Latest / The Junto Podcast / E32: Citizen Voices: The Rise of Independent Journalism

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E32: Citizen Voices: The Rise of Independent Journalism · The Junto Podcast

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Hello, America. Welcome to the Junto podcast, where we promote the practical
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applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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I am your host, Edgar Mills. Thanks for joining.
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Hello, America. Welcome to episode 32 of the Junto podcast.
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I appreciate you guys for listening and sticking with me.
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So in the modern age we live in, an individual voice, my voice,
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for instance, can reach potentially millions of people.
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Is citizen journalism a viable expression of what we consider libertarian ideals.
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Is it the ultimate expression of libertarian ideals, the ability to speak freely to the masses?
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And does it empower people or does it harm people?
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So it may empower the speaker, but how can we be sure what that speaker is saying to the world?
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How can we be sure that that's empowering other people or hurting other people or whatever.
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But it is definitely true that we have the capability and the capacity to speak
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up and to speak out against all manner of issues and injustices and just anything
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we want to talk about. And somebody will listen.
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I've discovered that. There's people listening to me right now. Somebody will listen.
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So this past weekend, I went to the Great Create DIY Festival.
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And it's a libertarian-centric get-together.
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And you have speakers. I was a speaker, and I talked about alternative networks
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and how to not function off-grid, but kind of create a, well, anyway,
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an alternate network of people who can help you to do things outside of the sort of mainstream.
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And then, well, plenty of people spoke, but one guy I was particularly interested
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in, I met a guy named Brad Binkley, and he is the host of the Propaganda Report podcast.
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And after I listened to him talk, you know, I was getting, I left,
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I left the festival a little early.
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Excuse me. I left the festival a little bit early and I caught him in the parking lot.
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And so we had a pretty good conversation and a meaningful conversation.
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And I was happy to meet, meet the guy. And he seemed like a very genuinely good
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dude. And he had a genuine passion to sort of expose truth and parse out propaganda that,
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flows freely across our television and interweb digits.
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And I've listened, I didn't know about that podcast, and now I do,
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and I've listened to a couple episodes.
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And yeah, I like the guy. He's from Georgia here. He lives, I think he might
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be from Georgia, but he certainly lives here.
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And I also think he does comedy as well. Brad Binkley.
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But anyway, he inspired me to, because his topic at the Great Create was citizen journalism.
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And so all the things he said I thought was very interesting,
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so I came home and kind of looked in a little deeper, and I sort of formulated
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my own thoughts on the whole thing.
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So, well, let's just define it real quick. Citizen journalism,
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I guess, is just kind of like reporting, right? News reporting.
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Well, what do you call news? Anything, right?
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Topical reporting just by non-professional individuals who have the means to do it.
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All you need is a phone, to be honest, or a laptop, and that's really it.
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And on some of these platforms, you don't even need that. Well,
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I mean, you could write a paper and go upload it at the public library and put it on Substack.
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There's a lot of venues these days. There's a lot of ways to get your word and
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your message out there to the public. So citizen journalism So.
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One journalist slash author, she defines citizen journalism,
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and this is kind of an in-depth definition,
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as an alternative and activist form of newsgathering and reporting that functions
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outside the mainstream media institutions,
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often as a response to shortcomings in the professional journalistic field,
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which uses similar journalistic practices as traditional or mainstream journalism.
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But is driven by different objectives and ideals and relies on alternative sources of legitimacy.
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Yeah, that was a very meaty definition.
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So I think one of the important parts of that definition is sources of legitimacy.
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Whether they're alternative sources or not, they still need to be able to sort of vet the information.
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Because anybody can put anything out there and we, oh my God,
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we can go on the internet and you'll see that anybody does.
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And citizen journalism has, I mean, sharply risen, I guess, since,
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well, you know, I'm thinking back, and obviously I wasn't born until 72,
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but there was, I seem to remember there always being little independent newspapers
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and little independent zines and things.
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Now, some of those are for, you know, it's artistic expression and comedy and
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things, But others were very pointed in sort of political critique and whatnot.
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But now, man, the computers, the Internet, it's all there.
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But the citizen journalism has really, the more we see traditional media,
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mainstream traditional media, there's a mistrust there.
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People don't trust what they hear on Fox and CNN.
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And rightfully so, in my opinion, which is why this topic is so interesting
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to me. The traditional media is failing us, folks.
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They're feeding us agendas, not unbiased, objective information.
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So I would guess and I would say that a lot of the citizen journalists,
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the people out there doing podcasts or out there on the street type reporting,
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you know, they have a little bit of skepticism toward not only mainstream media,
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but maybe even a little bit toward the government and or at least authority.
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But what it does, though, and what I think it does is it opens up.
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It's like a free market, a free exchange of information and ideas that you don't
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have to go through any gatekeepers.
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It is a proper free exchange. It's a proper free market of ideas.
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And we know ideas are strong. And we know ideas, good ideas can gain a lot of
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traction. We know those. We know these things.
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And what it also does, though, it decentralizes like the informational power.
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Do you understand what I mean? When the information is out there for all to
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consume, like the raw information is out there for all to consume,
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then the small sort of elites don't have a lock on it.
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They don't, they don't control what gets out or in what way it's delivered anymore.
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Now they only control that for, you know, the, yeah, the mainstream platforms.
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But I would say citizen journalism outnumbers mainstream journalists.
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Who knows, man? God, I don't even know what the ratio would be right now because
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anybody could potentially be a citizen journalist.
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So it takes away that power from the elites, and it reduces our reliance on
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literally government-influenced or corporate-controlled narratives.
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We don't rely on CNN and Fox. We can hear it on CNN and Fox,
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and then go, oh, whatever, and then go find your favorite conspiracy theorists
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or any other. I'm just using extremes there.
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And then you yourself can make a better informed decision on what you think about a thing.
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Yeah it allows us to when we get information now that's not to say a citizen
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journal a regular guy that's not to say i can't be a biased person i can be
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but you have to take what i say,
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and and process it just like you do mainstream media it's just that the fact
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that the matter is i don't really have that you can see just by the nature of
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who i am and many of these other people are.
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Now, I don't consider myself a citizen journalist, folks.
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Strictly opinion here. Strictly editorial.
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But what I'm saying is, you know my motives.
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I run a shooting business and a leadership development business,
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and I don't have deeper motives.
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I'm not being controlled by a corporate anyone. I'm not on the staff of some
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political action committee. Do you know?
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So, you can sort of, generally speaking, probably put a little more faith in
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what you're getting from a regular guy.
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I would guess. That would be my guess.
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Everybody has the capability to reach the entire world now, now, in today's society.
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Now, establishment media, like corporate media, they have sort of,
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they got a network system, right?
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They got a main whoever, let's say Fox, and then there's all these affiliates, and it's like a system.
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And never mind whether it's over the airwaves or over the digits or whatever.
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And then they have basically reading off the same script.
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So a Fox News affiliate in Atlanta is probably saying very close to the same
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exact thing as a Fox News affiliate in Dallas or a Fox News affiliate in Portland.
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So there's that. There's that.
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But we have the capability now to go direct point to point from my computer
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to your ears, from my microphone to your ears via social media,
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via audio director software, via Podbean, via Spotify, the whole works.
