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shopify.com/ special offer. pretty

2:00

embarrassing meme, that's par for the course. If

2:03

he does two really embarrassing memes,

2:05

then he might not win. But if he

2:07

could keep it under two embarrassing memes, I

2:09

think he'll win the debate. Because

2:11

of a couple reasons, one is that

2:14

Trump's a maniac and likes to act like a

2:17

maniac and does so in front of people who

2:19

love him, but when he's doing so in front

2:21

of no studio audience and just people who are

2:23

actually evaluating him, he might come across as a

2:25

bit of a maniac, right? Did I mention the

2:27

maniac thing? But also, for all

2:30

of the issues and debates that people have

2:32

an opinion on and the border is bad

2:34

for Biden and the economy for some reason

2:36

is bad for Biden, don't know why it

2:39

should be great for Trump and the handling

2:41

of the pandemic happened a while ago, but

2:43

that's better for Biden than for Trump and

2:45

the wars in Ukraine don't seem good, but

2:48

Trump does really want the Ukrainians to lose.

2:50

I don't know, that's less popular than more

2:52

popular. Here's the one issue that

2:55

people talk about much less

2:57

than they should. Nobody's talking about it. I

3:00

don't know if you know this, but Donald

3:02

Trump supports the insurrectionists and people

3:05

hate this. He doesn't dance around

3:07

it. He doesn't even do the

3:09

good people on all sides. He

3:12

supports the insurrectionists and I can't

3:14

underline just how bad

3:16

a policy position this is. Not

3:19

in terms of rightness, wrongness, ethics,

3:21

in terms of how much America

3:23

hates the insurrectionists. Even if he

3:25

calls them the January 6th hostages

3:27

and sings in front of the

3:30

January 6th choir at his rallies,

3:32

maybe even he doesn't know how

3:34

much the average person hates

3:36

the insurrectionists and hates the fact

3:38

that America had, if not an

3:40

insurrection, then a riot, an embarrassing

3:42

riot in the Capitol. You could

3:45

not like Pelosi. You don't want

3:47

someone to take a dump on

3:49

the desk of Pelosi. And every

3:51

so often you'll see the media,

3:53

right? And they should cover this.

3:55

It's a thing that happens. Some

3:57

January 6th insurrectionist will run for

3:59

office. This

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9:35

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9:37

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9:39

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9:41

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offer, all lowercase. That's

9:56

shopify.com/ special offer. Peter

10:02

Mackendo was born in Arkansas, somewhat

10:04

rural Arkansas. He was homeschooled. He

10:06

responded in the only logical way

10:08

he could. He founded a fake

10:11

Twitter account and pretended and spread

10:13

rumors about the homeschooling community. He

10:15

then graduated to bigger and better

10:17

fare. He founded the movement that

10:20

lets all Americans know that

10:22

birds aren't real. The

10:24

precepts of this movement, as strongly implied

10:27

in the title, are that birds aren't

10:29

real. All birds, at least

10:31

North American birds, they're essentially robot

10:33

replicas. They congregate on power lines. You've

10:35

seen that, right? That's to recharge. They

10:37

poop on your cars to track them.

10:40

They're pretty much an explanation for every

10:42

kind of bird, every kind of bird behavior.

10:45

And then tragically Peter Mackendo died. And he's

10:47

with me now. Hello, Peter. Glad

10:50

to be joining you from beyond the

10:52

dead, Mike. Thanks for having me. Sorry,

10:54

sorry about your death. So it's all

10:56

birds except the North American tufted tip

10:59

mouse. Do I have that right? You

11:01

know, there are many different sects of

11:03

belief within the bird truther universe. We

11:07

respect all of them. I do think that bird

11:09

is a robot though. I think every bird in

11:11

North America, all 12 billion are robots, as a

11:13

matter of fact. I've seen signs

11:16

at your rallies that say reject the

11:18

St. Louis Cardinals, which is true, that

11:21

say big bird or a picture of big

11:23

bird equal big lie. That's also true. Should

11:27

I choose my fandom based on rejecting

11:29

bird mascots? Does that do anything to

11:31

oppose the Philadelphia Eagles unless they're playing

11:34

the Arizona Cardinals and then I don't

11:36

know who to root for? I

11:39

mean, it's really just about what control

11:42

do we as the civilian have. We

11:44

have control over where we spend our

11:46

money, where we offer support. And

11:49

the more that we blindly go

11:51

along and support these bird mascot

11:53

teams, the more that we accept

11:55

the propaganda that the government has

11:58

forced upon us by making us...

