Hysteria is brought to you by Zbiotics. Between work, family responsibilities, and everyone needing something from you all day, getting together with friends can feel like a form of self-care, whether it's a glass of wine at dinner or a long overdue girls' night. I make sure to drink Zbiotics pre-alcohol before alcohol so I can enjoy the evening. Zbiotics pre-alcohol, probiotic drink, is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to break down acetaldehyde, a byproduct of drinking alcohol. Pre-alcohol produces an enzyme that is designed to break down this byproduct. Pre-alcohol, your first drink of the night, drink responsibly, and enjoy your next day activities. Zbiotics has sold more than 14 million bottles and earned the trust of thousands, including me. I know that my kids do not care if I went out the night before, they do not care if I'm tired in the morning. They will wake me up early, regardless, and so I have to be on my game every morning. So I tried Zbiotics before our Crooked Media Holiday Party, and I drank responsibly, and I drank water, and the next day I felt great. Try for yourself today, and if you're unsatisfied, they will refund your entire order no questions asked. Head to Zbiotics.com/histeria, code "Histeria" for 15% off your first order. Hello, and welcome to "Histeria." I'm Erin Ryan, and joining me today is a hysteria. Faith, author, speaker, and activist, Jalisa Arse. Jalisa, welcome. I am back. She's back. I'm so excited to be here. So, Jalisa, I'm just gonna come out the gate fast, bestiality, and that's a word. It is a word, and engaging with prostitutes are no longer disqualifying for candidates to join the federal bureau of investigation. Now, given now that it's okay for sheeped idlers to join our nation's most elite law enforcement organization, what do you think remains disqualifying? I have to say, this was not in the original outline. Zbiotics, yeah, you know, I don't think anything disqualifies. Yeah. Like, if you're a Republican, nothing can disqualify you. Like, if you are a Trump lover, then anything goes, you can do all sorts of things to animals. And you're good. You're good. You get a pass. Today, we are diving into a wave of natural disasters in the Trump administration's laissez-faire response. The looming social security cliff, political campaigns paying influencers for content under the table, and the bizarre saga of a man impersonating a NFL player to scam women out of money. Then we wrap up with Sandy Petty. Cannot wait to talk about, oh, the guy, the guy. It's the best story of the whole week. It's a bummer week, but that's the best story of the whole week. Yes, it is. You're listening to hysteria, the podcast for people who are tired of hearing unsolicited opinions on women's bodies from men. Claire, regretfully, can you play the clip? I'm going to come back and give you my take on Sydney Swinney's breast right after this break. If we're honest, we go, men appreciate women and men that appreciate women are not toxic. God made us a certain way to appreciate and want to meet with a woman. Women are made the same way to want to be with a man. I think Sydney Swinney is just a reminder that men are still men. I'm sorry, we are and women are still women and that's okay. Okay, I have thoughts. Okay, in that, that was a secretary of transportation that was a full on member of the president's cabinet. An adult man named Sean Duffy speaking for some reason about the breasts of a woman he doesn't know while his awful wife sits there giggling like she's been huffing nitrous. Julie, so what's your take here? That was my first question. Is that his wife that he is talking to about another woman's breast? Yes, because that seems rude to her. If that was my husband, he would not be okay. I'm just going to say, Julie said, I don't want a stereotype here. But Rachel Campos, Duffy is a Latina woman. I do not know a single Latina woman who would not. Is she Latina though? I don't know that we claim her and clearly this is another example of why we don't claim her because no, like I'm sorry, your husband cannot be talking about somebody else's boobs. Man shouldn't be talking about women's breasts into a microphone, into a microphone. Why? And also why do all the secretaries have podcasts or shows like don't they have jobs? This is a job, like why do they have shows? Like I feel like that shouldn't be allowed. Yeah, I mean, and also he's a secretary of transportation and it's not like our transportation infrastructure is hunky-dory in the US, like flying sucks worse than it's ever sucked. Ever. Like the roads and bridges are not being repaired. We still don't have a train system. Like what if I want to go to Denver? I got a fucking drive or like hitchhike, you know? Yeah, we don't even have like not every major city in the United States. Hello LA has like a good metro system, a good subway system. Like can we focus on that? Can I please take the subway from my house to the studio and not have to sit in 50 minutes of traffic? Like can we focus on that instead of looking at Sweeney's boobs? Well, clearly the only motor transportation show in Duffy is interested in his motorboat engine. Um. Okay. Uh, that was a, this is going to be a real awkward segue because we have some serious news to talk about today, but I didn't want to just like jump in and immediately be like, here's something really sad. So that's why I did that. But isn't it also sad that men are talking about women's boobies and, um, yeah, it's all that. It's all that. It's, it's below him. It's below. So this is what like our cabinet secretaries are doing while there is like an unfolding environmental disaster affecting parts of the world that had nothing to do with causing the climate change that they are now suffering the consequences of. Last week, a glacial collapse triggered devastating flooding in Nepal and Tibet. Over 1100 people are confirmed dead. Another 4,000 are still missing. I've seen wide ranges of numbers. Yeah. Um, it's, it's horrifying. The videos of that. Did you see the videos when they first started? I, I did. And honestly, when I first saw, I just come up on my Instagram feed. I had to like double check that it wasn't AI. Yeah. That was my first thought. Like, oh, this is just some like AI videos because the images really looked like something out of like 2012 or the, the day after tomorrow and like some of those like end of the world movies because that's how devastating they looked. I mean, one of them, one of the videos, one of the first videos I saw, there was water just coming over this big building and just completely swiping away entire villages. Those images were like haunting and devastating and I couldn't, I couldn't believe that they were like, they were real. Yeah. And it was like, you're watching hundreds of people die. Like there's no way any of those people, it was like ants getting swept away by a fire hose. Like it was, it was like the power of nature and climate change in the face of like our fragile humanity is just like we, we do not stand a chance. We don't stand a chance. I always, whenever I see any kind of natural disaster videos like that, like my mind always goes to whatever I was there with my daughter, like what would I do? I was like, what would I do? Like do you run? Do you just like, do you just hug her? Like, you know, it's like, it's, it's, that's I mean, the part that's haunting to me is like seeing people trying to run away when they do not stand a chance. Like you said. They just look exactly like little ants running away. And there's nothing they can do, like they're, they're going to, they're very likely going to draw a drown or, or, or be stuck in the mud. Like I just couldn't put myself in that position and think how devastating it is when you, there's nothing you can do. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's, it's so horrifying. And this is a sort of thing that thanks to a warming climate, it will probably happen more often like the Himalayan permafrost is melting and that's the sort of thing that causes things like the glacial collapse that we saw. And a member of Nepal's parliament put it to the New Yorker this way and I kind of paraphrase when I was introing this, Nepal is paying an extraordinarily disproportionate price for crisis. It did not create. We contribute a negligible share of global emissions, yet we sit downstream of some of the fastest warming glacial systems on earth. It's 100% true and it's something that we're seeing across the global South. Like recently there was a, an earthquake in Venezuela and that wasn't caused by climate change, but recovery is exacerbated by the effects of climate change. Like inclement, weather makes it more difficult for like rescue crews to get places. It makes it more difficult for people to shelter safely. It makes it more difficult for people to get out or to contact families. So it's all so sad and I, you know, you and I kind of talked about this when we were prepping for the show, but I spent time in Nepal like in 2017, I did a like eat prey love thing except not really eating and not really praying, not really like, I did a walk, walk, walk. I just like walked around the Himalayas for like six weeks and I haven't been to that particular region.
