like all
processed shit. There's fucking sugar in everything. It's like and
it's killing people. And like the Mexican government's done, like
you have notices on the food now you know, excess
so caldies whatever. But uh, but you know, it's it's
just it's crazy that that people don't realize what's going
on here. I mean, I tell people, that's a friend
of mine made a point once he's Canadian. He was like, man,
if conservatives ever looked at the and again, not trying
to make this political, but if conservatives, you know, they're
all people are like, oh, fifteen minutes. There was this
big thing against fifteen minute cities. Remember that fifteen minute
cities are a liberal stamp. Yeah, but when you look,
you could say the same for the car thing, like, Okay,
you're gonna be forced everywhere. There's not gonna be sidewalks
in a lot of the places you live. There's not
gonna be bike lanes, it's not gonna be public trans that.
You're gonna be forced to drive a car. You're gonna
be forced to make insurance payments, car payments. Uh, you're
gonna end up paying thirty percent more than the cost
because you're buying it on interest. You know you're gonna
be forced to do this. You have no choice. I
mean you can walk or you know, ride your bike
on a sidewalk like some of the homeless people you
might see out there, but you're otherwise you're gonna be
forced to do this. Like if you could say the
same thing, if like they ever came in it from
that they've really. I mean that's what. It kind of
boggles my mind. It's like, man, you don't realize, like
this is kind of a conspiracy. Dude, this is crazy.
I mean it's it's you're forced to do these things,
like you're like the ethanol thing, like that's very obviously
a scam. That all this again just manufacturing demand. You
have too much supply, you don't want costs to go down,
So what are you gonna do? You get to game
the system and manufactured demand. It's it's it's nuts. I
mean it's and it's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's no there's no counterpoint to it because
there's no big walking lobby and there's no like I
guess there's no like genuine people health lob because it's
not profitable to like moderate what you eat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I know, they're like, oh, just call do
push ups. It's like, well, man, I mean it's like
you need a lot more to be healthy than to
just do one hundred push ups a day. Sorry, but yeah,
it's uh, I don't know, man, it's cool. It's thanks
for explaining that too. I mean, I'm still gonna watch it,
but a lot.
Speaker 2: Of this it's it's a good one it probably didn't
need to be forty minutes long. Hey, as someone who
makes this, Okay, this podcast will be more than forty
minutes long then, So I mean I'm off the hook.
Speaker 1: As somebody who makes gratuitously long videos of them, like
no production quality, just the man screaming at the ground.
You know, I can sympathize with you on the long
the long Your videos are probably easier to watch than mine.
Speaker 2: But but but can I actually can I can I
hit you with a couple of questions or do you
have go ahead?
Speaker 1: Go ahead? The no structure.
Speaker 2: So when I was researching for the lawns video that
we were doing, maybe like probably like three days before
we were locking the script, they were like, oh, yeah,
I've heard the phrase kill your lines before. Where's that?
Where'd that come from? And it was your fucking series.
I didn't, I guess I didn't realize that, like you
had that like an actual TV show.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was a season. I was in it.
But I didn't produce that that I.
Speaker 2: Didn't Okay, So yeah, I just wonder how did that happen?
What was what was the deal with that? Because you're
like a genuine TV star. Yeah, well, just on that
at least.
Speaker 1: Me and my friend All's scorch in our production company,
which was this small production company out of New York
that I'm friends with, like one of the main guys
that are really cool. Guy. I don't know how that
fucking guy tolerated us, because me and Al are both
insane and and you know, we like we had we
like had a mutiny the first week that we were
in production. We still we hadn't signed the contract yet,
and like the production company was like freaking out because
we could have bailed at any time, and I straight
up told them, like I don't need this show. I
got my own thing. I'm doing this because I believe
in the message. But our friend David Metis and wonderful man,
uh you know, tolerated anyway, so that this production company
got this show together, pitched it to this a bunch
of different networks. This company called earth X's TV company
bought it, and you know, we thought they were going
to stream it. It's got a built in audience because
all the crime paced people works, all the crime paceman's
were excited about it, and it's just a good message.
People are into this stuff, like the Native Plant movement
here is growing, The killer lawn movements growing. People like
learning about the shit that grows and lives where they
where they grew up and did so for millions of
years and so.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: But earth X at the last minute they decided we're
not going to stream it. Earth xits based out of Texas, Like,
we're not going to stream it, We're going to sell
it to cable and me and Al were like, are
you kidding? What the fuck? So like, instead of being
able to just openly watch episodes, you have to like
rent the motel six and get the check channel two
sixty seven at two in the morning, you know, or
you can like sign up for like any one of
a number of no name streaming sea.
