THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 144 — Lesbian Bar Drama? Toys 'R' Us Returns? Elon Musk's Paramount?

00:00:03 Speaker 1: My name is Charlie Kirk. 00:00:05 Speaker 2: I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. 00:00:24 Speaker 1: College is a scam, everybody. 00:00:26 Speaker 2: You got to stop sending your kids to college. 00:00:27 Speaker 1: You should get married as. 00:00:28 Speaker 2: Young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter. Go start a Turning Point USA high school chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life, and I encourage you to do the same. 00:00:45 Speaker 1: Here I am. Lord, use me. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. 00:00:56 Speaker 2: Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show. a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. That is noblegoldinvestments.com. 00:01:17 Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Thought Crime Thursday, where. 00:01:23 Speaker 4: I am, as you can see, live on location today. I'm actually in St. 00:01:29 Speaker 3: Louis, Missouri, and we literally, as we're recording this, just finished the beatification mass of Fulton J. 00:01:39 Speaker 4: Sheen. 00:01:40 Speaker 3: And you can, in fact, see the procession, I guess, right over here behind me over my shoulder. And you can see folks are filing out 1,000 priests today. We're here today, 89 bishops and about another thousand sisters, nuns, religious clergy, so many people here, as well as a cardinal directly from the Vatican. Just an incredible American moment, incredible time to be an American. Obviously a huge moment for the church, but a huge moment also for America. And the idea of publicly bringing God and Christ back into America. 00:02:18 Speaker 4: The public square. 00:02:19 Speaker 3: And, uh, he is actually the very first American born Bishop to be declared blessed, uh, beatified by the church, which means that's just one step, one step below sainthood. And in fact, uh, so it requires one miracle to be blessed. And just to give the lay of the land here a little bit. And, uh, it's, it's very hard to, to come by these. They have a, a child who was born with 61 minutes of, His heart stopped for 61 minutes. They couldn't find anything they thought he was done for. They prayed for Fulton Sheen to intercede on his behalf. The boy started living, and just an incredible thing, that boy actually walked in the procession here today, 16 years old now. He presented the relic of Blessed Fulton Sheen on the stage. I believe it's still on the stage. It is actually his jawbone. is now in a reliquary on stage right here in St. 00:03:19 Speaker 5: Louis, Missouri. 00:03:20 Speaker 4: It's going to be on display as people head out afterwards. 00:03:24 Speaker 3: Talk about thought crimes. He was the biggest thought criminal of them all, Fulton Sheen. If anyone watches his shows, his clips, just amazing. 00:03:31 Speaker 4: What's up, guys? 00:03:32 Speaker 1: Jack, that's awesome. I'm curious. Let's just state it out at the onset here. I think Fulton Sheen is a mountain of a man, one of the legends here. It was him and Billy Graham. Earlier today, I said they were like the double-barrel shotgun of mass Christianity, a major move of God in the United States in the 50s and 60s, and then beyond. But I'm curious, because I've always had this question. Actually, Cerno explained it to me one time, but I forgot his answer. But I remember thinking, that's pretty good. When we talk about praying to somebody to intercede, right? So as a Protestant, I was always taught that we have one intercessor, and that is Jesus Christ. Right? That's like the book of Hebrews. What's the Catholic theology on that exactly? I was going to ask the same question because I don't know either. 00:04:19 Speaker 3: Well, so the difference is between mediator and intercessor. So a mediator is, of course, Christ. Christ is the only one who can mediate between the laity, the human beings, and. 00:04:34 Speaker 4: Heaven and God. Of course, there's no question. Prayer of intercession... is. 00:04:39 Speaker 3: Simply going to someone who we believe is already in heaven and saying, hey, can you put in a good word for me? 00:04:44 Speaker 4: It's the idea of asking them to. 00:04:48 Speaker 1: Pray to. 00:04:50 Speaker 3: A lot of people will say that, oh, Catholics believe that it's praying to that person. But, no, it's not praying to them. It's asking them as a favor, hey, can you pray for me as well? 00:04:59 Speaker 1: Got it. 00:04:59 Speaker 4: Okay. 00:05:00 Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember thinking it was, like, not a bad– because, like, okay, I think if I'm remembering, Cerno was, like, basically, well– You know, we believe in life everlasting, right? So they're still alive. So can you ask somebody who's living to say a prayer for you kind of thing? I think that's how I remember it. I got to look into it more because I've always, you know, I admit. 00:05:19 Speaker 6: We're already getting sectional disputes in the Rumble chat. We have Sergeant T 1978. God performed the miracle, not the dead archbishop. The Holy Spirit is the intercessor. 00:05:33 Speaker 4: But again, that's– wait, wait, wait. 00:05:35 Speaker 3: But that is– obviously God performs the miracle. 00:05:40 Speaker 4: No one's ever said otherwise. There's no question. 00:05:43 Speaker 3: The idea is that you asked for the intercession of, at the time, Venerable Fulton Sheen, now Blessed Fulton Sheen. You know, to pray for pray for in this case, it was the sun. And really, at the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that boy did live after his heart not beating for 61 minutes. And what's just amazing as an American story that he was here today. participating in this 16 years after that happened. 00:06:09 Speaker 1: That is wild. 00:06:10 Speaker 6: That's a little wacky. 00:06:13 Speaker 1: He has veneers. Is there a. 00:06:15 Speaker 6: Reason why they have his jawbone in that particular form? 00:06:19 Speaker 1: Because that's very Catholic, right? It is, but usually they're dead a longer time. 00:06:24 Speaker 6: A person's bones were more dissectable. 00:06:28 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an interesting question because it is kind of a– it feels like an ancient thing, right? Yeah. You would bury somebody and then they would– They did. 00:06:36 Speaker 6: A lot of wacky stuff in the Middle Ages. They would straight up– they would just dig up their body and they would start hacking at it for magical mystery bits. 00:06:43 Speaker 1: The body was already kind. 00:06:44 Speaker 4: Of like– But it's not wacky. Blake, it's not wacky. This is Catholic tradition. 00:06:47 Speaker 1: It's not wacky. You know a lot of Catholic tradition is super wacky, Jack. 00:06:51 Speaker 6: You know this is a wacky church. 00:06:53 Speaker 1: We are wacky Maxine. 00:06:55 Speaker 4: We are kooky Maxine. 00:06:56 Speaker 3: Look, I'm not going to be– I'm not going to hang out here and call this kooky while we're literally in the thing. I think that would be very disrespectful. 00:07:05 Speaker 1: Yeah. Listen, here's what I would tell you. Fulton Sheen is the freaking man, so why don't we just play some of his best of. How about this? Here we go. Sot 3. 00:07:19 Speaker 5: This is the era of Western Civilization. Modern Western civilization has identified freedom with freedom from constraint, and it denies goals and purposes and ends. All of our freedoms have certain goals and certain purposes and objectives. The result is that our people of our Western world, simply because they do not know why they are living, they've never decided what they're going to do with their freedom, find it boring. They would like to surrender their responsibility. They're full of anxieties and worries, and there's nothing in life that is quite as boring as a purposeless existence. Simply because our Western civilization has not found the meaning and the purpose of life simply because it concentrates upon freedom from something, our Western world is strong only in. 00:08:23 Speaker 1: War and not in peace. 00:08:29 Speaker 5: Strong only in war because it has the basic objective at least of defending our own existence. But it is not strong in peace because it has no unified faith. No universal goal. No universally recognized purpose in life. 00:08:45 Speaker 1: Yes, that's terrible. Charlie used to talk about that a lot. 00:08:48 Speaker 6: I will say it stood out to me when he was talking that his accent felt hard to place. And I looked up where he's from. It's just El Paso, Illinois. Random small town in Central Illinois. I don't feel like they talk like that anymore. 00:09:01 Speaker 1: No, they don't. 00:09:03 Speaker 6: And it didn't sound Irish. It was Irish by descent. 00:09:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, you see? It felt a little Mid-Atlantic, yeah. 00:09:10 Speaker 4: Isn't it that, like, yeah, the Mid-Atlantic accent. 00:09:14 Speaker 3: It's that, like, F-D-A kind of had that accent. 00:09:20 Speaker 1: But it is crazy, because that is a New York. 00:09:21 Speaker 6: You think of New York elites, and this guy, I'm just looking at his history, he went to They moved to Peoria, Illinois, and then he went to a university in Illinois, and then he studied at a seminary in St. 00:09:34 Speaker 1: Paul, Minnesota. 00:09:34 Speaker 6: So very Midwestern, and Midwesterners don't talk that way much. 00:09:41 Speaker 4: But he was the Bishop. 00:09:42 Speaker 1: Of New York. Fair. Maybe it all just bled over that way. 00:09:45 Speaker 4: For about 15 years. So it could have just kind of. 00:09:48 Speaker 5: 1895. 00:09:48 Speaker 1: And again, that. 00:09:52 Speaker 4: Was sort of like. 00:09:53 Speaker 3: And that Mid-Atlantic accent always was a sort of you know, affected way of speaking anyway. 00:09:59 Speaker 4: So it could just be like you say, like he just kind of picked. 00:10:01 Speaker 1: It up when he was in New York. Well, he was a showman. Let's be honest. The guy was a showman. He knew how to capture the camera. And he did a good job of that. Angelo says we need to play clip four and clip 19. So we're going to do it. Clip four. 00:10:14 Speaker 5: We have rights and liberties like freedom of press, freedom of conscience, freedom of association, which do not come from the government, which do not come from the will of a majority, which do not come from a state. These rights and liberties come to us from God. Therefore, the state cannot take them away. That is our principle. Now, they have to deny God because that would be another source of rights than the state or the party. In order to build up this structure of theirs in which the party is supreme, they must hold that any right or liberty which the individual possesses comes to him from the party. Therefore, the party can take the rights and liberties away. But if there was a God, then there would be rights not dependent on the party. So they have to deny God. 00:11:08 Speaker 1: So good. Yeah, I mean, that feels like right in message with the founders, which is, right, we consider these truths to be unalienable, or these rights to be inalienable. Self-evident. Exactly. What am I saying? We hold these truths to be self-evident, and they are endowed with their creator with certain inalienable rights. Gosh, I got my brain. 00:11:26 Speaker 6: You got to study one of those Hillsdale courses. 