of Nepal or Tibet, but I've been, you know, in different parts of the country. And when I say that the country is incredibly remote and rural outside of like Kathmandu and Pukara and a couple of like medium-sized cities, it is so remote. And the way to get aid to these people is like so arduous. Like you have to take helicopters. The roads are not wide enough to carry like big supply trucks. It is just not a place that like lends itself to being rescued. How does it, we were talking about this too. How does disasters like this highlight inequality? Yeah, I mean, I think you know like when you were talking about Nepal and like the negligible amount of emissions, it's like one tenth of one percent is what Nepal is responsible for. One tenth of one percent. And now I sound like Bernie Sanders. So to me, natural disasters always highlight the inequity that already exists in the world. Right. So when you have, when you think about like Nepal and like where it sits or we're talking about Venezuela or even what's going on in Puerto Rico with the water crisis or in Indiana with there also being no water, what it really tells me is that people who had very little or nothing to do with warming the world are the ones that are paying the biggest price. Right. Because you have industrialized nations like the United States and other countries that extract natural resources from places like Venezuela and other places. And the US you know, for better or for worse, like it has more money to hopefully respond to these to these disasters. Right. Nations that are prone to natural disasters that are developing nations have been asking for many many years for there to be some sort of fund where rich countries can pay into this this fund so that when there is a natural disasters, the developing nations can ask for money from this fund and kind of like a cap and trade or like a like what is done in some places for where like polluters pay for exactly like the super fund for cleaning up. So similar to like similar to that but on a global scale. Exactly. So it's like as far back as 1991 climate vulnerable countries who were asking wealthy nations to create a fund and in 2022 countries finally agree to create this fund. But of course it's like totally underfunded. Like there's there are only 800 million dollars that have been pledged to to this fund and when you think about the devastation like even in Venezuela where there's like 20 billion dollars of damage 800 million dollars. That's nothing right. It's it's a penny. So there needs to be more conversations about how wealthy nations need to pay for this disaster not because they not obviously it's a natural disaster right but I guess what I'm trying to say is like there's really nothing natural about these things happening right like it's not it's not natural for these things to happen and the response and what you were saying the roads are rugged there is very little infrastructure hospitals can handle the amount of devastation and so it just exacerbates the problem. Yeah it absolutely does and you know talking about money I used AI today to figure something out this is like a useful way to to to use it but I wanted to know how much money. I love that you disclosed that. I used AI. I know I I used Claude but when I was typing in Claude.ai I typed in Claire.ai because Claire is the name of our associate producer. Sorry Claire. So I I went I used Claude and I wanted to know how much the US has pledged to help both Nepal and Venezuela and how that compares to other expenditures in the American budget. So what I was able to find is that right now Nepal is getting three point six million dollars so far. Venezuela is getting about 386 million dollars so far and the war in Iran has cost 37.5 billion dollars so far and so if you divide it the average cost of the war is about you know two hundred six million dollars a day give or take. Nepal's total like pledges from America is about 20 minutes of war and Venezuela is about a day and a half. Oh my god. We're spending all the money. And isn't that the crux of it though like how much money we spend on the military on Warsaw broad on ice on ice that we could be spending to fund education to fund relief for natural disasters that we have a big hand in creating and that that's the problem the problem is ultimately greediness. And I have to say like just because I just like I'm always gonna have a soft spot in my heart for Nepal I just love it so much the people there and the nicest people I've ever met anywhere in the world they're just incredible and the natural environment is beautiful and we're gonna put some some resources in our show notes if people are interested in donating some money to help out there's some organizations that are doing some work on the ground there but if you're interested check out our show notes and we'll get into that. All right we're gonna pivot to the sexiest topic the sexiest time only here I'm only here to be sexy all right Julie so this is something that's kind of been like stuck in your craw you have the floor let me know what's going on thank you and I know this is dense but like it's really important and I think that sometimes we have to talk about unsexy but important things okay I will pause my non-stop pursuit of sexiness momentarily for this story I promise it's good information okay so the Social Security Trust Fund already tells you right hot topic hot topic so the year 2032 has been dubbed the Social Security Cliff so in about six years the Social Security Trust Fund is expected to run out and now that doesn't mean that it's gonna end all payments but if Congress doesn't act Social Security payments will be reduced by about 22% so imagine living on almost a quarter less when everything costs so much more money and the thing is that voters are pretty uneducated about how Social Security works so it hasn't really been a topic of conversation on the campaign trail although I think it needs to be but the senators that we elect this midterm cycle will likely be the ones in office when the trust fund runs out oh cool exactly and that's why we need to be asking them what is their solution to this right and so far there's been two main options that have been considered to address the Social Security Trust Fund's needs which are to either cut benefits for wealthier Americans or to eliminate the Social Security payroll tax cap right now wages are taxed only up to $184,500 but the proposed change would make that tax rate universal regardless of salary so if the trust fund runs out who do you think we should play old people old people old people now I think it's just like I just finished writing like a monster script on George W Bush so I'm really kind of mad also very sexy yeah so I'm super mad at him right now but fiscal irresponsibility specifically in the Reagan years and then again in the George W Bush years I think put us on a path for insolvency and we have not righted ourselves because the steps that we would need need to take to write ourselves would require some people to make some sacrifices who don't like to be asked to make any sacrifices e.g. the rich right so that to me is like it's it's what's wrong in a nutshell but reading this story like reading about the story and prepping for this I was thinking Julie so like we're both millennials right do you ever imagine retirement like is it something you even think about do you in your mind are you like I'm going to get social security one day or or yeah I mean I do think about retirement all the time like while am I working why can I read why why don't I retire at 40 I'm three years past my retirement actually but I think you you're bringing up a really great point which is like I think the bigger conversation around social security is how can anybody retire nowadays right so security checks are really not big enough for people to even live on um and I think about uh I think about like as millennials not just like our own retirement but the retirement of our parents right our parents are you getting to that age and so social security conversations are not just about old people they really about us too because if our parents don't get enough money on the social security check or haven't saved for retirement then it becomes our responsibility for many of us right like we are our parents retirement and so if if seniors are going to get a quarter less like who's going to make that money out right for many people it's going to be their daughters their sons their extended family it's probably going to be their daughters though it's probably going to be their I mean why do I even say sons like that's that's a lot it's it's going to be their daughters as they only have sons and then the sons are going to fight over whose job it is but yeah then it's going to be our job it's going to be it already is my job in my family so I think that's like a really good point and you know just to back up what you're saying a lot of states have something called failure responsibility laws which put children on the hook for
