By the way, I got this, and it's changing my life, is that are you this go girl now? It's look, it's is a functional item.

OK, what brand of Nalgene is that? I don't know.

Hydrofluoric, literally. I don't know what that implies. OK, I don't care.

I don't know what that I don't know the valences of the various water bottle bands.

We came into this like I would explain attempts to Brianna. But now this is worth explaining what a good girl is to virtually. No, this is good.

When when you and I learn the audience. Yes, I know what a vocal girl is. OK, OK.

I just don't know why this makes me wonder. Well, what do you think of this good girl.

Is I it's it's I mean like like viscose was like Microsoft's competitor to Instagram and there's like a certain type of person and there's like a personality type that's been given that name.

And what is associated with that, that person to you, if if not a hydro flask, I mean, God do just like you know, it's like something like a basic white person, I guess.

No, it's specific. It's, you know, a all who dress is very normcore and like oversized t shirts with like I mean that goes or whatever and squaddie.

But it's not just basic, right. Because they're it's a type of basic item that's like flavored chapstick that an eight year old would wear scrunchies around your wrist and in your straight floppy and a bun on the top of your head hair.

And it's the hydro flask. They and I think there's also I think they also care about the environment. Oh, here we go.

I am.

Hi. You must be now. Oh, OK. Yeah. This is the new hotlist.

You don't have one. Oh Jesus Christ. Lisburn that's kind of weird, huh.

Well see the turtles ok. I did ok. I didn't know that, that, that this I would not have gotten it if I don't because now I'll be lampooned.

There's nothing wrong with a hydro flask. It's just. Oh yeah. It's very efficient.

It keeps the water cold. That's what I've heard. And you like it's very efficient to drink out of up.

It's not making little noises when I do it.

OK, so this is just an efficient object. So I'm not, you know, getting up every frickin time. It's a glass of water like no, I just pour it all in here, especially because, you know, our recordings can go long and it's like, I don't want to be like, oh, can everyone, you know, hold up the whole thing so I can, you know, get another, oh, man, eight ounces of water.

I do not know why this is so funny to me. It's really great. I'm afraid I'm a this whatever whatever. Well, that's good, you know, and we're appealing to other audiences that might not otherwise watch this show. It's.

OK, I'm fine. OK, let's start the show. And I know we're all hydrated here. What are you drinking out of typically?

I washed it today because it was getting stain green, because I've been drinking a lot of chlorophyll, but I tend to drink out of a large mason jar or in the ultimate ID never see this.

You never thought I was slipping out of it? Well, right now I just have a glass, but I use my giant straw here, see how it's green from chlorophyll and a big, big, like, enormous mason jar.

If I drink three of them a day, it's my full daily quotient, but that's because I'm home. When I used to work at home, I have this actually. Let me just get it because it's people like it. OK.

The reason why I say that is because I feel like you're drinking surreptitiously like that. Something you don't want to show the audience, whereas I don't care.

OK, this is the Mason Jar dirtball joke. I have seen that. Yeah, but like off camera.

Yeah. And this is what I used to have at the office place. It's an embarrassingly overpriced brand called K.R. that were very trendy a couple of years ago.

What is that a what's that fruit called durian fruit.

Yes, I know it. So does it have got some anti homeless spice?

So there's some show that all that they're soft, they're rubbery. So they're not actually you could actually sleep on it and would probably be a nice experience. But they don't all have spikes. They have versions that are smooth. But this is such a big bottle that I like to have the grip and it's heavy because it's glass.

So you don't drop the bottle. I mean, that's why I picked the one. That's the that's the premise. It's like, you know, it's like the mats you put in the shower.

So you don't usually know the premise is the stupidest thing. Right, because they're glass. I bought it because I wanted a one leader glass bottle so I could track how much I was drinking. And I didn't want you know, glass is better for environmental reasons and BPAs or whatever they are, the chemicals that are in plastics and all this stuff. So I was on the hunt for a big glass bottle and this just happened to be the only liter sized glass bottle I could find on the Internet.

But the reason they're popular, they got really popular among, like yoga women, people with a lot of disposable income who also apparently drive everywhere because they're very heavy. It is not a light bottle. It's not the kind of thing you want to fill with water and put in your backpack. This is the biggest size. Obviously there smaller ones. I think they're popular with L.A. women who just drive to yoga and then carry their, like, forty dollar water bottle into the studio with them.

And there's like constantly dropping a lot of money to pay. You just replace that item.

Ironically, if you want to purchase just the glass insur it's only like fifteen bucks, but you can't repurchase, you can't purchase the sleeve separately, so you have to do the initial outlay. That's expensive. Well that's how they got you. Yeah.

Also it's been very durable. I had another big glass bottle that broke, which is why I had to shop for this one.

So it's been, it's been worth the money for what it's worth, and I'm very hydrated.

So that's yet another installment of bad faith and purchasing decisions.

You know, get the hydro flask, get the get the get whatever the hell price and it's going to improve your life. I mean, moving on, if you like. Oh, yeah.

One of the things I've long been promising on the show was to explain what in an effort to use to Brianna, because this is another one of those things where this has really I don't know, this really seems to have taken off in the past year, just the the multiplication of get rich quick schemes that people are engaged in, whether that's the you know, you saw in GameStop, right.

Where a lot of people thought, you know, unsophisticated investors got in there and they were left holding the bag. But you see it especially with crypto currencies right now. You know, obviously, our audience is you know, they want stock tips. They want to know how to get rich, much like everyone.

And, you know, the latest one is and if these I have a lot of questions Virgile about this. I have listened to several other podcasts, explainers, and I still have no idea what they were talking about because I felt like some really fundamental questions weren't asked.

So I'm just sitting here saying the Pottsy boys didn't do a good job. No, it was it was actually leftists. All leftists talk about NAFTA as the ones that I'm referencing.

If you really want to do this, I'm ready to do this. I'm ready to do it. I'm I have some questions for you that might take a little bit of time. I mean, I will answer all the questions.

Some of the answers might be lies, but I will I'm very game to answer the questions.

Then I try me try, because ultimately, I think, you know, I like our show.

I mean, thanks to the Paternot of our audience, our show does very well. We can pay for what we need to do here. We can make a lot of wonderful content. You know, I'm going to get a light soon. So, like, we're we're doing great.

But what if we were in NFTE and we sold it for fifty million dollars? That's just something you can do with that F.D..

OK, so you know what's in it for me.

OK, it stands for non fungible token, right. Well the thing is I. Don't know where to start. Here's my problem. OK, I've heard people explain it's a non-functional token. That means it can't be exchanged one for one. It's non-functional, isn't like a dollar. If I have a dollar and you have a dollar, we can exchange dollars. And they're both worth the exact same thing. It's fungible. Non-factual means they're unique. So I have not this bekar bottle because there are others like it in the world.

But let's say I, I do a Banksy on it and it's like special and unique and an art object. It's irreplaceable. I can't just swap it for whatever wonderful art framed tiger print or whatever is in your house.

It's non fungible. That does not explain to me why the thing has value, because there's a lot of unique crap in the world that doesn't have any intrinsic value. Nor does the fact, as I understand it, it is difficult to make these things through a complex technical process that I hope that you can shed some light on.

It's not actually difficult from the end users perspective, from the actual artist's perspective, you know, the technical details aren't really necessary to go that deep into it. So there's ones and zeros involved? I'm pretty sure so.

But my question is, just because there's a process to make something also doesn't mean it necessarily has value. It's not like, oh, it's a diamond. And it was like in the Earth for a million years. So that's why it's valuable, because it's rare.

In essence, what NFTE do is they use block chain technology to create authentic originals of digital art.

OK, but what's a block chain? OK, see, that's why I ask the question of where I need to start.

Yeah, because everyone just people I've heard people say that line like three times on podcasts. It's like what the hell is a block chain? OK, think of the block chain like this.

And like this is the technology that underpins bitcoin and Bitcoin as a conceptually kind of a proof of concept point.

OK, well, a block chain is the core idea. It's basically in the context of a cryptocurrency. It's basically a distributed ledger.

Those are just words. I don't know. OK, I know what distributed means. I know what a ledger is. OK, imagine this.

OK, like like forget about computers for a second. Imagine banks don't have computers and so how do they keep track of who has what. I think they will.

They have a ledger, they write it down and that ledger could say record every time that you withdrew money from the bank or you wired money to someone, whatever. It's just basic accounting stuff. Now, imagine if, like Twin Peaks.

Oh, you haven't seen Twin Peaks.

There's a whole thing with the ledger switcheroo.

I stop watching at some point, but. OK, sorry. Yeah, I know why. Well, I mean, I don't want to admit that on the show.

Where else exactly how to me, you know, I don't know why you're trying to get me in their crosshairs here.

OK, so imagine if there was one big ledger that recorded everyone's transactions. Right. And that always said who had wanted all the times and that you don't need the bank for that because everyone keeps an instant copy of that ledger, like every single person just has a magic copy of it.

That's basically what block chain does.

So it's just like a Google shared Excel sheet. You can think of it that way. Kind of.

I mean, there's other technical details that I don't really think it's necessary to go that deep into it.

But the idea is that there's no central authority that's governing the transactions or recording the transactions or anything. It's just it's just a system that's been implemented and no person can just, like, come up and, like, screw with it by writing a ledger that says, you know, I got a billion bucks because of the way that the technology manages to verify the authenticity of every transaction.

So that's that's a blocking in essence. OK, so what's interesting about that is you can use that technology to do things that are not just cryptocurrency, and that's where NFTE come into play. It uses the block chain technology to authenticate original works of digital art.

Thinking of it this way, like if your work of digital art is I don't know, it's like Nyan Cat five nine cat.

I was going in and I was going to go in an awful direction with it.

But it's Nyanga, right? You know, and everyone can post that. Everyone very everyone can have like a picked copy of it on their phone.

Well, imagine if there's just one original and that it's approvable original, say, you know, with like a certificate of authenticity or whatever, then every copy of it becomes like like a photograph of Starry Night.

Right.

Well, there's one original one and like, well, I mean, you can share you can have a friggin jpeg of it, but there's one original one and it's worth a hell of a lot of money.

So that's the idea.

It's it's it's creating an entire market.

But here's the issue. Starry Night isn't worth a hell of a lot of money because it's original for one. I don't really think it was worth a hell of a lot of money like in Bingo's lifetime, which. Bummer.

But no, he was but he was very broken.

It's like ultimately it's considered valuable because society decided it was a piece of high art that was part of a new. Movement, and we like it, you know, it has artistic intrinsic value, Nyan Cat or whatever jpeg someone comes up with, I need to I have I'm struggling to understand why we decide one of these random digital objects is valuable just because it's unique.

I mean, that goes to a longer conversation about value. I mean, for one, I don't think that something like Starry Night has an inherent monetary value.

No, but it does. I think it has cultural value. That is I think it has its cultural value.