12:00

cheer for the concept of

12:02

a bird. You know, it's like a

12:04

massive public humiliation ritual. They want to

12:06

put the bird in the middle of

12:08

the field and then have everyone applauding

12:10

and cheering for it. So,

12:12

I mean, I do think it's wise to

12:14

go for teams without the bird mascot if

12:17

you care about, you know, your purity on

12:19

this earth. Now, there

12:21

were birds and then the government,

12:23

you tell me because you know you're in

12:26

on this, the government systematically

12:28

killed them or they were killed

12:30

and then replaced with these surveillance

12:32

bots. Ah, it's a great

12:34

question, it's a great question. There

12:37

were 12 billion birds in the American skies

12:40

before the 1950s. Around

12:42

then, Alan Dullister, the director of the

12:44

CIA, decided, hey, there's 12 billion birds

12:46

up here. We could kill them, swap

12:48

them out, replace them with surveillance drone

12:50

replicas in disguise designed to spy on

12:53

the American people. So, what they did

12:55

is they got a plane, a bunch

12:57

of planes actually, from a wonderful company

12:59

called Boeing, who's been up to all

13:01

kinds of good things this year, and

13:04

Boeing helped them fly over the

13:07

entire country, almost like a large

13:09

lawnmower, spraying a poisonous toxin down

13:12

onto birds which would then make

13:14

them very sick, was contagious. They'd

13:17

fall on the ground and pretty much disintegrate

13:20

upon landing. As this

13:22

was happening, you know, for every bird that fell,

13:24

the drone rose, and the drones,

13:27

over the course of a 40 year systematic

13:29

process, filled the skies,

13:32

to the point where by 2001, upon the signing

13:34

of the Patriot Act, the

13:36

skies are filled with 12 billion birds and

13:38

the American people are none the wiser. And

13:42

the presence of all these birds

13:44

spying on us, what intel has

13:46

it revealed? Well,

13:48

I mean, it's been a long process, you

13:50

know, so with the Birds Are Real movement,

13:53

it's been around since the 1970s, and we're

13:55

always looking for evidence and proof to show

13:57

the people what's going on, you know, because

13:59

I think like we in... intuitively have a

14:01

mix of like prophetic dreams and Know

14:04

things passed down from other activists,

14:07

but it's important to show the cold audience

14:09

You know the people that may not be

14:12

already identifying with the truth. What's going on?

