Off The Hook - 2008-12-31

[00:00.000 --> 00:03.620]  [SPEAKER_14]: And lived with, even as an adult, the Berlin Wall.
[00:03.820 --> 00:06.820]  [SPEAKER_14]: And I remember the whole world rejoiced when that thing came down.
[00:07.040 --> 00:18.500]  [SPEAKER_14]: How in the world can our country turn around and a couple of decades later be doing the very same thing and at a grosser scale?
[00:18.880 --> 00:22.780]  [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly what the barrier will cost in terms of dollars is unclear.
[00:22.780 --> 00:31.200]  [SPEAKER_00]: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cost of construction and maintenance of 670 miles of border fencing could cost U.S.
[00:31.300 --> 00:33.500]  [SPEAKER_00]: taxpayers up to $49 billion.
[00:35.160 --> 00:39.200]  [SPEAKER_02]: And you're listening to 99.5 FM WBAR New York.
[00:39.380 --> 00:40.960]  [SPEAKER_02]: It's 6.59 p.m.
[00:41.000 --> 00:41.880]  [SPEAKER_02]: in 60 seconds.
[00:42.100 --> 00:43.160]  [SPEAKER_02]: Time for Off The Hook.
[00:56.750 --> 00:58.430]  [SPEAKER_09]: Now I can't make a call.
[00:59.170 --> 01:01.230]  [SPEAKER_09]: We couldn't get much worse.
[01:01.970 --> 01:03.770]  [SPEAKER_09]: But if they could, they would.
[01:04.050 --> 01:06.690]  [SPEAKER_09]: But the best is back from worst.
[01:07.390 --> 01:09.210]  [SPEAKER_09]: I hope that's understood.
[01:09.590 --> 01:10.290]  [SPEAKER_09]: But the best is back from worst.
[01:39.890 --> 01:40.690]  [SPEAKER_02]: Good evening.
[01:40.810 --> 01:41.890]  [SPEAKER_02]: The program is Off The Hook.
[01:42.130 --> 01:43.930]  [SPEAKER_02]: This is RedHackt in the studio, Engineering.
[01:44.270 --> 01:47.350]  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm joined by a number of people tonight.
[01:47.930 --> 01:50.430]  [SPEAKER_02]: I think I'll just go around the room in order.
[01:50.770 --> 01:52.370]  [SPEAKER_02]: In the corner there we have Voltaire.
[01:52.630 --> 01:52.990]  [SPEAKER_15]: Hey there.
[01:53.370 --> 01:54.030]  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, sorry.
[01:54.030 --> 01:54.110]  [SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[01:54.690 --> 01:54.870]  [SPEAKER_02]: Hello.
[01:55.430 --> 01:55.890]  [SPEAKER_02]: Notkevin.
[01:56.250 --> 01:56.630]  [SPEAKER_02]: Hello.
[01:56.910 --> 01:57.550]  [SPEAKER_02]: Or Rob T. Firefly.
[01:58.210 --> 01:58.630]  [SPEAKER_02]: Good evening.
[01:58.850 --> 01:59.230]  [SPEAKER_02]: Jim.
[01:59.510 --> 01:59.770]  [SPEAKER_02]: Hello.
[02:00.530 --> 02:04.030]  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we have Jason and Josh from Surrender.
[02:04.170 --> 02:04.390]  [SPEAKER_02]: Hello.
[02:05.410 --> 02:07.770]  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we actually have Junet in the corner.
[02:07.890 --> 02:08.110]  [SPEAKER_02]: Say hi.
[02:08.350 --> 02:08.550]  [SPEAKER_02]: Hi.
[02:09.150 --> 02:12.170]  [SPEAKER_02]: And then on the phone we have Bernie Esten in Philadelphia.
[02:14.130 --> 02:14.570]  [SPEAKER_02]: Bernie?
[02:16.010 --> 02:16.550]  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh-oh.
[02:17.850 --> 02:18.670]  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, there we go.
[02:18.810 --> 02:19.190]  [SPEAKER_02]: Hi, Bernie.
[02:19.650 --> 02:20.210]  [SPEAKER_02]: You there?
[02:20.330 --> 02:20.550]  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm here.
[02:20.710 --> 02:21.230]  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you hear me?
[02:21.390 --> 02:22.130]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I can hear you.
[02:22.130 --> 02:22.950]  [SPEAKER_02]: I can hear you now.
[02:22.950 --> 02:23.730]  [SPEAKER_04]: I can hear you now.
[02:24.130 --> 02:25.530]  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, happy new year from Philadelphia.
[02:25.850 --> 02:26.090]  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[02:26.670 --> 02:29.550]  [SPEAKER_02]: And then Emmanuel should be on the line from Berlin.
[02:30.510 --> 02:32.750]  [SPEAKER_02]: If that wasn't the noise we heard.
[02:33.090 --> 02:33.350]  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh-oh.
[02:34.070 --> 02:36.810]  [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe the fire engine's coming to put out the fireworks.
[02:37.130 --> 02:37.510]  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, good.
[02:37.650 --> 02:39.070]  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll try to get him back on the line.
[02:39.290 --> 02:41.250]  [SPEAKER_02]: But in the meantime...
[02:41.950 --> 02:44.550]  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, if he's in Berlin, what time is it there right now?
[02:44.950 --> 02:46.330]  [SPEAKER_02]: It would be past midnight.
[02:46.330 --> 02:47.130]  [SPEAKER_02]: It'd actually be tomorrow.
[02:48.030 --> 02:51.430]  [SPEAKER_04]: As in, like, a minute past midnight on New Year's Eve?
[02:52.190 --> 02:54.270]  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, actually, I think it'd be an hour past midnight.
[02:54.510 --> 02:55.690]  [SPEAKER_02]: An hour and one second, I believe.
[02:56.350 --> 02:56.630]  [SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[02:57.430 --> 03:01.150]  [SPEAKER_04]: There must be still much celebration going on in Berlin right now as we speak.
[03:01.370 --> 03:01.570]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[03:02.230 --> 03:07.930]  [SPEAKER_02]: Alright, well, while we're waiting, if we want to do some stories, I think I'll try to get Emmanuel back on the line.
[03:07.930 --> 03:10.410]  [SPEAKER_11]: Alright, we have some stories to talk about.
[03:10.850 --> 03:15.030]  [SPEAKER_11]: The first one, Britain aims to restrict access to websites.
[03:15.710 --> 03:22.850]  [SPEAKER_11]: So, everybody knows that UK isn't the best with privacy stuff and censorship, especially when it comes to technology.
[03:23.230 --> 03:30.370]  [SPEAKER_11]: And it appears that they're the culture minister, which sounds pretty early in the name.
[03:30.370 --> 03:39.110]  [SPEAKER_11]: But anyway, he has said that they're going to restart, that they want to do a program that's like the movie writing system for websites, which sounds pretty scary.
[03:39.130 --> 03:44.930]  [SPEAKER_11]: But the scariest part, at least for us across the pond, is that they want to work with the Obama administration for that.
[03:45.050 --> 03:52.250]  [SPEAKER_11]: So, let's hope that they don't get too far with that, because it doesn't sound very official.
[03:52.390 --> 03:54.170]  [SPEAKER_11]: It sounds like just something that he's saying offhand.
[03:55.230 --> 03:55.670]  [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah.
[03:56.350 --> 03:57.670]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's kind of an amusing image, though.
[03:59.190 --> 03:59.990]  [SPEAKER_15]: Let me get this straight.
[04:00.070 --> 04:02.990]  [SPEAKER_15]: They're trying to take the MPAA rating system, applying it to websites?
[04:03.230 --> 04:03.510]  [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah.
[04:04.310 --> 04:07.390]  [SPEAKER_11]: Everybody, I think it's a good time to give a shout-out to the movie.
[04:07.590 --> 04:15.490]  [SPEAKER_11]: This film is not yet rated at this point, which does a good job at exposing how bad the MPAA rating system is to begin with.
[04:15.950 --> 04:21.190]  [SPEAKER_11]: And it's so subjective of a thing, and it's obviously not going to be good for privacy or civil liberties at all.
[04:22.270 --> 04:28.130]  [SPEAKER_15]: Now, implementing a system like this would actually censor people who are of age to see a R-rated website?
[04:29.470 --> 04:30.130]  [SPEAKER_11]: I don't know.
[04:30.270 --> 04:30.930]  [SPEAKER_11]: I think it's...
[04:31.750 --> 04:32.950]  [SPEAKER_11]: It doesn't sound very official.
[04:33.150 --> 04:38.170]  [SPEAKER_11]: It's not like just something that this crazy old cultural minister got offhand.
[04:38.450 --> 04:39.710]  [SPEAKER_02]: Listen, I'm going to cut into you guys.
[04:39.830 --> 04:42.010]  [SPEAKER_02]: I believe we have Emmanuel on the phone now.
[04:42.370 --> 04:43.250]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, I'm sorry.