Certainly that comes from centuries of art history and a whole economy of art buyers and galleries and patrons. And and it doesn't make you know, it's somewhat random, but there's something there people decided.

My point is art is worth what art is worth. Basically arbitrarily as a production of this industry where everyone has a stake in protecting art is worth a certain amount. Also because of art speculators and the various, you know, billion dollar money laundering schemes that constitute the entire art market.

So who are the people who are creating the market for these things? Who are the the JPEG evaluators who are deciding what each of these random digital objects is worth?

Well, first off, it is it is simply decided by market forces because when you create an NFTE, you auction it off and you can you know, so you sell it to someone and then they can resell it or whatever.

There's only one in many ways like the value. This is arbitrary.

Is there a value to these things actually look like something? I mean, yeah, they look like something.

Sound like something you can have you can have like an MP three, like a like an audio file. You can have a video, you can have an image.

I mean, it's just it's the digital media that you and I consume every day.

But is the value of the thing, does it bear any relationship to its artistic value, like you might not like accounts or whatever, but, you know, it's aesthetic, you know, a giant, the materials to cost to make it.

It was difficult at a certain level of technical proficiency. I might not like the giant dog balloon, but I can't make it. It's hard to recreate.

It takes resources and a certain ability, technical skill with I mean, you can't make I can't make Freddy got fingered, but I don't think it's worth a billion dollars.

But it is. So this sold for sixty eight million. Yeah. This sucks man.

But it looks like a bad bad clothes painting you know.

Looks like shit. Yeah I agree. It's literally just a bunch, it just looks like a bunch of internet. Like if I did a Google search on something that's like not very specific like animal and then took every image that came up when I Googled Animal, shrunk them down really tiny and just hodgepodge them all together into a collage. And that's what this is.

I agree with you and, you know, again, like my point, you know, and, you know, getting away from the traditional art world is that there is no objective value to these things. And that's one of the criticisms of NFTE, which blown up in recent weeks, is that this is fundamentally just speculation.

And this is you know, this is a bubble. This is meant to reel in.

Soccers. I mean, I presume that there are actual sincere collectors of digital art here who actually do appreciate and admire this idea and have the basically the desires that rich people have to just own a unique thing, you know what I mean?

But as they like to be able to say, I've got the original thing. Yeah, that's another aspect to it.

It's like, yeah, you can decorate your house with it unless I know you got an iPad or something. All it is is just proof that you own the original. That's all it is. And because of the nature of digital objects me display, I can have the original. But for anyone to see that I have the original, I have to display it, project it within some device like a screen or an iPad or whatever, at which point it is indistinguishable from everybody's copy, which is also projected on.

So like there's a Vermeer where I can get up close and see the paint strokes and whatnot.

Well, would you understand a very rich person buying a piece of stolen artwork knowing that it stole?

Yeah, because they they show it to all their criminal friends when they come over to dinner. You do not show it to anyone.

Yes. That's what they do that then. Yeah. You do not show it.

I get to see, you know, when you watch billions.

Right. I do not watch billions. OK, do you watch the other one succession. I do watch succession. You OK? Obviously when the dad whose name I don't remember anymore, Logan, Roy, Logan, Roy, I'm sure he has a lot of stolen art somewhere. He invites his dumb, rich, evil friends over and he says, Hey Perry, I got something to show you. And they go into the room behind the secret door to the wine cellar.

And that's where he has all his Nazi art like that.

That'll be all right. That's I mean, that's a bad idea, but that's what they do. They have Jerone can get someone over and like, hey, man, let me see. Let me show you this.

You show the other evil people who are similarly implicated because when you're over their house, they showed you they're stolen are from Iran or whatever.

Like it's all I can't speak to how rich sickos act with their with their rich sicko pals. I do not know enough about it. This is not there are many bad guys that deal with these exact issues, such as true anon.

Well, that's who I was listening to. That was one of the NFTE conversations I was listening to that's pretty much outside my ambit.

I have to imagine some people with stolen art act like that and some it was stolen.

Art would spend, you know, forty million dollars on a famously stolen artwork and never show it to anyone and just live with the knowledge that they own a unique thing because the rich or the super rich are driven by pathologies that you and I just simply cannot relate to.

But anyway, going back to I mean, going about the 90s, I mean, like I said, it's I mean, it's comparable to the art market in that way in which you are some super rich people would buy forty million dollars for that piece of shit that Ben showed us. Other people are paying for it because they think that there's another sucker down the line and that this bubble is just going to keep getting bigger and bigger.

I mean, it's obvious where I'm stuck and we don't have to stay stuck here with me. But I think this question of where value comes from, I mean, it's fundamental to the whole thing, right? It was fundamental to the whole GameStop thing, too.

And anything that's speculative in this nature. And what's funny is that and a lot of ways investments in art are considered to be some of the safer investments. Yeah. For whatever reason, there's this idea that it's art.

And in a condo in Manhattan, you keep trying to tell 096 Street, I don't know about newer art.

I think that that's probably more speculative. But at least we're talking about classics like none of us can imagine a world where there's not going to be a broadly held artistic or cultural commitment to the the essential value of a painting by an old master like we're never in a million years from now 200, 300, 400, 500 years from now, the Mona Lisa is not going to stop being valuable.

The waterlilies are never going to stop being valuable.

Do with monetary value. Yes, because the markets are what they are. You know, they're all in the art history books. We've decided that these masters were important. They're historical figures now that brought about new movements and shifts in how we understand art. And that is irreplaceable.

Yeah, there's not yet been a crash in the art market. And because of how the value of art is socially constructed, it's difficult to imagine there ever would be right.

Like you could you could maybe hypothetically think, OK, let's say we like all be sixteen nineteen project is like the worst fears of the of the like kind of reactionary white right wing.

We radically change our value system as a society and say, actually, the old Masters weren't that great and we can tell the old man, look at all this other kind of art that was going on, OK, like all of those, like late 19th century artists, those Frenchy Frenches, they were just stealing from a bunch of Japanese artists anyway and like or relic African masks, Picasso, blah, blah. Screw them. We're going to just put value in the original products and devalue because they're going to cancel Picasso and go Gafoor right about those miners, all of that.

And so nobody, actually nobody was to touch a good guy anymore because it's just too toxic.

Yeah. What we do is we just go to Senegal and find the masks and that suddenly is what has all this value. Look I can imagine hypothetically all of that happening, but it's just so far fetched because of how deeply ingrained that body was in our culture and become super rich.

People do not give a shit about being canceled. I mean, if you hang if you hung out with on Jeffrey Epstein's private private island, I don't think you're going to give a shit what some Wolke liberal arts student thinks about your art.

Right. I do agree with you. We should invest in African masks. Yes.

I mean, this is this is actually interesting because I I have been in museums before and walked through the, you know, ethnic bits. You know, you're in the Met and, you know, most will make the beeline for the impressionist room. But, you know, you're walking through the like Asia. I'm always going to the mummies, OK?

Right. Right off the bat. Just, you know, mummies.

But, you know, let's see them. There are the parts with, you know, African masks. And I remember having this thought like I have felt inadequate at times in assessing the value of objects like that as compared to objects that are very culturally familiar to me because of what we learn about in school.

And it's like I grew up in Africa. I've seen a million masks and I remember having the color.

How do I know that this mask is like high art and a good mask and a unique mask or an old mask as compared to the mask? That's like hanging in my living room at home. That is more about my own our own culture's unwillingness to, like, educate us and think that those kinds of objects are important enough to learn about and distinguish and to be able to appreciate a certain kind of talent and craft. And so maybe maybe I'm making the case right now for why we shouldn't be so flippant about NFTE, because maybe it's worth explaining culturally how we perceive value outside of a narrow Eurocentric, largely 19th century lens.

So there's a lot of pessimistic skeptics about it, but I'm actually very amenable to that point that you just made. I can see ultimately the value of this system and particularly in the way that it could benefit digital artists who are just trying to each just trying to make a living where it's that's really fucking hard to do if you're a digital artist.

I mean I mean, that goes for, you know, the non digital art certainly as well.

So, I mean, I don't think this is something that just has to exist for it to be the, you know, to be a speculative instrument or to be the plaything of the deranged ultrarich.

I mean, I do think that one thing it exposes is that people do stuff too much freakin money if they're going to spend 40 million dollars for that piece of shit that Ben just showed us.

But as long as, you know, at the root of this is an artist getting a lot of money that they would not otherwise get.

I mean, that's not something I'm going to object to in the short term, irrespective of my views about the value of art and commodification of art.

Yeah, on one hand, I mean, obviously, if people are making stuff that is of some aesthetic value, whatever that means, and they have rich people who are willing to pay for it like Kudo's. Great. Also, let me get in on this.

You know, not everyone can write. Exactly. Are you going to have a successful patron where you're just straight up funded by a large audience of people be paying, you know, each person living in a small no amount of money each month. But, yes, I agree.

We do. We should get into this. So here's my proposal. OK, we should we should clip this section and sell it as an NFTE.

What makes that unique? Because it's the it's the original.

But I mean, that's part of the issue. Like, how do you tell if. A digital object is an original object, that's what the block chain does, it verifies that authenticity. So what?

So theoretically, everyone just agrees that that's the case. That's the basic idea of everyone.

We all everyone would have to buy into this idea that that's the block chain that prove proves that authenticity.

Isn't this like when Cicarelli or whatever bought the Wu Tang album? It is that I mean, that's a pretty good example. And wasn't that like, silly?

It is silly, but the difference there is I mean, I do think like they were selling that one album as an artistic statement, which I find interesting.

But the big difference is a guy like Shkreli, you know, buys that album and then can decide not to release it.

Oh, it wasn't an album. It wasn't an album that was out. It was a secret album.

Yes, it was an album. They they press exactly one copy and they sold it. And they were like, well, you know, whoever buys it, they can decide to release it to the public or they can just keep it.

Oh, well, that's less silly. That's actually an original product because it's not so popular. That's why it's a fascinating idea. But it's like it gets it gets silly because of the fact it's frickin Martin Shkreli bought it. But this is kind of what here's what this is kind of akin to.

This is like selling the master tape of an album right now with a master CD that you produce.

And then, you know, that goes into production and you just run a bunch of copies of it.

And the copies are identical, but there is still only one master, correct? Yes.

Well, I would say to that that there is a part of the value of the master is I think the presumption or the understanding that every copy is slightly diminished, even if imperceptibly to most people.

Right. Like, every time you cut a record, it I think it also wears on the master.

I don't know. Maybe I don't know the science of records. I mean, I'm sure I'm sure that's the case.

So I figure I figure that, you know, once it got to the point of digital media that became, you know, less relevant.

Well, that's my point. That's my point. Like, I can understand why. Well, let's take you know, potters casts are the same way or like, you know, what's his face. They got made a bunch of those, like, brass ballerinas. Right. Like, you know, the sculptures, little little sculpture, ballerina girls. There's like a handful of them. And I think they all came from the same cast, like Clay cast or whatever, used to cast bronze.