00:11:28 Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. No, but the point is, and then Charlie would always say that we have freedom, but in the Western world, we use it as freedom to be licentious, right? As opposed to we have freedom to be virtuous, right? And the founders didn't believe in licentiousness. That was not the freedom that they were ascribing. Anyways. Continue on. 00:11:48 Speaker 6: I'm just looking at other stuff that's just interesting about him. Apparently, his show had to get taken off the air because he had a beef with a cardinal over paying for powdered milk that they received. 00:12:02 Speaker 1: This is insane. 00:12:02 Speaker 6: This is from Raymond Arroyo wrote a book, and this is why life is worth living went off the air. In the 1950s, the government donated millions of dollars of powdered milk to the New York Archdiocese. Cardinal Spellman of that archdiocese handed that milk over to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith to distribute it to the world's poor. On at least one occasion, he asked that the director of the Society, Bishop Fulton Sheen, pay the archdiocese for the milk. He wanted millions of dollars. Despite Cardinal Spellman's considerable powers of persuasion, Sheen refused, and then apparently Spellman said... It may take six months or ten years, but I will get even with you. Everyone will know what you are like. And apparently he, like, froze Bishop Sheen out of parishes in New York City. And then he got the Pope to appoint him the Bishop of Rochester, New York, to get him out of the city. 00:12:55 Speaker 1: Wow. So no beef like a New York clerical beef, I guess. 00:12:59 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:13:00 Speaker 6: Also, on the more upside of things, I didn't realize Martin Sheen, his stage name, of course. 00:13:04 Speaker 3: But, Blake, this was also– I was going to say this is also because that– keep in mind that a lot of the other bishops didn't like the fact that he had so much influence and so much renown. And this was all kind of happening in the context of Vatican II, which was the liberal side of the church. 00:13:26 Speaker 4: Gaining more primacy. 00:13:28 Speaker 3: So, of course, they were working together to take down one of the most, obviously, conservative bishops that was publicly out there. So I think it's probably a little bit more than just the powdered milk. 00:13:42 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you're probably right. I mean, the church is not immune from petty squabbles or turf wars. We certainly are aware of that. But in general, did we play 19? We have not. Okay, let's play... I feel like, Jack, this is your favorite Sheen. This is your favorite Sheen here. 00:14:03 Speaker 4: 19. 00:14:03 Speaker 1: A minister right and sane, this. 00:14:06 Speaker 5: World needs a revolution. But not their cheap kind, which merely transferred booty and loot out of one man's pocket into another. We need the kind of a revolution in the United States and in the rest of the world that will purge out of a man's heart pride and covetousness and lust and anger and envy and gluttony and self. In other words, the true battle against communism begins within the heart of every single American. It means the recovery of our own great tradition, of our belief in God, of an affirmation in politics and an economic life, and among our politicians, of the things that are right and true before God. And we need not fear communism for if God is with us, then who can be against us? 00:14:57 Speaker 1: It's really so good. 00:15:00 Speaker 6: I'm getting amazed just reading more of the stuff. 00:15:02 Speaker 1: That was so good. 00:15:04 Speaker 6: When Life is Worth Living debuted, it was competing directly with the Frank Sinatra show. on CBS and it defeated the Frank Sinatra show, which was canceled competing in a time slot against a Bishop giving people. 00:15:20 Speaker 1: Dude, the guy had swag. He had some swag. That's what I'm saying. I'm not surprised to see the veneers. He was like, I I'm a showman. 00:15:27 Speaker 3: So I know that, um, I know that, uh, that, uh, we don't do jackets, but I did want to show. So, uh, on thought crime, but I did want to show. So they're, they're giving out these nice pins here, uh, where you can get for your jacket. So it's right there, a little lapel pin of JMJ. And this is what he would write at the top of every single one of his chalkboard talks. When he would do the chalk talks, he may have been the first guy on television to ever do that. He would always write at the top, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, JMJ. 00:15:56 Speaker 1: He was the original Karl Rove. Is that what you're saying? Or Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck does the chalkboard, too. I remember, actually, one AmFest... Glenn Beck was basically, hey, I need a chalkboard. We couldn't find one, so he had to go with the whiteboard. 00:16:15 Speaker 6: I'm just getting amazed at other stuff. The fifth Primetime Emmy Awards, so this is only the fifth Emmys ever held. They had a category, Most Outstanding Personality as a Host. Fulton Sheen wins, and he defeats in this category some of the names Lucille Ball, Edward R. Murrow, Adlai Stevenson, a few others, Jimmy Durante, all of these legendary people in television, and also Adlai. 00:16:38 Speaker 1: Stevenson for some reason. Is there an image of this, of him accepting the... That would be quite the image if they have that. 00:16:46 Speaker 4: I'm sure there's an image of it somewhere. 00:16:47 Speaker 3: But do you guys know, wait, Blake, does it say, the story goes that when he received the Emmy, he got up there and said, Well, of course, I'd like to thank the Academy for choosing me here on this. And I'd also like to thank my writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke. 00:17:06 Speaker 4: And John. 00:17:07 Speaker 1: Oh, that's amazing. Did he really say that? That's awesome. Or is that a joke? It certainly sounds incredible. I mean, he does have... It sounds true. It does sound true. Is this him? Yeah. 00:17:18 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:17:19 Speaker 1: That's wild. I'm trying to see. Is this him holding it? No, that's not him. 00:17:26 Speaker 6: I think we only have meme images of him holding it rather than, I don't know if they broadcast that all live back then. 00:17:32 Speaker 5: That's crazy. 00:17:32 Speaker 1: There were only. 00:17:33 Speaker 3: Like five TV stations. So I've been talking to a lot of the, funny enough, a lot of the guys here sort of about the records and the archives of the Fulton Sheen show. 00:17:47 Speaker 4: And while I think there's 280 hours of it that exist, that. 00:17:52 Speaker 3: Are known to exist in terms of the footage, but only about 80 hours of it have ever been digitized. So there's like another 200 hours of Fulton Sheen's show that just hasn't been released yet. And it wouldn't surprise me that that's part of it because a lot of it, it's like ABC or CBS have it in their archives. There's also a radio show that, believe it or not, he started his radio show in 1926. 00:18:12 Speaker 4: So 100 years ago. Uh, this guy started on the radio. 00:18:19 Speaker 3: And he went all the way through world war two. 00:18:23 Speaker 1: Sorry. I know we got a delay cause you're on your remote right now, but the, it'd be interesting to see like how he handled, you know, the wall street crash, you know, uh, 29, you know, or the great depression. That'd be really interesting to kind of hear. Even World War II as well. Yeah, certainly. 00:18:38 Speaker 8: You hear him talk about communism. It'd be really interesting to hear him talk about. 00:18:42 Speaker 1: Well, that was what was interesting. He was talking about we are only mighty in war because at least we have a gathering principle. At least we have something that sort of like gives us a goal and a purpose. And so but that is the military industrial complex. That's what like. all of us have been raging against the neocons for. It's like we can't just be happy and peace. We've got no gathering principle. We've got no unifying point. Which is why then we just keep moving on and on with forever war. It's almost like it fills some empty, vapid void within the hearts of our politicians because of what Fulton Sheen said. Go ahead, Jack. Sorry, brother. 00:19:14 Speaker 3: No, so I was going to say, you mentioned about what Russ was just saying about communism. So not only did he decry communism, and he went so hard that even after the United States publicly allied, of course, with the Soviet Union in World War II, that J. Edgar Hoover went so far as to open up an investigation on Fulton Sheen, and he had him tailed by an FBI agent. and they found that, uh, Hoover. And he found, he said that, that, you know, they couldn't find anything on him. 00:19:50 Speaker 4: That he had never done. 00:19:51 Speaker 3: Obviously it was, was against the war effort, but that he just wouldn't stop condemning communism, even regardless of, of us allying with them in the war. So the FBI literally investigated him. But one cool thing though happened is that after the war ends, uh, and the Cold War begins, that Fulton Sheen's anti-communism actually became very beneficial to the FBI. And believe it or not, he actually used to work to convert public socialists and communists in the United States, like Bella Dodd, who was the head of the Teachers Union. He converts her to Catholicism, and then she starts working for the FBI as an informant against the Soviet Union and against Soviet cells within the United States. So, I mean, it's just this whole part of our story from the 1950s that we've been like, you know, it's just been completely denied from our history. That's that's that's to make this incredible patriot beyond the obvious. 00:20:46 Speaker 4: Also an incredible patriot. 00:20:48 Speaker 1: You know what that makes me think of, though, Jack, since this is a show that we love to remember. Charlie is that Charlie, I'll never forget. You said MLK. He was investigated by the FBI. Right. Well, so was MLK. And that's a man that they did find some things on. I mean, it's just I'm just saying, you know, not all reverence. 00:21:11 Speaker 4: Oh, man. 00:21:12 Speaker 1: Follow the scriptures the same way. But that, you know, that's we don't have to make it about that. But I would say that that came. 00:21:20 Speaker 4: Actually, actually, they did. 00:21:21 Speaker 3: I will say, though, I will say there was one thing that he found apparently in the report. 00:21:26 Speaker 4: Now, I guess they got the file later. 00:21:28 Speaker 3: They did find that he talked his way out of getting a speeding ticket or a parking ticket or something. 00:21:33 Speaker 1: Good man. Good man. Well, that's just because he had the gift of gab. He was a great salesman. 00:21:39 Speaker 4: Oh, man. 00:21:40 Speaker 1: That's why his jawbone is up there. 00:21:42 Speaker 4: That's why the jawbone is up there. 00:21:44 Speaker 1: All right. 00:21:45 Speaker 4: Jawbone. 00:21:45 Speaker 1: It's just very good. That is a good point. He has the gift of gab. 00:21:48 Speaker 6: They actually explicitly say that's why. 00:21:54 Speaker 1: Here we got to play false compassion. I think we got to go on to lesbians. Here we go. Stop one. 00:22:00 Speaker 5: False compassion, which is gradually growing in this country, is a pity that is shown not to the mugged, but to the mugger. Not to the family of the murdered, but to the murderer. There are the social slobberers. who insist on compassion being shown to the muggers, to the dope fiends, to the throat slashers, to the beatniks, to the prostitutes, to the homosexuals, to the punks, so that today the decent man is practically off the reservation. 