Robert Evans, Cody Johnston, and Katie Stoll dissect how activist groups like Circa used clown tactics to mock Nazi rallies in Olympia and Knoxville, contrasting this with the "Honkler" meme's origins on 4chan as a vehicle for racist messaging linked to Brenton Tarrant. They trace the evolution from fascist Discord chats using terms like "Tranny Corps" to mainstream adoption by Alex Jones and InfoWars, noting how both sides now wear clown imagery indistinguishably. Ultimately, this cultural collision suggests that while clowns failed to stop rallies, they successfully blurred the lines between anti-fascist resistance and far-right absurdity. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Flinging Bread at Nazis00:04:47
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
An in-depth conversation with a man who's shaping our future.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
Check out my newest episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Shall we stay with me each night, each morning?
Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Mode of my next guest.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's violating my OSHA guidelines?
I'm Robert Evans, the host of Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history.
And today, my guests, Cody Johnston, Katie Stoll.
Hey.
Hi.
Hi.
Hey.
How are you guys doing?
I'm doing great.
Oh, yeah, we're here.
We're alive.
We just recorded Worst Year Ever and now we're recording this.
We did.
And I made a little very subtle reference to violating OSHA guidelines.
Now, you want to tell us a little bit about the objects that I've assembled on the table here?
Well, we got, okay, we got some English muffins wrapped in twine.
We've got a bag of mini bagels.
We've got a machete.
That's the Billy Wayne Davis podcasting machete.
We've got a large knife.
Yeah, kitchen knife.
And Sophie's got a switchblade.
I gave Sophie my walking around knife.
His everyday knife.
Your standard.
And that's not to mention all the various snacks and beverages that are also on this table, but I think these are the items you were referring to.
So there's twine wrapped around this entire box of Thomas brand English muffins with the original nooks and crannies.
Nooks and crannies.
Yeah.
This is a sling, a shepherd sling.
It's a weapon from the ancient world that a fan of ours, a fan of mine, made very generously, specifically to throw bagels, but we're out of bagels.
I threw quite a few of them and did some damage to the other recording room when Sophia was in here and we talked about the Falwell family.
One of the things I've learned, one thing I haven't learned about how to use this is how to make anything I throw go in the direction I want it to.
Oh, you don't know how to aim?
That's important.
It appears to be impossible.
But I have refused to read the very helpful guidelines that the creator of this object left me and instead have just been recklessly tossing things and everything.
I think step one, fling.
Step one, thing.
Fling.
And no other step.
Step two, watch.
Didn't they advise that you never use it indoors?
Yes.
Now, so when I started experimenting with this, and I realized that I couldn't control the direction of it, I also realized that the best thing to do would be to play a little game where I fling packages of bread-based food products at y'all, and you all have large knives to try to knock them out of the air, much like a piñata, but flinging into the air.
However, since I can't direct the device, the objects to go where I want them to go, I figured the safest thing to do would be to arm everyone in the room with a different kind of bladed object.
And it has to stand in different areas.
Why do I have the smallest blade?
Well, it's also the best steel.
Confronting Hate with Clowns00:14:31
That counts for a lot, some of you.
It does count for a lot.
There's not a lot of, I did not bring enough machetes.
Not all steel can defend you from a bread product.
I'm sorry.
It's not the size that matters.
It's how much steel is there.
The size does matter.
Give me the machete.
Wow.
I mean, I have not decided who gets what.
You guys, I feel like whoever gets the machete first gets the machete.
Give me the machete.
Sophie wants to know.
No, you only.
You want to be double off and give me the machete.
That's not going to work well.
This is not a democracy.
I mean, you're saying this is not a democracy.
Give me the knives.
If it's a knife.
In between the recording of worst year ever and behind the masters, producer Sophie becomes a Republican.
Things have changed.
She's been radicalized.
Wow.
So we're not going to fling objects around the room with dangerous weapons in everyone's hands quite yet.
Quite just yet.
Okay.
Quite yet.
That's what we call.
I don't know what we call that.
I'm not aware of other podcasts that do this.
Well, you're the only podcast.
I am.
Worth a toss.
What are we talking about today?
What are we talking about today?
Have you guys noticed some clowns all around the internet?
Oh, no.
And people's posts and like Twitter profiles of people and like online, people dressing up like clowns at protests.
Yeah, I see some clowns around.
Yeah.
You guys notice the president of the United States shared a video themed after take on me that at one point has one of the people he's talking to in clown regalia for some strange reason.
I did not.
Yeah, that happened too.
Today's about why are the clowns all over the place these days?
Which kind of clowns?
What Friday?
Scarius?
A couple kinds of clowns, actually.
A couple kinds of clowns.
So in our modern era of shiny new fascist movements tromping through the streets in various guises, the kind of folks who don't like fascism have found themselves at a bit of a crossroads.
At one end are the black bloc, the Antifa, who have become the boogeymen and women of Breathless TV anchors.
These people say fascists need to be outnumbered, overwhelmed, and sometimes even confronted with physical violence in order to force them off the streets.
And on the other end of things, you have folks who believe the best action is no action.
If we ignore the fascists, they'll go away, and confronting them in the street only earns them sympathy.
Most in the activist community tend to land in the middle, advocating a diversity of tactics.
And for years, one of the most prominent tactics was clown-based mockery.
And we're going on a little bit of a journey over this one.
So I hope you're all excited.
Hong Kong.
I'm buckled in.
The history of clowns as organized parts of activism goes back at least as far as 2003, when a small group in the UK formed the clandestine insurgent rebel clown army, or circa.
They trained cadres of clowns who would show up at the front lines of protests and confront right police with seltzer water, honking red noses, and that one weird scarf trick clowns do, I presume.