And, you know, you make the clay sculpture going to cover in some kind of petty thing and then you melt the inside out and then you pour the bronze in, like that's how you make things.

The original, I would presume, if it exists somewhere, is enormously valuable because it's the thing that enabled all of these statues to be made to be more valuable.

And you could conceivably make more to the end of all time. And like, you know, it's valuable because, you know, Degas hands were on it.

It's this artifact. It's fragile in a way that the statues themselves aren't good.

They're made of bronze in this thing is made of some kind of softer clay material.

It's putty. It's it's like it's a historical object. It is delicate. Like I can see a million ways why that would have value. I'm just really struggling. A digital object. You don't even know it's an original except this random technology told you it was. There's nothing new about it.

It has so far. For all of this to work, there has to be a community of trust where we all agree of like what you just said.

We all accept that, even if it is. The first I don't care, you're not buying anything.

I mean, I don't give a shit either. I think it's weird that my money on that ship, that's not quite what I'm saying. I'm saying that even if I think scribbly is silly for spending money in a way that I wouldn't spend money or even if I think I personally wouldn't spend money on the cast for Diggles Ballerina Girl, I understand the value of it as a historical artifact. As a thing that can be used, technically, it's a thing with a purpose that could be used to make statues, it's a thing that has value, has art value, has historical value, has technical value.

I see the NFTE, its first myth is completely constructed on top of which it has no utility. And because it can be so easily and immediately reproduced, it's as much as you want to say. It's non fungible. It's obviously fungible. And the way that everything digital is fungible is replicable. So get away from the idea of non fungible.

That's not specifically what that refers to. I mean, the name NFTE, I think is I find it very misleading.

But like like you grasp the main idea. I mean I mean, I think, you know, you're speaking to a like a core issue in the way, which is how is value determined.

Yes. Which is not I mean, a lot of people have been asking that question for centuries.

The GameStop thing, and this is what you're saying and you're saying and you're someone who's proposing that, OK, well, there are objective sources of value. There's use value. Yeah, there is a specific cultural value that may be hard to translate dollar terms.

Yes. That there is an objective value. Our I mean, my responses to all of those things would be I agree in broad strokes with what you're saying. I don't necessarily agree that it like there is a fungibility between, say, an ineffable work of art and the experience that it produces and, you know, dollar sign. Dollar sign. Dollar sign. Sure. That being said, the reason why entities are worth what they're worth is because fucking rich people say that that's it.

I mean, why is money worth what it's worth? It's made up. It's fake. Here's what I've concluded after this stimulating conversation, which I have genuinely enjoyed a great deal.

I was good, good. I thought to be sloppy or who was good. It feels like all of the discourse around NFTE is calculated to make us all believe the NFTE have value. And this is all a pyramid scheme for the rich people who are buying in or getting these articles written up and Bloomberg and Fox or whatever, and that we are basically printing rich people money by having this conversation about Nettie's.

If you buy a digital over forty million dollars, that means someone with forty one million dollars will need to be willing to buy it in order for you to realize any profit on that investment.

Which means, I mean, if you want to trick, you know, Elon Musk into spending a billion dollars on digital art, I mean, I don't care, but there's always the dumbest person with the most money somewhere who just wants to do it for the story like this is the problem with the uber rich people, right? At a certain point, it's not about whether or not they actually even think it's a return on their investment. They just get to hang the frickin Caravaggio in their living room.

And that's just it. They don't ever plan to sell it. It's what do you call it, conspicuous consumerism.

Yeah, but I think a lot of the people who are buying these are not like what you would think of as traditionally rich people. They are recently minted like crypto millionaires who are channeling their enthusiasm, enthusiasm for this technology.

And just like another like the hottest trend or cutting edge as they see it.

OK, I don't know what cryptocurrency is either, but we obviously don't have time to get it.

I mean, I think you already have the you have the pieces right there. But I mean, that's exactly it. And that's why you have these, you know, should like, at least in the short term, be viewed through the lens of this cryptocurrency asset bubble.

And frankly, the stock market asset bubble is well, it's a lot of speculation, which is why I would not advise the audience to go out and speculate on NFTE. This is not investment advice. Just, you know, clear that also the FEC doesn't bang down our frickin door or the SEC doesn't bang down our freaking door. But I mean, you know, I don't know if you wanna spend ten bucks on a jpeg of, you know, Hank and Boomhauer having sex with each other, I'd go nuts, you know, have fun.

But that being said, I think with that being said and also the fact that it's the cryptocurrency and all the shit is pretty much destroying the environment and freezing conditions, I mean, I've heard it, but I don't understand because it takes off.

I mean, this is an important point.

I don't want to be too glib about it, because this is part of I think the the the critique, the hostility that I see from a lot of people on the left is that, you know, hey, this is using up a shitload of energy and it's crude shitload of emissions because I'm going to try to explain this as simply as possible.

I mean, I'm not dumb stuff just doesn't make any. I know. I know. It's just I know it's it's kind of weird. I mean, I like I mean, there might be a point where I just want to say we'll just take that at face value.

I feel like that's what everyone's doing, which is why I can listen to three podcasts about I can explain this. I'm just going to collecting my thoughts for a second. So let's talk about Bitcoin for a second.

Right. It's like that ledger we were talking about, that block, block, chain ledger. Right. That's that's really all it is. But there is a finite number of them and they are produced through a process called minting.

Minting basically means do with making your computer do busywork, you force a computer to basically solve math problems to do for Ducos. If they solve enough of the math problems, then they meant Bitcoin and then you own that.

That's the basic system and there's other aspects to it.

And like that system is the thing that has to exist, because that's part of what keeps the whole network up is like people minting the Bitcoins because, you know, this is all like for like a distributed ledger like this to exist that's going to record every single transaction. And we're talking like, you know, millions of millions of transactions every probably every minute or so. For that to work, you're going to need a bunch of computers, you know, you know, actually running these operations, actually keeping the ledger.

The way Bitcoin is designed is that there's a hard cap on how many bitcoins could be produced and coins ever taken out of circulation.

No, they're not. There's always going to be like once like eventually they're going to reach a point where the last bitcoin is mined.

And how do they decide that something like nine million, the cap was basically kind of chosen kind of arbitrarily.

Toschi Nakamoto by who? By Satoshi. He was the inventor of Bitcoin. But there are other cryptocurrency that have like a like a bigger cap or whatever. That's not that important. No, I mean, you just need to know, like, those are just the facts.

OK, there's another episode where I have a lot of questions about how this fellow got people to invest in the idea that this digital object that he created had value as a currency. But I'm willing to move on at this point.

The way that it's design is that the first few bitcoins like your computer, you run a program like I could make a mint of like a second.

It gets harder to mint them as time goes on and it requires more processing power. It which will in turn require more energy consumption. And to mine a bitcoin right now takes a shitload of energy.

But not all energy comes at a consequence to the environment. Right. You can just build a giant solar panel and say, this is I have solar solar produced bitcoins don't at me.

No. Yeah, no, I absolutely do. My Hijau Bitcoins. I agree with you.

And I think that has to be a nuance in the debate about climate change.

And as it pertains claimed the coins. Yeah, crypto currencies. Right.

Because, I mean, the fundamental problem isn't that, you know, it's using a lot of energy that's creating emissions.

The problem is that, well, our entire global energy infrastructure, it's built on labor, on carbon consumption. Right.

Which is bad, especially when you consider, oh, we actually have the capital and labor and technology to create a purely zero emission global economy, complaining about Bitcoin fumes while eating my juicy Angus beef burger.

Yeah, basically.

Basically. So, you know, I bet I do want to give a nod to that because, you know, right now, yeah, there is something very appalling.

I saw a guy who constructed a natural gas derrick which connects to a shipping container full of graphics cards, computer processors, and that entire system that that filthy emissions system, like all, exist so that this this fuckface can Minta Bitcoin.

Yeah, of course. That's the kind of appalling kind of consumption that is certainly has no social value. But the overall idea of, OK, well, you know, the block chains can be really useful. They're like there are other purposes besides, you know, just having groups like Martin Shkreli get really rich. They you know, they kind of have uses beyond just speculation.

You know, I think that's very true.

And I'm not going to I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater on it, even if a lot of people engaged in it are, you know, huge dipshits. Yeah.

I mean, the part of this that's most interesting to me, I guess, and what I'd like to know more about is what this digital art is like. And I think not just as a joke, to be honest, but because I think it would help me to understand and maybe be a fruitful avenue for artistic exploration.

So if you want to go back to you know, I want to make an effort with you.

Well, that's what I'm saying. I think we should I don't know if there's like a hard cap on. I have not made one. And I don't know the hard cap on how long a video can be. I know you do videos with them, maybe just maybe three years. Maybe that'll be easier. I think we should clip this section of the show as an experiment. This is this is bad Faith Science Corner.

We're going to clip this whole conversation that we just had about numpties.

It's a very good conversation I enjoyed. And we're going to put it on the auction block and say, if you want to own a bad faith, original and original from the bad masters, from Virgil being bad, place your bets.

I want to just set the reserve at one dollar and just see what happens. Another interesting regular is when you set the reserve and someone meets the reserve.

So what does that mean to just that? The reserve? It's like, I'm sorry, you. Reserves the right to privacy, like setting the just the beginning price of the auction. So we put it like it's like auctioning for something at a blank price once somebody actually meets that price with an opening bid. And this is arbitrary as well, then that also goes for twenty four hours. So I want to say to the audience right now, bad, faithless, faithful.

Sorry, sorry. I know that's, you know. Now I'm nervous because this is going to be an NFTE is going to be on. It's going to exist forever on the block chain. I say the faithless look faithful. Look out for the bad faith NFTE auction. Don't get mad at us because we said all the stuff about climate change. We know about the climate change stuff.

So don't get mad about me, OK? This is cool. I'm into it. What I told you would be a good conversation.

What I imagined are NFTE. I was thinking visual. Madam, I'm going. I understand the video is visual, but I was thinking like a static image and I for whatever reason, the image that sprang to my mind was our logo.

But with us like baby pictures, like looking off into the distance like this, like, like a baby, like virtual three, like what's her name does the the weird photograph and Gatti's.

I mean, sort of, but I wasn't imagined as like smuggled in a pumpkin I like like in pink and blue, like on our cover image and like just to find a childhood image of yourself where you're kind of in three quarter profile and we'll just Photoshop it together. And in my head, that was kind of iconic image that the people really needed. Also, I just want to see a baby picture of Virgil. OK, this is not going in the NFTE.

I'm just I'm just calling it right now. Like, that part is not in the NFTE.

Come on, Virgil, why don't you want me to be happy? Let's you know what? We'll see how this one NFTE goes and then we can talk about it later. All right. I don't know. Maybe we'll make 20 million dollars. We'll see. Be cool.