00:22:50 Speaker 1: This is the false compassion. Reject all compassion for beatniks. Destroy the beatniks. 00:22:58 Speaker 6: Bring back the words social slobberers. Social slobberer is great. 00:23:03 Speaker 1: That's fantastic. What a character. 00:23:06 Speaker 3: There's a really good, in the extended version of that, he starts going off and he says that, It came from literature. 00:23:12 Speaker 4: And, in fact, it came from the books of it. 00:23:14 Speaker 3: He starts writing up some of the names of authors. 00:23:18 Speaker 4: And he goes, and John Steinbeck, that slob. 00:23:25 Speaker 1: You know, I mean, what's interesting, when is the last time anybody in the mainstream said anything about the homosexual lifestyle like that? I mean, that's, talk about thought crime. That was, I mean, wow. Okay. I want to talk to you about an issue so many Americans face, and that's health insurance. There's an organization I really, really appreciate called Christian Healthcare Ministries. CHM is a faith-based alternative to health insurance. And this is real stuff, folks. You've got to listen in. With CHM, you're not paying into a company's profit margin. 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Speaking of homosexuals, we're going to get a lesbian. 00:25:03 Speaker 6: We are going to decry the lifestyle because we need to talk about the lesbian bar in western Massachusetts. I insisted upon this because it is the funniest article ever written. 00:25:13 Speaker 1: I hope there are people in the audience that are completely unawares of this because it is Absolute gold. 00:25:20 Speaker 7: It is. 00:25:20 Speaker 6: So this is an article by the Boston Globe in their Globe Magazine section. 00:25:24 Speaker 4: I'm actually not as familiar with it, so please. All right. 00:25:27 Speaker 6: So this dropped a couple days ago as of this recording. 00:25:30 Speaker 4: I've seen the headline. 00:25:30 Speaker 6: Out of nowhere by Annalisa Quinn, and it's an article about– it's so great because it basically has a very anodyne headline. It's like, a Western Massachusetts lesbian bar required KN95 masks. When it changed the rules, all hell broke loose. Very dry. Very dry. It's like Last Stitch Bar in Greenfield wanted to build community. They got a firestorm instead. And then if you go past that dry headline, you start reading the content of it, and you get it. You really, all of you should find this article. Find an archived version of it so you can read the full thing. 00:26:04 Speaker 1: Or you know what? 00:26:04 Speaker 6: Subscribe to the Boston Globe for at least a month to read it. They deserve it. Because every paragraph of this article is stupendous. I'm just going to read the start of it, but we should get through all of the contents of it. The August 31st Instagram post from Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue, a lesbian bar in Greenfield, was upbeat, teasing a new DJ lineup and a volunteer meetup. But partway down the rainbow-hued post labeled Updates was a sentence that would splinter the queer community of this small Pioneer Valley city and beyond. It is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas that we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional. 00:26:48 Speaker 1: Wrote Last Ditch. 00:26:49 Speaker 6: Previously, patrons were required to wear a well-fitted KN95 mask, or better, at all times. The new policy was not received with love. Just say you're being complicit in a mask-disabling event and get over it, wrote one commenter. People like you... Kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience, posted another. I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ableists, wrote a third. 00:27:31 Speaker 1: And it goes from there. Listen, the thread grew to 442 comments. I'm supportive, but many furious. The people running the bar were accused of being ableist, eugenicist even, for relaxing their signature policy in the face of what commenters consider an ongoing pandemic. Greenfield hasn't reported any COVID cases in more than two months. It's so perfect. It's so great. The way she wrote it was brilliant. 00:27:57 Speaker 6: They are literally COVID dead-enders. They're still requiring masks. They're still having people lose their minds because they were in an ongoing pandemic that everyone else moved on from. 00:28:08 Speaker 1: Five years ago. Exactly. Well, it's kind of like that story of the Japanese guy in World War II that was on that island. And then 20 years later, he still thought we were fighting it. I've been there. 00:28:19 Speaker 4: I've been there to Guam. Yes. 00:28:21 Speaker 1: What was that in Guam? 00:28:22 Speaker 6: There were a bunch all over. 00:28:24 Speaker 1: I think the last one was in the Philippines. And he went 30 years or something. Wow. 30 years? Yeah. 00:28:30 Speaker 6: These people are going to be buried in the mass, man. 00:28:33 Speaker 4: The one in Guam, they had to. 00:28:37 Speaker 3: Like dig up his commanding officer because he didn't believe that the war had ended. He, cause he said Japan would never surrender. And so he said, he said, this is a trick of the Western devils. And he actually started shooting at people. We tried to come in and get, and like get him out of there. And they had to go find his commanding officer from Japan. And then bring him back to order him to come out and lay down his sword. 00:29:00 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:29:01 Speaker 6: This one, it's so great. The bar posts an apology. You can read that one. So they posted an apology. We are so sorry for our passive and dismissive tone of our change in norms and schedule impacting the most intersectional of us. 00:29:16 Speaker 1: The most intersectional. Management wrote on Instagram. 00:29:19 Speaker 8: They, instead of diffusing the situation, the apology seemed to make things worse. 00:29:24 Speaker 1: The bar had aired. 00:29:25 Speaker 8: It posted an Instagram card without providing alt text for the visually impaired. 00:29:29 Speaker 1: Without providing alt text. This set off a fresh round of accusations of ableism. 00:29:33 Speaker 8: Without providing alt text for the visually impaired. 00:29:36 Speaker 1: This is basically a genocide. So let me explain in broader terms, like, how this story plays out right so these three friends uh faz if you can yeah get them up um oh we have a rumble rant let's start there zuzu's petals maybe they wanted to keep the masks because they weren't pretty enough to show their faces and flirt successfully well you be the judge Okay. 00:30:05 Speaker 6: One of the better parts about this article is you cannot tell how many of the lesbians are lesbian and how many of the women. 00:30:11 Speaker 1: Are women, because the answer may be zero. Or are they all carnies? Or are they all carnies? And here's the funny part is, one of these three gals are... whatever they are, uh, who started this bar together, ended up leaving the venture to go to clowns. 00:30:28 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:30:29 Speaker 1: Just what's missing from my life. 00:30:31 Speaker 6: And they see you like a little clown. 00:30:33 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:30:33 Speaker 1: So here's what's here's, here's the broad strokes of what happened. So the bar apologizes instead of quelling the rebellion, it makes it worse and it gets really out of hand. Uh, the, I think it's the gal on the left there of your screen, the one that actually looks like a woman, uh, well let's let's be in general i mean of all of them that one on the left is definitely she's the only one without facial hair yeah this this is one of those moments where you want the beau french uh language he's like dear god it's worse than we thought right here just looking at the picture anyway so uh anyway so they try and make it uh apologize it makes it worse they all gather for a like a Zoom call and an in-person call. Some of the people wouldn't come in person. Some of them only would join by Zoom because they were that upset. And at this point, two of the people had left. I believe the gal on the left that does appear to be a female was the last one remaining. She was living in her truck, working four jobs, $ 50, 000 in debt, and she was just trying to hold on to this place and pay the rent in order to keep the bar alive for the communal aspect of it all. And then Blake, They bring in a mediator who's a white therapist. Yeah, a white therapist. 00:31:47 Speaker 6: Oh, man, let's get into the mediator. 00:31:49 Speaker 1: All right. 00:31:49 Speaker 6: So two designated mediators were there to facilitate conversations. 00:31:56 Speaker 1: And then they take. 00:32:00 Speaker 6: The Zoom attendees speculated that the mediator's license status made her a mandated reporter. an agent of the state, akin to police. One person going by Moss asked the mediator if they could have them hospitalized against their will, adding that the mediator's presence was, quote, wildly unsafe. 00:32:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, but then they basically say that it's all racist, so somehow it becomes a racist party here, and that the therapist... because it's a white therapist isn't able to speak. 00:32:35 Speaker 6: A lot of people are calling for an acknowledgement of harm. And I'm hearing a white therapist centering the feelings of a majority white and white adjacent staff writes noir. 00:32:45 Speaker 1: Who is black? 00:32:47 Speaker 6: Someone, it's someone going by their like drag name to their name is something noir and it's. 00:32:51 Speaker 1: Not their real name. It's their performer name. 00:32:54 Speaker 6: Uh, You chose to use your time to spill tears and center your feelings, Noir posted in the chat. This is incredibly racist and deflecting behavior. Eventually, after three and a half hours of discussion, the meeting wrapped up. Noir had more to say, but when someone suggested he come to the next community meeting, he refused. There's a lot of emotional and physical labor that goes into this. So for you, as a white person, that asks for me to stay for another meeting for free, he said, is incredibly disingenuous and racist. I'm not doing that. 00:33:28 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, this is, I don't know. But here, a couple things. The reporter did such a good job of just telling it straight. Yes. When your subjects are so insane, when they are so bananas, so bizarre, so off the reservation. Just tell it straight. 00:33:45 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:33:45 Speaker 1: Just tell it straight. Tell it straight. Because insanity just bleeds through. Straight. Pun intended. Tell it straight. But these people are existing in a subculture that is so insular and is so... foreign to most of us, that it's like going to the zoo reading this article. 00:34:02 Speaker 6: It's really getting at what should the business model be if you're a fading newspaper like the Boston Globe, which hasn't kept up with the New York Times, the ones that have really become national papers. Honestly, apparently, they got over 1,000 new subscribers just. 00:34:16 Speaker 1: Off this article. I think that's quite a bit higher now. 00:34:17 Speaker 6: It went massively viral, by far their most read article in ages. Liberal newspapers in liberal areas... you've got to provide freak show content of your local libs, because this sort of thing is happening all the time. 00:34:34 Speaker 5: Noirs. 