0:00

It's too am

0:02

in Drop City and you're listening

0:04

Tonight Call. Hello,

0:14

and welcome to Night Call, a call in

0:16

show for our dystopian reality. I'm

0:19

Molly Lambert and with me are Tess

0:21

Lynch and Emily Oshida. We're

0:24

gonna talk about some cults

0:26

today and some fireworks

0:29

everyone's favorite. I

0:31

feel like the conspiracy theory is whether it's a conspiracy

0:34

theory, the conspiracy theory du

0:36

jure. We

0:39

got a lot of good calls and emails about

0:42

fireworks, So thanks to everybody

0:44

who sent in your your

0:46

Bang Bang discourse. We're gonna

0:48

get into it in the second half of the show. Before

0:51

we do, let's take a night

0:53

call about Drop City. Hi.

0:56

Then Dennor

0:59

Colorado and I was just listening

1:01

to your latest episode and we're talking about

1:05

biodome and Spaceship Earth, but also

1:08

Buck Myster Cooler and

1:10

um My I was listening to in my art

1:13

CEO and my studio mate actually

1:16

started one of the first artists

1:19

commune in the country in the sixties

1:22

based off of Buck Monster Pooler's

1:25

um like geodesic

1:27

domes. What they did is

1:29

they bought a piece of land in Trinidad,

1:32

Colorado UM

1:34

and they built a bunch of a

1:36

bunch of geodesic domes

1:38

in the middle of like this kind of a plot of lands

1:42

um and they built it out of like just wood and like

1:44

car tops that they bought for like penny.

1:47

Um. It was super cool and

1:49

I don't know if y'all would be interested in looking it up.

1:51

It's filled drop the City, Um.

1:54

Yeah, it was like based off then they did

1:56

a bunch of direct stuff those usually create shells

1:59

um and most of them left Boulder

2:02

after the hippies kind of stuck over drops in

2:04

like the late sixties. Love

2:07

the podcast all Right, Drop

2:09

City, Drop City, USA. Did

2:12

you guys know about Drop City already? I

2:14

did know about Drop City because I

2:16

read this TC Boil novel about

2:18

it called Drop City. You

2:21

also read that novel? I did you

2:23

lent it to me? And I never gave it back, and I said, go,

2:26

Yeah. It came out in two thousand and three when

2:28

we were in college, and they definitely read it. Um.

2:31

And what I remember about the TC Boil

2:34

novel is that a lot of it

2:36

is about sort of the breakdown the

2:39

things that didn't work great in Drop City,

2:41

which, like a lot of communes, was

2:43

the balance of labor between the genders.

2:47

That's the big you know, the problems that communes

2:50

have as we think about how to form the night Call

2:52

commune. Division

2:55

of labor. Division of labor is a big

2:57

one. They're super white for the most

2:59

part, all these these communes. That was

3:01

something I also noticed in the Spaceship

3:04

Earth documentary. Again, they're

3:06

all theater companies. Also, they

3:08

were like, um, some of them are film students

3:10

from the University

3:13

of Kansas, which my mom

3:15

was the film student at the University of Kansas.

3:18

She missed the opportunity to go to Drop City

3:21

like by a few years. So yeah, I want to say

3:23

Drop City has a has a pretty good reputation

3:27

compared to some communes. Well

3:29

because it ended so quickly, I think, right,

3:31

it ended quickly, but it also didn't end like tragically.

3:35

Yes, and I did you guys

3:37

know why. I didn't know why it was called drops

3:39

City. Didn't remember if this was addressed in the novel.

3:41

But um, the four co founders,

3:44

I think, when they were still students, started

3:46

painting rocks and then they would drop

3:48

them out of windows to see

3:50

the reaction of people who were walking

3:52

by, not to hit them, but just to be like something

3:55

fell out of the sky. Maybe don't use a

3:57

rock if you're going to do that. Um. But

3:59

they called them drop art or droppings,

4:02

which was like a play on happenings but

4:04

also works in its own funny

4:06

way. Um. But yeah, they

4:09

made these really cool looking domes. It's fun to look

4:11

them up. And uh, I guess like,

4:13

yeah, when the when there was like a festival

4:16

there, uh, and it attracted

4:18

a ton of people. One of one of the founders

4:20

in particular was just like, oh, this place is

4:22

over and left. Um, and

4:25

now I think it's it's pretty demolished.

4:27

I think in the late nineties. Well,

4:29

apparently it cost four hundred and fifty

4:31

dollars for the land. That's

4:35

the communit I can get behind. That's somebody

4:39

else said it was seven hundred and fifty

4:41

dollars and that they both agree

4:43

that they paid money by selling some weed.

4:46

Of course one does. It's resourceful.

4:49

There's also a really good documentary I'm definitely

4:51

mentioned it before called Murder Mountain about

4:54

Humble that basically starts with

4:56

intentional communities and then leads

4:58

to kind of terrifying

5:02

meth amphetamine crime

5:04

syndicate on a TV stuff.

5:07

Murder Mountain was very depressing to

5:09

me. I mean, yeah, it starts off being like

5:11

we're in Humble, We're gonna like grow some weed,

5:14

and like, well, it shows how the weed growing

5:16

industry is part of the reason that a lot of these

5:18

communes started also because they were like, we need

5:20

a farm where we can grow weed, and

5:23

Humble was it was like they established

5:25

the idea of doing that in Humble and

5:27

then basically like drug

5:30

runners got involved and took it over and

5:32

ran out the hippies. So wait, actually,

5:35

what's the what is the Buckminster Fuller connection

5:37

other than having the geodes syc domes, that's

5:39

like the main one there were. It was like this

5:41

comes up in Spaceship Earth too. It's basically like the whole

5:43

Earth catalog was out. There were

5:46

a bunch of these books out at the same time that

5:48

were like how to live off the land, how

5:50

to build your own house, um

5:53

sustainably and cheaply, and

5:56

the Buckminster Fuller domes became

5:59

like the the easiest kind

6:01

of like way to do apes.

6:04

Just love Buckminster Fuller. Um.

6:08

Yeah, it was like they say here. It was also like

6:11

John Cage, you know, they were all into

6:14

conceptual living. I

6:16

just like the name drop City. It reminds me

6:19

of slab City. Also,

6:21

these are like very good apocalyptic

6:23

city names. But Drop City just sounds

6:25

like a place, like a like a place for

6:27

spies to just do dead drops. Um,

6:32

it's a very cool name for a commune.

6:35

Yeah, they could have gone with Dropping City

6:37

and I still would have been a fan this

6:40

this whole thing though, it does it just

6:42

the Colorado connection and

6:44

our many hours or at

6:46

least minutes that we've dedicated to Denver

6:50

and the airport there,

6:52

and I feel like there's been a few different

6:54

Colorado things. It makes me feel like eventually

6:56

we should do some sort of ranking of

6:58

the states by UM level

7:01

of night call for sure,

7:03

UM, because I actually think that Colorado

7:05

would be up there. It's a it's

7:07

a deceptively weird state. Uh,

7:11

but I would be interested to see how how it

7:13

shook out. Well, I

7:15

think UM as our resident expert

7:17

in like the weird, the weird

7:20

Pacific Northwest and surrounding regions.

7:23

What's Colorado the Rockies call

7:25

it? Yeah, it's a mountain states, mountain mountain

7:27

time. I feel like people just don't

7:29

know them about much about all those states because they're

7:32

like the last ones well, yeah, I think

7:34

I think it was on WHO Weekly where

7:36

they ranked the time zones by who

7:38

were them, and Mountain time was like the

7:40

most definitive who of the

7:43

time. So absolutely nobody

7:45

knows. Question is

7:47

mount what is mount like? What time is it now? In

7:49

Mountain It's just one hour ahead. One

7:52

hour ahead Central is two hours,

7:55

at Eastern is three hours. We should

7:57

have opened this episode by

7:59

saying that by putting us in mountain

8:01

time, this is why it's a night call

8:04

place. Night

8:06

call exists in mountain time for

8:08

sure. Well, yeah, this

8:11

is a good lead into our another

8:14

uh topic that Test and I

8:16

wanted to talk about,

8:18

which is another story about

8:21

a intentional organization

8:24

that was published on Medium.