It also would be funny if somebody bought it for, like R.A.F., NFTE for one hundred dollars. And then through a process of speculation, it became worth 20 million dollars. That would be less cool than did Martin Shkreli just owns it. I mean, that's a story.

If Bloomberg writes up something about bad faith because Martin's Carelli buys our NFTE, that the net win for us.

Let's do it. Let's be the first NFTE podcast podcast, NFTE.

Let's let's do it. Let's get in on Wiki. Also, let's get us the wiki page.

I didn't say that. You said I.

But, you know, I can see the value of I'm like fifteens. I can see it notable. Well, there you have it. There's you know, that's bad for the science Shaf of the day. Why don't we, uh, why don't we meet our panelists. It's been a while.

All right. Yeah, that's Maracanã. Oh, hello, Paul. I'm back with more shiny crumbs for you. Well, you did it. You got your fifteen dollars an hour. It's a thing you've been asking for for ten years. And now you finally have it five years from now. Just think in one hour you'll make fifteen whole dollars before tax. OK, Mr. Moneybags, look at you running around above the poverty line. God, there's so many things you can buy with 15 dollars.

You can buy four fifths of a Los Angeles restaurant hamburger before to treat yourself to a couple of gallons of the lowest tier gasoline. You can buy three hours of parking at the Santa Monica Pier or two hours of parking at your local hospital.

Let's meet our guests. She is a comedian from UCB. Kylie Brakemen.

Hello. Thank you for having me. He is alderman for Chicago's 30 Fifth Ward. He was the Illinois vice chair for Bernie Sanders. Twenty twenty campaign, Carlos Ramirez, Rosa, everybody both making their first appearances on the bad faith program. It's only two today. We're going to have three, but it turned out to be two Virgile.

You know, we keep going back and forth about this because my philosophy is that while as human beings, our brains are oriented to wanting things to come in threes, that panels work better when there's actually just two people because there's two of us also.

Well, that adds up to four. So that's that's my brain doesn't like.

Right. But the point is that there is a lot of people there's a lot of personalities. There's a lot of things that get on the table. And so, you know, I want I want both of these guys to have an opportunity to shine, especially since I followed both of you on Twitter for a long time for different reasons.

And I got to confess, I'm extremely excited to finally meet you.

It's it's so good in the flesh. But because you burst onto the scene at a moment when a lot of folks were afraid that comedy was dead because Joe Biden was in office and there was nothing to laugh about, there was no edge left anymore. And the liberals didn't know what to do with Joe Biden as a foil.

No, because now we're in a utopian society and everything's perfect. So what is there to make fun of? Everything's great.

Exactly. So for people who don't know, you are able to in these kind of like knit it together.

I want us to look at the ticktock style.

I'm going to say about you words that make me sound 75. Tick tock. Jump, jump, jump, cut. Artist, whatever or whatever you want to say.

She's a girl from the iPhone. Exactly.

I'm the girl who looks who makes videos that look like FaceTime because people don't want to click on anything that has three camera setups.

God forbid that you're able to do that and you are able to capture, I think, some of the inane liberal pablum that really finds its home where most like 30 and 40 something liberals live, which is also my home Twitter.

I mean, I wasn't necessarily not that I wasn't doing political stuff before this, but like I was mostly just focusing on, like, goofy stuff. I was in my own little bubble and I was just doing, like, really dumb characters. And then I think just being online 24/7 during lockdown back when it was like a real lockdown, really just warped my brain. And all I could regurgitate was just things that happened on Twitter of like cringe things that people are posting.

And so I think people responded to just the like, oh, my God, we're all crazy portion of it. Yeah, I'm.

So you went from doing I don't know what kind of characters to doing. Just Debra Messing.

Just suddenly only blue check cringe. Just twenty four. Seven. Well what's the response been like.

I mean I'll say this, Republicans never lash out at me because they don't find me. Every once in a while I look on a trending topic and I see tweets from them and I'm like, I've never seen any of these. I have never even encountered any of these opinions because we're so isolated. The only people who come for me are like centrists. And so it's been very interesting. I've had I had one person do like like a two hundred tweets about me within a day.

It was like she had feminist in her bio and everything was great.

It was perfect. What are they mad about?

It's hard to say exactly what they're mad about because most of what I'm saying, if you actually look at it, is nonsense. Like it's not anything. It's not like I'm like I'm Nancy Pelosi and I'm blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, sometimes I do that, but mostly I'm just saying, like, definitely do this brunch, but it's just these words and they really get under people's skin. And like, there are a lot of like middle aged women who are like, you shouldn't be making fun of women, you should be making fun of men.

And I'm like, where did they specify that I was? Woman, I simply am a woman, I don't know what you want me to do. We're now going full circle and we're saying women can't do comedy, which I love.

Yeah, it boggles my mind the various heuristics that people use to prevent themselves from enjoying anything at any time.

We're really at that point right now. That's a new one to me.

Like, you know, you've got to make fun of it. You cannot lampoon women and it's nuts.

It's like if we really want to have more women in comedy, we have to, like, have gross women characters on there. Like, do you want me to just portray every woman as superwoman? That sucks.

Well, next time, just slap a mustache on your face before you do your next supercut. We love that. We love that.

Something very funny about getting mad at one of your videos, which is just admitting, oh, I'm the person from the video. Right.

You got my number perfectly, because if they were a little smarter, they'd be like, yeah, that's a good joke at the expense of someone who's not me.

It's very telling. It's very telling. I don't know, like if I were to make some video about, like Rowe's Twitter, like socialist Twitter or something, I'm sure that everyone on the left would just be like, oh, cool. I hate myself, too. Also, you brought me.

Yeah, there's no jokes, but I feel like every leftist podcast is just making fun of every other leftist blogger.

Basically that's like that's why other people have other political orientations. Don't even need to work up. The effort to satirize the left is already doing it to itself. Yeah. Nobody hates us more than us.

Carlos, I want to ask both of you this question, actually, because in different context, obviously, Carlos, you're in actual political and Kailey here in political parody land.

But, you know, when you are on the left, frankly, even a little bit, you do end up finding yourself fighting often more with the people who are ideological peers or at least ostensibly share your party broadly than the far right.

And I'm curious, Carlos, what's it been like for you engaging in more local politics as a Bernie bro?

You know what? I will say that I'm pleasantly surprised whenever people that I consider ultra leftists are like, we have to stop those ultra leftists that are ruining our campaign.

And I'm like, oh, look like I don't know what this means in terms of where I stand on this spectrum. I will say that local politics is most definitely local. And so people very much consider me to be the far left of the Chicago City Council for four years. My first term, I was the only democratic socialist on the city council. We now have six self-identified democratic socialists, which, if you do the math, means the next election will have thirty six in twenty twenty three elected to the city council.

I think that when I speak to people like, for example, my comrade Kshama Sawant from the Seattle City Council, the positions that she takes are much more far to the left.

If you compare it to kind of where the political discourse is at in Chicago, it's really just a lesson that, you know, a lot of these conversations are extremely local things that pass for kind of mainstream liberal in Seattle or San Francisco or New York are oftentimes seen as very radical or extreme here in the city of Chicago.

How do you deal with that? Because, you know, we just had an interview, I guess it was Monday's episode, past p.m. episode. We were talking to some of the union members and Amazon workers who are organizing to be in a union down in Bessemer, Alabama.

And I asked them, you know, what do you make of all the kind of team? BERNEY Folks who descended on Bessemer?

Is it purely oh, I'm so glad people are here to help in the maintenance of the world and the bushes of the world are here to bring attention to this issue and were so happy or is there any sense of carpetbagging or any skepticism? And does this does it resonate for people that a lot of the folks that are down there are Vertebras, Danny Glover? Like, when I look with my biased burning eyes, I see just almost exclusively people from the left who identify as part of kind of the Bernie Democratic movement down there.

And I was curious to see if they perceived it that way as well and if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

And, you know, it was such a non issue to them. You know, they were just like, I'm happy for anybody to be down here supporting. And they did think that it was going to have a go radicalising influence on the people that were participating in the movement. And so I wonder how you negotiate that dance between kind of leading with those kind of, you know, Sanders associations, which can go one way or another when the message itself is popular, separate and apart from Bernie?

Yeah, I think one of the challenges is that the position of alderman is partisan. So we don't have a Democratic primary election. You know, in that Democratic primary, there are so many self-identified liberal or very liberal or progressive voters that I think in a lot of places it's easier to be associated with the Bernie crat in our non primary municipal election. There are a lot of people that would be voting in the Republican primary if we had one who are showing up and voting in my election, and so my polling for my re-election showed that I had taken so many progressive stances that my ceiling was essentially sixty four percent of the expected electorate in my district.

Essentially, anyone that I identified as moderate or conservative was just not going to vote for me. Now, if there was a separate Republican primary, those people that I identified as moderate or conservative would vote in that primary. I would win the Democratic primary with 80 percent of the vote, and then I'd go on to win the general election as a Democrat because Chicago is a Democratic town. And so I think the nonpartisan nature of our elections does mean that more conservative forces are overrepresented in our municipal elections.

And I think that plays out with a lot of people being very angry about my association with Bernie Sanders right there. Like, why are you talking about Bernie Sanders? Shut up. There's a pothole on my street. And then you have to go through the work of connecting the dots to say, look, there's austerity, there's divestment in our neighborhoods, there's corporate tax breaks. There are people that are dying in our community because they don't have health insurance.

And so if I'm going to be a good representative for my community, if I'm going to get that potful fix, if I'm going to make sure that our senior down the block is getting the medicine that she needs, then it behooves all of us, and especially myself as a local leader to get involved in national politics and fight for progressive champions like Bernie Sanders.

Chicago neighborhoods are you might as well be describing just you and me. No idea what any of the words mean. I can I can like name probably 15 Chicago neighborhoods that I know I would not be explaining where they are, what those words mean, but I've just heard them. What neighborhood do you represent?

So I represent the northwest side. If you've ever flown into OK, I'm already lost.

Yeah. So have the lake is on the east side off of the lake. It's really is Lake Michigan. Yes.

Once you know where you're confusing because it's in the state of Illinois, you know. Hey, you know, it is it's a huge lake. I don't know if people realize that this is not a little itty bitty lake. This is the largest freshwater resource in the world.

New York probably has bigger lakes, but no, it's not going to pick it up right here. I'm learning a lot.

So basically, if you fly into O'Hare and you get on the blue line train, I'm halfway between O'Hare Airport, which is on the far northwest side of the city and downtown, about sixty thousand people in the district, about half of them or more Latino immigrant background, about a third or more white. And then, you know, folks from Asia, from all across the globe.

So how did you come to run for the City Board of Aldermen?