[04:43.530 --> 04:49.770]  [SPEAKER_05]: We had a bit of an emergency up here on the roof in Berlin, where there was all kinds of fireworks and things going on.
[04:49.810 --> 04:53.750]  [SPEAKER_05]: And we jumped the gun and lit off a bunch of things we weren't supposed to light off, so we lost the connection.
[04:55.670 --> 04:56.790]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's New Year's here.
[04:56.970 --> 04:59.470]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's been New Year's for about an hour now.
[05:00.090 --> 05:03.210]  [SPEAKER_05]: And you might be able to hear some of the explosions going off all over the city.
[05:03.710 --> 05:06.150]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's simply an incredible scene.
[05:07.570 --> 05:11.890]  [SPEAKER_05]: But why don't you guys fill me in, because I don't want to go over what you've already said.
[05:12.010 --> 05:13.370]  [SPEAKER_05]: Have we introduced our special guest yet?
[05:14.210 --> 05:14.830]  [SPEAKER_02]: Briefly only.
[05:15.510 --> 05:16.730]  [SPEAKER_02]: We haven't had a chance to talk to him yet.
[05:17.430 --> 05:17.910]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, good.
[05:18.230 --> 05:20.090]  [SPEAKER_05]: So why don't you finish whatever it is you're saying?
[05:20.090 --> 05:24.930]  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't want to interrupt, and then we'll do something special for you here, and then we'll talk to our special guest.
[05:25.210 --> 05:28.570]  [SPEAKER_02]: I think we're done, actually, with what we were talking about, so feel free to...
[05:28.570 --> 05:29.010]  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, you're finished?
[05:29.190 --> 05:29.310]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[05:29.330 --> 05:31.070]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, well then, let me introduce some people here.
[05:32.110 --> 05:38.110]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're standing on the roof somewhere in Berlin with a bunch of people who have just celebrated New Year's, and we're still celebrating.
[05:38.490 --> 05:39.590]  [SPEAKER_05]: Can you hear the explosions?
[05:40.370 --> 05:40.730]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[05:41.750 --> 05:43.950]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right, because imagine this.
[05:44.090 --> 05:51.390]  [SPEAKER_05]: Imagine a city filled with just bottle rockets and fireworks, firecrackers of all sorts, just coming from every single building.
[05:52.250 --> 05:53.850]  [SPEAKER_05]: This is not something the city is putting on.
[05:53.950 --> 05:55.530]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's something the people of the city are putting on.
[05:55.790 --> 05:58.590]  [SPEAKER_05]: And it's just... it's an incredible sight.
[05:58.710 --> 06:05.210]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, of course, it's kind of ironic, too, because we're talking to some people tonight that are involved in a production that has to do with war.
[06:05.210 --> 06:07.490]  [SPEAKER_05]: Or I hope it doesn't bring back any bad memories.
[06:08.610 --> 06:11.310]  [SPEAKER_05]: But it's really a festive occasion.
[06:11.510 --> 06:14.070]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's something that is not very common in the United States.
[06:14.330 --> 06:15.830]  [SPEAKER_05]: We tend to be afraid of these things.
[06:15.910 --> 06:25.410]  [SPEAKER_05]: In fact, the Americans who are in this city right now, and I'm with a few of them, tend to be a little bit apprehensive when, well, for instance, people throw firecrackers in their direction as they're walking down the street.
[06:25.410 --> 06:28.210]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's a common thing here in Berlin on New Year's for that to happen.
[06:29.330 --> 06:33.830]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, we were on the train before, and people were actually lighting firecrackers on the train.
[06:34.490 --> 06:36.070]  [SPEAKER_05]: And you can imagine that's a bit unnerving.
[06:36.830 --> 06:38.610]  [SPEAKER_05]: But let me say hi to a couple of people here.
[06:39.070 --> 06:39.910]  [SPEAKER_05]: Bicycle Mark is here.
[06:40.050 --> 06:41.270]  [SPEAKER_05]: Let me put down that drink for a second.
[06:41.710 --> 06:43.370]  [SPEAKER_05]: And just say hi to the folks in New York.
[06:44.650 --> 06:46.910]  [SPEAKER_01]: Hello, New York, and Happy New Year from Berlin.
[06:48.630 --> 06:49.870]  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, and I should say something else.
[06:50.070 --> 06:52.370]  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think I should probably pass the phone off.
[06:52.870 --> 06:53.530]  [SPEAKER_01]: Pass the phone off.
[06:53.730 --> 06:54.050]  [SPEAKER_03]: There we go.
[06:55.670 --> 06:58.450]  [SPEAKER_03]: Hi, this is David Olsen from Numeric, Ireland.
[06:58.750 --> 06:59.950]  [SPEAKER_03]: Here with a few other Irish people.
[07:00.290 --> 07:01.010]  [SPEAKER_03]: Hello to New York.
[07:03.750 --> 07:04.650]  [SPEAKER_07]: Hi, Mom!
[07:06.990 --> 07:08.750]  [SPEAKER_03]: That was another Irish person.
[07:09.390 --> 07:11.530]  [SPEAKER_03]: This is Brie Pettis saying hello to New York.
[07:11.810 --> 07:17.110]  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's a pleasure to talk to you from the next year here in Berlin.
[07:17.230 --> 07:18.810]  [SPEAKER_03]: We're on the top of a roof.
[07:19.030 --> 07:21.070]  [SPEAKER_03]: And it used to be a clear night.
[07:22.570 --> 07:27.070]  [SPEAKER_03]: But now it appears to be foggy, except it's not foggy.
[07:27.150 --> 07:33.850]  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just the explosives that have been going off for the entire half, the entire last hour.
[07:34.230 --> 07:34.850]  [SPEAKER_03]: Exploding.
[07:35.590 --> 07:41.670]  [SPEAKER_03]: There's, like, the smell of sulfur is pervading the entire atmosphere.
[07:41.670 --> 07:45.430]  [SPEAKER_03]: And we're not at any sort of, like, exotic hot tub or anything.
[07:45.670 --> 07:49.130]  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just pure explosives here, people.
[07:49.130 --> 07:53.250]  [SPEAKER_03]: So, a pleasure to talk to you from the future in 2009.
[07:53.390 --> 07:54.170]  [SPEAKER_03]: Happy New Year.
[07:57.070 --> 07:58.350]  [SPEAKER_01]: Happy New Year, New York.
[07:58.550 --> 07:59.870]  [SPEAKER_01]: This is Martin from Lazern.
[08:00.590 --> 08:01.830]  [SPEAKER_01]: We're having a great time here.
[08:01.930 --> 08:04.270]  [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone is bearing fake mustaches that we laser-cutted.
[08:04.430 --> 08:06.290]  [SPEAKER_01]: And we will start some rockets for you now.
[08:06.710 --> 08:07.230]  [SPEAKER_01]: Happy New Year.
[08:09.330 --> 08:10.670]  [SPEAKER_01]: Hi, New York from Berlin.
[08:10.670 --> 08:11.630]  [SPEAKER_01]: This is John Flanagan.
[08:11.890 --> 08:12.890]  [SPEAKER_05]: Happy New Year, New York.
[08:14.970 --> 08:16.610]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, we're back to me now.
[08:16.770 --> 08:17.990]  [SPEAKER_05]: You guys hear all that?
[08:17.990 --> 08:18.670]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[08:18.810 --> 08:18.870]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[08:19.550 --> 08:22.210]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right, we're about to light some bottle rockets now.
[08:22.490 --> 08:22.990]  [SPEAKER_05]: Listen to this.
[08:23.090 --> 08:23.350]  [SPEAKER_05]: Hang on.
[08:35.590 --> 08:37.670]  [SPEAKER_07]: All right, now some firecrackers for you.
[08:53.570 --> 08:54.530]  [SPEAKER_08]: All right.
[08:54.710 --> 08:55.570]  [SPEAKER_08]: Happy New Year.
[08:55.950 --> 08:56.710]  [SPEAKER_08]: All right.
[08:58.650 --> 09:03.030]  [SPEAKER_05]: That really wasn't very much compared to what's been going on in the city, but for us it was a big thrill.
[09:15.880 --> 09:21.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, you know, I dare anybody listening in New York City to do that tonight and not get arrested.
[09:21.320 --> 09:25.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: But here it's unusual if you don't do this kind of a thing.
[09:28.940 --> 09:29.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: Here in Philadelphia.
[09:31.780 --> 09:32.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm sorry.
[09:32.820 --> 09:33.860]  [SPEAKER_05]: This is just insane.
[09:34.540 --> 09:35.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: I didn't know we had this much.
[09:37.260 --> 09:38.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: Where do we get all of these?
[09:38.600 --> 09:39.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: This is incredible.
[09:42.160 --> 09:44.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right, I'm going to duck inside now.
[09:44.340 --> 09:46.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: Guys, if you want to blow up the roof, that's your affair.
[09:46.740 --> 09:47.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm going downstairs.
