Knowledge Fight - #1128: March 17-20, 2006
Aired: 2026-03-27
Duration: 02:01:33


=== The Road Trip Begins (03:21) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey, hello.
[00:00:02]  How's it going?
[00:00:04]  I'm Dan.
[00:00:05]  I'm sitting here.
[00:00:07]  I'm Jordan.
[00:00:08]  I'm coming to your rescue.
[00:00:10]  I'm coming to your rescue right out the gate with that.
[00:00:12]  Hey, That's a rough start.
[00:00:15]  We're not great improvisers, I think, is the point of that opening.
[00:00:20]  This is thoroughly planned out, right, Dan?
[00:00:22]  The hey, hey, hey part of it was kind of like my brain missing a beat trying to figure out like, is this going to go before the theme song, or am I going to have to put the theme song in later?
[00:00:33]  Right.
[00:00:33]  And I decided in the moment that this is going to go in cold.
[00:00:37]  No theme song, just hey, hey, hey, hey.
[00:00:40]  I mean, I'm going to be honest with you.
[00:00:43]  We've given criticisms about having production meetings in the past, and I think maybe we are hypocritical in that regard.
[00:00:50]  There is a happy medium that we should strike.
[00:00:52]  Yeah, we have failed it.
[00:00:56]  So, Jordan, I'm on the road.
[00:00:58]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:00:58]  Yes, you are.
[00:00:59]  I am.
[00:01:00]  You do not.
[00:01:01]  You can see, obviously, I'm in a hotel room somewhere, but you don't know.
[00:01:05]  You have no idea where I am.
[00:01:09]  Well, I mean, just judging from the decor of your hotel room, I'd say, first off, America, and second, not the richest place in America.
[00:01:18]  You are right on both counts, and we will get to that in a moment.
[00:01:22]  So, what's going on here is that I am taking this road trip, and I'm also a lunatic.
[00:01:28]  And so, we had planned that we were going to continue working.
[00:01:32]  I was going to work from the road.
[00:01:34]  We'd established, you know, some ways to do that, getting some other equipment and all that shit.
[00:01:41]  But Alex has been out of studio still.
[00:01:47]  So, even though I'm on the road trying to live it up, go see America, I'm being annoyed that he's not showing up.
[00:01:58]  So, I figured, like, we're not going to do it, we're not going to do an episode about Stuart Rhodes hosting or anything like that.
[00:02:06]  We have episodes banked.
[00:02:07]  So, we have an old 2006 episode that we'll play after this little intro.
[00:02:14]  But, yeah, it looks bad over there.
[00:02:18]  And I can't say that it doesn't feel great to be having a fantastic time, personally, while Alex is conceivably having the worst time of his life.
[00:02:29]  It is hard for me to conclude anything other than that he is on a bender right now.
[00:02:35]  Based upon all of our previous interactions with him up until the point when he has been gone, they have been dangerously alcohol-induced.
[00:02:44]  It's true, but I think the last time I saw him visually, he was in a room that was suspiciously sterile-looking.
[00:02:53]  And I was like, well, maybe that's rehab.
[00:02:55]  Maybe someone took him to a dryout center or something.
[00:02:59]  Or he could be taking out his frustrations Dexter style.
[00:03:03]  You know, you never know.
[00:03:05]  Maybe he's out finally doing good for once and I guess murdering serial killers.
[00:03:10]  I don't remember that show.
[00:03:11]  He's taking out Carpe Dunkedum.
[00:03:16]  Many, many have gone missing for their criticisms of InfoWars recently.

=== First Stop Kankakee (11:46) ===

[00:03:21]  Leo Zagami dead.
[00:03:25]  Now who's the Antichrist going to be?
[00:03:27]  Yeah.
[00:03:28]  Yeah.
[00:03:30]  So I have much to report from the road, Jordan.
[00:03:34]  Yes.
[00:03:36]  I think that I think you made the prediction that America and not very affluent America.
[00:03:48]  Yes.
[00:03:49]  And I think you're right.
[00:03:50]  I am in Terre Haute, Indiana, right?
[00:03:53]  Okay.
[00:03:53]  All right.
[00:03:54]  The highest earth.
[00:03:58]  Sure, that sounds right.
[00:04:00]  I think that's, yeah.
[00:04:02]  I know a little bit of French, and I think that checks out.
[00:04:05]  That works for me.
[00:04:06]  So, yeah, I'm leg two of my journeys.
[00:04:12]  And so, to give everyone a little bit of a peek behind the curtain about the plan of this, I just sat on Google Maps and looked around for places that sounded funny.
[00:04:28]  And so, I ended up just scrolling around on the map, and I saw a town called Aroma Hills.
[00:04:36]  And it dawned on me that I had never smelled Aroma Hills.
[00:04:41]  And if you see the name, you can't, like, you can't have an ophactory memory of it just by looking at the word, but you feel like you should.
[00:04:51]  And so, I wanted to correct that, and I made that the first stop of my trip.
[00:04:56]  Right.
[00:04:56]  I'm going to ask you a question real quick.
[00:04:58]  I'm going to get, I'm going to interrupt here for a second.
[00:05:01]  Do you think it is then necessarily an act of violence for them to name it Aromahill?
[00:05:07]  Like, without, I didn't do anything to deserve this longing to know what a smell of a hill is, and they've just named it such to give me that feeling?
[00:05:15]  That's bullshit.
[00:05:16]  I really think it's an unintended thing.
[00:05:19]  Like, I don't think it's an act of violence.
[00:05:22]  I think the effect may be violence, but there's no malice in it.
[00:05:26]  Like, naming it that is not like, it's not hurtful.
[00:05:30]  Sure, I'm just saying people need to think ahead before they start naming things.
[00:05:33]  Right.
[00:05:34]  Someone weird like me might see the town name.
[00:05:37]  Exactly.
[00:05:38]  And then here we are.
[00:05:39]  I think 99% of people who would see that town name would have no second thought.
[00:05:44]  But for me, it was just like, huh, I go smell that place.
[00:05:48]  Right.
[00:05:49]  And so that was my plan.
[00:05:51]  That was my first stop.
[00:05:52]  And I came up with some other stops.
[00:05:54]  And as I was, as I think we mentioned this in the last episode, I spoke this into reality with my therapist and friends and then you.
[00:06:06]  And I told my therapist about my plan, just to make sure it didn't sound crazy.
[00:06:13]  And he thought it was a great idea.
[00:06:16]  And then the next morning, he sends me a text that there had been a tornado that had hit Aroma Hills.
[00:06:24]  So I tell you about this coincidence of like, I've never heard of fucking Aroma Hills.
[00:06:31]  I tell my therapist my plan is to start a road trip to that being the first stop.
[00:06:36]  Then there's, he sees a tornado has struck.
[00:06:39]  What is this?
[00:06:40]  Is this a sign of something?
[00:06:42]  And you managed to convince me a little bit that it is Gene Hackian.
[00:06:48]  Yeah, you have to.
[00:06:49]  You must go visit after this whole situation.
[00:06:53]  It is something calling to you.
[00:06:57]  Go chase the tornado.
[00:06:58]  It is a metaphor.
[00:06:59]  It's like it's fucking Wizard of Ozzian.
[00:07:02]  It's not just Gene Hackmian.
[00:07:05]  Gene Hackmian.
[00:07:06]  Hackmian?
[00:07:08]  Hackmanian?
[00:07:09]  Hackmian.
[00:07:09]  I think I'm going to go with Hackmean.
[00:07:11]  I think they all were.
[00:07:13]  So I got there, and my plan initially was that there's a, I was going to stay in Kankakee, which is just outside Aroma Hills.
[00:07:26]  And there's an Aroma Hills forest preserve.
[00:07:31]  And I was going to wander around there.
[00:07:32]  I was also going to see, because this tornado had happened, I was going to see what was up.
[00:07:39]  Is there anything that needs assistance?
[00:07:43]  How are they recovering and everything?
[00:07:45]  Any elderly celebrities that need help?
[00:07:49]  I didn't see any.
[00:07:51]  Maybe next time.
[00:07:53]  It was surprising to me.
[00:07:54]  And granted, I didn't poke around and ask too many people, but it seemed like there was a phenomenal recovery effort underway.
[00:08:03]  Like, there was a lot of trees and branches and stuff, but they were all very organized.
[00:08:08]  Like, everything was, like, it really, I don't know.
[00:08:13]  You can see things are wrecked, and you could see definitely that there is destruction.
[00:08:18]  I don't want to, like, gloss over that and minimize it, but there was another end of it, too, that it really seemed like people were helping each other, and that was in progress.
[00:08:28]  And so there was something pretty uplifting about that.
[00:08:32]  Like, you're coming into this place and you're not just seeing, like, oh, horror.
[00:08:38]  Oh, it's all awful.
[00:08:39]  It was kind of, there's a tinge of optimism that came along with it.
[00:08:44]  The destruction will come, but what is powerful about humanity is the rebuilding that comes after.
[00:08:49]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:08:51]  But so my biggest plan or point was that I was going to go to that forest preserve.
[00:08:57]  And so I'm heading over there.
[00:08:59]  I'm driving.
[00:09:00]  Yeah.
[00:09:01]  The one thing that I ran into that was like actual pretty like damaged that wasn't fixed was that there was a downed power line over the entrance to the forest preserve.
[00:09:19]  It was just impassable and looked like it would probably die if you tried to drive over it.
[00:09:25]  Yeah.
[00:09:27]  Whether or not you are following the precepts of some sort of god or anything, right now it feels more like a mischievous leprechaun kind of style thing going on here.
[00:09:38]  Like, follow me.
[00:09:39]  Ooh, not too close.
[00:09:41]  That's where I'm seeing this going.
[00:09:44]  How could it be that that place is the one place that's basically impassable that I saw in the town?
[00:09:51]  And it's the one place that I was set out to go.
[00:09:56]  It's like a video game wall.
[00:09:58]  You're not supposed to be able to go there.
[00:09:59]  Perhaps it'll be unlocked when you level up on the way back.
[00:10:03]  It's gated content.
[00:10:05]  Yep.
[00:10:06]  Yeah, that's a good way to think about it.
[00:10:08]  I don't have the upgrade.
[00:10:10]  I don't have my booster shoes.
[00:10:13]  You gotta have the shoes to jump the power or rubber shoes to keep from getting electrocuted.
[00:10:17]  This all makes sense.
[00:10:20]  So I just decided, like, I'll just go somewhere else.
[00:10:24]  I went to the Kankakee River State Park and walked around there.
[00:10:30]  Lovely time.
[00:10:31]  Had a blast.
[00:10:34]  Saw some nature.
[00:10:36]  Stood over the river and contemplated river shit.
[00:10:41]  Sure.
[00:10:42]  I found a sign that said that Sasquatch was around and then he wasn't.
[00:10:48]  Nah.
[00:10:49]  Well, I'm fairly certain he's still Pacific Northwestern.
[00:10:53]  So if he's on a trip at the same time that you're on a trip, now that's a coincidence.
[00:10:57]  I don't think he would have had the time to set up that sign that says Bigfoot over there if he was just passing through.
[00:11:04]  Like if he's on a road trip.
[00:11:06]  Yeah.
[00:11:07]  I mean, maybe he's some sort of Johnny Bigfoot seed where everywhere he goes, he puts one of those signs behind him so you know where he was along his journey.
[00:11:17]  Bigfoot was here.
[00:11:18]  Yes.
[00:11:19]  Or is it geocacher?
[00:11:21]  That's possible.
[00:11:22]  Yeah, you never know.
[00:11:23]  Little flash drives around.
[00:11:25]  Maybe he's got a little Google camera and this is for street view.
[00:11:31]  So that Aroma Hills was the jump off or the end of leg one and jump off of leg two.
[00:11:40]  What's your review of Aroma Hill?
[00:11:43]  You know what?
[00:11:44]  As a smell, nothing really notable.
[00:11:48]  I feel like the correct answer was it stinks.
[00:11:51]  No, it was fine.
[00:11:53]  I think the town was really lovely, and I think that the there's something inspiring about people working together to build back from a natural disaster.
[00:12:03]  Sure.
[00:12:04]  But the Kankakee River was lovely.
[00:12:08]  And I found a beaver den.
[00:12:12]  I found a little hidden beaver den from poking around.
[00:12:16]  And I also was on one trail, and I had, this might be a segment for my trips, my road reports, which is thought that seems profound, but probably isn't.
[00:12:32]  All right.
[00:12:33]  I suspect a jingle in our future for the segment.
[00:12:39]  I saw a guy coming out of the woods, right?
[00:12:43]  And I was not scared of him at all.
[00:12:46]  And I realized that I'm a very panicky, like scared person generally.
[00:12:52]  Okay.
[00:12:52]  But in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, if you see someone, they're not a threat to you.
[00:13:00]  If someone wants to hurt you, you're probably not going to see them.
[00:13:04]  So if you see somebody, they clearly don't mind you seeing them.
[00:13:11]  So don't be scared of them.
[00:13:13]  And while you're at it, if someone is going to hurt you, they probably are going to do it in a way that you're never going to see coming.
[00:13:18]  So don't worry about that either.
[00:13:20]  Probably.
[00:13:21]  Sure.
[00:13:22]  I suppose maybe wear a paper plate on the back of your head with a set of eyes, just in case, right?
[00:13:27]  Can't hurt.
[00:13:28]  Can't hurt.
[00:13:30]  You know, like as a sort of paranoid, jittery person, it was a nice little like, hey, whatever is going to attack you probably isn't, you're never going to see it.
[00:13:40]  And if you do see people, go ahead and be nice to them.
[00:13:44]  They're probably, they can't possibly want to hurt you.
[00:13:47]  Can I pitch you on this?
[00:13:49]  Let me take that back.
[00:13:52]  Maybe this isn't universalizable.
[00:13:55]  Let me just throw this out there for you.
[00:13:57]  And you can take it or leave it however that you desire.
[00:14:00]  But you are, and I think we both know this, a very hursuit man.
[00:14:04]  True.
[00:14:06]  I believe that in a woodsy encounter, you perhaps feel more in your element.
[00:14:12]  If I was an observer walking in, I don't look like I'm supposed to be in the woods, but you've got some lumberjack vibes, do you?
[00:14:19]  Yeah, there's a privilege, certainly, to my being a thick man of hair.
[00:14:29]  A hairy thick man.
[00:14:32]  Certainly I'm not someone's first target.
[00:14:37]  Maybe people in the woods aren't safe.
[00:14:38]  Look, my point is I was trying to be reassuring.
[00:14:43]  It turns out this segment's a bust because the profound thing, I have totally backtracked on it immediately just by saying it.
[00:14:50]  Well, I feel like this is a very, I only have to be faster than you kind of situation, right?
[00:14:57]  Like, if you're walking around in the woods, you only have to be less of a target than somebody who's very easily a target, you know?
[00:15:05]  So you should bring someone along.