00:34:34 Speaker 6: I just love that they're describing this. Greenfield is both physically and spiritually sometimes referred to as Lesbianville, USA. 00:34:41 Speaker 1: In the Pioneer Valley, quote, every bar is a lesbian bar. 00:34:45 Speaker 6: Nevertheless, Last Ditch, which opened last year as a bar for, quote, dykes, transsexuals, gender freaks, workers, and their friends, is struggling. 00:34:56 Speaker 1: Yeah so that's the whole point is that basically it was doing really well business was good then they do this whole mask optional thing you know six years after covid started and it everybody leaves it they bail on it it becomes this huge controversy within this community i i genuinely can't imagine i mean this feels like blue sky on steroids it's the same spirit as. 00:35:18 Speaker 6: Blue sky in real life yes i just love this like One wondered if they could have a Lady Gaga themed night to, like, revive the bar's fortunes. And Mixie, one of the people here, demurs. Gaga is canceled, she says. Gaga is Zionist. 00:35:34 Speaker 8: Well, and this reporter goes on to talk to this noir person. And these quotes are stuff that we've been hearing for the last year and a half. I'm not going to give grace. Spreading rhetoric that can and will get people hurt. He's referring to the fact that the bar account had liked a few comments supporting the relaxed rule. 00:35:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm telling you, this is like when we talk about peak woke, we're going to look back at this and be like, there's these little outposts in Guam and the Philippines. Are these people still fighting? 00:36:07 Speaker 6: It's still 2020 in terms of how woke they are and how they approach COVID. 00:36:12 Speaker 1: Insane mask frenzy. This is why people freak out when they see the inner workings of a DSA meeting. And they're like, point of personal privilege. They're always like this. And they're like, here's my privilege card. 00:36:22 Speaker 6: Every lib organization at a campus is like this. 00:36:24 Speaker 1: This is the culmination. This is the obvious conclusion of these people and their insanity. Left unabated. Left unaddressed. 00:36:33 Speaker 6: One of the things that is really interesting about this to me, by the way, that's underappreciated and it's kind of a big picture thing. It gets at how lesbians are very different from gay men. Have you have you ever noticed that? And like, yeah, OK, they're men and women, of course, but most of the time anyway. And but on top of but on top of that, like they have. radically different cultural practices in a way that I think. 00:36:58 Speaker 1: Don't lesbians and gay guys not really mix too much? They don't. And even think about this as an example. I don't think... I would say as an example that's. 00:37:06 Speaker 6: Interesting, gay men actually hang out with women all the time. You know, gay male hairdresser, gay male drama stuff, they go into female spaces. Lesbian women don't mix with men. Everyone's got a gay male hairdresser. There's not lesbian barbers. They hang out with other women, other lesbian women. 00:37:23 Speaker 1: Hold on. 00:37:23 Speaker 4: Hold on. 00:37:24 Speaker 5: All right. 00:37:25 Speaker 3: You want to have some real thought crimes? Let's have some real thought crimes. 00:37:27 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:37:28 Speaker 4: All right. 00:37:30 Speaker 3: So, Blake, for example, you mentioned a certain type of gay man, but there are two types of gay men. So, yes, there's a lot of misogynist lesbians. 00:37:39 Speaker 4: There's no question. We all get that. We all know. We're very familiar with it. Unfortunately, we can't seem to get away from it. 00:37:45 Speaker 3: But there's two types of gay men, all right? 00:37:49 Speaker 4: There's the type that. 00:37:50 Speaker 3: You mentioned, but then there's also the gay men who hate women, all right? There's also the misandrist gay men who are like, I can't stand them. 00:38:00 Speaker 4: I don't want anything to do with them. And that makes them go off in the other direction. Those are two different teams. 00:38:07 Speaker 1: Those are definitely two different teams. 00:38:09 Speaker 6: I feel like I don't encounter the misogynist gay men. They exist, but they seem very rare. I'm thinking in general. You think that gay men are very artsy, as it were, musical. Every woman wants a gay best friend or something, it feels like. 00:38:24 Speaker 4: True. 00:38:24 Speaker 1: I mean, that's fair. not all women but like that is a lot. 00:38:27 Speaker 6: Of that is a stereotype another thing i think about that's literally just and even even stuff beyond even stuff beyond just lifestyle stuff think about the fact that this bar this lesbian bar is very obviously also a political project oh we're gonna ban police from this bar we're going to talk about lady gaga and like they welcome yeah you they they care about zionism and palestine they allow homeless people to go in there like in comparison like Does any. 00:38:52 Speaker 1: Gay bar have a political ideology? 00:38:54 Speaker 6: They'll have the gay flag, and they would allow cops in because they want their strippers to be dressed like cops or whatever. 00:38:59 Speaker 1: They just feel much more good time boys. Yeah, exactly. 00:39:03 Speaker 6: I mean, a gay bar is much more likely to cause a new pandemic than to be. 00:39:10 Speaker 1: A never-ending bitter end against the last one. A gay bar is also a key word there. It is. 00:39:15 Speaker 6: Lesbians are very resentful. Their kind of ideology is like, gays are gay. You know, they're... We're not gay. 00:39:24 Speaker 1: Is that why we started calling gay men gay? Because they're sort of. 00:39:27 Speaker 6: I think i think it kind of did start from that like as a euphemism sort of thing like musical is a british euphemism for uh for gay and whereas in comparison there's an actual lesbian line that's like we're not gay we're angry really yeah that was like a lesbian protest thing and all of that and they're called Yeah, interesting. 00:39:48 Speaker 1: Homosexual men are called gay because the word transitioned over centuries from meaning joyful to describing a lifestyle outside of conventional social norms. I'm looking at– there's an amazing chart by our friend Steve Saylor where he has why lesbians aren't gay, and he has a big chart that's contrasting them. So, for example– cultural tastes, uh, gay men, arts, women, uh, lesbian women, crafts, uh, gay men. 00:40:15 Speaker 6: They like, uh, they like classical. They like actually like classical art. They like the ancient Greeks. They like the ancient Romans. They actually love the, you know, classical music, opera, and all of that. Whereas lesbian women, they resent dead white men. They want to overthrow the cannon. 00:40:28 Speaker 1: I feel like lesbians listen to like folk music. Yeah. 00:40:31 Speaker 6: Uh, no, well, it has says gay men, music, lesbian women, lyrics, uh, Gay men, unpolitical and hedonistic. Lesbian women, political and very activist. 00:40:43 Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. Well, I mean, this boils that down. Another interesting one. This is really interesting. 00:40:49 Speaker 6: Gay men don't claim to speak for all men, whereas lesbian women routinely will speak what women want. 00:40:55 Speaker 1: It's the long house. They're speaking for all women. Lesbian form. Yes. 00:40:58 Speaker 4: It is. 00:40:59 Speaker 1: Because women, even if they're gay... They think that they're like norm enforcers. This one is funny. 00:41:07 Speaker 6: Gay men, frequently persecuted. Lesbian women, frequently ignored. So, for example, in Nazi Germany, they actually did persecute gay men. You could get sent to a camp for that. Lesbianism was legal in Nazi Germany. 00:41:19 Speaker 1: Interesting. Didn't even care. Interesting. So, get this. By the 17th and 18th centuries, gay developed a secondary risqué connotation implying sexual immorality, uninhibited behavior, or promiscuity, such as gay houses, which referred to brothels. Oh, all right. And then by the early to mid 20th century, the word was used underground within queer subcultures as a discreet way to identify one another without using clinical terms. And then during the sixties and the seventies, a reclamation of the word ensued activists actively championing the word as a positive self-chosen alternative to the medicalized and stigmatized label. 00:41:59 Speaker 8: Of And then in the 90s, we started using it as a derogatory term towards our friends. 00:42:04 Speaker 1: And then there was elementary school. 00:42:06 Speaker 8: We started calling our buddies gay. I'm just thinking of other– The kids are going to. 00:42:13 Speaker 1: Do all right. I just keep thinking. 00:42:15 Speaker 6: Of more comparisons, like the fact that gays, they all go to the big city. They want to be a lot of– They're gay guys. And then these women went to their lesbian ville in rural Massachusetts to set up their lesbian. 00:42:28 Speaker 1: Bar in a town of 10,000 people. Has anybody been to Pioneer Valley, this part of Massachusetts? I can't say I have. You're like an East Coaster. Yeah, Jack's our resident East Coaster. Say again. 00:42:37 Speaker 6: We're asking, but when was your last visit to this part of Massachusetts? Because you're from the East Coast. 00:42:42 Speaker 1: Have you ever been to Western Mass, where this kind of valley? 00:42:45 Speaker 3: You're aware that Massachusetts is not next to Philadelphia, right? 00:42:49 Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, it seems pretty close by to me. 00:42:52 Speaker 1: It's all close. It is all close. 00:42:54 Speaker 6: Have you seen Arizona on a map? 00:42:56 Speaker 1: It's a very large state. It's probably as large as where you are from. Yeah, go ahead, Jack. So you've never been there. Okay, fine. 00:43:02 Speaker 7: Super. 00:43:04 Speaker 1: Jack, what is your general perception of lesbians? 00:43:07 Speaker 4: No, no, no. 00:43:07 Speaker 3: Why are you guys trying to go? I just wonder what it's like. 00:43:14 Speaker 1: Group trip! 00:43:15 Speaker 3: One of my interesting sense on that is that people have to remember that when you talk about domestic abuse, for example, domestic violence, and the perpetration of domestic violence, and I think we've said this on the program before, is that you will actually find higher incidence of domestic violence if you count women. Because obviously men are more forceful when they're violent, but women actually commit domestic violence more. And men just don't usually respond to it or care. They see it as de minimis in many cases. But the highest instance of domestic violence in any couple, whether it's gay, straight, heterosexual, et cetera, or homosexual, is within lesbians. 00:43:59 Speaker 4: It's the highest rate of domestic violence ever. 00:44:02 Speaker 1: I was looking this up. I'm looking it up. I'm fact-checking you. 00:44:08 Speaker 6: Although I wonder how often it's actual domestic violence and how often you see how political they are. They're like, your emotional tone was highly abusive and unacceptable. 00:44:17 Speaker 1: You yelled at me. But reading this article, you can completely see why they think they're so victimized all the time. Jack's right. Data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that lesbian women report the highest lifetime rates of, but they don't call it domestic violence, They call it intimate partner violence, IPV, which is not apparently an STD. It is not a venereal disease. No, no. IPV. It's just intimate partner violence. 