8:26

Yes, so this was mediums one zero

8:29

UM site, the arm of Medium

8:31

that is called one zero published this really

8:34

long and fascinating article

8:36

about the Daylife Army, which I think

8:38

was previously known as Temple, but

8:41

it also could be pronounced Temple because

8:43

one of the things that this cult does is

8:46

it has reinvented language um

8:48

to replace certain vowels with us

8:51

and wise, and they call it English

8:53

um, which makes for it makes for a

8:55

fun read. A lot of stories

8:58

about cults. I got so far

9:00

down along the line before I was like, maybe

9:02

this is a bad idea. So it's

9:04

based it's like anti racism,

9:07

like you know, overthrowing the patriarchy

9:09

capitalism is terrible. And yeah, so

9:12

it follows this one guy named Matthew who was recruited

9:14

into the cult when he was eighteen, and this cult

9:16

started on weird Facebook with basically

9:18

just ship posting. Yeah, it's a ship posting

9:21

cult, and they like openly

9:23

acknowledged that they're a cult constantly.

9:26

They're not like pretending not

9:28

to be there. All of their stuff is tagged with

9:30

like Jim Jones, People's temple

9:34

and family, like

9:37

like we're doing a performance

9:39

art piece about cults that like happens

9:41

to maybe also be a cult. Obviously

9:44

they don't think it actually is a cult,

9:46

or if they do, they're not admitting

9:48

it. But it's run by

9:51

two charismatic leaders. One

9:53

of them is named whiz L otherwise

9:56

known as Eban or Evan Carlson Um,

9:59

and the other one is Yeah.

10:02

So this is the question. It's stylized capital

10:04

K, lower case oh, capital A, so

10:07

it's either co A or CoA

10:09

And she's the sister of TV on the radio's

10:12

Kit Malone and her other brother is

10:14

also a DJ. Like she comes

10:16

from a very high achieving family

10:18

and she they both seem

10:20

very charismatic. They're like they

10:23

look very like hipster like there,

10:25

Yeah, that's the thing is it's like it's a hipster cult,

10:27

but like self consciously it's a hipster cult,

10:30

but it's just sort of presented as being

10:33

like a hippie anti racist

10:35

organization. So this is something

10:37

is this current or like it's the

10:39

kind of timeline that like when did it kind

10:41

of started? Probably like when Trump

10:43

got elected, So I think, well, I

10:45

think it may have even been earlier. I don't know.

10:48

There, I think it started around but

10:50

that was when the guy who they follow in

10:52

this story, Matthew, he got involved with it. He

10:54

was involved with it for like five years, I think.

10:57

So she so CoA

10:59

was really is a Jehovah's witness. And

11:02

there's like a point in the end of the story where they talked

11:04

to her brother cap alone and

11:07

ask him for comment about like his sister

11:09

being a call leader, and he's like, well,

11:11

you know, we were raised in like a very

11:13

oppressive religious atmosphere,

11:15

and like sometimes people who have trauma

11:17

from something like that like replicated in an

11:20

attempt to like, you know,

11:22

deal with it, but he was like I love my sister,

11:24

and like, yeah, he seems super cool.

11:26

What's fucked up about it is that it's

11:29

like it presents itself as like

11:31

a black female supremacist

11:35

like religion. At first,

11:37

it's like, you know, we're

11:39

here to like uplift black women, and like

11:41

you should you know, white people, like just

11:44

give us all your money to cleanse yourself

11:46

of your sins. But then there's also

11:48

racist stuff about black women from whizz

11:50

l, who is a white guy

11:53

who is co as partner, so like

11:55

it really feels like they're in an abusive

11:58

relationship and he's

12:00

manipulating her and they're both

12:02

manipulating all these young people who

12:05

get into it because it sounds really good.

12:07

It's that because they're basically promised that,

12:10

you know, some Matthew had like an

12:12

electronic music hobby that he

12:14

wanted to you know, like make money

12:16

off of, and they were like, oh, we can market

12:18

and they seem so savvy because their ship

12:21

posting and they're promising like drop City,

12:23

you know, and they're saying like oh, it's a cult,

12:25

but not really. It's like an artist collective

12:28

and we're going to get some land and everyone's

12:30

going to like make their art and we're all gonna

12:32

like end white supremacy.

12:35

Does ship posting make people seem

12:38

credible in your like,

12:41

does that make it feel like you're like credibly

12:44

um ironic about

12:46

your intentions or like, what

12:48

the deal? I think when they when they really

12:50

started appealing to people, it was that they

12:52

were so incredibly online.

12:55

They seem to have a sense of humor about what they

12:57

were doing, and they they point

12:59

out in the article that weird Facebook was kind of blowing

13:01

up at that point because it was like the demise of tumbling

13:04

weird Facebook. I

13:06

don't know what weird Cato

13:08

is real. It's real Molly, Molly

13:11

and I am. Back when Molly was on Facebook, we

13:13

were in a weird Facebook group

13:15

that was like all about disgusting food

13:17

and the tub chef. Yeah, tub Chef, which

13:19

was super I mean, there's all of these weird top chefs

13:22

could be a cult if it wanted to. Okay,

13:24

one thing is I didn't realize about it is it's a parent.

13:26

It's a play on top chefs. Yeah, sure,

13:30

but that's clear. It's

13:32

it's just I think it's like food

13:34

you would make in a bathtub, but

13:36

it crunches way off. Though

13:39

it started as that, but then in true weird

13:41

Facebook fashion, it just evolved

13:43

to be like any kind of weird food.

13:45

There were weird food brackets and you

13:48

know, that went on and on. Like then my friend,

13:50

my friend Anne, who was very involved in the

13:52

founding of tub chef and like other

13:55

uh weird Facebook groups,

13:57

eventually like weird Facebook

14:00

and tub Chef got invaded by norms

14:03

and then it's like she didn't want to be part

14:05

of it anymore because it got to learn

14:08

trying to or just like people were doing

14:10

things that weren't tub Chef. They were like

14:12

posting food that wasn't actually weird,

14:14

or just memes that have nothing to do with the theme.

14:17

There's also one called scrub Chef

14:19

that's all stumped memes about I'm

14:21

gonna I'm gonna throw out a

14:24

hypothesis. I don't think the weird

14:27

blank about the internet can

14:29

be truly weird if you know the person who's

14:31

involved with it in real life, Like I think

14:33

it deludes the purity of the online

14:35

experience if you actually if you're just friends with somebody

14:37

and they're doing a goroof online. I

14:40

think it's different than like I stumbled across

14:42

this weird thing on Facebook

14:44

at three in the morning because i couldn't get to sleep,

14:47

and now I'm subscribed to this thing called tub

14:49

chef. And these are definitely like

14:51

a group of artists. It's also

14:53

people affiliated with like everything is terrible.

14:56

It's people who's like, it's like weird Midwest

14:59

and their stall in trade is like replicating

15:02

that weird finding something weird on the

15:04

Internet or TV at three am,

15:06

feeling um, which is the

15:08

aesthetic of weird Internet. I guess,

15:11

um, here's where the very basic

15:13

by platform. But yes, anyway, go on,

15:16

we'll get to the really bad. Yeah. Yeah. So

15:20

basically they promised people, you know,

15:23

like if they promised

15:25

them the basically like getting

15:28

out of what's the pain matrix and getting

15:30

into the pleasure matrix. And the pleasure matrix

15:32

is to shed all of the like terrible

15:35

things about life and to shed

15:37

your what you've like learned from your

15:39

parents and from school that's kind of like

15:41

you know, giving you the perception that the systems

15:43

in place are good, and to enter the pleasure matrix,

15:46

which also placed a big emphasis on

15:48

masturbation and like sex, magic and

15:50

stuff, and by

15:53

doing that to become kind of enlightened

15:55

and then also to like live off the land. But

15:58

they also had some weird abusive

16:00

stuff even before things did get really bad. That's

16:03

also another classic commune issue. Yes,

16:06

I think that was also an issue at Drop City.

16:09

Yes. Yeah, they made everyone like scrub

16:11

the toy. They had like really exacting standards

16:13

of cleanliness and like personal hygiene,

16:16

and that extended to like dietary

16:18

prescriptions for individual members like this

16:20

one guy couldn't use ice cubes in his water.

16:23

He wasn't allowed anything sugary, but that was just

16:25

for him. Wait, I

16:27

feel like we zipped over the part where they actually

16:29

did make a commune. Did

16:31

that happen? They started? Okay,

16:33

so they recruited online, and they recruited

16:36

people who I guess you know, are lonely,

16:39

you know, people looking for guidance on the internet.