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Point to point, man, straight from my mouth to your ears without any network interference.
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And hopefully for as long as possible, without any commercials.
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And we bypass straight past these traditional gatekeepers.
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And if you guys remember, I did a paper and a pod, well, I did a podcast on
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the reemergence of the American counterculture.
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And one of the parts of that I was talking about was musicians and the capacity
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now to make music in your basement,
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produce it, edit and produce and, and just distribute it from your damn computer, from your basement.
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And potentially hit it big. That's what technology has done for us.
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So all of you out there, you know, there's a love-hate relationship with this technology.
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It is very beneficial to some. If you use it correctly, you can take advantage
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of it and do great things with it.
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And that's what this citizen journalism stuff is.
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And I liken, I say citizen journalism, and I liken that to a lot of the podcasts,
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because a lot of podcasts are like, you know, they're delivering some news.
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But, you know, largely you just have to understand that it's from an opinion perspective.
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An opinion perspective, but hopefully a good podcaster who's trying to deliver
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news to you will caveat by saying, hey,
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this, it's either second or third hand effect or sources or deliver their,
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you know, at least that they have a direct source or something like that.
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So we'll get to the pros and cons.
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Yeah, reach and accessibility. We have it now. We have absolute reach and accessibility.
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Traditional media is on the decline and has been. And that's measured.
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So I got some statistics here.
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And that's measured by U.S. ad revenue spending.
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And it's 18.3% in 2025.
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That's ad revenue spent on traditional media.
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And television ratings and news like CNN and all that.
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All of those viewerships are down, like big numbers, like 42%.
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I think CNN, quarter three of 2025 is down 42% of total viewers. Yeah.
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Now, what number did that start with? I don't know.
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Just standard network television, down. There are several newspapers.
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The Atlanta Journal and Constitution has just recently, I think,
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one October, gone out of print.
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I used to read the Atlanta Journal and Constitution back in the day.
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They had a liberal lean. They had a hard left lean, to be honest.
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They got out more and more as they went.
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I'm sure, yeah. Did the Atlanta Journal and Constitution go out of business?
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No. I'm sure they have an online presence now.
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Well, they've had an online presence. They just don't do print newspaper anymore.
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It's just the times are already changing.
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So, yeah, newspaper circulation from 2015 to 25, 65% drop in newspaper circulation.
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And that was from, now they do have hard numbers here, 37 million to 13 million.
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And to be honest with you, I'm surprised 13 million is still a number.
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Now, oddly enough, what traditional media has not dropped off? Yeah, talk radio.
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Now, it's interesting that that statistic exists, and I'm going to tell you why.
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When I started doing this podcast stuff, that was one of the things I would
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talk to friends or talk to people about it.
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And I said, the podcast of today remind me of talk radio of the 70s and 80s.
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In the 70s and 80s, talk radio was huge because you're driving in your car.
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You're going to work, right? That's when I listen to stuff is when I'm in the car.
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Yeah, man, people would tune in on their AM radio, pick up whatever,
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Neil Bortz, and just listen to his show.
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I'll admit it. I used to listen to Howard Stern back in the late 90s, man, mid-90s.
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That was basically talk radio. Now, it wasn't AM radio. It was on FM, big stations.
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But, yeah, talk radio is still holding fast, and that's pretty interesting.
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That's pretty interesting.
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Now, what's the commonality? I said podcasts remind me of old-school talk radio.
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Yeah, you might be delivering some news, but it's a personality,
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whatever that personality is.
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And they're delivering commentary, opinion, or analysis.
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Yeah. And so you get a chance to hear a different perspective,
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and you can consume that and process it.
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And then we're like, okay, I disagree, or I agree.
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And it kind of gets the wheels turning, right?
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Instead of just getting something from CNN, they're telling you how to feel,
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oh, this egregious thing happened. And they're leaving out and they're selectively
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leaving out details and things like that.
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So yeah, talk radio, it's pretty interesting that talk radio is holding tight.
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In contrast to that, all the digital stuff is up.
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Podcast listeners are estimated at monthly listenership. Now this is overall,
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this is not one podcast, right? It's just generalized numbers.
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100 million plus monthly listenerships on podcasts. Yeah, that's a lot of people.
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That is one third of America. Yeah, that's a lot.
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100 million plus ad revenue on social media is at somewhere around 2.3 billion.
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And something like 54% of Americans consume their news from the internet, from social platforms.
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So, and here's an example. During the election campaign, Joe Rogan interviewed Trump.
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And that, I think that YouTube, you know, it was on YouTube as well.
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It's on different platforms. But I think the YouTube video has 40 million plus views.
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That's pretty insane. That's pretty insane.
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Now, Joe Rogan's been in the entertainment business for a long time.
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And he's earned his way and he's earned his due.
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But it's crazy that one person can reach 40 million people.
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That's insane. And like him or not, whatever.
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So that's some crazy stuff, man. It's crazy stuff. And I like it. I think it's awesome.
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I do think it's the ultimate libertarian expression of free speech and freedom of association.
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Because guess what? I put this podcast out.
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I expected like, you know, at least three people to listen to it.
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At least three people to listen to it. You know, we're up somewhere around,
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I don't know, six, 7,000 listeners.
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And that's, hey man, it ain't 40 million, but it's pretty awesome.
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I'm pretty, I'm pretty stoked about that.
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So the decentralization of, of, of free speech, man.
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Yeah, you can go out on the street and have all the free speech you want But
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now you can get on And you can get on the internet And you can get on the socials
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And you can get on a podcast,
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And you can reach millions If you put it out there, someone will find it And
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appreciate it Yeah, that's what I think,
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I was talking about the gatekeepers earlier, you know, with the traditional media.
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Now, look, the digital world is not all rainbows and unicorns, right?
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There are gatekeepers in the social media space. And who am I talking about?
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The Zuckerbergs, right? The Dorsey, the people who, you know,
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started this stuff with all the best intentions, or even if they didn't have
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any intentions, just had no idea
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how it was going to grow, which I don't think many of them really did.
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And then they become these behemoths of information flow.
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So now we got gatekeepers. You remember also during the elections where some
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of these major platforms were
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complying with political sort of guidance to suppress certain information.
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Happened. So there's still gatekeepers, folks. Don't think there's not.
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However, it's just a little more, it's a little more free. We'll say it that way.
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But what's another risk? Okay, nevermind that part. We'll get to that part again.
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We'll probably touch on that again here in the future.
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What's the big risk though? You see it all the time and I talk about it all
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the time. The big risk is that you get into an echo chamber.
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Now you do that with traditional media too. Yeah, you get that with traditional media, too.
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But these echo chambers, the problem is with the digital world and the modern
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world is that these echo chambers, some of them are pretty extreme.
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It might be a niche market. You might not have that many people listening,
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but the people that are listening are frigging fanatical.
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And they're not hearing anything else except these extreme views.
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So it's good and it's bad. I think it's more good than bad.
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I think that we have a free market and a voluntary exchange of ideas over the
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traditional corporate or state media.
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But just mind you that there's still bad players everywhere.
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Bad players everywhere.
