Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Now, wait a minute. Now wait a minute.
Photos at home. Your choices matter. Your approach matters. How you do things in life changes your ending. And for almost a decade, we have all decided to Pokemon go to the polls very loyally. Yet look at this dystopia we're in. That's not enough.
Clearly, just Pokemon going to the polls. It's not helping us. We need a different approach for a better ending. And you know what? I was inspired by the anime version of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 7. Steel Ball Run. Steel ball run. And yes, voters at home, may we no longer Pokemon go to the polls. We need to JoJo steelball run to the polls of the most important election of our lives. Let's go. Yeah.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: This election, which will be, I do truly believe, the most important election of our lifetime.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: This is the most important election of our lifetime.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: This is the most important election.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Don't you you hear that?
[00:01:04] Speaker C: This is the most important election in our lifetime.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: I certainly think it's the most important
[00:01:08] Speaker C: election of my life now.
This is the most important election of our times.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Politicians say every time, this is the most important election. This one's really that important. Yeah. This is the plan. This is what we're going to do. We're going to have a voting horse race across America. All voters start in California and in New York and everywhere we go, we vote. Don't worry, laws do not apply to participants. Be gay, do crime. My voting related stands will be there to protect you. And we'll race and vote across America. We'll vote in California, in Arizona and Pennsylvania and Alaska somehow. And we'll keep voting. Vote, vote, vote. As we steal ball, run into the polls, into the most important election of our lives. Yeah. All right, Kennedy, the mic is yours. The mic is yours, Kennedy.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: You gotta vote.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: We don't know what a horse is, but we're gonna find out.
[00:02:05] Speaker C: Hopefully.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Maybe in this. Probably not in this episode, not in this episode, but we're gonna. We're gonna find out one of these days. We are gonna vote. If you're not in a line, get in line. If you're in the line, get a different line.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Okay,
[00:02:21] Speaker B: maybe that line's not for you. I just want to put that out there.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Hey, Kenny, I just met somebody cool in line.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, you did?
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's this guy named Josh.
[00:02:32] Speaker C: Hello.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: I was gonna say, if your name is Josh, get in line to say some stuff on this show.
[00:02:38] Speaker C: I'm voting early and often.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Yeah, you can vote by. You can vote by podcast now. Amazing new invention.
[00:02:44] Speaker C: That's what I've been told. Yeah. And I basically vote as frequently as I possibly can by going on as many podcasts as I frequently can. I consider that to be my form of voting.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: That's right. This is Josh Bowerman from the worst of all possible worlds and ill conceived with friend of the pod, June Ilper.
Josh, you're on a. You're on a sort of marathon across the country yourself.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: It's true.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: A sort of steel ball run through
[00:03:10] Speaker C: 52 podcasts in a.
Yeah, my own personal cannonball run. I'm calling it the podcast challenge. 52 podcasts in 52 weeks. And I think this is number one, like 20 or something like that.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Oh, you're doing good.
[00:03:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm ahead of pace, which is very exciting.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: That's good. Well, you're going to want to take a break somewhere. So it's a.
[00:03:30] Speaker C: It's a marathon, not a sprint. Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: So, you know, you got to have that planned in.
It's so great to have you on the show. I'm a big fan of your shows and when our producer said that we were going to have you on, I was super pumped. And then you picked a video game series that I don't know a lot about and was very confusing to learn about. So now I have a mixed opinion on you.
[00:03:55] Speaker C: Oh, okay.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Well, that came that. Well, we're going to have to find a way to resolve this plot thread. It might be through a Dais X machina.
Wow, that was bad.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: That was bad.
That was fast.
No, but this is. This is a very interesting video game series. You threw us at Deus Ex for this episode. Josh.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: What is.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: What is your relationship? This series of cyberpunk choice making, dystopian illuminati fighting, or maybe helping video games.
[00:04:34] Speaker C: Yeah. So Deus Ex is the greatest game of all time.