14:15

so We've talked

14:17

with ex CIA agents Specifically

14:20

this man named Eugene price

14:22

rest in peace who talked

14:24

with us sat down and said listen I worked for

14:26

the CIA in the 70s I

14:30

did this and I worked on the

14:32

program. I worked on the bird drones surveillance program

14:34

and I am Drenched in

14:37

guilt. He said every day he

14:39

feels extremely guilty about what

14:41

they did specifically just killing 12 billion

14:43

birds And how he

14:45

was complicit in turning America

14:47

into the surveillance state, you know So

14:50

it was a great interview. We got him to sit down on camera

14:52

with us And I think that was some

14:54

of the most compelling evidence in

14:57

convincing the public. Yeah Also,

14:59

I have noticed and I don't know if

15:01

your movement has picked this up But there

15:04

are signs out there by people who know

15:06

the truth and they've appeared over the years

15:08

for instance the lyrics to free bird If

15:10

I leave here tomorrow, will you still remember

15:13

me that exactly? Parallels what happened to the

15:15

birds and other Leonard Skinner lyrics? I mean,

15:17

they're kind of an urtext for this movement

15:20

Can you smell that smell there was there's

15:22

a there's a slight different odor that to

15:24

the robotic birds than to the real birds

15:26

For the people who were there whose lifespan

15:29

spans the time I do think that

15:31

there are a lot of and I don't know how

15:33

much of this, you know It just occurs to me

15:35

once you open my eyes to it. I began to

15:37

see it everywhere. It starts

15:39

unraveling You start seeing oh why

15:42

is why why do the presidents

15:44

not talk? They tweet on the

15:46

bird app Yeah, and then the

15:48

tweets are covered on the bird

15:50

logo media on NBC with a

15:52

with a peacock right in our

15:54

face Right, right. Yeah,

15:56

it's really egregious. It's really egregious and the

15:58

more the more that you see, the more

16:00

you tug on that little string, the more

16:03

it all unravels. Yeah.

16:05

Yeah. And then for people who are

16:08

like, oh, there are no conspiracies, you list a bunch in

16:10

the beginning of the book and

16:12

some of them are bird related, right?

16:14

Not just Operation Mockingbird, but

16:16

I don't know if you know Project

16:18

Artichoke, which was trying to get people

16:20

to become assassins, that was originally named

16:23

Project Bluebird. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

16:26

No, that's the thing. It's not a- It's

16:28

all out there. It's a really, really constant.

16:30

You can Google it, folks. You know, it's

16:32

really not. You want- I mean, the thought

16:34

that the government would do something dastardly and

16:36

devious in the realm of avian beings, it's

16:40

right there on paper. There's proof. Also,

16:43

if you think, oh, the government would never do something

16:45

like this, the government would never kill

16:47

something. The government,

16:49

the American government killing something,

16:51

killing an innocent thing, killing

16:53

something and replacing it with

16:55

surveillance. There

16:58

are far, far, far worse things that the

17:00

United States government has done. They're on Wikipedia.

17:02

You can look them up right now. MKUltra,

17:05

Operation Paperclip. These

17:08

aren't conspiracies, folks. This is what

17:10

our country was founded on. Documented.

17:13

Really. Yes. And

17:15

unless you want to live in a patriotic

17:18

delusion about the

17:21

altruistic nature of our government, it's important to

17:23

do your own research, you know, maybe live

17:25

in reality a little bit, and then you'll

17:27

know how to react to a lot of

17:30

things that are about to happen in the

17:32

future that may not be very good. So

17:34

I'm not going to do the cliched and

17:37

seen, but I will add to Peter Maggott.

17:40

That was fun. That was great. We

17:42

could go on forever. And you did for years

17:44

and years. I'm not going

17:46

to say never breaking character, but you founded

17:48

this movement. You committed to the movement. What

17:50

I sensed in our back and forth, you

17:54

weren't 102% trying to sell me on

17:56

this. I think if you were, you'd

17:58

probably adopt a day. different persona that

18:00

was a little off and a little

18:02

crazy. Yeah, that's the thing. That was

18:04

the persona for four years

18:07

that I really embodied. You know,

18:09

I started Birds aren't real in

18:11

Arkansas and became very almost

18:14

obsessed with the idea of method acting

18:16

this character as much as I

18:19

could. You know, so here in our conversation, it's

18:21

a bit tongue in cheek. It's a bit bada

18:23

bada. But, you know,

18:25

back in the day, I would

18:27

talk with journalists. I would talk with people

18:29

who are really just trying to decipher, is

18:32

this movement real, is what this guy

18:34

is talking about serious? You

18:37

know, not not that they were considering birds may

18:39

not be real, but they thought that I thought

18:41

the birds weren't real. And then I was claiming

18:43

I belonged to a movement that had been around

18:46

since the fifties and then we started growing a

18:48

real movement in real life. The thousands started joining.

18:50

Then the media is calling me saying, hey, who

18:52

are you? What's going on?