00:44:47 Speaker 4: Gosh. 00:44:47 Speaker 1: I just love that story. Fun. 00:44:49 Speaker 6: Every detail in this story. Like you just go to any random paragraph and read it. And it's just so fun. 00:44:55 Speaker 1: Wow. You know what? Who has the lowest. Gay men. 00:44:59 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:45:00 Speaker 1: The, I mean, I guess it's just, like, lack of testosterone. I kind of get it. It's just passive aggression. What would they be doing? I just feel like their attachment is. 00:45:08 Speaker 4: Because two men are, like, they're in a fight, and they're like, all right, fine, I'm just going to leave. 00:45:11 Speaker 1: Well, they probably fight. They just want to report it. 00:45:13 Speaker 4: They just walk away. 00:45:14 Speaker 1: Yeah. Like. I don't know. I feel like I go through a lot in life, and I. 00:45:19 Speaker 3: Oh, man. 00:45:20 Speaker 4: I'm going to get in big trouble if I. 00:45:22 Speaker 1: Go for it, Jack. Say it. Stop crying. Man. 00:45:24 Speaker 4: No, because guys know how to. Guys, you can tell. 00:45:27 Speaker 1: All right, fine. 00:45:28 Speaker 4: I'm just going to put it this way. Cause you can tell a guy to calm down and he will try that with a woman. 00:45:34 Speaker 1: It's like that. By the way, I was trying to, I was trying to show the team here. Some of the younger kids, like a little Tupac. 00:45:42 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:45:42 Speaker 1: I was going to say you were trying to show him Tupac. The reason it came up, the reason it came up is that because there's this video of Tupac speaking of gay. where the internet is accusing Tupac of being a gay actor. I sent you that video. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like before he was famous, and he got out of his pizza job to go do this interview, because he's like, I'm an actor. And he kept doing the limp wrist thing. It's very interesting. Anyway, so I was like to the team, have you guys ever heard of Tupac? Anyway, Eminem. This will be my last rap reference of the week. When I was in high school, I had bad musical taste. But anyway, so Eminem was, he has that one line where he goes, what's a little fight? Tomorrow we'll be bros again. And I've always thought about that going like, that is very dude. Slim Shady is a bad musical taste? Come on now. Well, I just think rap in general is degenerate. When it first opened, West Ditch did fairly well. 00:46:32 Speaker 6: Customers fondly remember a raucous opening night with a clothed simulation of a lesbian sex act, masks in place on the dance floor. 00:46:41 Speaker 1: No condoms, just masks. Masks everywhere. 00:46:44 Speaker 3: Wait, wait, wait, Andrew, Andrew, wait, can I ask you a question about, it's a little bit of a tangent, but this thing has been going kind of viral lately where people are saying that like, and I think I saw you tweet something about it, that rap is like not in the top 40 anymore after we defunded USAID. 00:47:02 Speaker 1: Is that true? It's totally true. Was that you who tweeted that? I mean, I'm not saying causation. What is going on with that? It's a fun correlation. 00:47:08 Speaker 4: Correlation. 00:47:09 Speaker 1: It could be just correlation. But yeah, it was John Doyle. He was like, you know, what's your favorite reason we're going to win in the midterms? And I was like, because we defunded USAID and there's no, and now there's no more rap songs in the Billboard top 40, which is true. It's been like, A total desert for a number of months. I looked it up before I tweeted it. 00:47:29 Speaker 8: Well, a lot of it is, too, the artists who are, like, known for rap have, like, started going into other genres. 00:47:38 Speaker 1: Well, Kendrick Lamar was there, and then he got booted, but he was, like, at 41. Kendrick Lamar isn't actually good music. Yeah, but he's popular, so... But there's really just, like, rap's fallen off. It's not a good art form. I mean, how many... It was never a good art form. Where else are you going to go with rap? It is what it is. Into the garbage? 00:47:57 Speaker 8: I'm... I think rap is starting to fill more of a messaging bubble again, like with Tom McDonald and, like, people who are actually trying. 00:48:07 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:48:08 Speaker 1: That's, like, a whole different genre. 00:48:10 Speaker 8: Yeah, but white rap is infinitely better than black rap. 00:48:14 Speaker 1: Says the white guy, but yeah. 00:48:15 Speaker 7: Yes. 00:48:16 Speaker 1: I do think it's generally more thoughtful. 00:48:18 Speaker 8: Yes, but I think that's the point. I think you're starting to see it's starting to become more lyrical. People are trying to actually use it to promote messaging rather than just mumble garbage, like nonsense. 00:48:33 Speaker 1: Yeah, like gangster rap was all about I'm going to shoot you. Mumble rap. 00:48:36 Speaker 4: The Billy Corgan. 00:48:38 Speaker 3: Did you guys see the Billy Corgan thing that he said about rap music, like how. 00:48:42 Speaker 1: It got started? 00:48:43 Speaker 8: No. 00:48:45 Speaker 4: No. 00:48:45 Speaker 3: So Billy was telling, he was, he, he has this podcast, the magnificent, magnificent others. 00:48:50 Speaker 4: It's really good. And, um, I'm a huge smash pumpkins guy in general. I've always been a fan of Billy. 00:48:56 Speaker 3: And, um, so he was saying that, but I actually, he was on another podcast where he was, he was being interviewed and they asked him about this. 00:49:04 Speaker 4: And I don't know exactly how it came up, but he said that he remembered it. 00:49:07 Speaker 3: It was like, there was this one day in the late nineties where he'd like, he's like, we just showed up to MTV and, and suddenly everything was different. Suddenly all the standard, even like basic stuff, like the standards, of things that you were allowed to show in videos. Like when he would do a music video, they would say, hey, you can't show guns. Or like, hey, you can't show alcohol or something like that. And they would just allow it all of a sudden for rap. And he was like, it was a complete changeover already. you know, overnight where rock had been this huge thing for like the early part of the nineties. And then at some point it's like they came in and suddenly boom, it's like, oh, rap is just going to be the one that. 00:49:47 Speaker 4: Gets pushed now. 00:49:48 Speaker 3: So to your point, here's a guy who was at the highest levels of the music industry, who was also kind of saying that he felt like there was a sort of artificial push to give rap. 00:50:01 Speaker 4: This standing that it had. 00:50:03 Speaker 3: I'm not saying there aren't any fans, but He was pointing out that it was very clearly pushed really hard by Hollywood, by the entertainment leaders. 00:50:13 Speaker 1: I've heard this a lot. 00:50:14 Speaker 4: And that he felt like rock was just kind of pushed away. 00:50:16 Speaker 6: I've heard this a lot, but I think it can be overblown because one thing that really hurt us actually is once they started getting SoundScan or whatever to track what. 00:50:26 Speaker 1: Was selling, it. 00:50:28 Speaker 6: Kind of made the top... It changed the top 40 very aggressively when that started to. 00:50:32 Speaker 1: Happen because what was. 00:50:34 Speaker 6: a top 40 hit was much more before they actually could scan it. It was like vibes based. It was like, they're like, Oh yeah, we're totally hearing all about this thing. And that could be 100% gamed. Oh, we're pushing this new artist. They have a new thing. 00:50:45 Speaker 1: So the churn and the top 40 was much more rapid. That's wild. And then what if the truth is the opposite? As soon as the opposite is true, the CIA was pushing all those bands. And then as soon as it went to something more. 00:50:56 Speaker 6: As soon as, as soon as it was, they could track it actually like with real numbers, we're deciding the top 40 and, One, hits started to stick around a lot longer because it turned out a number one hit had a longer lifespan than people thought. And then the other thing is we did see a big explosion in rap and hip hop because. 00:51:11 Speaker 1: I think they kind of tamped down. 00:51:14 Speaker 6: They tamped down on, for lack of a better word, ghetto stuff, ghetto music. And then it turned out they couldn't hide that a lot of people liked that. And then I wouldn't be surprised. Maybe we got the Corgan thing of they overcorrected of, oh, this stuff is actually really popular. 00:51:28 Speaker 1: Let's all embrace this new thing. Rock is out. Rap is in. Just expose that we all have crappy music tastes. All of you are sinners. 00:51:38 Speaker 6: All of you are sinners who listen to rap. 00:51:40 Speaker 1: So critics and pop culture historians, Jack, point out that MTV's focus at the time actually pivoted heavily toward teen pop acts like Britney Spears, and the Backstreet Boys or Nu Metal and Pop Punk rather than a direct overnight swap to rap. So I saw that. But yeah, he kind of suggests maybe the CIA was involved. So what's interesting about this USAID thing, and Blake and I have kind of joked about it a couple times, is that the other theory is that that's why all of these right-wingers are getting elected in South America, because we defunded USAID, which actually does probably sound... At least somewhat plausible on some level because you imagine all these government cutouts and these NGOs and these grants that are actually sort of like black budget CIA cutouts. I think that could be like an actual thing. I can't prove it, but it is a weird correlation. Well, speaking of adults who like toys, we should go to our next topic. Is that in reference to the opening night at the last stage? Don't worry, they wore masks. 00:52:47 Speaker 6: Okay, well, you guys wanted to talk about toys. 00:52:50 Speaker 4: I just went to mass, okay? 00:52:52 Speaker 1: I literally just went to mass. 00:52:55 Speaker 6: All I'm going to say is Jack is the one who wanted the topic about toys. 00:52:58 Speaker 4: That's true. 00:53:00 Speaker 1: He knew. 00:53:01 Speaker 4: Segways! Kids toys. 00:53:05 Speaker 1: He loves toys. Who adults love? No, you love adult toys. Toys R Us is about adult toys now. It's adult toys. Jack, let me tie these two together for you. So the kids that grew up not on rock music and Bill Corgan, they grew up on Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, and pop punk and rap. These kids have grown up and they love Toys R Us. Coincidence? Causation or correlation, Jack? 00:53:36 Speaker 3: Well, so it's a really amazing thing because, you know, the next topic that we're going to get into is that, so Toys R Us is like coming back. And actually, I can actually explain what's really going on with this. 00:53:51 Speaker 4: It's similar to what you said, but not exactly because you're missing a big piece of it. It is the. 00:53:56 Speaker 3: Return of Toys R Us, but the focus of Toys R Us now is going to be on adults, not kids. 00:54:04 Speaker 1: Yeah, where's the scary music? Come on. Dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun. The scream. Can I get a scream? Failing that, they could play the Indian music. Yeah. There you go. Or that. That works too. That's what I wanted. I had the honor of a lifetime to call Charlie a friend. And what I remember most wasn't just what people saw on stage. It was what was behind the scenes. That was an unwavering commitment to his faith, his love for his family. and his genuine desire to encourage others to live with courage and conviction. Charlie believed that following Christ wasn't something you compartmentalize. He didn't put it in a box. He lived it out loud. It shaped how he lived, how he served, how he treated people every single day. Charlie Kirk, American