So I decided to run in 2014 because I was sick and tired of seeing a mayor, a corporate neoliberal mayor, totally sell out our neighborhoods, basically sell the city to the highest bidder. Our local alderman was selling our community to deep pocketed developers because we have a system where local elected officials are alderman, make the decisions on zoning and land use. We saw a lot of displacement happening in our community, skyrocketing rent. So I started talking to neighbors and was like, hey, who's going to run for alderman?

How can we change things up in City Hall? And finally, people were like, why don't you run? And I was twenty five years old. So, Kylie, you're twenty four. I think I heard you say earlier.

I am the rumors that you're kind of like Carlos. They make something of yourself.

I got to get out there. I got to get to work.

I'm pretty sure Kylie has more Twitter followers than me. So I think she's had the success that, of course.

But, you know, folks were like, hey, why don't you think about running? And we formed a committee of local residents. We started knocking on doors. And interestingly enough, I mean, this is sort of kind of when Bernie was sort of, I think, hinting at running for president, there was definitely a shift in the national politics around discourse. You had Bernie Sanders and folks like Elizabeth Warren talking about taxing the rich. So locally, I knocked on doors and said, you know, we need to take on the big and powerful corporations of city hall and we need to make sure that our public dollars go to the public needs in our neighborhood.

And took that message door to door and one with sixty seven percent of the vote for while you were the only socialist on the Chicago Board of Aldermen and probably the first in decades, the first in about a hundred years, the last time we had had a socialist was in nineteen fifteen.

And actually Democrats and Republicans came together to run a hybrid candidate against him to unseat him. Sounds familiar.

And since then you brought five other socialists onto the Chicago board of Alderman, something like 10 percent.

Yeah. So we had a movement and we've had a leftist movement in Chicago for many, many years that has increasingly looked to electoral politics as a way to push forward our movement demands. It was a coalition of progressive labor unions, community groups. As well as the Democratic Socialists of America, we were able to elect six DSA members to the city council in 2019 and are oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, you go ahead. Virtually no, I forgot I was going to I was going to ask basically.

I'm just trying to think of an articulate way to put this.

How's it going going? I will say that one is a lonely number. I think that having six of us now, we're really a unit. We can work together, we can fight together. There's a lot more cooks in the kitchen, which means we can cook a lot more. And so whereas before a lot of times movement organizations would turn to me and say, hey, we need you to file this bill, we need you to be our champion on this.

And I'd say I've got a full plate. You know, I don't really have the capacity to take on this issue. Now, they have other aldermen that they can turn to. They can help lead on those things. So we're taking on things like climate change, affordable housing, progressive taxation, a whole host of issues that we can now pay attention to and lead on legislatively. Whereas before we were a little hindered because there was only one alderman they could turn to.

Yeah, it's something that we talk a lot about on this show is the consequences of the DSA electing socialists to the US House of Representatives, and that's less than one percent. That percent is a much more consequential number. What practical effect has your voting bloc, your coalition had over negotiations over things like the Chicago city budget?

Yeah, well, we've definitely moved the conversation to the left on a number of issues. We've been able to win important concessions. We've also been able to pass important ordinances. So for about four or five years, we had an ordinance that was stalled to completely end any collaboration between local police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. After the election of these additional socialists and some additional progressives, we were finally able to pass that. So in no case and no exception will Chicago police work with ICE to deport undocumented Chicagoans.

We were also able to push forward a non law enforcement, mental health first responders, a lot a lot of words, but essentially making sure that we have alternatives so that when people call 911 in their mental health crisis, a cop doesn't show up with a gun and then shoots them when what they really need is support and help in that moment. So the mayor was totally opposed to this. She said she only wanted a call responder model where we send out police officers with mental health professionals.

But all the data shows that what you really want to do is have a non law enforcement approach. And so we were able to win a pilot in the twenty twenty one budget to begin rolling out that program. In the end, we're only 10 percent of the city council. So that does hinder kind of the concessions that we're able to win. But there's no question that we've totally changed the entire landscape and move the conversation to the left. And I feel it myself, you know, whereas before some of my colleagues were like, you're kind of saying things that are out there.

It's helped bring our ideas into the mainstream and it's become part of the discourse at city hall and in city politics.

If memory serves, there was some controversy over, I believe it was the budget vote that one member of the Socialist Caucus voted for and against the party line on that. Could you describe what that controversy was and what the consequences were? Yeah.

So the leftist movements in Chicago, including D.C., rejected Mayor Lightfoot's twenty twenty one budget proposal as putting forward austerity has been balanced on the backs of working families as continuing to fund policing. So the demand was made that aldermen vote No. Five of the six democratic socialist aldermen stuck with our grassroots movements and voted no. Unfortunately, one of our colleagues voted yes. There has now been an internal Chicago DSA accountability process and the report of which will be coming out soon.

I think that it's a challenge and it definitely provided a challenge to our local chapter because we have to figure this out right. We've never had so many elected officials in office. We've never had so many people with a stated commitment to co governance or to engage in a dual power project. Is it sometimes called. And so this is really a test case to see how do we hold our own accountable? I trust the members of the Chicago GSA to work through this democratic process and figure out how we make sure that when people break with our grassroots movement, they're held to account.

Is the fact that the Chicago City Council Board of Aldermen, I mean, that's your name or it is nonpartisan. Does that create some distance between you and your other socialist and the Democratic Party?

Well, yeah, that's interesting. You know, the Democratic Party has really become more so like a corporate entity than like a party that's made up of like individual members. Each ward also has a Democratic and Republican committeeman. And for some time, because the Green Party got enough votes at the state level, each ward also elected a Green Party committeeman. In effect, those committeemen form the county party and they're the ones that actually make the decisions and decide who.

Is the county endorsed candidate, most aldermen are also the Democratic committeeman, even when they're Republicans who vote for Trump and have Trump signs in their front lawns, as we have one alderman who's the Democratic committeeman and had that in his front lawn.

So it's an interesting situation because most voters so for example, in the Democratic primary in my ward, upwards of sixty to sixty three percent of people voted for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary in my ward. And so I guess what I'm getting to is that the Democratic Party isn't this disciplined united force where they can say, you know what, get out of the party. You're a democratic socialist, you're not a Democrat. I think that there are openings, particularly at the local level, as we saw in Nevada, right where Bernie Kraut's a democratic socialist, can enter the party and actually we'll party within within these loose party apparatuses.

I'm curious, Carlos says one is the loneliest number. And what's it like being a very pro in the comedy world? You think, oh, it's California. California went for Bernie like it's the liberal coast where all the crazy avocado things happen. And yet it seems like maybe your experience isn't, that this kind of comedy is roundly accepted and embraced with open arms?

I think it's interesting because I would say that the kind of things that I believe in, like 90 percent of the comedians I like interact with and like all of my friends believe the same thing. And so I think, like on a personal level, it's not difficult at all. But I think in terms of like the broader sphere of like TV, late night and everything, and obviously I have no credits. I am simply online. But like, I think there is a general sort of like, let's just make fun of the Republicans.

That's easy. That's what we do, as opposed to maybe the tougher thing, which is to make fun of systems. And I don't even think it's that tough. I think it's very simple. I feel like it's very simple to be able to be like we can make fun of a system that is the richest nation in the world that doesn't give you health care. Like, I feel like people take things very personally where it's like, well, we can't personally attack these politicians because they're like, quote unquote, the good guys.

But it's like I'm not necessarily making fun of Biden specifically or like a specific candidate. I'm making fun of the system at large. And so it is always curious to me when people are like, you can't say this yet. You have to wait until X person is elected or X person is elected when it's really just like I'm just making fun of the reality at large. I didn't even explicitly think it was political for like a while until I started being branded as such.

Yeah, it's weird to see and I don't mean this kind of as a criticism of her, but sorry, the woman who got the Netflix show instantly from the Trump impersonations. Yes. Why am I blocking her name? Yes. Super there, Cooper.

So Sarah Cooper goes viral and immediately, you know, is rewarded with these kind of like structural Netflix. See, like she she becomes a household name, is doing the the circuit. And I'm not saying I don't know what the comparative clicks are on their videos because they're Cooper's videos. And I know that Trump is just a target that people love to hate. And you're going to get a certain amount of traction for that reason. But like the second I saw you, like, this is funny.

I would like to syndicate this, please, if we're just we're just literally doing Lip-Sync videos as television shows. I think that this is original content, actually.

I mean, it's interesting because I think there is like there's absolutely room for both. And I do think we serve very different purposes. I mean, I've messaged with her back and forth. Seems like very nice. I think that she has been working very hard for a very long time and it's paying off. And I think it's not undeserved at all. I mean, she found like a shtick that worked and somehow it has become this like super politically loaded thing versus where it's like, is this inaction?

Is this helping? Is this when in reality she is simply just mimicking the president's words? And I think it is very accessible in a way. Like I think that people who are maybe on the border and I don't know, maybe this is wishful thinking, maybe this is wishful Lincoln Project thinking, but maybe people on the border can, like, sort of unite and be like that's something to laugh at where like I am saying very specific things that antagonize certain groups of people.

It's a lot more online I'm online referencing here. It's a lot more me. And so I could see how it would be tough for Netflix to be like, do we want this weird shit poster to.

I mean, I know the answer. I will tell you, I'm curious if either both of you saw that moment recently on the Jimmy Kimmel show, John Oliver, but seemed to really highlight these gaps that are just there.

Like the gaps aren't new. They're they're big and they're prominent, but they very rarely sneak on to the mainstream media like this.

Alexa, how about Amazon working conditions? Alexis, Alexis, stop. All right. I have to know, what is Alexa, this is me time now. Alexis, stop, please. Alexis, please listen to me.

The panic space, what was that bit supposed to be? I don't know.

It seems like a straightforward bill. Like I'm going to ask Alexa about union busting. OK, that's a bet. That makes sense. Pretty straightforward satire. Like what was the Jimmy Fallon's idea of this bit?

I think they're going to ask it innocuous questions that had nothing to do with Amazon working conditions.

Yeah, I get and I get why? Like putting myself in their shoes. You want a like a like a home assistant that is a recognizable name. It's a little bit more recognizable than Google home. It's a little bit punchier than Google home. But you can't deny that there are certain associations with Alexa that are like really hard to ignore. And like Jimmy Fallon is not going to stop Basso's by not doing this. But it is still like it's a little weird.

It's a little weird to not address it.

He's trying to get paid. Right. And obviously, this is an ad this is a concept that they're putting on there and he's freaked out. Who knows? Maybe the contract says that he won't do anything to disparage. But now I'm just really curious, what actually does Alexa answer when you ask her what is union busting? And did Amazon change the answer after this aired? I want to know.

That's a very good question. I confess to having a Google home device, so.

Oh, I wonder what Google Home has to say. What does it do? Why do I have Google? What does it do? Do you talk to it?