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All right, so one of the big gripes, I think, is...
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From the establishment, you know, the mainstream people, you know,
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they all have a degree from,
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they all have a journalist degree or communications degree from NYU or,
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you know, Berkeley, UC Berkeley.
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And the citizen journalist might not have anything. Hell, you might not even
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have graduated high school for that matter.
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So they're on about qualification. What qualifies me? What qualifies Edgar Mills
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to share his opinion with the world? Well, I mean, what does?
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My inherent right to speak my mind, right? You ain't got to listen to it.
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But I have a platform and inherent right to share my point of view.
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If people listen to it and believe it or follow it or agree with it,
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now that's pissing off the establishment media, right?
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But he's not qualified. I'm qualified.
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Well, what are these people who are claiming these qualifications?
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If they're just reading from a script, they're just reading from a teleprompter, an approved narrative.
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What good is that? What good is that degree?
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Because that's what they are doing, folks. We know that, right?
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So what the citizen journalist provides is, well, one, potentially firsthand
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information, unfiltered information, and insights that probably challenge what
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the mainstream narrative is.
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Now, how genuine, you know, again, you have to make that assessment on your
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own, but how genuine is Don Lemon? You know what I mean?
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He's nothing but a caricature. A guy opens his mouth.
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I may as well be watching a cartoon. And he apparently is an expert, right?
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He is apparently a qualified expert.
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Yeah, we got to get to it, right? How thorough is the news or the information
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we're getting from the journalist, the citizen journalist?
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And how truthful is it? How accurate is it?
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Well, the experts, the mainstream folks, they follow some standards of journalistic
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integrity, at least superficially.
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At least superficially, they do.
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I really think it's only superficial.
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Because no matter what the standards that they measure, the quality and the
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truthfulness of the story, they still have to stay on the company line.
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They still have to support the company narrative.
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And if they deviate, I mean, we've seen in the past, if you deviate, you get in the boot.
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In contrast, does the citizen journalist have a standard?
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Well, what we do is timely information, and it could be timely and accurate information.
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But if you happen to be a guy on the ground in some protest,
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some riot, at very minimum, you're getting legitimate, unfiltered, uncut video.
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Now, that can be manipulated as well. The good thing about technology is now
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that the technology exists to be able to tell when these videos have been manipulated,
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same with mainstream media. They manipulate.
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There's been multiple lawsuits of mainstream news being sued for, what's it called?
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Slander, libel, slander or libel, I guess, for manipulating video to make it
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something look different.
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Famously, I want to say CNN had a video of Rogan where they manipulated lighting
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to make him look very unhealthy and very rough looking as opposed to the original
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lighting in a video where he just looked like it was normal Joe Rogan.
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So that's crazy, man. That's crazy that they do that.
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That shows you, they didn't just start doing that, by the way.
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Like the news shows you what they want to show you, what the company line is.
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And without anything else to compare it to, you're just like,
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look at that. That's what it is.
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Yeah. So the citizen journalist may not be accurate.
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That's the downside is you may get some uneducated, biased,
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you know breakdown of what's going on in front of them
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but also it might be very raw and you
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might just be getting the actual event as it unfolds and then you can make the
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the analysis on your own but i'll give you an example the hurricanes in in the
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southeast here in north carolina and stuff like that helene.
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Citizen journalists, there was videos all over the place from people on the
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ground who were absolutely ripping FEMA.
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Now, the mainstream news, FEMA was doing all, oh, yeah, we're out there working, working, working.
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That was a debacle, and, yeah, FEMA dropped the ball on it.
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Well, if you look back, we'll see that what is FEMA's real job in life anyway?
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Is it to manage hurricanes?
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Nah, man, it's a cleverly worded acronym, Federal Emergency Management Agency.
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At any rate, yeah, citizen journalists, man, they were out there showing that failure real time.
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And then citizen, charitable citizens were behind the rebuilding there and the help that got there.
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In fact, I'm proudly was a link in the chain to get, you know,
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generator to some people who needed some help, man.
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So regular citizens are out there doing the thing.
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So professionals versus, versus citizens, there's another podcast dude out there.
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He's pretty famous. I think Dave Smith, his podcast is called part of the problem.
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He critiques the expert class, like pretty hard, pretty hard because what,
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you know, what makes an expert an expert?
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Is it because you went to college and you got a degree and you've been working
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at CNN for three or four years? So now you're an expert.
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Or is it potentially that if I'm speaking on military matters and I derive my
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expertise through the fact that I was in the army for 25 years and I'm speaking
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on matters that I've seen firsthand.
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So who's the expert, really? You know what I mean?
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Who's the expert, really? Are you an expert because you took political science
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and now you're covering the war in Ukraine?
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Yeah, I don't know, man. I like the way Dave Smith kind of rips on the expert class, though.
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And we can point to the COVID debacle, folks. We can point to that to show you
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where the experts were full of shit.
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Absolutely full of shit. And it's all coming out now. It's all slowly trickling out, folks.
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The real answers and the truth are slowly trickling out.
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Not sensationalized Certainly not to be seen on mainstream media But the so-called
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experts Led us down a ridiculously.
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Dangerous path At minimum But yeah, they're elitists These so-called experts
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This expert class of journalists They're elitists They're all connected,
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folks They're all connected Right?
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The news and the entertainment industry and the political industry, they're all connected.
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And they manipulate information to their end. That's the way it is.
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A thing you're seeing, well, you've been seeing for the past couple of years, those deepfake videos.
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I tell you, citizen journalists debunk deepfakes faster than regular journalists.
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You, things you see on social media come and go before the mainstream media ever gets a grasp of it.
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You'll get, you'll get information a week and a half later from,
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from mainstream media because they got to figure out how they want to craft
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it up and edit it up and there and, and shape the narrative.
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So from a libertarian's perspective, yeah, man, we think that the professional
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world is generally speaking over credentialed.
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If you got to go to school longer to be a hairstylist than you do to be a cop,
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there's a problem. That's a weird problem with credentialing.
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Yeah, that's crazy. It doesn't make any sense.
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Libertarians kind of believe and agree and even celebrate the abolishment of licensing,
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professional licensing.
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Because even then, let's say I go to college or I go to some school to get some credential.
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Who's the jackass teaching the class?
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Is it some jackass that went to school to get a master's and whatever,
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couldn't get a job doing anything in the field, so became a professor to teach
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the same thing over again?
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I'll use anthropology as an example of that.
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Think I know an anthropology graduate who I'm pretty sure is working at Walmart.
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I guess that's a place to study anthropology.
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I guess. Yeah, man.
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Too much credentialing out there as it is. I believe experience counts as much as anything.
32:16
But all this credentialing does is creates this little elitist sort of monopoly
32:22
on the information, right? Monopoly on the information.
32:26
Now, as citizen journalists, we need to understand that, yeah,
32:31
we should have our own standard of integrity and our own standards for fact-checking and things like that.
32:39
That stuff does need to be, we need to deliver accurate information.
32:45
So what are speaking of corporate media and citizen journalists,
32:53
well, let's say independent podcasts.
32:56
Let's take corporate-owned media, sort of the broader term, and then independent podcasts.
