Latest / Blocked and Reported / Episode 231: Nerd Takeover (with Andy Mills and Matt Boll)

Transcript

Episode 231: Nerd Takeover (with Andy Mills and Matt Boll) · Blocked and Reported

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Blocking Reported.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Katie Herzog.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: And joining me today, while Jesse is, well, honestly, who cares?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I have two very special guests, dog sitter extraordinaire Andy Mills and his podcast partner, Matt Ball.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Andy and Matt are the hosts and producers of the podcast Reflector.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is a new show that is probably familiar to our listeners because I put an episode in our feed.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's very good.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Please go check them out.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: And Matt and Andy have extensive experience in the podcast and journalism world.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: They are really demeaning themselves to be here today.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Guys, welcome to Blocked and Reported.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for having us.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: How's Moose?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Does he ever ask about me?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: He's asking about you, yeah.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I told him that we were talking today, and he got a boner.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually kind of weird.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Moose had a really hard time getting to like me.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: I heard that.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: What is it about you?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was rough.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've had dogs my whole life growing up, so I don't know what vibe I was putting off, but...
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think he probably felt so.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Backstory for people who are not the three of us.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Andy, of course, as most of you know, because I've talked about it extensively.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Dog sat for me while we were on tour at our house in North Carolina.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: And Matt came down and stayed with him.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: And Moose was apparently not a fan.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: And my theory is that he was just so in love with Andy.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was disgusting that he probably viewed you as a threat.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was being protective.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'll confirm this as a theory.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: I think that it was he and I were just in this amazing daily rhythm.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: Our affections were growing.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: And then suddenly there's this, you know, other man who showed up.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm big.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm hugging him and we're talking.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Does he hate Jesse?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Jesse's bigger than me.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: he's never met Jesse,
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm sure that he hates him just based on what I've told him about Jesse.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the other thing is just, you know, Moose, he's like, he's very monogamous.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: He's not poly.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't want a third.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: So sorry, Matt.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe next time.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: I still love you, Moose.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like the listeners who care about the Moose drama should know that Katie and
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: I are,
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like we're very good friends.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: The amount of love and affection that Moose had for me upon your return and how he
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: wanted to sleep with me and not with you,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_03: I thought was going to break our friendship for a minute.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: I was nervous.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, Moose, you got to go in the other room, man.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like on the one hand, I was really happy to know that Moose was taken care of so well when we were gone.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: But on the other hand, never fucking again.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: He's going to the kettle next time.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is bullshit.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: He loves you.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'll be back, Moose.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you guys are each going to tell me some stories about Internet bullshit today.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hoping for two.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: We might have to save one for the primo, depending on how long things goes.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in the blind seat.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what's going on.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited for this.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: But before we get to that,
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: we had promised listeners that this week's episode was going to be about the Matt
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Walsh film.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Am I racist?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to hold that for another week because Jesse and I recorded it before
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: this ongoing disaster in Western North Carolina and beyond.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I just need to talk about the hurricane for a minute.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't want that to wait.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to hold Am I Racist until next week.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: You have an extra week to do your homework if you want to see that film.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the hurricane.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: I took a beta blocker this morning to try to help me keep my shit together.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see if it helps.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: It helps really well for public speaking.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it will for grief.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: So first off.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you to everyone who checked in with me.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: I am fine.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: My family is fine.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of downed trees at my house, but the structure is somehow intact.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: I guess all of the French drains that Jana spent weeks digging by hand actually worked, shockingly.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we were very lucky.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: But of course...
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: We're all feeling a lot of grief.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: The images and the video and the reports from the area are just,
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: you by now,
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: most of you have hopefully seen them by now,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: but it's just,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: it's horrific.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: People lost everything.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Towns, entire towns, families.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's also an environmental disaster.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the French Broad, that's the big river that runs through Asheville.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't particularly clean in the first place,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: and now it's full of toxins that are leaching into the groundwater.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: So this is going to be
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: a very, very long-term disaster.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we won't really know the extent of it for months because there are so many
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: communities that are way back in these winding hills and valleys and coves and so
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: many roads and bridges were just absolutely destroyed that even getting to those
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: areas to rescue people and assess the damage is going to take probably months.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: So this is Hurricane Katrina-type shit, but New Orleans was flat and Western North Carolina...
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Have you guys ever covered natural disasters or been in a natural disaster yourselves?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, to both.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I've never been in anything this intense.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: I grew up half in Louisiana, and it was a normal thing to hunker down.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: And,
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: for the daily,
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: we covered a lot of natural disasters in my tenure there,
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: including the terrible floods that happened in Houston.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: But when I think about something of this scale...
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: I think the most experience that I have with it,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: Matt,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: maybe this is you too,
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: is that when we were in college,
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: we were among the many college-age volunteers who responded to Hurricane Katrina by
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: getting our dad's tools,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_03: putting them in a truck,
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: driving down to New Orleans and showing up to say,
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: how can we help?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: Which was a formative experience in a number of ways to be there to help a community in a time of need.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: But it also was a mind-opening experience in just
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: what happens to a community when it gets so destroyed.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: And especially interesting is the way that panic and paranoia relate to each other.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: The level of conspiracy theory that was alive and thriving all over New Orleans was shocking to me.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: I couldn't quite believe
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: The things people were telling me with absolute conviction was true about how the
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: government actually bombed the levees on down the list.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's been a lot of that going on right now.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Matt, what about you?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember any specific conspiracy theories that you heard down in New Orleans?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Hurricane Katrina was the first actual foray into journalism before I even –
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: knew I would want to be a journalist.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: We went down there to make like a school documentary.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we talked to people who were in like organizations helping for relief,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: as well as I think we talked to the mayor or some sort of government representative.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: We're so old that it...
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: Fades from memory.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I mean, I remember very clearly people saying pretty wild conspiracies as if they were truth.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think the biggest one,
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: as Andy said,
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: is like the bombing of the levee was just like taken as truth by like organizers in
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: these organizations.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: Just a picture it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: Matt and I show up there with our friends and our tools.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Your Bibles, I assume.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: No, we were... Post Bible.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we were leaving that world behind.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I hadn't quite let go, but... Yeah, Matt was more in it than I was.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: But we spent the night in this three-story public school in sleeping bags in all of
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: the rooms,
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: science lab and...