18:55

And, you know, I would spend

18:58

sometimes hours on the phone

19:00

with journalists breaking

19:03

down, you know, and,

19:05

you know, sometimes going into fits of rage

19:07

because of how little the media understood what

19:09

was going on. Were you trying

19:11

to literally fool them or was

19:13

it more you were trying you

19:15

were happy enough that if they

19:18

got it enough to present your

19:20

supposed character and information as

19:22

a bit of a bit because if it

19:24

was a bit, then people might

19:26

caught into it and the right people,

19:28

the kind of people who would come

19:31

out to a rally and be mostly

19:33

young people, quote unquote, in on the

19:35

joke, play acting. It would become almost

19:37

like a spontaneous improv everywhere type of.

19:39

Right. So is that what you were

19:41

looking for? Were you looking for really,

19:43

really fooling people? The answer

19:45

is yes. The answer is

19:47

both of those I was trying to

19:50

accomplish. And that's what we were

19:52

able to do. You know, the idea was a

19:54

bit of a Rorschach test for boomers and Gen

19:56

Z or for people that may not be as

19:59

little as. on meme culture,

20:01

you know, or as aware

20:03

of pranks and absurdist

20:06

late internet humor. You

20:08

know, a lot of people 40 plus

20:10

or not. And so, you

20:12

know, they would see the idea Rorschach test

20:15

immediately go, Oh my God, this country is

20:17

going to shit. This is, you

20:20

know, things are falling apart conspiracies are sweeping the

20:22

nation. We need to talk about this. Whereas

20:24

if you're someone that, you know, kind of grew up

20:26

on Twitter, you see this and like, Oh, this is

20:29

clearly somebody messing around, you know,

20:31

and so that created a

20:33

really interesting duality where we had this

20:35

improv everywhere type audience and we'd go

20:37

hold rallies. I had a birds aren't

20:39

real van satellites on the top covered

20:42

in decals riddled with typos. We'd

20:44

go around holding rallies and you know, we'd

20:46

have hundreds of people show up, not people

20:48

that actually believe birds weren't real, but

20:51

people who understood the wink of it all.

20:54

They understood the twinkle in the, the

20:56

twinkle in the eye to every a

20:58

dead pan thing. Yeah. But

21:01

it was both and the wink, the wink was

21:03

built in there though to give people the out

21:05

a hundred percent.

21:07

Yeah. Yeah. There's

21:09

an interesting game. You know, that's a delicate place

21:12

to strike because it's really

21:14

easy to make

21:16

people uncomfortable, for instance, you know, it's really,

21:18

really easy to kind of throw people up

21:20

in the air. What's hard is to,

21:22

you know, give them that wink and we'll let them

21:24

know this was a joke, which then makes that makes

21:27

the rest of it kind of unlocks it.

21:30

It makes it valuable. You know, I know

21:32

Andy Kaufman had this great performance where he's

21:34

on stage and he's bombing the standup set

21:36

and it's so awkward in the room and

21:39

everyone's so uncomfortable. And then he starts crying

21:41

and wheezing, but then somebody rolls out congas

21:43

and his wheezing is on the rhythm of

21:45

the congas and he starts playing the congas

21:48

to the wheezing. And it's this unspoken reveal

21:50

to the audience that it was all planned

21:52

from the beginning, you know, without even saying

21:54

anything and the audience, you know, erupts in

21:57

applause. They get it, you know, so it's

21:59

a similar. kind of game of, okay, if

22:02

you're looking at it almost like a trapeze artist,

22:04

you can throw somebody up in the air. It's

22:06

really easy to do that, really easy to make

22:08

somebody uncomfortable or question something, but the hard thing

22:10

to do is to catch them. That's

22:13

the hard part of trapeze. Yeah. And

22:15

from what I understand, you didn't know about

22:17

Candy Kaufman. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Now,

22:19

I have his biography on my shelf right

22:21

here. I've become obsessed with them. But

22:24

yeah, whenever I was, I think it was on an

22:27

interview with the Daily Beast in 2019 or something.