martyr, captures that heart. This documentary isn't just simply about remembering Charlie. It's an invitation for each of us to ask what kind of legacy we're building and whether we're willing to stand firm in our own faith when it's tested. I hope that you'll watch it with your family and have those conversations together. Go to angel.com slash Kirk. That's angel.com slash Kirk. Become an Angel Guild member. Watch Charlie Kirk, American Martyr, and help bring more stories of faith, courage, and conviction to audiences around the world. All right. We got to get back, though. We got to take ourselves back in time to a kinder, gentler era. Were we still in a country? We had self-respect. Kids were kids. Adults were adults. Let's play Sod 11th. 00:55:39 Speaker 3: I don't want to grow up on a Toys R Us kid. 00:55:42 Speaker 8: They got a million toys at Toys R Us that I can play with. 00:55:45 Speaker 4: I don't want to grow up. I'm a Toys R Us kid. 00:55:48 Speaker 8: They got the best for so much less. 00:55:50 Speaker 1: You really flip your lid. 00:55:51 Speaker 6: From bikes to trains to video games, it's the biggest toy store there is. 00:55:57 Speaker 5: I don't want to grow up, because baby, if I did, I couldn't be a Toys R Us kid. 00:56:03 Speaker 1: More games, more toys, oh boy. 00:56:06 Speaker 3: I want to be a Toys R Us kid. 00:56:09 Speaker 1: Did he say so gay for toys? No. Oh, okay. I think the word at that point was not... That had been reclaimed by the gays at that point. But you know what's funny about this whole topic is that line in the song that I forgot. Like, I don't want to grow up because if I did, then I couldn't be a Toys R Us kid. Except you can now, Jack. You can be a Toys R Us adult. Much like... It's worse, cousin. This is bad. 00:56:39 Speaker 5: It's so bad. 00:56:40 Speaker 1: It's so bad. 00:56:40 Speaker 4: But I can explain this. I can explain this. So it's bad. It's sad. 00:56:46 Speaker 3: It's awful. But I'll tell you why it's happening. And the answer, of course, as usual, is communism. And so what I really mean is going on is that, unfortunately– It comes down to this idea that we live in a K-shaped economy, and there are some people who are doing really, really well and some people who are really not. And for a lot of the country that are living below the median income line, you've been living in a recession or a silent recession since 2008, since the financial crisis. 00:57:24 Speaker 4: And this has caused what specifically? a lack of home ownership. 00:57:29 Speaker 3: And Charlie, of course, our dear friend talked about this so many times, the lack of home ownership, and the which creates a lack of what family formation. So then if you have all these people who aren't starting families who aren't starting kids who aren't having kids, and they're realizing internally that, hey, I'm missing all these milestones. 00:57:48 Speaker 4: That I'm supposed to be having in my life. 00:57:50 Speaker 3: And, you know, maybe they see others who do have those things, they think, I want to almost regress to a time where life felt more simple, where life felt, as Andrew said, kinder and gentler, like when I was a Toys R Us kid. And so they throw themselves into Pokemon cards and Toys R Us and all these other things as collectors, the Funko Pops, etc. You mentioned Disney adults. 00:58:16 Speaker 4: That's another one. 00:58:17 Speaker 3: Star Wars adults. Obviously, Star Wars is fake and gay. And that's where this is coming from, actually. It's because you have millennials and elder millennials, a number of Gen Xs, well, not as many, but you see some Gen Xs do this, that have just completely been checked out of. 00:58:36 Speaker 4: These life milestones. 00:58:38 Speaker 3: And so they do have disposable income in some cases, and that's what they're spending it on rather than kids and houses. 00:58:45 Speaker 1: I think. 00:58:47 Speaker 6: It definitely is people doing that stuff as an alternative to kids, but I don't know if it's a, if it's a downwardly mobile thing, I think that actually might invert it, which is we've had a decline of families. It's yeah, it stinks is we've had a decline of the family enough that now it's just utterly dominant. How much spending power, like especially leisure spending, consumer spending, uh, that's so heavily linked to people who don't have kids and essentials to spend on. They have a ton of disposable income and they're going to blow it on stuff. And especially due to the same value decay that's causing them to not marry and have kids in the first place, they have almost these very childlike interests and desires. They have never outgrown... I love action figures. 00:59:32 Speaker 1: It's a maturity issue. 00:59:33 Speaker 6: And also, we have better manufacturing these days, as an example, and so it's even easier to target these people. So let's say you're a kid who liked Star Wars. You're now, maybe you're an adult, you're a computer programmer, you're 40 years old, you make a good amount of money, maybe a six-figure income, maybe even high six figures, ton of money to blow. They don't even just get you, oh, I want to buy those kid toys. They could go, here's an amazing set of all the Star Wars toys, and you can get all the collectible versions of it. 01:00:02 Speaker 1: They're probably more like adult-themed, too. Yeah, they're more adult. 01:00:05 Speaker 6: They're higher quality than a kid would probably demand. You'll get the better painting. Maybe they'll have more joints. And again, you can get a whole big set of them. That's the thing that stands out to me. You can really soak people for lots of product. 01:00:18 Speaker 1: Go ahead, Russ. 01:00:18 Speaker 8: It's a maturity issue. When you grow up, you're supposed to graduate. You grow up riding a bike. So you start with training wheels. Then you graduate to a bike. Then you get to a certain age and you graduate to a dirt bike. And then you graduate and you get to another certain age and you get a motorcycle. It's about finding toys that is a representative of your age group, your class, right? I've found myself, like even when I was in college, like you'd go through Walmart, right? You're like, hey, I'm just going to check out what kids have for toys nowadays, right? 01:00:55 Speaker 1: And you'd be like, you'd see the Legos. And as a Lego kid, as somebody. 01:00:58 Speaker 8: Who grew up... I would still buy Legos. Our neighbor gave us this huge bucket of Legos, right? I would walk through and go, man, it's sick to be a kid now. 01:01:09 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:01:09 Speaker 1: Like, you can have Legos that are Marvel, and, like, as a Marvel nerd, I'm like, yeah, I totally... You're a Marvel nerd? I'd be down for a Spider-Man Lego. Yeah, I get it. 01:01:18 Speaker 8: But, like, now we have, like, to his point, we're not creating families, so now we have all this. 01:01:27 Speaker 8: Disposable income. And so now it's like, hey, you know what? I'm going to buy that Lego set that I couldn't buy back when I was a kid. And now– but then now that's also now– Adding to the effect of why toys are now getting more expensive, more expensive, more expensive. 01:01:42 Speaker 1: It's so perfect. 01:01:43 Speaker 6: The Lego thing is a perfect example where there's Legos. They're so much more obviously not meant to be played with by five-year-olds who just mash whatever together. 01:01:51 Speaker 1: No creativity anymore. 01:01:52 Speaker 6: Instead, it's much more, oh, it's going to be much. 01:01:54 Speaker 1: It's a puzzle. 01:01:54 Speaker 6: It's more based on franchises. Oh, that thing you like. And then it's a puzzle you put together and you display it. You never take it apart. You never mess around with it. 01:02:02 Speaker 1: Here's the directions you must create it the way that it looks. I used to take them apart and make my own stuff. 01:02:05 Speaker 4: Yes. 01:02:06 Speaker 1: And that was the best fun. My brother and I got a massive, like. 01:02:10 Speaker 8: 16-gallon bucket full of Legos from our neighbor that went to college. My brother and I, like every weekend, we'd end up dumping it on the floor, spend an entire day building bases and houses. 01:02:26 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:02:27 Speaker 8: And then take rocks and chuck at them and destroy it all and then put it all back in the bucket and then do that again the next weekend. 01:02:33 Speaker 1: So Blake hit on the key here, though, is that you have dinks, disposable income, even not dinks, but you don't have enough money to buy a home or start a family. 01:02:42 Speaker 7: Yes. 01:02:42 Speaker 1: But you have more money because you don't have kids, so you have money to blow still. So it's actually like sort of this cut. You get stuck in this in-between zone. So instead of spending money on useful things or on your kids' toys, you're spending money on your own toys, and you still don't have enough to really retire or build wealth. 01:03:00 Speaker 6: I don't even know that it's that. I think a lot of these– I think it's just a straight value decision. They think it's actually more fun to buy all of these things, and having kids sounds like a drag. There's a lot of– having kids stinks propaganda out there. Like they, it's not that they can't afford kids. or they'll say it's because I can't afford kids, but it's an excuse in the sense that even if they made a million dollars, it's a cop-out. 01:03:22 Speaker 1: They would need a comical amount of money. By the way, I will tell you that. Mexicans prove that you can have kids without any money. You will never have enough money. It's never a convenient time. You just have to go for it. 01:03:32 Speaker 6: A lot of people, when they say we can't afford kids, their definition is, I would not believe I could afford kids until I could have a child with absolutely zero sacrifice of any other kind to my entire lifestyle. that's just that's the values that they hold and that's a common one and getting more common it's really bad and it's more glaring now because so much more of the world is built to cater to these people so in the past family friendly was the way it was the norm in so many things so now there's way more things that are actually family. 01:04:06 Speaker 1: Unfriendly just for adults you. 01:04:08 Speaker 6: Shouldn't go yeah only adults are allowed at this thing this thing is way better if you're an adult so Then as a result, oh, it feels like I'm giving up more stuff if I were to have kids. 01:04:18 Speaker 8: That's also where something like Pokemon cards have blown up. 01:04:23 Speaker 1: It's become huge. 01:04:25 Speaker 8: That's one where it's like on one end, I'm like, guys, this is a part. The Pokemon revolution or whatever you want to call it is a part of this. But I will also give the caveat that the dads who were Pokemon fans and have kids and have gotten their kids into pokemon so that they're now doing it with their kid that's where i think and that's that's the right that's the point of toys it's for parents to how to to play with their kid or and to play. 01:04:58 Speaker 1: There and we should work jack in here because i know he was really passionate about this topic he's unfortunately jack is at a mass and he's you know the feed is delayed so jack jump in here but you know another thing occurs to me is When we were kids, remember like Golden Girls and stuff? They actually let their hair be in a bob. It was like they let themselves look old. But as the years have gone by, like older people want to stay young. And I think that same spirit is affecting like us into our adulthood where we want to sort of not grow up and not just assume the mantle of adulthood. I don't know. That strikes me as something that might be playing into this. Jack Posobiec, your thoughts. 