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: the library around all the books around all the beakers and all this,
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: we're just a bunch of other college kids sleeping in sleeping bags.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: And then we'd wake up in the morning and all the different organizations would have a morning meeting.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: We'd have breakfast and then we'd get assigned where we were going to go and what
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_03: we were going to do that day.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: But a part of that morning meeting was,
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: was some speaker who maybe was trying to motivate us in some way,
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: but that speaker often was spouting like info wars levels of conspiracy theory with
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: absolute conviction.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah,
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: it's very interesting to think of what would have happened then with that disaster
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: being as big as it was if we had the social media of today.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And now we know what would have happened because it's happening right now in real time.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: There have been a ton of rumors circulating online, I'm sure in person as well.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the hurricane was caused by geoengineering, cloud seeding, weather manipulation.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's an attempt to steal the election from Trump.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's a land grab.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's about the Spruce Pine Quartz Mine.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: FEMA is confiscating donations.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Trump himself said on Twitter or whatever,
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Truth Social,
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: that the feds are going out of their way not to help people in Republican areas.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Marjorie Taylor Greene insinuated that they,
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: whoever they is,
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: and I don't think she's talking about non-binary they-thems,
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: caused this by controlling the weather.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's a classic Marjorie Taylor Greene.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: Pure to form.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: She hits the high.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: I should say,
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to do this,
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: but I should say in her defense,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: it is possible to control the weather in small,
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: cloud seating does exist.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's true.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: Very respectful, Katie.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Just, we want to do all sides here.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm an all sides guy.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you are.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, there are also some darker rumors swirling that I'm not even going to repeat.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of the rumors have been about the government response.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, FEMA is on the ground, despite what you will read on Twitter.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: They're there,
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: as is the National Guard,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: the State Department of Transportation,
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: the Forest Service,
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: agencies from across states.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you can hear reports from people who have interacted with these federal agencies.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the Asheville city manager was on the radio praising the FEMA response.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Chef Jose Andres from the World Central Kitchen, he's on the ground.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: He posted photos of himself with a FEMA search and rescue unit.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: They are there.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: FEMA says they have 900 search and rescue personnel on the ground in North Carolina alone.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And there are thousands of federal personnel on the ground in all of the states in total.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I know people who've applied for disaster aid and received it really quickly, like within 48 hours.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, now the new rumor, and this isn't true, is that people are only going to get $750 total.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's not true.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's an initial payment to tide people over in just like a fucked up emergency situation.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: More money will be coming.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: But that said, I have heard some complaints that are not conspiratorial that are legitimate.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: So one,
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: some areas have seen no government presence,
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: state or federal,
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: and all rescue and recovery operations are being managed and performed by
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: volunteers from the community.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I heard the mayor of Marshall himself say this on the radio like five days after the storm.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: Marshall is an adorable little town close to Asheville that is beloved to us and I
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: think is completely decimated right now.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: they lost—it's a one-street town,
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: and it's right along the French Broad River,
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: 20 miles from Asheville,
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: so not hard to get to from Asheville.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not gone.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there are still some buildings standing, but it has been absolutely destroyed.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really sad because it was one of these towns that was going through a resurgence.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: It had come back to life after years of sort of slowly dying and people leaving the
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: town and businesses closing,
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: and it was coming back to life again.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: It literally was the town that we were talking about in our conversations about
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: what can we do about the small town that I live in and the small towns here in the
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: Midwest that are just so struggling right now.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: And we're like, how do we become like Marshall?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: Marshall's on the up and up and then bam, they hit with this.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And just completely underwater.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: So as of at least a few days ago, they had seen zero help from the government.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe the government is waiting for permits.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Who fucking knows?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: So another rumor that's been going around is that the Fed,
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: so FEMA in particular,
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: that they're confiscating donations.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you would think that if this were as widespread as people claim, that there would be video of it.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: Perhaps.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Cell service is limited, but it's improving by the day.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I have seen plenty of videos claiming that this is happening, but none of the act itself.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so FEMA put out a statement about this.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'll read you a bit from that.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: These are all false.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then they go on to explain that FEMA itself doesn't actually take donations.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: These are handled by other agencies, organizations that specialize in exactly this thing.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they say FEMA doesn't conduct vehicle stops or handle road closures.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: So if someone says they are with FEMA and they confiscate your goods, you are being robbed.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, this is robbery.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: Don't believe them.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that has happened.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: If people have said, hey, we're from FEMA, give me those pallets of water and cleaning supplies.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: But if it has happened, it's not coming from FEMA.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Another thing I've seen a lot online is that FEMA is turning away volunteers.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: They also address that in the same statement.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So these I've seen Red Cross has done this as well.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: These organizations are having to put out supplies.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: like webpages addressing rumors because they're so rampant.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so in this statement, they explain that FEMA itself, they don't accept volunteers.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: They work with volunteer groups.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: They even provide training and search and rescue training and things like that,
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: but they don't take volunteers themselves.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: So they have their own search and rescue teams.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And if some random person with a chainsaw wanders in and is like,
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: put me in,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: coach,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: they're not going to be like,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: sure,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: have at it.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's just that's not how it works.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And, Andy, you can probably see why.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: As a person who operates chainsaws, even I am leery around them, right?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody who has a big heart but not a lot of skill and experience –
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: is a danger on any work site, but especially in an emergency situation like this.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: And on top of them getting hurt,
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: just think about the fact that if you have a ton of volunteers who are showing up
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: and getting hurt at a time when the local population is desperately in need of all
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: the services they can possibly muster,
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: it just adds to the overall problem.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And in some cases, somebody is going to show up with a chainsaw and actually be super qualified.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think we can blame FEMA for being like,
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: we need to know that you're with an actual organization.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: We just can't trust anybody who wanders by.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: And a paddler I know was part of a volunteer search and rescue operation during
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: another flood,
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: not this one.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he told me that one of the volunteers died at this,
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: someone who wasn't trained,
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: who wasn't with an official volunteer organization died.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: The actual person they were looking for was fine, but a volunteer died because this shit is dangerous.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's insane.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's another rumor.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: I talked to a different pro kayaker.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: This is a guy named Dane Jackson.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: His name won't mean anything to you, Andy, but he's extremely famous in that world.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was told that Dane had been run off by FEMA when he was doing some sort of supply run.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: But when I spoke to him, he said that's just not how he would put it.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: He said that he was bringing in supplies around Chimney Rock Bat Cave.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: So Chimney Rock,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Lake Lourdes,
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: this is one of these areas people have probably seen videos and pictures of because
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: it's gone.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so when Dane and his crew were hiking in,
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: they ran into search and rescue and the feds,
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: the search and rescue team,
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: they just recommended that they not continue.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: It was a suggestion, not a demand.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Dane said they were really friendly and they exchanged info.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And basically search and rescue was like, we're all good down there.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Everything's taken care of.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't a fight.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't conspiratorial.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was just that they weren't needed.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: So there was another case in Lake Lure, Chimney Rock area that did get a lot of publicity.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: So this was after a guy with a helicopter,
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: a citizen,
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: he had a background in law enforcement,
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: but now he's a civilian.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: He was threatened with arrest if he flew in to save some people who were trapped on
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: a mountain,
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: including his son.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So he'd flown in, picked up a woman, dropped his son off to stay with her husband.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: flown to another site to drop her off, was going to go back for his son and this other guy.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: And he was told by a local official...