It was originally released in the year 2000 for the PC and then it had a sequel, Deus Ex, Invisible War, which is not a very good game. And then a little later on, two more sequels, Deus Ex, Mankind Divided and Human Revolution. Human Revolution actually came first. And basically the gist of all of the games is you play as a character who is mechanically augmented, biomechanically augmented, and you have to uncover conspiracies, basically plots and various people who are trying to control the world. And by immersive simming your way through all sorts of different level objectives and obstacles, you eventually discover what is at the core of these various conspiracies. That's the gist of the game.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: That's a great summary. What, what personally draws you to them and make like, why was this like the topic you wanted to talk about today?
[00:05:37] Speaker C: Well, I just have a very special relationship with the immersive sim genre generally. And immersive sims basically are the type of game where you play in first person in a 3D environment.
And the way that you advance through the game is sort of up to you. You know, you can shoot, you can sneak, you can hack, you can do all sorts of different things to move through the different challenges that are put in front of you.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: So yeah, this was famously like one of the very first games where like even decisions that you would in the moment feel were kind of small could impact things all the way through the rest of the game.
[00:06:21] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. It's like the old cliche. Right? Choices matter. And other great examples of immersive sims would of course be like Dishonored, Bioshock, System Shock to Prey, the more recent Prey, the one that came out in 2017. That's a fantastic game.
All of these are good examples of the genre, but Deus Ex is still the og.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a very neat series and yeah, very influential on so many. I mean, you rattled off a couple, but like we could spend the whole rest of our recording time just naming games influenced by Deus Ex.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: So it really is a hyper influential series.
The only reason I'm not more familiar with it is because at a certain point in my life I stopped being able to play first person games. So I've only played the first one a million years ago and vaguely remember it, but it was, it was so cool.
I do remember that it was mind blowing when it came out.
[00:07:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's the thing that jumps out at me about it still. Right. Because I try to go back and replay it every year or so and it even at this point, right. 26 years after it was released, it is still a game that did things that have not been done since, just in terms of like world immersion and the different ways that you can approach things. And I also will say I enjoy also Human Revolution, and especially Mankind Divided, the most recent game in the franchise. I think Mankind divided is like 2/3 of a perfect game, but unfortunately they just didn't finish the game because the developer or the publisher forced it out the door basically before it was done.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: So I guess you could say the quality of the game is very divided.
[00:08:10] Speaker C: I would say that, yeah, yeah, that's.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: That's always unfortunate when publishers get in the Way of good games.
Many such cases unfortunately.
So yeah, something I think is really interesting about this series is that Deus Ex is like you've mentioned, very conspiracy obsessed and weaves in some interesting real life conspiracy concepts very loosely into the game in a lot of ways. Usually just like taking a lot of liberties with it, but still in a way that's like recognizable if you've ever interacted with conspiracy stuff in life.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: Yeah, the. The original pitch for the game and the story and the world of the game was like, what if every conspiracy theory was true?
And so a lot of people now will look at the game and be like, damn it predicted everything.
Which is because there's like everything is in there, you know, like there's an entire subplot about like a.
A virus that has been unleashed upon a rest of population, but the government also controls the vaccine and sh. That you know.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: Yeah,
[00:09:22] Speaker C: yeah, the Illuminati's in there. Majestic 12 is in there.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Funny you should mention the Majestic 12 because that actually going to be the second topic for this episode I wanted to pick out. I. As soon as I realized that the Majestic 12 was a thing in, in this game series, I was doing my homework. I was like, oh well this is something that I want to touch on because I think that there's a lot of interesting conspiracies that they touch on. But that I didn't want to go too broad for this episode. I wanted to pick something a little more specific. And the Majestic 12 is one of the.
It's just a very fascinating conspiracy to me personally, which is this idea that there was a group of 12 people that were privy to special knowledge about UFOs and aliens that nobody else was privy to, not even the President or things like that.
I just think that's a very fun idea. And also it's very funny that one particular like conspiracy writer was basically just gaslit for decades to write about this and then it turned out there was like basically no proof behind it. I think that's just kind of. I mean it's also sad because it's a person's real life, but it's comedy
[00:10:39] Speaker C: in that it is, it is fun. I mean you can actually go on the FBI website and they have declassified some of the documents.
Bogus is just written over the pages because it is all bullshit.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: I love how that's an official FBI classification.
[00:10:57] Speaker C: Yeah, here, I'll send you the link. It's pretty cool, the bogus.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: We'll put it in the show notes for all you listeners and, yeah, no, it's. It's funny as hell.