Speaker 2: You don't have Pigley Poop TV.
Speaker 1: They've all got like these weird startup names Filo and
Swap and whatever the fuck they sound like pylon portant
channel names. Well, right now, on a Patreon there's a
link to a you know, I shouldn't put this out there,
but for the next two weeks there's a link where
people can watch all of season two just by doin
on the Patreon. Oh, just hoping I don't catch a
lawsuit from earth X here, but you know whatever anyway,
But but yeah, so that was that was the thing,
and it was a fun show to produce. They did
two seasons and the people at earth X were super cool.
I just wish they would have made a different decision,
you know, but uh, but yeah, it got out there
and now no one can watch it. So you know,
if you happen to rent a motel six and you
know Las Crusix, New Mexico, and you're up at two
in the morning, you can catch it on Channel two
sixty seven. So that was it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's that is very interesting. I was, I was.
I was curious to know how that fit into the
larger Pay's world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just like a side gig. We basically
filmed two seasons in a year and a half and
it was really fun. We did San Diego, Miami, South Texas, Chicago, Baltimore.
Where the fuck else did we go? Oh? New Orleans.
So we went to all these different cities and found
homeowners we wanted to kill their lawns, and then went out.
We killed the lawns different ways each time, and then
we'll go and find, you know, find like the native
habitat and that's where we would get inspiration from for
what the plant in people's yards. And and some of
those yards I've gone back to and they look fucking amazing,
like a lot of the Chicago yards, because there were
four yards in Chicago, and they're like amazing prairie gardens now,
you know that are just fucking wonderful to hang out.
And everyone that we did it for is like in
love with it, you know. Two years later they're all
excited about it. So it's been really cool. I mean,
every time I do this and come back to check
on the yard, like people are fucking stoked. They're like, man,
I saw this really cool dragonfly in my yard. Holy shit,
you know, and like this person has no background in biology,
they generally didn't care about this shit, but they're stoked
on what's going in the yard, you know. And I'll
tell them about all the plants that we planted there
and what they're related to and what they what pollinates them,
and they've got some cool soil fungus they associate with whatever,
you know, and it's cool. I mean, that's what I
live for. I love like seeing people get excited about
shit again. And like that little kid that just loves
to play in the backyard with sticks and roly polies
comes out, you know, like what society tries to kill,
like the spirit inside of us that society like pours
cold water on, you know, and you get the Mortha
Devomne's fucking walking dead. You know, when people that are
just hate their jobs, hate their lives whatever. The antidote
today is that five year old kid that's still inside them,
that likes to just look at bugs in the backyard.
And that's what comes out when people do this stuff.
So it's nice to me. I really fucking talk a lot.
I'm sorry, it's supposed to be your interview, No, this is.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm I'm curious about, uh, what makes you
tick and how how your various tendrils come together and
the origin story and everything. So I'm sure if I
listened to enough episodes of this podcast, I could glean
it from various breadcrumbs you dropped throughout the episodes, but
I'd rather just get to mainline info anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some of the podcasts are you know, guest episodes
like this, and then some are just ranting episodes just
like me talking about whatever I did saw. Some cool
shit whatever. But you know, I can't really listen to
them after I do them because it's just the word.
But yeah, I'm trying to think.
Speaker 2: Was there.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, let's move on to if we If I
can ask you one more question about extra video the
weird fruit. I'm guessing is this the palm oil episode?
Speaker 2: What? Yes?
Speaker 1: What? And what is this? Explain to everybody what's going
on here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, basically, there's a kind of oil that's in Basically,
you know, the majority of the products that you eat
in a grocery store. I think over fifty percent of
the items often have contained some form of palm oil.
And so palm oil is the seed of the oil
palm tree. And it's a really effective oil. It's got
a lot of really positive qualities, and like anything with
a lot of positive qualities, capitalism has zeroed in on it,
figured out that they can exploit it for a lot
of money, especially like an exploitable workforce like Indonesia for instance,
and they've figured out ways to sort of force people
in the developing world to grow an insane amount of
oil palm to harvest the palm oil, and there's a
ton of negative side effects from that, one of which
being like the clear cutting of rainforests and peat and
the destruction of orangutan habitats, or the monocropping of oil
palm trees so that they can like harvest these you know,
palm oil and put it in oreos for instance, to
just make the texture just like three percent more creamy.