16:42

Um, and then they were saying like here's this, like

16:44

we're going to teach you. We're gonna un

16:46

teach you everything that like you've learned, you

16:48

know, sort of like Q and on, but like

16:52

like seemingly like an online

16:54

scene, but it's just unusual

16:56

for that stuff to get into meat

16:58

space. Well it was it was

17:00

half and half for a while. A lot of people are

17:02

only involved online. There's and there's a very

17:04

small group of people who were involved

17:06

in this at all, and it's at its peak it had only

17:08

a few dozen members and now I think

17:11

there are five. Um. So it wasn't

17:13

everyone living, cohabitating or anything.

17:16

It was like a select few who decided

17:18

to kind of take the leap. And they started

17:20

by trying to like monetize internet

17:22

advertising basically, which as we

17:24

all know, is impossible, but what

17:26

a what a cult for our times? We

17:29

will not be growing weed, will be selling.

17:33

So they would recruit people and be like, you have to

17:35

post ads for Temple and recruit

17:38

people for Temple, and that's how you like pay

17:40

off your debt to Temple. UM

17:42

and giving Temple money is washing,

17:45

is called washing. It's like you're washing yourself

17:47

of the guilt you have for like being

17:50

in this capitalist, white supremacist,

17:52

misogynist society. So

17:56

some people got so into it that then they were recruited

17:58

to be like I R r L soldiers

18:02

and join up with Temple

18:04

in real life. And so they did get

18:07

some property in Washington, but

18:10

that was while his parents house. Okay,

18:13

so Whizzel. Also Whizzle is

18:15

related to a guy who's in the band Earth, which

18:18

is also interesting. It's a very like you

18:20

know, indie rock adjacent cult.

18:24

And his dad is like

18:26

some famous objectivists, so

18:29

he went to like the ain Rand school

18:32

as a child. He

18:34

was like raised by an objectivist,

18:36

so his whole thing was like, fuck,

18:38

my objectivist dad, I'm going to get into

18:41

like collectivism, but like not

18:43

really because he

18:45

still wants to be in

18:47

charge of everything. And the washed money was buying

18:50

like expensive cars, you know what I mean. The

18:52

washed money was not going toward any

18:54

kind of great right. It's kind of like wild

18:56

wild countries, give up all your earthly

18:58

possessions but also give them to us,

19:01

um And so they kept

19:04

trying to kind of get in like rich people, people

19:06

who they thought were going to provide like a big windfall,

19:09

you know who they could like. It's very Manson

19:11

family too. It was a lot of like

19:14

call your parents and demand money because

19:16

they taught you all of these stupid ideas in the

19:18

first place, so they need to give money

19:20

to you that then you can give to us

19:22

because we're teaching we're giving you a real education.

19:25

Yeah, And and the parents were like, no,

19:28

I won't do that. Yeah. So there was like

19:30

some guy, one of the guys they talked to who they brought

19:32

in. Um. He they were like expecting

19:34

his parents to give all this money, and then when they didn't,

19:37

they like essentially

19:39

forced him into sex trafficking

19:43

and started doing that

19:45

with other members of the group as sort

19:47

of their new plan to make money. We'll

19:49

hold up with the way that they did that.

19:52

First of all, they suggested that one of the members

19:55

who identified as straight have sex

19:57

with a man. But the sex,

20:00

the sex trafficking thing was because

20:02

the members were forbidden from getting

20:04

any kind of a job because that would be

20:07

a capitalism. You know, you can't do that,

20:09

that would be a capitalism. Interesting

20:11

time, anyway, that would be a capitalism. Don't

20:13

do a capitalism. But anyway, they were like, you can't

20:15

have a job, but you need to pay five

20:17

hundred dollars a month or whatever to stay

20:20

with us. So the people were basically

20:22

they had to slightly kind of sneak

20:25

out of the cabin and find a way to get

20:27

money without having a job. So

20:29

a lot of them were, you know, driving for ride

20:31

shares, but it became hard to conceal these

20:33

things. So that's why eventually they started

20:36

doing escort work. Also because this

20:38

was like you know, they had a lot of things

20:40

of like the pearl divine or

20:42

whatever, which is basically drinking

20:45

jizz was a popular thing,

20:48

one of the big sacraments. Um, let's

20:51

take a break for an ad and then we'll

20:53

finish up the saga and come come

20:55

into fireworks when we return. Welcome

21:11

back. We were just discussing Temple

21:14

a k Daylife Army, and we've gotten into

21:16

some of the darker stuff with

21:18

it. UM. But I think

21:21

what what kind of needs to be clarified

21:23

maybe a little bit is that nobody was

21:25

really forced into sex trafficking,

21:28

um, but they were given very

21:31

few options to operate under

21:33

the rules of this cult without doing it.

21:35

It's like extremely Manson family

21:37

because that was a Manson family tactic. It's

21:39

like a lot of cults tactic is like, you know, show

21:42

of loyalty by being like do

21:44

something you wouldn't normally do. Manson

21:46

had all of the male members

21:49

of the Manson family have sex with each other to like prove

21:51

that, you know, they were free of ego or

21:53

whatever, but it's totally to like

21:56

demonstrate that you will do anything,

21:59

you know, whatever it takes. So then

22:01

they started using Grinder and Craigslist

22:05

and stuff. Not Craigslist, you can't do that anymore,

22:07

but Tinder hook up sites

22:10

to to to do dates

22:12

and right, they wouldn't let them have any

22:14

other jobs, and people were like secretly getting

22:16

door dash jobs and and rideshare

22:19

jobs. Yeah, and like the

22:21

accommodations kept getting kind

22:23

of less nice. Like at first they were

22:25

at Whizzl's dad's

22:28

house, and then they were at some

22:30

other like nice airbnb's with the pool

22:33

and stuff, and then they were in like a motel

22:35

six, and then they were just like living out

22:37

of cars and camping. And at a certain

22:39

point they added like a seven level thing

22:42

to it that is very scientology,

22:45

where it's like, you know, you're supposed

22:47

to move up through the levels and like get rid

22:49

of all your baggage, um, but

22:51

nobody can actually move up to the top level except

22:54

for them. So anyway,

22:56

it kind of it resolves

22:58

the article. Resolve of the cult is not in

23:01

any way kind of resolved. But the member who was

23:03

being who was telling this story to medium,

23:05

has since left and started an Instagram

23:08

called pain Matrix where he out

23:10

he has all these videos, um and pictures

23:12

from when he was in the cult, and he kind of breaks it down.

23:15

Several members have anti

23:17

Temple instagrams now and tell

23:20

us about the Instagram life of Temple.

23:22

So I was trying to find Temple stuff online.

23:25

I looked on Instagram and

23:27

found both followers and X followers,

23:30

and they're like basically directly

23:32

addressing all of the stuff in this article

23:35

on their Instagram right now, sort of just like

23:37

making fun of it. It's very just like Internet

23:40

e It's like everything's a troll.

23:43

Like even the people who are out

23:45

at it, they still think of it as being

23:47

a troll or or they're

23:50

being out of it, is a is a troll or

23:53

no, like just that, like they respond to

23:55

everything to criticism like trolls

23:57

just you know, which

24:00

is like the least helpful way to like understand

24:02

what's going on with something, especially

24:05

if you're like if there could be something serious

24:07

like people being in danger

24:09

with it. That's what I'm saying. Like the guy

24:12

like whizz L just posts like you know,

24:14

his whole vibe is like they all dressed in white, and

24:16

his whole thing is like looking like a creepy

24:18

like you know, hipster cult

24:21

leader guy um and he

24:23

tags his photos with like you

24:25

know yeah, like people's temple and stuff.

24:27

Just like it's very It's

24:30

that thing where it's like if I'm being self aware of

24:32

how fucked up it is, then like yeah,

24:35

you know. There's

24:37

a part also there's a quote I think it's from Ka

24:39

in the piece where she says like any

24:42

attention on the internet is good attention,

24:44

yes, yeah, which really

24:47

I mean again, she's also very charismatic

24:49

and like, you know, you

24:52

you understand how people got

24:54

drawn into this and also how they got

24:56

drawn to her because she presents herself

24:58

as like, you know, a

25:00

black feminist who is you

25:03

know, gonna You're gonna teach

25:05

people how to unlearn

25:07

yeah, bad things that they've learned. It's like the goals

25:10

that they stayed are all good on on

25:12

the page. But then all the members are

25:14

like, they're not actually an anti racist organization.