=== A Bust on Tigers (12:41) ===

[00:15:08]  Absolutely.
[00:15:08]  A forest buddy who's like a dud.
[00:15:12]  I would suggest a thin, unathletic person to keep with you.
[00:15:18]  All right.
[00:15:19]  All right.
[00:15:20]  So I took off from Aroma Hills, and I had a good time.
[00:15:26]  It was nice, and a lot of what I was looking for, no complaints.
[00:15:32]  But then I took off for my second destination, and I'm about to send you a picture, Jordan, that you can...
[00:15:42]  I'd like you to describe to the listeners here.
[00:15:46]  I'll do my best.
[00:15:48]  Oh, man.
[00:15:50]  You know, I find it very interesting that we live in a time where you can text me something and I get it instantly.
[00:15:56]  That's kind of fucking weird, right?
[00:15:58]  It's been like that for a while.
[00:16:00]  I know.
[00:16:00]  What is that?
[00:16:01]  It is Dan giving a thumbs up to a, I mean, it looks like it's striped like a tiger, but it's got to be a mountain lion, right?
[00:16:10]  Oh, no.
[00:16:10]  Who has a tiger?
[00:16:12]  Oh, this is an illegal tiger.
[00:16:14]  Are you hanging out with an illegal tiger?
[00:16:15]  Is that what's happening?
[00:16:17]  Well, we should take the illegal out of the explosion.
[00:16:20]  That is a tiger.
[00:16:21]  All right.
[00:16:22]  There is a tiger in a cage.
[00:16:25]  I watched Tiger King, so I'm guessing that it's super illegal.
[00:16:29]  Well, actually, these people, it's an exotic cat rescue in outside Center Point, Indiana.
[00:16:41]  Okay.
[00:16:42]  And I decided that was the second stop of my trip because I wanted to check it out.
[00:16:49]  I wanted to see.
[00:16:50]  I love, obviously, I love cats.
[00:16:52]  And I thought it would be really interesting to see these tigers.
[00:16:58]  And, oh, it was.
[00:17:00]  Oh, man.
[00:17:00]  Oh, man.
[00:17:01]  Nice.
[00:17:03]  They have a guided tour that they take you on of the facility because the facility itself is an active working rescue where they take in cats from people who try to illegally own them as pets.
[00:17:18]  I think they actually even did say that they had taken some from someone else.
[00:17:22]  They had a couple tiger kings.
[00:17:24]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:24]  They had a couple tiger kings.
[00:17:26]  Also, animals who are used in movies and then don't have a home.
[00:17:32]  No one can take care of them.
[00:17:34]  So they have, I think he said something to the effect of like 200-something animals that are cared for on this refuge.
[00:17:43]  And man, what a fucking nuts thing.
[00:17:49]  Yeah.
[00:17:50]  These cats are huge and you're right next to them.
[00:17:53]  Like I was feet away from tigers, lions.
[00:18:00]  Yeah.
[00:18:01]  Five minutes into being there, we're walking down a trail and these two lions start growling at each other.
[00:18:09]  And I can't tell you like how it felt in my chest.
[00:18:14]  Like you could feel the vibration of these.
[00:18:21]  You felt the evolutionary history of 200,000 years of most of the time being terrified of giant cats.
[00:18:29]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:30]  And I don't know if I'm proud that this is exactly my first thought, but my first thought was like, eh, he could eat me.
[00:18:38]  That's fine.
[00:18:39]  If this is what's going to kill me, that's fine.
[00:18:42]  I was at peace with the idea of...
[00:18:45]  Then I started to think about, like, what goes into a lion killing me, which would be, like, a lot of tearing.
[00:18:50]  It would be a...
[00:18:51]  It was a real bummer for a while.
[00:18:53]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:53]  That part I wasn't cool with.
[00:18:55]  But just as a concept, a lion eating me, like, eh, I mean, I think, I think the, don't, don't we go into shock, you know, like we see the body doing all the screaming and all that stuff, but because of the way our brains work, they just shut off, so you'd probably just die without even knowing.
[00:19:12]  Well, I mean, after you die, you would have no idea that it really hurt.
[00:19:16]  I have no idea, and I think a lot of those, I always feel like those stories are just meant to reassure us.
[00:19:21]  You know, like the shit.
[00:19:24]  We're just being reassured.
[00:19:25]  Oh, the lions won't eat you.
[00:19:27]  Don't shit.
[00:19:29]  You won't feel it.
[00:19:30]  You'll be fine.
[00:19:31]  Anybody who could refute that is probably dead.
[00:19:36]  It is a fairly easy to solve problem, isn't it?
[00:19:38]  Yeah.
[00:19:39]  Yeah.
[00:19:40]  So it was wonderful.
[00:19:43]  It was a really, really great time.
[00:19:49]  Yeah.
[00:19:50]  They have foxes and skunks.
[00:19:53]  The skunks didn't come out of hiding, which is probably good because I could have freaked them out.
[00:19:57]  Yeah.
[00:19:59]  But yeah, I can't.
[00:20:02]  You know, you see animals in the zoo and they're bummed out.
[00:20:08]  They seem incredibly miserable.
[00:20:11]  Yeah.
[00:20:12]  And these animals, obviously, it would be better if they were in nature.
[00:20:16]  Maybe.
[00:20:17]  Although natural habitats are eroding and, you know, under attack.
[00:20:21]  So maybe it wouldn't.
[00:20:23]  But leaving that aside, a lot of them are raised in places that make them very difficult to reintegrate into the wild.
[00:20:31]  And to the extent that they can be, they seem pretty happy.
[00:20:35]  And like the tour guide, when he was walking around, he went up to the tiger cages and was petting them through the gate, like the fence.
[00:20:46]  And like they were rubbing up against the fence affectionately.
[00:20:49]  Yeah.
[00:20:49]  It just reminded me of Celine.
[00:20:51]  Like there were so many behaviors that were just like, okay, this is a 300-pound murder machine, but it also has the same tendencies as my tabby.
[00:21:03]  Yeah, I mean, there's like, okay, there's no consciousness that says they know how large or small they are.
[00:21:11]  They're just cats.
[00:21:13]  You know?
[00:21:13]  Like, that's why Celine, if Celine was large, would just jump on you in the same way.
[00:21:19]  You would just be crushed.
[00:21:21]  Yeah.
[00:21:22]  Yeah, they're all just cats in the same size, right?
[00:21:25]  They're in a different size.
[00:21:27]  And that's what the guy was saying, too.
[00:21:28]  It's like, they're really sweet, but it would probably kill you just by accident.
[00:21:35]  Right.
[00:21:35]  It would be playing with you.
[00:21:36]  Yeah.
[00:21:37]  It'd just break its toy.
[00:21:39]  Yeah.
[00:21:40]  And that kind of was a bummer.
[00:21:44]  Well, you know, here's what I'm thinking, right?
[00:21:46]  It's a bummer that they're being mistreated right now.
[00:21:49]  But what's important is that some of them make it through because they'll have their time again.
[00:21:54]  Humans aren't going to be on top for the rest of time.
[00:21:58]  So you got to figure eventually there'll be something that messes us up and then the cats, boom, right back on top.
[00:22:06]  Hold on now.
[00:22:09]  I am not certain that we could ever say there was a time when cats were on top.
[00:22:17]  I guess the best, if I looked at the history, the best they've ever had was probably Egypt.
[00:22:23]  And humans were still on top there.
[00:22:25]  They just worshipped cats.
[00:22:26]  Sure.
[00:22:27]  I mean, I don't know.
[00:22:28]  Maybe they're on top right now.
[00:22:30]  They seem to be doing pretty well for themselves.
[00:22:32]  The smaller ones, at least.
[00:22:34]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:22:35]  They'll grow eventually.
[00:22:37]  Yeah, they've insinuated themselves into our lives to the point where we no longer think them a threat.
[00:22:41]  And that's a strategy.
[00:22:43]  Yeah.
[00:22:43]  Sure.
[00:22:44]  Maybe eventually they're like goldfish.
[00:22:46]  As we diminish, they will expand.
[00:22:49]  And then house cats will become house people.
[00:22:52]  We'll be small little people for their giant.
[00:22:55]  I don't know if I'm going to stick by that one.
[00:22:57]  I don't know if that one's going to work out.
[00:23:00]  I'm trying to carefully.
[00:23:02]  I don't think I'm going to let...
[00:23:03]  I'll hang with that one.
[00:23:06]  So yeah, I think, you know, it's always really difficult to go to a place and know exactly, like, is this the coolest thing?
[00:23:16]  But I definitely got the sense that I was glad that they were doing the work that they're doing and taking care of those animals.
[00:23:25]  And like, it seemed, it seemed like a pretty positive thing all around.
[00:23:29]  And everyone was really nice.
[00:23:33]  And yeah, just a hoot.
[00:23:35]  Just a hoot.
[00:23:37]  Just a hoot.
[00:23:38]  Well, that's fantastic.
[00:23:39]  No album.
[00:23:40]  Hey, well, I mean, maybe there were at one point in time, but then, you know, I imagine large cats don't truck with that.
[00:23:47]  No.
[00:23:48]  And they can hang up in trees high enough to handle the business.
[00:23:51]  You know, we have propaganda films that tell us, like, Tigger can hang out with Owl.
[00:23:58]  Right.
[00:23:59]  And that's not true.
[00:24:00]  Well, I believe I watched I watched The Staircase, and I believe that there was an owl murder in that, or potentially.
[00:24:07]  But not with a cat.
[00:24:08]  That was just a human.
[00:24:09]  That's true.
[00:24:10]  That's true.
[00:24:11]  Just a human.
[00:24:13]  So this guy who's given me the tour, I had a moment that fucking blew my mind.
[00:24:21]  So we're like three-quarters of the way through the tour or so.
[00:24:25]  And he was an awesome older dude, Jim Bakerian in some ways, physically, but not like as a character or a person.
[00:24:37]  But he's talking to me about telling me the stories of these cats.
[00:24:43]  And it's just a blast.
[00:24:46]  He's been in the cat game or taking care of cats since the 60s.
[00:24:51]  And we get to where our path is going one way.
[00:24:58]  And then the people feeding the cats are going the other way.
[00:25:02]  So we're going to intersect.
[00:25:04]  We happen to intersect just after they've fed a leopard, an old leopard.
[00:25:10]  And when I say old, I mean, it's still, it's like a big-ass leopard that looks scary as shit.
[00:25:15]  Sure.
[00:25:17]  One of the people who's in the feeding group is like, she needs to take her meds.
[00:25:23]  And so he, my tour guide, gets a chunk of meat that has the meds, goes in the cage, ends up trying to give the meat to the leopard who has retreated inside his little nook.
[00:25:39]  So now he's gone into the nook and is basically inside a clubhouse, a little tiny clubhouse with the leopard, giving it the meat with the medicine on it.
[00:25:53]  I think he knows what he's doing.
[00:25:55]  He's responsible.
[00:25:56]  He's not taking any real dangers.
[00:25:59]  I'm not worried.
[00:26:00]  Then his phone rings.
[00:26:02]  And I'm thinking, my heart would stop if I'm this guy, I'm in an enclosed space with a leopard and my phone rings.
[00:26:12]  He's totally chill about it.
[00:26:14]  Yeah.
[00:26:14]  Takes the call.
[00:26:18]  No, I mean, you know, it's not like going to the gorilla cage in the zoo or anything like that.
[00:26:23]  He's just known this cat for probably its whole life.
[00:26:26]  This cat and him are probably buds.
[00:26:29]  Yeah.
[00:26:30]  And I get that the cat's old too.
[00:26:32]  So maybe that factors into it.
[00:26:35]  But like, it just is still, you have to be scared of the instincts that it might have.
[00:26:42]  I trusted that he knew what he was doing.
[00:26:46]  But at the same time, there was a split second of me thinking like, wrong day, wrong day for me to visit.
[00:26:53]  No, no, no, no.
[00:26:54]  Yeah.
[00:26:55]  You know, I'll say this.
[00:26:56]  Anybody who's done something for 60 years, anytime I've interacted somebody with that amount of experience, I've seen them do things that I would describe as extremely dangerous with a lot of laissez-faire kind of vibes about them.
[00:27:11]  So, you know, he's been doing it for a long time.
[00:27:14]  If he were scared or if there was going to be a problem, he probably would already be dead by now, right?
[00:27:21]  Yeah, but that day has to come.
[00:27:24]  You know, like you say that, like, he would be dead already at some point that day happened.
[00:27:29]  You know, like, I agree with you almost 100% that like people who have been doing things for a long time, you see them do reckless shit and they get away with it.
[00:27:39]  But they also also, like, yeah, luck runs out.
[00:27:43]  I was so scared that I was there at the moment that luck ran out and a leopard was going to attack.

=== Part of Nature (02:38) ===

[00:27:49]  And the fact that it didn't waste.
[00:27:52]  Do you become a cat rescue shelter because you want to die sleeping in your bed?
[00:27:58]  No, my friend.
[00:28:00]  At the end of your days, you want to feed those cats with what's left of you.
[00:28:05]  He's lived a long life.
[00:28:06]  He's ready to make the future happen for the next generation of cats and cat people.
[00:28:13]  Beat me to the lions, he says, when he's 85.
[00:28:18]  Hey, you got to go.
[00:28:20]  You're going to go sooner or later.
[00:28:22]  There's nothing you can do about that.
[00:28:24]  There's something kind of beautiful about it.
[00:28:26]  Take me up and feed me to the cats.
[00:28:30]  He did finish the tour, so I left him quite alive still.
[00:28:33]  Still alive?
[00:28:34]  That's good news.
[00:28:35]  That's good news.
[00:28:36]  Yeah, but just a great, it was a great, you know, I think that Aroma Hills obviously was blocked off that forest preserve, but the river was still great.
[00:28:49]  But as an idea of this being one of the stops, I'm so glad I went to that.
[00:28:56]  I'm so glad that's there.
[00:28:58]  I take it you're enjoying this a great deal more than any sort of tourism kind of thing.
[00:29:03]  Like, you know, obviously my wife and I, we've gone to other countries and we've done like ziplining and shit like that, where there's a tour group, where there's lines of people.
[00:29:13]  I'm assuming that this is much more your style.
[00:29:16]  Yeah, definitely.
[00:29:18]  Like, I'm, I'm, uh, one of the things I'm finding I really enjoy is like driving on country roads.
[00:29:25]  Like, just that is because that shit is there all the time.
[00:29:30]  And we, it's just out of sight, out of mind.
[00:29:34]  But it's so calm and peaceful and like just, you know, we are a part of nature, right?
[00:29:43]  All right.
[00:29:43]  Now, that is a profound thought that may be on further reflection.
[00:29:49]  Let's get the jingle.
[00:29:51]  No, but we're a part of nature, and a certain amount of agriculture is a product of our nature developing.
[00:30:00]  And so it still feels like part of it.
[00:30:04]  It's not as wild and untouched as the woods or whatever, but it still feels like outside of maybe like Big Agra or something.
[00:30:13]  Obviously, a giant factory farm or something isn't going to scratch the same little place.
[00:30:18]  Sure.
[00:30:19]  But, you know, some of these country roads, you see crops and stuff.
[00:30:24]  And it's very calming in a strange way.

=== Who Is at Fault (04:50) ===

[00:30:28]  Yeah.
[00:30:29]  I can see that.
[00:30:30]  How do you feel about being gone?
[00:30:32]  You've been gone for a few days.
[00:30:34]  Are you thinking, ah, maybe I'm missing home or are you just ready to see the open road in front of you?
[00:30:41]  Well, it's a mixed bag a little bit.
[00:30:45]  I think I miss you.
[00:30:48]  I miss Celine.
[00:30:52]  We're coming up on.
[00:30:53]  Oh, wait, it's Wednesday today.
[00:30:56]  I'm going to miss movie time with Angela Lampsbury.
[00:30:59]  That's true.
[00:31:00]  That's true.
[00:31:01]  And so people, I miss people some, and I count Celine as a person, strangely, but like, I don't, I don't miss Chicago at all.
[00:31:15]  I believe you.
[00:31:16]  And don't get me wrong.
[00:31:17]  There's nothing wrong with the city.
[00:31:18]  I don't hate it or anything.
[00:31:19]  But I'm not eager to get back to a city environment.
[00:31:27]  Yeah.
[00:31:27]  I don't know what that's going to manifest into, but yeah.
[00:31:33]  Just to fill in people who haven't, Jordan and I have talked about this privately, but my plan was there's three stops that I'm going to make and then re-evaluate along the way whether or not I was going to keep going and just keep exploring and see what I find.
[00:31:51]  And at this point, I do feel like I'm going to go further than three.
[00:31:56]  All right.
[00:31:57]  I think, yeah, I think I'm definitely I found a fourth stop that I think would be fun.
[00:32:03]  So there's at least that.
[00:32:05]  So we're recording in the morning on Wednesday, and I'm about to take off on leg three.
[00:32:12]  And I believe there will be a leg four at this point.
[00:32:16]  Wow.
[00:32:17]  That's good to hear.
[00:32:18]  I'm excited by that.
[00:32:19]  There's, you know, there's always the concern that maybe one wants something in idea and then in practice, very much not the case, which can be disappointing.
[00:32:30]  Sure.
[00:32:31]  Or there can just be a little bit more fear than you were expecting and that can draw you back.
[00:32:37]  And that's disappointing.
[00:32:38]  But that you're ready to spread those wings and move on to another stop.
[00:32:41]  That's exciting.
[00:32:43]  It is.
[00:32:43]  It is.
[00:32:44]  And I'm.
[00:32:46]  Yeah.
[00:32:47]  Yeah.
[00:32:47]  I'm cognizant of the fact that I need to be aware that I have to get back.
[00:32:54]  So like, you know, as much as I'm like, hey, a fourth leg would be great.
[00:32:58]  I'm also like, well, okay, then that also means you're committing to it taking longer to get back.
[00:33:04]  Right.
[00:33:04]  But that's okay.
[00:33:05]  I think that's okay.
[00:33:07]  My headspace is there for that.
[00:33:10]  And yeah, I'm not sure.
[00:33:12]  I'm not sure.
[00:33:13]  I like that I'm not sure.
[00:33:15]  Yeah.
[00:33:16]  I wonder if anyone ever would have swum across the channel if they had to swim to get back.
[00:33:23]  You know what I mean?
[00:33:24]  Like, if you got to do it once, that's an achievement.
[00:33:26]  But knowing you got to swim the whole thing on the way back, nah, that's too much.
[00:33:32]  Are you talking like at the beginning of the beach?
[00:33:35]  Yeah.
[00:33:36]  When Richard, Etienne, and Francoise have to swim to the beach?
[00:33:40]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:33:40]  That kind of thing.
[00:33:41]  You're going to tire yourself out.
[00:33:43]  So you got to make sure that you plan for the appropriate travel time.
[00:33:48]  It's kind of appropriate because I'm on a travel thing here.
[00:33:53]  But I did read The Beach recently, and then I watched the movie the other night.
[00:33:57]  And I'm mad at the movie.
[00:34:00]  We don't have to get into it, but I'm mad at the movie.
[00:34:04]  Just driving through the woods, angry at the beach.
[00:34:09]  Danny Boyle.
[00:34:12]  Is this your fault?
[00:34:12]  Whose fault is this?
[00:34:13]  Whose fault is this?
[00:34:15]  I like his work.
[00:34:16]  I like 28 Days Later so much.
[00:34:19]  And that was him and Garland, and Garland wrote the beat.
[00:34:21]  What the hell?
[00:34:22]  What happened?
[00:34:23]  All right.
[00:34:24]  You've had two experiences now.
[00:34:26]  Without telling us what your next experience is planned to be.
[00:34:30]  How about tell me what your hope for the next experience is?
[00:34:34]  You've had the sniff of a post-tornado rebuilding project.
[00:34:41]  You've seen giant cats.
[00:34:42]  You've met people who care for them in the woods, just neglecting all forms of society to care for animals that cannot care for themselves.
[00:34:52]  All right, come on.
[00:34:52]  I'm exaggerating it.
[00:34:54]  This is a show, okay?
[00:34:55]  For God's sake.
[00:34:57]  Tell me.
[00:34:58]  So tell me what experience you want on the next leg.
[00:35:01]  Well, the next leg without giving away anything, because the element of surprise is important for you.
[00:35:07]  Of course.
[00:35:09]  I think it's just stupid.
[00:35:15]  I'm looking, I'm looking.
[00:35:16]  So you're headed to an Applebee's.