It's.
It's definitely just a really interesting situation.
And, yeah, I mean, intelligence agencies release information that's not true from time to time. It's a part of. It's a part of their, you know, their strategy.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: Government lied. The government lied. Government lied.
[00:11:27] Speaker C: I mean, it's not even lies in this case, necessarily. It's just like sometimes as an intelligence agency, some of the information you get is bad intel.
I think there's this. There's this general assumption among conspiracy theorists that, like, everything that comes through intelligence is always going to be accurate, which, of course, it's not. People are full of shit. People make things up all the time.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Oh, thank God I can trust the government fully.
[00:11:56] Speaker C: That's right. That's right. You can trust them with everything. You can especially trust the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for sure.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: The other part of this that conspiracy theorists get wrong is just thinking that everybody in the government is in this weird lockstep with each other, when, in fact, there's a lot of misinformation and distrust and conspiracy within members of the government. And so if you start spreading some evidence that looks even slightly realistic that there's a secret group of 12 men within the government with special power, like there will be, that will. That will myth will spread within the government itself to some extent, at least for a period of time.
[00:12:35] Speaker C: And this is why I love the world building of Deus Ex so much, right, is that you have sort of at its core, you have this villain named Bob Page who runs this company called Versa Life. And Versa Life is the company that produces both the virus and the vaccine for the virus. And Bob Page is part of Majestic 12, and he's also hooked up with the Illuminati. Well, actually, sorry, the Illuminati is trying to take him down. The Illuminati are actually up against Majestic 12. But what Bob Page is trying to do is engineer a superhuman AI that he can integrate with in order to create the titular Deus Ex machina.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Did you say this guy's name is Elon Musk? I'm sorry, I wasn't paying that much attention.
[00:13:21] Speaker C: This is the crazy fucking thing is like I. But Elon Musk famously will not shut the fuck up about Deus Ex. And he thinks that he is Adam Jensen, the protagonist of Human Revolution and Mankind Divided. But he's fucking Bob Page. He's the loser.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Wait, are you calling Elon Musk a loser?
[00:13:44] Speaker C: I am. I am. I'm bold enough to Say, okay.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Wow. Bold.
[00:13:47] Speaker C: Bold.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:13:49] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: I can't believe that for the. I think as many episodes as we've had episodes timed, someone has called Elon Musk loser on this podcast.
Can't believe it happened again.
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of funny, interesting stuff in all of this to be examined. And, yeah, deus ex, definitely a game that arguably a little ahead of its time in some of the questions it was asking. And so, you know, I want to ask some questions that I don't know if they're ahead of their time. They're definitely of our time.
Let's step into the voting booth.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: All right.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: And talk a little about little, little questions and scenarios.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Okay, I have a question. Should this camera, this very futuristic camera be in my voting booth that's staring directly at my ballot? I think this shouldn't be here, Kennedy.
[00:14:44] Speaker C: That's against the law in the future.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, you know, if you have problem with it, just complain to Roscoe H. Hillencoder.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: Should there be the security guard looking straight at my ballot as I. I don't know. This feels like security. Stay gone. Wrong.
Well, okay. Redundant.
[00:15:03] Speaker C: But that guy's actually just a VersaLife representative. It's chill.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Yeah, okay.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: It's chill.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: It's all chill.
They have to be armed for reasons that are important, but it's still okay.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: All right. So if we were going to have a majestic 12 today in our. In our current world, what conspiracy would they be overseeing now? I feel like aliens and ufology. Not as popular as it was back when Majestic 12 was a hot conspiracy. Yeah. So what are we going to apply them in our current day to?
[00:15:36] Speaker C: I mean, I feel like it's got to be the group of people who are trying to work large language models into everything. Right.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Well, but that. I was trying to come up with a hypothetical scenario.
[00:15:44] Speaker C: Oh, I see.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: No, that's a great. That's a great answer.
Yeah, I think the people that are trying to push AI into weird parts of our life, I guess that means Grimes is a member of the Majestic 12, right?
[00:15:59] Speaker C: Yeah, it's Grimes. It's Sam Altman.
It's Mark Zuckerberg, It's Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Satya Nadella.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:13] Speaker C: Who else would be on. On this?