25:17

They're not like a feminist

25:20

organization, and they target

25:22

a lot of like trans kids, because

25:25

they target people that are like vulnerable or

25:27

have something you know that

25:30

they like are dreaming of, like

25:32

a transition that they're like We're going to help you achieve

25:34

whatever it is you want. And then there was

25:36

a trans woman who was saying, like, but they wouldn't let

25:38

me go to the hospital or get her hormones

25:41

because they don't believe in hospitals. So they

25:43

were like, but I think it bears mentioning

25:46

that this sounds as though it did

25:48

start from a kind

25:50

from a good place, and also like

25:52

we can do something good and kind of have a laugh

25:55

and like try to market it in this new

25:57

way. And then I think at some point

26:00

um CoA started to tell

26:02

people that she was communicating with aliens. She

26:04

was carrying a pendulum around that would

26:06

allow her to like communicate with you

26:09

know, the galaxy and like interpret

26:11

those messages for followers and stuff. So

26:13

it does kind of did she rename herself the General

26:15

Lisimo? She did, or General

26:18

CoA is now her Instagram name, but all that

26:20

stuff too. I was like that would just work

26:22

on New age people, like even better, you

26:25

know, like if you say, like there's some esoteric

26:27

system to this that you have to learn and

26:29

you can only learn it by like following us.

26:33

So many people want that, they want to

26:35

be told how to be better.

26:37

And if you add an l O L onto

26:39

it that then there's like less

26:42

embarrassment factor because but

26:44

we're all like fucking with you, Like

26:47

there's something very sinister about that. I mean,

26:49

I have to like to just broaden what

26:52

this sounds like to something

26:55

you know, more general or more cultural.

26:57

It's happy now, Like I feel like I

26:59

always a vague sense of easiness.

27:01

The more mimified stuff like eat the

27:03

rich or guillotines for everybody like

27:06

becomes a meme because then I feel like

27:08

the actual intent or vision

27:10

for the future that is like gestured at

27:12

by that sort of statement that has now

27:15

become ironic or just like a weird

27:17

kind of half joke, gets like kind

27:19

of forgotten about or diluted in a way.

27:21

Well, it's like a lot of things where it's like you can

27:23

say anything you want online, and we're

27:25

seeing a lot of like the blowback from

27:28

that, you know, coming home

27:30

now of just people when they first

27:32

were like, Wow, I can really say anything online.

27:35

Uh, no one's going to stop me. That

27:39

does lead to kind of like a dulling of

27:41

if you're saying something really violent or crazy

27:44

that it's supposed to just become normalized, or

27:46

if you're saying something that's that is

27:48

uh, you know good or could be you know,

27:51

constructive if it was in earnest. You

27:53

know, if you're talking about like

27:55

a positive revolution for people,

27:58

but you're doing it with the astra of

28:00

like L O L at the end

28:02

of it, then it's like very that But that

28:04

feels very of its time, Like that

28:06

feels very now. Yeah,

28:08

And you know, I think what

28:11

makes this feel very sinister is sort of that they

28:13

are hooking people in with this idea

28:15

of anti racism. You know that

28:18

of course, there are lots of like great

28:20

anti racist organs that aren't cults

28:22

that like might you

28:25

know, radicalize you if you have like

28:27

bad parents, who are you

28:30

know, didn't teach you anything good? It's

28:32

just And I think also like, especially

28:34

if this has started after Trump selection in

28:36

twos sixteen, like that was a moment

28:39

of genuine panic where a lot of people like,

28:41

what the funk am I supposed to do with my life

28:43

now? Like? How can I not be a part of a problem

28:45

in a way that I think a lot of people are dealing with now.

28:48

Also, and I think the younger you

28:50

are, the less patients. If you're

28:52

in the middle of a kind of like national

28:55

emergency moment like that, the less

28:57

patients you have for people who are

29:00

experienced with the organizing, who do the

29:02

dumb boring work of like you

29:04

know, bringing about social change, like you

29:06

want the dramatic thing, you want to go out into the

29:08

woods and burlap and like whatever, like start

29:10

a commune like that has a lot of appeal.

29:13

It's very understandable. I mean, it's understandable

29:15

for me, Like I know, I

29:17

mean, I mean for sure, and I think

29:19

we're seeing that now too, because it's like it's

29:21

exciting to be at a protest and

29:23

to be at an action, and it

29:26

can be less exciting to be on like a

29:28

two hour zoom call like going over

29:30

how everything went and planning for the next

29:32

thing. But that stuff

29:34

does all have to be done, and like just

29:37

being accountable these

29:40

people, it's just kind of a bummer.

29:44

One girl who was in it still, I looked at her Instagram

29:46

for a really long time. She

29:48

had a real Manson girl vibe um

29:50

and she posted like emails from her parents that were

29:53

like we read another article about how

29:55

you're in a sex trafficking cult. And she'll be like

29:57

l o, l oh, my god, they

30:00

understand my family and she's just but

30:02

it was interesting because she kept being like, my parents

30:04

are neoliberals, Like they're dirty, disgusting

30:07

money, like should burn um,

30:10

oh my gosh, which some of these things. I was

30:12

like, I understand. Yeah, I

30:14

mean that's that's the thing. That's the reason

30:16

that this article was so interesting was because

30:18

normally, its cults, it's built on something that

30:20

is less accessible as an idea

30:22

than this one is. And yeah, there was a twenty sixteen

30:25

Daily Dot article I think was the first to bring

30:27

this to people's attention. Um

30:29

and yeah. At that point, the cult had

30:31

existed for a couple of years, and that was

30:33

the I think the first indication that a lot of

30:35

the parents and relatives of people involved

30:38

in this cult, we're like, oh, it's not just

30:40

like they're spending a lot of time on line

30:42

talking to their weird new friends. It's like this

30:44

might actually be dangerous to them. Yeah,

30:47

and it does have some like Jonestown

30:50

vibes for sure, because like one of the really

30:52

insiduous things about Jonestown also was

30:54

that it was like we're creating this new church

30:57

for like racial equality, and

30:59

so it was a white cult

31:01

leader, you know, promising like racial

31:04

equality and like that's what the purpose

31:06

of this group is. We're starting like a new

31:09

post racism commune, and

31:11

obviously that is not what happened

31:13

with Jonestown. So yeah,

31:16

I think it's just like, once you get people to listen

31:18

to you, there's there's like

31:20

a point where people naturally like stop

31:22

questioning things themselves. Um.

31:25

I saw somebody saying that about podcasters yesterday

31:28

and what way. Um I thought

31:31

it was funny actually because I was like, I've definitely noticed

31:33

this a little bit. It was Sarah scorm the comedian

31:35

who I really like. Um, she was talking

31:37

about people who have just replaced their own

31:39

original thoughts with takes from podcasts

31:42

and how that's like an entire type of person now,

31:45

especially for politics, and I was like, yes,

31:47

she is right about

31:49

that. Um yeah,

31:52

I think nobody is immune to like hearing

31:54

something catchy and like being like I

31:56

also now think this especially

31:58

now, and like, at least speaking for myself,

32:01

most of my social interaction has been

32:03

replaced with listening to podcasts and

32:06

audio books. But like all

32:08

of my human voice stuff is just like

32:10

listening to other people's takes on podcasts,

32:13

which I'm sure is like very damaging. Those

32:16

are your friends, Emily and my new friends.

32:19

They don't know who I am, but I know who they

32:21

are. Um,

32:24

we're going to take a quick break and when

32:27

we come back, we're going to get back into everybody's

32:30

favorite conspiracy theory this

32:33

fourth of July. Welcome

32:47

back to Night Call. First off, we're

32:49

going to take an email from Will from

32:52

Okerville River. Hey,

32:55

thanks for writing in, Will, Will

32:57

write, I wonder what you make of the fireworks

32:59

can RC theories that have begun circulating

33:01

in the past few days. The uptick and neighborhood

33:04

fireworks was something I noticed gradually. It seemed

33:06

at first to be an outgrowth of the A p M healthcare

33:08

workers shoutouts, and then the shoutouts were replaced

33:10

by explosions, and then the explosions

33:12

went all through the night. Then I noticed that my

33:14

friends all over the country we're hearing them. And

33:16

today I'm seeing news stories along with social

33:19

threads about random white men pulling

33:21

up an unmarked black SUVs and handing

33:23

out pro grade fireworks to kids. And

33:25

I saw a couple of photos of said SUVs,

33:27

and also a weird New York Post story about a

33:29

group of firefighters spotted setting off illegal

33:31

fireworks in Brooklyn at midnight. For some reason,

33:34

common sense tells me that this is just your typical

33:36

neighborhood fireworks fun only on steroids

33:39

because people are pent up on board and agro from

33:41

quarantine. But this is the

33:43

month in which we've seen the NYPDS dumb

33:45

shake Shack poisoning lie picked up

33:47

by all the New York news networks. We've

33:49

seen cops not accepted gineering into the ground

33:51

on camera until us he tripped, and we've

33:54

seen unidentified badgeless soldiers

33:56

on patrol in DC. A week or

33:58

so ago, I was reading a slate piece of out William

34:00

Barr, which said, chaos is the point.