01:05:37 Speaker 3: Man, no, that's such a good topic to ping off of as well. And I mean, I couldn't agree more. It's like we can't allow ourselves to be older anymore. It's like we don't want to grow up. Nobody wants to grow up. Nobody wants to because it's also taking off the responsibility. The thing that I do want to bring it back to, though, and I'm going to keep bringing it back to is the economy. 01:06:02 Speaker 4: And is the fact that. 01:06:03 Speaker 3: Look, I mean, guys, we know the midterms are going to be what they are in a couple of weeks here. And we know what the headwinds are. And so much of this is economically driven. And I think so much of what's happening in culture is also downstream of the economy. And it's downstream of these tough economic times that we find ourselves in. In the same way, by the way, that so much of the loss of morality and God in the public square in the 1960s was because there was so much of an abundance of the economy where people were sort of like they had it too well. They didn't feel any of those pressures at all. And so suddenly it was like, hey, go do whatever you want. Go have sex with whoever you want. Go smoke whatever you want. And it just became this huge, basically this like the free love movement of the 1960s, this huge cultural revolution. And this what, coming back to Fulton Sheen, that's what he was warning about, And the idea then that you would have these adolescents who– what do they call it? 01:07:07 Speaker 4: Perpetual adolescents, right? 01:07:08 Speaker 3: Where you have kids having kids and then never actually– this is where you get to the problems of you hear these parents doing free-range kids or I let my kids parent themselves and I don't tell them to not pick up after themselves and I let them do what they want and I'm not going to send them to school and all this. And this is what happens when you have a society without standards. And yes, that means standards for ourselves individually as well. 01:07:38 Speaker 4: As when we get older. And all the rest of it. 01:07:41 Speaker 3: Are there things that I love enjoying with my kids that I enjoyed when I was a kid? 01:07:45 Speaker 4: A hundred percent. 01:07:45 Speaker 3: There's no question about it. We're actually watching Animaniacs right now. It's like my kids love it. They love watching Animaniacs. We like watching Scooby-Doo. You know, we just find stuff that we liked from when we were younger. 01:07:58 Speaker 4: That's great. My son is, I'll give him a shout out here. He's working on. 01:08:03 Speaker 3: Doing the entire Yakko's Nations of the World song for his upcoming school talent show at grade three. He currently has the entire song memorized. There's just a couple like country pronunciations we're working on. 01:08:18 Speaker 4: And so it's just a great thing. 01:08:20 Speaker 3: And it goes to show you how good some of those things used to be. But the problem is, is that when you get older, you should want to to have those things. You should want to get married. You should want to have kids. You should want to own a home and, and all of this. And the problem I think though, is that, uh, these people deep down actually do want those things as well. And either one, they're having trouble getting them or number two, they're getting distracted by, uh, so many other glittering things out there. 01:08:49 Speaker 1: Kind of reminds me of that one story we covered where the 40-year-old women were throwing themselves these, like, lavish weddings for themselves. Yeah. 01:08:59 Speaker 5: Oh, gosh. 01:09:00 Speaker 4: Yes. 01:09:00 Speaker 5: Yes. 01:09:01 Speaker 1: Yes. It's like they deep down want them, but they want them on their terms. Yeah. And if they can't have them, you know, like, you get what I'm saying? It's almost like they're trying to reclaim something or something. without the responsibility i don't know there's something there but it's basically kind of what we're getting around this prolonged adolescence this arrested development. 01:09:24 Speaker 8: And it also doesn't help that and economy have a broken system when it comes to the family unit right now yeah because we've got more single moms we've got more you know broken families and so that's not helping either um. 01:09:38 Speaker 1: Yeah i agree yeah should we hit paramount deal If you want, we can do it real quick. Real quick. We're getting tight on time here. Yeah, of course we are. Of course we are. 01:09:47 Speaker 6: But we can hit it because Paramount, of course, is buying everything at WB. And it's a gigantic deal. But it's gotten so big that they are apparently trying to recruit Elon Musk as a potential co-investor in this buyout. 01:10:01 Speaker 1: Which is amazing. 01:10:02 Speaker 6: Which would be amazing in a few ways. 01:10:03 Speaker 1: He wouldn't have full control over it. 01:10:05 Speaker 6: But remember, this is going to give them control over, among other things, CNN. 01:10:11 Speaker 1: Jake Tappa. 01:10:12 Speaker 6: And they've done a lot of articles hostile to Elon Musk. 01:10:16 Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be really fascinating. They would definitely have some– there would be– listen, you know what's crazy is that these people are already threatening to leave. Oh, no. Yeah, I know. What's the gal that goes with Scott Galloway? I don't know. I don't watch CNN. No, no, no. 01:10:29 Speaker 6: My license plate– I have to stick by a principle here. 01:10:32 Speaker 1: Hold on. What is your license plate? My license plate is CNN Sucks. Did you not know that? No, I've never seen you drive a car. Oh, that's true. Kara Swisher. 01:10:39 Speaker 6: For those who do not know, my license plate is literally CNN sucks. 01:10:42 Speaker 1: I've literally never seen you drive a car once. It's amazing. Yeah, he has CNN sucks. It's great. I got it in Virginia and I got it in Arizona. Thank you, Oliver Darcy. Up yours. 01:10:51 Speaker 6: Believe it or not, I had that license plate before the CNN docs. But then it just became even better. It was well chosen. 01:10:57 Speaker 1: Maybe that's why he did it. Yeah, Kara Swisher is already saying she's going to quit from CNN. I think she's a contributor. But anyway, she's going to quit if this merger goes through. 01:11:07 Speaker 4: Wait, Blake. 01:11:08 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:11:09 Speaker 4: Wait, wait, wait. Actually, correction. This is more of a Russ thing. Russ, I just realized. 01:11:15 Speaker 3: If Elon gets control of Paramount, that means he gets control of WB. And if he gets control of WB– We can fire James Gunn. 01:11:25 Speaker 4: We can fire James Gunn again. 01:11:26 Speaker 1: Fire James Gunn. Why are we going to fire him? 01:11:29 Speaker 4: Yes. 01:11:30 Speaker 1: Caboose. He is destroying the DC brand. All right, Caboose, chime in. Currently, he is. No, no, no. Bad. Currently, he has been destroying Green Lantern. Good. To the point that it's. I never liked Green Lantern. 01:11:45 Speaker 4: Oh, no. 01:11:45 Speaker 1: I like Green Lantern. Green Lantern is a great brand. Caboose, Caboose. It's all of it. 01:11:49 Speaker 4: All of it. 01:11:50 Speaker 3: No, Superman, Supergirl, Green Lantern, Batman, all of it. 01:11:54 Speaker 1: All of it, but currently he is destroying Green Lantern. Here's my problem. I don't know the DC catalog. 01:12:00 Speaker 4: No, even Looney Tunes. The last Looney Tunes movie was awful. The Looney Tunes movie was so bad. 01:12:06 Speaker 1: Well, also the... Looney Tunes had a movie? 01:12:09 Speaker 8: Yeah, they also did a Space Jam. Even the Space Jam 2 movie with LeBron sucked. 01:12:14 Speaker 4: The Space Jam was awful. 01:12:16 Speaker 1: All right, Caboose? 01:12:17 Speaker 4: So for folks who don't know that when– oh, go ahead. 01:12:21 Speaker 1: I was going to call in Caboose because I know he's got a thought here. Caboose, is this the real reason that Elon needs to come in? Do we have any indication that Elon doesn't like James Gunn? 01:12:31 Speaker 7: Personally, I don't think Elon needs to step in. I think either way, just Warner Brothers, Paramount, the deal needs to happen. You've got a lot of people's jobs on the line, which Mark Ruffalo is– trying to get a bunch of people to lose their jobs for the sake of pandering to the left. 01:12:49 Speaker 1: True. 01:12:51 Speaker 7: I think in terms of James Gunn, he's going to lose his job either way. The dude's not making money for them. 01:12:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, he's hemorrhaging money right now. 01:12:58 Speaker 6: But will he be catapulted into a volcano, perhaps? 01:13:03 Speaker 1: No, but we could try to work something out. 01:13:07 Speaker 6: What I will say, Elon Musk getting a. 01:13:09 Speaker 1: Big personal stake in WB would excite me in that. 01:13:15 Speaker 6: I think it's an opportunity for us... I feel like so much reason we don't get good content is we kind of just need a billionaire who cares. 01:13:22 Speaker 1: Enough about movies. He's just going to grok it all, though. Yeah, he might. That's the problem. 01:13:26 Speaker 6: These guys would be like, let's make an AI movie. It'll make an AI Odyssey he said he was going to make. 01:13:30 Speaker 1: Terrible idea. But I just kind of wish. 01:13:34 Speaker 6: You think a movie's expensive to make, but when you're at these, he's worth a trillion dollars. They're not that expensive to make. He could trivially allocate a billion... $ 500 million a year to make one or make five really awesome, cool, historical movies, dramatic ones, like new adaptations of properties that everyone has said would get it. And you give them $ 100 million such that you'll release it, and if it makes money, that's great, but it at least keeps it so. 01:14:02 Speaker 1: It will not be a total bomb. 01:14:03 Speaker 8: He just needs to bankroll Mel Gibson at this point is what he needs to do. 01:14:07 Speaker 1: So you know what's interesting to me about this deal, though? Okay, Jack. Go ahead. Go ahead, Jack. 01:14:12 Speaker 3: No, I just wanted to tell– no, by the way, the reason I'm saying this again is because if folks don't know the backstory that James Gunn, after he had been the creator of– not creator, but like the guy who did the movie of Guardians of the Galaxy, he was doing a bunch of other stuff for Disney on the Marvel side, that in 2018 he was fired by Disney for– Number one, because of going after Trump supporters. But then number two, me and Mike Cernovich dug up all of James Gunn's old tweets where he was making horrific jokes, quote unquote jokes, about pedophilia, about child rape, about. 01:14:52 Speaker 4: Things that would happen on his sets. 01:14:55 Speaker 3: And so it was actually, yeah, it was like me and Cernovich just dug. 01:14:59 Speaker 4: Up his old blog and all these tweets. 01:15:02 Speaker 3: And that's why he got fired in the first– in fact, I just looked it up in Grok, and it says– yeah, it says right here. The posts were unearthed and amplified by conservative commentators and outlets such as Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec after a vocal critic of then-President Trump engaged in political arguments with them on Twitter. 