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Palmer.
[00:16:16] Speaker C: Yep. Yep. Palmer. Lucky, for sure.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: All right, thanks for correcting me there.
[00:16:22] Speaker C: I. I like. I like calling him Lucky Palmer, though I might have to start doing that.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: It sounds funny that way.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Lucky Palmer, especially when compared to Unlucky Palmer.
[00:16:32] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: Also, it Just makes more. Okay, I'm, I'm from the south, so it makes more sense in my brain. This first name, Be Lucky, you know, like, that's like a. That's like a. There's Southern people with names like that.
[00:16:43] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: Whereas, like, Palmer as a first name is insane. I'm sorry.
[00:16:48] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, no, that's. That's definitely not right. Palmer Lucky is actually a deus ex ass name, too. I will say
[00:16:59] Speaker B: also, if I read off some of these alleged members of the Majestic 12, it's a Majestic 12 ass name to Lloyd Berkner Van and R. Bush.
Detlev Bronc. It's not.
[00:17:12] Speaker C: Good Lord, that's not my name.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: Stop reading from your fantasy novel. Kennedy.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Who's the leader of the new Majestic 12?
[00:17:23] Speaker C: I think it's probably Sam Altman, right? Maybe.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: I don't know. He doesn't seem to get a ton of respect from his peers.
[00:17:33] Speaker C: Well, but, I mean, you got to think about the fact that his entire enterprise was, like, pulled away from him very briefly, and then he was able to do that whole coup at OpenAI to get his power back.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Wait a second. What if we're not thinking about this the right way? What if the leader is the last person that we would expect? Who on the surface is fighting against it, but deep down is actually the leader? That's right. Gabe Newell.
Gabe. And
[00:18:05] Speaker B: why would you say something so dangerous on this show?
[00:18:10] Speaker A: Please don't betray me. Please. I want to be wrong.
[00:18:13] Speaker C: Dario Amade obviously has to be in there. The anthropic guy.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's a good choice. I think the leader of Majestic 12 is. Is old Big Balls himself.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: Oh, that. Now we're cooking.
Cooking.
[00:18:29] Speaker A: Excuse me. What size are his balls?
[00:18:32] Speaker C: Edward Corestein.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: Oh, I remember. It took me a second.
[00:18:37] Speaker C: Edward Big Balls Corstein.
Wait, how did I not know? I just looked him up on Wikipedia. How did I not know that his grandfather was in the kgb? That's crazy.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: It's.
[00:18:52] Speaker C: Did you know that?
[00:18:53] Speaker B: You know, I, I, I. I don't like to agree with Libs if I don't have to, but, like, Rachel Maddow said some stuff that we should have listened to.
[00:19:04] Speaker C: God, he went to Rye Country Day School, too. This guy's. This guy's a huge piece of
[00:19:11] Speaker A: school.
[00:19:11] Speaker C: Friends describe him as intelligent and driven with Elon Musk being his hero.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Okay, so I feel like there's a logical contradiction here.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: All right, so for my next question here in the voting booth, uh, if you know. So Area 51 was really tied into the Majestic 12 conspiracy. Like. Like the. The. And in fact, it's kind of interesting because Area 51 is kind of like, outlived and outgrown Majestic 12 as a conspiracy, but.
[00:19:37] Speaker C: Right.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: But the origins of Area 51 primarily are also the same origins as Majestic 12.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: Hey, Kennedy, I have a question for you. What State is Area 51 in alleged.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: Nevada.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Nevada.
[00:19:51] Speaker C: Meta.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: Nevada.
Nevada. You may continue.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: So, you know, I think Area 51 was very much a product of its time to some extent, in terms of, like, be. Like. Like the obsession with it. Like, that particular base being a UFO thing was very much like sort of. Of. Of a particular era.
So I think if.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: If today.
If.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: If ufo. If ufology was a brand new conspiracy that started today, I think that the conspiracists would pick a different place to be the hot spot.
Where do you. Where do y' all think that hot
[00:20:32] Speaker C: spot would be for UFO activity specifically?
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Like, where is the government keeping all the UFO secrets?
[00:20:40] Speaker C: Oh, they're keeping it at NORAD in Colorado Springs.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: Oh.