34:02

Chaos keeps the cameras on Trump and Bar,

34:05

Chaos puts the head of the federal law enforcement

34:07

apparatus in a position to exert enormous

34:09

power over the flow of information. And

34:12

of course that word chaos made

34:14

my mind go somewhere super specific, namely

34:16

the CIA's Operation Chaos in the sixties,

34:19

whose basic mission, as with co Intel

34:21

pro what's to turn communities and activist groups

34:23

against each other and create an attitude of distrust

34:25

and paranoia. Things feel weird

34:28

outside, even though I've personally gotten

34:30

used to all the random all night booms. If

34:32

they were replaced by gunfire or tear guest

34:34

canisters, I probably wouldn't even notice. But

34:36

since we're in a moment where some are calling to defund

34:38

the police while others are imagining this means a world

34:40

where gangs and murderers room free, it strikes

34:43

me that neighborhoods filled with chaotic explosions

34:45

aren't exactly helping the cause. As

34:48

conspiracy theories go, this one is maybe

34:50

silly, But on the other hand, it's so hard

34:52

to discount any conspiracy theory when

34:54

you can't trust any giant organization that pretends

34:57

to have the public interest in mind. Thank you,

34:59

well, I want to just like confirm

35:01

between the three of us and and maybe

35:03

like among our audience in general.

35:06

Um, fourth of July is uh is

35:08

canceled this year? Right? Uh?

35:13

You mean the purge? Yes? Yeah,

35:18

I've been thinking about south Land

35:20

Tales a lot for many reasons,

35:23

but I just assume it's gonna

35:25

be south Land Tales this fourth

35:28

last year. I mean, yeah, who knows.

35:30

I just feel like, one,

35:32

you can't really go out anyway to kind

35:34

of a low point for America right now. Yeah,

35:37

but that I mean I could see it being used

35:40

as a good opportunity to like overturn

35:42

some more statues and stuff like that. Yeah.

35:44

Well, I would love it

35:47

if people reclaimed the

35:49

fourth of July by knocking

35:51

the fourth of July itself over. I'm

35:54

saying, like, mout Rushmore is the big

35:56

one. We got to figure out the engineering there.

35:58

Get some get some engineer, Like

36:01

if you're a if you're a woman in Stem

36:03

or a man in stem, let's figure

36:05

out how to get the amount Rushmore

36:07

down. Yeah? Can I just can we just say fuck

36:10

Mount Rushmore? Yeah? About Rushmore's

36:15

they destroyed? Yeah,

36:17

they destroyed a sacred,

36:20

sacred mountain. It almost

36:23

killed Carrie Grants.

36:25

True, nothing good

36:28

has ever come of Mount Rushmore. How

36:30

could they destroy it? Though? Are they just going

36:32

to blow it up? While you could

36:34

like chop the faces, you can give it a facelift.

36:37

That seems so hard. What if you made it into

36:39

know that it's probably too much work to make it into

36:42

waterfalls so that the water is like streaming in

36:44

front of their faces and eventually just erodes

36:46

them. That

36:49

That's what I'm thinking, That's what I'm saying. This is a job

36:51

for engineers, not us, So I'm asking

36:53

the engineer's sake. I think this is a job

36:56

for land artists a k a us.

36:58

Yeah, drop that too. I

37:02

think Tash just came up with a really good John

37:04

Cage let water away.

37:06

Yeah, yeah, it's the long term happening.

37:09

The only problem with this idea is

37:12

just getting a large body of water and

37:14

somehow plopping it where we need it. Yeah,

37:18

that's we're just dropping. We're dropping water.

37:20

They've done, they've done more

37:22

in in like Avengers movies. They can take

37:25

right, We'll take the reclaimed water from

37:28

the shutdown Splash Mountain. Oh

37:30

yeah, all that blue water.

37:33

Yeah, that needs needs to be purified.

37:36

Um. Anyway, So the that's

37:38

about the beginning of end of our our our

37:41

Fourth of July plans. I think it's a podcast.

37:43

But in the meantime, a lot of people seem to

37:45

have been getting a head start on Fourth of

37:47

July, as I think per usual,

37:49

especially in Los Angeles, there's about a month of

37:51

firework ner random fireworks going off

37:55

the four fourth of July, as people you know,

37:57

acquire their illegal fireworks

37:59

from very places and set them off like we're kind

38:01

of used to that here. I think like

38:04

as far as fireworks goes, this

38:06

is mostly a New York seems

38:08

to mostly be a New York thing. Maybe that's

38:11

because I mostly follow New York people. But at

38:13

the same time, there have been more fireworks here than

38:15

usual I think in Los Angeles.

38:17

All right, everybody, let's put

38:20

our tinfoil hats on, put our

38:22

put our firework hats on. I

38:26

just want, like, first impression,

38:29

did you think? What did you think when you

38:31

heard this conspiracy? You don't want to say

38:33

what the conspiracy is first for those

38:35

people who maybe site some people

38:38

who are the first to sort of bring it bring

38:40

it in. A Twitter user with the Twitter

38:43

named Son of Baldwin was tweeting

38:46

about it first, suggesting

38:48

that it was a conspiracy

38:50

involving the police, that maybe

38:52

the police were giving out fireworks

38:55

to uh young black

38:57

kids, especially in New York, so that they

39:00

could then have to

39:02

like rush in and save the day or demonstrate

39:05

what happens when there's no cops, is that nobody

39:07

comes in to stop fireworks from being lit

39:10

off. Um, some people think

39:12

the cops were just doing it themselves. And

39:14

there's a video of a New York fire station

39:17

where there just appears to be a huge creative

39:19

fireworks going off in the

39:22

front room in front of a yeah, just in front of a

39:24

fire station. So

39:26

a couple of people, we know, we're

39:28

investigating it, the writer Charlotte

39:31

Shane and um,

39:34

a couple other people, and

39:37

so far I haven't seen any conclusive evidence.

39:40

So there a few of the things

39:42

that kind of made the rounds. There

39:44

was There was the New York

39:47

Freight Department photo. There was also

39:50

a video, and I'm not sure I

39:52

was trying to figure out which precinct it was. I think it

39:54

was somewhere near Williamsburg where there

39:57

was a bunch of fireworks going off

40:00

and what looked like whatever the building was behind

40:02

this precinct, and a bunch

40:05

of cops were just sitting out front like not

40:07

doing anything, like even though you know, the fireworks

40:09

were like literally behind them. So there was

40:11

sort of like kind of furthering the idea

40:14

that that they either

40:16

don't care or they were putting it off

40:18

themselves. I mean, I think that the

40:21

Son of Baldwin conspiracy,

40:23

as laid out by that account,

40:26

it's pretty um it covers

40:28

a lot of bases in in the on

40:30

the way that all the best conspiracy theories

40:33

do because it's sort of like, well, even

40:35

if it's not that, it's still that it's basically

40:38

the thing like, Um, so you

40:40

know, it could be that they are that

40:44

protesters are putting them off. That

40:46

that that's like, you know, that's the first thing that a lot

40:48

of people assumed that it was is that

40:50

these are like kids and a lot of people who

40:52

had been at protests earlier that day just like letting

40:55

off steam, putting out, putting off fireworks

40:57

like and that

40:59

uh, that the police weren't

41:01

doing anything about it because the

41:04

more noise and chaos there was.

41:07

Then then that makes that

41:09

group of people, those young people who are protesting

41:11

into the bad guys who are not letting other

41:14

people sleep, or they

41:16

are directly supplying the fireworks

41:18

to those people, in which case they are encouraging

41:20

that behavior, or they're just straight up cutting

41:22

out the middleman and setting them

41:24

off themselves. Um. And

41:28

the end that, you know, it could be a mix

41:31

of all of those things, and

41:33

it would still serve the end purpose,

41:35

which would be to keep

41:38

the city uh sleepless

41:41

and crazy feeling and to

41:43

kind of foment this um

41:46

kind of antipathy toward the

41:49

protesters and and towards what people

41:52

most I think, you know, mainstream

41:54

non tinfoil hat wears just

41:57

assumer kids and and

41:59

and probably non white kids. Uh

42:02

So, I don't know. It feels like that that

42:04

conspiracy theory like it it

42:07

brand, It branches off in every direction

42:09

and covers every base in a in

42:11

a way that does make you feel like it's very possive. It was

42:13

a great conspiracy theory because it

42:15

couldn't be proved wrong or right

42:18

instantly, so there was a

42:20

lot of space for people to like, you

42:23

know, be Internet detectives about it.