=== Applebee's Next Leg (08:53) ===

[00:35:18]  Uh.
[00:35:18]  I might as well.
[00:35:19]  Honestly.
[00:35:20]  I mean, like, it's not that, but I think it'll be stupid.
[00:35:26]  And then that's what I'm looking forward to.
[00:35:30]  But also, actually, I had a third experience that we didn't get to.
[00:35:33]  All right.
[00:35:35]  I took that tour of the cat park in the early afternoon yesterday.
[00:35:43]  And then I had time, you know, that I could have done stuff.
[00:35:48]  I was thinking about going to another forest preserve or something.
[00:35:54]  But then I realized that I'm in Terre Haute, right?
[00:35:58]  Sure.
[00:35:59]  You know what's in Terre Haute?
[00:36:01]  Absolutely not.
[00:36:02]  There's a casino.
[00:36:04]  Oh, okay.
[00:36:06]  All right.
[00:36:06]  You gambled.
[00:36:08]  Yeah.
[00:36:09]  All right.
[00:36:10]  I decided that the way that I would put it is this trip is it's not all just like me trying to descend into like a primitive nature form of myself.
[00:36:22]  Sure.
[00:36:22]  It's expressing and following things that I really like and have liked and things that like connect with my heart in some way.
[00:36:32]  And, you know, the woods is that.
[00:36:34]  Big ass cats is that.
[00:36:36]  Trying to smell a city is that because it's fucking dumb.
[00:36:39]  Right.
[00:36:40]  And like poker is something that I fucking loved when I was younger.
[00:36:46]  Great.
[00:36:46]  In college days, me and Nikki Gifts would go out to the bars.
[00:36:50]  They had bar poker during the poker boom.
[00:36:53]  And we would play like two, three nights a week sometimes.
[00:36:57]  We would be out at the bars.
[00:36:59]  We'd run into the same people who we had strong opinions of, even though they were strangers.
[00:37:05]  So very important Chris Moneymaker was to the poker community in that time period.
[00:37:10]  This is a little after Moneymaker, but he kicked it off.
[00:37:13]  He kicked it off.
[00:37:14]  Yep.
[00:37:15]  This is around the time of like the magician, Antonio Esfondiari and poker, Daniel Megranu.
[00:37:22]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:37:24]  Phil Helmuth, the bad boy of, I don't know what he does.
[00:37:28]  Him and Mike Mattasow would yell at each other all the time.
[00:37:31]  The bad boys.
[00:37:32]  I would give anything to not remember these names.
[00:37:35]  There are so many important things that are gone inside my brain.
[00:37:38]  Yet somehow fucking Phil Helmuth lives up there.
[00:37:41]  Yeah, Jennifer Tilly would show up and play.
[00:37:46]  Really great and the nice guy.
[00:37:48]  Huck Seed.
[00:37:49]  That was another guy.
[00:37:50]  Phil Ivey.
[00:37:51]  Man, I remember all of these fucking poker players.
[00:37:53]  Yep.
[00:37:54]  I don't know why.
[00:37:55]  I don't know why.
[00:37:56]  There was a time.
[00:37:58]  So I went to the Terre Haute Casino and they have a poker room and just playing some poker.
[00:38:06]  And I didn't, I lost.
[00:38:10]  I didn't lose a lot.
[00:38:11]  I lost even half of the amount that I had set aside as like, this is the fun money for like a night at the casino.
[00:38:19]  Right.
[00:38:19]  So I left.
[00:38:20]  I left before I had even lost the nut or whatever.
[00:38:25]  Because I just, I bought in for half of what I would accept losing and sat at the table.
[00:38:32]  And like, people were just really nice.
[00:38:35]  Like, some of them were friends and clearly had like a poker scene.
[00:38:40]  Yeah.
[00:38:40]  They were very welcoming.
[00:38:41]  And it wasn't a like sharky kind of situation where people were trying to like gun for each other.
[00:38:50]  It felt like obviously you want to win pops and you want to win the money.
[00:38:55]  That's poker.
[00:38:55]  Yeah, it also felt kind of like a house game.
[00:38:59]  Yeah.
[00:38:59]  Where people are, you do want to just see some cards sometimes.
[00:39:03]  Sure.
[00:39:03]  Sure, absolutely.
[00:39:04]  Let's play this bad hand just to see if the luck hits.
[00:39:08]  Why not?
[00:39:08]  Yeah.
[00:39:09]  Yeah.
[00:39:10]  As much as like, you know, I don't know who any of these people are.
[00:39:13]  They're in a casino in Terre Haute, Indiana on a Tuesday night.
[00:39:20]  So who knows?
[00:39:21]  But it just seemed like they all were nice.
[00:39:27]  And that was nice.
[00:39:30]  I didn't sit down and be like, I fucking hate this guy.
[00:39:33]  There wasn't one person at the table who I'm like, God, I wish they weren't there.
[00:39:37]  It was just all pleasant, like, as a facsimile of a social thing.
[00:39:43]  Like, I know it's not real.
[00:39:44]  None of us will probably ever see each other again.
[00:39:46]  Right.
[00:39:47]  Except them.
[00:39:48]  They will see each other.
[00:39:49]  They'll be there on Tuesday for a long time to come.
[00:39:53]  Yeah.
[00:39:53]  But for me, they welcomed me in graciously and we joked around.
[00:39:59]  And it was a lot of fun.
[00:40:03]  It was scratch and itch.
[00:40:07]  And I lost my last hand and I was totally fine with it and happy.
[00:40:14]  And, you know, hey, fun playing with you guys.
[00:40:17]  Thanks for letting me and took off.
[00:40:19]  And, you know, like, I just like it.
[00:40:22]  You know, it points something out to me.
[00:40:24]  What I'm hearing, what I'm hearing from you is that based on this trip, it's something that we never remember.
[00:40:31]  It's something that we keep away from ourselves: it takes a lot of work to get people on reality TV who will behave like assholes.
[00:40:40]  It takes an algorithm.
[00:40:41]  It takes an entire corporation funneling assholes on social media to get those assholes there.
[00:40:48]  Most people, the massive majority of people, are one exactly like you, and you're really nice, so so are they.
[00:40:57]  And I think that the other thing, too, about that is that I think that every, not everybody, but most people want to have fun.
[00:41:07]  Yeah.
[00:41:08]  We're all going to die.
[00:41:09]  Have fun.
[00:41:10]  And I think that a lot of people are not like they feel like it's not safe to have fun with other people and they keep a guard up.
[00:41:18]  And I think that that gets in the way of people being able to have fun.
[00:41:23]  Sure.
[00:41:24]  This is another profound thought that probably isn't profound, which will be the theme of this road trip.
[00:41:32]  You know, if you read Eat, Pray, Love now, you're like, yeah, yeah, I got it.
[00:41:36]  Yeah, traveling.
[00:41:37]  It's fun.
[00:41:39]  It is, but it's not just the traveling of it.
[00:41:42]  But it is, it is something about it.
[00:41:44]  Sure.
[00:41:46]  So, yeah, I took off and I, you know, went home.
[00:41:53]  Yep.
[00:41:53]  Went back to the back to the hotel.
[00:41:56]  Conked.
[00:41:57]  I don't think I've ever been to a casino and not drank or not stayed way too long.
[00:42:06]  And there was something very nice about being able to walk out at like 10:30 and be like, I had a very pleasant time.
[00:42:15]  I lost a little bit of money, but I had a very pleasant time with some strangers.
[00:42:20]  And I could be fine with that.
[00:42:25]  I remember being young looking at older people doing stuff like that, thinking, ah, those idiots, they don't even know how to have fun anymore.
[00:42:34]  Now it is a delight.
[00:42:36]  It is the most fun thing in the world to be home safe without any kind of problems.
[00:42:43]  Yeah.
[00:42:44]  Or to just have, you know, you don't need an extreme experience.
[00:42:47]  Just have an experience.
[00:42:49]  Have a pleasant time.
[00:42:51]  Yeah.
[00:42:51]  Yeah.
[00:42:52]  So that's kind of, you know, looping back to your question, that's kind of what I'm hoping.
[00:42:56]  Whatever this third leg, I hope it's stupid, but I also, you know, I hope it's pleasant.
[00:43:02]  I hope it's.
[00:43:05]  I think we're all wishing that it continues to be pleasant for you.
[00:43:09]  I think we're all excited that you are doing this.
[00:43:12]  I think this is kind of a big step for you.
[00:43:15]  And, you know, the future is uncertain.
[00:43:17]  So this could be something that helps propel you forward.
[00:43:20]  Sure.
[00:43:21]  And I wanted to address one thing.
[00:43:23]  I did see one comment that I thought was really a good point.
[00:43:27]  And that is, Dan chose the exact wrong time to do this with the, you know, like gas prices and stuff.
[00:43:34]  Right.
[00:43:34]  Yeah.
[00:43:35]  And I would like to say correct.
[00:43:38]  However, part of my calculation was that there's such an uncertainty with the way the world looks right now that six months from now, I think I might not be able to do this, period.
[00:43:52]  Right.
[00:43:52]  Whereas now it's a burden and it's more expensive than it would be like in normal times, but maybe I couldn't do this later.
[00:44:01]  And I would kick myself if I didn't when I had an opportunity, even if it's a pain.
[00:44:09]  Now, that's something that actually is profound.

=== Nutella Ice Cream Cones (02:47) ===

[00:44:11]  Thank you.
[00:44:12]  Yes.
[00:44:14]  I have more deep thoughts that I will ruminate on my drive to destination three.
[00:44:19]  Excellent.
[00:44:20]  But we will, yeah, we'll check in.
[00:44:23]  I'll send you some dumb pictures.
[00:44:26]  Of course.
[00:44:27]  And yeah, I'll post those pictures with a tiger too, because people deserve to see that.
[00:44:33]  Wonderful.
[00:44:34]  But Jordan, so lovely to see you.
[00:44:37]  Always pleasant.
[00:44:38]  I've been missing you.
[00:44:39]  I'm glad to see you enjoying yourself.
[00:44:41]  Oh, come on.
[00:44:42]  You're traveling.
[00:44:43]  You're God.
[00:44:44]  Come on.
[00:44:44]  We do what we do.
[00:44:45]  Sure.
[00:44:46]  Yeah.
[00:44:47]  Now people get to enjoy an episode of our show covering some time from 2006.
[00:44:54]  So enjoy that and we'll check back in with you from the road.
[00:44:59]  See if Alex is dead.
[00:45:02]  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:45:19]  Dan and Jordan, I am sweating.
[00:45:22]  Knowledgeparty.com.
[00:45:23]  It's time to pray.
[00:45:24]  I have great respect for knowledge fight.
[00:45:27]  Knowledge fight.
[00:45:28]  I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys.
[00:45:30]  Shang, we are the bad guys.
[00:45:32]  Knowledge fight.
[00:45:33]  Dan and Jordan.
[00:45:34]  Knowledge fight.
[00:45:35]  Rattler.
[00:45:37]  I need, I need money.
[00:45:41]  Rattler.
[00:45:42]  Andy and Pansy.
[00:45:44]  Andy and Pandy.
[00:45:46]  Andy and Kansas.
[00:45:47]  Andy and Kansas.
[00:45:49]  Andy.
[00:45:49]  It's time to pray.
[00:45:50]  Andy in Kansas.
[00:45:51]  You're on the airplane for all of us.
[00:45:52]  Hello, Alex.
[00:45:53]  I'm a fish pin calling my kids saying I love your room.
[00:45:56]  Knowledge fight.
[00:45:58]  Knowledgefight.com.
[00:46:01]  I love you.
[00:46:02]  Hey, everybody.
[00:46:03]  Welcome back to another Trade.
[00:46:04]  I'm Dan.
[00:46:05]  I'm Jordan.
[00:46:05]  We're a couple dudes who like to sit around, worship at the altar of Celine, and talk a little bit about Alex Jones.
[00:46:11]  Oh, indeed we are.
[00:46:12]  Dan.
[00:46:12]  Jordan.
[00:46:13]  Dan.
[00:46:13]  Jordan.
[00:46:14]  Quick question for you.
[00:46:15]  What's your bright spot today, buddy?
[00:46:16]  My bright spot today is: you know what?
[00:46:18]  It's March, so I'm going for blah, blah, blah.
[00:46:20]  Yep.
[00:46:22]  Enough with a survivor, right?
[00:46:24]  I mean, like, we've talked about survivor too much.
[00:46:26]  You've hit the beat a few times.
[00:46:28]  Yeah.
[00:46:28]  We're like five or six more before Rake Effect kicks back in.
[00:46:31]  Yeah, I don't want to get there.
[00:46:33]  Maybe I'll bring it back up down the road, but I just don't have enough thoughts about it, honestly.
[00:46:37]  Not a bad idea.
[00:46:38]  And I did have a bright spot that is worth sharing.
[00:46:40]  Okay.
[00:46:41]  And that is I got a pack of Nutella ice cream cones.
[00:46:44]  Okay.
[00:46:45]  You can get them at local grocers.
[00:46:47]  Sure.
[00:46:48]  I'm sure.
[00:46:50]  Various drugstores.
[00:46:52]  Wherever groceries are sold.
[00:46:54]  I got them and I was very worried because I've seen Nutella used in other applications.