Oh, that's a spicy one. Or under the Denver Airport.
[00:20:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: What's down there?
[00:20:52] Speaker C: Or maybe. Or maybe at. What's the. I'm trying to remember.
At Los Alamos. It might be Los Alamos in New Mexico. Right. That would be another good place.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Oh, New Mexico mentioned what's.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Let's go.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: We're cooking this episode.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: You know what? I'm gonna give a shout out to our editor and just say Minnesota. Minnesota.
All right, let's go.
[00:21:17] Speaker C: Not forgiving you for your sins. Okay. Back to my country.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: God just scolded me like, the.
[00:21:23] Speaker C: The places that you would.
These are all places that are active Air Force or Space Force installations. Right. So whether you're talking about Colorado Springs, Los Alamos, which is near a lot of the, like, the Manhattan Project stuff, all of those are good options.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: We also have Richard Branson spaceport here in New Mexico, which doesn't really seem to actually get used much. So that kind of.
[00:21:46] Speaker C: Is that in Albuquerque or where is that?
[00:21:49] Speaker B: It's down by Truth or Consequences.
[00:21:51] Speaker C: Oh, okay.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: And have ruined a small town. Little facts about the world.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:57] Speaker C: I'm looking it up right now.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Which of our current 2026 newscasters that's on TV right now, Ewing Stuff at Us. Is actually an AI controlled by the government.
Oh.
[00:22:13] Speaker C: Oh, like Eliza Kassan.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:15] Speaker C: From. From Human Revolution and mankind Divided. Yeah.
Barry Weiss, obviously.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Oh, God.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: Fuck you.
You're not supposed to give us the truth.
[00:22:27] Speaker C: Well, that's what I'm here for. I'm here to tell. I'm not here to lie to you.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that's Barry Weiss's job.
[00:22:34] Speaker C: I love Eliza Cassand, too. I will say that's another sort of piece of the Deus Ex lore that I really enjoy is how you have this character who exists purely for the sake of propaganda, and I think tacitly, a lot of people know that she's an AI, but they all kind of go along with the farce that she's a real person.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Pretty wild. We are rapidly approaching these sorts of questions in our own world.
The first.
The first chronological Deus Ex game, not the first one to come out, but the. In their chronological lore order, takes place in 2027.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Right around the corner.
[00:23:15] Speaker C: Oh, is Invisible war set in 2027?
[00:23:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Leads us to an obvious question, right? Kennedy.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: So what.
What does Donald Trump do to bring us to Deus Ex world and in the next one year.
[00:23:30] Speaker C: Or wait, no, not Invisible War, sorry. The first. The first game in the chronology is Human Revolution. Right, right, right.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: So, yeah. So what does Donald Trump do in the next year to get us to Deus ex human Revolution?
[00:23:45] Speaker C: Are you waiting for me to give an answer? I'm not sure I have an answer to that question.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: Is there. Is there a particular. I mean, you know, the game? Well, is there a particular bill he could sign or act? He could act. He could take. That would, like, push us strongly into.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: I mean, certainly there's an AI Bill he could do.
[00:24:05] Speaker C: I mean, one could say, given that a big piece of the plot of the original Deus Ex is, you know, the Gray Death and the ambrosia vaccine, that he already got it under way by distributing COVID 19, of course, across. Across the United States, and then inventing the vaccine. Donald Trump did all of that.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: I can't believe I. We came up with one of the worst questions possible, and you gave an answer beyond our imagination. He already did.
[00:24:35] Speaker C: Right.
Yeah. So it's already underway. It's already underway.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: Oh, my God. Okay. Yeah, we deserve that. You have one point for you, Josh was not expecting that.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: Yeah, that was. That was a solid one. Okay, going back even further, do we think the shadow government gave Dick Cheney a nanomechanical heart? That's how he got through the.
[00:24:55] Speaker C: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Dick Cheney is augmented. No doubt about. It was augmented.
That hunting accident was actually just a cover for when they had to recalibrate his augmentations.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
What senator would be the first to move to ban augments? In women's sports, which senator would move to ban augments from sports in general? Who would be like, we have to keep sports pure. We can't have augments in sports.