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, don't go.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Don't do this.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And when he was like,
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to pick up my son,
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: he was told by this local official that if he went and picked up this man and
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: brought him back to the site,
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: he would be arrested.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: So everything I've read about this makes it sound like the pilot was in the right in this case.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like he'd coordinated with rescue groups.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: He got clearance to fly in the area and that this was a petty local tyrant exercising his power.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: But again, he was a local.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: He was local.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: He wasn't a fed.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_03: So it was true, but inflated.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: It was true that he was threatened with arrest.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't true that he was threatened by the feds.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was a local asshole, not a federal asshole.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this, of course, like the response.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: It hasn't been perfect.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it might – for all I know, it might not have been good.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And probably in some places it has.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: In some places it hasn't.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Again, some areas have not seen anyone.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: So people are still waiting to be saved.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is horrible.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: But my guess is that this is more because we're dealing with –
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: A government agency,
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: so low bar for efficiency there anyway,
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: and it's a very complicated,
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: chaotic,
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: evolving situation in a very,
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: very difficult terrain with lots of fucking nooks and crannies and roads that no
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: longer exist.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: You said nooks and trannies instead of nooks and crannies.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Let's leave that.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Nooks and crannies.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I just don't think that the public servants who go to work for FEMA to save
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: people's lives at the worst moment of their lives are trying to kill Republicans to
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: swing the vote.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, but if you look at Twitter, that's exactly what you'll see.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And of course,
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: it doesn't help that now Elon Musk is fucking retweeting every unverified rumor
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: that he comes across.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, boy.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: You guys,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: as journalists and as news consumers,
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: how can people be smarter news consumers at a time like this when there's so much
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: information swirling around and it's really hard to verify what's real and what's not?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'll say a few things.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, first is to understand that this is very common.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: Matt and I have actually been working on what is essentially a profile of climate
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: change doomers and preppers and showing how these people with very different
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: politics actually have a lot in common.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a fascinating story.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: And for it, we were talking about.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: to David Graham from The Atlantic, who's done a lot of reporting on natural disasters.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: And for a while,
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: his beat was to try and understand what are the greatest threats to our society
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: posed by these natural disasters.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things he said is that when communication networks break down,
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: so in this case,
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: we're talking about the electrical grid going down and all the effects that would
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: have on a society,
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_03: that in lieu of that communication,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: you revert back to rumors.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's just the natural progression.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's what has to exist.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: And
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: It can be helpful.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: Rumor networks are not always wrong,
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: but I do think that keeping that in mind,
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: that this is a panicked community working largely on rumors,
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: doesn't mean you should ignore it,
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: but it means that you understand this is a rumor probably more than a reported,
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: verified fact.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think the second thing that can be helpful here –
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's just to remember that the federal response to these localized disasters has
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: completely changed since Hurricane Katrina.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: That was such a political fallout for George W.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: Bush that since Katrina,
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: we have upped our federal response to these disasters enormously.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact,
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: if you go back in American history,
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: for most of American history,
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: there was no federal response to disasters like this.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you think about the Great Chicago Fire in the 1870s.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: It burned down the entire city almost.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: There was no federal response because that's a local problem.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: That's not what the federal government is for.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_03: And in some ways, it's tied back to –
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: The founding of our country and the division of power – if you go back to the
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: Monroe and Madison presidencies,
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: they're having serious fights about whether or not the federal government can
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: legally give financial assistance to states that want to build bridges and roads.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: That was seen as like, well, that's an overstep of the federal government.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: This just shows how much more –
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: the federal government is responsive to issues happening in our country.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the government has a reputation now of not being very efficient,
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: of not working incredibly well.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think that when you see some conspiracy about a flubbed response or
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: irresponsibility on behalf of the federal government,
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: keeping in mind that we're not crushing it right now in anything we do,
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: and that this sort of
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: disaster relief response that they're doing is somewhat new to the responsibilities that they take on.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: To add to that,
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was reading today,
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: FEMA is now under the Department of Homeland Security,
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: which is also what a lot of immigration services are under,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: as well as different federal organizations.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the funding is
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: is so specifically allocated to each, to like disaster relief, is one funding.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the rest of the funding that FEMA has to deal with other things,
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: they can't easily get to that funding to use it for disaster relief unless Congress
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: says that they can do it,
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Which Congress, we all know.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're not going to do it.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Fast, efficient, on top of it.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so they may have the money technically, but they can't get to it.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, as...
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: the secretary of homeland security just said they're going to run out of funding
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: for disaster relief aid and they don't have enough so i think a lot of conspiracies
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: come up around that too oh they're spending too much money on immigration instead
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: of israel ukraine depending on where you are right right if we weren't sending
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: those bombs then we would have cash for this but it's like that's not how it works
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: um it's still inefficiency and it's still like right the government is not doing a
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: good job at figuring out how to get the money where it needs to go but
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not as conspiratorial.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: Matt, is it true – you've looked into this more than I have.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: Is it true that some of FEMA's funding has been going to the unprecedented migrant crisis?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, but it's allocated for that.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's not – it's allocated for like shelter and food services for migrants specifically.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And to get that money, maybe they have some left over or maybe they didn't spend the budget out.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's not easy to get that money to the disaster relief fund, which is the fund that they would use.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it is like government inefficiency and conspiracy smashing into each other for a
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: very terrible cocktail.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: So a few people have asked me what I think of the national news coverage of this.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think overall, it's been pretty good.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: In the first few days,
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: it was pretty frustrating because like I was watching,
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: just spent like three days in my basement watching Fox Weather,
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: which is the only weather channel I can get with an antenna.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: And all of the scenes were from Florida where things are bad, but they're just not as bad.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Or this one scene of a Fox weather reporter standing right by a flooded area.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: A woman drives through and then he goes and saves her.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: But it's actually pretty humiliating.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like they played it over and over,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: but it's pretty humiliating for him because at first she's like screaming in her car.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: And at first he goes, I called 911.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: They're coming.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: You're cool.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: You're cool.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then after a few minutes, he's like, OK, I'm going to go save this fucking woman.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: So so there was some I had some frustration with that.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think in general, the national media has done a pretty good job.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: an incredibly difficult situation to report from because so many roads are closed.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to get to.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: The airport's been closed until just, I think, yesterday.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: No cell service.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: So just the challenges of doing reporting in a situation like this, this is like war zone shit, right?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this thing happens in any kind of natural disaster or any kind of disaster,
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: natural or otherwise,
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: where the national media will come in,
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: cover the story as best they can,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: and then they leave.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: The story just moves on.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's a big world.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: There are lots of stories to tell.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: The planet continues to rotate.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's just how it is.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: the New York Times isn't going to open a bureau in Asheville or Banner Elk or
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Spruce Pine for the next five years to cover the recovery.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not realistic.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, your favorite sub-stackers aren't going to be covering this either.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's just not what they do.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: But the human toll and the economic fallout from this storm is going to be enormous.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it goes way beyond Western North Carolina and East Tennessee.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And even though the local news in those places has been just as hollowed out there
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: as it has been everywhere else,
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: the local news is going to be the best way to continue to follow this story after
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: the national papers leave.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: So the Asheville Citizen Times,
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: the AVL Watchdog,
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: papers in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia and North Georgia and West Virginia.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: And since Internet is really spotty right now,
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: local radio has been instrumental in getting people information.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: So the public radio station has been pretty good,
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: although it sort of annoys me because at some point they're still cutting to
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: national programming.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll like tune in and they're playing fresh air.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like...
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: No one needs to hear Jerry Gross right now.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Come on.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been listening to my favorite alt-rock radio station, 98.1 The River.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: They have an app.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: They have online streaming.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And they're doing a call-in show every day where people call and they ask questions
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: and swap information like it's the fucking 90s.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm learning more from that than I've learned about the day-to-day stuff,
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: like who has water,
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: who has power,
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: where to get food,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: where to take a shower,
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: when trash pickup is coming back,
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: how different neighborhoods are doing,
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: and hearing just also horror stories.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: I've just learned more from that,
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: just from people talking about their experiences than I have from most reporting.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, local news, which is, as we all know, on its deathbed right now,
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's in moments like this that we realize how valuable it really is.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I will just give a plug.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: I live in the Midwest, and our local news programming, as you can imagine, is completely hollowed out.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: And the amount of good work they can do is super impressive.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_03: But I will say...