22:30

And during these interviews, right

22:33

now, I think now that I talk about

22:35

this after coming out of character, six, seven

22:37

years after the project, I like joking around

22:39

about it. But in that day, I decided

22:42

the funniest thing I could do was be

22:44

as serious as possible. The

22:47

concept of the character was the joke and that

22:49

if I were to do micro jokes, we'd kind

22:51

of ruin the point. So I would be in

22:54

these interviews and be almost

22:56

on the verge of tears and

22:58

talking about something that really matters to me. And if

23:00

they were to say, okay, but

23:02

are you joking? It's like, what are you talking

23:04

about? Like why would you call

23:06

me and accuse me of that? Yeah.

23:10

So the real conspiracy theorists, and I've

23:12

talked to a lot of people who've

23:14

chronicled them and when we wrote a

23:16

book about the flat earthers, there's

23:18

off. And then after there's usually

23:21

occasion by some horrible crime, they delve

23:23

into a community. First was 4chan, then

23:25

it was 8chan. And there's

23:27

this thing going on where the

23:30

joke or the fact that it is

23:32

a joke kind of helps the people

23:34

who are the true believers. And so

23:36

you have this mix because before you

23:38

were talking about, you know, people my

23:40

age or people your age, not my

23:42

age, people who are younger immediately

23:44

recognize this as a parody. But, you

23:46

know, parody, I'm not going to say

23:49

becomes reality, but there are people who

23:51

are generally they hate Joe Biden. They

23:53

actually do hate Joe Biden and they

23:55

know that QAnon isn't real, but they

23:58

love putting the memes out there. They

24:00

love putting Pepe the Frog

24:02

out there without necessarily believing all the

24:04

Pepe the Frog stuff. Or they call

24:06

themselves Gropers. And sometimes they're called shitposters.

24:09

So there is the ability to say,

24:11

I'm in on the joke, but also

24:13

to perpetuate the joke. I

24:17

know that was, it was probably that didn't happen

24:19

with birds aren't real, maybe it did. But my

24:21

question is, analyze that. What's

24:23

the role of people who are

24:25

there for the humor or there

24:27

for the lulz, right? But also

24:30

do, do provide some

24:32

wind beneath the conspiratorial wings.

24:36

That's a great point. I don't know if

24:38

you looked into Pepe the Frog at all

24:40

or that phenomena. Have you looked into that?

24:42

Yes, yes. Yeah. Really,

24:45

really interesting. I think isn't kind of the similar

24:47

era that you're talking about. Yeah. It's

24:50

just this image of a frog,

24:52

this cartoon that was a joke

24:54

originally, but then became co-opted and

24:56

became a symbol that represented something

24:58

entirely different. I think that

25:01

was a big fear with birds aren't

25:03

real of mine, honestly. And that was

25:05

the reason why I came out of

25:07

character as well. So I wanted there

25:09

to be something researchable concrete somewhere where

25:11

there were someone could say this, I

25:13

made this up in Memphis. This has

25:15

not been around for 50 years, you

25:17

know, and I did feel, gosh, I

25:19

guess that was 2022, a sense of

25:21

responsibility. I think gratefully, though, I

25:23

was able to see how a lot of people interpreted

25:25

the idea. It's hard to tell on the internet, right?

25:28

Especially when people are kind of in character with you

25:30

in the comments. It's a bunch of

25:32

numbers. You don't really know who your audience

25:34

is or how your idea is impacting people.