42:25

And that also kind

42:27

of blurred the lines of like once it became

42:30

a conspiracy theory, then were

42:33

then it just sort of does become true in

42:35

a way. Does that make sense? Because

42:39

I saw somebody posted in Baltimore,

42:41

and the writer pe Moscow has also

42:44

been doing research on this um

42:47

they post somebody posted in Baltimore. There was like a

42:49

Craigslist post that was like got

42:51

these shells, like these giant fireworkshells

42:54

for free for any BLM supporters.

42:56

Like BLM supporters can get

42:58

your free fireworks. I think that's

43:00

fake though. I think that's like, I they're

43:03

a lot of fake Craigslist ads. Lately,

43:05

I feeling, well, okay, here's the thing

43:08

too. Okay, So I initially

43:10

was like, obviously I believe

43:13

that like the cops plant evidence

43:15

and would do something like this. It was more that

43:18

the idea process

43:20

behind it was so convoluted that I was like, it's

43:22

so stupid that either means it has to be the cops

43:25

or it's just like Occam's Razor. And

43:27

it's two weeks before the fourth of July, you

43:30

know, because there

43:32

are always a ton of fireworks in Los

43:34

Angeles. It starts in like May sometimes,

43:37

and it's definitely gotten

43:39

more crazy every year, gotten

43:41

more widespread across the city every year.

43:44

And this year fireworks

43:46

are insanely cheap and available

43:49

everywhere because apparently fireworks

43:51

companies who like this is their season didn't

43:54

make their quota on anything because

43:56

there like was no Memorial Day or

43:58

Easter or anything. So people

44:01

are like giving away fireworks, and

44:03

if you look, somebody's sent me like

44:05

a like a Facebook link On Facebook.

44:08

People are all posting that like things are for sale,

44:10

and then they'll be holding up whatever the thing they said

44:13

is for sale in front of a huge room full of fireworks.

44:15

Yeah, it'll be like PlayStation Control or forty

44:17

dollars, and then it's in a warehouse full

44:19

of fireworks. But I have to I

44:22

have to jump in and say that we

44:25

in l A. I think that I usually

44:27

associate the summer fireworks a lot with baseball

44:30

games because they've set them off at Dodger Stadium,

44:32

and I think that I generally, you

44:34

know, feel that they start in May and then they last

44:37

way too long. There's even I was watching

44:39

Under the Silver Lake again last night. Sorry, another

44:42

conspiracy paranoid movie, but

44:44

there are fireworks. How many times

44:47

do you really want to you? I

44:50

think last night may have been like twelve.

44:52

Oh my god, I know I'm

44:55

under this. I don't know, Emily.

44:57

It's your fault. You recommended we

45:00

own it. I mean, it's really it's we

45:03

own it. I mean I can't. I

45:05

I have to like self identify as this. But please

45:07

don't think of me this way. People listening to

45:09

the just just to read it. But

45:11

there's even a moment in it where

45:14

fireworks just start going off like crazy

45:17

and they're like, whoa, it's late in the season for

45:19

fireworks, which is like something that you hear

45:21

so often of like it's a little early for fireworks,

45:23

it's a little late for fireworks, but they never

45:26

never stopped. But the difference between a Dodgers

45:28

stadium. I used to live right next to Dodgers State,

45:30

right, Like that's like a professional display happened

45:32

all the time. It was just like you can't have a dog if

45:35

you live around there. It's just nearly I mean

45:37

people do anyway, but like it's it's I

45:39

think it's torturous if you do. But

45:42

there's a difference between that and

45:44

I think the random one off. That's

45:47

what I'm saying. So this is my point

45:50

is that we are all being deprived

45:53

of the professional fireworks. Normally

45:55

there are those fireworks, and then there are all of

45:57

the other people setting off their own fireworks

46:00

roughly the same time, which is

46:02

also a way of if you can't be at a game and

46:04

you feel like doing something you probably shouldn't

46:06

do because it could start a fire, upset someone's

46:09

dog, but you're doing it anyway because you like to have

46:11

fun, which fine, but I

46:13

mean it was usually the way of like celebrating

46:15

that. Now there's nothing to celebrate, there's nowhere

46:18

to congregate, there's no kind of sense of like that

46:20

going on, So I I understand

46:22

people's impulse to set off a ship ton

46:24

of fireworks, like I get it. The

46:26

main counter theory I've seen is like kids

46:28

are board and fireworks are cheaper

46:31

and more accessible than they've ever in

46:33

history. If this a happening in

46:36

like December or something, I think

46:38

it would be way more unsettling. The fact

46:40

that it is two weeks to the fourth

46:43

of July means it's all like do

46:45

not you know, believably deniable.

46:47

Okay, here's what I think. I

46:49

think. I think

46:51

it's different in different cities. And

46:53

I didn't know that until I asked

46:56

people to make me field recordings of

46:58

the fireworks. And DJ

47:00

Jubilee, excellent DJ

47:03

in Front of Night Call sent a

47:05

recording of the New York

47:07

fireworks and they were totally

47:09

different from the fireworks here. Totally

47:12

didn't sound anything like the even

47:15

the most fireworks that we have here. It's

47:17

sounded like somebody

47:20

setting off professional grade fireworks.

47:23

Uh. Continuously, also

47:25

the way that sound works like there

47:27

have been two or three

47:29

times when somebody in my neighborhood

47:32

was setting off fireworks in Brooklyn and

47:35

the sound because you're

47:37

in a cord or of buildings. If

47:39

somebody's setting off fireworks in

47:41

the middle of that, it's loud as fun and

47:44

it's actually really really it's

47:46

much more than like, oh, pop pop in the distance

47:48

and your dog grows a little bit. It sounds like there's

47:51

like guns going off out last night. Last

47:53

night, someone was setting them off less

47:55

than a block for me, and it started this whole

47:58

email chain between everyone who lives

48:00

in my neighborhood trying to find out who had done

48:02

it, and people started like accusing each other. But

48:04

it it sounded it was so incredibly

48:07

loud. But I, guys, I have to pause you because we have

48:09

we got some feedback on this. We have

48:11

some calls and emails from listeners, and I think we

48:13

should pause and take one so we can continue

48:15

this. Okay, Um, Hi, I'm

48:18

just calling to say that I

48:20

am I feel pretty certain so

48:23

I don't have concrete evidence

48:26

that the cops are the

48:28

ones letting off all these fireworks

48:31

because the timing is

48:33

very suspicious and

48:35

it just seems too to be true that they're

48:37

all happening with such frequency

48:40

all over the country at the same time of night,

48:42

every single night. Um,

48:45

and I think they're trying to scare us into wanting

48:47

to keep them around unsuccessfully.

48:50

So yeah, those are my thoughts.

48:52

Wow, too bad for the cops, that

48:55

we are like the Joker and

48:57

chaos only feels us. Um

49:01

I

49:02

I I mean, I think, I think, I

49:05

don't know what I think still actually it is

49:07

what I was gonna say, But I do think it's interesting,

49:10

Like what Tests was saying, it has degenerated

49:12

into people into like Shirley Jackson's the lottery

49:14

of people being like Goody

49:16

Tests lit the fireworks, and

49:18

that feels like a pre uprising

49:21

part of COVID that I'm not trying to

49:23

get back to at all. No way, there's

49:25

uh, I mean, I think we cut

49:28

this part out of Will's email, but um

49:31

that he did mention the next door thing

49:34

and I've been noticing this thing on next door

49:36

nothing to do with fireworks. Other there's in plenty

49:38

of fireworks discourse whenever

49:41

I go on there. But um, when

49:43

there is like a neighborhood disturbance, like a

49:45

loud party at like a rental house or

49:47

whatever, Um, there's a huge

49:49

there's always a huge debate about like don't call the

49:51

cops. Don't call the cops, Like we don't like,

49:53

let's not rely on the police anymore. And

49:56

I feel like I feel like the same

49:58

thing is happening with the fireworks, because and everybody

50:00

was just like what do we do, Like,

50:03

you know, the people who had normally rushed

50:05

to call the cops about that sort of thing, or

50:07

like, oh, I don't know what to do now. So

50:09

it's like creates this weird mirror

50:12

like accountability or something around

50:14

all that, right, because people are also like, well,

50:16

I want to be excusing it if it's kids

50:18

doing it, but if it really is the cops doing

50:20

it, I don't want to be like, oh, it's cool, you

50:23

know, because like fuck that.