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: They are tempted by the same thing that the national news is tempted by.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: And in some ways,
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: it's an aspect of what you were talking about when we say like what to keep an eye
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: on when being a responsible news consumer,
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_03: which is that it's hard in some news stories to give it a story's shape.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: And the easiest thing you can do is have an antagonist.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so one of the ways in which you show up at a natural disaster and you're thinking,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: well,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: what's the story?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: The story can't just be it rained a lot, it flooded, and this guy lost his house.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: That's not a great story.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: So the temptation is to go, who's to blame for this?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's Joe Biden.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's FEMA.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's the National Weather Service's lack of warning.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: Some of that is less about,
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: well,
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: this is going to be the most helpful information that will inform the public in
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_03: this tragic time.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: And it becomes more about, well, this is just like an easy story.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: That lazy journalistic impulse is present there.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: And it does tempt.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: I see it tempting local journalists.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: journalists as well, especially when everyone's competing for attention.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: And you think, well, if I do the responsible, informative thing, it's not going to go viral, right?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: It might be helpful to my community, but it's not going to get as much attention.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: And that dynamic is obviously one in which we are actively trying to fight against
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: by starting this thing,
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: Reflector,
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: and by hopefully growing it into more of a newsroom.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: But
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's just the number one thing I tell people,
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: no matter what kind of story it is,
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: to keep an eye on whenever you're consuming news.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: OK, before we get to the fun shit, I have a recommendation.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is a recommendation specifically for people who are from the area and are far from home.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: So people who aren't there and are feeling a lot of grief or anyone who is mourning this.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Beta blockers, they don't work.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so here's my recommendation.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Go to the woods.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a dog, hopefully a cute dog, bring the dog with you.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: Go by yourself.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you have woods, get to them.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: And listen to Tyler Ramsey.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: So he's an actual musician.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Any album will do.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of his songs, they seem to have been written for this moment.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: So just go by yourself.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Just fucking cry.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: All right, the beta blockers did not work.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's really good advice, though.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you get on the radio with Andy, you end up crying, Katie.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: My second recommendation, and this is for everyone, is watch The English Teacher on Hulu.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: Have you guys seen this?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's so good.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: We discovered it last night.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's the first thing that's made me laugh in a week.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: Comedy's back?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Comedy's back.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: It is funny, and I think whoever writes it might listen to this podcast.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a sitcom?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's a sitcom.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's a really good sitcom.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was just wondering where the funny sitcoms have gone.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hulu.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's one.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Anything that you guys want to say before we get to the really important stuff?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, just that I'm sorry, Katie, and I really appreciate you being personal and vulnerable as always.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: We know that this is your hallmark.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_03: You are always so – you're never sarcastic.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: No,
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: I mean it really is heartbreaking,
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_03: and I do think if we're going to have some bit of good news to end this segment on
• 29:43
  –
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: that we are seeing the worst of the worst of America in our politics,
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: in the comment sections of anything that has a comment section.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: And it's moments like this that I do feel really proud of America and our insane
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: generosity because there are so many people giving insane amounts of money and
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_03: trying their best to send support to the people who've been affected by the storm.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it can be in these awful moments
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_03: times that we remember that we are a community, right?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: We are in this together as much as we're divided about who we're going to vote for
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_03: or whether or not some book belongs in the library,
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: that when reality sets in,
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: we have each other's back.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_03: And that I think sometimes
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: covering politics, I worry that that's no longer true.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: I worry that the binds that are holding us together are just so severed.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: And then seeing the way people can come together, it's cheesy, but it really is a sign of hope.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: I agree,
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: although I do have some questions about even small rescue organizations and
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: nonprofits are being inundated with cash,
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: which is obviously a good problem to have in a lot of ways,
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: but that can also be a problem in itself.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh, well, you don't want to let it in on a good note, Katie.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, just so you know, if you're donating money, be careful because there are so many scammers.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_03: I've already seen some of them out there.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: If you're currently giving money to Gaza, I hate to tell you that money's not getting there.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and of course, when the roofers and the...
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: construction crews start showing up.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_03: I've done roofing in Louisiana with my dad in the midst of different hurricanes
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: that have gone through there.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_03: And we will show up and find people who have no business roofing houses charging
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: three times what's reasonable.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, of course, all that's going to happen too.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the flip side.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: Go back to the generosity.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: No,
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm hearing this from my neighbors,
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: from everybody who's there,
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: that it's just a remarkable time to be there,
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: as hard as it is.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: All right, let's get to the fun stuff.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: Who wants to do housekeeping?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: I can't do it.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: I need a moment.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: Compose yourself.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: We'll do it together.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: Matt, do you know the housekeeping one?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: I know that you guys do housekeeping.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't fake it, to be honest.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Andy, you're up.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean...
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to butcher it.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: I do know that this is a podcast called Blocked and Reported.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: Close enough.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: They can be found at blockedandreported.org.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Just say we.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: You're in the family, Andy.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Just say we.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: We can be found at blockedandreported.org,
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: where we have a subscription service for just a few dollars a month.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: You get extra episodes, which if you're not getting right now, you're really missing out.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: The extra episodes are sometimes the best episodes.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: And you can also be a part of a thriving community that even if you happen to be a
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_03: guest on Blocked and Reported are mostly nice to you.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_03: You can go to Reddit, but I never understand the Reddit thing.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: Just Google Reddit Blocked and Reported.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know why you're typing in the whole website there.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: But it's a fun Reddit to go look at.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: Anything else?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: We don't have merch anymore, so don't buy the merch.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's it.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you guys should get some merch.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, absolutely not.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: We're not getting merch.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: Merch is a disaster.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: Merch was a disaster on the scale of Hurricane Helene.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what is happening for the rest of the show.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Who wants to go first?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I think I'm queued up to go first.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: We've got two different stories from you.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: And as you know, Katie, Matt and I often do very serious stories.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: We really enjoy wading into some of the thorniest subjects and debates in our
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: society and trying our best to be nonpartisan,
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: to help people see where people with incredibly different views are coming from.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: And for the last few weeks, we've been doing that with doomers and preppers.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_03: By the way, both doomers and preppers are –
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: looking at what's happening in Asheville and saying, see, I told you so.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Doomers would be climate change doomers who think the world's ending in 10 years.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, preppers would be those who are ready for the world to end.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: We've also recently been doing stories about the free Palestine movement and all that.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: And, and it's heavy.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so we thought for today we would bring you a story that we would never do on
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: our show because it is about nerdy,
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: geeky comic books,
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: cartoons,
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: superheroes,
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: video games,
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: as well as,
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: race,
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: sexuality,
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: identity,
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: even some dick pics.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: Are you ready for that?
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like...
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: To start off,
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: a lot of this is going to be dealing with fan culture,
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: which I know you've mentioned before and you've told some stories before in the fan world.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: But Katie, I actually don't know.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: Are you now or have you ever been a quote unquote fan?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: I have never been a member of a fandom.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was perhaps,
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: this is sort of embarrassing to tell,
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: especially to you guys,
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: but,
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was a really huge fan of public radio way before I got into journalism or podcasting.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: How's that embarrassing to tell people who came up in public radio and you were
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: just talking about the beauty of radio?
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: But also complaining about local public radio station.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the only that was the only thing I would say I've ever been a fan of.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know that that counts because there wasn't a community.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_03: Being a fan,
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_03: I believe,
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: is usually defined by like having an emotional connection,
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: being invested,
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: participating in a broader community.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, the dreaded word identity.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_03: It becomes a part of your identity.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: I would not say that my love of fresh air goes so far as to become part of my identity.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: I do not wear the public radio nerd shirt, although I do have it in my drawer.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_03: Matt, actually, because we've been friends for so long, I know that you are a fan of many things.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think of you as a Lord of the Rings nerd primarily.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: God, that's so surprising.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: Was that your first... How long have you been in one fandom or another?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: Where did it begin for you?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't ever consider myself in a fandom.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't go to the conferences.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even really participate in the internet forums or stuff like that.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I have, since childhood, been a fan of fantasy.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord of the Rings was just an early love of mine.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Star Wars was an early love of mine.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think my very first fantasy novels were The Chronicles of Narnia.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: I probably read them at like seven or eight.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're very on brand.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I've always been a fan of fantasy, other worlds, that kind of thing.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's mostly a solo endeavor.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't get too drawn into the communities.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: We will check your Google history to see if that's true.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_03: The amount of times Matt has said, this is just like Lord of the Rings to me is too numerous to count.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: I regularly send you clips of Lord of the Rings movies to talk about our lives.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: This is exactly what we're going through right now.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: Okay,
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: so the story that I want to tell you today comes from my first foray into fandom,
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_03: which is the X-Men world.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: Are you familiar with X-Men?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: I just saw maybe one of the X-Men movies.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I did, though.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was the one with the claws, the guy, Wolverine.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: I saw that one.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: Is that X-Men?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: Wolverine is a very big part of the X-Men.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: In my defense, I was distracted.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: This was at the Asheville.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've already talked about this on the show.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to repeat it because it's so disgusting.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: I took my nephew.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: This was at the Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company, which is like a theater and pizza place.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the woman sitting beside us had her bare feet on the table, so I could not concentrate on the movie.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's fucking horrible.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's good Asheville flooded now that I think about it.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: Those bare feet, they haunt you.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: They do.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: Dream about them.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_03: Just as a quick introduction to the X-Men world,
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_03: X-Men,
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_03: like many comic book franchises,
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_03: was started back in the 1960s by legendary Stan Lee.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_03: And if you've never heard of it before, it can sound a little bit weird.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_03: It has to do a lot with Darwinism and evolution and prejudice and discrimination and
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_03: And since its beginnings has had a lot to do with social justice.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Is X-Men woke?