Now, their purpose was mostly to boost the spirits of activists dealing with police violence, washing mace out of their eyes, and cringing away from truncheons and such.
At their height, Circa had around 150 professional clowns in Edinburgh, Scotland alone.
Encounters were formed in other cities in Europe and the United States.
So that's cool.
Cool.
Sounds nice.
Still hate clowns.
Still hate clowns.
I'm a little fashion.
I'm more or less okay with those clowns.
You might say that a guy like Vermin Supreme today is kind of like the modern incarnation of that attitude towards clowning at protests where it exists to kind of de-stress everybody, de-escalate things, distract people.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, there's a sense of A, yeah, de-escalating and sort of like making like, we're having, this is a silly time.
This is a silly time.
We can have some fun with it.
Right.
But also, the thing fascists hate the most is being mocked and not taken seriously.
They hate it.
We're going to get to that.
Thank goodness.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it's a complicated issue to discuss.
We'll touch on that.
Yeah.
Now, in 2005, the National Socialist Movement decided to hold a parade on the Capitol steps of Olympia, Washington.
It was to be your standard Nazi affair.
A dozen-ish guys in uniforms waving flags trying to trigger people.
The ostensible goal of the march was recruitment, which the group could sorely use.
A year or so later, the National Socialist Movement would barely be able to scrape together 80 people from across the entire United States.
So, according to the Seattle Times.
Instead of shouting, or worse, attacking, protesters dressed up as Nazi clowns to mimic the rally.
Ever see a Nazi clown goose-stepping?
It was like springtime for Hitler.
David Newart, a journalist covering fascism since forever, says after a time, onlookers seemed to forget about the deflated white nationalists entirely.
That was the most striking defeat I've ever seen dealt to neo-Nazis.
And Newart still kind of holds to this line.
That's the most effective way that you can confront these people in the streets.
That's pretty good.
In 2007, a group of fascists calling themselves Vinlanders decided to hold a march in Knoxville, Tennessee.
They were confronted by a clown block made up of members of the group Anti-Racist Action, or ARA.
Again, the clowns pantomimed Nazi salutes and goose-stepping.
Basically, holding their own clown-themed version of the rally.
When the Nazis chanted white power, the clowns shouted back white flour and then threw fistfuls of flour in the air.
That's fun.
That is fun.
Yeah, that's nice.
Oh, I bet they were so mad.
I bet they were.
All this pissed off Alex Linder, the rally organizer, so much that he charged at the clowns and attempted to assault them.
He was arrested by Knoxville police immediately.
Again, the clowns dealt a startling blow to roughly a dozen Nazis.
That's good.
That's pretty good.
I'm coming around on these clowns.
Yeah, make them look silly, make them angry, trigger them.
Trigger them.
And then the clowns.
And then they do the violence, and then they get...
Yeah.
Speaking of triggered, I can see that Sophie and Katie are passing notes, and I don't know what's happening.
Katie just gave me a really cool sticker.
I gave her a sticker.
Sorry.
I feel like somebody's trying to take my throw-in sling away.
No, no, no, no.
Then I need an even more new sticker, which I can also buy.
You can vote.
Yeah, she asked for once I brought it, and I didn't want to give it to her before.
I forgot.
I was listening.
Okay.
He's cradling his nooks and cradles.
He's cradling the sling.
I didn't mean to offend you.
I'm not taking your sling today.
You can use it as much as you want, buddy.
All right.
Well, when the police come later, I'm going to tell them you said I could use it as much as I wanted.
I'll vouch for you.
Thank you.
We've got it recorded.
Do crimes save lives.
Beautiful.
In 2012, the National Socialist Movement again held a rally, this time in Charlotte, North Carolina.
It drew about 50 supporters, making it one of the more sizable gatherings in the group's history.
Several hundred clowns showed up to counter-protests, outnumbering the Nazis five to one by some accounts.
Again, they tossed white flour in response to Nazi chants of white power.
This counter-protest was organized by the Latin American Coalition.
Their youth coordinator, Lacey Williams, said this to WCNC.
The message from us is, you look silly.
We're dressed like clowns, and you're the ones that look funny.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Not inaccurate.
Not inaccurate.
In January 2017, more than 500 Swedish Nazis from the Nordic resistance movement held a rally in the city of Falun on International Labor Day.
They were confronted by the activist group We Are De Larna, many of whom showed up, yet again, dressed as clowns.
Ivan Midjic, a representative of the counter-protesters, told Radio Sweden that he had come to believe humor was the most potent weapon against fascist extremists.
Angry people, they know how to meet anger.
They know how to meet hate and violence, but they don't know how to meet humor.
We could see they were very troubled by having us there.
Now, Midgetch said that his clown rally was directly inspired by the ongoing activism of clown cadres in Finland, who had shown up in Clown Block to counter the anti-immigrant group Soldiers of Odin for years.
By 2017, the idea of confronting fascists with clowns was rather popular with activists all over the globe.
From an optic standpoint, this sort of activism was certainly successful.
Mainstream news sources were markedly more positive towards activists who dressed as clowns rather than in black, even when the activists dressed in black didn't do anything.
Now, Justin Bates is from Charlottesville, Virginia.
In the wake of the 2017 rally that killed Heather Heyer, or in which Heather Heyer was murdered by a Nazi, he started to get racist robocalls from Scott Rhodes of Idaho.
You guys remember Scott Rhodes, Road to Power?
Yeah.
We talked about him during the midterms.
Fun guy.
I love when these colorful characters pop up again.
It's like in Frasier when somebody from Cheers would come in once a season.
I love that.
It's comforting.
It's comforting.
The American fascist cinematic universe.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And everybody's Woody Harrelson.