=== Venezuela Baseball Game (05:35) ===

[00:46:58]  And sometimes it just doesn't work.
[00:47:00]  Incorrectly.
[00:47:01]  This hit so hard.
[00:47:03]  Nice.
[00:47:04]  It was really good.
[00:47:05]  The texture and the flavor of Nutella blended well with the vanilla ice cream.
[00:47:10]  Solid.
[00:47:11]  Solid eight and a half to nine out of ten.
[00:47:14]  Damn.
[00:47:15]  It's very good.
[00:47:16]  Dang.
[00:47:16]  And I want to go buy another box.
[00:47:18]  Damn.
[00:47:19]  So good stuff.
[00:47:21]  That is a bright spot.
[00:47:22]  8-2 when I opened the box because I was like, this right away.
[00:47:27]  Oh, it's another chom, chop, chomp.
[00:47:29]  That's the stuff.
[00:47:30]  You know, it's good whenever you're like, well, I think I'm going to have to do that exactly now.
[00:47:34]  I shouldn't, but I must try another to make sure it's as good as I think it is.
[00:47:38]  Absolutely.
[00:47:39]  And it stood up to scrutiny.
[00:47:41]  It's like how Douglas Adams described drinking, you know, like you send the second one down to check and see how the first one's doing.
[00:47:47]  And before they get there, you got to send a third down to go after both of them.
[00:47:50]  I could have had a third one.
[00:47:52]  I probably stopped myself, but I could have.
[00:47:56]  Anyway, what's your bright spot?
[00:47:57]  My bright spot is, well, I'll finish up with my World Baseball classic.
[00:48:02]  Crack of the back.
[00:48:04]  The old Mighty Ducks won.
[00:48:07]  So Venezuela defeated the United States in the championship game.
[00:48:11]  Ironic.
[00:48:12]  Fantastic.
[00:48:13]  It was a really great game.
[00:48:15]  It was great for baseball.
[00:48:16]  Did they free Maduro?
[00:48:18]  That's what I'm saying.
[00:48:19]  The Mighty Ducks won.
[00:48:21]  Like, it doesn't get more Mighty Ducks than that.
[00:48:23]  Like, I'm not rooting for the U.S. over Venezuela.
[00:48:27]  I'm rooting for Venezuela.
[00:48:29]  Fucking, if you're rooting for Iceland in the Mighty Ducks 2, you're insane.
[00:48:33]  It is a very funny underdog kind of story, given the world.
[00:48:39]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:48:40]  It could only have been better if it was Iran.
[00:48:42]  Like, it would have been there.
[00:48:44]  Wow.
[00:48:44]  Like, if Iran wins the World Cup in Mexico, you know, as opposed to not being allowed to play because Trump threatened them.
[00:48:52]  Was it close?
[00:48:54]  Oh, yeah, three to two.
[00:48:56]  Almost, Bryce Harper almost won it in the eighth, hit a two-run home run, two to one.
[00:49:01]  Then in the ninth, Venezuela pulled it off.
[00:49:04]  It was awesome.
[00:49:05]  It was a great game.
[00:49:06]  You kind of get the feeling that they could have won if Shohei wasn't playing for Japan.
[00:49:12]  Who?
[00:49:12]  Venezuela beat Japan.
[00:49:14]  No, if he was on Team America.
[00:49:16]  Oh, yeah.
[00:49:17]  Maybe they could have pulled off the Venezuela game.
[00:49:19]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:49:20]  Well, I mean, but what's great about it is that for baseball, baseball is a dumb game.
[00:49:25]  It doesn't make sense.
[00:49:27]  So it doesn't matter if you're the best team.
[00:49:29]  It's so fucking random that it has very little effect on what, you know, like the best team in this season of all the year, right, will probably win about 60 to 65% of their games.
[00:49:42]  That's not that much.
[00:49:44]  No.
[00:49:44]  Right?
[00:49:45]  Well, as Tori Hunter once said, it's a very hard game.
[00:49:49]  It's a very hard game.
[00:49:50]  You got to hit the ball and then get it past like nine dudes.
[00:49:52]  There's so many guys.
[00:49:53]  Yeah.
[00:49:54]  It's a dumb game.
[00:49:55]  Yeah, but it is, but it is our dumb game.
[00:49:58]  Right.
[00:49:58]  And so what's great about it, right, is even though you have the four or five best hitters on the planet on one team, right?
[00:50:04]  Even the best hitters on the planet still only hit the ball about once every three times.
[00:50:09]  So statistically, it is just as likely for them to all go 0 for 3 as it is for them to go 2 for 3 or 3 for, you know what I'm saying?
[00:50:18]  It's one of the, like, it makes me the argument that you're making is it makes me feel like this is one of the only places where a series of games really makes sense.
[00:50:28]  Absolutely necessary.
[00:50:29]  Yeah.
[00:50:30]  Absolutely necessary.
[00:50:31]  Basketball and football, like football doesn't, they just have one game.
[00:50:34]  Yeah.
[00:50:34]  And that's, that feels right.
[00:50:36]  Yeah.
[00:50:36]  Basketball probably doesn't need a series either.
[00:50:38]  Probably not.
[00:50:39]  But yeah, the stats with baseball.
[00:50:42]  You just have no idea who's going to win on any given day.
[00:50:46]  Like, and that's why the WBC is so great because everybody only gets one game.
[00:50:50]  It's almost completely random.
[00:50:53]  The last one in 2023, like the guy played again this year.
[00:50:57]  There's a guy who plays for the Czech team, right?
[00:51:02]  And he's like, I don't know, just a part-time guy.
[00:51:05]  Like, he's borderline a plumber, right?
[00:51:08]  He's an electrician.
[00:51:09]  I think that's his actual job.
[00:51:11]  But borders on a plumber.
[00:51:12]  Borders on a plumber.
[00:51:13]  I was trying to remember.
[00:51:16]  He's so close to plumber.
[00:51:17]  It's basically the same thing.
[00:51:20]  But yeah, he throws 80, and in 2023, he struck out Shohei.
[00:51:24]  Wow.
[00:51:25]  Right?
[00:51:25]  Like, he's going to take that with him for the rest of his life.
[00:51:28]  He struck out the best baseball player on the planet, right?
[00:51:32]  But that's also because baseball is so fucking random.
[00:51:35]  You might just strike out the best player on the planet on accident.
[00:51:38]  Yeah.
[00:51:39]  It's going to happen.
[00:51:40]  It's so weird.
[00:51:41]  Yeah.
[00:51:41]  That's great.
[00:51:42]  I'm glad he had a good time, and I'm glad the Cinderella story played out.
[00:51:47]  Good news, Venezuela.
[00:51:49]  Maduro, you're coming.
[00:51:50]  You're coming home.
[00:51:54]  Come on.
[00:51:54]  Like, I want to live in a crazy world.
[00:51:57]  Yeah.
[00:51:57]  So, like, we're already mostly there.
[00:51:59]  Yeah.
[00:52:00]  Let's just let Trump say, all right, you won.
[00:52:02]  You get him back.
[00:52:03]  Yeah.
[00:52:04]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:52:05]  Absolutely.
[00:52:05]  If we, we could definitely, like, people used to solve wars with the one-on-one.
[00:52:10]  We could just switch to baseball in a heartbeat.
[00:52:13]  I think that if Trump released Maduro because Venezuela beat us in the World Baseball Classic, it would fuck with the world's headspace in a way that would be more damaging than if he executed Maduro.
[00:52:26]  I think you're right.
[00:52:26]  I think that would escalate the like anything is possible quotient to infinite.
[00:52:32]  Yeah.
[00:52:32]  You just don't know what could happen.

=== Welcome New Wonks (02:11) ===

[00:52:34]  It would be like my strategy that I came up with if I was a football coach to I would sometimes punt on second down.
[00:52:40]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:52:41]  Just to confuse people.
[00:52:42]  You'll never know.
[00:52:43]  No.
[00:52:43]  You'll never know.
[00:52:44]  You beat us at baseball.
[00:52:45]  Maybe I'll give you your dictator back.
[00:52:46]  You might.
[00:52:47]  I might.
[00:52:48]  I might take the Cape Horn.
[00:52:50]  I might just take it.
[00:52:50]  Now I have it because you guys beat us at baseball.
[00:52:53]  I don't know why.
[00:52:54]  I might give you New England.
[00:52:55]  Yeah.
[00:52:56]  I don't want it.
[00:52:57]  Yeah.
[00:52:57]  It's yours, Spanish.
[00:52:59]  Boston people don't like me.
[00:53:02]  So, Jordan, today we have an episode to go over.
[00:53:05]  All right.
[00:53:05]  We're going to be in the past.
[00:53:06]  Okay.
[00:53:07]  We're going to be talking about some of Alex's past doings.
[00:53:10]  Okay.
[00:53:10]  We're going to be talking about March 17th to 20th, 2006, Friday to Monday.
[00:53:17]  And before we get to that, let's take a little moment to say hello to some new wonks.
[00:53:20]  Ooh, that's a great idea.
[00:53:21]  So first, Leah, Obie, Baby Quinn, and Dixie the Cat.
[00:53:25]  Thank you so much, Jerry Policy Walk.
[00:53:26]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:53:27]  Thank you very much.
[00:53:28]  Thank you.
[00:53:29]  Next, Daniel Agen is writing books about queers, potheads, villains, and a queer political and queer pothead villains.
[00:53:37]  Thank you so much, Jeron Howe Poliwonk.
[00:53:38]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:53:39]  Thank you very much.
[00:53:40]  Thank you.
[00:53:41]  And to my angelic Chris, you are the best non-binary partner a lay blooming trans girl could ask for.
[00:53:46]  And I'm sorry I made you think we were heteronormative for the last 20 years.
[00:53:50]  Our time together has been the brightest spot anyone could ask for.
[00:53:53]  And I look forward to our evolving future together forever and ever.
[00:53:56]  And always your favorite Pokemon, Eevee.
[00:53:58]  Thank you so much, Jerry Policy Walk.
[00:54:00]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:54:01]  Thank you very much.
[00:54:02]  Thank you.
[00:54:02]  And we get a technical credit in the mix, Jordan.
[00:54:04]  So thank you so much to my last name is Jones, and I tell people I'm related to Alex Jones.
[00:54:08]  Mark, you know it's true.
[00:54:10]  Thank you so much.
[00:54:10]  You're an Iowa technocrat.
[00:54:12]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:54:13]  Four stars.
[00:54:14]  Go home to your mother.
[00:54:16]  Someone, sodomite, sent me a bucket of poop.
[00:54:18]  Daddy Sharp.
[00:54:19]  Bomb, Jar Jar Binks has a Caribbean black accent.
[00:54:25]  He's a loser, little, little kitty baby.
[00:54:28]  I don't want to hate black people.
[00:54:30]  I renounce Jesus Christ.
[00:54:31]  Thank you so much.
[00:54:32]  Yeah, thank you very much.
[00:54:33]  So on our last episode, we listened to 316, Stone Cold Austin Day in the Past.
[00:54:38]  Sure.
[00:54:38]  Stone Cold Steve Austin Day in the past.
[00:54:40]  Wow.
[00:54:40]  Stone Cold Steve occupied Austin, Texas Day.

=== Fool's Gold Economy (08:38) ===

[00:54:45]  All right.
[00:54:46]  Whatever.
[00:54:46]  Anyway, it was a lot of fun.
[00:54:48]  Yes.
[00:54:48]  And so here we are on the 17th.
[00:54:51]  And Alex starts the show, and I'm like, you should quit.
[00:54:55]  Welcome, my friends.
[00:54:56]  This is the 17th day of March 2006 on this live Friday edition.
[00:55:04]  And we're going to have open phones today.
[00:55:06]  Why open phones?
[00:55:07]  With a full three hours.
[00:55:09]  Any news issue, any item, any story.
[00:55:12]  Any solutions you wish to discuss?
[00:55:14]  Any questions?
[00:55:15]  Any comments you disagree with me?
[00:55:17]  Whatever.
[00:55:18]  Whatever.
[00:55:20]  This never seems angry.
[00:55:24]  This is what?
[00:55:26]  Andy, this is Andy Daly show, isn't it?
[00:55:29]  Today we're going to be talking about going outside or not going outside.
[00:55:33]  Do you want to talk about going inside?
[00:55:35]  What do you want to talk about?
[00:55:36]  We're here to talk about it.
[00:55:37]  Yeah, but it's not as electric.
[00:55:40]  No, no, no.
[00:55:40]  It doesn't feel as excited.
[00:55:42]  No, it's reluctant.
[00:55:44]  Yeah, Andy's character is excited about whether or not you want to go inside or outside.
[00:55:48]  Yes, he is.
[00:55:48]  Alex is like, take your calls, your solutions.
[00:55:50]  Whatever.
[00:55:51]  I wish we had something else to do.
[00:55:53]  Yeah, it feels dead on Friday.
[00:55:55]  Yep.
[00:55:56]  So he spent some of his time before getting to calls ranting about how the economy and the stock market and all that shit is fake.
[00:56:03]  Everything's fake.
[00:56:04]  It's fake.
[00:56:05]  The Chicago Mercantile is fake.
[00:56:07]  Much of the New York Stock Exchange is fake.
[00:56:12]  It's a joke.
[00:56:16]  Almost our entire world now is a hoax.
[00:56:21]  What we're told, what goes on, it's just most of it is a hoax.
[00:56:26]  And an example of this is Bush, we now learn a couple weeks ago, signed a spending bill that was hundreds of billions of dollars, and $2 billion of it that he wanted was not passed.
[00:56:39]  And so he just went and got an earlier version of the bill that never passed and signed that.
[00:56:44]  And we've now learned that he was told that, sir, you're signing a bill that wasn't passed.
[00:56:48]  Speaker of the House told him this in a letter.
[00:56:51]  They just signed it knowing we're so done they can take $2 billion right in front of everybody and she's like, well, $2 billion.
[00:56:57]  That's what they do.
[00:57:02]  So now the stealing, now the looting, now the craziness has gotten so wild that I can't even imagine what's going to be next.
[00:57:13]  This is a great illustration of why you can't really just rely on Alex for information.
[00:57:18]  He's not interested in actually conveying what's real.
[00:57:20]  He just builds up stories.
[00:57:22]  This is day two of him covering this story about Bush signing the Deficit Reconciliation Act of 2005.
[00:57:28]  And at the start of the show, he claimed that he looked into this and even called Congress for comment.
[00:57:34]  He's acting like he's done a lot of original reporting and legwork that's backing up this coverage, but he still has a very basic detail of the story wrong.
[00:57:43]  This isn't about Bush signing a bill that has $2 billion more in pork that he gets to steal.
[00:57:48]  It's about Bush signing a bill that has $2 billion less in Medicare funding than the version of the bill that Democratic Representative Henry Waxman believed they were passing.
[00:57:58]  At this point in 2006, there really isn't even a story.
[00:58:01]  It's just a letter that Waxman has written raising this complaint.
[00:58:05]  Engaging with this story within the bounds of reality would require Alex to argue that Medicare should get $2 billion more in funding, which he can't do.
[00:58:14]  Bush signing a bill that didn't pass Congress is too exciting a headline to ignore.
[00:58:19]  So in order to cover this, he has to create a fake version of the story to entertain the audience, which is what he's doing.
[00:58:25]  And it doesn't mean anything.
[00:58:26]  Yeah.
[00:58:27]  I think it's nice to start everything with like, it's a hoax and then have a take.
[00:58:33]  Like, I feel like you can't do that.
[00:58:35]  If you start with three things are hoaxes, then either you have to go into why they're hoaxes or just be like, and so is everything else.
[00:58:41]  Who fucking cares?
[00:58:42]  Everything is a hoax except the $2 billion that Bush signed.
[00:58:47]  That's a hoax, too, right?
[00:58:48]  No, no, no.
[00:58:49]  That's free from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
[00:58:51]  That's completely different.
[00:58:52]  That $2 billion, completely unrelated.
[00:58:54]  Hey, buddy, take a hit of this and let me blow your mind about how money's a hoax.
[00:58:59]  It's a hoax.
[00:59:00]  What?
[00:59:01]  Fuck.
[00:59:03]  But it's tied to the gold standard, right?
[00:59:05]  Gold's a hoax.
[00:59:06]  Oh, no.
[00:59:07]  Wait, is gold a hoax?
[00:59:09]  No.
[00:59:09]  I don't know.
[00:59:10]  I'm going to go audit Fort Knox, though.
[00:59:12]  I think that would be.
[00:59:14]  Is any gold even real anymore?
[00:59:16]  I don't know.
[00:59:16]  Did they just vaporize all the gold secretly while we weren't paying attention?
[00:59:22]  Okay.
[00:59:25]  Don't answer that like that was a legitimate question.
[00:59:28]  Did they vaporize all the gold?
[00:59:30]  I wasn't going to answer your question directly, but I did get lost in thought thinking about how I don't think I've ever touched gold.
[00:59:38]  Like, I probably have at some point or whatever, but like I've never, I've never held a gold coin.
[00:59:46]  I've never really held a gold coin?
[00:59:48]  I don't think so.
[00:59:49]  Really?
[00:59:50]  You have?
[00:59:52]  Rich?
[00:59:52]  I mean, I think so.
[00:59:54]  I think I've, I think, here's what I think happened.
[00:59:56]  I think I felt.
[00:59:58]  No, I guess, I mean, it was like a $10 little gold bar, right?
[01:00:01]  But that's probably just like a little lead with gold wrapped around it, right?
[01:00:06]  Maybe.
[01:00:07]  You know, so I didn't really touch a gold bar.
[01:00:10]  You know, it's like one of those little things.
[01:00:11]  I have experience with the chocolate coins.
[01:00:13]  Yeah.
[01:00:14]  I have experience with fool's gold.
[01:00:16]  Yeah.
[01:00:16]  I know that.
[01:00:17]  But yeah, I can't think of any time I've engaged.
[01:00:20]  Because, you know, I watch the traders.
[01:00:21]  Sure.
[01:00:22]  I've never seen that.
[01:00:23]  No, I've never seen any borrowed.
[01:00:25]  No, I've never seen anything.
[01:00:27]  It does make you question whether or not they're real.
[01:00:29]  I'm saying maybe they did vaporize it.
[01:00:31]  No, I've never seen one in person.
[01:00:33]  Yep.
[01:00:34]  So money, a hoax, obviously.
[01:00:38]  But Alex deals with there's some calls and a topic comes up of countries wanting to pay for oil in different currencies than dollars.
[01:00:49]  Yeah.
[01:00:50]  So at one point, I was looking to the power hour this morning and they were making mention that something about in order for countries to purchase oil in the Arab state, they have to pay 40% of it in the Euro.
[01:01:02]  Have you heard anything about that?
[01:01:03]  Yes, they are moving to a Euro-controlled petro dollar, and a lot of other of the Arab countries are also dumping some of their cash reserves and moving part of their reserves into the Euro.
[01:01:22]  Iran is moving entirely into the European Union denomination.
[01:01:28]  All right.
[01:01:28]  Thank you very much.
[01:01:29]  Thank you.
[01:01:30]  I appreciate the call.
[01:01:32]  So it is true that some countries, like Iran and Russia, have requested the countries purchasing their oil pay for it in Euros.
[01:01:39]  This isn't really an attack on the dollar.
[01:01:42]  It's not some kind of threat to the status of the dollar as the currency that's tied to oil.
[01:01:46]  It's a reflection of the U.S. sanctions against these countries and their desire to get paid in an unsanctioned currency.
[01:01:53]  Alex is reporting the idea of Iran wanting to be paid in Euros as a piece of a conspiracy where the Euro is meant to replace the dollar.
[01:02:00]  But in reality, Iran would prefer to use dollars if we didn't have them under heavy sanctions.
[01:02:06]  The EU is more reliant on oil imports from Iran and Russia, so they can't afford to fully cut off and sanction those industries.
[01:02:13]  While U.S. banks have frozen accounts that would be involved in these companies taking payment and dollars and converting that to the local currency or investing it in other stuff that uses the dollar.
[01:02:24]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:02:25]  It's a hassle with the U.S. sanctions.
[01:02:27]  It costs money to launder money.
[01:02:29]  There is a threat to the U.S. dollar's status as the currency that most of the world's economies use for trade, but it's not oil-producing countries accepting payments in other currencies.
[01:02:39]  It's the possibility that enough powerful economies could get together and form a new currency system that sidesteps the dollar because the benefit of basing their economic transactions on the dollar is outweighed by the volatility and other downsides that we present.
[01:02:55]  The guy that Alex helped get elected in the present day is going far out of his way to make this more likely because even, you know, the BRICS countries and shit, They understand that world economies work easier if the dollar is a go-between for like taking one currency and converting it to the dollar and then converting to another one as opposed to going from A to C.
[01:03:20]  It's just easier.
[01:03:22]  It just is.