It survey what it does do that. I mean, you hear me watch 90 AT&T. But I got it because I used to have a party every year, big party for my birthday in New York. And every year my little Sony Music player would not get loud enough to be louder than the voices in the room. And so I would go and buy a speaker from Best Buy and then usually return it after the party because they're very expensive.

And I can never decide what speaker I wanted. And then sometimes I would borrow my mom speaker. But this one year I didn't have time to do it. And my brother convinced me he was like the tech go to person in the family to get a Google home device. And I really didn't want to do it, but I did it and I had every intention of returning it also.

And then I just forgot. So you just use it as a speaker? Yeah, I'm going to ask it things like, OK, well, what's the temperature like in DC today?

Oh, so you're doing other things with it. You're interacting with it. I had an echo.

I will confess. I had an echo dot. I want it in a Facebook live improv guessing game where I wasn't even in the show I like. They were like the first person to comment the capital of whatever state gets this echo dot. And I'm like, sure. And they mailed me an echo dot and I like plugged it in. I had Amazon listen to my thoughts for probably a year and all I used it for was rain. Sounds like rain sounds for me to go to bed to.

And then I'm like, I can't do this. So I gave it away at an improv show of my own and it was the circle of life.

Yeah. I feel like this is a terrible way to think, but my feeling is that they're going to listen. They're listening to my thought.

I had a friend of a friend who worked at, I think, Google, and she knew how to take the speaker things out of her phone like it was some technical thing. Well, and she did it like she it's like how all the surveillance people always have their cameras on their computer. covid, like the people in the know, are very savvy and do the things. But I'm not like I'm not going to do that, you know, I'm not going to do that.

So if the government wants to blackmail me, I like Martin Luther King or whatever, I'm just going to have to deal with the fact that they know my hair removal routines or whatever embarrassing thing is happening in this house. And, you know, I'm not cheating on anybody or killing anybody. So for the most part, I think that they're limited in their options. I'm guarding against blackmail by being just decent.

You didn't have the devices and you could cheat on whoever you want. Well, if I if I feel so inclined, then I'll get rid of my Google home.

But how would you those rendezvous like how would you like even like meet someone this you need to go home to set up fidelity.

Where are you going to call someone sending you a telegram like meet me.

It's twenty twenty one.

It's twenty twenty one. We use our digital assistants to meet our lovers.

It's Well we got to do my future partner knows the second I get rid of the Google home they should be concerned.

Should we have prizes on the show so we can create. More winners. The world needs more winners. Yeah, I mean, I just I was thinking about Kylie winning that echo thing.

What giveaways do want to have for the bad faith and staying where we can give away your frickin Google contextualizes.

I do have a little mini one that I don't plug in, but I also got for free at like a CBC weekend event hosted by Google.

If you keep doing that, you will simply just start doing the Jimmy Fallon bit and then you'll we'll be right back where we started.

Well, think about the bit that I did want to say is I think that if a leftist had been planning the bit, I get the conceit. I get that it's funny to ask this robot things, that it gives you quirky answers like I'm not a monster. I understand. But I think the lefties had been playing the bit the same way. John Oliver's immediate association with Alexiev was Amazon. And what's the first is this obsession with Amazon? Right now it's the Union Drive.

And Bessemer, we wouldn't have done it. We would have picked a different device. We would have just gone with an echo or we would have built in a joke about Amazon into the bit. Yeah. You know, it wouldn't just have glossed over our head that we could pretend that this was like a sponsorship deal style bit that was going to be friendly to the product.

No, it's it's a difficult thing to get by. And I think it's like people are so afraid to take overwhelmingly popular positions like Amazon is evil is, I would say, a known baseline opinion that most people share. And so the hesitancy to go after it, I mean, I saw some people on Twitter claim that that bit was not sponsored, that it wasn't like under the table sponsored even, that it was just purely because of the name recognition.

But I don't know. You never know. You never know what goes on.

I mean, I kind of believe when Jimmy says this isn't a planted bit, sort of like a sponsored bit persay, but it can also be the case that Amazon is the sponsor of your show, even if this bit wasn't placed down any and that you are worried about the consequences of doing a bit like being overly critical.

And of course, like Amazon video also exists, Amazon Prime or whatever they call it, they're streaming like that also exists like there are corporate overlord consequences, like everywhere you look. And I don't know whose parent company owns what, like, you know, that's that's something if I were the host of a show, maybe I'd panic, too. I don't think I would. I don't think this would even happen in the first place. But yeah.

Well, if you if you were to leave, then if Jimmy if Jimmy Fallon is thinking about doing a similar bit in the future, he can win a lot of fans.

I mean, and he could lean in. And I think people would genuinely like it. If Jimmy's advocate too much in this, I believe it. We would have loved it.

The same with it. You know, it's so refreshing to have any leftist in any mainstream sphere. I mean, I think that's why you resonate so much with so many people.

Kylie is like it's just such a void and it seems like such an opportunity for folks. There's a market like I went on CNN like a month or two back and people lost their mind just because it's like a recognizable leftist was like me and Liz Breunig, recognizable leftist on cable news. Just the fact of us being there before we even opened our mouths was like a small media event in lefty circles.

And it's like there's an appetite. Why not take a bite?

It's shocking that, again, Medicare for all universal health care, whatever, supported by two thirds of the country. I feel like people are shocked when people share these opinions or when those opinions are represented in a way that doesn't make sense to me. These are overwhelmingly popular policies. Why is that? And of course, I mean, it's corporations. It's one percent of whatever, controlling everything.

But to be successful in this system, you have to internalize kind of like the neoliberal consensus and be well versed in being able to kind of adhere to what neoliberalism tells us is correct. So Jimmy Fallon is not an idiot, right? Like he's got it to where he's got because he knows how to deal with moneyed people and he knows how to be funny in a way that doesn't challenge them or threaten them.

I don't think he knows how to be funny, but also he might also be an idiot.

We've got our battle lines drawn.

I mean. Right. I mean, I get what you're saying, but I just think this is a bad example for that. Speaking speaking of controversial punditry, we have another clip of things that went down and neoliberal.

And I wanted to see what your guys is response to this one was there's you you were kind of funny and they were testing you.

Now, a few questions about this process. First of all, is it true that when you were having the test administered, you inhaled and the doctor's finger went all the way up your nose and got stuck and had to be released with a tool? Is that true? Just to deal with the Russian cop, she she wanted to comment that I have a little button nose and she was afraid that the swab would actually hurt because it extended my nasal cavity.

You know what? I understand?

This is the normal swab I'm holding up here now for everybody at home. Is it true that this was this swab that the nurse was actually using on you and that at first it went into your nose and disappeared so that in scale, this was the actual swab that was being used to fit up that double barrel shotgun that you have mounted on the front of your pretty face. So you see breathers left this comedy on TV.

I know what you're talking about is that the is for listeners who aren't watching.

That was Chris Cuomo interviewing his brother, the governor of New York, who is embroiled in a scandal at this point, doing some really high end prop work with cotton swabs that get increasingly large, comically large, that that the size of those batons they used to use on American Gladiator to knock each other off like podiums.

I have never seen this clip before doing comedy on scene like those.

Those like Univision daytime comedy shows. You don't know anything about Univision daytime shows. So put them in with some trash that you saw on CNN.

That's right. But don't bring down the high end comedy and other contacts with this. Cuomo, Cuomo.

Not that I know people have asked this before, but how can you just interview your own brother every frickin night on CNN?

It doesn't count. It doesn't count.

That's just you just hanging out with your brother. That's not that's not news. I mean, I know normally it's not even news, but this seems worse.

I mean, Carlos, Chicago gets a lot of crap, as you know, fundamentally corrupt city. But this seems to really rank up there with rank corruption.

It's nepotism. I mean, you know how Rahm got that like seven part special on CNN, his brother, Ari Emanuel, the Hollywood producer. I'm sure he picks up the phone and says, hey, you know, help my brother out. He's up for re-election. It's going to be a tough one. Give him a series on CNN. And the next thing you know, there's a puff piece every night on CNN, you know, saying this is Rob and how he's saving Chicago.

So, yeah, of course, it's who you know, and that's how the world works. And and the great travesties that we know that that's how rich people help each other. Like rich people have the clearest class consciousness, like they will pick up the phone and be like, hey, my idiot son needs a job. Will you hire him at your firm? And then like I got you, buddy, but God forbid working poor people do that and try and help each other out.

So what we're saying is Kiley needed to have an uncle or an aunt at a major studio, and then I could have the Hulu show.

I want my dad to be David Hulu and then my name will be everywhere.

OK, well, I had to I had to get into that. I hope we're going to be able to have some guests that can speak to the, you know, underlying issues, both the nursing home scandal and all of the sexual harassment scandals that Cuomo is up against. But what was really remarkable is that as those things that hit the fan over the last couple of months, they did ultimately have to address the fact that Cuomo has been interviewing Cuomo.

And the response was now that, you know, my brother is in the mix of all of this, it would be inappropriate for me to be doing coverage of him. Therefore, I won't be covering him anymore.

So there's no acknowledgment that it was wrong to have done it when Cuomo was America's hero, quote unquote, because of the covid response.

Now, there's an appreciation this would be awkward for us. So we're not going to do these interviews anymore.

Mean, isn't that just another case of the canceled culture mob coming for comedians?

Yeah, for standup comedian canceled. Speaking of cancer culture, I've been dying to talk about this. You can yell at me if he wants to pop culture focused. But this was one of the most enjoyable counterculture moments for me. Virgil and I, we did an episode a little while back where we talked about the Oprah real family interview.

I don't know if you guys been following this. I'm thinking, oh, yeah, Carlos, I know you're a busy man. You have a lot on your plate, but you're all over it.

I've seen the media, so now I get my news from Instagram.

But so I don't know if you guys watch. It's not that actually the view. It's not the chat. The talk. Sorry, I didn't know.

What I'm talking about. Is that Meghan McCain. What know that's the view. No, that's the view. The talk is the one with Sharon Osborne, principally Elaine Walter Wirth, who was previously the editor in chief of Teen Vogue, Teen Vogue, editor in chief, being a whole other scandal that's going on.

But we'll put that to the side for now.

And on a recent episode about a week ago, Sharon Osborne got into a little bit of hot water as she defended Piers Morgan, who you may be aware is a big fan of the royal family in the Crown and consequently not such a big fan of Meghan Markle. And Sharon Osborne said some words in defense of Piers Morgan as her friend and the following ensued.

I feel even like I'm about to be put in the electric chair because I have a friend who many people think is a racist. So that makes me a racist. And for me, at 16 years of age, to have to turn around and say I am racist, what's it got to do with me? How can I be racist about anybody? How can I be racist about anybody or anything in my life? How can I. Well, well, well.

What will be right. We'll have more topics.

So don't go away. I think we should stop. We'll be right back.