25:37

You know, I think that all the time about, you know, people

25:39

I see with big numbers, you don't really know your audience, especially

25:42

when you're operating in this in this

25:44

sit in this satirical tongue in cheek

25:46

world, you know. So we started

25:49

holding these rallies and I almost let

25:51

out a big sigh of relief in

25:54

2019 or so when

25:56

I saw that everyone showing up was totally tongue

25:58

in cheek. They totally got it. Totally

26:00

got the bit and I mean I think it

26:02

was because we planted a series of winks throughout

26:04

our work to where you know If you were

26:06

the media looking for a

26:08

sensationalized piece on you know

26:10

on whatever publication You

26:13

would report on it as real But if you go

26:16

three clicks deep you can read about our history and

26:18

see okay when the government decided to kill all the

26:20

birds Alan Dulles was pissed because birds were pooping on

26:22

his car in the parking lot And it

26:24

really didn't help him out a lot and he had like

26:26

a real personal vendetta against these things He called them flying

26:28

demons, and you know wanted to get rid of them. It's

26:30

like it clearly gets to this absurd points

26:33

deep down And

26:36

we tried to plant that wink and everything

26:39

But yeah, I mean I remember the rallies

26:42

really being a good validator and the

26:44

last rally that we held Washington

26:47

Square Park in New York City there were

26:49

about 3,000 people there, and

26:51

it was like this perfect massive

26:54

Improvisational immersive theater sort of

26:56

experience where everyone it was

26:59

in character together For

27:01

you know two hours Being

27:05

a raving bird mob don't

27:07

you think some percent of a

27:09

QAnon rally or a conspiracy

27:13

theory online are People

27:16

who are telling themselves

27:19

essentially that yeah, I know Q's

27:21

not real But it's fun. It

27:23

pokes the people I want to

27:25

poke it gets them upset plus

27:28

there is community to it Maybe

27:30

a certain group of people show up with

27:33

their friends see the wackier people inside the

27:35

community and that propels them along I think

27:38

that you're getting at not just

27:40

the human dynamics that exposes

27:42

the dearth of depth

27:44

of Conspiracy theories, but you're also even

27:46

though you're kind of an anti conspiracy

27:49

theory You're also a conspiracy theory like

27:51

you're operating on a lot of the

27:53

same human dynamics that they are even

27:55

if you have a metacognition

27:57

My point is that not everyone

27:59

within the actual harmful conspiracy theories

28:02

don't have at least that

28:04

self-concept that oh it's all a big joke

28:06

and we're here for the lulls. I

28:09

think that's a very very good point. Yeah

28:11

I have I guess gotten to talk with

28:13

a lot of people throughout the years who

28:16

are in those communities. I think you nailed it when

28:18

you said they get community out of it. I certainly

28:20

think there is a bit of trolling you know but

28:23

when you commit your

28:25

life to something right commit your life

28:27

which is what these people do their

28:29

entire public persona it's all they talk

28:32

about with their families you know it

28:34

completely encompasses them. I think

28:36

that that happens when you hit the nail on

28:39

the head they get community from this not just

28:41

community but they get a sense of purpose right

28:43

I have I have a direction in

28:45

my life my days are not for nothing and

28:48

and meaning you know you get a

28:51

sense of identity you know these are like some

28:53

of the most poor human needs the

28:55

things that I'm looking for every day you

28:57

know and I think that it's certainly you

28:59

know when you get into birds aren't real

29:01

there are certainly parallels of why people would

29:03

join a meta fake movement and

29:05

why people would join a real conspiracy theory

29:07

because maybe it has less to do with

29:10

the truth that you're believing but more so

29:12

the belonging or the sense of belonging that

29:14

that belief provides. Thanks to Peter

29:16

Magidot for joining us if you want

29:18

to hear more from Peter about disinformation

29:20

misinformation bird information subscribe to

29:23

Pesca Plus we talked for

29:25

40 minutes it was delight I think he

29:27

liked it too you'll hear almost all of

29:29

that we still even with Pesca Plus cut

29:32

out the really dumb parts or

29:34

where the internet connection fails us so

29:36

it's curated but it's also much more

29:38

expensive capacious if you will like

29:41

the mighty swoop of

29:43

the condors wing subscribe

29:45

at subscribe.mikepezka.com you

34:00

the long-term solution creates so

34:02

many complications in achieving the

34:04

short-term solution that no solution

34:06

is made. What about

34:09

when you stupidly allow the problems of

34:11

small towns or large cities or huge

34:13

municipalities to fester? I think what you

34:16

do then is you invite

34:18

the idea that there are no solutions.