33:04
So let's look at a thing. What are the motives for independence?
33:07
Guys like me, what are the motives?
33:10
Normally, it's kind of driven by a passion, right?
33:15
And I just want to share things that I'm interested in and passionate about.
33:21
No benefit in lying about a thing.
33:25
I have no benefit in sensationalizing or downplaying anything.
33:31
I'm talking about things that interest me, and I'm opening the door to be corrected
33:36
on things, and I'm just sharing an opinion.
33:39
So I think most independent people, that's what it is. It's just passion.
33:45
And with that, I mean, there's always going to be some conflict.
33:49
There's always going to be somebody who wants to shit on you.
33:53
But, well, I'll give you some, okay, part of the problem with Dave Smith.
33:58
Now, he's got a big podcast.
34:00
It's not Joe Rogan big, but I mean, I think he's got like half a million plus, right?
34:08
But he's clearly passionate about delivering the analysis that he delivers.
34:14
I don't know. I don't think he's
34:16
doing it for a money grab. I think he's passionate about what he does.
34:20
And then the guy I told you I met this past weekend, Brad Binkley, the propaganda report.
34:27
Now you talk to that guy for 30 seconds. You see that he has a passion about what he's doing.
34:32
Yeah, absolutely. And then my friends, I got Elizabeth and Zach,
34:39
they have a podcast called Banish Big Brother.
34:42
Now I can tell you those two people have no motive no ulterior motives whatsoever
34:50
except to inform you, the general public,
34:55
about surveillance overreach, state surveillance overreach.
35:01
And they have a genuine, hardcore-to-the-bone passion about spreading that information.
35:08
There is no gain in them lying about what they're doing. They're not making money off of it.
35:19
My friend Jake has a podcast called Free Georgia Podcast.
35:23
And all of these are all, the ones I've just all mentioned, they're all libertarian-esque podcasts.
35:28
And what does that mean? They're just, you know, they're about freedom,
35:32
right? About freedom. That's all.
35:35
But yeah, Free Georgia Podcast. And I think my bud Jake's getting ready to pass
35:40
the baton over to a host and her name is Kat.
35:45
I don't know her last name, but I did a little five or ten minute spot with
35:51
them this weekend, and she seems very nice, and she seems very genuine.
35:56
And I'm sure that she has no ulterior motives other than just to deliver news
36:01
about libertarian-esque issues, especially as they pertain to the state of Georgia.
36:07
Yeah, yeah. So what about corporate motives then?
36:12
We all know what the corporate motives are right profit and influence that is it,
36:20
that every owner has an
36:23
has has a has a agenda and and
36:27
probably the majority of that agenda is profit make money and expand make money
36:35
and expand so i'm gonna say i'm gonna there are about six corporations out there
36:42
controlling all of the information in America.
36:47
Comcast, which is a cable company, among other things, owns NBC.
36:53
Disney, the wonderful world of Disney, owns ABC.
36:58
Warner Brothers owns CNN.
37:03
Paramount owns CBS. Who does Sony, who else does Sony own?
37:10
I can't remember who Sony owns. And then Amazon owns MGM.
37:15
So that's all your entertainment and news, right, all packaged up.
37:20
And you can tell even watching these streaming platforms, you know,
37:23
you can kind of see where they're willing to go, what they're willing to let
37:28
you see and what they're not.
37:30
Yeah, you can see that. But those companies I just called out own about 90%.
37:35
They control 90% of the media, the U.S. media. Is that elitists?
37:41
For six companies to own or to control 90% of the media in the U.S.?
37:45
Absolutely, it's frickin' elitists.
37:49
Who owns all the podcasts? Yeah, no one.
37:54
No one owns the podcasts. Who owns the Junto podcast?
37:59
Well, I guess Edger Mills.
38:01
I don't think anybody else does. Now, the distribution platform that I go through,
38:07
I've never been censored or I've never been given any guidelines or do's and
38:15
don'ts or anything like that.
38:18
I'm pretty sure I can say anything I want to say on here from the distribution perspective.
38:27
I mean, then it goes to Spotify and Apple and all these other platforms.
38:31
You know, you can hear some bizarre shit out there, you know.
38:37
So right now they're not being censored. And that's the way it ought to be. And I like it.
38:45
And that's why corporate media is bad though, right? Corporate media is bad
38:49
because they are vulnerable.
38:51
Any business, any big business is subject to some buyout,
38:57
to some takeover by someone who may or may not have your same desire or principles
39:04
and desire to share them or whatever.
39:08
Independence, not so much, right? Like I'm sure if somebody went to Dave Smith
39:12
and said, here, Dave, I want to give you $20 million to buy your podcast,
39:19
but I want you to still host it.
39:22
Do what you do, but...
39:25
Would Dave Smith take that? I'm not sure, man. I don't know.
39:29
Somebody offered me $20 million and said, hey, do what you do.
39:31
But I can be honest with you. I would try to wiggle out of that.
39:36
I would try to best assess how can I get this $20 million and still say exactly what I want to say.
39:43
And I guess I would do that until somebody knocked on the door and said,
39:47
hey, Edgar, look, you can't. You need to scratch that one.
39:51
I can't have you talking about that. And at that point, I would be in breach
39:56
of contract and I'd have to give $20 million back.
40:00
That's just me. I tell people this all the time. I'm not afraid of money,
40:03
but I mean, I'm not motivated by money at all.
40:06
I just want to pay the bills, man. As long as I can pay the bills, I'm good.
40:10
Yeah. So corporate media is subject to that. I think independent,
40:14
less, less, right? They're less subject to that.
40:19
Look, we always go back to big corporation-y people doing corporation-y things. Evil, evil, evil.
40:26
But it's cronyism, right?
40:30
When corporate media is up here and they're all spitting the same script,
40:34
that should be a red flag.
40:36
And that's how the cronyism works.
40:39
That's how the cronyism works. Well, go get your...
40:44
Sometimes I watch Fox News in the morning. And when I say Fox News,
40:47
I mean the local Fox 5 Atlanta, because really I'm just interested to see,
40:52
one, what the weather is going to be.
40:55
See who got shot in South Fulton.
40:58
See which apartments went up in smoke in DeKalb County.
41:02
And then, yeah, and then a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
41:05
But then they always got a doc who comes on.
41:07
And one of those docs is very much, you know, party line guy.
41:12
Yeah, take the COVID vaccine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he downplays the harm of all that.
41:20
And it bothers me. But he's getting paid.
41:24
So corporate media has a way about shaping a narrative.
41:28
Yeah, shaping a narrative, which may in turn suppress opposing views a little bit.
41:38
Libertarian, ideal. You might look at that and you might think, man, yeah.
41:44
So authenticity, yeah. I think authenticity, well, one is critical in my opinion.
41:53
And that's what you see on the independent, the podcasts and independent music
42:03
and independent, a lot of things is you see the authenticity.
42:07
You know that you're listening to a regular guy, a regular girl, someone who.
42:15
Probably understands your point of view, somebody who may or may not,
42:19
you know, probably agree with you though on certain things and somebody you
42:23
might run into out at the Jerusalem Grill or,
42:27
you know, at the pub.
42:29
Regular guys. The authenticity is there.