[09:48.580 --> 09:49.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[09:51.160 --> 09:52.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: I've got to get out of here.
[09:55.540 --> 09:56.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: Hang on.
[09:56.060 --> 09:56.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm coming back inside.
[09:57.100 --> 09:57.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: So that's...
[10:01.020 --> 10:02.180]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, are you guys still there?
[10:02.680 --> 10:03.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: Hey, we're here.
[10:04.020 --> 10:04.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right, good, good.
[10:05.220 --> 10:07.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: Hang on a second while I gather my wits together.
[10:07.360 --> 10:09.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm going back into a wood area now.
[10:10.100 --> 10:13.300]  [SPEAKER_04]: Here in Philadelphia, they shoot...
[10:13.300 --> 10:19.080]  [SPEAKER_04]: Here in Philadelphia, they have a tradition here and in Camden, New Jersey, they shoot firearms with live rounds into the air.
[10:20.140 --> 10:22.400]  [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm going to be wearing my hard hat in an hour.
[10:23.420 --> 10:25.160]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, they do things differently in America.
[10:25.200 --> 10:26.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: That's certainly true.
[10:27.600 --> 10:29.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: But yeah, it's such a festive occasion.
[10:29.660 --> 10:31.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: This is the second New Year's I spent in Berlin.
[10:31.600 --> 10:34.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: Before that, I spent New Year's in Amsterdam.
[10:34.220 --> 10:37.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: And it was also very festive with lots of fireworks.
[10:37.460 --> 10:39.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: I imagine lots of parts of the world do this.
[10:39.480 --> 10:42.860]  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, there are parts of the States where it's legal, obviously.
[10:43.000 --> 10:43.620]  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not every...
[10:43.620 --> 10:44.700]  [SPEAKER_02]: In New York City, it's not.
[10:44.800 --> 10:48.040]  [SPEAKER_02]: But when I've been in Texas on New Year's, it's fine there.
[10:48.040 --> 10:50.820]  [SPEAKER_02]: In Houston, you know, I shot off plenty of rockets, so...
[10:50.820 --> 10:52.580]  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think it's a U.S.
[10:52.640 --> 10:52.820]  [SPEAKER_02]: thing.
[10:53.760 --> 10:54.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[10:54.300 --> 10:59.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I'll happily go to Texas to see if the festivity is the same as here.
[10:59.520 --> 11:01.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: But maybe we can hear from our listeners in Texas.
[11:01.220 --> 11:03.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: They can write to us, oth@2600.com.
[11:03.900 --> 11:06.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: We certainly like to hear their experiences.
[11:07.040 --> 11:08.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: But yes, 2009 has arrived.
[11:09.280 --> 11:10.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: We can confirm that.
[11:10.560 --> 11:11.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: 2009 is here in Berlin.
[11:11.840 --> 11:15.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: And soon, 2009 will be where you are as well.
[11:16.340 --> 11:20.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, just to let you guys know, it's all festive and fun here.
[11:22.060 --> 11:23.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, we...
[11:23.840 --> 11:25.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: Any news stories you guys want to talk about?
[11:26.040 --> 11:28.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: Things having to do with the changing of the year or anything like that?
[11:28.820 --> 11:29.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: Or have you already gone over that?
[11:31.060 --> 11:38.320]  [SPEAKER_04]: There is an FCC decision just this week that's sort of new worthy and is probably worth celebrating.
[11:40.560 --> 11:42.680]  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, that's...
[11:42.680 --> 11:48.000]  [SPEAKER_04]: You may remember we talked a couple of weeks ago about the advanced wireless services band.
[11:48.000 --> 12:03.040]  [SPEAKER_04]: It's around 2155 megahertz to 2180 megahertz where the FCC was going to allow a nationwide Wi-Fi network that would be free of charge to people with a minimum speed of 768 kilobits per second.
[12:03.760 --> 12:10.560]  [SPEAKER_04]: But the FCC was going to mandate content filtering for pornography and other undesirable content.
[12:11.020 --> 12:14.800]  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, the FCC just announced they're not going to have any filtering requirement anymore now.
[12:15.080 --> 12:20.780]  [SPEAKER_04]: So, if this actually goes through, within 10 years...
[12:20.780 --> 12:25.400]  [SPEAKER_04]: It's supposed to be covered 95% of the country within 10 years, free Wi-Fi.
[12:25.680 --> 12:28.640]  [SPEAKER_04]: But at 768K in 10 years, it'll probably be crawlingly slow.
[12:29.000 --> 12:33.880]  [SPEAKER_04]: But the fact that it won't be required to be filtered by government mandate is good news.
[12:34.080 --> 12:45.780]  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you also have to think about the fact that it might be crawlingly slow for multimedia applications and things like that, but for basic connectivity, I mean, how much bandwidth do you need for checking email or receiving messages and things like that?
[12:45.780 --> 12:46.840]  [SPEAKER_04]: More than enough.
[12:46.940 --> 12:47.100]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[12:47.860 --> 12:48.360]  [SPEAKER_04]: And voice.
[12:48.520 --> 12:49.940]  [SPEAKER_04]: It would handle voice as well, easily.
[12:51.440 --> 12:51.900]  [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah.
[12:52.260 --> 12:57.320]  [SPEAKER_11]: Now that they got rid of this censorship requirement, there are still opponents of it.
[12:58.680 --> 13:02.740]  [SPEAKER_11]: Most of the telecom industries are opposing this bill.
[13:03.480 --> 13:07.320]  [SPEAKER_11]: Before, it was the telecom industries and civil libertarians in general.
[13:07.520 --> 13:09.220]  [SPEAKER_11]: But now we just have to worry about...
[13:09.220 --> 13:17.620]  [SPEAKER_11]: Now that we have the civil liberties intact, we have to make sure that the plan goes ahead and isn't stopped by lobbyists that represent established interests.
[13:19.340 --> 13:19.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[13:20.100 --> 13:21.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, let's move on to our special guest.
[13:21.880 --> 13:27.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: I know they've been waiting patiently for us to get through all this nonsense that we've been calling for here in Berlin and various other things.
[13:28.740 --> 13:31.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: Jason and Josh, welcome to WBAI.
[13:32.060 --> 13:32.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: Are you guys there?
[13:32.720 --> 13:33.200]  [SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, we're here.
[13:33.760 --> 13:34.040]  [SPEAKER_13]: Thanks.
[13:34.340 --> 13:34.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: How are you doing?
[13:35.520 --> 13:40.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, Jason Hartley is the author of this incredible book.
[13:40.500 --> 13:43.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: Actually, I've been reading this book throughout my journeys, Just Another Soldier.
[13:44.300 --> 13:52.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, of course, Josh Fox, director of Surrender, the play, the production that a bunch of us attended a few weeks ago.
[13:52.060 --> 13:53.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: We discussed it on the radio.
[13:53.780 --> 13:54.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, great.
[13:54.640 --> 13:56.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: The lights just went out here for some reason.
[13:57.320 --> 13:57.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm sorry.
[13:58.460 --> 13:59.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: Here's the problem.
[13:59.360 --> 14:06.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, in Germany, what happens is if you don't move around, lights go off because they're all intelligent and energy-saving.
[14:06.380 --> 14:07.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, I just turned them back on.
[14:08.240 --> 14:15.420]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, okay, so these guys are involved in the production of Surrender, which I believe has been renewed.
[14:15.500 --> 14:22.160]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's going to start over again from January 7th to January 25th at the Flamboyant Theater, 107 Suffolk Street.
[14:22.160 --> 14:22.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: Flamboyant.
[14:23.940 --> 14:25.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: Flamboyant Theater, thank you.
[14:25.440 --> 14:26.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: 107 Suffolk Street.
[14:26.380 --> 14:27.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: 107 Suffolk Street, is that correct?
[14:27.880 --> 14:30.180]  [SPEAKER_13]: That's correct, 107 Suffolk Street, Flamboyant Theater.
[14:30.180 --> 14:41.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, now, for people that don't know about this particular show, it's described as a simulated war deployment experience in three acts.
[14:41.400 --> 14:59.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: What that basically means is that if you show up as an audience member, you wind up basically inside basic training where you're taught how to carry a weapon, how to clear a room, how to engage the enemy, and then how to become reintegrated into society.
[15:00.140 --> 15:06.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, I know this is something that may strike horror into the hearts and minds of many WBAI listeners.
[15:07.040 --> 15:11.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: After all, our radio station is pretty much founded on pacifist philosophy.
[15:11.880 --> 15:23.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: But I think it's also very important for us to understand what is going on in the world and what kinds of experiences the people that we live with are going through.
[15:23.500 --> 15:28.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think Jason has done an incredible job sharing that with us.
[15:29.600 --> 15:32.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: Jason is a member of the Army National Guard.
[15:32.820 --> 15:37.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: He was deployed in Iraq from February 2004 to January 2005.