=== Citizen Rule Calls (04:27) ===

[01:03:23]  Based on how we have everything set up.
[01:03:25]  And they wouldn't upset that balance unless there was a reason to.
[01:03:31]  That middle point is going to fall apart.
[01:03:33]  Yeah.
[01:03:33]  Yeah.
[01:03:34]  And if I'm the other countries, right, and I'm looking at the United States, I'm going, whoof, this is rough now.
[01:03:41]  And then I'm thinking, maybe they, maybe they put it back together.
[01:03:44]  Maybe they get their system back together.
[01:03:46]  They, they figure stuff out.
[01:03:47]  They got that.
[01:03:48]  But I still know that they got another Trump in them.
[01:03:51]  It's not like they got rid of all the Trumps.
[01:03:53]  There's another Trump somewhere.
[01:03:55]  And if I'm seeing that, I'm seeing that as a risk.
[01:03:58]  Yeah, every country has a Trump in them and a potential for that.
[01:04:02]  Right.
[01:04:02]  It's just, we need reassurances and stability to make sure that Trump can't destroy that currency.
[01:04:09]  Yeah.
[01:04:10]  I'm just saying I would prefer to, I would be like, hey, I'll work with these other people.
[01:04:14]  Yeah.
[01:04:15]  And that could be part of a new world order that Alex is interested in bringing in.
[01:04:19]  A new world order?
[01:04:21]  The new new.
[01:04:21]  Okay.
[01:04:22]  But not the old new world order.
[01:04:23]  Not the old new.
[01:04:24]  Okay.
[01:04:24]  Or the old old.
[01:04:25]  Right.
[01:04:26]  Or the new old.
[01:04:27]  Wait, which one's the new old one?
[01:04:29]  That was the new one.
[01:04:30]  The new world order is now the new old.
[01:04:33]  Yes.
[01:04:34]  And also the old new.
[01:04:35]  Right.
[01:04:36]  It's the new old and the old.
[01:04:37]  Oh, man.
[01:04:37]  Those adjectives.
[01:04:39]  Yuck.
[01:04:40]  So Alex takes calls, and he gets a call from a guy that he knows, like someone who calls in and bothers him a lot.
[01:04:47]  And they argue, and Alex gets mad at him and then hangs up on him.
[01:04:52]  Then Alex gets a call from somebody who reassures him and makes him feel better.
[01:04:57]  And Alex is like, hey, that guy who I don't like, you should call back in and argue with this nice caller.
[01:05:05]  So that plays out.
[01:05:06]  I like that.
[01:05:07]  I don't have any clips of it because it's just fucking dumb and it goes way too fucking long.
[01:05:11]  Of course it does.
[01:05:12]  But yeah, Alex is like, I've got backup now.
[01:05:14]  Call back in, I dare you.
[01:05:15]  That's so funny.
[01:05:16]  And then the two callers yell at each other for a bit.
[01:05:20]  And then that ends.
[01:05:21]  And Alex is a bit depressed.
[01:05:24]  He just is in kind of a bummed out state for the rest of the show.
[01:05:27]  I think he blew it.
[01:05:27]  Well, he's just doing a call-in show and then his call-in big fight happens.
[01:05:31]  So now he's in kind of a post-coitus call-in.
[01:05:34]  Yeah, I think the serotonin's gone.
[01:05:36]  Yeah.
[01:05:37]  And so we end up with a call like this.
[01:05:39]  I got a question for you, though.
[01:05:42]  Is there any way I can get a signed picture of you that I can post on my wall?
[01:05:47]  You know, we don't really have any of the classical glamour shots or publicity shots that most talk show hosts have.
[01:05:55]  There are a whole bunch of free photos of me all over the web.
[01:05:59]  So print out the one you like and hang it on the wall.
[01:06:05]  And if you want something signed from me, that's what I would really like.
[01:06:10]  Well, the problem is, you know, I sell my signature, and not because I even want the money.
[01:06:15]  It's just that if I offer three, I'm not trying to brag.
[01:06:19]  I want the money.
[01:06:19]  I'm not going to be signing thousands a week.
[01:06:21]  And it would really be impossible to get any work done.
[01:06:23]  It's already annoying.
[01:06:24]  And I like doing it, but I run out of time.
[01:06:26]  I got all this serious stuff to do.
[01:06:28]  I'm sitting there signing my book, Descent to Tyranny.
[01:06:30]  If you get a Descent to Tyranny, sir, I'll sign it for you.
[01:06:34]  And I'd like to tell you, if you mailed me a citizen rule book and asked me to sign it, I might do it.
[01:06:42]  But then I'm going to get a bunch of requests for people that order citizen rule books and I sign those.
[01:06:47]  And I just really, it's not a good, it's not the best way to spend my time.
[01:06:52]  Just send the guy an autograph.
[01:06:54]  He's on his deathbed.
[01:06:55]  Listen to this guy.
[01:06:57]  It could not hurt you.
[01:06:58]  Just going into this whole spiel hurts you more than just being like, yeah, probably.
[01:07:03]  What is the precedent I set by sending you an autograph?
[01:07:06]  Don't care.
[01:07:06]  Don't need one.
[01:07:07]  Next time, say no.
[01:07:08]  This time, say yes.
[01:07:09]  Move on with your life.
[01:07:10]  Just send him a signed picture.
[01:07:12]  A couple bucks, maybe.
[01:07:14]  I'll sign a dollar for you.
[01:07:15]  If he wants to S-A-S-E it, you know what?
[01:07:18]  Get me an envelope.
[01:07:20]  Print out that picture.
[01:07:21]  I'll sign that picture and send it right back to you.
[01:07:24]  You do 99% of the work and I'll sign it.
[01:07:26]  You know?
[01:07:27]  Let's flip this, Alex.
[01:07:28]  I want to send you an autographed picture of me.
[01:07:32]  How much does that cost?
[01:07:34]  Yeah, so that was just kind of sad.
[01:07:36]  Yeah.
[01:07:37]  Anyway, this show, this is a disaster.
[01:07:39]  This episode, no good.
[01:07:40]  It's Friday.
[01:07:41]  He wants to go home.
[01:07:42]  He's taking calls.
[01:07:43]  Whatever.
[01:07:44]  Yeah.
[01:07:44]  You know, gets the two callers to fight each other for fun.
[01:07:48]  It's kind of boring and a dud.
[01:07:50]  Yeah.

=== Martin Sheen Autograph (15:40) ===

[01:07:51]  And so we're done with Friday.
[01:07:54]  Yeah.
[01:07:54]  We're taking a weekend.
[01:07:55]  There's something, there's something quaint and beautiful about the radio show where the guy knows the callers because it's not big enough yet, but it is still pretty big, you know?
[01:08:05]  There's something beautiful about that.
[01:08:07]  Yeah, when he knows some of them and is annoyed by some of them.
[01:08:11]  Right, that's great.
[01:08:12]  But the problem there is, if it were good radio, it would stay that way, but it doesn't.
[01:08:17]  Yeah, I think that, you know, what you're talking about is exactly right.
[01:08:21]  Yeah.
[01:08:22]  Like that vibe and that energy of, hey, I know this guy.
[01:08:25]  I'm pissed off by him.
[01:08:27]  That's what I want to hear.
[01:08:28]  I want to.
[01:08:30]  I would OD on that if Alex was providing it.
[01:08:32]  Yep.
[01:08:33]  It's just in practice, whatever mood he's in and however it's struck on this episode is no good.
[01:08:40]  It's just not the way it works.
[01:08:41]  But maybe another day.
[01:08:43]  Who knows?
[01:08:44]  So we come back from the weekend.
[01:08:45]  Yeah.
[01:08:46]  You show up on Monday.
[01:08:47]  Right.
[01:08:47]  And there's big news over at InfoWars.
[01:08:51]  Now, after the break here in a minute or two, we're going to come back and talk to Charlie Sheen for the full hour, for the rest of the hour.
[01:09:00]  And he's been in over 65 major motion pictures, has a couple more coming out this year.
[01:09:06]  Of course, he's the star, the biggest star on one of CBS's hit shows, and that's two and a half men.
[01:09:14]  And Charlie and I have had a chance to talk some in the last week or so.
[01:09:19]  And he's just got a few issues, a few questions he wants to bring up concerning 9-11 and what's happening here in America.
[01:09:27]  So believe me, you're not going to want to miss the interview.
[01:09:32]  Was this this episode?
[01:09:33]  No, we've talked about Charlie Sheen being on the show before.
[01:09:37]  Yeah.
[01:09:38]  We talked about when he destroyed his career.
[01:09:40]  Right.
[01:09:41]  That's not this one.
[01:09:42]  That's not this one.
[01:09:43]  No.
[01:09:43]  Oh, my God.
[01:09:44]  2011.
[01:09:45]  Okay.
[01:09:45]  This is in 2006.
[01:09:47]  I was about to freak out.
[01:09:48]  I was like, holy shit.
[01:09:49]  No, this is when, this is just after Alex met Charlie.
[01:09:53]  Yeah.
[01:09:54]  They talked on the phone before this, and that was, they'd never met before that.
[01:09:58]  Wow.
[01:09:59]  It's very clear.
[01:10:00]  Yeah.
[01:10:00]  They're just getting to know each other.
[01:10:02]  Wild.
[01:10:02]  You know what's weird about that?
[01:10:04]  There's one coincidence about that, right?
[01:10:06]  On the way here, I was walking and I was like, I wonder if everybody's gotten over the Kanye and he's like, apologized for being bipolar yet.
[01:10:13]  Has he?
[01:10:14]  Has Kanye, or is he still committed?
[01:10:17]  I know that he did do some apologizing.
[01:10:21]  I don't know how much that I don't know how much people cared.
[01:10:24]  Right.
[01:10:25]  I don't know if he's been welcome to hear about anybody's good graces or anything.
[01:10:31]  I know that he did definitely repeat that part of the cycle since the Hale Hitler season.
[01:10:37]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:10:38]  Yep.
[01:10:39]  Yeah, yeah, we've moved on from that part.
[01:10:41]  We're in the season of whoops.
[01:10:45]  Well, the reason I thought it was because I'm like, oh, we're in post-Tiger Blood, right?
[01:10:49]  That's where we're at.
[01:10:49]  Oh, not in 2006.
[01:10:51]  No, no, no, no, that's what I'm saying.
[01:10:53]  For Kanye now, we're in post-Tiger Blood.
[01:10:55]  Yeah, we're in the sort of reflective part after the manic outburst.
[01:11:01]  Right.
[01:11:01]  The anti-Semitic manicure.
[01:11:02]  Right.
[01:11:03]  Right.
[01:11:03]  Yeah.
[01:11:04]  So Charlie Sheen in 2006 is just a celebrity.
[01:11:08]  Top of the world.
[01:11:09]  Yeah.
[01:11:09]  Yeah.
[01:11:09]  It's on two and a half men.
[01:11:10]  Killing it, highest paid guy, right?
[01:11:14]  I think so.
[01:11:14]  This is only a couple of years into the show.
[01:11:16]  Yeah.
[01:11:16]  So I bet he was.
[01:11:18]  I bet he had a great salary.
[01:11:20]  Yeah.
[01:11:21]  But there was still more to come.
[01:11:22]  Five more years of this show.
[01:11:24]  Exactly.
[01:11:25]  Mr. Sheen, of course, he comes from an activist family.
[01:11:28]  Martin Sheen.
[01:11:30]  who is the star of the West Wing and has been immortalized by some of the movie roles that he has played, like Apocalypse Now, has always really stood up first to corruption by the federal government, especially warmongering.
[01:11:49]  And his son is somewhat of an activist.
[01:11:51]  In fact, both of his sons are somewhat of activists in their own right, though not as well known for activism as their father.
[01:11:58]  Well, I think that in the future, you'll be seeing Charlie Sheen standing up more and more to the issues that he's concerned about.
[01:12:07]  And he'll be doing some of that coming up in the next segment and talk about his hit show, Two and a Half Men, which a lot of people I talked to here in the office before Mr. Sheen was going to come on really excited because they're big fans of that broadcast that airs every week on CBS.
[01:12:26]  So we're going to go to break.
[01:12:27]  We're going to come back.
[01:12:28]  We're going to talk to Mr. Sheen for the rest of the hour.
[01:12:30]  And then coming up in the second and third hour, I'll get into all the government-sponsored terror news, the Iraq news, the police state news here in America, what the secret police are up to, and a lot more.
[01:12:40]  So I get that Alex probably isn't getting paid to have Charlie Sheen on the show, but there's no way to describe this as anything other than part of a promotional campaign for his show.
[01:12:49]  Alex is clearly promoting Two and a Half Men and talking about how the staff are excited because they like the show.
[01:12:56]  That's fine if you're doing a morning radio show or just some frivolous drivetime kind of thing, but Alex shouldn't be promoting CBS.
[01:13:04]  He thinks that the media is controlled by the globalists, and Two and a Half Men is one of the most successful shows on TV.
[01:13:10]  From Alex's point of view, there really isn't any way to imagine that the show would be on if it weren't doing the bidding of the globalists.
[01:13:18]  This illustrates the difficult position Alex has placed him in for himself in terms of the media.
[01:13:25]  His ideology requires that he demonize everything and everyone involved in making the banal shows that pacify the masses, and that's easy when none of them want to talk to you.
[01:13:35]  This is an easy position to maintain when you're not really turning something down.
[01:13:40]  The publicity and validation that you get from associating with celebrities, that was never really an option.
[01:13:45]  So aggressively pretending you're turning it down is a great way to create an iconoclastic image.
[01:13:51]  The problem arises when some celebrities want to start hanging out, and all of a sudden the choice is real.
[01:13:57]  If you choose to keep your distance, then you're leaving money on the table, but at least you're not a conspiracy theorist shilling for primetime CBS sitcom.
[01:14:06]  Sure.
[01:14:06]  If you make the other decision and decide to associate with the celebrity, then you have to come up with an excuse for how the media is still bad and controlled by the globalists, but what you're doing is cool.
[01:14:17]  The correct choice if you want to do a serious show is to not interview Charlie Sheen.
[01:14:22]  There isn't some amazing insight he has into what happened on 9-11 because he's a famous actor.
[01:14:28]  The value that he brings to Alex is that he's a very famous actor who could be presented as co-signing everything Alex says.
[01:14:35]  The choice to interview him reveals that Alex is, in fact, interested in chasing celebrity, which isn't wrong in and of itself.
[01:14:43]  It's only wrong because of the way Alex presents himself and how he chooses to present this interview.
[01:14:49]  Alex and his employees are supposed to be the last humans who can see through the devil's evil plans, and they work around the clock to counter him.
[01:14:56]  But now we're hearing that a bunch of them love two and a half men, one of the most run-of-the-mill sitcoms on the air.
[01:15:03]  I'd understand if they watched two and a half men as part of their studying the globalists' message so they could find predictive programming buried in the easy jokes, but that's not what Alex is saying.
[01:15:14]  Alex has to glaze Sheen, CBS, and Two and a Half Men because he wants to have a friendly interview with Charlie, and it works out so well for him.
[01:15:23]  Alex is able to insinuate himself into Charlie's life to the point where Charlie has a meltdown on Alex's show five years later that gets him fired from two and a half men.
[01:15:33]  Charlie descends down a very dark point from there, but Alex is able to use his proximity to the story to go on the view, exploiting his connection with Sheen to boost his profile.
[01:15:44]  And it wouldn't have been possible without Alex promoting CBS back here in 2006.
[01:15:50]  And just to be clear, at this point, Sumner Redstone is the head of CBS, and he's a billionaire who donates to a ton of Democratic politicians, but supported Bush in the 2004 election.
[01:16:01]  He's everything Alex is supposed to be.
[01:16:03]  I mean, it was wartime.
[01:16:05]  All right.
[01:16:05]  You have to support the wartime president.
[01:16:07]  And John Kerry.
[01:16:09]  But like, look, this is bullshit.
[01:16:10]  Yeah.
[01:16:11]  You can't be like, oh, a lot of my staff loves this two and a half men coming up tonight on CBS.
[01:16:16]  Go check it out.
[01:16:17]  Like, this is, that's not you, man.
[01:16:19]  All right.
[01:16:19]  So here's the thing, right?
[01:16:21]  So the globalists, they're smart.
[01:16:23]  They're not these dumb globalists.
[01:16:25]  They're not going to make the number one watch show on television the globalist mouthpiece.
[01:16:31]  That would be too obvious.
[01:16:33]  They make every other show on television the globalist mouthpiece, but the number one show they leave completely alone.
[01:16:39]  Okay.
[01:16:40]  See?
[01:16:40]  This seems arbitrary.
[01:16:41]  It does feel that way, doesn't it?
[01:16:43]  Almost like somebody would just make it up on the spot.
[01:16:46]  Also, they seem to have an amazing ability to tell what is going to be the number one show.
[01:16:51]  Yeah, it's pretty crazy, isn't it?
[01:16:53]  Yeah.
[01:16:53]  They're really good at it.
[01:16:54]  I don't think that anyone would have predicted like lost would be as big of a hit.
[01:16:58]  No, but that's why it was globalist controlled because they knew it wasn't going to be as big of a hit.
[01:17:05]  I'm following you.
[01:17:06]  I'm not.
[01:17:07]  I literally am not following me anymore.
[01:17:09]  Okay.
[01:17:09]  I lost where I was.
[01:17:10]  Yeah, I think Alex has too.
[01:17:12]  Yep.
[01:17:13]  I think this is embarrassing.
[01:17:15]  All right.
[01:17:17]  Our staff loves the show.
[01:17:19]  Yeah.
[01:17:19]  Tune in.
[01:17:20]  Yeah, this is very Jimmy Fallon.
[01:17:22]  You can be Jimmy Fallon if you're Jimmy Fallon.
[01:17:25]  You can't be Jimmy Fallon if you're Alex Jones.
[01:17:27]  No.
[01:17:27]  That's not how it works.
[01:17:28]  No, and you can't just decide that because someone is willing to talk to you and be friendly with you that they're one of the good celebrities.
[01:17:37]  That makes the definition of who's good and bad way too obvious and arbitrary.
[01:17:42]  Who likes me versus who doesn't like me?
[01:17:44]  Yeah.
[01:17:45]  Oh, well.
[01:17:46]  So Alex introduces Charlie by talking about Martin Sheen.
[01:17:50]  And he referenced Martin Sheen in that last clip.
[01:17:53]  But he talks more about his activism.
[01:17:56]  And when I got a chance to talk to Charlie Sheen, I was just amazed because I've talked to a lot of other big Hollywood people.
[01:18:03]  We've got a few of them on this show.
[01:18:04]  And they call me up sometimes, say, hey, you're doing a great job.
[01:18:08]  Or I'm buying 50 copies of your video.
[01:18:10]  And I'm like, no, here, just take it.
[01:18:12]  But they're not as informed, I have to be honest, as Charlie Sheen.
[01:18:15]  I mean, I talked to this guy like an hour and a half yesterday, and he just really knows what's going on on the planet today.
[01:18:22]  But that shouldn't surprise me.
[01:18:24]  His father, Martin Sheen, has been on the front lines.
[01:18:28]  As Mark Twain said in the beginning, a patriot is a scarce man, hated and feared and scorned.
[01:18:32]  But in time, when his cause succeeds, the Tim had joined him because then it cost nothing to be a patriot.
[01:18:38]  And of course, it's been proven right time and time again.
[01:18:40]  It was his father in the days leading up to the war that was the most vocal spokesman in America against this disastrous conflict.
[01:18:47]  Everything he said has now come true.
[01:18:49]  And of course, Charlie Sheen and his brother are also activists in their own right.
[01:18:55]  And we are just incredibly honored to have Charlie Sheen on with us for the balance of this hour.
[01:18:59]  Mr. Sheen, good to have you with us.
[01:19:01]  Nice to be here, Alex.
[01:19:02]  How are you?
[01:19:03]  I'm great.
[01:19:04]  Before we get into the really serious stuff, tell me a little bit about Two and a Half Man.
[01:19:09]  Oh, gosh, we're thrilled.
[01:19:11]  We are at the end of our third season.
[01:19:15]  We have three more shows to shoot.
[01:19:19]  Most sitcoms will shoot 22 episodes, but because the network always wants more product, we do 24.
[01:19:29]  So our season will continue when all the other shows have shut down.
[01:19:33]  But it's going good.
[01:19:34]  It's going really good.
[01:19:37]  We've found ourselves sort of in or around the top 10 for most of this year.
[01:19:44]  And we found out we got picked up for next season, which is fabulous.
[01:19:49]  And what's happening is they're using our show to launch new shows, which is the sign of great confidence and trust in us sort of being the anchor of that Monday night lineup, you know?
[01:20:04]  So with that, I should probably throw out a shameless plug on tonight's show, if that's all right.
[01:20:10]  Oh, sure.
[01:20:10]  Tell us about tonight's show.
[01:20:12]  Tonight's show is your title.
[01:20:15]  It's entitled The Spit-Covered Cobbler.
[01:20:19]  And it's funny because we'll always relate to a line of dialogue.
[01:20:24]  And so it's about my brother Alan, played by John Cryer.
[01:20:29]  And he's dating a girl who has no money.
[01:20:32]  And so he doesn't have any money himself.
[01:20:36]  I sort of support him on the show because I took him in when he went to a divorce with his kid, played by Angus Jones, right?
[01:20:43]  And so he's dealing with a woman, April Bowlby, who plays Candy on the show.
[01:20:48]  So 9-11, right?
[01:20:50]  Wow.
[01:20:51]  It definitely feels like Alex wants to talk about some stuff that at least looks like it's important for the Infowar, but Charlie wants to promote the show.
[01:21:00]  They appear to be on different pages, and it's a bit uncomfortable to hear Alex fake laugh as Charlie tells him the plot of tonight's episode in a bit more detail than we need.
[01:21:08]  Maybe trim it up.
[01:21:11]  Also, Alex should hate Martin Sheen.
[01:21:14]  He's a guy who's participated at civil disobedience throughout his life and has been a lifelong Democrat.
[01:21:20]  He's had stances that Alex could agree with, like the fact that he's been publicly quite anti-abortion, but Martin Sheen always did campaign work and promotion for anti-abortion Democrat candidates.
[01:21:31]  His opposition to abortion didn't trick him into thinking that he had some common cause with the GOP and was part of a larger belief he had in life, like anti-war kinds of like thing that it all blended together, and that's where it came from, as opposed to some religious zealot conviction that Alex has.
[01:21:48]  Right, right, right, right.
[01:21:49]  Alex absolutely does hate Martin Sheen and everything that he stands for, but he also knows that his brand in 2006 relies on his ability to not look like a white identity lunatic to the folks on the left who are really mad about the Iraq war.
[01:22:03]  Sheen is a big anti-war activist, so Alex needs to pretend to respect him for show.
[01:22:08]  Yep.
[01:22:08]  So the audience thinks, oh, he's on our side.
[01:22:11]  Yep.
[01:22:12]  Yeah.
[01:22:12]  And anytime you get any questions or any feelings, just be like, oh, remember in Apocalypse Now, tell me about Dennis Hopper.
[01:22:21]  That's all you got to do.
[01:22:22]  You just move back to Apocalypse Now and you're good.
[01:22:25]  You can.
[01:22:25]  Yeah, right?
[01:22:26]  Yeah, I think that if Alex had a real accounting of what he believes and his positions, he should be like, hey, your dad sucks.
[01:22:33]  Yeah, he really should.
[01:22:35]  He would also say he was pretty great in hot shots, part due.
[01:22:39]  Part du.
[01:22:40]  Yeah.
[01:22:41]  Yep.
[01:22:41]  That's fair.
[01:22:42]  Yep.
[01:22:42]  So Alex has had enough of hearing about the plot of this episode of Two and a Half Man.
[01:22:46]  Haven't we all?
[01:22:47]  Yes.
[01:22:48]  So he wants to bring up 9-11.
[01:22:51]  And Charlie's like, you know what, dude?
[01:22:53]  I'm a fan of your work.
[01:22:54]  I like you.
[01:22:55]  I like 9-11.
[01:22:56]  You have some questions about the official 9-11 story, and we got hooked up because we both mutually have been looking into that.
[01:23:05]  And I want to just, I guess, start by what happened on 9-11, what your instincts told you, and really just go from there.
[01:23:15]  Well, it was interesting.
[01:23:17]  And let me just preface that by saying that I've been a fan of yours for a long time, and I've been following you, and I've seen all of your documentaries, and your research is tireless.