34:20

So this is a defense

34:22

of the short-term solution, the low-hanging fruit that

34:24

is so often derided is not the solution

34:26

to all that ails us. Yes, but it

34:29

could be the solution to that thing, that

34:31

one thing that's ailing us right now. Let

34:34

us take pot shops, weed

34:36

shops in New York, little math

34:38

here. In May

34:41

of this year, The New York Times

34:43

reported that there were 2,000 rogue head shops. Do

34:47

you know how many legal ones there were in New

34:49

York as opposed to the 2,000 operating without licenses?

34:52

This is from a May article, 85. Then

34:55

a few months later, Kerb had an updated

34:57

figure. There were 57 legal

35:00

weed shops in New York and

35:02

2,900 illegal ones. The New

35:04

York Times slightly tweaked a

35:06

few months after that, its

35:08

numbers, the estimated licensed retailers,

35:11

62 unlicensed, 2,900. This

35:16

isn't like, oh, half the pot shops are illegal. This

35:18

is 62 out of 2,900. That'd

35:22

be just a little over 2.2%. New

35:27

York didn't legalize weed, really. They just

35:29

legalized arresting anyone for it. And then

35:31

they did nothing. Well, now they're closing

35:33

down a couple of dozen of

35:36

the illegal shops, but they're not really putting

35:38

the legal ones online any quicker. Even

35:40

if the overall goal was good, you

35:43

know, we shouldn't be spending resources locking up

35:45

pot smokers or growers. I agree with that,

35:48

but that's not an actual policy. That's an

35:50

opinion. Maybe it's even a law, but it's

35:52

not a policy. Now the governor did

35:55

just fire Chris Alexander, the executive director

35:57

of the Office of Cannabis Management. And

36:00

she did so because there was no policy. And

36:02

that's on her too. When

36:04

you follow up trying to

36:06

get a huge policy change, right,

36:08

the legalization of pot, and you

36:11

address that change, you do change

36:13

the law, but you change

36:15

a policy, no pot, that's

36:17

a policy, it was enforced with a

36:20

lack of a policy. There's no policy now,

36:22

they're just not arresting people who sell pot.

36:25

Well, you endanger the future

36:27

idea of policy writ large.

36:29

I get the impression that when it came

36:31

to pot, the reformers had a slogan, they

36:33

had an agenda item, they had an end

36:35

goal, they just didn't have a plan. These

36:38

weren't serious people, or maybe the

36:40

elected officials or the bureaucrats who

36:43

agreed with their plan, maybe even

36:45

campaigned on their plan, never

36:47

really had a plan, they just

36:50

had a stance or a platform.

36:52

Again, not serious. And right

36:54

now pot Gallup has been doing polls, 70%

36:57

of Americans now believe that marijuana should be legal.

36:59

But what do you do with the next big

37:01

change that is a heavier lift, right? When it's

37:03

pulling at 60% or even at 45%, but

37:08

you still think it's a good policy.

37:11

Government needs to work and needs to

37:13

show that it does work in order

37:15

to change things that people are a

37:17

little nervous about. Another New York example,

37:19

subway breaks. They're open to

37:21

the public, you know, like Linux, but

37:24

for subways. I don't know

37:26

how a city chooses to have open

37:28

access to breaks, but not bathrooms, but

37:30

here we are. And like the F

37:32

train veering off the tracks, there we

37:34

go. Hello,

37:37

thank you for riding the New

37:39

York City subway. We at the

37:41

MTA, we think of our riders

37:44

as partners, as clients. That's

37:46

why we give all of you access to

37:48

the breaks. Now you might think, whoa, that's

37:50

not a great idea, but you would be

37:53

surprised. It's worse than not a

37:55

great idea. It's one of the

37:57

most horrible ideas any municipality has ever adopted.

38:00

and CBS local news reports. Police are

38:02

looking for this man wearing a T

38:04

shirt saying swag don't come cheap. He's

38:07

seen in this grainy surveillance video surfing

38:09

the northbound to train at the 14th

38:11

Street and 7th Avenue subway station. On

38:14

Tuesday police say he rode several stops

38:16

before he pulled the emergency brakes. Who

38:19

is to blame? It's those damn kids says

38:21

the head of the MTA, Jano Lieber. I've

38:24

got to convince the kids, most of the kids

38:26

who are messing around that way, this is really

38:28

unfair to other riders and it creates risk. But

38:31

you heard the stats and they're the same there for 2023.