parents bills. So they can even if you have no contact with your parents, they're rarely enforced. But even if somebody has no contact with their parents, they're completely financially severed from them. In certain states, hypothetically, a medical facility, a long-term care facility, whatever, could pursue the children of people who run out of money for money that is owed by the parents. And that's something that really scares me. And that's something we wanted to do a show about for a while. So I don't want to get too in the weeds about it because I'm not like an expert, but it's just, I think people don't want to think about this either. They don't want to think about it. And like you said, the people who are most poised to contribute are the ones who don't. Right? Like, why is there. I was talking to my friend about this yesterday, and she brought up the point that like, why are we taxing up to $184,000? Like, it really should be we tax people after $184,000 to infinity, right? Like, people who make less than that are the people who would benefit from having those extra couple hundred dollars in their paycheck. Like that's the people who make more than that are the people who should be paying for it. Absolutely. And those people rely upon benefit from and oftentimes exploit the people that are making less than that. You know, their lifestyle is brought to you by the service workers who make their food or the person who cleans their house or the person who does their gardening or the person who helps change their bed sheets when they go to the hospital. Like, those are the people that are like supporting their comfort and their lifestyle. And so why aren't they the ones paying into what comes next for these people for the workers? Exactly. I think that's a really good point. Well, I don't think that people are going to want to talk about this, but eventually we're going to get to a point where we have to ask. We have to we have to like be like, what is happening? What? People should start asking this question on the campaign trail. And they should also be asking that question of their current congress people. I mean, it's I've been thinking a lot about coyote versus acne because that movie just came out and a lot of people really like it. But I think to use a metaphor, I think of a lot like you can only continue running off the edge of the cliff for so long before you look down, look up and go, beep, beep, and then like fall. Yeah, there's there's only you can only fake it for so long. And eventually you reach the end of when you can fake it. So, scan. I think I made that sexy. I think you did. You made that very sexy. Thank you, Julie. So, okay, we're going to take a quick break and we come back more news. hysteria is brought you by quints. You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself reaching for over and over again. The sweater that somehow works with everything. 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Helix is the most awarded mattress brand and if my opinion isn't enough it's also tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. Go to helix sleep.com/estereopod for 27% off-site wide exclusive for listeners of our show. That's helix sleep.com/estereop for 27% off-site wide exclusive for listeners of our show. Helix sleep.com/estereop And welcome back. You're listening to hysteria. The podcast that knows how to hedge its bets. Okay. A North Carolina Republican congressional candidate named Laurie Buckout has been banned from the prediction market Colchie for placing a bet on her own congressional race in violation of Colchie's insider trading laws rules. Buckout is running to unseat Democratic representative Don Davis in North Carolina's first district which is considered a probable pickup for Republicans because North Carolina just did some partisan redistricting. But I don't know if it's a probable pickup anymore because this fucking dumbass did some really stupid stuff. So Buckout is considered an insider. You're not allowed to trade as an insider on Colchie. They have like the flimsiest rules. They're like wet noodle rules bare minimum shit. You are not supposed to place bets on things that you would have inside information about. EG a race you are running in. That's a game you are playing in. You know stuff like that right? A business that you help run. But here's how you know that she's a real genius that could take some changes to Washington that are much needed. She bet $1,000 that she'd win her own campaign. She's been fine. She's been fine. $2,589. That worked out. And 96 cents and faces a three-year ban from the website. Buckout herself characterized the move as dumb. And then she tried to pivot to being like you know what American people really want. But anyway. At least she's self-aware that she realizes that it was dumb. It's like honey if you want to place a bet you place a bet to take the opposing side of it so that you win anyways. It's like one of the things where like well you know if I lose my race at least I want some money. If I win my race who cares about the money because I want my race. Exactly. That's the logical smart thing that you would do. Yes. I mean, and you used to work on Wall Street. It's called hedging. I was before we recorded guys. I was like telling Julisa that I think that this is a good way to handle like sports disappointment. Like if my heart is really like behind a team if like the Minnesota links make it to the WNBA finals again. I'm gonna like bet against them because in case they lose I could never do that. I could never like just thinking about placing a bet against like the San Antonio Spurs or the Texas Longhorn like it just makes my heart like tighten. I'm like I can't do that. I can't bet against them. But that would have been this smart thing to do when I went to the NBA finals paid a ton of money for that ticket. And then we lost against the Knicks which is like I could do a whole hour talking about that series. Maybe I should have done that. I didn't know you went to the finals. I went to the finals because I was like I thought the last time the Spurs weren't the finals I didn't make it and I was so mad at myself. And I said when the Spurs make the finals again I'm gonna go no matter what. And so I went to game one. I took myself to San Antonio, bought a ticket, went to the finals we lost. And at that moment I was like I don't care that we lost because it was so much fun being there. Like we're gonna win the series anyways. I should have placed a bet against the Spurs and at least made some money. Lesson learned. Lesson learned. I mean it sounds like a really head versus heart situation for you. I know. And you know what this is why I'm working on Wall Street anymore. Yeah you're not supposed to get your feelings involved. You're not supposed to get your feelings involved. I want to talk about political influencers. You had a really interesting story you wanted to talk about this week about like who is delivering messages where they're coming from and who's paying for them. Yeah okay so first of all let me say this. If I try to influence you to buy Tequila which I will eventually not just buy it but drink it or subscribe to a magazine or even like use of you to product on social media. I have to tell you that it's an ad right there like very clear guidelines that if I'm trying to influence you to buy something I have to put hashtag
I have to use the paid campaign link on Instagram. I'm like, I have to tell you that I'm getting paid for this, but if I endorse a congressional candidate, for example, or a presidential candidate, I don't have to tell you if that campaign paid me. I can just pretend like I'm just doing it because I really believe in them without disclosing that I'm getting paid. And in fact, there are only four states that have loss or regulations requiring content creators to disclose paid political messaging, but they only apply to state and local races. So again, congressional candidates, presidential candidates, there are no rules regulating any of that. The New York Times published an article over the weekend that highlighted the different ways that campaigns have taken advantage of these sparse rules. For example, there's an influencer called Josh Green who took home $21,500 to post in support of Tom Steyer after initially being critical of him. Okay, pause. Where's my Steyer money? That's what I said. I was like, you know what? I would have. I did vote for him. There was. And I would have hosted about. There was a Latino influencer, Carlos Espina, who has 14 million followers on TikTok. Although his account was banned earlier this week, but side story. He got paid $400,000 by the Steyer campaign. I'm like, "Bro, you could have called me." I mean, I didn't vote for him, but attention progressive billionaires. We are right here. We are right here. I am ready to take your money. I will disclose that I took your money, but I will take it. I wouldn't do like a JD Vance if he was like, "Here's dollar sign, you couldn't pay enough money." Right. Here's a burlap sack with a dollar sign on the side of it full of gold coins like Scrooge McDucks, you know, money been. I would not. But I think if there's somebody that I'm like, "Okay, this is somebody that I vibe with." I would take money. Yeah. Why not? So. But like the non-disclosure thing seems like. That's the problem. Yeah. That's the problem, right? Because Green actually like defended the payment to the times, framing it as influence is getting paid for their work, which by the way, as someone who creates content online, I fully support getting paid because if somebody asks me to do like 10 hours of work to make a real, and they want to pay me $200, which is sometimes what people want of me. I'm going to have to get a real job, and I don't want a real job. And then Green claimed that he would only take money from campaigns that he would support anyways, which begs the question if he were to support them anyways and why the lack of transparency. Yeah. It just all seems very slimy. It is slimy because the only way that we're finding out about this is through campaign records and like how many Instagram and TikTok like casual viewers are going to go to campaign finance reports to find it. And even if they were, many times it's obscured because it's done through like agencies, right? So you don't know, it'll just say like they paid this agency for social media work. And then that agency is paying the creator the actual payment. So it's hard to even know, it's hard to even know who's getting paid. Right. And it's scary thing to me is there's so much more money on the Republican side. There is so much more money on the Republican side. And the amount that's going to get thrown behind, you know, is probably already being thrown behind 2026 and 2028 is kind of staggering and exhausting. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean Josh Green is like a liberal example of a creator, but creators getting paid and not disclosing it, it goes across the political spectrum. Did you know that Laura Loomer gets paid to not post about companies? She gets paid to not post because I mean, I don't post that about a lot of companies. Yeah, I know. I know. Well, because you have to get more toxic is the thing, Julie, so you have to become horrible. I have to become a thuxika. Become horrible. Step one, become horrible, step two, threaten to be horrible to companies in a way that they do not want to be associated and then step three profit. That's what Laura Loomer does. There are people that have that like I talk shit about companies all the time. I know. I know. You got to do it. You got to do it worse. You got to be meaner. You got to be more irresponsible. Okay. I got it. I feel like the lesson of today is like the least you have to do with making the world a better place, the more you profit. I know. I'm doing it the wrong way. I mean, this is this morning, right? Before we recorded, I found there was this article posted on Semaphore by Max Tani that was about something called ghost creators. And we were both. That's the most insidious. That's even more insidious than what we're talking about. Well, because at least with these ideologues, they are being paid by a specific campaign to post specific things. But there is this other layer of content creation influence social media that is just I guess content. They're just kind of like cloud farms, so there will be like almost identical videos being made kind of spamming and like carpet bombing, essentially YouTube with political messaging. And a lot of it is conservative political messaging, but the person behind it is not a partisan at all. All they're trying to do is get the most followers and likes an engagement to monetize content. To monetize the content and then and then offer up their services to help artificially boost other content. So they, you know, Tani uncovered like there, there's certain videos that are where an actor will play progressive and then there'll be, you know, a couple months later, he's now a big fan of Donald Trump and it's just, it's very crazy because it like the person behind it doesn't even care who wins. Right. They just care about what gets attention and what gets attention are the kinds of videos that angry people who are isolated in their home. It's just rage bait. Essentially. Essentially rage bait. Yeah. A lot of Zora and Mandani videos. A lot of AOC videos. Yeah. And it's all brought to you by somebody who only cares about making money, literally doesn't care about anything else. And like sometimes the copy is generated by AI, sometimes it's, sometimes it's AI generated videos. So it's just like, it's like, it's not even real people. Yeah. It's like, the whole thing is AI generated just to, just to be able to cash in on, on, on the views. And then when it is real people, I saw this one, this woman in mystery who posted videos from three different accounts, first promoting the stire campaign in California, Stevenson Michigan and the affordability of crisis in Wisconsin. And her whole aesthetic change in each of those videos to like make it seem and make it look like she was from those places and she's actually from like Kansas. Okay. From Missouri. Kansas. Things are hands-ins when there were two perfectly good Californians right here, actual Californians who are registered to vote and do vote and do vote and do vote. Okay. And do vote. Okay. Now you're on my shit list. I wish I could rescind my vote for you. Basically. What was a Wisconsin costume? Like, was it like a mess? Oh, she was, no, she was wearing a, a, like one of those military style hoodies. Oh, a packers one. A pack, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah. That's what she was wearing. And she had like two braids, two braids going, like she had two little braids. Like so she was just, she might as well have been a paid actor. Yeah. You know what I mean? Cause she is. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Essentially that's what she, that's what she is. And you know the thing about all of this also makes me think the reason all of this is possible is because there are no regulations. Nobody is regulating who can post things. And like if you have a political ad that you post on the billboard or a political ad that you hear on the television or on the radio, it you, it will say, right? This ad was paid for by such a such a campaign or this ad was paid for by this pack. There is disclosure that comes along with it. And ultimately that's what I would like to see on social media. Like a mandatory disclosure. Yeah, man. Like just like there is when I try to sell, you know, 1800 tequila. It's like, I have to say this isn't it. I do actually really like 1800 tequila and I drank it way before they paid me to post about it. You and then I had to say hashtag ad. Yeah. Right. I also think that like in addition to regulations, there needs to be like enforcement mechanisms that are pretty severe. Like on like there should be like a one strike in your out rule when it comes to social media platforms that like if you, if you violate this, if you found, if you found violate this in your account, it's banned for like a certain amount of time. Um, yeah, because it's not, it's not a great area. It's either you got paid or you didn't. Yeah. It shouldn't be a great area. Um, hey, but don't worry. The campaigns, political campaigns, influencers and AI generated nonsense people are not having all the fun. The Trump administration is utilizing secret influencers also the Trump administration. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon, the Pentagon has secretly installed conservative veterans with large followings in civilian government roles to push the agenda of Trump and secretary of not being gay, Peter, I'm sorry. I have to say that every time we talk about him, um, because he's, he's the most overcompensating ball of something that I've ever seen. Anyway, um, the suspected creators are mostly on X, of course, because that's where everybody is. Everybody terrible. That is. That's why I'm not on it anymore. Yeah. It's, it's terrible. Um, and they're reportedly either functioning as special government employees or highly qualified experts. That's the problem. That's the problem. Anybody with a mic now can call themselves an expert. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
like they are. Yeah, I mean, and former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who I think is probably going to run for Governor Villainoy at some point because he's why not. Otherwise he's just posting. But he criticized the Pentagon, Leslie. He posted how many more people that are blue check marks on acts that are putting out information on behalf of the federal government and Donald Trump and the Republican Party are actually special government employees. So a special government employee can be employed by the government for I think 130 days before that all expires, but highly qualified experts, HQEs, can be employed for much longer. Does this seem like it should be illegal? Like, what, why are we paying for this? You know, on a scale of like illegal, this should be at least a little, like a little illegal, you know, like at least a little, at least tell you a little bit, to use tax payer dollars to pay someone to basically be your online cheerleader. Because that's what people are doing. They're just like, you know, they're like, praising hexet and like, praising Trump and just saying all, like, just being very complimentary. That's what they're getting paid to do, to paid compliments to headsets, basically. But why are we paying them for things that they did for free before? It seems like a waste of government resources. Yeah. Like they did that anyway. So like, why are we paying them? I think it's also insidious because for those people that we are talking about, you know, the YouTube people who are just sitting there like consuming rage, bait after rage, bait after rage, bait, this sort of artificial boosting of Republican talking points and hexetian bluster is it creates this artificial sense of the normalcy of their insane opinions. It creates an artificial sense that what they are doing is right and what they believe is right. And that a lot of people think the same way as they think, even though Donald Trump's approval ratings are how lower they like, I don't know, I don't know where they, I don't know where they are. They're about as low as like, skabies at this point. I don't know why I just grabbed skabies from my ad. But it just, it feels very insidious because it like creates an alternative reality that these people can choose to live in. And the thing is like, the people that, that like were part of this article who are, I guess, the employees in question, they're not just like any veterans, they're like kernels, you know, they were like army, like the highest position you can have in the army, the highest position you can have in the Air Force. So like, they are like, put on court, like serious people who used to have serious jobs who now are getting paid to just say crazy things on the internet. I mean, they should make bank at, at Blackwater, like every other, just kidding. They should go for Fox News. You know, those are the people who should be paying more money into the security fund to bring a back to my sexy topic. I think that if you are a special government employee that is paid to pretend that you're not working for the Department of Defense, your salary should be taxed at 100%. 100%. And I think the next administration, I think we should start making wild, wild pitches about what the next administration is. Why not? Operation clawback, what we're going to do is every ill gotten gain that happened during the second Trump term, we are going to claw it back. The United States government is going to use its power to just suck that back out of your bank account, like a vacuum cleaner. Yes. And that she go to pay for my daughters, um, uh, Montesdory school. Well, I think if we take about three Department of Defense employees, salaries, that should cover about six months of childcare in LA, right? Yes. All right. We're going to take a quick break when we come back. Finally, we're going to talk about this NFL guy. Yeah, I can't wait. Histeri is brought to you by ritual. We know the importance of a good night's rest to keep up with the demands of a busy schedule, but it can be tough to switch off and relax at the end of a long and tiring day. Rituals magnesium plus is a blend of magnesium by glistenate and tart cherry powder for mind and muscle relaxation, helping you to unwind from the day and support restful sleep. So you can wake up ready to take on the next day. I love magnesium. I ever since I had kids, I've had a problem with like getting Charlie horses in the middle of the night and it absolutely sucks. And magnesium is the only thing that has helped calm my twitchy muscles. I don't know if that means that I think it's probably just means I needed magnesium. I love magnesium plus because not only does it calm twitchy muscles, it helps me sleep better. I can't explain it. 