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_03: We are going to get to that.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: Don't get ahead.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: It may have been woke before there was woke.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: But the basic storyline is like it's Earth as we know it.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_03: But there are all of these mutants that are born who have an X gene, a genetic mutation.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_03: And this genetic mutation gives them superhuman abilities and
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes they come around puberty.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes they're born with them.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: And these mutants are coming to having this awakening and they're meeting each
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_03: other and they're trying to figure out how to navigate this world all in the
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: backdrop of discrimination.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: And discrimination is a huge part of it because the human race is freaked out by
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_03: these mutants and they are feared,
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: often persecuted.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: They are the victims of hate crimes and hate movements.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_03: And this makes up a huge part.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: of the drama inside the world of X-Men.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: Andy, why are they, you know, they're the superheroes of the world.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think of superheroes as being persecuted or discriminated against.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why are the X-Men discriminated?
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what's going on?
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: The easy thing to say is, like, because they're different, Matt.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_03: They're different.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: And listening to your show, Katie, I sometimes am like, they're...
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: They are the neurodivergent, right?
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: Neuro-spicy.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_03: They're neuro-spicy.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: But, of course, it is in part because of that.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: But also they are dangerous and they're powerful and humans cannot control them.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: And there is this fear that some of the humans have that they may be the next step
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: in evolution and humans don't want to be replaced,
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_03: right?
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're our AI.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: In a way now, if they were coming up with X-Men, maybe it'd be AI.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the X-Men was created during the American civil rights movement.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: And there are tons of ways in which they were intentionally weaving the fantasy
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: world of X-Men into the real politics of the time.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: The main protagonist is this guy, Charles Xavier, right?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_03: Professor X, who's all about peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: He has a
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_03: school where he brings all these young mutants in and teaches them to control their
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_03: powers and to work on behalf of good and not evil.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_03: And then his nemesis is Magneto, who has an incredible backstory.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_03: His parents were killed in the Holocaust,
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: and he believes that the human race will never accept mutants and that instead of
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: trying to live in peaceful coexistence,
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_03: mutants just need to acknowledge that they're better and they should dominate.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is he Jewish?
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, he is.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_03: In the comic books, he's very Jewish.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and we'll get into this in a second with the cartoons.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: But it's interesting,
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: the politics of the American civil rights and the politics of Israel were very
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_03: different than they are on the American left today.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: It was seen as the same struggle against conformity, white supremacy.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: They weren't seen as the oppressor.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, definitely.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: They weren't seen as the oppressors, even though obviously they had power.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: The politics of it are really interesting.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I have to ask Katie that if we get too in the weeds on our nerd stuff,
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_03: hurry us along because that's the thing about being a nerd is that you're
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: interested in all these little things that aren't interesting to most people.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: So...
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: Be referee.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: Okay,
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_03: so the X-Men comics start in the 60s,
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: but in the 1990s,
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_03: the X-Men was a absolutely fantastic Saturday morning cartoon.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: It ran on the Fox network from 1992 to 1996, and it was cool.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: The music was awesome.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: The storylines were great and it was fucking intense.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like people were dying.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_03: Every episode had like tears.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: As I mentioned, it's got like a Holocaust and a, you know, civil rights themed overtone.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_03: So of course it's going to be intense.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like there's like one person is almost MLK.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: One person is almost Malcolm X. There's a, the real world is seeping into the fantasy.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: Far more than Garfield and Friends.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_03: Saturday mornings were getting hit with a lot of intensity when you heard that
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: theme music kick in from X-Men.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: I sometimes compare it to The NeverEnding Story.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_03: Did you watch that as a kid?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_03: Do you remember?
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I for sure saw it as a kid.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember very well, but it was weird.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well,
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: a lot of people around our age will talk about seeing the horse in the Swamp of
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_03: Sorrows get sucked under and die and say,
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: like,
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: that scarred me for life.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_03: That was every week on X-Men.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: It was super tough.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_03: And that's really where my love of it began.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I, you know, did all the things.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_03: I collected all of the toys and the cards.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: And if you came over to my house as a kid,
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_03: I would make you go look at this tableau that I had created of all the X-Men in a
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_03: battle scene,
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: like with fishing wire hanging from the ceiling.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: Did you have girlfriends?
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_03: No, Katie, I didn't.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_03: I did not.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_03: Who needs them?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_03: Who needs them?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: But as awesome as it was to be an X-Men fan as a kid,
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_03: the last several years of being an X-Men fan have mostly been awful because the
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: movies that they made out of the X-Men,
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_03: and this is going to be controversial to any X-Men nerds listening because I know
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_03: we're split on this,
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: but they suck.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: They're really bad.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: Logan maybe was okay,
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: but mostly the movies that they've made out of this beloved franchise have lacked
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: the kind of intensity.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_03: They've changed storylines that are really important to those of us who love this property.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: They look cheesy, and it's not been like Marvel.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: If you were an Iron Man fan...
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_03: Marvel's been awesome for you.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_03: But if you're an X-Men fan, these movies haven't been very good.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so a lot of us nerds who grew up loving X-Men, we've cashed out.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: We're not in it anymore.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_03: We've left a long time ago, and I was chief among them.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: But then this spring,
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_03: Matt was over at my place,
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: and he asked me if I knew about this new X-Men cartoon that was coming back,
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: which I actually have no idea how you found out about,
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_03: Matt.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: I have two children and they love Disney as, as most children do.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we have Disney plus, which is the Disney streaming service.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just on it one day and they have these like banners of the new stuff
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: that's coming out at the top of the Disney plus streaming platform.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw one of the banners said, you know, had the X-Men logo from the cartoon.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: I recognize the cartoon and it said X-Men 97.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I was mostly just confused.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was like,
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, are they just bringing the cartoon to the platform so people can watch the old cartoon?
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand what that 97 is.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: So.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think I knew you were an X-Men fan.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was just like, what is this X-Men 97 thing?
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and I'm so grateful that you did.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yes,
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_03: now Disney somehow owns Fox,
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: which confirms all the conspiracy theories from QAnon about how the media is being
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_03: run by like seven people.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_03: And they decided to bring back the cartoon,
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_03: but they made this decision to essentially create...
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of nostalgia out there,
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_03: right?
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like the Ghostbusters get a sequel and all these old properties are being brought back.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: Twister.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_03: Right, but...
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_03: The people behind X-Men 97 created nostalgia porn for those of us who loved this as a kid.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_03: Because instead of it being some kind of a reboot,
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: what they did was that they created this X-Men 97 to start...