[15:38.000 --> 15:47.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, Jason, first, I'd like to ask you a couple of questions, because I know you were over there and you did something that basically got you into a bit of trouble.
[15:47.040 --> 15:52.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, you ran a blog, you dared to run a blog about your experiences while you were in Iraq.
[15:53.160 --> 15:54.180]  [SPEAKER_05]: Do you want to tell us something about that?
[15:55.440 --> 15:58.900]  [SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, when we got deployed, the train-up began in 2003.
[15:59.060 --> 16:00.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: Blogs were really just kind of starting to catch on.
[16:00.920 --> 16:04.120]  [SPEAKER_16]: It was still sort of the domain of the slightly more geeky.
[16:04.200 --> 16:06.160]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I was a computer science major in school at the time.
[16:06.180 --> 16:09.200]  [SPEAKER_16]: So, it just became like an easy way for me to keep in touch with family and friends.
[16:09.200 --> 16:14.400]  [SPEAKER_16]: I figured I would just write stuff once, put it on a blog, then not have to send out a thousand emails to everybody.
[16:14.560 --> 16:16.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: For me, it was just an easy way of communicating.
[16:17.060 --> 16:21.860]  [SPEAKER_16]: But then once people started reading it, it kind of evolved into something else entirely.
[16:22.040 --> 16:35.640]  [SPEAKER_16]: And then once the army found out about it, you know, months later, because the army is very, very quick at, you know, picking up on this stuff, it became a little bit of a fiasco because they weren't too keen on me sharing my feelings and what was going on with our training and so forth.
[16:36.120 --> 16:40.860]  [SPEAKER_16]: But in the end, yeah, it got me in quite a bit of trouble because I took it down, then I put it back up toward the end.
[16:43.180 --> 16:49.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: And, yeah, the army's not a big fan of the First Amendment, frankly, when it comes to combat zones and photographs of detainees and that kind of stuff.
[16:50.440 --> 16:55.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: Is that the kind of thing that you had on your blog, was photographs and stories about detainees, things?
[16:55.360 --> 16:56.560]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, quite a bit.
[16:56.660 --> 16:59.080]  [SPEAKER_16]: I mean, I was pretty open about everything that I was experiencing.
[16:59.340 --> 17:13.860]  [SPEAKER_16]: It was very much not like the hero porn type Black Hawk Down stuff, which I think is what really kind of annoyed my commander in general, is it's not like, you know, forget all kind of the gross stuff and just say how great of a job we're doing.
[17:14.300 --> 17:15.700]  [SPEAKER_16]: It was very personal.
[17:15.700 --> 17:17.880]  [SPEAKER_16]: My audience was not going to be other soldiers and whatnot.
[17:17.880 --> 17:21.200]  [SPEAKER_16]: It was just kind of me and my family and anybody who might want to peek in on it.
[17:22.860 --> 17:25.900]  [SPEAKER_16]: And, yeah, I kind of learned a difficult lesson that way.
[17:26.000 --> 17:28.280]  [SPEAKER_16]: But in the end, I'm happy that I did it.
[17:28.300 --> 17:31.520]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I think there are people out there who enjoyed the fact that I was, you know, able to do that.
[17:31.620 --> 17:33.020]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I feel good about it.
[17:33.500 --> 17:38.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: Can you tell us something about how you would set up a blog while deployed overseas?
[17:38.400 --> 17:40.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: And what kind of connectivity was there to start with?
[17:40.780 --> 17:41.920]  [SPEAKER_16]: You know, you'd be surprised.
[17:42.060 --> 17:46.260]  [SPEAKER_16]: We spent five months before we went to Iraq and frigid upstate New York training.
[17:46.840 --> 17:50.240]  [SPEAKER_16]: And we actually had decent access to Internet while we were there.
[17:50.320 --> 17:56.260]  [SPEAKER_16]: We actually had somebody install DSL like into our barracks, which was great.
[17:56.460 --> 18:02.520]  [SPEAKER_16]: And then once we were in Iraq, it was, I was there like for OIF too, which was the second year basically that the war was going on.
[18:02.600 --> 18:07.700]  [SPEAKER_16]: And it was at this really great juncture where the army had no idea what the hell they were doing on any front really.
[18:08.020 --> 18:16.960]  [SPEAKER_16]: And we actually hired a company out of Baghdad, came to our base and installed, you know, high speed Internet with a satellite completely unfiltered, unregulated.
[18:17.080 --> 18:18.260]  [SPEAKER_16]: The army didn't even know about it.
[18:18.400 --> 18:25.920]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I, my, my day to day experience in Iraq was not that different than it was back home because my computer was right next to my bed.
[18:26.020 --> 18:39.080]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I, you know, after we would, I could get back from work, sit down about my day, you know, download things I probably shouldn't if my mom's listening and then go to bed, you know, and that once we left, they, the army finally got wise, like maybe we should,
[18:39.240 --> 18:41.000]  [SPEAKER_16]: you know, cause I, we had an instant message.
[18:41.060 --> 18:43.440]  [SPEAKER_16]: I was, I, I, my mom, okay, mom, we're going to go on a raid now.
[18:43.640 --> 18:45.220]  [SPEAKER_16]: Be back in a couple hours, you know, see ya.
[18:45.820 --> 18:58.620]  [SPEAKER_16]: I mean, operational security wasn't really probably the way that it should have been, but we actually had decent connectivity while we were there and which was actually incredibly easy for me to update a blog and send out emails and just about everything else that I would do back home.
[18:58.700 --> 18:59.520]  [SPEAKER_16]: It was just kind of slow.
[18:59.720 --> 19:03.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I, I blamed the like LimeWire and guys downloading things.
[19:03.960 --> 19:08.340]  [SPEAKER_16]: They shouldn't kind of killed a lot of our bandwidth, but yeah, it was amazingly good.
[19:08.720 --> 19:21.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, what I, what I'm curious about, uh, the army was upset, uh, that, uh, that, that this, this blog was up, uh, what do they think was going to be happening with the Internet being, uh, available to everybody serving over there?
[19:22.360 --> 19:25.440]  [SPEAKER_16]: You know, the army is not very proactive about anything.
[19:25.680 --> 19:30.580]  [SPEAKER_16]: They wait until something blows up and then, you know, literally and figuratively, then, then they kind of react to it.
[19:31.000 --> 19:46.140]  [SPEAKER_16]: Um, I don't think anyone thought about it, you know, but then once, you know, the, the rationale was, I thought, well, the enemy could be reading this stuff and we shouldn't allow them that because, you know, whatever, which was really kind of a lame excuse because there was nothing that was in my blog that isn't,
[19:46.280 --> 19:50.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: you know, completely accessible through any other, you know, in the newspaper, for crying out loud.
[19:50.800 --> 19:53.260]  [SPEAKER_16]: But, uh, they, clearly they really didn't think about it.
[19:54.380 --> 19:54.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: Mm-hmm.
[19:55.180 --> 19:58.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, what, what, what motivated you to, uh, to want to put up a blog in the first place?
[19:59.500 --> 20:01.480]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, I'm a suburban kid from Utah.
[20:01.780 --> 20:05.660]  [SPEAKER_16]: I'm probably the most, but like the least interesting human being ever born.
[20:05.800 --> 20:08.120]  [SPEAKER_16]: And it was just the first interesting thing that had ever happened in me.
[20:08.200 --> 20:10.900]  [SPEAKER_16]: And it, to me, I just, it seemed like, how could I not write about this?
[20:11.620 --> 20:15.520]  [SPEAKER_16]: You know, I was, I definitely, I definitely had to do it and I just, I had the means to do it.
[20:15.580 --> 20:16.380]  [SPEAKER_16]: And so I did.
[20:16.500 --> 20:17.780]  [SPEAKER_16]: And that was, I was, that's all it was really.
[20:19.020 --> 20:19.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: Amazing.
[20:19.580 --> 20:23.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now the, uh, the blog, I believe can still be found at justanothersoldier.com?
[20:23.820 --> 20:24.720]  [SPEAKER_16]: Uh, yes, it can be.
[20:24.880 --> 20:36.660]  [SPEAKER_16]: Basically everything that got cut out of the book is on the blog there at justanothersoldier.com, which is still a lot of material, particularly all the photographs that, you know, cause the book kind of got published very quickly and we couldn't include photographs.
[20:37.320 --> 20:41.900]  [SPEAKER_16]: So there's a lot of, there's definitely still a lot of really interesting material, even though it's stuff that got cut from the book.
[20:41.980 --> 20:45.300]  [SPEAKER_16]: I'd like to think of it as kind of like a DVD extras.
[20:45.960 --> 20:50.100]  [SPEAKER_16]: Basically it's the extra feature from the book is the website now, but there's still plenty of fun stuff to read if you were to go there.
[20:50.640 --> 20:52.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the book is called Just Another Soldier.
[20:53.040 --> 20:54.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's published by Harper.
[20:54.500 --> 20:56.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, uh, I guess it's available everywhere, right?