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You're listening to hysteria, the podcast for people who are glad that Texas Republican Senate hopeful Ken Paxton is as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside and also he can't dress for shit. Take a look at this picture, Julisa. This is check out this fit. This is a picture of Ken Paxton at a campaign event that occurred over the weekend. I would support the Secretary of Transportation talking about these boobies. Oh yeah, those boobies. Those boobies he can talk about. Turnabout's fair play. If he's going to talk about boobies, we're going to talk about boobies. 100% and Ken Paxton's boobies. But I don't actually want to talk about ken Paxton's boobies. I don't want to look at this picture. They are suboptimal. I think that it's really funny that the party of reclaiming masculinity has a man running for Senate to be the kind of totem of that. Looking kind of like grimace on Botox or grimace on Ozempic, I think. It's like when he just grimace, I just all fell down. Yeah, he's just got, he's not eating enough protein, but he's on Ozempic and like the extra skin is just kind of hanging off of him. As someone who's in a weightloss medicine, I take my protein intake very seriously. It's because that's what, because I don't want to look like that. I mean, I could never look like that because it would be impossible. No way. You're way too beautiful to look like Ken Paxton. Yes. Also, I thought it was like, I thought everybody just knew that you don't wear purple and brown and like khaki. Like it doesn't look good. It does never, it never works. You know what? He is really divorced right now. Like a wife would be like, these are not your colors. I mean, I don't know. The women that some of these men are married too, I don't know. I don't think they would know either. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I don't want to look at this picture anymore. All right, fair enough. We're going to move on to our favorite story of the week. Okay, this whole block is just going to be stories that feel fun because this week is like most weeks has been pretty heavy, but we're going to get in some lighter stuff. I've been obsessed with this story. I know you have. Our producer Caroline is an obsessed with this story. I've been spamming the group chat with I know with videos of this story. It is a gift that just absolutely keeps on giving. Day John Love is a 34 year old man who defrauded at least 26 women out of 1.3 million dollars since 2022. He met, that's a pretty good, that's a pretty good living. That's like he's pulling in like a good 300k a year. That's just him and probably was in text and probably was in text and probably more because that's what we know about. So he met the women online, started romantic, really.
relationships with them and then he deceived them with fictitious investment opportunities. One of the ways that he got the women interested in him was that he pretended to be a player for the San Francisco 49ers and here is how he did that. Now let's watch some clips of this video. We'll describe it to people who are listening to this instead of watching. Okay that video was of a man running around a scrawny man wearing no shirt, black shorts, black basketball shorts and a 49 year helmet on a beach running in a route that is ass. It's just like not even a good route. Not even a good route. But he was pretending to be a wide receiver and he was defrauding women I guess who don't know what a good route looks like. We don't know what a good looking man looks like, but the football helmet thing to me is the funniest aspect. He took it everywhere with him. He took it to the beach. He took it to defraud a poor small business owner who had hamburgers and then he messaged a hamburger shop and was like I'm a 49ers player, let's collab and then he went to the restaurant and took his helmet with him, he would take his helmet to his car to like everywhere he went, he carried his helmet and I've come to believe that that helmet is like his stuffy. He just can't go, it's like his little company, he's like I'm lying, I'm defrauding all these people, I need my little comfort stuffy, I can't go anywhere without it. Oh my God, it's like when my two year old gets home from like child care, she immediately just runs and finds her blanket and like holds it. That's Dejon's. Dejon's? Dejon's? Dejon love, he went by several names, but Dejon love Dejon love is that his real, is that his real, that's the name that I see in all the stories, but I have not done a deep background check. You know, if you're going to be defrauding people, Dejon love is like, if that's your name, if that's your government name, this is what you were destined to do. Oh, that's a good fraudster name for sure, but he was, and also he's got the same last name as the Green Bay Packers, quarterback Jordan love. So he told some people that he was related to Jordan love, he also told some people that he was from Switzerland and worth a lot of money. Let's watch a video of him explaining like, yeah, one-to-one video describing his wealth. Here, that was another 20, the Rechar mail is 300,000, this ring is about 15,000, I believe, and I'll show you all it some more in a second. I love Jury's been my thing, I got my ears in, it's another 50,000, I love that he's flexing his ears. So that's why I'm going to show you the website, so what I'm going to do is, I'm going to just flip the camera, it's about $8,000 a bit. $8,000 bad. Here's my TV, this TV is about 8,000. No, it's not. I love him. Sorry, you guys, you guys can't. They give us these. That is the house that, like, you're 25 years old in your slut phase and you wake up and you're like, oh, fuck, I don't want to be in this house. Yeah, it's like the window coverings came with the unit, there are no decorations up. Nothing on the walls, just plugs into the wall, not even covered up, or no interior designer touched that. Also, I love that he was flexing his veneers as being rich, I have straight teeth, I have veneers. Did you catch that? He was saying that his veneers were $50,000. $50,000? I was like, wow, that's a lot of dental work. You have just little gollum teeth underneath those. Whenever I see somebody talk about having veneers, I'm like, oh, I know that your teeth are little points and that's your real teeth, they're just like either mouth of gollum. But yeah, this, okay, so the thing I love about this story is that the rabbit hole just keeps going. There are so many videos and so many women who were exposed to this guy who didn't fall for it. He cast the white in it. The way that I found this story was I was on TikTok and I saw a video that was this woman saying like, now I've dated a few NFL players, here's how to make sure you're not being scammed. And she did like, you know, she had the influencer voice, first you can go to the website and check the roster. Just like the most basic shit. Like if someone tells, if I had a friend come to me and say I'm dating this guy or like this guy reached out to me who says he's like on the 49ers, I would like pull all the shit up. I would like have his high school stats in tennis. I would know what he won best, whatever his senior year, yeah, I would like know where his last three addresses were. It's not that hard to find. It's not. It's not, especially if you're psycho, like me. But like this, it just reflects such a deep in curiosity from the like people who ended up being scammed by him. When I was telling Fernando about this, he was like, totally victim, victim lay me right on. I was like, do not blame the victims. But also, yes, I understand what you're saying that like the first thing you would do is like Google, like Google it, although I read somewhere that initially because he's been posting as an NFL player for such a long time that if you Google him, the very first thing that would come up as like the AI Google summary would be like DJ on love, eight, 34-year-olds NFL player for the 49ers because because AI is just pulling from the internet. So like if somebody just did a quick Google search, they would, they might be like, oh, yeah, he's a real football player. Right. They would not do the deep dive that like you and I would pop out. Okay. So minus one for AI. We had plus one earlier for the slow back about the war, but we're back at zero net zero over AI. Um, yeah. So there, I guess there was some like reason for people who had like confirmation bias who they want. They want to be dating an NFL player, you know, but also like, have you seen real NFL players responding to this video? Yes. That has been my favorite. All of the like, I think like the LA Rams did a video asking their players like, um, how they would prove that they're, that they play in the NFL. And one of the players was like, I just carry my helmet everywhere everywhere. I always have it with me. And it's like totally deadpan so funny, but then like seeing actual NFL players being asked about it and just looking at their physicality versus like the physicality of this person who is running routes on the beach, wearing a helmet and no shirt, which by the way, I'm calling it right now, helmet, no shirt and black gym shorts is the low effort Halloween costume of 2026. Yes. I think you're going to see a lot of guys shirtless wearing 49ers helmets and black basketball shorts. Um, I love that. It just, it feels to me like, it's a lot, it's like confirmation bias meets gullibility and a lack of media savvy. But yeah, he made $1.3 million. He had an accomplice named Taylor Jamie Chan. I'm very curious about 18 year old accomplice like, what was he doing? How was he, how was he helping? I want to know how they met. How did you meet this 18 year old who pretends to be your financial advisor and like scams women out of like transferring money into a fake bank account? I don't know. I said, like, I