42:33
When somebody hits me up on a text or email or something, they don't get a standard
42:38
form letter back. You know what I mean?
42:41
And when you look at these corporate media types, they're all polished and they're all shaped up.
42:48
They're all, and the hair's perfect. The suits are perfect.
42:51
Now, like I said, I watch the local affiliate, Fox 5 News, and one of the guys
42:58
on there, Buck, man, he does Buck's burgers, you know, I'll go get some burgers
43:02
at a local place somewhere.
43:05
And that humanizes him a little bit. But he's got some sweet suits, man.
43:10
But I'll tell you why I started watching Channel 5 is Ron Gant is on there.
43:16
And if you guys don't know who Ron Gant is, he played Major League Baseball
43:22
for the Atlanta Braves back during the world in the 90s when the Braves were smoking hot.
43:30
Yeah, I've always liked Ron Gant.
43:34
And then Elise Eadie. She's a doll. She's an absolute beauty.
43:39
But Buck, yeah, authenticity, man. He's out there, you know,
43:42
eating Buck's burgers. I love that.
43:45
It's still polished up, though. You know, there's still the big camera.
43:48
They probably still got a makeup guy, and they probably blah,
43:50
blah, blah, all that stuff.
43:52
You don't really have that with the independents.
43:55
Authenticity. You know what you see now, though?
43:59
And Brad said this during the Great Create thing.
44:03
Some of these people are now, they're trying to do podcasts.
44:06
Did you see Michelle Obama? She's got a podcast, I guess.
44:12
Think that that's genuine? Like, she's just like, you know what?
44:16
I got something to say. I'm going to go ahead and throw it out there.
44:19
Does anybody think Michelle about it? Now, if you guys noticed that my podcast
44:23
is audio only, I don't have a video version of this.
44:27
I'm in my basement, folks. I'm sitting in my basement right now.
44:30
And this is my de facto office.
44:33
And I got, you know, some pictures on my wall of like some, a couple of the
44:37
going away plaques I got, you know, from 1st Battalion and from 2nd Battalion.
44:42
And, you know, I got a plaque from St. Petersburg Police SWAT team that when
44:47
I trained with them, I got, you know, I got some stuff down here that, some Army stuff.
44:53
I got my family crest up on the wall over there.
44:57
I've got a print, you know, poster, framed up poster of a Picasso up on the wall.
45:05
I've got a canvas, you know, framed canvas sort of thing.
45:10
And it's got a phrase on it.
45:13
And it says, all you can take with you is all that which you've given away.
45:18
Does anybody know where that quote came from?
45:22
All you can take with you is that which you've given away. Yeah,
45:26
that's up on my wall. I got a whiteboard next to my desk.
45:29
And then I got a little bit of miniature thinker, the statue, Rodan's Thinker.
45:36
I got that sitting on my desk because I like to think of myself as a thinker.
45:40
But check this out. If you guys know me, if you know me well,
45:44
you'll know that the reason I got
45:45
that little statuette is because it's a prominent feature in the series,
45:53
the TV series, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Yeah.
46:00
Old Dobie. He loved the ladies. Tuesday Weld was on Dobie Gillis first couple
46:06
of seasons, and she was an absolute beauty.
46:09
And Dobie was often sitting next to the statue doing the same pose,
46:15
thinking hard on how he can get Thalia Miniger to go out with him.
46:20
Anyway, I digress.
46:23
Authenticity, man. Does anybody think Michelle Obama is doing an authentic you
46:30
know from the heart podcast and then and brad mentioned uh joy reed yeah,
46:39
i think she got fired what what network does she work with was it msnbc or cnn
46:45
one of those one of the lefty ones i think she got fired maybe so she decided to start doing a podcast,
46:54
do you think that she's genuinely just sitting in her basement just giving it to you from the heart,
47:01
i don't think so there's probably a news crew behind the camera yeah man they
47:08
don't have it right and it's hard to have that authenticity i guess once you
47:12
reach a certain level of exposure,
47:15
I guess shit I don't know I don't know.
47:21
But what's different about the news people even in their podcast right independent people deliver,
47:29
plain spoken you know raw analysis raw opinion and I think that I think that
47:37
goes a long way for relatability and building trust we speak to regular people
47:44
and regular people relate.
47:48
But I want to say, and I'm not sure where this statistic, I had it and I don't
47:55
have it anymore, but podcast in the United States,
48:00
57% men and 52% of women is the listenership of podcast monthly.
48:11
So it's half and half, you know, roughly of the, you know, a hundred thousand
48:16
plus monthly listeners, you know, a little more than half's men,
48:21
a little more than, well, half, half the men, half a winner.
48:25
They hear people that they can relate to.
48:28
And so they listen and you can, you can find a podcast on any topic, folks.
48:33
I know politics seems very prevalent and I don't even want to say my,
48:37
my podcast is political. It kind of is, I guess.
48:40
I think I classified it as something under philosophy or something like that. I don't know.
48:48
I tend to get off on political tangents.
48:52
But citizen journalists, while being authentic and relatable,
48:57
they can deliver information.
48:59
Information and not only deliver information that the mainstream is not delivering,
49:06
but also expose the bias or the hypocrisy of the mainstream media. Yeah.
49:15
Independents, independent podcasters, independent citizen journalists actually
49:21
do empower individuals and in communities with information.
49:27
And I think absolutely that the corporate mainstream media does not.
49:32
It's elitist. It's elitist by nature.
49:37
And by nature, elitists do not empower the individual or the small communities.
49:42
That's what I think. They don't empower the individual or the community. They don't.
49:49
People do not trust the mainstream media. That is a fact.
49:54
I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 28% Americans trust the media.
50:00
That's a pretty low approval rating, I think.
50:05
So why would you mistrust the media? Well, let's use the COVID thing for a minute.
50:12
That was a hard propaganda push, folks. That was a big campaign,
50:16
all right, that they put out against the American public.
50:20
But what it exposed a lot is the greasy connections, the incestuous connections
50:29
between the news media and the government and the entertainment industry.
50:35
And that right there is enough, folks, when when that stuff is not forthright.
50:42
And if you don't come on a newscast and you're given some news that has to do with getting a vaccine.
50:52
But you happen to be married to someone in the CDC and you don't disclaim that. Right.
51:00
Hey, look, full transparency. My husband works for the CDC, but I'm telling
51:06
you that the CDC is saying this.
51:09
Nah, they don't do that. They don't do that. So it seems shady.
51:13
Whether it's not or is, it seems that way.
51:17
Now, you guys have heard me carry on before about CIA and Operation Mockingbird
51:23
and all that stuff, right?
51:25
So we know that the media and the government are in bed. We've known that.
51:31
But like quite literally There's a lot of.
51:36
Intermarital Stuff going on Is that a word?
51:39
There's a lot A lot of government people Married to a lot of news people Married
51:44
to A lot of entertainment people Married to a lot of government people Back
51:49
and forth Back and forth Back and forth I said in one of my last episodes Like
51:52
they're all sleeping together Right?