01:15:21 Speaker 1: That's fun. So this– that's one– interesting aspect of this, but the, so you got the CNN aspect, you got, I guess DC, but what's also interesting is that they're trying to move paramount out of Los Angeles. It's also true, which, which basically is like the death knell for it's the beginning of the end, the beginning of the end, because they're moving a bunch of these, uh, projects are already moving from, uh, LA to like Atlanta or Nashville, uh, I mean, this could be the great exodus, the beginning of the great exodus of the studio system out of L.A. 01:15:57 Speaker 8: Do you think that because Paramount is moving out of L.A., it makes it more tantalizing to Musk to try to work out something? 01:16:12 Speaker 1: I would say so. Yeah, like American Idol is moving its production out of Los Angeles after 25 years relocating to Atlanta, Georgia. The Masked Singer moved its production from Los Angeles to New Jersey earlier this year. Paramount. David Ellison's Paramount recently floated plans to move operations out of California amid an antitrust battle with Bonta. which is the Attorney General of California. So Bonta's trying to get in there and block this deal, but it's backfiring on a big day. 01:16:40 Speaker 6: So wait, you used to work in Hollywood show business, what have you. What does it substantively mean if a studio is just going to move all the way across the country? Because the studio doesn't move with it, or does it? Would all these people move? 01:16:54 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's corporate offices, certainly. I mean, it's interesting to see what would happen if it was like... You've got accounting. You've got all the boring stuff that every corporation has. But really, the question is the decision makers. The guys that are greenlighting deals, would that move out of L.A.? Because then you still have... There's a whole ecosystem that's there. You've got the agents, and they can just go down the road to meet with people. You can have meetings with actors, with directors. That's why it's all in L.A., is because while you're developing projects... you're just constantly meeting with all these different players to see what can happen. But you got zoom. Now you got, everybody's got airplanes, you know, uh, if you really need to meet face to face. So I, I don't know that there's, it's, the question is production, physical production. Deal-making is one thing. Physical production has moved out of LA a long time ago. 01:17:47 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:17:47 Speaker 1: I was going to say, it might have turned into a giant hub for that. Yeah. It's so, but you still had the studios, right? So they're still filming things like American idol, the voice, uh, survivor, all these things have big production facilities where you go to the lot and I've been to them, you know, where you go into the lot and they have a big, the studio is just basically a big old open, you know, looks like an airplane carrier. It's huge. Um, and then you film it there and then you've got the union guys and you got all this, but the prop, the problem is that the prices have, you know, shot up over the years, extremely high. And then you've got competition in places like Atlanta that are building massive studios, uh, venues, right? So you have the space, It's probably cheaper, and then they give you these tax credits. So I don't really know what the benefit is of having physical production in L.A. anymore. The reason that physical production was in Los Angeles to begin with was that it had– this is actually a true story. When Hollywood was starting out, they had the ability to shoot in mountains, desert, uh tropical looking scenery beaches you had all the the different like looks. 01:18:51 Speaker 6: And now you can do all of that with a green screen. 01:18:53 Speaker 1: Yeah you can do exactly but that's why i go outside and the other reason that it that it uh started in la is because of the weather actually because they they so much of it was outside they had to be able to have predictable weather and predictable rain patterns So that was a big thing just for production, just keeping cameras dry and film dry and things like that. But all of this stuff has gradually become less important, so I don't really know what the point of it is. 01:19:14 Speaker 6: You know what my favorite reason, though, that it went to California, besides all that, is that Thomas Edison's motion picture, he had the patent on the motion picture camera, and they were huge jerks about enforcing the. 01:19:26 Speaker 1: Patent on it. 01:19:28 Speaker 6: And they thought, when you had to get places by train, it was hard for his agents to enforce his patent way out in California. Because he was in New Jersey, of course, Menlo Park. And they just moved all the way across the country where it was difficult for the patent guys to get them. 01:19:46 Speaker 1: What happened was then you got into the studio system where an actor and a director and screenwriters would all sign deals with the studios. And they still kind of have that. It's called a first look deal where if you come up with a project, you have to first look. What the studios do is they essentially give you a retainer, so you're funding people, development, and all this stuff on an ongoing basis, and they get the first right to buy your ideas, your IP. But back in those days, if you were an actor that signed with Warner Brothers or Paramount, then you had to basically, you could only act in Paramount's pictures. You could only act in Warner Brothers' pictures. So again, you had to be present in Los Angeles because all of it was filming all the time in L.A., And you just had to be there. That's why Hollywood became such a magnet and such a center of gravity for the whole industry. 01:20:34 Speaker 8: So part of this, too, American Idol has just announced that it's leaving L.A. 01:20:38 Speaker 1: American Idol still exists? Yes. 01:20:41 Speaker 4: Yes. 01:20:41 Speaker 8: Yes. 01:20:41 Speaker 1: But apparently singer, the mass singer. I just read this. 01:20:44 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:20:44 Speaker 1: Apparently the TV production activity in L.A. region. 01:20:47 Speaker 8: Is that was down 27 percent in the second quarter compared to the last it's. 01:20:51 Speaker 1: Not just that it's commercials all this stuff because remember the first thing that sucked all the business out of la was vancouver so connect canada yeah and that was like a quick plane fight up the coast right so atlanta's a little farther new york had some production of course but That was the first thing. Then Atlanta came on board. 01:21:08 Speaker 6: Before Atlanta, I remember every movie in the early 2000s, they would use Toronto as this discount New York. So you have all these action scenes in New York, and people would be like, that is clearly Toronto. 01:21:19 Speaker 1: Originally, they were using downtown LA as the discount New York. 01:21:22 Speaker 4: Wait, wait, wait. 01:21:22 Speaker 1: Dark Knight used Detroit. All three blocks of it? I think they used Chicago. Oh, okay. 01:21:26 Speaker 4: Chicago. 01:21:27 Speaker 1: Chicago. 01:21:27 Speaker 4: I thought Dark Knight had some of Pittsburgh, too, actually. 01:21:31 Speaker 3: No, Blake, I was going to say, this last season of the one show. 01:21:34 Speaker 4: Even though the guy is a massive libtard, the. 01:21:37 Speaker 3: One show that we will still watch is Reacher. And so this last season was set in Philadelphia. And I was telling Russ about it, that. 01:21:48 Speaker 4: It's set in Philly, but it's very obviously Toronto. 01:21:52 Speaker 3: And so they split between like, oh, now we're in New York or excuse me. 01:21:56 Speaker 4: Now we're in Washington. Now we're in Baltimore. 01:21:57 Speaker 3: Now we're back in Philly all throughout the season. But it's very obviously the same city over and over. And they make some like really ridiculous mistakes. Like they refer to the train station in Philadelphia as Penn Station, even though the Philly train station is 30th Street Station, Penn Station is New York Station. 01:22:15 Speaker 4: But it's, like, very clearly just Toronto. 01:22:18 Speaker 3: They just kind of, like, changed the logo that's on the police car or whatever. 01:22:21 Speaker 4: It's hilarious. 01:22:23 Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that's been happening for years. But it's production expenses. 01:22:26 Speaker 8: I've always wondered, because of Texas's large, like, private land, like, it's a lot of private land. Why do you think that Texas hasn't turned into kind of a production area? 01:22:40 Speaker 1: Well, they tried. I mean, there was a bunch of states that offered tax incentives. Like, New Mexico has them. What's that? 01:22:48 Speaker 4: Too many H-1Bs. 01:22:51 Speaker 1: Well, the other thing about Texas is it just doesn't have a lot of, like, land variability, actually. You've got, like, forest, flat forest. You've got flat desert, basically. 01:23:00 Speaker 6: What made California so good is literally you get that radical change in climate. You can drive two hours and you go from the coast to Yosemite. 01:23:08 Speaker 1: True. Yeah, well, and you could have snow, you could have desert, you could have mountains, you could have Joshua Tree, you know. 01:23:14 Speaker 4: True. 01:23:14 Speaker 1: It just has everything in California. But the point is, none of that really matters. But there was a bunch of states that did tax incentives. Like, New Mexico had a tax incentive. I think Texas had a tax incentive. But there was a bunch of, like, random ones, too. It just... What happened with Atlanta is it just... They built, like... Even the guys that... Well, so, where we filmed our... Our Super Bowl, our halftime show. Yeah, Jack and I were there. Was at those big, huge facilities out there. That's where Superman was done. Chick-fil-A guys built a big studio system out there. So all of a sudden there was infrastructure. And then once you kind of gather all those people and you have a tipping point almost where there's enough industry draw there, people just move there. And then you've got skilled artisans and craftsmen and filmmakers. What's interesting, though, about that is that Georgia is now blue. So that's at least quasi-blue. Wah, wah. That's what happens. 01:24:10 Speaker 6: When you bring a bunch of libs. This happens a lot. Happens a lot. 01:24:12 Speaker 1: Texas might do that. They'll just do it with tech. Oh, probably. Tech and Mexico. 01:24:16 Speaker 6: I don't think it's going to be tech that turns Texas blue. 01:24:19 Speaker 1: Or Indians. 01:24:20 Speaker 6: People always want to blame the Indians. Guys, there's a very obvious reason Texas has become a blue state. It is because it is now a plurality Mexican state. 01:24:27 Speaker 1: That's what I just said. I said Mexican. 01:24:31 Speaker 6: Exactly. 01:24:32 Speaker 1: Um... Well, that's a fun place to... Why do we have Prince Caspian? Is that Warner Brothers? Chronicles of Narnia? Anyways. All right. That wraps us up. 01:24:41 Speaker 4: That's Netflix. 01:24:42 Speaker 1: Yeah, that was B-roll. Totally wrong, guys. Jack, why don't you take us home? And, you know, one last word to the blessed Sheen. 01:24:52 Speaker 3: Yeah, guys, check him out. Fulton Sheen has great stuff out there. You can go and find his reels all over the place, super viral, and dig deeper. Dig deeper to find out what he was all about and use this as a way to further your relationship with the Lord. Use it as a way to further your relationships in reality and further your relationships with one another and your relationship, of course, with God. 01:25:16 Speaker 4: And as always, go out there and commit more thought crime. 01:25:25 Speaker 6: For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.