they, I don't know. I guess if I was at the first person I would go to is like my cousin. We like it. But they're like, I think he's to our cousins. Um, yeah, but they're currently in custody in Boise, Idaho, um, another part of his legend that I really liked was where he said he was from Switzerland, and his family is one of the richest families in Switzerland, um, but he doesn't appear to speak any languages that are frequently spoken in Switzerland. Like, he doesn't seem like if he was a child in Switzerland, why doesn't he have like any kind of an accent from having spoken like French or German or any other, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's just very odd. Erwin, it's just been time with his mother and they own Gucci stores. Gucci stores. That was my favorite. My favorite was that he said he was, they were, um, shareholders, shareholders and not shareholders of like Gucci, but shareholders of a specific Gucci store like Gucci's a franchise. Like Chick-fil-A everybody you can buy in, you can get on the list and if you pay a certain amount and you're a franchise, it's like you could tell that like he, he did some research you know, to make sure he had some of the lingo down like, you know, that he knew like shareholder and fast men returned, profit, like every once in a while he would like spit, like he would spit out some of these words, but then like he started, I feel like he started getting lazy in his scamming because he would send women like pre-recorded, uh, voice notes. God, there was one that was five minutes long where he was giving his whole backstory and again, talking about how he was rich and I'm sensitive to being like, the way he pronounced something was so awful because like I have an accent and I don't know how to pronounce how the things, uh, but I did laugh when he mispronounced real estate investor, like he, he said it like in a, in a very like weird way where I was like, bro, that's like your first, that's your first clue, ma'am. That's your first clue. Um, all right, moving on to another story that brought us joy, look, if somebody has got to be deported, if somebody has to be deported, why not this guy? Why not this guy? Oh my god, this is going to feel like honey in my mouth when I say this next part. Okay, ex gay, which that's not a, you'd let's not a thing, but let's go with it. Ex gay, British, white, winged, white supremacist, grifter, millo, Giannappalous has been arrested and deported. Oh, and I didn't think it was possible for me to agree with like any deportation, but here we are. And for those that might not be familiar, Giannappalous posted on ex last summer, we have got to deport millions and millions and millions of people without that. Nothing else matters. Hey, he's putting his money where's he?
mouth is. He's one of those millions now. He's backing it up. He's backing it up. He's backing it up. According to eyes, Milo entered the US legally in 2019, but then overstayed and failed to show up in court for his immigration adhering. And last summer, as I said, he posted in favor of immigration, of the immigration crackdown. But after his fallout with Maga and his enlightenment with Majority Taylor Greene, the crackdown turned right back on him. Oh, okay, there's more to this story. There's some more to this story. I'm just thinking about thinking about Francesca Ramsey and her ukulele icing in the leopard's eat the face songs. I think she did post it about this. I have a tiny little violin this big. Oh, that's really small. Come on. So Laura, Laura Lumer claims that she reported him and she's taking credit for his for his deportation. Do you believe that she's responsible? I don't know, but I love that she's running her mouth about this. For once, I'm like, yes, Laura Lumer, keep running your mouth. I love watching this. I'm like to let them fight meme at this point, you know, like let them fight. I'm fine with like the ultra right grifter class consuming itself, because that appears to be what's happening. They just eat each other. They're just going to eat each other. I mean, and Laura Lumer is, you know, it's really funny now. She's like going after immigrants or whatever, but Laura Lumer is a Jewish woman. And does she think that eventually it's not coming like the same forces that she's trying to harness or not going to turn on her? I mean, that's the thing about, like anytime that, you know, I see like a Latino who voted for Trump and like their mom got deported or they're, you know, their wife got deported. It was in a detention center. I'm like, did you not think it was going to happen to you? Like, do you think that just because you voted for Trump, that he cares and he's going to somehow protect you like no you know and and like I you know I I want to be careful because I do think that like people are getting deported who should not be getting deported who are you know showing up at their immigration court hearings and getting picked up other immigration court hearings like he just millo like millo mylo mylo it doesn't is mylo say say however you want he's mylo uh mylo like just straight up didn't show up you know he had a court hearing he just didn't show up until they and so I I think it was ice that picked them up at the New Orleans airport um so like yeah like if you're not showing up to your immigration hearing and you're saying that millions and millions of people should get deported um it's like yeah you first the day it shows up at your door right yeah you should volunteer you first you know he should be like I am here illegally so I volunteer I did anybody make more hay out of the death of Chris Hitchens than mylo you know bliss because like Chris Hitchens I feel like if Chris Hitchens were still alive mylo wouldn't be a thing because like mylo has a british accent for people who have not had the displeasure of like hearing him talk but I feel like he gets a lot of mileage out of being like out of people thinking people with british accents are smart and witty and fun and like delightful ooh he's so delightfully wicked and I think Chris Hitchens did it but way better like mylo is like the team who Chris Hitchens sort of like again if Hitchens hadn't died and when he died he was like a total asshole but the only thing I would have made her better like I don't know where he got deported to uh but like people are getting deported to like countries in Africa that no con that like why are they there you know so like I don't know I hope he got sent to somewhere far away I don't know I just I'm just in my head I'm like pitching the show of a white supremacist grifter getting deported to Africa and having to try to like try to like navigate oh my god okay I cannot get over the dejon love story and you just reminded me that I wanted to say that um it's obviously going to be a Netflix movie oh sure I mean there's so much footage already they don't even they don't even need a camera yeah I just need a documentary it's essential they can just like play the clips and then like interspers I don't why am I directing this Netflix special for free you guys have your own people um another story of a awful man who uh experienced a consequence earlier this year the met made the interesting choice to honor known interesting for sure interesting interesting in a Minnesota way which is like a passive aggressive way to say like fucking terrible uh interesting choice to honor known racist and anti-Semite john galliano with a costume institute exhibit the met gala launch of the exhibit was scheduled on holocaust remembrance day which you know I gotta say if you're working for the met gala it's very important to look at a calendar you know you can't you can't so there was intense backlash galliano himself took to instagram to announce that the exhibit will no longer go on as planned um in the announcement he did not use any racial slurs which is like great above what I expected from him to be clear galliano's anti-Semitic past is like it's not a misunderstanding it's not like he said something about like not liking Benjamin Netanyahu he has said just straight up a Nazi shit he I think he said I love Hitler yeah he's like that's that's pretty that's pretty that's I mean that's literally that's what the Nazis did yeah yeah um he was convicted of an anti-Semitic hate crime by a French court in 2011 um the incident cost him his role as creative director at Christian Dior where he had uh worked for 15 years but then after a couple years off in a stint in rehab he was all fixed and it was named the creative director for Mason Margella where he worked for another 10 years so um now there what's going to be the theme of the met gala like what what do you think they should do instead since it's not John Galliano or to the costume institute spotlight I don't know but I know that we're talking about this particular designer but actually to me the decision was Anna Winters to give him this retrospective and uh I think as much as we're talking about um you know John Galliano we should also be talking about Anna Winters and like what was she thinking and not just like this met gala but what was she thinking last year with you know Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez being like the main sponsors of the of the thing like yeah I feel like she needs to just like retire I don't know if she has grandkids but if she does and she should just go play with somebody else's grandkids like man I just retire like you you're not making good choices and decisions what if what if she did retire and she's been body swapped how would you know it was the real I mean how would you know it was the real Anna Winters my I used to really like dream of doing a prank like I don't like flashmob but I thought this would be a funny version of a flashmob to just hire a bunch of actors in New York City to show up dressed just like Anna Winter at the same time at like a fashion week event because she has like this distinctive swab with bangs and the glasses it wouldn't be hard for somebody who was like a skinny old lady to just do that and pretend to be Anna Winter and just like not ever smile and kind of stick her neck out like a turtle a little bit I think I think that she might it would work she might have in body swapped the real Anna