51:53
They all They send their kids to the same Private schools They all go to the
51:57
same country clubs And they're all sleeping with each other,
52:01
I alluded to it earlier, in the 24 campaign,
52:06
the administration basically was coerced and manipulated,
52:12
well, not manipulated, but definitely coerced and forced Facebook and Google
52:16
and Amazon basically, well, basically to censor dissenting of use.
52:22
And that came out, you know, yeah, and that came out only after the fact.
52:28
And then you got, well, in the current administration, using the FCC to try
52:34
to pressure certain people and to, well,
52:41
to de-license certain organizations over coverage critical of the administration.
52:48
That's not bueno. It's not bueno. It wasn't bueno when Biden did it,
52:52
and it ain't bueno for Trump to do it.
52:55
Man, there's a lot of examples here. I just don't want to go and sound like a conspiracy theorist.
52:59
I'm not. This is all the things that I have here are all legitimate things.
53:05
Sitcom ran a campaign, a site campaign, on social media using fake accounts
53:11
to discredit Chinese vaccines.
53:15
And that came out in a 2021 Pentagon campaign.
53:21
Criticizing oversight. So the government pressures, and they don't have to pressure
53:29
too hard folks, mainstream media to stick onto official narratives.
53:35
They don't have to pressure them too hard. They just got to do a little pill
53:38
talk at night and be like, well, my boss wants this and that and blah,
53:42
blah, blah. There you go.
53:44
Citizen journalists don't, we ain't in that loop. I'm not in that loop for sure.
53:49
Again, I'm not a journalist. But those out there, I mean, how can a citizen
53:55
journalist be pressured?
53:57
I guess, well, people in Europe, you post the wrong thing on your Facebook and
54:06
you're going to go to jail now in the UK.
54:09
Yeah. So I guess they can put pressure on you that way as an individual.
54:13
Just trump up some, I don't even know what, hate speech charges,
54:17
and then boom, that's it.
54:19
Something so frigging subjective that nobody can make sense of it.
54:24
So you could get pressured as an individual, I guess, to go to jail.
54:29
But if the government says, well, hey, we're going to withhold money from you
54:32
if you continue with your podcast, well, they would be in a breach of contract,
54:37
but that's another story.
54:39
There's just a whole level of mistrust out there.
54:44
That there's constant examples of. It's always popping up.
54:49
So in our First Amendment, we have freedom of speech and association,
54:52
and I want to say freedom of press. I'm pretty sure that's in there.
54:57
I'm not going to look that up word for word. I can't read the First Amendment
55:00
right now, but I think there's a freedom of press as well.
55:04
But all these little incestuous little ties to the government,
55:10
that violates that freedom of press. There is a conflict of interest there,
55:14
and that makes the government able to coerce the media.
55:20
That's it. So otherwise, let's get back to, let's get away from the government stuff.
55:25
What does, what does the mainstream media, what are they chasing?
55:28
What is their, what is their purpose?
55:29
We talked about motives earlier, but, and it was money for the corporate media, right?
55:34
Ratings, right? They want ratings. Ratings is what gets ad revenue.
55:39
Ad revenue is what makes all the money.
55:41
And we see that that's down. So what does that, that lend itself to?
55:47
That lends itself to sensationalism they
55:51
try to do any they try to do things for ratings talk about
55:55
certain stories or highlight certain things to for wow factor or whatever excuse
56:03
me to try to to try to drive those ratings up so you know i don't even know
56:09
how the nielsen system works but it.
56:14
Yeah, high ratings gets high ad revenue.
56:18
The more people that the company believes is going to watch this show,
56:22
whatever show it is, that's why I like Super Bowl ads, right?
56:27
You know what, a 30-second or a one-minute spot for a Super Bowl ad? I don't know.
56:31
A few million dollars. That's insane, right?
56:36
So, of course, they're going to try to be as outrageous as possible.
56:40
Now, pro football has got built-in viewership.
56:43
How they managed to screw it up with bizarre, you know, halftime shows.
56:47
I don't know, but ratings right now in the same token podcast and digital media,
56:55
it's all about the views and the clicks because the same kind of thing applies there.
57:00
If you got, you know, a hundred thousand plus, I don't know what listeners,
57:06
well, then companies will want to run ads and then however, you know, you get per click.
57:13
Like, I don't know how all that shit works, but there's a risk of that affecting
57:20
the independent media as well.
57:24
Now, the trick is, though, I don't think the kind of money is there for that. Right.
57:29
I don't believe that that kind of money exists. When you say that I've monetized
57:33
my channel, I don't know what the hell that means.
57:36
But other than probably Joe Rogan and maybe Sean Ryan, you know,
57:41
I don't think too many people were making what you would consider a living off
57:46
of a podcast. That could just be me and my ignorance.
57:51
I'm pretty sure you don't consider OnlyFans citizen journalism,
57:56
but I hear they're making money pretty good over there.
58:02
At any rate, the younger generation, I am Gen X, and then what?
58:08
There's millennials, then there's Gen Z, and I don't even know what the new
58:12
generation is called or going to be called, but it's, it has trended away from
58:20
television. Good people.
58:21
Now I grew up, I was born in 1972.
58:24
Yeah. My parents had, well, back, back in the seventies.
58:28
Yeah. You had a dial. You had dials on your TV and rabbit ears and yeah,
58:36
the remote was me, right?
58:38
Go change the TV. No, stop right there. And there was like six channels. Yeah.
58:43
2, 5, 11, 17, 2, 5, 11, 17, 36, 46, and 69, and Channel 8.
58:52
So that's a pretty good bit. That's a lot of channels. Channel 8 was PBS.
58:58
Channel 17 was TBS, Turner Broadcasting. It used to just be called a super station.
59:04
I don't even know what it was called before that.
59:06
And they played, generally speaking, a bunch of old movies. Like now,
59:10
you got Turner Classic Movies.
59:12
They played old movies and like Andy Griffith and stuff. And I think back then you go, I don't know.
59:18
Then you had the big network, 2511.
59:23
CBS and NBC. Then you had channel 36. I can't remember it.
59:28
And then channel 46. I can't remember it, but I want to say like channel 46
59:31
was like where I played like Kung Fu.
59:35
I don't know if you guys remember that TV show at David Carradine.
59:38
That was, it was supposed to be Bruce Lee, but it ended up being David Carradine
59:42
and then like Kung Fu theater and stuff like that, man.
59:48
Yeah anyway these days there is so much out there to consume it's insane it's ridiculous,
59:56
and you can you know there are tv shows because we got like a samsung smart
1:00:03
tv so if you just go in the channel guide on samsung tv there's like this whole
1:00:09
block of channels it's just like video game stuff.
1:00:13
People playing video games on TV.
1:00:18
And then there's whole blocks of channels. It's just like music television.
1:00:23
There's whole blocks of channels that are like outdoor, you know,
1:00:27
Red Bull frigging extreme sports stuff.
1:00:31
There's just whatever. It's all out there these days. It's all,
1:00:34
it's all out there. It's madness.
1:00:36
So yeah, of course, kids ain't watching TV or they, even if they are watching TV, they, I don't know.
1:00:43
They seem to prefer the small screen and they're right in their hands as opposed
1:00:47
to the big screen on the wall.
1:00:48
I don't know. I can tell you this. I got a gigantic television in my living
1:00:53
room. Like it's ridiculous. It's absurd.