I'd watch that.
Now, yeah, so he starts getting these robocalls, these very racist, very anti-Semitic robocalls from Scott Rhodes of Idaho.
Now, Bates decided to counter this by organizing an event where people would dress as clowns and play accordions outside Rhodes' home.
Quote, he targeted my hometown, so I said, okay, if he wants to use his First Amendment rights to spread his ridiculousness, then I'll use my First Amendment rights to spread my own ridiculousness.
And you know what?
Why not do it in front of his house for as long as possible?
Because if he's going to torment my friends and neighbors and their homes and businesses with his stupid shit, if he wants to get into a stupid shit competition, I'll win that every day.
That's a choice quote.
That's a good quote.
It's a good quote.
It just says stupid expletive, but I think it's pretty obvious.
He was saying stupid shit.
Yeah.
Oh, that's real good.
Now, that does sound like a fun idea.
And unfortunately, I've actually found no evidence that Scott ever made this happen.
Somebody does find it.
I would love to be corrected on that.
But what's interesting to me is that all the coverage at the time focused on the idea in a video he made of like a clown.
Bates announced in 2018 that he'd planned to do this next spring, but as far as I'm aware, nothing happened this spring.
Nonetheless, it's interesting to me how much media attention he received for this idea that didn't actually happen versus how much media attention is received by a lot of rallies from activists I've seen who've like gotten hundreds or even thousands of people to show up and how like nobody cares about it.
Here's a short list of the sites that covered Bates's not a clown stunt stunt.
That didn't happen.
Floridapolitics.com, uknews.yahoo, spokesman.com, Blavity, Huffington Post, Bonner County Daily B, Newsweek, and KHQ.
All of those people covered it with like man's response to neo-Nazi robo-caller, send clowns.
That's Newsweek.
A Virginia man found a hilarious way to troll a racist robo-collar.
Like the, it got a lot of coverage.
Nothing ever happened.
Weird, interestingly.
That's weird.
Yeah.
Maybe a sign, though, that it actually is a good tactic if there's more follow-through because the media seems interested.
Yeah, it's a story that they can latch onto.
Yeah.
And they're not going to fall into the trap that they always do with the false equivalents and things like that.
It's just like, no, here's.
Yeah.
That's just what's going on.
Not like they're not making a judgment, really.
Yeah.
About whether or not someone should protest outside somebody's house.
Yeah, or whether or not one side is just as dangerous as the other because they're just very straightforward, supportive of the silly thing as opposed to framing it like it's a serious issue.
And because if it's a serious thing, then you have to be like, well, what are they both saying?
Are they both the same?
Is one violent and one, you know?
It's all non-sounds.
Yeah, interesting lessons there.
Now, it's hard for me to judge the actual efficacy of the tactic of confronting Nazis with clowns.
Because for one thing, it does not seem to actually dissuade Nazis from continuing to march.
In May of 2018, the Nordic Resistance Movement marched again in Ludwiga, Sweden, again with around 500 people.
Clowns Against Racism rallied against them, and they drew more activists than ever to show up in Clown Block, which proved to be a problem because for the first time, the clowns drew in enough numbers that they had to have a permit to march.
And since they hadn't gotten a permit, the police reported the organizer for contravening the law on public order.
There it is.
But again, these guys kept marching after being confronted by clowns.
If you're trying to make the case out to stop them, kind of got a long road to go there.
Even though there's some evidence that it can be very effective and can trigger them to make a bad optics decision has happened in Olympia.
Right.
It seems to be effective in certain ways.
But not in the main way.
It's not a silver bullet.
They aren't scared of clowns like I am.
Yeah, they're not Katie.
They aren't me.
And if they were Katie, they wouldn't be Nazis.
Exactly.
It wouldn't be a problem.
Yeah, something to that.
Just like they know how to deal with anger because that's where so much of them comes from.
Yeah.
And they know, like, oh, if I'm triggering you, then I'm going to stay calm and I'm going to be like, well, what?
Everyone's racist, you know, just because I say this.
And they know how to handle that, but they really.
It doesn't stop them.
It doesn't stop them.
But they don't handle it very well.
Yeah.
Now, dire than all of that is the fact that in recent months, Nazis themselves seem to have found a way to adopt aspects of this tactic for themselves.
Oh, good.
And this brings me, rather unfortunately, to the Honkler meme.
Honkler?
Honkler.
Yeah.
Honk Hawkler.
Yeah, that's literally.
That's what it is.
If you spend a lot of time on Twitter or any of the other foul corners of the internet, you can log off and just burn your computer, walk outside, pet a cat.
But if you spend time on those places, you've probably run across strange images of a green frog dressed as a clown.
He's a Pepe.
This is Honkler.
He's essentially a Pepe meme in Clownface.
I'm going to quote now from an article by Jared Holt from Right Wing Watch.
Online personalities in far-right and white nationalist online circles are attempting to attribute racism and anti-Semitism to an image of a cartoon character, Pepe the Frog, depicted poorly drawn and as a clown.
And that effort has gained notable traction in recent months.
Far-right proponents want the broader internet to believe the character directly represents their worldview, but the situation in the whole represents an attitude shift in far-right circles online and a slow inching forward even towards more radical elements of the movement.
Now, that might sound a little bit weird, but the more radical view is a sort of hardcore nihilism that's currently sweeping the ranks of very online fascists.
See, they were pretty optimistic for the first couple of years of Donald Trump's election, thinking that he was going to do all of the Nazi shit they wanted him to do, but he only did some of it.
Yeah, not enough.
Not nearly enough.
Not being explicit about it either.
And their lives still suck, which is a problem for them.
So a lot of these guys have begun to lose hope of ever instituting the murderous ethnostate they so desire.