Winter is like on a beach in Bora Bora just enjoying herself we know what she might be but she's still like she's still texting someone it's still you're still texting be like John Galliano is like the person because she has been like John Galliano's like behind the scenes true leader like she's who helped them land his new job after he got fired from Dior like she has been trying to rehab his image like she set up a meeting with like Jewish leaders after the incident so like she's the one that has been like trying to fix him and fix his image so that he can continue to be in the spotlight and I think that a lot of people do this when you have someone who's like a creative genius and therefore we allow them to be like racist and horrible people because their creative genius is just so great right well and it's it's usually men that are allowed it's always man yeah I've yet to think of a woman who has been allowed to say this horrible things and made such a wonderful comeback because by the way he has a collection with Zara coming out this month so it's not like he's like not working you know it's not like he's like he just didn't get to have an exhibit at the Medgala which by the way only three only three living designers have ever gotten a retrospective while they were alive yeah so like it's a huge honor that we were trying that Anna Winter was trying to bestow upon him can I propose an alternative yes it's not my idea I saw it on Instagram and I think it was a lore magazine ran a piece on this dolly parton it should be oh my god dolly parton the the imagine a dolly parton themed Medgala of people dressing in a sort of country western sparkles goddy like big colors big hair big boobs like you know what that's one that that Lauren Sanchez Bezos would actually have fit in with because she would be able to pull off the like goddy country they're not sure enough freaking prom dress yeah she would a mother of the bride gown for from like a mother of the bride that's way too involved in her son or a mother of the groom gown she's like way too involved with her son um but yeah dolly parton exhibit dolly partons like performance costumes um her guitars yeah and uh yeah I think I think I don't know Aaron you're giving people way too many great ideas this wasn't my idea this was in there's an article in a lore magazine I just want to elevate it I want to amplify it and I want not everybody else today.
I agree, it's like yell about it loud enough that maybe we'll actually have an interesting mechilla next time. Let me text Anna. [laughter] I know who's the number you have in your phone. All right, we're going to take a quick break when we come back, Sanny Petty. Hestaria is brought to you by Little Spoon. Anyone who's a parent knows feeding decisions are not one time thing. You make them again and again and again. Stage after stage. Do you know they have to eat three times a day? It's crazy. You have to feed them three times a day just for 18 years. And too often the options out there, whether you're feeding a baby toddler or big kid, just don't meet the standards you want for your child. Parents are constantly asked to compromise on ingredients, nutrition, transparency, even safety. And it makes you wonder, why does it feel like there are more high quality food options for dogs than there are for kids? 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The podcast that thinks the most offensive thing about that Callaway Golf ad was that it featured people playing golf. I hate golf. Let's watch the ad, Julius hasn't seen it. Do not touch my new driver. Oh, that's aggressive. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So what am I supposed to buy from this? Yeah. So Callaway Golf is apparently manufacturer's golf sticks. I don't even know. And as soon as you touch them, you become crazy aggressive, crazy person. Yeah. And so a lot of people had issue with the fact that it features a woman being pushed down to the ground because she's about to touch this guy's driver. And he has been driven insane by the quality of this golf stick. And I am going to be calling it a golf stick. No, but I'm like, if golf has no haters, I am dead. I think that golf is an affront to nature. I think it is an elitist, horrible thing that is environmentally devastating. And I think that every golf course should be converted to low-income housing with green space in the middle that is shared. 100%. Every golf course. Every golf. First of all, I went golfing one time, one time. And also, you've got to understand that I used to work on Wall Street, right? Where like, golfing was like the place to be. And I only won once. Well, golfing is where inside boys pretend to be outside boys. Yes. And I hated it. I was like, I was like, I just want a drink. Like, can I just sit in the golf cart and be like, all, can I just be, you know, driven around in this little golf cart and drink? Like, this is terrible. Like, I don't like this. And it hurts my hips. Like, I mean, I just think like, just whatever, the ad presented a lot of like culture warriors with the opportunity to virtue signal for how like offended they were or not offended they were as part of their like personal brands of being like woke or not woke. And it's just, it's all very tiresome at this point. And also realizing we have very different algorithms. You know, it's funny because I hate golf so much that I will, like, I hate it to get this existence. Yeah. I have golfed before I took golf in college. Am I good at it? No. But do I want to be good at it? No. I find it offensive. Like, why are we turning vast swaths of spit, why are we cutting down the trees? Like, fertilizing. I was trying to build a huge golf course in Puerto Rico where there is like, what people don't have drinking water and we want to take all that water to water the grass, which is not even a native plant to the places where I just don't even get me started. I will, I will fight. If golf were a person, I'd fight it. You'd push it down like, I would push it down like, I pushed down that woman. Pushed down the woman. Um, yeah. All right. And that's another reason not to golf because the men are, look, I gotta say this, my father and law golfs, but he is the exception that proves the role. And like, he's a great dude. Everyone else who golfs who I do not already like is bad until proven otherwise. I can think of a couple of people that in my life that, that golf that are like, great people. Just play, play pickleball. It's way less environmentally off. Just go to that. I do, you know what I do? Like, I don't know what it's called, but where you go and like, you just hit the ball and it's like a driving range. Oh, a driving range? A driving race. Yeah. But there is one specific, like in LA, there's one place where you can go, um, top golf. Oh, okay. That's what it's called. Top golf. I do enjoy top golf. to just like hit a ball really, really far. But you can do that with a baseball. You could just throw up a baseball and hit it and cause some property damage in death or an environment. (laughs) No, that'll try that next. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I didn't tell you to do it because that sounds like a very bad advice. Okay, before we get to say any petty some announcements for the class at Crooked, we believe the answer to right wing authoritarianism is a big, welcoming, fun, pro-democracy movement. Conversations that don't just focus on what's broken, but also what we can do to fix it. That's what CrookedCon is all about. CrookedCon comes just after the midterms in DC from November 5th to 7th. It's either gonna be super fun or everyone's gonna be super mad. We think it's best to get together in person to meet all the like-minded folks, hash it out and see if we can get a functional winning party out of the deal. I will be there. Join us at CrookedCon, head to CrookedCon.com for tickets, line up announcements and more. Okay, let's get to say any petty. I'm gonna go first. Got a standing slash like news update. Okay, the hysteria podcast collectively has been obsessed with a specific case out of Arizona of a woman named Laura Owens who alleged that former star of the bachelor Clayton Eckerd got her pregnant with twins only to have it revealed that she had scammed not only him, but multiple other men in her past into fake like fake pregnancies and tanglements. So she did that multiple times and then Clayton Eckerd was the first one to like, really fight back and get like, attention on the case. It has been a saga that has been going on literally since I found, like right before I found out I was pregnant with my daughter who is now two. Oh my god. So like, it's literally been almost, it's been like three years that this saga has been going on and it started because she filed a petition for like a paternity parenting agreement in an Arizona court. So she started this, right? Now at the end of all, she was in pregnancy. She was not pregnant, she was never pregnant but she like bought a pregnancy belly. She like made like fake medical records. You can, okay, you need to listen to the podcast Love Trap because we had the host and creator and producer of Love Trap down the show. - I am writing that down. - It's gonna take you, it's gonna steal days of your life and you were gonna be so glad that they were stolen by the pod, it's so good. Okay, so we had the creator and like, producer of the show, Stephanie Young on this pod. I have been following the case before it was a podcast. Okay, now at the end of the saga, Laura Owens, the scammer at the center of it, has pled guilty to four counts. She was originally charged with 14, she accepted a plea deal. She's pled guilty to four, carries a maximum of like 12 years in prison, like various frauds and fabrications and stuff. Meanwhile, her parents have declared bankruptcy. Her dad was a prominent Bay Area radio personality and you just have to listen to the podcast if you haven't listened to it. It's like it gets crazier and crazier as you listen. You have to listen to it. Anyway, Laura Owens has pled guilty. It feels like kind of anticlimactic. A couple of the men who have been at the center of the case have posted or indicated that they feel kind of like, okay, now this is it. Her sentencing is in October.