1:00:55
And when my grandkids come over, we'll put whatever show on that is appropriate and.
1:01:02
Span is so short that they won't even sit and watch the show on the big giant screen.
1:01:07
They're running around and doing other things. It's crazy. And that's okay.
1:01:12
I'd rather them do other things than be glued to a screen, but usually they
1:01:16
want to get on another smaller screen.
1:01:19
That's crazy. But it's trending down, folks. TV. Yeah, it's not going to go
1:01:25
away most likely, but it's trending down for sure.
1:01:28
So this chase for the ratings, this chase for the clicks, You know,
1:01:31
it distorts the markets a little bit, probably.
1:01:33
It can create monopolies, especially in the corporate world.
1:01:37
But the sort of independent stuff, it's still, man, it's still,
1:01:41
I still got to choose to click on a thing and watch it.
1:01:45
Now, the question is attention span.
1:01:48
Does that thing that's being put out there, can it hold your attention?
1:01:52
Because even adults these days, not even kids, the attention span,
1:01:56
if you ain't hooked in the first, you know, like 10 seconds, that's it. It's gone.
1:02:02
So anyway, the chase for the ratings, yeah.
1:02:05
In the corporate world, I think they're having to try and figure out new things.
1:02:10
I think that's why you see some of these TV personalities, you know,
1:02:13
kind of popping up on podcasts or doing interviews on,
1:02:18
you know, popular podcasts because it's a market that like they're not trying
1:02:24
to get ahead of it because it's been out there. They're just trying to catch up.
1:02:28
Yeah, they're just trying to catch up.
1:02:32
Equals ads, equals money. What's some other unseen sort of money influences?
1:02:40
Well, for traditional news media, right? Corporate media, it sees salaries, right?
1:02:46
These people make a lot of money. Let's see here.
1:02:50
Sean Hannity is on Fox and Rachel Maddow is on MSNBC.
1:02:57
They both make somewhere around $25 million a year. Can you believe that shit?
1:03:03
Yeah. And then it says here, your average TV anchor on like,
1:03:09
you know, local news stuff, they're making over $85,000 a year average.
1:03:16
So how much am I making from, from my media platform here?
1:03:22
Zero dollars. Yep. That's right, $0.
1:03:27
So these people are incentivized. If I'm Rachel Maddow and MSNBC wants me to
1:03:33
bash on Trump and they're paying me $25 million a year, I'm going to bash on Trump.
1:03:40
If I'm Sean Hannity and Fox wants me to bash on Biden for $25 million a year,
1:03:44
I'm going to bash on Biden.
1:03:46
I think it affects their ability to be independent. I do think that.
1:03:52
You know, money, I guess you can buy some power with money, I guess a little bit.
1:03:58
But like one of the ways that people make money, they all on the social media
1:04:02
is they got these Patreon channels and stuff like that.
1:04:05
And like they'll have followers who pay, you know, I don't know,
1:04:10
two, three bucks a month for a membership.
1:04:12
Well, if you amass enough followers paying two or three bucks a month,
1:04:15
yeah, that's pretty decent money, I guess.
1:04:17
Now, what do you give them for that money. I, you know, I don't know.
1:04:20
I, again, I don't know how any of that stuff works.
1:04:23
I'm not 100% sure I even really want to, but what else?
1:04:28
So yeah, you can do ads on social media, right? I could do ads on my podcast.
1:04:32
I just don't, I don't want to explore that right now, but what,
1:04:37
I don't know. You guys give me some feedback.
1:04:39
If, if I did ads on my show, would you rather just hear me read the ad?
1:04:44
Be like, Hey guys, now I'm going to, I'm going to do a frigging ad here,
1:04:47
read the damn ad and then carry on?
1:04:49
Or do you want it to break in with whatever their little commercial is?
1:04:52
I don't know. I'm probably going to end up doing ads sooner or later, I guess.
1:04:57
I don't know. It depends on how the money situation plays out with some other stuff.
1:05:01
But anyway, other than that, then it's like donations, right?
1:05:04
People are membership based or some people just donate to the cause to keep
1:05:10
it running. Yeah, I don't know.
1:05:15
The thing about donations is if they're, I don't want to say anonymous,
1:05:18
but like no strings attached donations, right?
1:05:21
Like if somebody out there just said, hey, Edgar, I'm going to,
1:05:23
here's 10 grand. I like what you're doing.
1:05:26
You know, keep the faith, bro. Keep, keep rolling.
1:05:30
I would take that money and I would upgrade my little basement studio and I'd
1:05:35
keep doing what I'm doing.
1:05:37
But you don't get that in the corporate world, right? If you,
1:05:39
if somebody gives you money to do a thing, they expect something in return.
1:05:43
That's just cold, hard business, and that's the way they do that.
1:05:46
So, yeah, you can see the differences there with monetary influence.
1:05:53
Ultimately, those big salaries from the corporate side, yeah,
1:05:57
I think I just, yeah, it supports statism, man.
1:06:02
It supports the company line.
1:06:05
And whereas the independent guys are out there and they're getting money from
1:06:10
volunteers or from small memberships and stuff like that. So, yeah, man.
1:06:15
Again, I think the independent, the citizen journalist comes out on top there,
1:06:21
for being able to maintain a neutral, well, not be pushed around by influence anyway.
1:06:29
So today, right now, today, there exists somewhere around a half a million podcasts.
1:06:37
That's a lot of podcasts. I don't know if there's a half a million television shows.
1:06:44
But I made the comparison. I do this a lot when I'm having a conversation about it.
1:06:49
Now I made the comparison, the podcast, modern podcast to talk radio of the,
1:06:55
you know, seventies and eighties, but I'm also going to make it a comparison
1:07:00
given those numbers, right?
1:07:01
A half a million active podcasts as of today. If,
1:07:07
musicians out there, right? There's how many musicians, how many records,
1:07:13
I'm saying records like everybody goes to the record store, how many downloadable
1:07:17
songs exist on the internet?
1:07:19
Yeah, probably, probably way more than a half a million.
1:07:23
And that's the goodness of the internet, right? You don't have to be famous
1:07:26
to put your stuff out there.
1:07:28
Now it might take a while for somebody to find it, but somebody is going to find it.
1:07:32
And when they do, and they, and it speaks to them, they're going to download
1:07:35
it and you're going to make six cents or whatever off of it.
1:07:39
And then somebody is going to hear your stuff. And then they're going to be
1:07:41
like, Hey man, you hear, have you heard this?
1:07:44
And then somebody else is going to download it and then you're going to make six more cents.
1:07:48
And then, you know, maybe you'll be successful. Maybe, you know,
1:07:51
your little crew of 20 people who love your music, they're just loving your music.
1:07:56
Just can't wait till the next one, you know, you drop the next, the next song.
1:08:01
So and it's like podcasts. It's the same. I kind of was worried about that.
1:08:05
I was like, man, put a podcast out. Who am I talking to?
1:08:08
Talking to the air, you know, like my own kids don't even listen to my podcast.
1:08:14
My wife doesn't even listen to it. I got to force my wife just to listen to it.