50:25

I mean. I also like, I mean, before

50:27

this became like I went into full till conspiracy

50:30

land, I like, I,

50:33

I guess what from the few times that the

50:35

fire did go off when I was

50:37

in in New York in Brooklyn, like

50:39

it was, it was upsetting

50:42

enough and disturbing enough. And if I was having

50:44

like, say, a really jangling

50:47

nerve day, if my anxiety happened

50:50

to be up there, like they would make me cry

50:52

because they are they just you

50:54

know, it's like where you break out into a cold sweat because

50:56

of the disturbance of them. And so

50:58

when I did see, like, you know,

51:01

I posted this thing, somebody had made

51:03

a sign in their neighborhood that said like, please don't

51:05

do this. Like it's just start like a

51:07

very kind of like whatever,

51:10

lame and dorky, but still like

51:12

non law enforcement evolving way to like address

51:15

your neighborhood and be like, hey, this isn't

51:17

cool, like we can't sleep,

51:20

our our dogs are really upset, and

51:22

just like putting it out there and had it had it it got

51:24

like spray painted over this like funk off or

51:26

whatever. Get used to it like that.

51:28

That stuff does also

51:31

make me feel crazy, no, I know, and

51:33

I think, like it's not that I don't

51:35

understand the people who are like my

51:37

dog is upset, you know, it's

51:40

giving me PTSD whatever. To

51:42

me, it's like people trying

51:44

to find something that you like definitely

51:46

cannot find, you know, people

51:48

who are like I want to call the manager of fireworks

51:51

and be like stop it. You

51:53

you know, it's like you have to just kind

51:55

of like give yourself over to the fact that you have

51:58

no control over it whoever

52:00

is in charge of it. UM.

52:03

I did another podcast the other day

52:06

that was based out of New York called grub Stakers,

52:09

and I said, like, oh, are we going to hear

52:11

the fireworks while we're recording? And like halfway

52:14

through the recording, the fireworks

52:16

started and it was insane.

52:19

It was like Hannon going

52:21

off. But but the thing that really strikes

52:23

me about it is being so different from the l A ones is

52:25

the l A ones have this like chaotic random

52:28

pattern. Some of them are big and

52:30

loud, but like most of them are small

52:32

and fizzily, and it just sounds

52:34

random. It sounds just like one pop

52:37

and then another way over there. It sounds

52:39

like actual chaos. The thing in New

52:41

York sounds coordinated because

52:43

it's like flat. It's like boom

52:46

boom, boom boom, just like

52:49

like they have like a row of like

52:51

rockets basically or whatever that they're setting

52:53

off like. Well, then I saw something that

52:56

Macy's. I think this was real. Macy's

52:59

announced their doing like a fireworks

53:01

spectacular for

53:03

the fourth July. They said, New

53:06

York They're gonna light professional

53:08

fireworks throughout the different boroughs of New

53:10

York. No amaz this which

53:13

also makes me think of that thirty Rock episode

53:15

where they're like the nine eleven like tribute

53:17

to fireworks. UM.

53:21

I read an interesting piece on this in The Atlantic

53:24

by Caitlin Tiffany, and she wrote,

53:26

to some degree, our current circumstances

53:28

are likely to blame. In a paper,

53:31

the sociologist Ted Gertzel found

53:33

that belief in a conspiracy theory is strongly

53:35

correlated with anomia or anomia

53:38

or a feeling that social order is collapsing

53:41

and the situation of the average person is

53:43

getting worse. He also found a correlation

53:45

between conspiracy belief and positive responses

53:47

to the question thinking about the next twelve

53:49

months, how likely do you think it is that you will lose

53:52

your job or be laid off? So I think,

53:55

even though I know that here,

53:57

I don't think that there's any kind of coordinated

54:00

effort to drive people insane with fireworks

54:03

in Los Angeles. From what I've

54:05

been hearing in New York and

54:07

in like more rural communities

54:09

that are kind of experiencing this, it feels

54:11

undeniable. But at the same

54:13

time, I think it can be compelling

54:16

and kind of appealing to participate

54:20

in things that have you know, I

54:22

mean, I don't know if I were super

54:24

bored and super depressed

54:27

and like by myself in a in a small

54:29

town, and I thought that like setting

54:31

off some fireworks might be fun, and

54:34

also like I don't know,

54:36

maybe I can't imagine it,

54:38

but it's like maybe play into something that's

54:40

like a good version of this conspiracy, because

54:43

there are so many different ways to interpret it. Well.

54:45

People have also pointed out it's like

54:47

kids didn't get to graduate or have

54:49

problems. And if I'm like, they're

54:51

not going to get to go to college, they don't get

54:53

to go to summer camp, Like what is the

54:55

one thing they can do right now? Is like hang

54:58

out and people are mad, and it's also way

55:00

of communicating with other people, you

55:02

know. I mean we're you're trapped in your own

55:04

little zone, but you do something that's powerful

55:07

that people feel and people here,

55:09

when otherwise you're kind of relegated

55:12

to just like talking to people on the computer. Right.

55:14

I mean, there are people in my neighborhood who do

55:16

like an official you know, not official, but like

55:19

a neighborhood Fourth of July fireworks

55:21

show every year who go and get like it's

55:23

not surprising to me that amateurs

55:25

could get like some you know, semi

55:28

pro seeming stuff, especially because again

55:30

like theme parks are closed, there's no concerts,

55:32

Like maybe those people are selling the big

55:34

giant fireworks on the black market because

55:37

they can right now, because there's no other use

55:39

for them now. I always

55:41

remember being in Vegas once and

55:44

and being at a bar and like talking to some random

55:46

dudes who were like on their way

55:49

to like they were coming from somewhere in Nevada

55:51

to just bring fireworks to l A. They

55:54

were like, just bring in black markets for sure.

55:56

And people have had so much

55:58

free time to like go buy fireworks

56:00

in places that they're legal. Um,

56:03

And people have said about New York too, that New Jersey

56:05

I think legalized them not that

56:07

long ago, so it's like it's not

56:09

inconceivable you could get really good

56:12

fireworks in New York. But there's something about

56:15

the sort of like metronomic

56:18

way that the New York fireworks sound that

56:20

does sound like it's like here.

56:23

Is the thing that makes me um

56:26

feel craziest about the New York ones, specifically

56:28

the New York ones, is that I think the

56:30

first wave, like when when I first started realizing

56:33

that they were like becoming a difference

56:35

for people and they were different, and people were

56:37

kind of complaining about them and like or what's up with

56:39

the fireworks? Like very quickly,

56:42

this narrative emerged mostly from like

56:45

like white journalists that I follow

56:47

that it was like it was racist to complain

56:49

about the fireworks because it

56:52

was like part of a Black Lives Matter

56:54

celebration, but like, yeah,

56:59

like it, and I was like,

57:01

this seems weird and I'm only like

57:03

right now, I'm mostly only saying this from

57:06

white people. And then this big

57:08

BuzzFeed investigation story

57:10

came out. It's like, um,

57:12

like blaming the strife over

57:15

and the conspiracy is about about

57:17

the fireworks on white gentrifires.

57:20

And then I'm like I'm fully like in chaos

57:22

about then, because I'm like, oh, we're starting

57:24

like this weird racial argument

57:27

over fireworks in Brooklyn and like making

57:29

a gentrification issue, even though

57:31

like if you are a human and a half ears

57:33

you cannot sleep because of fireworks, it

57:36

is not. It is not. And also if

57:38

you're a human who likes reckless fun,

57:40

I mean it's fireworks are the great equalizing

57:43

totally. Fireworks are a gentrification

57:46

issue for sure, especially

57:48

oh yeah, especially I feel

57:50

like in l A, the divides between people

57:53

who like love fireworks and fireworks.

57:55

No, Yeah, that's an age thing. I I kind

57:57

of I refuse to believe that, because, like,

57:59

there are are old people in any

58:01

neighborhood who are not necessarily rich

58:04

gentrifires who don't like fireworks.

58:07

Like, there's not that people who don't like fireworks.