=== Urban Warfare Training (15:09) ===

[01:23:31]  And it's interesting because a lot of these guys, you sort of look behind the notes and you start to discover inconsistencies in a lot of the claims that they're making, which pretty much torpedoes the credibility of most of their substance.
[01:23:48]  But with you, that's not the case.
[01:23:51]  So one thing that's interesting is that Charlie says he's been following Alex for years and watched his documentaries, but he doesn't say that he listens to the show.
[01:23:59]  If he did, I think that the point he's making about Alex's claims being super consistent would be hard to defend.
[01:24:06]  At this point, Alex hasn't made Endgame or the Obama deception.
[01:24:09]  So the only documentaries he made are the police state ones, the Bohemian Grove one, and America Destroyed by Design.
[01:24:17]  These are all bullshit, but I can understand how Charlie could watch them and feel like they weren't like other conspiracy theorist trash, where you look under the hood and it all just falls apart.
[01:24:26]  And the reason for this is that Alex's documentaries are mostly self-referential, which is a big part of why it's always been hard for me to find a way to cover them on our show.
[01:24:36]  Most of it is just about creating a feeling and then telling you where that feeling should be directed, but there's no truth or falsity to any of it.
[01:24:44]  For example, in one of them, Alex shows a bunch of B-roll footage that he shot at an urban warfare training exercise.
[01:24:51]  In it, you can see people dressed in military-style outfits storming what appear to be suburban American homes.
[01:24:57]  The people running this exercise would tell you that the troops are fighting in urban areas overseas, and doing these exercises in approximations of the area they're going to be in is important for training.
[01:25:08]  Meanwhile, Alex shows the footage and claims that their troops training specifically to later raid suburban American homes.
[01:25:16]  That's what the footage looks like.
[01:25:18]  So obviously, the people who would say that it's training for operations in other countries like Iraq must be lying.
[01:25:24]  In service of making his point, Alex can flash up and reference unrelated and out-of-context documents, some of them fake.
[01:25:31]  He can play out-of-context clips of people saying things that reinforce his point, like the clip we discussed a while back of a person in one of these training exercises improvising a line about being an American, and all of it is meant to build up and reinforce the feeling that Alex is selling.
[01:25:48]  But there's nowhere to really go with fact-checking.
[01:25:51]  Charlie can't research any of this any further because Alex is selling a feeling and reporting on people's intentions.
[01:25:58]  He's telling you that the military is running these urban warfare exercises because they intend to use these tactics against the U.S., but you could never confirm this.
[01:26:07]  If you reached out to them, they'd give you the answer about overseas urban conflict situations, and you'd be back where you started.
[01:26:16]  And the reality is that Charlie didn't and doesn't fact-check any of these things that Alex says on these tapes.
[01:26:21]  But what he's telling Alex is more that he enjoys the feelings those tapes give him.
[01:26:27]  The feelings are consistent through Alex's films, which feels like the same thing as Alex having all of his facts in order, and you checked his notes, and it's all good.
[01:26:37]  The feeling is good.
[01:26:39]  Yeah.
[01:26:40]  So Charlie's kind of dumb.
[01:26:42]  You know, I'm thinking about this, right?
[01:26:45]  And I'm thinking, if his angle, if he had his, if his angle was this, right?
[01:26:50]  I don't want them training in these situations, not because I don't want them to have success in Iraq or because I think they're not going to use it in Iraq.
[01:26:59]  I don't want them to train because I want operational advantage should they ever be sent to us.
[01:27:05]  I'm training in suburban warfare to make sure that when they come here, I'll have the advantage, right?
[01:27:11]  I can't let them train in suburban warfare, too.
[01:27:14]  That's coherent.
[01:27:15]  That is, well, at least.
[01:27:17]  I mean, it's somewhat coherent.
[01:27:18]  Yeah.
[01:27:19]  But yeah.
[01:27:20]  I could see that being like an That's not what Alex is saying, but it is it would it would be like, all right, we must study what they do in urban warfare in order to be prepared militarily for that.
[01:27:35]  Yeah.
[01:27:36]  Right.
[01:27:37]  So then the angle there would be like, I kind of want them to lose in foreign wars.
[01:27:42]  I guess so.
[01:27:43]  I guess that's kind of the point.
[01:27:44]  That would preclude them from doing that.
[01:27:46]  It would make it very difficult, yeah.
[01:27:48]  That's also not Alex's point.
[01:27:49]  No, I hope they lose.
[01:27:51]  It's probably not going to be a good point in 2006, especially.
[01:27:54]  Yeah.
[01:27:55]  His point is mostly selling those DVDs with sensationalized and out-of-context shit.
[01:28:00]  Yeah.
[01:28:00]  So Charlie, he's been doing his own research.
[01:28:04]  Ooh, that's always a good sign.
[01:28:05]  Yeah, it is, especially if you're charged.
[01:28:06]  This is tough for me because for the longest time, I've been doing my own independent research.
[01:28:14]  And, you know, I don't claim to be an expert in any of these fields, but just as a concerned, upstanding, tax-paying American citizen, there's just questions I have that I wish somebody could explain away for me.
[01:28:34]  There's things that one will view and then look at the Keene Commission's official report.
[01:28:41]  And it just, as I heard somebody once say, might have been you, there's holes in the story you could fly a Boeing jet through.
[01:28:51]  Oh, there certainly is.
[01:28:52]  In fact, we were talking yesterday, and you said over the phone that the biggest conspiracy theory is the official story.
[01:28:59]  I mean, at every point, it's a fabrication.
[01:29:02]  It's a lie.
[01:29:03]  Would you elaborate on that?
[01:29:05]  Well, yeah, it's like they want to just pigeonhole all of us into this group of conspiracy nutbags when we're not really debating things that are related to UFOs bringing down the towers or Building 7 or the Pentagon, right?
[01:29:25]  And so it just, you know, it just feels like, you know, there's things in there that we're not the conspiracy theorists on this particular issue, you know?
[01:29:41]  I will accept Charlie's point that he doesn't like the idea of everyone who doesn't believe the official story of 9-11 being painted as the same kind of conspiracy theorist.
[01:29:50]  At this point in American history, after 9-11 and in the Iraq war, the media really didn't have to take the various different versions of weirdos out there all that seriously because social media hadn't become ubiquitous and the iPhone wasn't even released.
[01:30:05]  There's a lot of nuance and difference between people who thought that the story of 9-11 didn't add up and people who thought the UFOs took down the towers were an entirely different crew.
[01:30:16]  They were.
[01:30:16]  They were separate back then.
[01:30:17]  But the media really couldn't treat them as all that different.
[01:30:21]  They could get away with treating them all as in the same basket back then.
[01:30:26]  It's worth noting that the people who thought UFOs took the towers down didn't really exist.
[01:30:31]  There might have been a few of them on message boards somewhere, but in terms of conspiracy theorists, there really were just the same two sides there always is.
[01:30:39]  The side that thinks things don't add up and are seeking explanations for it, and the side that wants to blame their scapegoat group for everything, who are just going to distort all information they find to serve that goal.
[01:30:51]  I'm interested in Charlie's seeming inability to articulate anything that resembles a question that he can't get an answer to.
[01:30:59]  He wants answers to these questions, and throughout that whole clip, he didn't say anything specific.
[01:31:05]  No.
[01:31:05]  He just said platitudes and like, why won't anyone answer my questions, man?
[01:31:10]  Yeah.
[01:31:11]  And it seems like he's about to, on multiple occasions, say something specific.
[01:31:16]  Yeah.
[01:31:16]  And then he stops.
[01:31:17]  Then he pulls back.
[01:31:18]  Yeah.
[01:31:19]  I don't know why exactly, but that was a strong feeling that I got from him.
[01:31:23]  I feel, here's what I'm, here's what I'm getting.
[01:31:26]  Right.
[01:31:27]  I am imagining a version of It's a Wonderful Life with Alex.
[01:31:31]  And then if you like, just really go back through and see the way that he's touched people and like, oh man, if you weren't there, I bet things would have been so much better.
[01:31:41]  I bet things would have been so much better.
[01:31:43]  He's got the worst It's a Wonderful Life ever.
[01:31:46]  At the end of it, he's like, that makes me want to jump.
[01:31:49]  And they're like, yeah, that's why we did it.
[01:31:51]  That's what we're here for.
[01:31:52]  Yeah.
[01:31:52]  You got to go, dude.
[01:31:55]  It's so weird to look at this with the knowledge that he essentially is complicit in ruining Charlie's life.
[01:32:02]  Absolutely.
[01:32:03]  It's so wild.
[01:32:04]  It's so wild.
[01:32:05]  Charlie Gene's a big boy.
[01:32:06]  He can make his own decisions.
[01:32:08]  Obviously, Alex isn't responsible for any of that.
[01:32:10]  Man, he played a particular role in a way that he should have known better.
[01:32:16]  As a bipolar type one person, right?
[01:32:19]  In these situations, I'm not always in control.
[01:32:23]  And I definitely hope I'm not meeting somebody at the time who's going to point me the way Alex does.
[01:32:28]  You know, like when you're manic, you're like an arrow going whatever direction as fast as possible.
[01:32:33]  And if you let that guy point you, you're fucked.
[01:32:35]  Yeah, because he wants to profit off whatever direction you're going in.
[01:32:39]  Yep.
[01:32:40]  So I got this strong feeling that Charlie was like about to bring up specifics of the questions that he has, but kept pulling back.
[01:32:50]  And I think that Alex got the same sense.
[01:32:53]  It seems to me, like, you know, 19 amateurs with box cutters taking over four commercial airliners and hitting 75% of their targets, that feels like a conspiracy theory.
[01:33:05]  Well, I tell you, back in 2001, everybody admits that cell phones didn't work over 3,000 feet.
[01:33:10]  How are they working at 33,000, 32,000 feet?
[01:33:14]  How did Al-Qaeda make NORAD stand down?
[01:33:16]  Did Al-Qaeda call Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco as the Chronicle reported and say don't fly to New York?
[01:33:22]  No, the White House did.
[01:33:24]  Did Al-Qaeda call Salmon Rushi and say, don't fly to New York on September 11th?
[01:33:28]  No, the Times of London reported that the White House did.
[01:33:31]  Did Al-Qaeda run drills, CIA, and Pentagon drills on the morning of 9-11 of hijacked jets hitting those exact same targets at those exact same times and then drills the day before and drills two weeks before?
[01:33:43]  Yeah, the answer to that would be probably not.
[01:33:47]  I think that Alex could sense the same ambivalence that I felt in that last clip.
[01:33:52]  And Sheen wasn't coming up with any specific talking points.
[01:33:56]  He was saying that he had questions, but wasn't being specific about anything.
[01:33:59]  And I suspect that's why Alex launched into that barrage of talking points.
[01:34:04]  These are supposed to be the anomalies that represent the questions that they just can't get answers to.
[01:34:10]  This is really how Alex's rhetoric works.
[01:34:12]  If you're in a conversation with someone and they hit you with that, there is no way to respond.
[01:34:17]  He's referenced like 10 different things, some of which you probably don't know anything about.
[01:34:23]  And the aggressive tone that he's taking is meant to make it clear that he's ready to defend any of these things if you push back on them.
[01:34:30]  But they're all pretty hollow.
[01:34:32]  And I don't count any of that as Charlie having questions about those things.
[01:34:36]  Sure.
[01:34:37]  He's having them projected onto him, but he didn't bring these up.
[01:34:41]  Yeah.
[01:34:42]  We've talked about pretty much all those points in the past, and the only thing that Charlie seems to be bringing to the table himself is that he thinks that 19 amateurs would have more trouble taking over planes and that they hit too many of their targets.
[01:34:54]  That's a fine concern to have, but I don't know how anyone is supposed to argue that with him.
[01:35:00]  He thinks that taking over a plane is too hard for them to have pulled off, but he's not going to accept anyone who takes the position that apparently taking over a plane was easier than we wanted to believe in 2001.
[01:35:11]  He thinks they should have hit less than 75% of their targets, but what would Charlie need to hear to decide that it's possible for hijackers to have this level of accuracy?
[01:35:21]  How are these things possible to argue?
[01:35:24]  Are these actually questions that Charlie has that no one can answer for him?
[01:35:28]  Or are they feelings that he has that no one's been able to help reassure him about?
[01:35:33]  I kind of think it's the latter, and that Alex knows that he can easily hijack feelings and make them seem like questions.
[01:35:40]  And that one of the best ways to do that is this flood of supposed anomalies that gets you off your back foot and makes you like, well, I can't, I don't have answers for any of those things.
[01:35:49]  And they just reinforce the same feeling.
[01:35:51]  Yeah, because if your questions are, if your questions literally are like, I don't think they could hijack planes and I don't think they should hit that many targets, then what if the answers are just like, yeah, it was too easy to hijack planes and anybody who hijacks shit is going to hit somewhere between 25 and 75% of their targets.
[01:36:07]  They got lucky and hit the high end.
[01:36:09]  Or they could have just tripped and fallen and not hijacked any plane.
[01:36:13]  It's just random.
[01:36:13]  Life is chaos.
[01:36:15]  Yeah.
[01:36:16]  Maybe it's not entirely random in the rolling the dice sense of it, but like, yeah, they hit 25 to 75 percent of their targets.
[01:36:24]  We got unlucky that we live in a reality where they were at their highest point.
[01:36:28]  Absolutely.
[01:36:29]  And like, yeah, it should be harder to take over a plane.
[01:36:32]  It should be.
[01:36:33]  That's one of the lessons 9-11 certainly taught people.
[01:36:36]  I agree.
[01:36:36]  That changes are made.
[01:36:39]  Is it satisfying enough to say there were a lot of naiveties that we operated with at early September 2001?
[01:36:49]  That's not satisfying.
[01:36:51]  That's not going to.
[01:36:52]  No, it is like the world didn't operate that we thought it did, the way we thought it did, in a more unsafe way than we thought it was, right?
[01:37:01]  But Alex's point is, well, then what we're going to do is make it seem like the world is the least safe place in the world.
[01:37:09]  No, no.
[01:37:10]  The world is entirely safe, except for all of these things that the evil people are doing.
[01:37:16]  Right.
[01:37:17]  9-11 only happened because these evil people fucking did it, not because, well, it's something that can happen in the chaos and randomness of the world.
[01:37:26]  The world is fucking so safe.
[01:37:28]  If it weren't for these fucking globalists.
[01:37:30]  If it weren't for these fucking globalists.
[01:37:31]  Yeah.
[01:37:32]  Silly.
[01:37:33]  Yeah.
[01:37:34]  Anyway, I think Charlie, for the most part, doesn't want to talk in specifics.
[01:37:39]  Right.
[01:37:39]  I think that's all that Alex is doing in this interview.
[01:37:45]  No, it's just the more you look at stuff, especially specific incidents, specific events around the Fateful Day, it just raises a lot of questions.
[01:38:00]  There's a lot of questions, and I know that a couple of years ago, it was severely unpopular to discuss any of this.
[01:38:10]  But it sort of feels like, just in my research and in the people that I talk to and in and around my circles, it seems like the worm is turning.
[01:38:21]  Because you start talking about this, even with conservative Republicans, and they can't really debate away some of the most obvious facts.
[01:38:34]  What are the obvious facts?
[01:38:36]  What are the obvious facts?
[01:38:37]  Worm is turned.
[01:38:38]  You start talking about this stuff.
[01:38:39]  The fateful day.