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_03: right where x-men the cartoon left in 1996 and just pick up there and they went
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_03: even further they hired some of the same voice actors they tried to make the
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_03: animation look just like it was they kept exactly the same uh awesome theme music
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_03: that all of us who love the cartoon just stand up and like bang our fists to and
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_03: it's specifically designed as this nostalgia piece
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I was reading about all this stuff and about how much effort they were going through.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_03: Then I also started to see people say, oh, no, it's super woke.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_03: This thing went woke like everything else.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's terrible.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought, oh, OK, well, that does happen sometimes.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: But I got it.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: I got to check it out.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_03: Let's let's watch it.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_03: So I put on the first episode,
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: and just as they hoped I would do,
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: I totally cheer when I see the opening credits,
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: when I hear that music.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_03: The animation does look like a slightly better version from when I was a kid,
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_03: and I'm filled with all these feelings.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: I actually had this emotional moment hearing the theme music and seeing this
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_03: cartoon because it reminded me
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: One of the reasons I think I loved X-Men so much is that when I was a kid,
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: my folks were split up,
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: and for about a year,
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_03: I lived with my mom.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_03: Most of my growing up,
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_03: I lived with my father,
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_03: and while I was with my mom,
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_03: she was really broke and on food stamps,
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: and she didn't have any channels on her TV.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: and I would miss the Saturday morning cartoons and my dad would tape X-Men for me
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_03: on VHS and send it to me and I would pop it in and I would watch the same episode
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_03: over and over so I'm literally like crying having this emotional experience
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_03: watching this show I'm loving it so much and
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it turns out, like, it is kind of woke, right?
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_03: They've got a they-them character now.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_03: They've darkened the skin of certain characters.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: They're kind of leaning into the social justice aspect in a way that reflects modern times a little bit.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_03: But the truth is, it's fun, and it was good, and it was working for me.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_03: And another important aspect of the show that they brought back,
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_03: which is important to mention because it's going to come up in the drama later,
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_03: is that they kept the X-Men super sexy.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_03: Katie, can you open up the show notes here?
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_03: I've snapped a few pics from the 90s X-Men world.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_03: I would love for you to describe.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_03: This is children's cartoon material.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: Feast your eyes on the X-Men.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is the new one or is this from the 90s?
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_03: This is from the 90s.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_03: This was a poster that hung in my room.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is, it's extremely sexy, sexual, both sexy and sexual.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: So you have women in bikinis, very strong muscles, not like waifish really.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: These are buff women.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Big titties, big, fake titties.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_03: We call that busty.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: We call that where we're from, but it's a busty.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: I call them giant fucking titties.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: The titties are so big that they're like the titties that like a drag queen would wear, the fake ones.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: You have a little bit of slight girl-on-girl, I'd say, there in the corner.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Is that girl-on-girl?
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: Woman with the cheetah print bikini.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's definitely a threesome vibe going on over there.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: Threesome vibe.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're poly.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_03: You don't understand.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_03: See, Storm and Jean have a special bond.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_03: We don't have to get into it.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_03: We don't have to get into it.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: Special bond.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I call it, too.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: The men, short shorts.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: I see Wolverine back there.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's got like an 18-pack, and I think he might be smoking.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: Is he smoking?
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_03: Wolverine's constantly smoking.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_03: Always smoked.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_03: If you scroll down to the next one, you'll see he's just puffing on his cigar.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: Does he vape now, or does he do Zen?
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's still got the cigar.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is funny.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is the sort of thing that if libs of TikTok saw this in a school classroom,
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: would be getting the teacher fired.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's super sexy.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the thing you want to know about Wolverine is that Wolverine heals himself.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's his superpower.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: So the cigarettes do not bother Wolverine.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, if only we all had that.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_03: It would be wrong for him not to smoke, Katie.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_03: Take advantage.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: Scroll down to the next one just because this is important.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: This is Rogue.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: And what would you say you notice about this character Rogue?
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: Her butt.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously her butt.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's the only thing one can notice about here.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: A little side boob there too.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, this is a redheaded woman with her booty popped.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: She's wearing a very form-fitting outfit.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: What you see is her butt.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a fantastic, muscular, this is the feminine form in, I guess, male fantasy eyes.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know what she's wearing?
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like when you go to the, I don't know if this exists in your tiny town.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have gyms in your tiny town, Andy?
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_03: No, we don't have gyms.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_03: We don't have anything.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so for those of us who live in urban areas, gyms exist, and there's this style of shorts now.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you've seen this on the streets of Chicago.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: The style of shorts now that women wear that show their entire butt crack.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: Have you guys seen these?
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_03: Can't avoid them.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot avoid them.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: I frankly think they should be illegal because they turn everybody into an ogler
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: even if you don't want to be an ogler.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: She's wearing – Rose is wearing those but in spandex.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's rogue.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_03: Go ahead.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_03: If you want to just scroll down to the next few,
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_03: just – I want you to – I gave you a number of options just to see –
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_03: so pornographic yeah this is a man uh whose muscles could not be bigger this is
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_03: bishop package could not be bigger either and then yeah so yeah this was i think a
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_03: lot of people my age we didn't just love the show but like you loved the show we
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_03: had our first feelings of like warm inside when i see rogue and her uh her backside
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_03: uh watching the show and the new cartoon did not skimp
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: On the sexiness of the cartoon characters, especially Rogue.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_03: In fact,
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_03: as you might suspect,
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_03: with every new episode that came out of this new incarnation,
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: X-Men 97,
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_03: the big fans like myself,
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: it's not enough for us to just immediately watch the show and love it.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_03: You then immediately have to go
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_03: Onto the websites where you're seeing all of the commentary and people are pointing out the Easter eggs.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_03: There's a vibrant YouTube culture where people will break down all the Easter eggs.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: And unlike a lot of properties that have been made in the last several years,
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_03: X-Men 97 was specifically made for the fans.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_03: If you had never seen X-Men before, there was so much in these properties.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_03: cartoons that would deeply confuse you instead of trying to cast the widest net
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_03: possible and get maximum eyeballs on something by thinking like what would please
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_03: everybody they intentionally were making the show for the nerds but a part of the
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_03: breakdowns would also be like stills from like here's the best shot of rogues but
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_03: in this episode and all this stuff but all of this now brings us
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_03: to the drama, the blocked and reported aspect of this nerd rabbit hole that we're taking you down.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_03: So the showrunner was a guy named Beau DeMeo.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: In a lot of ways,
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_03: he's been credited with why the show was awesome,
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_03: a lot of the creative choices that were made in it.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_03: He helped to write several of the episodes.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_03: And his background's interesting.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_03: He hadn't really done anything too big.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: He was one of the writers on the show Witcher.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: Did you ever see The Witcher?
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know about this?
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_03: The Witcher was very sad.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: If you're a fan of The Witcher books, I mean, I guess I'd be curious.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe some of them liked it, but not so good.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_03: He hadn't really done too much.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_03: He helped out with some Star Trek stuff I read online, but I'd never heard of him before.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_03: But where he is really big is on Twitter.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, no.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: He loves Twitter and Twitter for a long time has loved him back.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_03: He also has an OnlyFans page.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_03: Katie, if you look at the show notes there, there's a nice shot of him.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's his Twitter handle.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_03: How would you describe this man?
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: Gay.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: He looks gay.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: You know what?
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_03: You're right.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: I could not tell.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting how you can tell someone's sexuality based on their posture.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's wearing a Speedo and he's very buff.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: He looks like he takes a moderate amount of HRT.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, not HRT.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, it's HGH.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: HRT, would that be like, that'd be estrogen.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: Are you talking about testosterone?