And that's fucking it. You know, Like there there are
tons of other other you know, oils we could use.
I mean, you know there's it's just it's just that
classic exactly the same thing as we've been talking about
yet another. You know, sometimes you flip over a rock
and it's a roly poly. Sometimes you flip over a
rock and it's an industry that's exploiting people in Indonesia.
And this is the second one.
Speaker 1: It seems it seems like a lot of times you
flip over a rock and there's some grotesque scheme, like
money grubbing scheme by some sleezoid that really needs to
just touch is, you know, get in touch with his
five year old inner child again, you know. But instead
he's like finding new ways to like make more money
than he needs to buy shit. He doesn't really, it's
it's I love that the same theme. I mean, it
really is. It's like you're this is what is great
about You're. So it's different variations on the same theme,
and just from an anthropological and sociological perspective, it's really interesting.
It's like this is really the ship that runs our world.
These are this kind of stuff like this is peak
human development here. We're finding ways to make that the
cream inside an Oreo cookie three percent cream here, and
that's that's it's amazing. I mean, this is really, you know,
three hundred thousand years of human evolution to do this shit.
This is it's crazy. This is bottom of the brainstem ship,
especially when you look at I mean Borneo. Indonesia has
amazing biodiversity there. It's in a complex living machine, a complex,
and we're destroying it all. We're destroying these museums to
put up dollar general stores filled with I mean, right figures.
Speaker 2: It's like the burning of Alexandria. You know, it's like
there's all this natural, not natural, but there's always knowledge.
I mean, in in Indonesia it is natural knowledge, but
alexand it's not the perfect fucking metaphor. Okay, I get Yeah,
we're just like lighting this shit on and oftentimes literally
lighting it on fire. Like one of the one of
the best ways that they found, the least labor intensive
way to like clear peat forests is to drain them
and then light them on fire and then like release
all that giant carbon bomb into the atmosphere and then
they can plant oil palm plantations on top.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and no, nobody like who makes these decisions, like
the most like most people on Earth would not want
this if you ask them, if it was put to
a vote. It's like it's sleeves bags with lots of
money and power that decide this stuff. And it's crazy
because it's the seconds, the same thing everywhere all over
the globe. It's like it's in the way this system works.
It's if you know, if there's not enough demand, we'll
make demand. We'll make people want it. It's the same
shit drug dealers, do you know. It's like, yeah, just
give you a little taste of fence and they'll get
you hooked. Then you keep coming back and yeah, yeah,
fuck it. Who cares about the recombinations.
Speaker 2: I think that one of the one of the other
stark things is like the developed world, like when you
when you use that phrase like developed generally means that
is a country that's already destroyed all of its forests,
you know, like truly like it sucks, but it's like
this is nothing new. In fact, these are just like
kind of the last pockets of wilderness and they too
are going to be burned on the altar of capitalism
because we can't seem to stop ourselves.
Speaker 1: It was just like it's not very smart though either,
Like it's not this is not the way intelligent species behaves.
This is the way that a species that's acting like
a greedy, spoiled nine year old behaves, like just taking
everything without thinking about the long term effects or the repercussions.
And it's it's like, god, damn, man, haven't we aren't
we better than this? I mean maybe not, but I
would like to think I've.
Speaker 2: Only seen this movie though, Like haven't haven't, Like doesn't
everybody know the outcome? And I think the answer is
always like, yeah, we know it's bad, but we got
to hit our Q three numbers, bro, Like, obviously it's bad.
Nobody wants to do this, but we're three percent down.
We got to get you know, like twelve million more
in sales and if we don't do this, the company
next door is going to do it anyway. And I
know I'm a better person than that person. So I
guess I'll let mother Nature take one for the team
and I'll cut down another rainforest in Borneo.
Speaker 1: But there's no planning behind this, there's no like, a
better way to do this than this, And we can
do this is more sustainable because if we do it
this way, in fifty years, this is going to be repercussion.
So I just like get as much as you can. Like,
have you ever watched a tweak or build a cabinet before?
For instance, this is just something I saw twenty years ago.
It's living in a really rough apartment in San Francisco.