And so all of these clown references are a reference to the fact that they believe modern society is a clown world where races intermix and genetically superior specimens like themselves go tragically unfucked.
And that that means the world is clowny.
Yeah, it's a certain clown show.
And if we keep the clown world going, it'll, what is it?
Piss earth is another term there?
Yeah, piss earth.
Yeah, there's a whole bunch of them.
You know what's not piss earth?
The Clown World Chaos00:04:43
What?
Oh, I bet I do.
I bet.
Oh, uh, uh, uh, fuck, it's on the tip of my tongue.
I can't think of what it is.
Product.
Products!
And services.
Sophie's getting ready with a knife.
And I think that has just prompted me to, when we come back, finally toss these crannies and nooks.
Hand me that machete.
Look, the machete's up and for grabs.
People just grab the weapons they are.
Products!
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
They said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Lori Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
From power to parenthood.
Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
From addiction to acceleration.
The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
And it's a multiplayer game.
What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
Find out on Mostly Human.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
He related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Sherry stay with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
Would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Yeah.
Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Honkler Meme Origins00:12:22
And we're back.
We're back, and there's an arms race going on at the table.
I couldn't stand up.
Everybody got to arm themselves.
Get something to hit these nooks and crannies, Thomas's out of the air.
I don't know what direction they're going to go in.
One weapon is for me, one is for Anderson.
She has no thumbs, so I'm holding it for her.
Katie?
I got this stapler.
Okay.
Cody, grab the knife blade first.
Oh, yeah.
I'm stepping down on it.
Just keep that away from my face.
All right.
I'm just going to wind up myself.
I'm like very sad that this is happening.
It went backwards.
It went literally behind him.
It went to be behind me.
As he was winding up.
The most opposite direction.
I need to be the safe way to do this.
Oh, you're not done?
Is there needs to be someone behind me?
I need to be surrounded in a forest of knives so that I can throw this safely.
All right.
No, Cody, don't be the sacrificial lamb.
I mean, he can't do it a second time, right?
Corey, we need you for worst dream effort.
There's no way to know how this is going to go.
It'll be okay.
I'm going to throw it.
All right, now I think the way to do this is to swing it above my head.
Oh, it went sideways very violently.
Getting there.
We're getting closer.
Are we not done?
Let's try this again to the next ad bricks.
Somebody has to hit it with a blade.
All volunteers shout out.
While it's midair.
Well, this is very embarrassing.
I thought it was lovely.
Daniel, did you get that on video?
Video?
Yeah.
I was protecting myself.
Sophie, this is a podcast.
Thank you, Robert.
Is it your first day?
Thank you, Cody.
Thank you, Katie, for not being a trash.
A man man's blading podcast.
I'm saying it's audio-related.
There's no visual elements, okay?
Okay.
Five stars.
No notes.
So, like all good memes, the honkler and clown world memes evolved in a decentralized fashion.
The website Know Your Meme has tracked its entire evolution, and I'm going to quote from them now.
In February 2019, racist and anti-Semitic variations of the character named Honkler began appearing on 4chan's poll image board.
Additionally, the character is associated with the term honk pill, which is often described as an absurdist alternative to black pill nihilism, allowing a person to appreciate the humor in an absurd universe, interpreting existence as a cosmic joke.
Take the honk pill.
Everything's a pill these days with the far eye.
I'm just, I don't want to take any more pills.
Yeah.
Take some soma.
Medicated.
Isn't that a pill?
It is a great pill.
Yeah.
Someone should go back in time to the Wachowski sisters and be like, don't make it a pill.
Don't do it.
Don't make it a pill.
I know this is a fine from a narrative standpoint in 1999, but we're all going to regret it.
Be like, instead of a pill, like an enema.
Yeah.
An enema.
Take the red enema.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Oh, you've been honk enema.
God, I. Just be honked.
I am so ready for when deep fakes allow us to replace that scene in the matrix with Kiana Reeves getting an enema.
The actual honkler image was first posted on 4chan that January with the message, what emotion does this image evoke from you?
Almost immediately, users hit upon the idea of using the meme as yet another dog whistle to signal national socialist beliefs.
So this is the, you can see, this is Honkler.
Oh, there he is.
I'm sure you've seen this guy floating around Twitter.
Yeah.
So the guy says that, and then one of the first responses is someone saying, Honk Honk equals HH, Heil Hitler.
If you honk, you're a honky, taking back the rainbow, mocking the parentheses that mean something is Jewish, clown world.
Clown world inside was to say the clown world is created by the Jews.
And then somebody quoted that and said, why honk honk is the next okay sign.
And then someone else said, taking back the rainbow brother doesn't belong to faggy sodomites and trans freaks, honk honkler.
And they have a picture of Honkler with the rainbow wig on in front of a gas chamber.
Oh, look at him.
Yeah.
So that happened very quickly.
Yeah.
They really were like, yeah, let's turn this into another Nazi diet.
I know how to do that.
This is literally the only thing we do anymore on the internet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Is make things Nazi to.
You do not have to clear my schedule.
Let's do this.
I have nothing else going on.
On February 11th, users on 4chan's poll board launched Operation Honk with the goal of spreading the honkler meme across the internet.
Their goal was to get it into general circulation and hopefully convince normies to start spreading it around without any idea as to its origin from one of their posts.
They will adopt our child and post Honkler on social media under mainstream memes already in circulation.
There will come a time when we must take him back.
Whether of the honk or not, we must perpetuate this meme to show the world our ideas.
So stupid.
So dumb.
Huge dorks.
Whether of the honk or not.
All these mass shootings.
Yeah.
Very frustrating that we have to care about this.
Yeah.