[20:56.520 --> 20:59.260]  [SPEAKER_16]: Uh, it should be, you know, online bookstores.
[20:59.620 --> 21:00.120]  [SPEAKER_16]: It's easy to find.
[21:01.020 --> 21:01.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: Cool.
[21:01.580 --> 21:04.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: And it's, uh, I, I, I, like I said, I've been reading it, uh, over the last few weeks.
[21:04.940 --> 21:11.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: It is an incredible, uh, uh, uh, story, incredible, um, series of emotions that you feel reading this.
[21:11.580 --> 21:13.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: And it's, um, it's just really well done.
[21:13.300 --> 21:15.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's, it's, it's, it's a great, uh, great piece of work.
[21:15.860 --> 21:21.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, Josh Fox, uh, you're the director of, uh, the show Surrender, uh, which Jason is also involved in.
[21:22.200 --> 21:25.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: Um, do you want to tell us how, uh, this all came to be?
[21:25.760 --> 21:27.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: How did you get in touch with Jason?
[21:27.340 --> 21:28.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: How did the show come into the end?
[21:28.820 --> 21:29.260]  [SPEAKER_13]: Sure, sure.
[21:29.340 --> 21:29.800]  [SPEAKER_13]: I can do that.
[21:30.080 --> 21:40.140]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, Jason Hartley is a mutual friend of, uh, uh, friend of a friend, Laura Wagner, um, who is a film producer who was producing a film that I was directing called Memorial Day.
[21:40.440 --> 21:43.060]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, and we needed a military advisor for that film.
[21:43.420 --> 21:49.940]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, and I'll put in a plug now because Memorial Day actually, after three years in the making, is going to open in February.
[21:50.000 --> 21:54.760]  [SPEAKER_13]: In New York, it'll open at the IFC Center, uh, Sixth Avenue and Third Street, February 4th.
[21:54.900 --> 22:00.940]  [SPEAKER_13]: So, uh, people who've seen Surrender or, or who will see it can go to see Memorial Day right afterwards.
[22:01.180 --> 22:02.860]  [SPEAKER_13]: So, um, uh, at IFC.
[22:03.180 --> 22:10.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: Uh, but, uh, Jason, we needed a military advisor because essentially, uh, my company, International Wow Company, is a company of, of quite a few actors.
[22:11.300 --> 22:15.860]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, International Wow, uh, started in 96 in Thailand.
[22:15.860 --> 22:26.500]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's become a network of actors directors and directors, designers, writers, um, in 29 countries, uh, you know, basically 150 people and getting together to do projects.
[22:26.620 --> 22:34.520]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I was working on this, uh, film called Memorial Day, which tracks a group of people from a crazed beach weekend in Maryland, uh, over to Iraq.
[22:34.800 --> 22:42.800]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, and so we needed someone to train our actors to become soldiers and also me because I wanted to know what, what to do, you know, how to create this film.
[22:43.000 --> 22:48.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: So luckily, uh, Laura knew Jason and then I started to look at his, his blog and read his book.
[22:48.920 --> 23:01.080]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I realized that, um, we had already shot about half of the film and then we were looking for Jason to come in, um, or somebody to come in and Jason's blog and his book is incredibly in your face.
[23:01.080 --> 23:03.880]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's extreme and it doesn't pull any punches.
[23:04.160 --> 23:08.500]  [SPEAKER_13]: And that sort of what we were looking for in terms of our work as well.
[23:08.660 --> 23:10.800]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's, it's very much, it's a confrontational approach.
[23:11.180 --> 23:16.600]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, and I thought, wow, I'm, I might actually get along with this person.
[23:16.600 --> 23:22.620]  [SPEAKER_13]: So we had a meeting up in New Paltz, um, which was, I think really kind of mutually intimidating in a way.
[23:22.700 --> 23:26.720]  [SPEAKER_13]: You know, I think I was scared to meet Jason, this guy who had been in Iraq and, and I don't know.
[23:26.820 --> 23:29.580]  [SPEAKER_16]: And Josh came with a whole entourage and then we sat there.
[23:29.720 --> 23:36.720]  [SPEAKER_16]: Josh talked for 45 minutes and like his entire crew sat down and thought, this guy must be really important because he has a whole crew that just sits there with him.
[23:38.080 --> 23:38.860]  [SPEAKER_13]: That, um, yeah.
[23:39.500 --> 23:40.400]  [SPEAKER_13]: Uh, thanks.
[23:40.920 --> 23:43.240]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, but actually we got along really well.
[23:43.360 --> 23:50.580]  [SPEAKER_13]: And then basically we spent a few weeks with our actors about, uh, you know, between 12 and 15 actors training in these combat techniques.
[23:51.060 --> 24:00.700]  [SPEAKER_13]: And it was astounding because, um, you know, I have to say the last time I was in WBAI, I was here with theaters against war THAW, which is, you know, 350 member theaters.
[24:00.860 --> 24:02.640]  [SPEAKER_13]: And we were here quite a few times.
[24:02.640 --> 24:04.380]  [SPEAKER_13]: I was one of the steering committee members there.
[24:04.980 --> 24:09.420]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, and here I am doing military training and having a blast, having an unbelievable time.
[24:09.640 --> 24:13.600]  [SPEAKER_13]: And it keys into something really fundamental, a survival instinct inside of people.
[24:13.800 --> 24:15.540]  [SPEAKER_13]: And it's, it's transcendent in a way.
[24:15.640 --> 24:27.020]  [SPEAKER_13]: And when you're with a group of guys, you know, in the stack lined up there, ready to raid a room and, and, you know, you have your rifle and you have your, your buddies, there's nothing you'd rather be doing at that moment.
[24:27.160 --> 24:28.260]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I thought, isn't this interesting?
[24:28.440 --> 24:33.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: This is a complete, utter contradiction, contradiction inside of myself, a contradiction for the actors.
[24:33.880 --> 24:34.800]  [SPEAKER_13]: And everybody got into it.
[24:34.900 --> 24:37.860]  [SPEAKER_13]: And, you know, um, it became a little bit like an addiction.
[24:38.000 --> 24:40.040]  [SPEAKER_13]: And when we ended up, we got so carried away with it.
[24:40.120 --> 24:46.960]  [SPEAKER_13]: We ended up, uh, shooting a scene that we probably shouldn't have shot in our, uh, warehouse in Brooklyn, um, with some live rounds.
[24:47.100 --> 24:49.100]  [SPEAKER_13]: We ended up getting raided by the street crime unit.
[24:49.480 --> 24:49.860]  [SPEAKER_13]: Blanks, right?
[24:49.980 --> 24:50.640]  [SPEAKER_13]: Live blanks.
[24:50.760 --> 24:50.900]  [SPEAKER_13]: Yeah.
[24:50.960 --> 24:51.160]  [SPEAKER_13]: Sorry.
[24:51.340 --> 24:55.940]  [SPEAKER_13]: We ended up, anyway, we were so hyped up on this training that we ended up getting raided by the street crime unit, almost getting killed.
[24:56.540 --> 24:59.000]  [SPEAKER_16]: Um, the cops came in with weapons out.
[24:59.240 --> 24:59.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: Yeah.
[24:59.500 --> 25:01.800]  [SPEAKER_16]: Like, they did what we, what you would do.
[25:01.880 --> 25:03.480]  [SPEAKER_13]: You were filming it and they were doing it for real.
[25:03.620 --> 25:04.020]  [SPEAKER_13]: Right, right.
[25:04.040 --> 25:04.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: We were filming it.
[25:05.100 --> 25:13.440]  [SPEAKER_13]: We were, they had like 20 guys in the, in the house with, you know, a fake barrack set up and all these rifles and, and, um, and they drew, you know, nines in my face.
[25:13.640 --> 25:15.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: And it was really, you know, not so fun.
[25:16.040 --> 25:17.300]  [SPEAKER_13]: Anyway, the training...
[25:17.300 --> 25:18.400]  [SPEAKER_03]: Did you get that on film?
[25:18.820 --> 25:19.580]  [SPEAKER_13]: No, no.
[25:19.880 --> 25:20.640]  [SPEAKER_13]: Uh, well, I don't know.
[25:20.820 --> 25:29.740]  [SPEAKER_13]: Actually, someone claims to have got it on film, but I won't look at it because it was as close as I've ever come to getting, at least as far as I know, shot by the New York City police.
[25:29.920 --> 25:36.860]  [SPEAKER_13]: But, um, anyway, uh, the training was, was so interesting that I wanted to offer this to the general public.
[25:36.860 --> 25:41.960]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I thought, let's figure out a way to have the training happen in an hour and a half.
[25:42.100 --> 25:45.320]  [SPEAKER_13]: People can do it, get involved in it, and then let's take it a step further.
[25:45.480 --> 25:49.500]  [SPEAKER_13]: So when talking with Jason over, we talked about this and planned it over a course of about a year.