I left for the summer, and you know, a friend
moved in, who a friend of a friend moved in
who was a methadict, and they built a really fucked
up cabinet. And I came back and saw this. At first,
I was like, what the fuck do you do to
my apartment? And then I was like, what the fuck
is that? It looks like a cabinet, like a like
it looks like a cabinet, met a birdhouse, met a
drawing out of a Doctor Seuss book. It was the
most mind blow I mean, this is and this is
what we're doing in terms of economies, in terms of
developing quote developing the world around us, the land use
we put together. There's no planning to it at all.
It's it's just how much money can I make as
quick as possible and then slash and burn fuck it?
You know.
Speaker 2: It's and I think people assume that there is planning
going on, you know. I think like part of the
of the like the aftertaste of the Great American experiment
and like us being a massive superpower of a country,
is sort of the feeling that somebody's got it figure
it out, Like of course Colorado wouldn't just you know,
like ze own something for you know, residential if it
was going to be a problem, Like of course the
Colorado River is going to have enough water in it.
How could we plan something like that and fuck that
up that bad? Right? And it's like no, Like every
single time you just dig a little bit into the surface.
It's like fourteen fucking guys in eighteen ninety one all
got together and like, Okay, we're all going to tack
this river up. Together and it never is always just
a house of cards. And for the first time ever,
we have the ability to like as a as a
global unit course correct and it's like, well maybe we can.
I don't know. I don't want to be too nihilistic here,
but like, I mean, there's a chance. There's always a chance.
Speaker 1: It's fucking terrifying. It's like being on a ship out
at sea and you wake up in the middle of
the night because you feel some bumps and then you
go up to look to like the captain's the fucking whatever,
the platform is where to navigate, and the wheel is,
and you realize there's no one at the helm. Like,
there's no one at the helm. You're like, there's like
a monkey driving the fucking You're like, oh shit, he's
got a cute little fezon and shit, he's playing the
accordion and smiling and he's very obviously I met the
amphetamines and that's all that's that's who's driving the ship.
You're like, holy fuck, there's no like that. And that's
like kind of the trajectory humanity z on right now.
And and kind of as a result of of this
form of capitalism we're in it's crazy. It's fucking terrifying.
Like there is no plan for tomorrow. There's no plan
to make sure we all survive and make it another
five hundred years. It is just get get in what,
get in what you can like if you can fit
in there and get some get it.
Speaker 2: You know, it does feel like a going out of
business sale, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Like pigs at a trough, Like literally, like pigs that
a trough that get out of the way. I want
to get some too, you know. Fuck it, Well the
foods that we don't have anymore, we're running out. You know,
maybe we should refill the trough now just get it. Well,
it can't. It's yeah, it's it's scary shit. But uh,
you know, as a nihilist myself, I kind of uh,
you know, it's it's I guess I'm a more of
a catastrophist really if I express any political belief. But yeah, man, there's.
Speaker 2: Never been a better time to be a catastrophist. I
mean you really to be like an interesting angled catastrophist
who's also into botany. I think this is You've nailed
a genre here.
Speaker 1: It's like that circle jerk song, you know when the
ship hits the fan. It's kind of like that's like
the ethos we all got a duck when the ship
hits the fan. But you know, I wish it just
is frustrating for me because it doesn't it doesn't have
to be this way like we could. They're like we
have smart people, they're just not in charge, or if
they're smart, they're in charge, but they're they're there, their
smartness is overshadowed by their greed, you know, and they're
their membership of this like money loving cult. It's crazy.
It's crazy, But uh.
Speaker 2: No, I hate Shanghai your own podcast, But in our
dwindling minutes do it? What do you think is? What
do you think is the way out? Like is there
a or is it better to look on sort of
a local level and like just try to embody the
solution that might work on a global level and move forward, Like.
Speaker 1: What's the way out? As individuals? Like for people listening
to this podcast, like there's a coping Yes, I.
Speaker 2: Feel like as as leaders, maybe as aspirational leaders of
various communities. I'm sure there's a lot of people listening
to this who are like, yeah, I hold a certain
amount of sway in my local group.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, if the if the well being and
future of our species depends on this living machine that
we're inhabiting, which is the biosphere, I would say looking
to the living machine for instructions and trying to understand
it should be some of the utmost priority, and certainly
not disassembling that living machine, uh and throwing out the pieces,
you know, like again to make a tweaker reference, because
that's what our species behaving like, like a tweaker under
the hood of a car, Like just what's this? What's
this piece? Doe? I don't know, wrench it off, throw
it away? Fuck it? You know, what's this tube?
Speaker 2: Do?