58:09

But kids, all kids love

58:11

fireworks, That's not true. A lot of kids,

58:14

I mean, especially a lot of kids who are like on the spectrum

58:16

or whatever, really hate fireworks. And a lot of

58:18

the most compelling arguments for not doing

58:20

fireworks is that, you know, for veterans,

58:23

for kids who are you know, neurodivirgin

58:26

or whatever, they're so incredibly traumatizing.

58:28

I feel like firework response is a very

58:30

personal and I don't really

58:32

think it it follows along them though. It's totally

58:35

a gentrification issue because it's

58:37

like any time people that aren't white

58:39

or like using public space in any

58:41

way, people call

58:44

the cops on them, like the cops on them, like

58:47

called bullshit on this honest, Like, I

58:50

see what you're saying that it's part

58:53

of the character of the neighborhood. I'm not

58:55

saying like doing a military display

58:57

of fireworks every night is the character

58:59

of anyone's neighborhood, although like you said,

59:01

with the Dodgers, it is actually something they

59:03

do in Echo Park that's a corporate like,

59:06

that's a national but it's also it's

59:08

the people who a lot of the people who live

59:10

around the stadium are also. I mean, I

59:13

think in l A like, it's something that people participate,

59:15

whether they're at the stadium or not, because if you

59:17

can see the fireworks far away coming from

59:19

the stadium, it's something that you do to participate

59:22

anything that's happening in a neighborhood that then

59:24

white people move in and are like this needs to stop

59:26

happening is part of gentrification and doing

59:30

the fireworks, But that's what's happening this

59:32

year. And I do think that That's what I'm saying is

59:34

like, I do think it's possible

59:37

that there are racist

59:39

people, such as the police or Proud

59:41

Boys or whatever, doing

59:43

fireworks to try and instigate

59:46

racial tension and create

59:48

arguments about stuff like this in order

59:51

to again be like, see, here's why we need

59:53

cops law in order you don't like things

59:55

that happen without cops. I don't think it's

59:57

like the c I A. You know, I

1:00:00

don't think it's like a federally coordinated

1:00:02

program. But the theory I've heard that seems the

1:00:04

most believable to me is the idea that this

1:00:06

is like yeah,

1:00:09

on message boards being like, what if

1:00:11

we lit off fireworks all the time?

1:00:14

You know, I don't think they foresaw

1:00:16

the white liberals being like, no,

1:00:19

we can't because of like white guilt about

1:00:21

having gentrified these neighborhoods that we live

1:00:23

in. You know. Again, it's like, I don't think

1:00:25

it's having the intended effect because I don't think anyone's

1:00:27

turning on the protesters. You know. I

1:00:30

think people are like annoyed about

1:00:32

fireworks, but I don't think anyone's like, you

1:00:35

know, like Black Lives Matter is

1:00:37

doing these fireworks, and now I don't see

1:00:39

their point of view, Like I think it's not going

1:00:41

to convince anyone to come over to their side,

1:00:43

which is why it seems But it's also entirely

1:00:46

possible that it's just really

1:00:49

bored people. It's possible.

1:00:52

I mean, I cling to this guy's because I

1:00:55

do. I've wanted to set off

1:00:57

some fireworks recently. I

1:00:59

feel stressed out. When

1:01:02

I was growing up, I feel like it was so normal to

1:01:04

set off fireworks. Yeah, I don't think. I don't

1:01:06

know if it was illegal or even restricted

1:01:08

that I guess I wasn't illegal in Washington,

1:01:10

so people just did it all the time. Like we would get a

1:01:13

huge amount of fireworks and set them off like an

1:01:15

abandoned lot. It was fun, it was great.

1:01:17

I love fireworks, but like I know, I do know

1:01:19

people who like burned themselves. But it's

1:01:21

still you know, you gotta

1:01:23

take a couple of hits in life. Don't

1:01:26

set off fire. We're not endorsing setting off

1:01:28

fireworks, but it's really it's really fun

1:01:31

set them off. I'm just like, I'm

1:01:33

just like I think that the argument has

1:01:35

gone to a real like

1:01:38

galaxy brain level that I'm just like,

1:01:40

I feel totally under That's

1:01:42

what's fun about it. Was it evolved like

1:01:45

five times in the space of two hours.

1:01:47

It's it's hard to find fun though in anything

1:01:49

when you start talking about like the Proud

1:01:52

Boys on message boards and stuff like that.

1:01:54

And like I want to say again, like I totally

1:01:56

think the cops stage things

1:01:59

all the time. I think that they were responsible

1:02:01

for lighting that cop car on fire at the Fairfax

1:02:04

protest in l A. I personally believe

1:02:06

in order to instigate chaos because

1:02:08

that was a peaceful protest. But even

1:02:10

if it was like black block, you know, like

1:02:13

if it was like Antifa, I still

1:02:15

think they like left it there as like

1:02:17

please somebody like this on fire. That's

1:02:20

what I'm saying. It's like, I don't I

1:02:23

still don't know what I think if some evidence comes out

1:02:25

that that demonstrates that the cops have any

1:02:27

you know, if they're a smoking gun, so to speak.

1:02:30

What I think is crazy is how condescending

1:02:32

people on each side of it have been. That's

1:02:35

the crazy because I'm like, these

1:02:38

they're both viable, like believable things

1:02:40

to me, and it's probably both, like we all

1:02:42

think it's probably both. It's definitely

1:02:44

some of it is just kids setting off fireworks,

1:02:46

and then if that's being augmented, uh

1:02:49

with you know. But also I've seen people

1:02:52

be like there are just professional fireworks

1:02:54

nuts who wait all year to go buy

1:02:56

fireworks and give fireworks shows like

1:02:58

this. Our friend Dave Hill

1:03:00

said he has like a brother in law or something who

1:03:03

just is like, no, it's just fireworks,

1:03:05

guys, I promise you this is it's true that

1:03:07

there are fireworks. I mean it's like, yeah, like

1:03:09

people with Christmas lights and stuff like that, who go

1:03:11

absolutely bonkers over decorating their houses.

1:03:13

I don't think that happens as much in New York,

1:03:15

though. I'm just gonna say I think that I agree

1:03:18

the New York thing is the most compelling argument

1:03:20

for this being organized, because we've

1:03:23

all heard how that sounds. And I was saying,

1:03:25

I think it's the ghost of George Plimpton, because

1:03:27

he apparently was like

1:03:29

a real big fireworks enthusiasts

1:03:32

and would that was his rich guy interest was like

1:03:34

fireworks shows, and then somebody

1:03:36

was like, well he was in the CIA. I

1:03:38

think that has to be the last word on fireworks.

1:03:41

It has to be girls

1:03:43

melting out of our noses

1:03:45

due to fireworks discourse. We've

1:03:47

been totally destroyed. And that's right where

1:03:50

they like, it's the point just to get people

1:03:52

to stop talking about police killing

1:03:55

of black people, which is like the

1:03:58

point of most conspiracy seem to opus eight

1:04:00

people have been pretty good at doing that on

1:04:03

their own. We fall right into

1:04:05

their trap, like making

1:04:07

yeah, but that's the problems,

1:04:09

Like the media wants a new news cycle every week,

1:04:11

and it's like, no, we need to keep the focus on

1:04:15

prosecuting killer cops. That's

1:04:18

the main issue. Amen. And

1:04:20

when we prosecute some killer cops, we will

1:04:22

light off all of the fucking fireworks,

1:04:25

but not in New York and not in your dogs.

1:04:29

We'll have to go to a big open field. Um,

1:04:32

we'll go to Drop City. We'll go to Drop City.

1:04:34

We'll we'll set them off from the dome. That actually

1:04:36

sounds lovely, doesn't it. Yes,

1:04:39

Yeah, okay, guys, I'm down. Well.

1:04:42

I think that does it for this week. Thank you so

1:04:44

much for tuning in. Um. We

1:04:46

will be back again next week and as

1:04:48

always, we would love your stories,

1:04:51

conspiracy, theories, thoughts.

1:04:53

Give us a call to four oh four six

1:04:55

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1:04:57

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1:05:00

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1:05:02

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1:05:06

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1:05:09

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1:05:14

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1:05:17

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1:05:20

don't gay enough reviews. I feel like we need to say

1:05:22

this at the top of every episode. Leave us a freaking

1:05:25

review on item if you're

1:05:27

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1:05:29

don't have to. I want feedback,

1:05:32

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1:05:34

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1:05:38

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1:05:42

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1:05:44

all, s