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: Or testosterone, yeah.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like he juices a little bit.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_03: He made juice.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_03: He loves to lift.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_03: He loves to nerd out.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_03: And he loves to post nearly nude pictures of himself on the internet.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_03: But right before episode one of X-Men 97,
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_03: this thing that he had given a year of his life to and that he was the showrunner of,
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_03: right before it came out,
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_03: he was fired.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_03: And there was no press release.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_03: There was really no word at all released about it.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_03: And it became this strange side story to the excitement of X-Men being back and all
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_03: the nerds who every time Marvel or Disney or any of these properties put something out,
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_03: they write a million things so that the fans will consume it.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_03: But they didn't really know what to say about Bo because he was fired and there was no word.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_03: And what was even stranger is that
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_03: it's not like he suddenly disappeared.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_03: He kept tweeting.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_03: He tweeted about the first episode.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_03: He tweeted how great the team was.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_03: He started tweeting little behind-the-scenes things from the show.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_03: He was,
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_03: as I mentioned,
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_03: there's a they-them character now on the show,
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_03: and he's talking about how exciting it is for these queer characters.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_03: He's answering fans' questions.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_03: There's really no sign, if you look at the Twitter account, that, like, anything's wrong.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_03: And it just added to the mystery of what was going on.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_03: And alongside these kind of tweets about,
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_03: hey,
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_03: I really loved what you did with Cyclops in this episode.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, thanks so much.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_03: Any questions you have?
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_03: He's also tweeting things like this.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_03: So look at these pictures here.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: How would you describe these tweets?
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_03: What would you...
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: These are also super fucking gay.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: So one of them,
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: it's like a,
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: it's his,
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: it's like an,
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: not anime,
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: I guess it's in the style of,
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: is it,
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: that's the style of the cartoon?
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's animated, yeah.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's an animated portrait of himself nearly naked, but with the Cyclops mutants eye band on.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it looks like he's got – I mean I know that this is – based on his character,
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: I know that this is not a chastity belt.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: But he's got quite what looks like a chastity belt over his – That is a package.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_03: He's not afraid to put the package in.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_03: He's also posting these pictures of himself like shirtless, working out, giving the peace sign.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: Big dude.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_03: He's very proud of his work on the show, and he's also very proud of the fact that he is gay.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: And his body, by the looks of it, which, frankly, he should be proud of.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_03: He doesn't look like a nerd at all.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's hot.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_03: Is that because he's not white?
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's because he's strong.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly, exactly.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_03: But that's going to come into play later.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, pretty much everything written about him refers to him as a gay writer or a gay show creator.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's a huge part of his public brand, and I imagine a huge part of his identity.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_03: But as the show came out and it actually turned out to be better than people expected, especially if –
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_03: anyone out there is considering watching it.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_03: I would recommend staying all the way through episode four when,
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_03: uh,
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_03: something very dramatic happens and it's strangely resonant with what's happening
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_03: in Israel right now.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's, it's deeper and stranger than I think people were expecting and it ended up, uh,
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_03: winning all of these Emmy Awards and animation awards.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_03: And it seemed at first as if,
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_03: Bo was going to be a part of receiving these awards and he was invited to go to this,
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_03: gala and this dinner.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so for the most part,
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_03: whatever mystery was surrounding his firing kind of went away for a while in light
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_03: of the success of the show.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_03: But then Bo came out and broke the silence on why he was fired.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_03: And you guessed it.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_03: He did it with a super weird tweet.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_03: Katie, can you read this tweet here?
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: Firstly, I'm so grateful to have worked on X-Men 97, collaborating with some amazingly talented folks.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: Creating this revival was a dream come true, and the support fans have shown is so touching.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: However, I felt it pressing for me to speak up in the wake of leaving the show.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: Above is X-Men fan art I posted on Instagram for Gay Pride in June.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: On June 13th, Marvel sent a letter notifying me that they'd stripped my season 2 credits due to the post.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sadly, this is the latest in a troubling pattern I suffered through while working on X-Men and Blade.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, scroll down.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_03: Here's the post.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so Moose is barking.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's saying hi to you, Andy.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: He can sense around the microphone.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: The post is, it's a cartoon drawing of him and his, whose costume is that?
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_03: Cyclops.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's some of Cyclops' outfit.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_03: He's mostly naked.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's, yeah, he's just like looking buff and nearly nude.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_03: And super sexy.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the caption is, yeah, the caption is happy pride, rainbow emoji.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_03: And he followed all this up with another tweet that said,
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_03: I'll have more to say about this soon,
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_03: but I have to take a step back from social media to find a safer space for me to be out,
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_03: proud,
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_03: and nerdy.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_03: Stay tuned.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_03: So the secret is now revealed.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_03: Bo DeMeo was let go because of something to do with the fact that he is gay and
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_03: that being gay was not a thing that he was encouraged to be in his job.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's 0% chance that that's true.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: Could I say this back to you so I understand?
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: He is saying...
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: through a series of sort of cryptic tweets that because he posted a picture of
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: himself that said happy pride,
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: where he was almost nude.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something that he's done many, many times throughout the years, I assume.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this isn't the first time he's posted a nude picture of him in a Cyclops outfit.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: So he's a hot black gay guy,
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: and he's saying that a Disney property fired him for being a hot black gay guy.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: Something else is going on here.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_03: That's essentially what he was signaling to the fans.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_03: He's signaling it.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_03: He's got more to say soon, but he just needs to take a step back from social media to find a safe space.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_03: Are we caught up now?
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: And how long did he take a step back for?
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, you'll be surprised to learn that his break from social media lasted a total of three hours.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: Record-breaking.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's like when Jesse says that he's leaving Twitter.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_03: We never believe him.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_03: What ended up happening is that in the wake of this cryptic tweet that asserted
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_03: that he was being punished because of this sexy X-Men picture,
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_03: Marvel released a statement.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_03: And it said,
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_03: it didn't say much,
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_03: but it said,
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_03: Mr.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_03: DeMeo was terminated in March following an initial investigation.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_03: Given the egregious nature of the findings of that investigation,
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_03: we severed ties with him immediately,
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_03: and he has no further affiliation with Marvel.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: He fucked an intern.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we didn't know, but I will tell you this.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_03: I went to the fan sites where all the nerds had been talking about the cartoon,
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_03: and I maybe contributed a comment or two over the months.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_01: What's your handle?
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not going to say.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, come on.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to say what it was.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: Handy Andy.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_03: Back rub Andy.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_03: Undercover.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I was talking about your roofing business.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_03: Just with you, you never know, Katie.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: That would have been handy Andy.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_03: My nickname.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_03: And what I found on the nerd sites is that none of the fans were buying what Bo
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_03: DeMeo was claiming here,
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_03: that he was somehow the victim of anti-gay discrimination.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_03: And on a broader sense,
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_03: Disney has for many years been in a number of what I would call gay controversies.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you guys remember back in the 90s when they supposedly had a gay
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_03: day at Disney World and lots of
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_03: people on the right said that they weren't going to go to Disney World anymore.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_02: In fact,
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_03: my own eighth grade trip in public school,
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_03: we were saving up our money to go on a trip and some people wanted to go to Disney.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_03: And there was a boycott inside my tiny little public school saying,
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_03: we're not sending our kids to Disney World because they're too gay.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's been a part of that for a long time.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_03: But of course, in recent years, there's been accusations that Disney has become woke and that they're
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_03: unnecessarily trying to put gay or queer or female characters into places.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's a furry company.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_03: This is the accusation, right?
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_03: There's been these total flops with shows like She-Hulk,
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_03: which truly were just about pushing this kind of social ideology.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_01: Did Hulk transition?
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_01: Is that who She-Hulk is?
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I wish.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm imagining Hulk in drag, which actually sounds pretty good.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_03: I love, that's actually...