=== Controlled Demolitions (04:52) ===

[01:38:40]  Like, he feels to me like somebody who doesn't really have anything, but is cool.
[01:38:45]  Yeah.
[01:38:46]  And the only thing you're getting out of this interview is networking.
[01:38:50]  Like, he's just networking with Charlie.
[01:38:52]  Yeah.
[01:38:52]  Charlie doesn't have like some great truth to give him about 9-11.
[01:38:57]  Yeah.
[01:38:58]  There's nothing that he's uncovered in his research that makes him a valuable source.
[01:39:02]  The only thing is feeling associated.
[01:39:05]  Alex is associated with this really, really famous rich guy.
[01:39:09]  Yep.
[01:39:09]  And the audience by proxy can feel associated too.
[01:39:12]  Yep.
[01:39:13]  That's what this interview achieves.
[01:39:14]  Yeah.
[01:39:15]  And Alex is trying to make it more.
[01:39:17]  He's trying to give him the smorgasbord.
[01:39:19]  Yes.
[01:39:19]  You pick one.
[01:39:20]  I'll take any of these.
[01:39:22]  You don't trust this?
[01:39:23]  Let's talk about that.
[01:39:24]  And because Charlie's not really taking the bait, which is interesting, again, in the context of how we know Charlie's career goes, you know, like this is when he's like, I'm not going to take the bait.
[01:39:35]  But I think he's taking the bait and being like, I'm comfortable with the fact that this is a baited hook.
[01:39:40]  He's dipping his toes in the water.
[01:39:41]  Yeah.
[01:39:41]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:39:42]  You're right.
[01:39:43]  You're right.
[01:39:43]  He won't let him.
[01:39:44]  He's using one of the buffet options that Alex is setting out in front of it, but it's not because he's against eating.
[01:39:49]  Sure.
[01:39:50]  It's, I think, probably because he's like, I don't know.
[01:39:52]  I don't know.
[01:39:52]  I don't know enough of what he says.
[01:39:53]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:39:54]  I don't feel like I want to put myself out on the limb for this.
[01:39:57]  He doesn't realize that Alex is not going to be like, what you don't know about NORAD?
[01:40:02]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:40:03]  He could just, Alex will yes and whatever he chooses.
[01:40:06]  Yeah.
[01:40:07]  That's just Alex wanting to be like, get more involved, get more associated in this.
[01:40:12]  Yep.
[01:40:13]  And so finally, they do kind of get to something they can sink teeth into.
[01:40:18]  Okay.
[01:40:18]  And that is Building 7.
[01:40:20]  All right.
[01:40:20]  Building 7 got pulled, my man.
[01:40:22]  Sure.
[01:40:23]  Yeah, and then you've got Silverstein, the leaseholder, the owner of 7, as well as the rest of the complex, right?
[01:40:32]  On tape on the record, saying, We've had such a terrible loss of life that day, and I made the decision that they should go ahead and pull it.
[01:40:41]  And we gave the order and watched the building come down.
[01:40:44]  Yeah.
[01:40:45]  Well, pull is the, I mean, that's his coming to the demo world as action and cut, the movie world.
[01:40:52]  In fact, in the same PBS documentary narrated by Kevin Spacey, or not Kevin Spacey, the other guy, he comes right out and says they cut to one of the other engineers demoing a building, and he says we're getting ready to pull it.
[01:41:08]  This is the kind of evidence that Alex provides.
[01:41:10]  And it's not really evidence, but it looks enough like it that it can trick people in documentaries pretty easily.
[01:41:16]  Larry Silverstein said that they decided to, quote, pull it in an interview about 9-11.
[01:41:21]  And Alex is presenting this as proof that he gave the order to carry out the controlled demolition.
[01:41:26]  Sure.
[01:41:26]  The problem is that on its own, this isn't proof of anything.
[01:41:30]  In context, it's pretty clear that Silverstein was talking about the decision to pull the firefighters from the building because he's describing a conversation that he had with the fire department commander.
[01:41:40]  That guy had told Silverstein that they weren't confident they could control the fire in Building 7.
[01:41:45]  So when they said pull it, they were talking about getting the firefighters out and letting the fire burn out on its own.
[01:41:50]  Right, right.
[01:41:51]  We're trying to save people's lives instead of letting them die in part of a fire that they can't even fight.
[01:41:55]  Yeah.
[01:41:55]  In order to prop up his own interpretation of what Silverstein said, Alex has some video of demolition people saying pull it before they take down a building.
[01:42:04]  It's a different building and it has nothing to do with 9-11, but they use the same words.
[01:42:08]  So this must mean something.
[01:42:11]  Whenever someone uses the words pull it, they must be talking about controlled demolitions.
[01:42:16]  We have a remarkable language where the same words can be used in many different situations.
[01:42:22]  Lighted up could be used by someone turning on a lighting rig or by someone who has a joint in their hand or by someone telling a group of soldiers to open fire.
[01:42:31]  If you had a video of a lighting person saying that they decided to light it up, and then you played a video of a soldier saying light it up before shooting into a building, you could create the image that the lighting person was giving a kill order, but it wouldn't mean anything.
[01:42:45]  No.
[01:42:46]  And this is the same kind of game that they're playing.
[01:42:48]  Yeah.
[01:42:49]  And I don't, I don't, it's sad.
[01:42:52]  It's just, come on, guys.
[01:42:53]  Yeah.
[01:42:54]  I mean, it really does point out the failings of language whenever you contextually it requires so fucking much.
[01:43:01]  You know, like we're playing from behind the gun.
[01:43:05]  There's no way to contextually defeat somebody who can just remove it at will.
[01:43:09]  Like, that was how great it was before we had recorded stuff.
[01:43:13]  You didn't know if somebody said that.
[01:43:14]  You couldn't trust anybody.
[01:43:16]  Now it's on recording.
[01:43:18]  Can't trust it.
[01:43:19]  But now, yeah, you have a recording and like that could mean a hundred different fucking things.
[01:43:23]  Yep.
[01:43:24]  It's all insane.
[01:43:25]  Yeah, now we have fake recordings and deep fakes.
[01:43:28]  Terrible.
[01:43:30]  There's no.
[01:43:31]  You know what?