38:34

Same stats this year. 1700

38:37

times they pulled the brakes, 30 made

38:39

sense. I'll say the same thing I

38:41

said about legal pot shops. It's not like half of

38:43

them don't work. 90% don't

38:45

even work. More than

38:48

98% of the time someone pulled the

38:50

brakes. It was a mistake. It was

38:52

a prank and it was dangerous. There

38:54

have been a couple of very big

38:56

train derailments. And

38:58

then this report on WCBS, they hit

39:01

up a professor, an NYU professor. Now

39:03

this guy couldn't come in the studio,

39:05

he's too busy working on complex solutions

39:07

to almost intractable problems. So they wire

39:09

him up remotely. It's a bad connection.

39:11

It's obviously a fake background. But

39:14

anyway, they needed him because only

39:16

this professor could deliver the flaming

39:18

arrow of insight to pierce this

39:21

vexing conundrum. Professor

39:23

Katsuo Kirbyashi is the chair

39:25

of mechanical and aerospace engineering

39:28

at the NYU Tandon School

39:30

of Engineering. One solution

39:32

is that we eliminated that kind of

39:35

the system and they should get rid

39:37

of the kind of direct access for

39:39

these people to activate the emergency brake.

39:42

Eliminate the emergency brakes.

39:44

Well there you go. Thank you, tenured

39:47

professor Katsu. Glad

39:49

we could all tap into his expertise. I don't

39:51

know how many years of instruction, learning, and study

39:53

it took him to decide, I don't know, maybe

39:55

he shouldn't just let any putts pull the emergency

39:58

brakes. Because we have shown... shown

40:00

they will. We have

40:02

hard problems. We've always had hard

40:04

problems. In San Francisco, Kevin

40:06

Fagan, who wrote about that Dianne Feinstein cleaning

40:09

up the camp, you know, he acknowledged the

40:11

situation has gotten much worse. There were 2,500

40:13

to 4,000 homeless people every night

40:17

in 1986, and in San Francisco today, it's

40:19

8,000, so it's doubled. But

40:22

then again, San Francisco used

40:24

to spend in 1986 $30

40:26

million a year. So with inflation, that would be 90

40:29

million dollars. You know what their budget is on

40:31

the homeless now? $650 million, and they have

40:35

17,000 beds of supportive housing and 3,800 shelter beds, but

40:37

still nothing gets to

40:43

the root cause or the long-term solution.

40:45

Of course you can. You have to

40:47

change the laws of San Francisco and

40:49

most coastal cities to

40:51

look more like Houston, which

40:53

homeowners and the political class

40:55

has historically been against. It's

40:58

the only long-term solution. Sometimes

41:00

the short-term solution does something,

41:02

saves a 4-year-old's life, shows

41:04

the people in the city that something can

41:07

be done. We have always

41:09

had very hard problems. But

41:12

by so pathetically addressing or managing

41:14

the less hard problems, we don't

41:16

just fail to solve those specific

41:18

problems. We do create the greater

41:20

problem of hopelessness, cynicism, a disbelief

41:22

that anything can be done. Some

41:25

problems are in fact extremely

41:27

complex and intractable, but lots

41:29

really aren't. Subway

41:31

breaks. Let's be

41:33

a tiny bit more practical,

41:36

attentive, and intelligent on the

41:38

solvable problems, else we

41:40

squander the will to tackle the

41:42

big ones. And

41:49

that's it for today's show. Cory Warra

41:51

produces the gist. Joel Patterson is the

41:53

senior producer. Leo Baum interns with

41:55

us. Baum! to

42:00

what's happening. Michelle

42:07

Peska is the special

42:10

projects, quaternet tricks of

42:13

Peach Fish Productions. To advertise,

42:15

go to www.advertisedcast.com/the JS. Thanks

42:18

for listening.