[25:49.840 --> 26:02.580]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, you know, uh, let's give them the training, a crash course, and then let's throw them into a military installation or essentially what would be another part of the training, like when you would go on training raids and do that with actors.
[26:02.900 --> 26:08.080]  [SPEAKER_13]: And then let's do it, let's extend it a little bit further and actually put people in the position of soldiers coming home.
[26:08.140 --> 26:11.220]  [SPEAKER_13]: Cause that, I don't know if the army trains for that in the same way.
[26:11.480 --> 26:15.160]  [SPEAKER_13]: So, well, so the idea would be three act structure.
[26:15.340 --> 26:28.900]  [SPEAKER_13]: One with training with Jason, another one where you raid this Iraqi village, which is populated by actors, uh, some of whom who you are compelled to shoot, some of whom you are compelled to search, others of whom you're compelled to do nothing to, I guess.
[26:29.460 --> 26:30.620]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, or...
[26:30.620 --> 26:32.000]  [SPEAKER_13]: Sometimes he makes those three things up.
[26:32.140 --> 26:32.460]  [SPEAKER_13]: Oh yeah, right.
[26:32.580 --> 26:33.980]  [SPEAKER_13]: Sometimes that's part of the point, right?
[26:34.060 --> 26:34.420]  [SPEAKER_13]: Right, yeah.
[26:34.420 --> 26:36.040]  [SPEAKER_13]: That sometimes you end up shooting civilians.
[26:36.440 --> 26:48.380]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, and that you have this intense experience where the war machine or the, the war training, um, takes over and that takes over your, uh, that is what does the operation.
[26:48.540 --> 26:55.380]  [SPEAKER_13]: The way you've been trained in just an hour and a half leads you into a scenario, um, which you wouldn't ordinarily, uh, find.
[26:55.800 --> 27:00.980]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, I don't, I guess, uh, which you wouldn't ordinarily do, right?
[27:01.480 --> 27:13.180]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, and then you, you're stuck with the repercussions of this and then you come home on a plane, you get on the plane and then you, the audience all together gets on this plane and the stewardesses are there giving you, you know, stuff.
[27:13.400 --> 27:18.960]  [SPEAKER_13]: And then the stage opens up and each, we, we play out seven or eight scenes of homecoming.
[27:19.180 --> 27:21.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: There's a funeral, there's a hospital, there's a bedroom scene.
[27:21.980 --> 27:30.720]  [SPEAKER_13]: And one, and each scene, an audience member is called onto the stage to read a karaoke scroller where they actually play the key role in the, in, in the scene.
[27:30.940 --> 27:38.060]  [SPEAKER_13]: So you have your girlfriend yelling at you in an argument at home and one of the audience members is on stage, um, and responding.
[27:38.280 --> 27:40.840]  [SPEAKER_13]: I think one of the people in this studio actually was in that role.
[27:41.360 --> 27:43.520]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, so it's it's, it's worked fabulously well.
[27:43.660 --> 27:49.120]  [SPEAKER_13]: We ran it for three weeks, uh, three and a half, four weeks at the Ohio theater, our beloved Ohio theater on Worcester street.
[27:49.480 --> 27:57.180]  [SPEAKER_13]: And you know, we're so excited by it and it's a 32 person cast of about a 50 person operation and everyone, you know, everyone just wanted to just put it on again.
[27:57.180 --> 28:02.560]  [SPEAKER_13]: So we juggled our schedule around and, and we're reopening it January 7th through the 25th.
[28:02.640 --> 28:03.540]  [SPEAKER_13]: Everything is at wow.
[28:03.780 --> 28:04.880]  [SPEAKER_13]: Surrender.org.
[28:05.060 --> 28:06.000]  [SPEAKER_13]: That's easy to remember.
[28:06.200 --> 28:06.300]  [SPEAKER_13]: Wow.
[28:06.480 --> 28:07.400]  [SPEAKER_13]: Surrender.org.
[28:07.600 --> 28:08.240]  [SPEAKER_13]: That's our website.
[28:08.660 --> 28:16.400]  [SPEAKER_13]: Tickets, you can see photographs, you can read FAQs, you can read audience reactions, which are really kind of embarrassingly off the charts.
[28:16.880 --> 28:18.200]  [SPEAKER_13]: So it was a big deal.
[28:18.220 --> 28:19.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: Josh, I'm a little curious about that.
[28:19.320 --> 28:20.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: The, the audience reactions.
[28:20.700 --> 28:27.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, when you first started doing this, it must have been, uh, uh, kind of a nail biter, not knowing how this was actually gonna turn out with people.
[28:27.640 --> 28:32.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: What, what kinds of, what are some of the classic reactions you got from people going through basic training off the streets of Manhattan?
[28:32.900 --> 28:36.160]  [SPEAKER_13]: Well, I wanted to pile as many risks as I possibly could into this.
[28:36.280 --> 28:38.860]  [SPEAKER_13]: You know, first of all, we didn't know how people would react to the training.
[28:39.120 --> 28:41.980]  [SPEAKER_13]: Then we didn't know how people would react to having to go into a war.
[28:42.140 --> 28:44.320]  [SPEAKER_13]: I mean, and the war simulation is really loud.
[28:44.720 --> 28:46.080]  [SPEAKER_13]: I mean, it's insanely loud.
[28:46.220 --> 28:48.240]  [SPEAKER_13]: We give out, sometimes give out earplugs.
[28:48.440 --> 28:51.660]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, and we didn't know how people would react to being called up on stage.
[28:51.780 --> 28:56.600]  [SPEAKER_13]: But you know, what's, what's so interesting is how compelling this indoctrination process can be.
[28:56.780 --> 29:06.020]  [SPEAKER_13]: You know, once you step into that hallway and, uh, Brandon Smith says, stand right here, here's your boots, go up the stairs, take, you know, take your uniform.
[29:06.460 --> 29:09.360]  [SPEAKER_13]: This, no one really bucks the system.
[29:09.500 --> 29:09.660]  [SPEAKER_16]: Yeah.
[29:09.740 --> 29:15.600]  [SPEAKER_16]: My, my biggest anxiety with the training was what, I mean, I've trained soldiers a lot, but that's easy because they're all there to be trained.
[29:15.740 --> 29:19.100]  [SPEAKER_16]: It's, you know, it's, plus there's mechanisms in place that they don't want to do it and so forth.
[29:19.160 --> 29:22.060]  [SPEAKER_16]: But I, I was worried, and how can we take essentially people off the street?
[29:22.200 --> 29:22.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: Right.
[29:22.600 --> 29:30.100]  [SPEAKER_16]: And the first thing that I do is yell at them, teach them how to do the pushup, and then continue to punish them for an hour and a half when they screw up my simple rules.
[29:30.220 --> 29:30.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: Right.
[29:30.320 --> 29:30.660]  [SPEAKER_16]: I love it.
[29:30.940 --> 29:32.800]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I thought, well, what if someone just were to say no?
[29:33.060 --> 29:34.380]  [SPEAKER_16]: I'm not sure what I would do.
[29:34.480 --> 29:47.440]  [SPEAKER_16]: What's interesting is after having done this for like three plus weeks is I've learned a lot about the whole concept of obedience to authority is when there's the illusion of authority and you tell someone, do this, do a pushup, even though you're physically incapable of doing it probably,
[29:47.480 --> 29:52.020]  [SPEAKER_16]: or you're a girl or whatever, and they do it anyways, is really interesting.
[29:52.240 --> 29:58.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: And the other thing here is there's, there's a, you know, there's a hundred plus people in the theater, you know?
[29:59.080 --> 30:00.500]  [SPEAKER_13]: So that's where you are.
[30:00.760 --> 30:04.800]  [SPEAKER_13]: And the interesting thing, I mean, International Wow Company is an experiment in culture.
[30:05.080 --> 30:07.540]  [SPEAKER_13]: And we do collaborations with other countries.
[30:07.540 --> 30:09.060]  [SPEAKER_13]: We do collaborations with other cultures.
[30:09.420 --> 30:13.080]  [SPEAKER_13]: And when you step into another culture, like we can get off a plane, like you're in Berlin right now.
[30:13.200 --> 30:16.340]  [SPEAKER_13]: I love Berlin because you can fire fireworks and that's completely normal.
[30:16.520 --> 30:18.060]  [SPEAKER_13]: And if you're in New York, it's not completely normal.
[30:18.280 --> 30:23.920]  [SPEAKER_13]: Well, if you walk in, step into the culture of the military, there are certain things that are completely normal and certain things that are abnormal.
[30:24.360 --> 30:35.080]  [SPEAKER_13]: And it was all about creating that At atmosphere, you know, where to say, no, I don't really want to do that, is there's so much downward pressure on you to not, you know.
[30:35.360 --> 30:40.400]  [SPEAKER_13]: But I think it's also, the thing about it is, when someone's teaching you something, you want to do it well.
[30:40.720 --> 30:46.260]  [SPEAKER_13]: You know, if they're teaching you math, they're teaching you computers, whatever it is, you're just compelled to do it well.