1:08:18
But somebody's listened to it because I got the metrics, you know,
1:08:21
on the on the pod being there.
1:08:24
So, you know, you put it out there and if somebody hears it and speaks to them, they'll listen.
1:08:30
And then if they like it, they'll stick with it. And then they'll maybe share
1:08:33
it with their friends. That's the way it works, I guess.
1:08:35
And that's fine, man. I like that. That's genuine. That's grassroots stuff.
1:08:39
That means it's not what's being forced down your throat.
1:08:44
When you turn the TV on, that news is getting forced down your throat.
1:08:48
You've got to go click onto the Junto podcast. it ain't gonna just pop up folks yeah.
1:08:55
You got to go search for the Juneteenth podcast. And then you got to open and
1:08:58
look, scroll down, see which time.
1:09:01
Oh, yeah. He's talking about pornography. Oh, I don't listen to that.
1:09:05
Oh, he's talking about conspiracy theory. Yeah. Let's see what Edgar's got to say about it.
1:09:12
Versus corporate mainstream media when six corporations own everything and it
1:09:17
pops up on radio and TV and everywhere.
1:09:21
And even on your phone, you know,
1:09:22
you get ads from these big corporate behemoths. You know what I mean?
1:09:27
So the difference between citizen journalism and mainstream media is you've
1:09:32
got to go find the citizen journalist and actively seek out their information.
1:09:39
Whereas the mainstream media, it's all there getting pushed down your throat
1:09:43
all day, every day. So these independent voices, similar to mine,
1:09:48
out here on the digital airwaves,
1:09:54
what?
1:09:56
Really truly free. I mean, we can even say freedom is subjective, man, these days.
1:10:02
But if we can openly question the official narrative, openly resist,
1:10:11
if needed, the official narrative, well, then we're free, right?
1:10:17
But blind acceptance and compliance to the official narrative,
1:10:23
that just leads to surfdom folks.
1:10:26
Now I want to give you a little side note here. When I was writing my notes,
1:10:31
I did it on Microsoft Word.
1:10:34
Microsoft Word. I typed in the word surfdom because I was writing this sentence,
1:10:40
blind acceptance and compliance lead to surfdom.
1:10:44
Microsoft Word corrected surfdom to freedom, auto-corrected it.
1:10:50
So I went back and rewrote surf them again. And I checked my spelling.
1:10:55
Yeah, that's how you spell surf them. And it corrected it again.
1:10:59
It had the little red squiggly line under, and its suggestion was freedom.
1:11:04
And the sentence was blind acceptance and compliance lead to blank.
1:11:13
Microsoft says freedom.
1:11:17
Let that sink in for a few minutes, folks. Microsoft Thank you.
1:11:23
Serfdom for freedom. Be engaged, folks.
1:11:27
Be engaged as citizens of America, as citizens of the world.
1:11:31
Be engaged and give an ear to
1:11:35
the citizen journalists, to the independent voices, to the small podcasts.
1:11:41
Support free speech because this is free speech and that's it.
1:11:48
This is free speech right here. And be skeptical, folks, of corporate media.
1:11:54
Absolutely, 100%, be skeptical of corporate media. Take it all in, folks. Take it all in.
1:12:02
Process it. Analyze it. Think independently. Come up with your own conclusions.
1:12:09
Yeah, that's it. Just use the citizen journalist as a guide.
1:12:14
You can even use mainstream media as a guide, but only a guide.
1:12:19
Understand that they have an agenda.
1:12:22
All right, good people. That was the topic for today. Citizen journalism.
1:12:29
Independent voices out here in the digital wild. Support. Yeah, support.
1:12:36
Please give me your feedback, good people. I'm a flawed individual. I'm a flawed human.
1:12:40
I don't have spell checkers and fact checkers and those people around me.
1:12:46
And of course, I'm not doing this live anyway. I could probably go back.
1:12:50
I think I do a pretty good job doing research when I do it.
1:12:54
Tell me what you think. Give me your feedback. I'm out here right now actively searching for topics.
1:13:01
I want to know what my listeners want to hear about, or at least to hear my thoughts on.
1:13:08
Write a paper on something that you're passionate about.
1:13:11
Send it to me, and we'll get it posted up on thejuntopodcast.com.
1:13:18
Come out and shoot guns, ospreyshootingsolutions.com. Come out and do some land
1:13:23
navigation this Friday, folks.
1:13:25
This Friday and Saturday is the two-day land navigation course.
1:13:29
You can find it on twoteamguys.com. Please give to the Help a Homie Fund.
1:13:35
A buddy of mine, we talked just yesterday. My buddy Justin owns a company called
1:13:41
Vitax Solutions, and they're a medical training and medical equipment provider.
1:13:48
And they do aid bags from big to small, and they do a lot of good things.
1:13:54
So I'm an affiliate with them.
1:13:55
So if you, and you can find this on my LinkedIn page, the Osprey Shooting Solutions
1:14:03
LinkedIn, or not LinkedIn, I'm sorry, disregard that, Linktree.
1:14:07
You can find this on my Linktree, Osprey Shooting Solutions Linktree.
1:14:12
So I'm an affiliate with VITAC, and any purchases that are bought on that affiliate program.
1:14:21
So with the OSS, from the OSS VITAC page, not only do those proceeds,
1:14:28
the profit goes, will go straight to the Help a Homie fund.
1:14:32
And then VITAC is going to match that.
1:14:35
So that is very gracious of Justin. And I appreciate that he's doing that.
1:14:41
And that I think is going to help us, you know, get a little more money in the
1:14:45
bank for, for what we want to use it for, which is to help people who need help, like immediately.
1:14:52
So that is give send go.com backslash help a homie fund.
1:15:00
If you want to give to that, you can go there and give to it.
1:15:02
If you're in the need of some medical stuff, go to Vitax solutions backslash
1:15:07
Osprey shooting solutions or go find that on my link tree. And you,
1:15:13
find yourself some equipment. VITAC is also, I think they are also now a distributor
1:15:19
for North American Rescue, which is a very big, prominent medical equipment provider.
1:15:25
So yeah, there's that. I want to just appreciate Justin here out loud publicly
1:15:30
for suggesting that and for matching those funds.
1:15:35
And then other than that, folks, keep your fingers crossed for the SiloFirearmsTrainingComplex.com.
1:15:42
Sorry, SiloFTC.com. That's the landing site.
1:15:47
That's the webpage for the, hopefully, our range that is going to be,
1:15:52
hopefully, getting approved, zoning approved in January.
1:15:57
So keep your fingers crossed. If you're praying in person, pray for us.
1:16:01
And if you're a savage, heathen, woodland tree worshiper, please do a spell.
1:16:08
Dance around a fire naked with some chickens and try to get that thing approved.
1:16:15
Let's see. What else? That's it, folks.
1:16:19
Be good to each other. Yeah, be good to each other.
1:16:22
Have good manners when you're out there in the public, out there in the wild.
1:16:26
Open the door for somebody.
1:16:28
Yeah, pick up a piece of trash. Like my friend, Trail Trash Dirtbag.
1:16:33
Do something good tomorrow when you get up and go out. Do something good.
1:16:37
All right, folks. I appreciate you.