The thing is that that woman I'm sorry, what is her name? The the black woman. Sure. I forget her name. She was so graceful with Sherrod in a way, but she really did not need to be. There's a part that comes after this when they come back after the break where Sharon says, don't you dare cry if anyone has the right to cry right now, it's me. It's like textbook how not to respond to a conversation about racism as the person who is literally not being aggrieved and so shocking.

And so, I mean, it's not shocking, but it is shocking. I mean, I just love the line.

How can I, at sixty eight years old, be racist when it's like not being what she loves me.

I'm a boomer.

Not all white women at the root of this is she's friends with Piers Morgan. Yeah. So, you know, Piers has been running around saying we talked about this Virgile. It seems like he hung out with Meghan Markle once and me maybe thought it was a date.

And then she introduced her to the prince and then he feels like Prince Harry stole his shot, because if you really read between the lines, it wasn't even a date.

Like he bought her a few rounds of drinks and then she gracefully made an exit. It was not a date. This man thinks it was a date. It was not a date.

It's huge voter behavior, obviously. So now he's super irritated because he is a man slighted, a man scorned. And Sharon said something along the lines of like she tweeted she tweeted A defense of him, like, Piers Morgan is my friend. And apparently it came up on the show. And, you know, some of the other hosts were like, well, I don't I think that Piers Morgan is has been saying is either racist or racial or somehow racially motivated.

His comments about Meghan Markle and then Sharon Osborne jumped to your.

I feel like you're telling me that I'm an electric chair. I feel like I'm just being accused of racism by proxy. I don't even know what I mean.

And yet they said your friend is maybe racist. So can we have a conversation about what it means for you to be defending his substantive remarks in this moment?

Yeah, they hadn't even thrown that her away yet, but it was like she didn't need to be in this story at all. I feel like everyone had bigger fish to fry. Everyone was canceling the queen. Like we're not talking about you, Sharon Osborne, but you made yourself the center of the story and now we have to go. Well, yeah, you probably are a little racist.

It's like the people who insert project themselves on to the folks you're making fun of in your bits.

I like How dare you?

So moments like this, they do make me a little panicky about how far we need to go as a country, because I feel like this discourse is very 2008.

Like a story like this would have thrilled me to no end and been like my entire political consciousness in 2008. And explaining to everyone exactly why Sharon Osborne is wrong would be tantamount to that.

That would have been my Selma Jesus.

I mean, that's that's what it was. I mean, it was I mean, do you remember like Virgil, Carlos? I mean, I don't know.

In twenty eight years I was eleven location tables and she's reading picture books about Barack Obama.

This is pretty cool. I'm going to go to Third and Sweat. That's where we were. I used to read all these blogs by people I like, like the Francesco's rantes of the world.

We're doing the hard and much needed. Work, I've just like basically explaining the most rudimentary concepts in the world to the broader, like largely white liberal public like this is why maybe you should ask people before you stick your hand in their ass like that was the level of discourse.

And now I think a lot of the left is really over it because we have bigger fish to fry. We're concerned with all of these broader economic issues and understanding that structural racism is more than all of this interpersonal stuff about, you know, the person who works with me at my law firm said something rude and it's hurtful. But that's not necessarily our focus in the political realm.

But this this moment really took me back and made me question whether I've been too quick to scoff at the need for the kind of white fragility books Sharon Osborne maybe needs to go back to 2008.

Some literature she read, does she read the book and she stops being an asshole. So I think I think you read the book and you still have the same underlying bad personality traits and you just have the vocabulary to defend yourself.

Yeah, that's the difference. That's exactly it.

Like, you haven't really done any kind of growth or change. You're just going to still be a jerk about other things.

You're saying she becomes a performative activists. She'll just be like an egomaniac and like calling people out. But exactly. People of color. Damn.

Let's face it, there are there are people on the left who red white fragility and had a big problem with. There's a moment in the book where they describe this very phenomenon, right. Where someone says something was racist and the person who's being accused of racism or implicated in the racism starts to cry and make it about having to coddle them and their feelings as opposed to the actual aggrieved person.

And some folks on the left were like, this is so stupid. They're telling white women they don't have permission to cry. If you have feelings, of course, everybody's entitled to their feelings. And it seemed like even there are parts of the left who didn't understand this phenomenon that was illustrated so perfectly here.

But it's not like sincere tears as a kind of weaponization of sorry you say it white fragility to try to distract from the underlying point, which you can agree or disagree with. But they never were able to get to a substantive conversation about whether or not what what Piers Morgan said was racist and whether or not Sharon Osborne was giving cover to it through her tweets.

Yeah, it's this it's this white woman panic where where we go. That couldn't possibly be me.

Yeah, it's very true. People just sort of like they turn on the waterworks, not even consciously. I don't even know if it's like if it's like I am now going to invalidate, but like it's this response that just doesn't need to happen. We can not do that. We cannot make it about us. But we're white women. We're going to make it about us. And it's it's horrible.

I mean, how's your accent, Kylie? Because I feel like there's material that's going to show video.

OK, we should do a little bit more serious when people are looking to us for political guidance in these tough times. I don't want to fool around too much around here. We've been talking about on the show a lot about the global relief bill, what made it through, what didn't make it through, and the politics around fifteen dollars, minimum wage not making it. And there's obviously, again, here's a theme, a pretty significant gap between the way these issues are talked about in the left media versus in the mainstream media.

Then can we do the same on the stimulus clip?

President Biden, Vice President Harris and other high profile surrogates are traveling again this week to promote the coronavirus relief law, which included fourteen hundred dollar checks for low and middle income Americans. We know some progressive Democrats have pushed for recurring payments, not just a one time payment of fourteen hundred dollars, but more. And there is this idea of a fourth round of stimulus checks making headlines in local and some national outlets. Is the White House considering something like that, a fourth stimulus?

Well, we're obviously going to look at the economic data and what the needs are. And what the president is focused on now is figuring out what's next as a part of his build back better agenda. It's no secret that's going to be about jobs. He's having policy discussions through the course of the next several days and weeks. And I expect he'll have more to convey on what's next in bad faith sweepstakes.

Who can tell me what she just said?

She said it's no secret that he cares about jobs. You know, jobs, jobs, jobs, pivot, pivot.

The question was, are there going to be recurring stimulus checks, stimulus checks, or is there going to be a fourth round?

I think she said maybe, but she said nothing at the same time. It's kind of skillful.

It's kind of simple. But I was never I was never any good at that. If there wasn't an answer, you know, as press secretary, if there was an answer that I knew or the very rare occasion that I feel like Bernie's answer wasn't what people wanted to hear, I sometimes. Messed up by just saying the thing or I said that Bloomberg had a heart attack and got in a lot of trouble, it was two stents. Why are they putting in stents if it's not a heart attack?

I'm sorry. It was an accident. I apologize.

Honestly, potato. Potato. The man's putting in stents. He's had a heart attack. He's just lying to us.

When that fiasco happened, not one reporter that I know actually just asked Bloomberg, have you had a heart attack?

Well, I think, you know, the big story is, you know, Bernie, national press secretary cast aspersions lies about whether Bloomberg has had a heart attack.

And it's not liable if it's just a question, if it's just something that happened. It was defamation. Old men have heart attacks. That's right.

You know, obviously, I always said it by accident. Like, I. I misread stents for heart attack because it's like the logical conclusion, you know. Oh, astronaut helmet came off and he was floating in space. And I go on the news and say, astronaut died today and he died.

He's just floating in the vacuum of space without a helmet on. We don't know that. I am sorry. You're right.

I'm going to wait for confirmation from the moon or whatever.

Carl, I'm curious, in your district, how is the stimulus being perceived?

Is there pressure or any blowback for some of these bigger structural elements, namely the 15 dollar minimum wage not making it through?

You know, I think there's definitely a lot of disappointment that 15 hasn't made it through. It's a little different here in the city of Chicago because we really passed an ordinance to get us to 15. However, there's a lot of cities across the state of Illinois, a lot of districts that do not have 15 and do not have a pathway to get to 15. I think a lot of people are not aware about the assistance to children that was included in the stimulus.

And I think once we begin to see that rollout, I think people will be pleasantly surprised. And of course, there's just always the the excitement around, you know, getting that stimulus check and in ways in which we as a community can sort of redistribute that money because there were some people that received the stimulus check that feel that they don't need it. And so they're talking about how do I support mutual aid? How do I, you know, support undocumented neighbors that might not have necessarily received a stimulus check or homeless neighbors who might have difficulty getting that support and that check from the IRS?

I think generally the response to the recent round of covid money has been extremely positive. That doesn't mean that we should point out the fact that we need more and that we're going to continue to need more government assistance and programs to really address poverty. But at the same time, I do think that it's a step in the right direction and people see it as that.

Do you see what's going on with this rogue, the rogue socialist city council person who's not maintaining the block? Do you see any parallels with how you're able to wield power locally on the city council and the understanding that you can operate in tandem and get things done with the choices that are being made by the squad and Congress in particular, this conversation about whether or not they should be acting as a block to either hold up the Kovil bill for things like a 15 dollar minimum wage when you have these must pass bills or to hold up the vote for Nancy Pelosi in order to get hearings and a vote on Medicare for all these kinds of things.

Has your experience on the city council given you any insight into what you think might be going on in Congress?

It's difficult because locally I know very clearly, like, OK, these are the local leaders that are fighting for these specific issues. These are their aldermen that we can push. This is how much leverage we have. And we try and figure out that inside outside strategy. Right. Who are the main community groups that are pushing for specific thing? And how can I use my position as an alderman on the inside to get them in town so that they can better form their grassroots demands, they can better form their grassroots campaign, and then we can do that one two punch where they're pushing on the outside and we're using our legislative tricks internally.

You know, sometimes you use your legislative tricks, so to speak, tricks, but you use your legislative tools to make a point. Sometimes you just want to make a point. And sometimes that's what the organizers on the outside want as well. You know, there was a campaign, my first term, to ask that Rahm Emanuel not spend one hundred million dollars on a new shooting range and swimming pool for cops, but instead invest that money on the west side of the city of Chicago.

And it was called the No Cop Academy campaign. We already have a police academy. We don't need a new facility being built. And I was the only alderman to Castelnuovo. And I use a legislative tool at my disposal, which in our city council we call for publish, where I was able to kick the vote back several days. In the end, we only got one additional their alderman to vote no with me. And so a lot of people were like, why did you do that?

You didn't win anything. It was pointless. All you did was because the city council to meet again. But that was a coordinated decision that was made with the grassroots. It wasn't me acting alone, right? There was a broader movement that I was being responsive to sometimes movement. Or people that are organizing have come and meet, asks of me to be more controversial, but I haven't really felt like the grassroots support was there. So it's really just a matter because we don't have a workers party because we kind of don't have a clearinghouse where all of this organizing work exists under one roof and we can coordinate under that one roof.