[30:46.480 --> 30:49.160]  [SPEAKER_13]: And so people start plugging into that instinct.
[30:49.320 --> 30:52.680]  [SPEAKER_13]: And then they realize that what they're learning how to do well is to kill people.
[30:53.220 --> 30:55.040]  [SPEAKER_13]: And that becomes...
[30:55.040 --> 30:55.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: Definitely, yeah.
[30:55.820 --> 31:00.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's amazing, because I was one of the people in this, as were three of the people, I believe, in the studio.
[31:01.140 --> 31:03.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: Jens, Voltaire, and Notkevin.
[31:03.160 --> 31:03.860]  [SPEAKER_05]: You're all there, right?
[31:03.880 --> 31:04.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: And you all took part in this?
[31:05.600 --> 31:05.860]  [SPEAKER_15]: Yep.
[31:06.380 --> 31:06.740]  [SPEAKER_15]: Yes.
[31:07.060 --> 31:10.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, Notkevin, in fact, you even became a member of the cast.
[31:10.320 --> 31:11.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: Do you want to tell us how that came about?
[31:14.120 --> 31:15.600]  [SPEAKER_12]: I kind of just started showing up.
[31:17.460 --> 31:19.280]  [SPEAKER_12]: That's the key to international wow.
[31:19.380 --> 31:21.520]  [SPEAKER_12]: If you keep showing up, you've got a lot to do.
[31:22.240 --> 31:32.420]  [SPEAKER_15]: Yeah, I came out of the play, and I was just kind of so blown away that it was kind of stuck in the back of my mind for about a week, and I just couldn't stop thinking about it.
[31:33.560 --> 31:33.920]  [SPEAKER_15]: And...
[31:33.920 --> 31:36.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, you actually were blown away, because you were dead.
[31:36.920 --> 31:37.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I was killed.
[31:38.980 --> 31:39.440]  [SPEAKER_13]: That's right.
[31:39.460 --> 31:41.960]  [SPEAKER_13]: Some of the audience members don't make it through the second act.
[31:41.960 --> 31:54.640]  [SPEAKER_13]: There is a, you know, a hospital, you know, and each of the squads suffer some kind of casualty, and some of those people who end up in the hospital room end up dying, and they go to the death room, which I'm not going to talk about what happens in the death room.
[31:55.160 --> 31:58.100]  [SPEAKER_13]: That's for the people who've been there to elaborate upon.
[31:58.100 --> 32:08.940]  [SPEAKER_13]: But, um, about, back to audience reactions, it was really, uh, it went, and it has been going quite, about as well as we could have imagined, you know.
[32:09.120 --> 32:17.240]  [SPEAKER_13]: Um, it's a long show, it's three and a half hours, and no one ever complains about the, it just, it's like you start being inside of that reality.
[32:17.240 --> 32:31.140]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I think that, um, that's one of the reasons why we're really compelled to bring it back, uh, because it had seemed to be working so much, you know, and it has created, uh, family or community or whatever you want to call it around the production and people,
[32:31.420 --> 32:38.700]  [SPEAKER_13]: you know, obviously like Notkevin, who are here in the studio inviting us in here, um, a little bit off topic for your program, um, to talk about this.
[32:38.700 --> 32:52.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's, it's, it's, you know, we just want to keep, keep doing it, and, and, um, hopefully the listeners, uh, of, of this program, WBAI, will come down, uh, check out WowSurrender.org and take a look at it and come down and see us January 7th through the 25th and be a part of that,
[32:52.780 --> 32:52.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: too.
[32:52.920 --> 33:04.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: You really do have to suspend your disbelief for a little bit, and, and, and what you guys are saying is so true, because when I was down there, uh, yeah, I'm being yelled at, I have to change my clothes, I have to hold, uh, my weapon in just the proper way,
[33:04.780 --> 33:18.460]  [SPEAKER_05]: I have to do push-ups when told to do push-ups, and within a few minutes, uh, your, your resistance has, is changing to just wanting to be accepted, and then, when you're through all of this, when you go through all of this for a, a few hours with these people who are yelling orders at you,
[33:18.780 --> 33:25.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: all of a sudden, this camaraderie begins to develop, and you just want to please them, and when it's over, you feel like you've really been through something together with them.
[33:26.280 --> 33:28.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, does that parallel what happens to you when you go into the military?
[33:29.400 --> 33:38.640]  [SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, absolutely, and what's, it's amazing that we've been able to do that on kind of like a micro scale with the show, but I, it's, yeah, it's, it's identical to what I feel.
[33:38.700 --> 33:48.680]  [SPEAKER_16]: In the military, you're with a group of people, and you can, vastly different, you're from all different parts of the United States, and sometimes not even in the United States, and then, it's, it, you, that camaraderie develops quickly.
[33:48.840 --> 34:03.280]  [SPEAKER_16]: Anytime you suffer together, builds camaraderie very quickly, and, because it's a way of coping with, the only guys who don't make it through training are the ones who don't make friends, and occasionally people, we, we, we have people quit, you know,
[34:03.520 --> 34:07.040]  [SPEAKER_16]: a handful, every time we do a show, it's normal, and I...
[34:07.040 --> 34:08.000]  [SPEAKER_12]: Every time we do a show?
[34:08.340 --> 34:10.480]  [SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, well, you, you're doing stuff, Josh, I'm kind of hanging around.
[34:10.480 --> 34:12.280]  [SPEAKER_13]: I thought you were talking about the military, not about theater.
[34:12.340 --> 34:24.280]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, it's, even that, it's, it's still, it's analogous, it's similar, there's always a handful of dudes who quit, because somebody kind of like, they don't get along, they don't, you know, surrender to the camaraderie, if you will, okay, and they, I know it's bad,
[34:24.440 --> 34:36.440]  [SPEAKER_16]: and they don't, they don't make it, and so, yeah, it's, it's, I think it's a natural mechanism in human beings, it kind of, it's a social aspect, it's, you, you, you, you be tight to deal with, you know, whatever the, the thing you are suffering at that moment.
[34:37.040 --> 34:53.520]  [SPEAKER_13]: And that's what you find in the theater as well, also, I think, you know, that that was one of the main connected points, right, because you're working with a group of people towards this incredible, difficult set of obstacles in the theater, always, and you develop a real camaraderie relationship with each other.
[34:53.520 --> 34:55.720]  [SPEAKER_13]: And that was one of the things that we wanted to open up as well.
[34:55.900 --> 35:06.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I might add, just because this program, you know, I think surrender, is seeking to, to break that barrier down between the audience, between the spectator, and the actor, between the artist and the audience.
[35:07.060 --> 35:21.320]  [SPEAKER_13]: And also, I think, I think of that in a, in a, in a correlative way to the way the Internet functions, you know, because I think we're raised on, you know, film, TV, reading books, at a certain point, these media that have narratives that, you know, you don't interact with.
[35:23.520 --> 35:24.880]  [SPEAKER_13]: Now it's a totally different thing.
[35:25.060 --> 35:30.320]  [SPEAKER_13]: Our brains are organized towards the Internet, which we can interact with, which we can shape and move and change at any moment.
[35:30.520 --> 35:40.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I think surrender is a lot about that principle, you know, the principle of you are here, and you're constantly making choices against it, you know, or with it, towards it.
[35:40.860 --> 35:45.720]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's about your, you know, what, what are you going along with, you know, and how does it, how does that experience change?
[35:46.640 --> 35:48.740]  [SPEAKER_13]: And a really weird thing happened to me.
[35:48.880 --> 35:57.140]  [SPEAKER_13]: When I, when we closed the show, I took one of the huge flat screens from the theater and put it in my room, and I was watching a movie.
[35:57.560 --> 36:02.680]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I'm sitting there, like, kind of shaking and freaking out with sort of, like, needing to be at the theater.
[36:03.180 --> 36:16.060]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I, I was watching this movie, and I started to click my knee, like, it was a mouse, like, I wanted to click to the next window, because the movie was just not moving fast enough, it was boring, you know, it was bizarre.
[36:16.620 --> 36:22.520]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I couldn't, I realized my hand was tapping at my knee, as if I was, like, trying to click to the, you know, another window.
[36:22.780 --> 36:26.400]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I felt like this had something to do with surrender, something to do with experience.
[36:26.400 --> 36:30.720]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's a new form of theater, a new form of going to a narrative, going into a narrative.
[36:31.120 --> 36:32.360]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's still very much controlled.
[36:32.540 --> 36:33.440]  [SPEAKER_13]: It still has its own arc.
[36:33.580 --> 36:34.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's still, you can't change that.
[36:34.920 --> 36:40.980]  [SPEAKER_13]: But it does have that other feeling of, you are there, it's reacting to you, and you can react to it.
[36:41.620 --> 36:50.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're speaking with Josh Fox and Jason Hartley of the production Surrender, taking place at the Flamboyan Theater, did I say it right this time?