I would love to ignore these people.
Really?
That would be great if you didn't, if they weren't a concern.
If a detectable fraction of them didn't shoot up random Walmarts, it would be nice to ignore them.
And like talk to each other.
And talk to each other and try to get each other to shoot up Walmarts.
Yeah.
Cool stuff.
A honk Facebook page was quickly created, and the meme rapidly spread outside the confines of the chance and into the wide world of other incredibly shitty people.
One of those people was noted actor James Woods.
Celebrated actor James Woods.
On April 8th, he posted this little gym to his Facebook page.
Now, what is that?
What is that?
What does that look like to y'all?
Wait, which?
The bottom one.
I mean, it looks like Honkler.
It is Honkler.
It was in front of an African-American lady.
That's not quite all of the subtext.
Do you recognize what that image is based off of, Katie?
It's a picture of Honkler in a car mugging towards the camera.
Yeah.
And it's basically just traced over a drawing of the Christchurch shooter in his car.
That's what it is.
It's a Christchurch shooter.
It's Brenton Tarrant as Honkler in front of a YouTube personality.
Did not get that at all.
Jesus.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's James Woods sharing a Honkler meme of the Christchurch mass shooting.
Do you think he knew that it was the Christchurch shooter?
Hard to say, because you guys didn't.
That's part of why I'm going to show it to you.
It wasn't an instant.
But I didn't.
Once you said, I was like, oh, yeah, it's the car.
It's that image that we know.
It's strange to think of sharing something.
But yeah, I guess.
I have no idea if Woods knew.
Like, he knew what the clown world...
Because clown world's taken on two meanings.
Both of them are that the world's fundamentally absurd because of all this multiculturalism bullshit.
But the two different ways of taking that is the not explicitly Nazi way is that like, well, these SJWs and these liberals are just so absurd.
And it's a clown world because of that.
And then on the explicitly Nazi side, it's the Jews are the ones making it be that way.
And that's why it's.
Well, right, it's always that like that little leap you need to make.
Yeah.
And I mean, I've seen even like we don't want to talk about Tim Poole.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But like he's done videos where he's like, people say the honkler thing is like about Nazis and stuff, but it's actually not.
It's just because the world is so nuts.
And it's like, nah, you're helping.
You're helping there, buddy.
Yeah.
It's very frustrating.
It's very frustrating.
I don't believe that James Woods is, as 4channers would say, Jew-pilled.
Which I don't think he understands entirely what he's saying.
Yeah, and he's old.
He's old and not smart.
And it's like internet stuff.
And it's internet stuff.
To parse that kind of thing.
Someone probably told him it's a conservative thing, and he was like, well, okay.
And specifically why he posted it, he was declaring war with hashtag clown lady.
And the clown lady in the picture, the woman who the Terrant Klein is looking at, is a YouTuber named Lil Lunchbox.
And she provoked the ire of the right wing when she complained about the Honkler meme and particularly complained about the appropriation of rainbow imagery by the right.
She said, I'm ready to go to motherfucking CL war, clown war over this.
You are not going to take a symbol of happiness and acceptance and multiculturalism and turn it into something racist and antiseptic and homophobic.
I think she meant anti-Semitic and transphobic.
So that's like...
That's the reaction they wanted.
That's the reaction they wanted.
And James Woods is declaring war on her in this.
But then his responses got really weird because like Woods spent the rest of the day like watching more and more of her footage.
And like, it seems like he actually seriously did start to enjoy her stuff.
And then he started posting positive things about her.
She's my new favorite person on Twitter.
I mean, she's certainly committed to her position about things.
She's willing to go to war.
I like her.
I'm not kidding.
I mean, there's the clown stuff and the not so liberal stuff, but she's likable.
I don't know why.
I'm still smiling.
I started out making fun of her video, but now I'm really curious about her.
I mean, that's charming to me.
He also might just have been backtracking, but someone was like, oh, you spread terrorist propaganda.
And I was like, ah, fuck.
I like her.
I mean, you can't delete it.
It delivers.
Now, I was lurking on 8chan the same day this happened.
And so I was able to watch them react to this because they had created the original image that then got chopped up of Terrant as Honkler.
Like that started on 8-Chan's bullboard.
So they were very excited to see someone as relatively mainstream as James Woods share it.
And they immediately then started taking pictures of Little Lunchbox's face and photoshopping her with green skin and a rainbow clown wig and turning her into a honkler, which is just sort of the way the internet works when it does stuff like that.
But I will say, I don't think James Woods quite knew what he was doing.
No, I mean, it's what happened.
It's like their goal.
Like you're not.
Yeah, he's not looking at this and going, oh, yeah, the terrorist and Hitler stuff.
He's going, oh, yeah, these clowns.
It is clowns.
That's right.
When Donald Trump retweeted that 8-Chan meme of Hillary Clinton with the Star of David on it, that's the most.
It was like, he didn't think that was a star of David.
He just said, oh, someone else hates Hillary.
Fuck yeah.
Right.
He didn't take that much time to have that.
It's the fact that you are so connected to these communities that's a concern.
It's that, like, how did you see this racist thing and why did you connect to it and retweet it?
Like, James Woods has some access to and relationship with people who are sharing these Nazi things.
He's just not going, oh, yeah, they're Nazis.
Like, that's their goal.
It's upset.
It's upsetting.
It's not great.
It's not the way I would prefer things work in national politics.
But here we are.
These secret Nazis tricking famous people into sharing theirs.
And famous people reacting to it by generally saying, well, I guess I'll defend Nazis now rather than admit that I got tricked.
It's great.
I really love 2019.
Yeah, pretending that it's not a problem and that there's nothing going on and there isn't a community of people that actively do this on purpose.