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_03: That might have been better.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_03: She-Hulk is a whole other episode.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's a very fascinating document of the times that we're living in right now.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_03: But it was panned by the fans and was not renewed for a second season, to say the least.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_03: And,
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_03: of course,
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_03: a lot of other fans were pointing out the fact that this is 2024,
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_03: that it's not exactly controversial to be gay,
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_03: and that he's in a union.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so...
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_03: I actually should fact check that to see if it's true,
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_03: but they were saying this doesn't pass the smell test.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_03: So this is when Bo breaks his long three-hour break from social media to tweet the cryptic following.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_03: Katie, will you read this here?
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_01: The truth will be revealed.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_01: After their Disney Plus disaster, Marvel wants to mislead with alleged contract breaches over tweets.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's tragic it's come to this, but unsurprising.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_01: Stay tuned.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_03: Stay tuned, guys.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_03: Stay tuned.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_03: And this is when this guy,
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_03: Jeff Snyder,
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_03: who runs a blog where he essentially is giving the inside scoop on the Marvel world.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, that's somebody's whole job because it's that big a deal.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_03: This guy,
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_03: Jeff Snyder,
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_03: he publishes a story with anonymous sources,
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_03: but it says that Bo DeMeo was fired because he was sending naked photos of himself
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_03: dressed as X-Men characters to the illustrators of the show and telling them that
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_03: they should use these as inspiration for their artwork.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_03: And supposedly he was especially sending them to a handful of very cute men who were
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_03: on the illustration team that of course, Jeff Snyder, I don't have any affiliation with him.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_03: He has a lot of credibility with these fans and in this world,
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_03: but I cannot claim that what Jeff Snyder publishes is biblical truth.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_03: But as soon as this accusation goes out there,
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_03: An old coworker from his time writing for The Witcher came out and said that he had
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_03: behaved in a very similar way when he was at The Witcher and that actually it came
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_03: out that he was fired from The Witcher.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't as if he just left on his own accord.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_01: So he did this at The Witcher and then he got fired for it and continued to do it at X-Men.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_03: Once again—
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_03: Rumors, we don't know exactly, but that is what came out.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of people are running with it because it just is too unbelievable to
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_03: believe that it was as simple as he was being persecuted for his identity.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_03: And what's interesting is that the fans' reaction has been to kind of look inward for a second.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the interesting things that's come from this is that some fans are now
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_03: looking at the cartoon and they're saying,
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_03: is it weird that they're so sexy?
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_03: they're just now saying this yeah and there's a whole thing happening inside this
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_03: nerd world where they're saying so we have a guy who has been accused and it
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_03: appears credibly accused of sexually harassing his co-workers by sending them sexy
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_03: pictures of himself and nudes himself and then we're forced to make this sexy
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_03: cartoon they're they're wondering if he was abusing his power and
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like, is it wrong for us to love the cartoon so much?
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_03: Is it wrong for us to be so attracted to Rogue, Katie?
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_03: Is it wrong?
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_03: Because if it's wrong, I don't want to be right.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_03: Fan world has been in just a really weird place.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: I like the idea that,
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: okay,
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: so if Jeff Snyder is correct and what you have is a boss essentially sexually
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_01: harassing his employees,
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: this is a Me Too story that the perpetrator is trying to turn into a social justice
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: story and make himself a victim.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_03: and thus why I bring it to you on Blocked and Reported, Katie.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_03: There's nowhere else to really publish.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_03: This is the one and only place where I can let my nerd flag fly and bring you this
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_03: tale of internet drama.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_03: The last update we have from this is from a few weeks ago when Bo DiMeo announced
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_03: that he's actually going to sue Disney,
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_03: that he wants at least to get credits back or some kind of compensation for what he
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_03: says was a toxic work environment.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_01: Was it because people kept sending dick pics to the animators?
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well,
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_03: he claims in this six-page filing that it was not safe for him to work at the
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_03: studio as a gay black man.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_03: and said that the accusations being made against him were egregious and false.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_03: And as example of the sort of danger that he was in as a gay black man at Disney,
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_03: he includes a few specifics.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_03: One of them is that he said when he was at a company barbecue,
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_03: one producer from Marvel said to him that he must quote,
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_03: get a lot of dick because he was so hot.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_01: Was he holding a hot dog in his hand when he said that?
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he had to have done that.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_00: He was also wearing a really skimpy Cyclops outfit at the time.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_03: And the other example was that when he was on the set of Blade,
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_03: which I guess he was working on at the time as well,
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_03: hasn't come out yet.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it never will.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_03: He said he was at the Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta when he says that he heard
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_03: someone say,
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_03: quote,
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_03: someone needs to crack a whip around here.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_03: Hmm.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_03: which he said was, of course, referencing slavery and a lot of black workers were there.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_03: So this pretty thin read to try and put this whole thing on.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe more will come out.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_03: We don't know.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_03: The case is still out.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_03: But in the end,
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_03: it is,
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_03: an interesting place when it comes to the distance we've traveled with both the
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_03: kind of Me Too accusations and how they've evolved.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_03: These stories about these big companies and they're either...
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_03: being accused of buying in way too much to social justice, right?
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_03: And getting too woke or on the other end that they are just trying to stand in the way of social justice.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_03: And that is just a boardroom full of,
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_03: white men who are trying to do the thing they've always done.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that it does reveal,
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_03: especially,
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_03: being deep in the nerdom that at this point,
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_03: the battle lines just aren't clear anymore.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like,
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like if this had happened a few years ago, it might have gone one way.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_03: A few years before that, it may have gone another way.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_03: And right now, people really are in kind of a let's wait and see.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_03: And in some ways,
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_03: I think that that's maybe a sign of progress that people aren't just jumping
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_03: immediately to defend him or jumping immediately to say,
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_03: he must have been awful and he can never work again.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_01: if this had happened at a different company,
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_01: a company that wasn't so overtly allied with the gay community,
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_01: he probably would have gotten more traction when he just accused the company of
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_01: being homophobic or racist or whatever.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_01: If it were,
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: a company like Nike,
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_01: maybe he could have just said this and people would have automatically believed it.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm heartened by that,
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_01: that even the members of this fandom,
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_01: who presumably like this guy as well,
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_01: the knee-jerk reaction isn't just to say,
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_01: my God.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: the evil corporate overlords are homophobic.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's to say, wait a second, the furry company?
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_01: This doesn't make any sense.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's my tale, and those are its lessons.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Andy.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_01: I would say that this makes me want to watch X-Men, but that would be a lie.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we have another story coming.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_01: Matt is going to tell us a story about,
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_01: I actually have no idea what this is about,
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_01: but we don't have time to put this in the free episode.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want to hear that, actually, Matt, why don't you give us a little teaser?
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is about a video game called Assassin's Creed that I love a lot,
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_00: and it has had some troubles around their new game that's coming out that another
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_00: internet drama has emerged.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Creed heads, join us at BlockingReported.org if you want to hear that.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And before we go, where can people find Reflector?
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_00: you can find our podcast,
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Reflector,
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_00: on any podcast app that you happen to listen to,
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Spotify,
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Apple.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just search for Reflector, and it should come up.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_03: You can also go to Reflector.show and find us there.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_03: Leave a comment, whatever you like.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: All right, please check them out.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Reflector is, frankly, much better than what we do.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you guys again.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for having us.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for having us.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_01: thank you for listening this has been blocked and reported our show is produced as
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_01: always with help from jessica the 80s baby i'm katie herzog and let's let tyler
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: ramsey sing us home
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_02: And there was nothing that you could hope Except for all the things I told you Were
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_02: worth holding on to And all the fields were rolling down
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_02: Never lay there in the long nights of the sun
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_02: Since I had seen her