=== Pearl Harbor Investigation (15:03) ===

[01:43:32]  Dan?
[01:43:33]  It's a hoax.
[01:43:34]  It's all a hoax.
[01:43:36]  This is what I was trying to get.
[01:43:37]  This is a hoax.
[01:43:37]  The mercantile.
[01:43:38]  The whole thing is a hoax.
[01:43:40]  The Chicago of the MET.
[01:43:43]  But that was the reason that I kept that clip in and decided to discuss it was that it was something that Charlie brought up.
[01:43:50]  That was a specific that Charlie brought up.
[01:43:52]  So when he has these questions that can't be answered, this seems to be an example of one of those things.
[01:43:59]  And I'm trying to illustrate the shallowness of these questions that aren't really questions.
[01:44:04]  Yeah.
[01:44:05]  And so we have another one here from the Sheen Man.
[01:44:09]  Let me ask you, though, how long did it take to start an investigation after, I don't know, Pearl Harbor?
[01:44:15]  About a day.
[01:44:17]  Okay.
[01:44:18]  The Titanic.
[01:44:20]  It started that day.
[01:44:22]  JFK.
[01:44:23]  Started that day.
[01:44:24]  Yeah.
[01:44:25]  9-11?
[01:44:26]  Started about a year later.
[01:44:29]  Yeah.
[01:44:29]  The investigation of all of these things started immediately in a nonspecific sense that folks were asking questions about them and the government was trying to figure out how to respond.
[01:44:39]  In order to actually look at Charlie's question, we have to just deal with the official investigation, which for 9-11 was the 9-11 Commission, which they said took too long to start.
[01:44:49]  Right.
[01:44:50]  That commission was established on November 27th, 2002, which may feel like a long time after the actual event.
[01:44:59]  However, let's look at some of the other examples that Charlie brings up.
[01:45:03]  He asks Alex about Pearl Harbor, and Alex says that investigation began the day later.
[01:45:09]  As we know from the famous quote, Pearl Harbor, that attack happened on December 7th, 1941, a day that will live in infamy.
[01:45:15]  In Congress, the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor attack was not established until September 6th, 1945.
[01:45:23]  What?
[01:45:24]  Four years later.
[01:45:26]  It's almost like they had other things on their mind immediately.
[01:45:29]  Sure.
[01:45:30]  Should cut, bip.
[01:45:31]  But in fairness, in December 1941, President FDR did create a panel to investigate the attack headed by Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, which became the Roberts Commission.
[01:45:42]  They directed blame at a few U.S. Navy men who were derelict in their duty and raised concerns about Japanese spies, which became part of the rationale for the internment of Japanese Americans.
[01:45:51]  Good stuff.
[01:45:52]  So from that information, it looks like maybe Pearl Harbor was investigated much more quickly, but that's to pretend that the 9-11 Commission was the first investigation into 9-11.
[01:46:03]  The joint inquiry into intelligence community activities began in February 2002.
[01:46:09]  The point is, as it relates to 9-11, as is the case for all of these tragedies, there were investigations that were launched quickly.
[01:46:16]  And then as more information was gathered, a full official investigation could be carried out.
[01:46:22]  Usually, the preliminary ones, like the February 2002 investigation with 9-11 and the Roberts commission with Pearl Harbor, were focused on the question: how did this happen?
[01:46:33]  Looking at intelligence or leadership failures that could have been responsible.
[01:46:38]  This happens because, in theory, we should know everything we need to know to carry out that investigation.
[01:46:43]  It has to do with us, our troops, our readiness.
[01:46:47]  Those kinds of things are easier to immediately assess, like, where are the holes here?
[01:46:52]  And that's what you see in these tragedies, the immediate investigations.
[01:46:56]  Yeah, you can't do a 9-11 commission investigation until there is a little bit of distance.
[01:47:01]  Yeah.
[01:47:02]  And that's the same for every one of these examples that he lists.
[01:47:06]  I mean, all of the examples that he lists, too, the main investigations were not like, like, how would I put it?
[01:47:16]  They were commissioned on the sense of like, hey, let's fucking do it.
[01:47:20]  You know, they're not commissioned on like, oh, why hasn't anybody done this before?
[01:47:25]  They're like, we've got all of this shit.
[01:47:27]  We've got all this evidence all over the place.
[01:47:29]  These people have their ideas.
[01:47:30]  These people have their ideas.
[01:47:31]  These people, all this stuff is over there.
[01:47:33]  So here's what we're going to do.
[01:47:34]  We're going to get you guys and you fucking do the whole thing.
[01:47:38]  Right?
[01:47:38]  That takes so much time just to get started because you don't even know how much evidence you have.
[01:47:42]  Yeah.
[01:47:43]  Right?
[01:47:43]  You don't know who you need to collect from.
[01:47:45]  It's true.
[01:47:46]  And you definitely don't know how you're going to discover who got here from what place if you're just starting a war.
[01:47:51]  Yeah.
[01:47:52]  And like, let's even look at his list.
[01:47:55]  One of them was the Titanic.
[01:47:57]  Like 9-11 or Pearl Harbor, those are attacks.
[01:48:01]  Yeah.
[01:48:01]  Pearl Harbor, sorry, the Titanic sunk.
[01:48:05]  Yeah.
[01:48:05]  Like that, obviously there needs to be an investigation of that, but it's not like it was sunk by a belligerent country.
[01:48:12]  Yeah.
[01:48:12]  It's sunk by a belligerent drunk and an iceberg.
[01:48:17]  And those fucking time travelers that didn't save the ship.
[01:48:21]  They were supposed to save the ship.
[01:48:25]  Fucking ton of assholes.
[01:48:27]  They saved us from the meteor, but they can't save us from it.
[01:48:30]  It doesn't make sense.
[01:48:31]  But like comparing those two or having this list is, it reveals a little bit of the.
[01:48:38]  I don't think your point is serious.
[01:48:39]  Yeah.
[01:48:39]  This is a meme conspiracy.
[01:48:41]  This is like a post that you'd see that's supposed to blow people's minds, but there isn't the depth to it.
[01:48:47]  There is no situation where that like that is just a structure that you cannot trust inherently.
[01:48:54]  Like, when did this start?
[01:48:55]  The next day.
[01:48:56]  I don't believe you.
[01:48:57]  I already don't believe you.
[01:48:58]  Right.
[01:48:58]  You answered too quick.
[01:48:59]  The next day isn't possible.
[01:49:01]  Who the fuck who got to work?
[01:49:03]  When did they show up?
[01:49:04]  9 a.m.?
[01:49:05]  The exchange between them isn't meant to reflect reality and when investigations started.
[01:49:10]  It's a call and response church kind of feeling.
[01:49:13]  Yep.
[01:49:14]  Between the two of them.
[01:49:14]  It's affirmation of faith.
[01:49:16]  We're just going to believe this.
[01:49:18]  I don't need any more information.
[01:49:19]  Yep.
[01:49:20]  So what they do want, not more information.
[01:49:23]  Nope.
[01:49:23]  But an independent investigation.
[01:49:25]  Oh, everybody loves a good investigation.
[01:49:26]  We got to get to the bottom of it.
[01:49:27]  Independently.
[01:49:28]  More than half of Americans in major polls want some type of real investigation.
[01:49:32]  What would you like to see?
[01:49:34]  I would like to see the same thing.
[01:49:35]  I think it's got to be headed by, if this is possible, some neutral investigative committee.
[01:49:48]  I don't know exactly how to establish that.
[01:49:53]  Well, the problem is, you know, you would know more about that than I would.
[01:49:56]  Well, the problem is they tried to, again, appoint Henry Kissinger and they called him independent.
[01:50:00]  It was like appointing one of Janet Reno's deputies to investigate Waco and calling it independent.
[01:50:05]  What would be independent?
[01:50:07]  Maybe just randomly pick 20 engineers or something and then draft them for a committee and then make sure no one tried to intimidate the witnesses.
[01:50:15]  I mean, maybe just a jury of the peers.
[01:50:18]  What if we use like retired political foreign nationals?
[01:50:24]  What if we use experts that don't have any ties whatsoever to this administration?
[01:50:29]  Well, Michael Meetscher, a number three in the Blair government, says that he believes the government may be behind it.
[01:50:34]  And then we have a couple of former German defense minister saying the same thing.
[01:50:39]  And a bunch of other Russian and other foreign leaders are saying the same thing.
[01:50:44]  Over 80% of the French public and major polls say our government did it.
[01:50:48]  So, boy, we got foreigners to do it.
[01:50:50]  I think they come to the same conclusion we have.
[01:50:51]  Foreigners.
[01:50:52]  But I'm just saying, as far as people that don't have a stake or don't have an interest or don't aren't controlled.
[01:50:57]  Oh, I agree with you.
[01:50:58]  I agree with you.
[01:50:59]  I'm just saying that they would come to the same conclusion.
[01:51:01]  Yeah.
[01:51:02]  That's stupid.
[01:51:03]  Yep.
[01:51:03]  But it's amazing how Alex's mind works.
[01:51:06]  They're talking about how they could put together a neutral, unbiased committee to investigate 9-11.
[01:51:11]  And all of the people Alex can come up with to include are people who agree with his conclusion already.
[01:51:16]  The most biased people doesn't want an unbiased committee.
[01:51:20]  He wants a committee that's pre-biased towards his conclusion.
[01:51:24]  And that's actually really key to understanding him.
[01:51:26]  Yep.
[01:51:27]  And actually, unbiased neutral jury might not always convict Alex, but they would never be persuaded by the arguments he'd be able to make in a formal setting.
[01:51:36]  And actually, unbiased neutral committee wouldn't reach the conclusion that, hey, maybe loose change figured 9-11 out.
[01:51:43]  Nailed it.
[01:51:44]  That conclusion is only coming from a rigged, highly biased committee, which is what Alex actually wants.
[01:51:50]  He just insists on calling it unbiased because it sounds better, and he's an idiot.
[01:51:55]  Yeah.
[01:51:57]  God, I couldn't get this image out of my head whenever he was like, oh, we should get a bunch of foreign nationals to do it who have no.
[01:52:03]  I had this like it's like an Oceans movie.
[01:52:07]  I had this moment where Osama bin Laden turns around and like removes his mustache and you're like, ah, it was him.
[01:52:13]  And he's leading the commission.
[01:52:15]  God, that'd be great.
[01:52:16]  Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't be great to have Osama leading the investigation.
[01:52:20]  No, but it would be a very funny image.
[01:52:22]  And don't get me wrong, I don't think Kissinger's great either.
[01:52:25]  No, I agree.
[01:52:25]  I think these are both bad options.
[01:52:27]  bad dudes but i i love the idea that alex the fucking americana guy is like let's get uh yeah you know what charlie sheen actor You have made a wonderful point about foreign nationals deciding what happened with our government.
[01:52:42]  I don't think you can sincerely want foreign nationals to do an investigation if you also call them foreigners in the same sentence.
[01:52:52]  And so Charlie's idea is retired, like public servants of foreign countries.
[01:52:57]  People who are just servants of all.
[01:52:59]  And Alex is, he's like, okay, I know a few of them.
[01:53:02]  And then he remembers a trivia piece that 80% of the French believe that 9-11 was an inside job.
[01:53:09]  So what?
[01:53:09]  Now we just want a jury of the French?
[01:53:10]  Yeah, let's just let the French.
[01:53:13]  They gave us the Statue of Liberty, and now they're going to free us from 9-11 conspiracies.
[01:53:17]  Thank you, the French.
[01:53:19]  The fun thing is just like thoughts like that reveal how non-sequitur his thinking is.
[01:53:28]  You don't want the fucking French?
[01:53:30]  I don't even know how you could get to a point where you're like, hey, 80% of the French think it's an inside job as support for anything.
[01:53:37]  Yeah.
[01:53:37]  Anything.
[01:53:38]  Except for cheese.
[01:53:39]  Wow.
[01:53:40]  You don't like cheese, though.
[01:53:41]  I'm not a cheese guy.
[01:53:43]  I tried cheese in Paris.
[01:53:44]  Yeah, let's not get into it.
[01:53:46]  So Alex, the first hour is interviewing Charlie Sheen.
[01:53:50]  Yeah.
[01:53:51]  And it's basically, as I've described, you know, he's ambivalent to take responsibility for saying too much stuff, but also he's on board.
[01:54:00]  He likes Alex.
[01:54:02]  He is into these conspiracy leanings in a way that is so sadly unaware of how much of a consequence this will have.
[01:54:13]  I know.
[01:54:15]  But yeah, you shouldn't do this in the first hour.
[01:54:19]  It is so strange.
[01:54:22]  It's like, right, you're seeing somebody on that street over there, right?
[01:54:29]  And you just know because five years later they get hit by a bus.
[01:54:32]  You know that you can see a five-year-from-now bus coming.
[01:54:36]  And you're like, you just got to move out of the way, man.
[01:54:39]  But there's nothing you can do.
[01:54:40]  Much like the people from the time tunnel on the Titanic.
[01:54:43]  You can do nothing.
[01:54:44]  You can't do anything to change the past.
[01:54:46]  Yeah.
[01:54:47]  Unless you were already supposed to have done that.
[01:54:49]  That sucks.
[01:54:50]  Yeah.
[01:54:51]  Anyway, you shouldn't do this in the first hour because what do you do for the rest of the show?
[01:54:56]  Three hours of calling.
[01:54:58]  Whatever.
[01:54:59]  Whatever.
[01:55:00]  So at the second hour, Alex is, I mean, he's riding high on the fact that he interviewed Charlie Sheen, but also like, everything feels down.
[01:55:08]  Yeah.
[01:55:09]  But it turns out some of their stations didn't air all of them.
[01:55:14]  Well, you know what happened?
[01:55:16]  Our AM and FM conspiracy that listened off of the satellites were able to hear the whole Charlie Sheen interview.
[01:55:26]  But 15 minutes towards the end of the interview, about 45 after last hour, all of the streams, and I mean, there are a bunch of streams.
[01:55:34]  I've got servers, the network has servers.
[01:55:37]  It just maxed out and crashed.
[01:55:38]  So what I'm going to do is, that interview is so important as more and more prominent people go public.
[01:55:44]  I'm just going to air that interview again next hour.
[01:55:47]  We're getting a lot of requests, and phones are ringing off the hook of the network.
[01:55:50]  Yeah, they're just going to air it again in the third hour.
[01:55:53]  Amazing.
[01:55:55]  God, that's the type of shit that only being your own boss is only available to you.
[01:56:00]  Yeah.
[01:56:00]  You know?
[01:56:01]  And it also is like a reflection of we had a famous guy on.
[01:56:05]  Like, I don't think it's a terrible interview, but it's also not an interview that illuminates anything.
[01:56:12]  Right.
[01:56:13]  It doesn't bring to light any new information.
[01:56:15]  It is just like, we got fucking Charlie Sheen on the show.
[01:56:18]  And that's why it's re-aired.
[01:56:19]  That's why people are drawn to it and why Alex wants to make the most of it.
[01:56:24]  Not because we're actually breaking through anything.
[01:56:28]  It is, it is, I mean, ironically, it's like if the doors open with Break On Through and then did Break on Through as an encore, you know, it's like, you know, why.
[01:56:38]  You know why.
[01:56:38]  Yeah.
[01:56:39]  Yeah.
[01:56:39]  So he plays it in the third hour, and the second hour is kind of like waiting for that to happen.
[01:56:46]  Yeah.
[01:56:47]  But Alex does say something that got me excited.
[01:56:50]  I snuck out last night after work and saw V for Vendetta.
[01:56:53]  My wife here's like, oh my God.
[01:56:58]  I'm going to be caught in my own mouth.
[01:57:01]  I snuck off and watched it last night, and it was good.
[01:57:05]  People said it was Illuminati, and I'd read some of the different synopses that were out there about it.
[01:57:10]  And I've said those were dishonest.
[01:57:12]  I mean, I have questions about the Matrix.
[01:57:15]  I have questions about some of the Illuminati things that are in it.
[01:57:17]  Okay.
[01:57:17]  Especially in the third one.
[01:57:20]  Okay.
[01:57:21]  What is it?
[01:57:22]  Matrix Revolutions or Revelations?
[01:57:24]  I forget.
[01:57:27]  But the Wachowski brothers with V for Vendetta, I know why the media is attacking it.
[01:57:31]  I mean, it shows the government carrying out terror attacks with a bird flu type weapon to get martial law to go after their political enemies and to sell the pharmaceutical that is the cure for it.
[01:57:47]  Which is what's happening in our real world.
[01:57:50]  So I got excited because it's like, okay, another fucking shot at a movie review.
[01:57:53]  Let's do it.
[01:57:54]  We're going to fucking get V for he just saw V for Vendetta last night.
[01:57:58]  That's like that's earthquake levels of his career.
[01:58:02]  That is what we are here for.
[01:58:04]  He might as well have a tattoo of a guy Fox Max.
[01:58:06]  Absolutely.
[01:58:08]  That movie is important.
[01:58:10]  Yeah.
[01:58:11]  He does not really talk much more about it.
[01:58:13]  God damn it.
[01:58:14]  I'm hoping that maybe it's coming.
[01:58:18]  Maybe the V for Vendetta review is coming outside of this little bit of stray.
[01:58:24]  Hey, it's got good messages in the prologue to how the movie sets up the world that it exists in.
[01:58:31]  Yeah.
[01:58:32]  Yeah.
[01:58:33]  I was really kind of hoping because I don't really remember.

=== V for Vendetta Review (02:57) ===

[01:58:35]  Like, I was trying to remember what exactly happens, and now I don't have the full thing.
[01:58:39]  You know, I've got the vibe of V for Vendetta.
[01:58:42]  Natalie Portman.
[01:58:43]  I've got Hugo weeping, shaving her head.
[01:58:45]  And Stephen Fry is a show host who's gay.
[01:58:49]  Yeah.
[01:58:49]  And he has a bolt of courage at the end, and then they just murder him.
[01:58:53]  Yep.
[01:58:53]  And then, yeah, Natalie Portman becomes Guy Fox's acolyte.
[01:58:59]  Right.
[01:58:59]  And they blow up the powder plot.
[01:59:02]  Remember the investigator.
[01:59:06]  I should rewatch it.
[01:59:07]  And I would have if Alex reviewed it.
[01:59:09]  Yeah.
[01:59:11]  So I make this promise to you.
[01:59:12]  Yeah.
[01:59:13]  To the American people.
[01:59:14]  If he reviews it, I will re-watch it.
[01:59:16]  All right.
[01:59:17]  I'll probably re-watch it anyway.
[01:59:18]  Yeah, probably.
[01:59:20]  Alex reviewing it will trigger a rewatch.
[01:59:22]  Okay.
[01:59:22]  All right.
[01:59:23]  For sure.
[01:59:24]  Yeah.
[01:59:25]  God.
[01:59:26]  Anyway, he just replays the show.
[01:59:28]  We've had so many, so many problems with him just following through on a movie review.
[01:59:33]  Well, two in the last two 2006 episodes.
[01:59:36]  Right.
[01:59:36]  That's brutal.
[01:59:37]  Scanner Darkley and V for Vendetta.
[01:59:38]  We're owed to two that are important.
[01:59:42]  Yeah.
[01:59:42]  High up on the list.
[01:59:44]  And I think have a large potential for him to misread in interesting ways.
[01:59:48]  Right.
[01:59:48]  I know more about Oblivion from him.
[01:59:50]  Yes.
[01:59:51]  But Oblivion doesn't mean shit.
[01:59:53]  No.
[01:59:54]  But Scanner Darkly and V for Vendetta, huge on the list.
[01:59:57]  Yeah.
[01:59:57]  Oblivion and Elysium.
[01:59:59]  Yeah.
[01:59:59]  Like.
[02:00:00]  It doesn't mean shit.
[02:00:01]  Not really.
[02:00:03]  So I will pray that we get this V for Vendetta review.
[02:00:08]  Absolutely.
[02:00:09]  But I can't promise anything.
[02:00:11]  I am but a man.
[02:00:12]  You can't promise it.
[02:00:13]  No.
[02:00:13]  No, you can't.
[02:00:14]  I wish I had a V for Vendetta quote that I could twist into being about whether or not you get the review that you want.
[02:00:23]  Yeah.
[02:00:23]  I was waiting for you, Mr. Review.
[02:00:26]  Oh, God.
[02:00:27]  No.
[02:00:28]  I would bet.
[02:00:29]  Okay.
[02:00:29]  Here's what I bet.
[02:00:30]  I bet you could find out what episode he does a review of V for Vendetta on somewhere.
[02:00:37]  Yeah.
[02:00:37]  But I don't know which one it will be, which year it is.
[02:00:40]  I don't know, but it could be at any time.
[02:00:42]  Yeah, but that's cheating.
[02:00:43]  I don't want to.
[02:00:43]  No, I know.
[02:00:44]  I don't want to cheapen this.
[02:00:45]  That's what I'm saying.
[02:00:45]  I don't want to find it accidentally, much like we did with this Charlie Sheen interview.
[02:00:51]  But that's what I'm saying about this review, right?
[02:00:54]  Is that it could really come like two years from now.
[02:00:57]  Yeah.
[02:00:57]  We don't know.
[02:00:58]  Yeah.
[02:00:59]  It's a thief in the night when those movie reviews finally come.
[02:01:03]  Yeah.
[02:01:03]  And none of us are supposed to know.
[02:01:04]  No.
[02:01:06]  We see through it.
[02:01:07]  Yeah.
[02:01:08]  So we'll be back, hopefully, with movie time.
[02:01:12]  But until then, we have a website.
[02:01:14]  Indeed, we do.
[02:01:14]  It's knowledgefight.com.
[02:01:15]  Yep, we'll be back.
[02:01:16]  But until then, I'm Neo and Leo Mdz Clark.
[02:01:18]  I am the mysterious professor.
[02:01:21]  Yeah, woo, yeah, woo.
[02:01:23]  And now here comes the sex robots.
[02:01:25]  Andy in Kansas, you're on the air.
[02:01:27]  Thanks for holding.
[02:01:29]  Hello, Alex.
[02:01:30]  I'm a fish Tim Color.
[02:01:31]  I'm a huge fan.
[02:01:32]  I love your work.
[02:01:33]  I love you.