It makes me think 2020 might just be a pretty good year.
The least best year of all of them.
That seems negative.
Ever.
Welcome to the best of the everything so smart, smart, smart.
Yeah.
Now, I don't know what was going on with James Woods, and I won't pretend to.
But I do know that the shit posters on 8chan took to honkler memes like a duck takes to racism.
When I started writing this episode, I looked through my giant document, saved 8-chan posts, and the first honkler meme I found on there was from April 8th, which was, yeah, again, the same day that James Woods made that post, although I think it happened earlier than that, and I just didn't choose to save those images.
But here's an example of one of the more baffling versions of this meme that I really don't even know what's trying to be conveyed there.
It's clearly based off the shining.
You've got, yeah, an axe coming through, a bathroom where a woman is half-dressed, and then the honkler's little face peering through the wall.
Shining Horror Parallels00:04:58
Oh, she's dressed all sexy.
Yeah.
There might be some incel shit there.
It's really hard to say.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I honestly have no idea what the message of that is even supposed to be.
I guess keeping Tom kind of thing.
I don't know.
There's some thing going on there.
No, I doubt it.
There's dildos on the shelf, though, so I bet they'd call her a Stacey or something.
Right.
Like there's some mixed messaging there, it seems.
Yeah.
It's unclear.
Or maybe they're just saying we're going to kill women who like dildos.
Right.
Yeah, something like that.
Yeah.
Or just women's.
We represent the women.
You know what doesn't kill the women?
What?
This products that support this podcast.
Yeah.
I hope.
I hope.
Yep.
They don't.
They don't.
Good.
We've had all of our products.
Daniel's saying this is a good idea.
Well, I feel safe.
Thank you.
I'm going to buy them now.
I thought they were going to harm women, but somebody's picking up a knife.
Yeah, everybody should get their knives ready.
As soon as we come back from the break, it's going down.
Oh, gosh.
All right.
Time to get my stapler out.
Products.
I don't know if you fix this.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
Oh my god, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share each day with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Lori Siegel and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
From power to parenthood.
Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
From addiction to acceleration.
The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
And it's a multiplayer game.
What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
Find out on Mostly Human.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Moda.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
Quitting When It Hurts00:13:42
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Well, we're back, and because we're coming back from a break, I'm going to attempt to properly fling the thing with the sling in enough of a direction that somebody with a weapon is able to hit them out of the air and make these now rather crumbled English muffins burst like a pinata filled with gluten agglutinata.
All right, all right, I'm gonna call my shot.
First, it's staying in the sling.
Yeah, yeah.
No, you're getting better.
It went.
It went to where it was.
The second is, it's supposed to stay in the sling, not eventually, but initially.
Sure long enough to build up my duck.
That was too fast.
If you did not duck, that might have gotten you square.
There's really no way that I could have defended myself from that.
I mean ducking, that's that counts as difficult.
If I had ducking is a manner Robert says to Katie for almost killing her.
Katie, I'm sorry for almost killing you, thank you, I was trying to hit so much Katie.
I don't have any choice but to accept your apologies.
Here's the machete.
I think you need it more than I do now.
See, if the machete had been there, you could have hit the the bagels when you toss this back.
I would have hurt myself with the machete when I died.
No, you would have saved it.
You would have cut them in half and we were like oh, it's amazing how many would have got damaged.
Not enough, they're mushed up, Daniel.
Daniel said, not enough Robert, you're still employed, good job.
Well, we'll have to change that.
Tossing papers doesn't have quite the oomph.
I love tossing, I'm just a toss fan, I'm a tosser.
For fuck's sake, right.
I don't know what that means, but British people say.
Yeah, you're.
I think it has something to do with the go swivel, you tosser.
And then you do like a reverse peace sign.
Oh, like that's the British one for the butt.
You tosser.
Oh, I thought it was something else.
I mean, it might be about anal ingus.
Is that what you're referring to?
No.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Either way.
No, no, no.
It means somebody with a tendency to show off or brag in an excessive and embarrassing way.
Well, there you go.
Because I bragged about my tossing.
Yeah.
And it worked.
Wow, you're a tosser about your tossing.
Oh, boy.
I hope nobody relies on these English muffins for breakfast.
You're fine.
Oh, good.
Are you going to put them back?
Well, yeah.
I'm not going to waste food.
That's good.
Thank you.
Thank you for praising me.
You're good.
I love being praised.
The honkler meme quickly generalized into the clown world meme, which we talked about a little bit earlier, but it started with the honkler and then turned into the broader clown world thing.
Memes are confusing.
Clown World obviously involves references to clowns aimed at making the point that our modern world is social justice and treating women like people.
It's fundamentally absurd.
This actually has its origins back before the honkler meme.
So this is one of the things that's confusing about this.
That, wait, that women.
No, no, just the clown world to refer to that.
Yeah.
I found clown world references on archived Discord conversations between fascists as early as 2017, which is well before the start of the Honkler meme.
Although it seems to have just been a term they were using rather than sort of a meme in and of itself.
Right.
So I'm going to read a little conversation from the vibrant diversity chat room, which was frequented by many of the people who marched and organized the bloody 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
A lot of those people do terrorisms.
Sure.
Sure, weird that a lot of those people end up doing terrorism.
A lot of them.
Like a statistically significant number of them have done a terrorism or something.
Like every couple months, you see a terrorism done or like a suspected terrorism done, and you're like, that person looks familiar.
Oh, here they are marching literally next to this other terrorist.
Here they are marching right next to this terrorist.
Cool.
Quite something.
So these posts came after a long discussion about whether or not transgender people should be able to serve in the military.
Of course it did.
Very woke taste.
Yeah, I think you take a lot of things into consideration.