So we'll find out where this goes from there, but given her tenacity and tendency to kind of drag things on, we'll see if this is the end of the saga or if there's just another chapter to go. Oh my god. Julie, I'm going to listen to this. You have to listen to this. I wrote it down. I'm going to listen to it on my way home. It is like my favorite, it is like cozy crime where it's like, it's true crime, but nobody's dead. So like it doesn't feel as like exploitative, it's kind of like a scammer with the audacity. It's really good. The person who did this podcast, you do the podcast about Dejan Love. Oh yes. Stephanie Young. I know you listen. I'm going to tag you. I'm going to tag you in our episode this week, Stephanie, because I think that you should absolutely, that should be season two. That should be season two. 100%. We have so many great ideas today. We're like a fountain of ideas. We really should just do this without microphones on just to come up with good ideas. Yeah. Julie, what is your sanny pity? Okay. I am feeling very petty about the fact that more dates have been added to the usher slash Chris Brown tour. And you can't go. No. Just. Yes, I'm so annoyed because it wear my free tickets to this concert. If it was just usher, honestly, like I would want to go. But I just can't get over how we've like forgiven Chris Brown for all the terrible things that he's doing. Listen, like I don't think that we should judge people by the worst thing they've ever done in their life. However, if you keep doing that worst thing over and over and over again, like I don't know that I'm ready to forgive you, you know, like it wasn't just like what he did to Rihanna, which we all remember what her face looked like after he beat her up. But then like in 2013, he allegedly punched Frank Ocean in 2013, same year. He was sentenced to a thousand addition hours of community service after the DA found problems with his prior community service records. Again, in 2013, he punched a fan in the face for refusing a photo, broke the man's nose, went to rehab, later was jailed on a probation violation. In 2014, he was sentenced to 131 days in jail for that probation violation. In 2015, he was accused of hitting a man in an argument over a baseball game. In 2016, accused of beating a woman and stealing her phone, 2016 accused of threatening another woman with a gun. In 2016, he was sued by Mike G. His own image consultant for false imprisonment and assault. Whoa, I didn't know about half of these. Is this a section of his Wikipedia entry? Just like violence? Basically, there's probably a header that's like violence. This list keeps going. Like 2017, two more things, 2018, another team, 2019, something else, 2020, something else. In 2024, he was hit with a $50 million lawsuit, allegedly, that he and his entourage beat four concert goings backstage in Fort Worth, Texas. Like the list keeps going. Oh my god. Like this man is not well. This man has continued to exhibit very violent behavior. So why is Usher on tour with him? Why is everybody that's going to the concert buying tickets to support this man who has continued to allegedly beat people up? Yeah. Has been found guilty of some of these of these crimes, pled, you know, has plead deals for some other ones. Like why are we so quick to forgive men? It's like what we were talking about with John Galliano, right? Like when you think someone's a creative genius, you're like, okay, I forgive you for doing all these things. But by the way, Chris Brown's music is not even, it's not even, it's like mid. He's not the John Galliano of R&B music. Exactly. John Galliano is actually a talented designer who is a terrible person. Yes. Chris Brown, mid artist, terrible person. Terrible person. Yeah. Like, so I'm like, at this point, it's like on Osteau, you know, like well, not on me because I didn't go to the concert. Yeah. But on all those people that are going to the concert. Like if we continue to support these people, then anytime an artist or someone famous or even like people in our real lives beat a woman up, it's going to be like, well, we forgive you. It's fine. We're going to continue to support, like there are no consequences. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, the consequences you and I are talking shit about him and insulting his music, but I don't think he cares. I don't think he cares. Yeah. It's like Usher. Come on. Come on. After that delightful Super Bowl halftime show, you're going to do us like this. You don't need to do this. And the thing is like Usher can just go on tour by himself. And he would, he would sell out, you know? Like he doesn't need Chris Brown. Chris Brown needs Usher, I think. So why is Usher doing this? Why are people buying tickets this concert? There was actually like a video I saw where there was someone interviewing people asking them like that they know some of these things, you know, like, did you know that Chris Brown did this? Isn't that? And some people would say like, yes. And like still went to the concert. Some people would say like, no, I didn't know that. But I think we should be asking people, we should be asking people like why are you supporting this concert? Why are you supporting this man? Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, I completely agree. And that is a perfectly great petty. I don't even think it's petty. I think it transcends petting us. I think it's like a legit, it's a legit thing. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, shame on you, Usher. Shame on you, Usher. Shame on everybody that's going to the concert. And if you're going to this concert, you better never listen to Ariana song or buy any Fenty products. You cannot buy any Fenty products and not even look, I'm wearing a Fenty product right now. I'm wearing a white. Because you didn't go to the concert. Because I didn't go to the concert. I'm allowed. You like it. All right. That's all the time we have for this week's episode of hysteria. Julie Starr say thank you so much for joining me on listeners audience. If you want to pre-order Julie Starr's forthcoming book, you can pre-order it now. It is called holding on to what's mind, bad money, winning and cultural power. Your bad money book. My bad money book. The cover. I'm obsessed with the cover. It's like bad money at the Super Bowl. Oh, amazing. And it's like bright yellow. And I'm also really glad that when I came to the show today, I was like, I finally have something else to promote the last four years. It's been, you sound like a white girl. You sound like a white girl. I'm like, I have something new. I can go on the show again. Amazing. Well, listeners, if you want to get in touch,
[email protected] is the email address where you can reach us. And there'll be more hysteria for you next week. hysteria is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Caroline Reston, Claire Fogarty, Kendra James, Adrian Hill and me, Aaron Ryan. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Rachel Gayesky, Dylan Villanueva, Claudia Scheng, Mia Kalman, Jay Banks, Charlotte Landis, and Jordan Cantor. Our staff is probably unionized with the writers of the Old America East.
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