Speaker 1: Fucking? What's this belt?
Speaker 2: Do?
Speaker 1: Fucking? I don't know. I got to get to this
the problems with the end, you know, I would say,
studying it and trying to understand it and expressing a
little bit of humilia. I think I think the instructions
are in quote nature. I always say, I don't like
the word nature. It's just the real world. It's you know,
the word nature implies it's something different from us. There's
nature and humanity, humanity and nature. No, Nature's the real world.
We're apart, you know, but I think if anything, you know,
where would I start. I don't know, teaching, you know,
geologic time scale and grade school. Having people learn a
basic I mean it sounds absurd and irrelevant, but having people,
you know, as first second grade understand the basic parts
of plants, how natural selection works. I mean, this stuff
is all around us. It's the living world, it's how
we work, it's how everything you know. I think again,
it's it's like more I guess I would take more
of like a sagan esque approach, like you make like
Carl Sagan, like you make science and technology such a
bigger part of the education system, and and also just
the culture in general. You know, I think that's really important.
Like you go to New Zealand, they have fucking their
native mushrooms and fauna and flora on their currency. You know,
we got like some balding old white guy, Like why,
I'm not saying he shouldn't be there necessarily, but maybe
you could put something else in there too that's more
pertinent to what is here. And I think, you know again,
it's just we got to stop acting as a culture
like we can discard this stuff or that it's only
important if we can eat it or make a medicine
out of it or whatever, or biofuel or whatever. It's like,
the the living world is the answer. It's it's everything, man,
It's the whole hu chain we depend on. So that's
and that's what I try to I try to get
people just look closer, right it. But I mean I
for the people in power. I mean this is because
it all comes down to that. It comes to a
void of leadership at the top. And that's where I
get confused. I'm like, I don't have an answer for that,
Like how do you make sure that the right people
are in charge? Fuck? I don't know, man, I don't know.
I don't know. Because the sociopaths are really good at
getting to the top.
Speaker 2: So they're they're incredible. They have such they got great
skills at so much.
Speaker 1: So much. Yeah, yeah, they're definitely. I really admire their
their passion and their drive. It's like the condescending ship
people say to me somethings, I really admire your passion, but.
Speaker 2: Love your attitude.
Speaker 1: Man, so interesting, ah God, and then I just throw
up on their shoes. But but yeah, man, I don't know.
I I think uh, I think this. I think what
you're doing is really important and I love your fucking
channel and your sense of humor is hilarious, and thank
you for being a voice of sanity to counteract, you know,
like the kind of ship you see on the Joe
Rogan podcast or the Landman Show, which is still a
good show. But their rant was just their rant. He
went on, it's like, wait, Mills, I guess all scam.
It's like renewable energy, just scam. We need oil? Like
wait a minute, wait what what? Like no, but we
you know, yeah, man, So thanks for doing what you do,
and uh.
Speaker 2: Of course thanks for thanks for and honestly right back
at you. I feel like the more the more of
your stuff I watch, the more I'm like, man, this,
I wish I could learn even a hundredth of any
of this. And the way you're able to just like
produce more and more like information and sort of botany
facts out of out of seemingly nowhere is really really impressive.
So I think like you're you're a real leader to
the community, and just keep keep it going and great
to great you be on the pod.
Speaker 1: Yeah man, thanks thanks to Lough for that. Don't watch
too much, it'll drive you insane. So you know you're
still listening to the.
Speaker 2: Back and forth between your channel meditation and laying man,
or as I call it, the Big Three.
Speaker 1: Did you watch any of the eighteen sixty eight? Like?
Those were good shows? Actually too. I don't watch much, but.
Speaker 2: I haven't really watched that yet, but like it's on
my list when I have a free fucking weekend. I haven't.
I haven't clipped into it.
Speaker 1: Western dramas. We're watching Western dramas anyway.
Speaker 2: Just joining us. We're talking about Western dramas, folks. For men,
buy men, ladies, take a HiPE.
Speaker 1: It's for men crying together, men crying again. Man, I'm
excited to see the videos you got coming out and
again thanks again for coming on here and fucking a.
You know I got your number now, so I must
be sending you a text every once in a while,
you know.
Speaker 2: Please. I have a million questions about why my office
plans are dying. Oh yeah, I'm sure I'll hit you.
Speaker 1: Up about that anytime, anytime, man. I love answer questions,
all right, man, Riley Williams, thank you so much, Thanks
so much, man,