Horatio Carey.
Honestly, putting trannies on the front line is cruel.
Camp and Carl.
To the enemy, Horatio Carey.
LOL Vanguard.
Seriously, they should be put in frontline service.
Horatio Carey.
Cannon Fodder.
Camp and Carl.
I hate it.
Just don't waste any armor or weapons on them.
Horatio Carey.
Tranny Corps.
Northern underscore Confederate.
LOL such Clown World.
Thankfully, our president, all caps and ARE, has a simple solution to Trannys.
No.
So that's good.
That's good.
That was unpleasant to listen to.
It really was.
That's the first reference I can find to Clown World in one of those really clear discussions.
Thank you for hating it.
It is.
Good job, Robert.
Yay.
As is usually the case, the Clown World and Honkler memes quickly traveled from the most extreme corners of the internet to more mainstream Nazis.
Oh, Mary, get out of here!
Get out of town!
Get out of town.
Nazis.
Get Nazis out of town.
Get out of Nazis.
Get out of town.
Nazis, get out of town.
But then if somebody gets hit when you're telling Nazis to get out of town, you'll be declared domestic terrorists.
That is true.
It's the same.
I love our system.
It's helpful.
It's good.
It has no flaws.
I'm going to read from Right Wing Watch again.
Great.
Honkler and Clown World memes were recently incorporated into Goy Talk, a new but growing web-based white nationalist podcast.
The show's hosts advocate white nationalism in a detached way and embody the same increasingly nihilistic attitude among the white nationalist and white supremacist movements in the United States, conveyed in the repetition of the word clown world.
Goy Talk hosts express racist and anti-Semitic views as a staple of their programming, with guests that include David Duke, Christopher Cantwell, and Patrick Little.
Nevertheless, they are ultimately nihilistic about the state of the world and their ability to change it without mass organized action, reminiscent of the violent writings of James Mason in his book, Siege.
Whoa.
Whoa.
Yeah.
So I always feel bad.
I know a lovely Chris Cantwell, who's a wonderful director.
Whenever I hear him.
That's a fortunate name to have Halt and Catch Fire.
Halt and Catch Fire.
A lot of great sketch comedy back in the day, too.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Yeah.
It's unfortunate.
It's ironic that the good Chris Cantwell directed Halt and Catch Fire because the bad Chris Cantwell, I would not have a problem if he were to halt.
Halt and Catch Fire.
There it is.
Nailed it.
Beautiful.
So guys like Christopher Cantwell and David Duke are fundamentally different parts of the fascist media ecosystem from, say, the guys on 4chan.
And the fact that folks associated with them had latched onto the Honkler meme is evidence that it had essentially spread to the uncool sections of the Nazi right by this point, by kind of like the middle of this year, early, you know, quarter, first quarter of this year, the end of that quarter.
So my guess is that the channels behind Honkler probably reacted to this into the same way we all did when our parents first got onto Facebook and started spreading minions memes.
Like, this is kind of that for Nazis.
Right.
And they're like, oh, David Duke's in on it.
We got to find a new thing to be Nazis.
The crying Nazis doing it now.
Yeah, the crying Nazis doing it now.
Fuck.
Yeah.
Here's a note.
Yeah.
You're all fucking dorks.
None of you're not cool.
Stop it.
You're as cool as David Duke.
That's your note for the Nazis?
That's my note for the Nazis.
Well, I'll let the Nazis know you.
Yeah, like you were really directing that directly at the Nazis.
You made direct eye contact with Robert.
I will let the Nazis know.
Please let them know.
Yeah.
It has now filtered, it being the Honkler meme, has now filtered thoroughly out of the weird right-wing internet and into the streets.
I'm not precisely sure when the first fascist demonstrators started marching in clown gear.
The first time I saw it was in May of 2019 when Joey Gibson of Patriot Prayer held a rally in Albany, New York with a tiny gaggle of Proud Boys.
Now, this was an away game for Joey, who usually marches in Portland and Seattle, and it was a huge flop.
Nobody even showed up to counter-protest him.
Only one journalist showed up to write about it, and the whole event was forgotten basically as soon as it happened.
The only noteworthy part of this rally was the fact that several Proud Boys showed up in Clownface.
And guys, I will include some of these pictures on the site.
You do owe it to yourself.
There's been some sad clowns in the past.
I feel like that's a thing that is regularly done.
This guy here is the saddest clown.
Oh, you're a sad.
Your pity's warring with your disgust, isn't it?
Oh, yeah.
It's like taking an anti acid after drinking a bunch of acid.
Is this the one I think it is?
I don't know.
Is it?
No, this is a different way.
Isn't that one good?
He just looks so dejected.
It's like the Snoopy music is playing.
Oh, yeah.
Or Charlie Brown.
Yeah, somebody pulled a fucking football out from under that kid's clown shoe.
Oh, yeah.
I was expecting one.
I got another one.
It's a delicious treat.
There's some great ones.
There's some really great ones.
Now, a month or so later, the Clown World meme reached what I have to suspect will be its saddest form, perhaps its apotheosis.
Alex Jones featured it on InfoWars.
Now, Jones has a long history of pulling content from 4chan and 8chan, mainly in the form of conspiracy theories and the very dumbest of memes.
This time, he appropriated the term Clown World, which again was first coined by literal Nazis to describe the nihilistic rage they felt at their inability to stop people from race mixing or accepting LGBT people.
Jones, however, used it for his special coverage of the Democratic debates.
Infowars.com presents Clown World, the greatest comedy show on earth.
The promotional graphic features all the Democratic candidates in crudely photoshopped clownface.
Elizabeth Warren also wears a Native American headdress.
Bernie Sanders is a mime.