[00:25:25] Speaker C: We can't have, I mean, I would argue that that is, that would probably be a good idea to not allow biomechanical augmentation in sports.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: Maybe it's Senator, you like that?
[00:25:37] Speaker C: I don't like any senators, so I don't, I don't know.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's fair. Even Bernie Sanders voted in.
[00:25:43] Speaker C: I'm having a, I'm sorry, I'm having a lot of trouble with this thought experiment. I don't really understand the parameters here.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: Then create your own parameters. Augment the parameters. Augment the question.
[00:25:56] Speaker C: My parameters are augmented.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: Okay, augment the question.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Augment the question.
[00:26:05] Speaker C: I don't know.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: What do you think John Setterman? I think, I think he'd finally get up in arms about a topic and it would be this one topic.
[00:26:13] Speaker C: I don't know. I don't think he could ever be as passionate about anything as he is about defending the great state of Israel.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: You know, I am going with the safest possible answer. I am going to say Mike Rounds because nobody knows who the fuck Mike Rounds is. So you can't tell me offhand that he wouldn't be the first one to do it.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: All my listeners at home are just going to shrug and say, sure. Yeah.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: So it's micro. Yeah. Don't.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: Nobody knows who this guy is. I must be right.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Wait.
[00:26:44] Speaker C: He's the junior senator from South Dakota. I have never heard of this guy. What the fuck?
[00:26:48] Speaker A: Exactly. He would be the first to go through this.
[00:26:51] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like everybody knows Thune, obviously. But I, I, I did not know it's Mike Browns.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: Like, come on, come on. Mike Rounds, you know, Mike Brown. Still, it would be him.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: But everybody knows Mike Rounds. And if you don't, you loser, you suck. So just pretend that you know who he is.
[00:27:11] Speaker C: I prefer Mike Squares.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: Oh
[00:27:15] Speaker C: yeah.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: He's my triangles.
20, 30, maybe.
How much time do you get off work for augment sickness in the United States? Any.
[00:27:27] Speaker C: None of. None. None. Are you kidding?
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Matter if the injury was caused at work.
[00:27:33] Speaker C: Do you think that, like, you don't, you don't get pto, you don't even get. The only reason that you get time off if you get injured at work is like fucking liability reasons. There's definitely not going to be a law against it.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: But okay, well, but you said if there's liability reasons. What if, what if the augment was caused by an injury at work where liabilities involved, who's liable?
Joe Biden.
[00:27:57] Speaker C: Oh, okay. Well, then, I mean, it's. It's all Joe Biden's got to pay out.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: He does that with all money.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: But, you know, he's not going to because he's just Biden his time.
[00:28:09] Speaker C: He still owes me a thousand dollars.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: He owes us all money. It's crazy. Crazy that that man owes every man, everyone in America, money.
I keep getting away with it.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: You can't keep getting.
[00:28:22] Speaker B: What about in Europe? Do you get like four weeks off and in Denmark, augment sickness.
[00:28:29] Speaker C: Well, so one thing that's again, just to pull back to deus ex lore. Right.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: The.
[00:28:35] Speaker C: There is. In human revolution, there is a thing where you can take sort of a special Aug that later on gets disabled in a. In a certain way. And so the best thing to do is to not take that upgrade when you have the opportunity to do it. And basically in the lore of the game, the idea is it is triggered to make everybody be sort of disabled at the same time.
And because it is all in the control of the organization that is providing these augmentations.
No, you wouldn't get time off because you getting sick at a specific moment is the point.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Yo, this episode's making me an anti vaxxer. Not really, but.
But Jesus Christ, this, this could instill some health care fears into you.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: Are Republicans, like, where are Republicans going to roughly fall on OGs? Are they going to be like, yeah, OGs make you work harder or are they going to be more like, oh, no, this is health care?
[00:29:41] Speaker C: I think that it would probably just fall along market lines versus non market lines. Like the idea being you should be able to upgrade and augment your body in any way, shape or form you choose, but the government is going to pay for any of it.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: No, we're all equally free. Then we have the same rights. The poor person has the same rights as.
As Elon Musk.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: Right. And of course, Elon Musk has the ability to purchase as many as. As. As he wants. Right. So it makes us free in the way that markets make us free more broadly.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Oh, God, I can just imagine him.