It's kind of like a hodgepodge, right. So I'm sure that the members of Congress find themselves in a similar position where sometimes they're going to turn to certain activists on a certain issue and commiserate with them in terms of what the strategy should be. Sometimes they're going to turn to other activists. And so I think it's really kind of just figuring out who really represents kind of that grassroots swell and who has the long term support and strategy to continue pushing on this issue and work with them to advance that matter.

I mean, that's become a theme we've heard. We heard Chris Hedges last week say basically the same thing. You know, it's the Make Me Do It line.

You know, it's the I think the absence of I mean, I said this a million times at this point, the absence of, you know, organized labor, the absence of the kind of extra political leadership, you know, outside of political leadership that has existed in times past has made people put perhaps undue focus or have undue expectations of the squad to fill it and be those leaders. And I think that they could inspire a level of movement energy if they wanted to.

But they're obviously competing pressures for an elected official that don't exist for an outside organizer. And so I understand why people keep looking to them in the absence of others. But also, in all likelihood, you're going to have to have this mix of organizers and musicians and artists the way that they used to have in yesteryear, who could really stoke the kind of public sentiment in the kind of public engagement and levels of protest and activism that we've had in years past, which is to say more front facing camera videos.

And I would say, look, Bernie, to his credit, I mean, look, the house did what it needed to do. It included 15 in the bill. Ultimately, it was the Senate that failed us. But our champion, Bernie, made those Democrats take that tough vote. And now we know who were the Democrats that didn't want to include that bill. So it's not like, you know, they went to Bernie. We're like, look, the parliamentarian doesn't want 15 in the bill.

Biden doesn't really want fifteen in the bill. Manchin is saying no. And Bernie was like, OK, I got you back. Don't worry about it. We'll work on it later instead as my best, Bernie is pretty good.

But but instead he was like, fuck that, we're going to fight for 15. I'm going to put the amendment forward. I think he did exactly what the movement needed him to do in that second. And I will also say, you know, the in the house, the it was in the bill. And so at the same time, you don't always want to be going to the nuclear option. Right. And so it's really figuring it's like any campaign.

You want to know when to escalate there and you want to have a clear strategy about when you escalate there. And there has to be buy in from all the parties involved in that coordinated action.

Yeah, I mean, you know, we went over this on the last episode, so I don't want to win a longer time.

But the question is, Bernie did his best ostensibly or at least fought in so far as bringing the vote on whether or not to include fifty dollars in that bill.

But that kind of obscures, you know, focusing on that obscures the extent to which if Chuck Schumer hadn't taken it out of the bill to begin with, which he didn't have to do just because the parliamentarian rules doesn't mean it like magically just disappears out of the bill.

That was a choice from the Biden administration to do that. If he had kept it in, it would have been incumbent on a conservative or a moderate Democrat to bring an amendment to take it out of the bill. And that would have required 60 votes.

So they basically orchestrated a posture where they turned a fifty one vote situation into a 60 vote situation that would make it impossible to put it back in as opposed to making it impossible to take it out. Right. And then ultimately, we would have had a vote on it. Fifteen dollars minimum wage instead of a vote on whether or not to put a 15 living wage back in the bill. And that posture is very different for someone like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who we all know are from states where everyone supports 50 dollar minimum wage.

How do I know that?

Because in every state they support it because it's all of them. It's all of them. Thank you both so much for joining us today. Where can people find you, Kylie? Find your work and see more of you.

You can follow me at deadeye brakemen on Instagram, Twitter and Tock and any other updates or plugs you'll see from there in Kala's.

Where can people find you in support? Any efforts that you might be championing right now?

You can follow me on Twitter at C D, as in Daniel Rosa, and you can visit my website. Carlos Rosa Dog. Awesome.

Thank you both. This has been fun. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. Bye bye. Chicken, I have a jam, Javier, which while I'm a disco girl now, you know, got to keep with the aesthetic, you know, speaking about Cuomo, you know, I just I wanted to flag this for I know we've got very long on this episode.

I just had to get his thoughts on this one.

I don't know. I don't I'm I'm sure you caught a little of this, but I don't know if you've seen the full quote is reported last week in the midst of the, you know, the Cuomo scandal. Perhaps you've heard of it. These are quote from an article from Politics NY quoting Inas Dickens, an assemblywoman from Harlem and an unnamed Cuomo subordinate's and unnamed source inside the Cuomo administration.

The source said, We're growing in an age of cancel culture. We're not careful. It will come back and flip on us if we keep going and believe immediately all this stuff and that gets recanted. Then we go back to the space where no one believes women.

That's, you know, we're up to like six, seven, you know, women who came forward. I don't really think all of those are going to be recanted.

In any event, if you believe women too hard, what is there left to believe in? What a take the source goes on.

It's really unfortunate that the deaths of thousands of New Yorkers had to take a back seat of allegations from white women that the history of white women allegations is still given.

No one preference over anything to this person doesn't like those. Personally, I know this versus defending Cuomo. They're so cynical. He's in such he's such a sticky wicket that they're using the genocide title as a cover for his sexual harassment allegations.

That's what it is. It's like, why are we you know, why are we talking about this meat to self when you just killed a thousands of old people? Let's let's get serious, folks.

I rue the day anybody ever defends me the way this one is.

I don't think anything that validates the point I was making, which is that he could probably be one of these two things. But the fact is, both of them happening at the same time, piss them off. And it's like, no, just give me one. I can give you the nursing home thing, because that's more of, like an explicitly partisan thing. And I can say, oh, this is all Fox News because that is so dark.

As for Hyena's Dickens, this is a quote that was deleted from the story for reasons I'm not sure why. Imagine this quote was deleted because it was a little vague, because it's not written as a quote, more like a recapitulation. But I believe this is what this was either what Dickens or the source was saying. Historically, white women's unsubstantiated claims that black males were propositioning whistled at or recklessly eyeballing. Eyeballing them led to hundreds, if not thousands of black males being brutally lynched, murdered, most notably fourteen year old Emmett Till.

Yeah, I remember this one. The premise of this is that Cuomo is black, mean he's Italian.

That's, you know, a lot of him saying, I am a woman, I am black, I am Asian, I am Hispanic.

I remember that little speech as a New Yorker. I am a Muslim. As a New Yorker, I am Jewish. As a New Yorker, I am black. I am gay. I am disabled. I am a woman seeking to control her health and her choices, because as a New Yorker, we are one community, the New York City. So we got all of bases covered.

Frankly, you can commit crimes here. Here's the last couple of quotes. I just want to get your thoughts on this. This is from a Facebook post by Enos Dickens.

Assemblywoman, the third woman wasn't a government employee. They were at a wedding with five hundred people knowing in the corner in the dark of the night, but in broad daylight at a party of mass of people. And she says he touched her back. Well, so what? Turn around. Ask him. Excuse me. Are you trying to get my attention? Because I don't know you. That's what a black woman would have done. Handle her business.

Knowing that often sexiness is used to secure favor is. So I just had to know is I want a black woman. What I've done because I'm not a black woman. I don't know. I don't know.

Let's get a Professor Anita Hill on the phone and ask her whether or not black women can be sexually harassed.

I mean, so you're saying you would I mean, you can't tell me. Sorry to put you on the spot there.

I mean, I don't I mean, you don't have to reveal to the audience your strategies for dealing with Andrew Cuomo.

Look, I mean, we are at the end of an episode and we have to wrap. But someday I'm very happy to talk about the kinds of harassment that existed in my corporate law experience. I truly thought that when I became a lawyer that race was going to be the biggest obstacle in a professional environment. And I was very surprised to discover how much my gender played a role in the way that my colleagues interacted with me.

I do think that there is a perception that black women are invulnerable and are not like sexual, legitimate sexual objects. And that's part of what was played upon by Joe Biden and Clarence Thomas in the course of the Anita Hill hearings. Like the idea the country did not rally behind her and see her as vulnerable and in need of protection and defense, the way that I think white women like Sharon Osborne are able to take advantage of that very last quote here.

This is again. Dickens' Facebook post, the latest said he didn't touch me, but he said, I dress like a lumberjack with a red plaid button down shirt, quite inappropriate office attire, particularly in government. I've asked staff inappropriately dressed, are they the hoochie mama on the corner? And in Albany, male staff cannot enter the chambers without a tie and jacket on.

What's funny about this is like, OK, so maybe this half a point, maybe it would be reasonable for a woman to be like, hi, sorry, miss, that's not appropriate office attire.

You have to wear business professional and not Brooklyn hipster gear to work. Sorry, I didn't mean that as an aggression virtual. My apologies.

But then I own many of buffalo check plaid shirt.

But then this woman who's defending Cuomo interjects more sexism in it than Cuomo did originally by saying, yeah, people staff are inappropriately dressed. Sometimes it's the hoochie mama on the corner.

I also want to note, I think that's a pretty I would have to guess that's a mischaracterization of what the actual allegation is. But it is funny that the responses look, I abuse my staff, too, so it's it's fine.

I denigrate my staff. I compare them to sex workers as a means of denigrating them. This is you know, it's just the way you do it. So you play ball in Albany.

But I mean I mean, I relate to this one because, you know, we we have a dress code here at Bad Faith and, you know, is always on the good side.

I did. Do we have a dress, good or bad? We would dress code sometimes. I'm on the bad side of it has to be like that. You got to go change. Never. We have guests. We have guests coming your impeccable virgile and all respects.

Thank you. Thank you. I mean, unless there's anything else, I think that's it.

No, I think that is all. Thank you all to our listeners. And if you are not yet a subscriber, I mean, I got to say you're missing out on a lot of great premium content.

I feel like whenever you say that, I've got to say. Such as and then I always forget and I don't know why I don't know what's wrong with my brain are like, I couldn't tell you what happened like three hours ago, the last three days ago. I just it's it's a problem. It's like a real problem. There's a call for help out on Rising once.

And Crystal, ask me what's on your next episode. And I was like I just said words. I completely just lied. I don't know.

It's for five bucks a month. You you can you can you can help support our very healthy lifestyles and you can also get premium subscriber only episodes. They're like these episodes, but they're only for subscribers. That's the core difference. Like the only way to get those episodes at Patriot dot com slash Bad Faith podcast. And if you go there, then you can figure out exactly what those episodes, what those guests were.

And like, I don't have to keep doing that. What do you sign up for it? You get you know, you get a feed for the show. You can put in any podcast that you want. Guys, premium episodes of free episodes does not have the promo clips. Just a clean, nice feed of bad faith. I can.

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This week's premium episode, which came out on Monday, featured, I think, a really good and important interview with several folks who are on the ground in Bessemer, Alabama, our deputy sue advocate at Amazon worker into Social Security numbers, one of whom is on the ground in Bessemer, helping with the organizing effort.

So to subscribe to hear all of that and about those who don't actually keep that, they keep some driving at four fifteen. It's great. So while they're still in their. Stick shift is the much that's style, but I found it. It's all up to us to invite you down the way you are. So you're getting what you. What do you mean, your father, Kyle? Nonskid. You want to.