Joe Biden is, for some reason, done up as Jack Nicholson's version of The Joker.
What?
I'm really, I really don't understand.
Like, they're all different types of clowns.
Oh, this is bizarre.
Like Elizabeth Warren.
Okay, obviously, that's the one thing that lazy right-wing pundit hits her for.
Corey Bookers is the most terrifying.
I get Sanders from mine because he's the oldest.
So, like, yeah, you have to be the old-timeiest clown.
Why is Joe Biden Jack Nicholson?
It's so weird.
Because he carries an absurdly long handgun that he uses to shoot the bat plane out of the air.
Yeah, that's so weird.
Does he?
Did he?
Is he?
He probably is.
You know what?
Points to Alex Jones.
That's fair.
Well, he also fell in that vat of acid.
And Joe Biden's eye exploded that one time.
Exactly.
This is before that.
From the acid.
This is before that.
This is before Biden's eye exploded.
The night before?
Oh, no.
That was later.
Very cool.
Very cool.
Check out the podcast Knowledge Fight if you want some coverage of Jones' Clown World show.
But obviously, it wasn't good because he's bad.
Jones is corny.
Yeah, and he's not even fun anymore because so many people are threatening to end the act, actively suing him that he can't even be that fun.
Yeah, he's really trying to tone it down because he realizes, oh, I guess I can get sued for being sued.
I guess I'm being sued.
Yeah.
Now, about a month before I wrote this, at the end of September 2019, a straight pride parade was held in Boston.
It was organized by a coalition of fascists, outright neo-Nazis, and Milo Iianopoulos.
During a powerfully sad press conference for the event, one of the organizers was asked, What do you say to taxpayers who want to know why you're wasting the city's resources because you three guys can't get laid?
The organizer responded, The world is clown world.
The world's gone crazy because there's nothing wrong with being straight.
What?
Great.
Okay, man.
Okay, man.
You know what?
At least it's very lucid and like clear thought.
Yeah.
Really, an answer.
Really a solid answer.
Several attendees at the parade were photographed dressed as clowns.
Two men wore honkler costumes complete with green face paint.
Oddly enough, the counter-protest of this event also included clowns.
While activists on the ground is while activists on the ground battled with the Boston police, who went a little bit nutfuck on the demonstrators, online anti-fascists started flooding Twitter and other social media apps with pictures and footage of large groups of clowns, tagging the footage as part of the straight pride parade.
It wasn't, of course.
This was just unrelated clown footage.
But that's where things sit now.
We've gone from activists dressing as clowns to keep each other's spirits up to marching in clown costumes to counter serious uniformed neo-Nazis to fascist demonstrators willingly dressing themselves as clowns while online anti-fascists flood the internet with fake clown footage in order to distract from their real event.
Seems you guys excited about where we are.
What a fun little episode.
What a fun, fun thing.
I'm more excited about where we're heading.
What a roller coaster I went on regarding clowns.
Hating clowns, starting to like them, back to hating them even more than I hated them originally.
I do hope that what we see in 2020, if this evolution continues, is two large groups of functionally indistinguishable clowns beating each other in the street while the police just go, who do we tear gas?
I guess everybody.
I think that's what we call a civil war.
Yes.
It's that false equivalence that you're helping a little bit, where it's like, it's like the sneaches.
You keep switching.
Sneaches on beaches.
Oh, yeah.
Or you keep switching back and forth, and then you're like, well, who's the clown?
What are you protesting for or against?
Oh, you're a fascist, but I'm not.
But to you, I am.
I guess we're both clowns now.
Roller Coaster Clown Hates00:04:27
It's great.
That's not.
I disagree.
Sorry.
Well, I hope this was helpful.
Very.
Now I know I have a new enemy.
Yes.
Clowns still?
Clowns still.
Still, speaking of clowning, oh, he's gonna do one more.
I'm gonna try it.
I'm gonna try it.
I don't think you're gonna do it.
Don't try.
Do it.
Thank you, Cody.
Thank you for believing in me.
Absolutely.
Let's start off by going down.
Not a bad decision.
Katie, I gave you the machete.
I can't.
I'm specifically non-violent.
Cody, get the machete.
The machete scares me.
Daniel has the machete.
Daniel has the machete.
Dale, you be careful with that machete.
Protect me Anderson.
So if you make sure the OSHA guy doesn't come in.
All right.
I'm going to close my eye.
I'm going to do this like Luke Skywalker.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
Well, that wasn't great.
Well, guys, it's another episode done.
Another miserable failure.
In the bag.
In the bag.
We did it.
You did it, Robert.
You guys have some pluggables to plug?
Fuck yeah.
Daniel's still holding that machete.
Yeah.
Check out our news show.
Worst year ever.
Yeah, worst year ever.
Here on a podcast, even more news.
That's the one that Cody and I do.
Yes.
Yeah.
And Cody.
This is a YouTube show called Some More News.
Check out video versions of the news.
You can help support that by going to patreon.com/slash some more news.
So much to check out.
So much to check out.
And if you want to endanger the people around you by throwing breakfast food recklessly, Thomas, Breakfast Like No Other, the original Nooks and Crannies English Muffins.
Those are so good.
He threw nooks and crannies.
That's because I love you.
You can find this podcast at behindthebastards.com.
You can find t-shirts on TeePublic.
You can find me at BastardsPot.
And you can listen to the worst year ever, the podcast.
It's about a year that's not going to be very good.
Do it, You're going to love it.
Cool.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that: trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
An in-depth conversation with a man who's shaping our future.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world of AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
Check out my newest episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Shall we stay with me each night, each morning?
Listen to Nora Jones' playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Mode.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
Woo, My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanks Stat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.