I don't know how to put this, but he would go for the most cringiest augments, right?
[00:30:23] Speaker B: The most. Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: Like, I don't know exactly how to put this, but he would go for the cringiest ones.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: He'd get like. He'd get like a big metal jaw like the guy in One piece. Something like that.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: Wapol. Yes. Yes. He would get a Wapol jaw.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: What would RFK Jr's home remedy be for augment sickness?
[00:30:47] Speaker C: Drinking bleach.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: Little sip of the old bleach.
[00:30:52] Speaker C: Either that or raw milk
[00:30:56] Speaker B: specifically. You gotta, you gotta pour the raw milk into like a port.
[00:31:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: Wow, that is a terrible sentence. Kennedy, can we, can we vote to
[00:31:05] Speaker B: erase USBC ports with raw milk?
[00:31:08] Speaker A: Can we please vote to erase that sentence from history? No. Okay.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: No, no, it's out there.
If aliens are behind if, you know, if, if ufologists were right.
[00:31:20] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: And aliens are pulling the strings.
[00:31:24] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: I don't. Aliens specifically want us to have health care.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: Like they're super advanced. They've got to have health care.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: Like they've got great health care. Probably. So like why don't they want health care for us? What. How does that fit into their conspiracy?
[00:31:37] Speaker C: Well, I guess I.
So this is not something that is framed up as being a hypothetical in the world of deus ex. So that's the first thing that I'm confused about. But, but. Okay, so in a world in which aliens exist in our real. But are conspiring to keep us from having health care.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:00] Speaker C: It's probably just that they are. They. They want us to be subservient to them. Right. Like as with anything, they desire absolute subservience. And so keeping us from being healthy is one of the best ways to do that.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: That.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: Andrew, I'm not going to lie. Like, I love all our guests, but you're actually the guest most on top of it. And me and Kennedy are on the defense now.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: Andrew, do you have any alternate beliefs about aliens in health care?
[00:32:29] Speaker A: I mean, the most. The other alternative would. Would be that our bodies are so different that their health care doesn't work on us.
Like what if, what if.
[00:32:41] Speaker B: Oh, it's not worth investing in the time to convert their health care.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: I mean, what if all the right wing conspiracy theory health care stuff works on aliens?
[00:32:52] Speaker C: Oh, that's an interesting idea.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:55] Speaker C: So like if the aliens only get stronger by drinking raw milk and so they then assume like so. So in this world also, RFK is actually a lizard person. Which makes sense, actually.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: Okay. Yes, yes. So they are trying to give us their health care.
[00:33:12] Speaker C: They're doing their best, but they fail to understand.
Okay, now we're cooking.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: The aliens. Homeopathy works on the aliens. You know, you. You dilute something. You dilute something a ton and work better.
Wait, but it's called universal healthcare. It should work in space.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Yeah. And what's. What's the U.S.
what's our big football game called? What's the big annual football game called? The World Series. No, that's baseball.
The Super Bowl. They're considered the world champs.
Right, but it's only in America. Same thing here.
Wait, that's basically.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: It's only in America, though, is because the rest of the world is like, whoa, American football has a lot of head injuries. I don't know.
[00:34:02] Speaker C: I mean, at least in baseball we have the World Baseball Classic now, which is like a true international championship.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that's legit.
[00:34:09] Speaker C: Venezuela World champions, like, win a peace prize.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: Well, yeah, the aliens make fun of us in the same way that people outside the United States make fun of football being the world champions. Like, they're like, oh, but it's only in the U.S. well, all the aliens are right. They call it universal healthcare when it's only on Earth.
See, it's like that.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: What. What would be the products that would proudly advertise themselves as made without augment labor?
[00:34:41] Speaker A: Raw milk.
[00:34:43] Speaker C: Yeah,
[00:34:46] Speaker B: this is the Raw Milk episode. The title of this episode should be Raw Milk.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: I'm going to veto that. I don't think so, Tim.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Nope, it's happening.
[00:34:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think just in general, you would. You would have a group of like crusty individuals out in the desert, right? Like in New Mexico and Arizona who would be like, yeah, this is. This is proudly augment free. Whatever.
Produce mostly. I imagine
[00:35:16] Speaker B: maybe some questionable supplements, like some ground up liver powder.
[00:35:20] Speaker C: Yeah, no doubt.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Proudly augment free.
[00:35:23] Speaker C: Just protein, human bodies. Yeah, protein, everything, right?
[00:35:27] Speaker B: Yeah, everything
[00:35:29] Speaker C: Augment free. Human protein, for sure.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: Everything is augment.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: All right, this is our final voting question.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: Final vote.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: How would an evangelical pastor determine if your augment has a spirit in it? Quote, unquote. And how do you get it out?
[00:35:46] Speaker C: Oh, that's an interesting question. Okay, so obviously, when it comes to evangelical Christianity, when you ponder the idea of a soul, the question is, can it be redeemed? Right. And we are seeking redemption.
I think that it depends on the kind of evangelical we're talking about. If we want to go like Pentecostal with it, I think that you would prompt the Augment, the augmented individual, to speak in tongues. And then if they are capable of doing it, if they're capable of sort of like going, then it's like, oh, you're not augmented and you're. You are doing it from the Lord. But if they refuse to speak in tongues, they. Then we know that the Augmentation has taken over their soul, and they are executed immediately. I think that's what happens. Oh, I'm the spot. Ooh.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Like, I've never. Oh, wow. Like, immediately, immediately. Like right now.
[00:36:46] Speaker C: Yeah, right there. They just take a gun, they shoot you in the head. Yeah.
[00:36:49] Speaker B: Not even. I was hoping to be stabbed with two swords.
[00:36:52] Speaker C: Maybe that too. Maybe, maybe. Maybe the stag stab you with the dragon tooth sword, because that sword is really cool. It's got a blue blade. It glows. Ooh.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: I have worse ways to go. Not many.
[00:37:04] Speaker C: Maybe you get beheaded.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: That's classic.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: A trap door opens underneath you and you fall into lava.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Now we're cooking.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: Almost literally.
[00:37:14] Speaker B: Yeah. If you fall into lava, I mean, you're.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: That's pretty cooked in a pretty.
[00:37:19] Speaker B: Pretty serious, literal sense.
Josh, you've been a great sport for this episode.
Thank you so much.
We can step out of the voting booth now. There's some agents over there that'll hose you off.
[00:37:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
Pay no attention to the men in black. They're again, they're just here to keep you safe.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Good, good.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: We're just here for all of our safety. This has been a really fun time. I really appreciate you coming on the show.
[00:37:46] Speaker C: Thanks for having me.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: If people out there in the big wide world, they want to listen to your podcasts or see your funny posts or things like that. How do they do that?
[00:37:56] Speaker C: Well, they can follow me on Blue sky mostly. That's where I spend most of my time these days at Bosh Worst Possible World, where I post various things and then I also co host two podcasts. One of them is called the Worst of All Possible Worlds. We talk about media and media culture, and we are trying to understand how the media that we consume got us into this worst of all possible worlds that we live in. And we're also trying to chart a course out of here.
We have done an episode about Deus Ex. It was our 100th episode. And you can follow us wherever you get your podcast. Just search for the worst of all possible worlds. I also co host a show called Ill Conceived. We talk about natalism, which is the ideology that sees declining birth rates as the biggest problem facing the world right now.
Which is not our position, but it's a position we're interested in interrogating. And, you know, ill conceived. Again, you can just search for ill conceived in your favorite podcast client. You should be able to find us.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: I love things that are ill conceived.
[00:38:53] Speaker C: Me too.
[00:38:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Speaking of things that are ill conceived and things that you can find in your podcast client. You can find this show, most important election of our lives everywhere. That you love podcasts. And you can vote for us by
[00:39:05] Speaker A: giving us places that you hate. Podcasts. We'll probably be there.
[00:39:09] Speaker B: Yeah, we're there too, probably.
And you can give us a vote. Five stars. And you know, share. Share the love of voting with your friends.
And it's great to vote with you, as always. And if you're not in a line, you had this whole episode to get in a line.
[00:39:28] Speaker C: That's right. Vote early and often, folks.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: I'm really disappointed if you're not in a line right now, but you have one more chance to redeem yourself, and that is to get in a line right now.
Stay in that line and remember to vote.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: Bye Bye for the ever.