[36:50.500 --> 36:50.980]  [SPEAKER_12]: Flamboyan.
[36:51.760 --> 36:53.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: Flamboyan, I'll get it right when you say it.
[36:53.580 --> 36:56.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: 107 Suffolk Street from January 7th through the 25th.
[36:57.720 --> 37:00.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: And four of us in the studio have been through this already.
[37:00.840 --> 37:03.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: What would you guys say to many of our listeners?
[37:03.320 --> 37:11.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't consider myself to be a pro-military person by any stretch of the imagination, yet I found the whole experience to be fascinating.
[37:11.300 --> 37:17.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: What would you say to people who are, and I don't think, I think there are quite a few members of our audience that might be a bit hesitant about this.
[37:18.560 --> 37:23.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: How would you explain it to them in a way that they might be willing to go through this?
[37:24.300 --> 37:26.040]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, this is June's, by the way.
[37:26.140 --> 37:28.000]  [SPEAKER_10]: I was a wuss the first time around.
[37:28.000 --> 37:29.220]  [SPEAKER_10]: You guys actually participated.
[37:29.220 --> 37:30.480]  [SPEAKER_10]: I was just an observer.
[37:31.300 --> 37:32.400]  [SPEAKER_10]: Because I wasn't really sure.
[37:32.940 --> 37:35.600]  [SPEAKER_10]: The whole participatory thing was a little weird to me.
[37:35.820 --> 37:39.080]  [SPEAKER_10]: And I didn't want to go in and get yelled at and make a fool of myself.
[37:39.300 --> 37:43.260]  [SPEAKER_10]: So I opted to just watch, which you can do.
[37:44.180 --> 37:46.180]  [SPEAKER_10]: But it was so good.
[37:47.300 --> 37:49.760]  [SPEAKER_10]: One of the other things I was afraid of is just being an observer.
[37:49.760 --> 37:52.160]  [SPEAKER_10]: I thought, well, they're going to laugh at me because I don't want to do this.
[37:52.240 --> 37:54.300]  [SPEAKER_10]: And I'm going to get put down.
[37:54.460 --> 37:56.080]  [SPEAKER_10]: But you actually get treated very well.
[37:56.080 --> 37:58.900]  [SPEAKER_10]: You're like a VIP when you get there.
[37:59.100 --> 38:00.400]  [SPEAKER_10]: They have a liaison for you.
[38:00.480 --> 38:01.340]  [SPEAKER_10]: You're first on the plane.
[38:01.480 --> 38:03.320]  [SPEAKER_10]: You get to watch everything without having to be yelled at.
[38:03.820 --> 38:05.920]  [SPEAKER_10]: So that helped to calm my nerves.
[38:05.980 --> 38:07.160]  [SPEAKER_10]: I had such a good time.
[38:07.380 --> 38:10.620]  [SPEAKER_10]: I went back a week later and did the thing for real.
[38:10.740 --> 38:11.980]  [SPEAKER_10]: So it was a lot of fun.
[38:13.740 --> 38:14.300]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[38:16.400 --> 38:20.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: It really is something amazing to try doing something a little bit different.
[38:20.860 --> 38:24.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: And just see how someone else lives their life.
[38:24.840 --> 38:30.180]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think through Jason's book and through this play, you just learn so much.
[38:30.340 --> 38:36.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think that opens up eyes and wakes people up and helps us understand each other a bit more.
[38:37.300 --> 38:39.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: Jason, I'd just like to go into some more of your background.
[38:40.180 --> 38:43.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, I know that I found this part of the book to be particularly fascinating.
[38:44.080 --> 38:45.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: Your expulsion from school.
[38:45.920 --> 38:47.180]  [SPEAKER_05]: Can you tell us this story?
[38:47.280 --> 38:50.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: Because I think a lot of our listeners might identify with this.
[38:51.100 --> 38:51.480]  [SPEAKER_16]: Yeah.
[38:51.560 --> 38:52.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: I went to school.
[38:52.840 --> 38:53.600]  [SPEAKER_16]: I'm from Salt Lake.
[38:53.600 --> 38:54.360]  [SPEAKER_16]: I went to school in Utah.
[38:54.780 --> 38:57.980]  [SPEAKER_16]: The culture there is very centered around the Mormon church.
[38:57.980 --> 38:58.920]  [SPEAKER_16]: It's very conservative.
[38:59.320 --> 39:06.480]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I had a complaint when I was in high school that I didn't feel as though kids really were treated in a way that would prepare them for adulthood.
[39:06.760 --> 39:09.520]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I had a bunch of, you know, bad citizenship.
[39:09.520 --> 39:10.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I had to do all these service hours.
[39:11.020 --> 39:15.020]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I wanted a way of expressing my dissatisfaction with the way that the school treated its students.
[39:15.020 --> 39:18.980]  [SPEAKER_16]: So I thought the way to do it would be kind of through like a literary terrorism, if you will.
[39:19.060 --> 39:26.940]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I wrote an underground newspaper where I just basically complained in, you know, what I tried to be as funny as I could be and also as profane as possible because Mormons love that.
[39:27.680 --> 39:29.060]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I made this little newspaper.
[39:29.460 --> 39:32.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: I had seen the movie Pump Up the Volume with Christian Slater.
[39:32.440 --> 39:32.960]  [SPEAKER_16]: Fine film.
[39:33.640 --> 39:36.200]  [SPEAKER_16]: And it really got me, you know, kind of fired up.
[39:36.220 --> 39:37.020]  [SPEAKER_16]: I thought, I'm going to do this.
[39:37.020 --> 39:44.040]  [SPEAKER_16]: So I made this little eight-page newspaper and I figured out a whole time when, like, there was no supervision at the school and distributed it into the lockers.
[39:45.040 --> 39:49.700]  [SPEAKER_16]: And it was then on, you know, Monday morning when everyone opened their lockers and had a little newspaper.
[39:49.980 --> 39:51.580]  [SPEAKER_16]: But, you know, created quite a fiasco.
[39:51.580 --> 39:58.700]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I had taken great lengths to hide my identity, which did absolutely no good because all my English teachers looked at it and said, well, Jason wrote this.
[39:59.580 --> 40:08.360]  [SPEAKER_16]: And, yeah, long story short is I got expelled for my writing, which is not unsimilar to kind of how the army reacted when I did virtually the exact same thing.
[40:10.700 --> 40:13.720]  [SPEAKER_16]: But, yeah, that was kind of an interesting experience.
[40:13.960 --> 40:16.020]  [SPEAKER_16]: My mom didn't talk to me for a few weeks.
[40:16.360 --> 40:17.360]  [SPEAKER_16]: I never graduated.
[40:17.560 --> 40:20.100]  [SPEAKER_16]: I had to, like, go back a year later and get a diploma through a whole...
[40:20.100 --> 40:25.340]  [SPEAKER_16]: They wouldn't even take me at, like, the alternative high school where all the pregnant kids and, like, drug addicts go.
[40:25.580 --> 40:28.040]  [SPEAKER_16]: I got kicked out of the whole district because they were so furious.
[40:29.540 --> 40:29.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: Wow.
[40:30.320 --> 40:34.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it sounds like you're a rebel against any kind of authority.
[40:35.420 --> 40:37.760]  [SPEAKER_05]: How did you wind up in the military with that attitude?
[40:37.960 --> 40:40.740]  [SPEAKER_16]: I think I've thought about this a lot and I get asked this a lot.
[40:40.800 --> 40:46.000]  [SPEAKER_16]: I think what it is is the army provides me with a structure that I can continually rebel against my father perpetually, essentially.
[40:46.640 --> 40:49.340]  [SPEAKER_16]: You know, and it's also interesting to be on the authority side of it.
[40:49.460 --> 40:51.520]  [SPEAKER_16]: You really, you know, take self-loathing to a whole new level.
[40:51.720 --> 40:54.560]  [SPEAKER_16]: So why rebel against authority when you just become the authority?
[40:55.060 --> 40:56.400]  [SPEAKER_16]: You know, I don't know.
[40:56.580 --> 40:57.960]  [SPEAKER_16]: It's just probably not therapy hour.
[40:59.540 --> 41:01.800]  [SPEAKER_16]: But, yeah, it's kind of...
[41:01.800 --> 41:04.300]  [SPEAKER_16]: There's a lot of duality, I suppose, in everything that I do.
[41:04.380 --> 41:08.000]  [SPEAKER_16]: And that's one big structure of duality that I love.
[41:08.680 --> 41:17.320]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I think on the activist question that you brought up earlier, I think it's very, very important to look at these issues with the complexity that they deserve.
[41:17.760 --> 41:20.220]  [SPEAKER_13]: You know, I mean, I've been an activist for a very long time.
[41:20.220 --> 41:26.220]  [SPEAKER_13]: And one of the things that I find frustrating is a little bit the black and white aspect of being against or for things.
[41:26.360 --> 41:29.220]  [SPEAKER_13]: I mean, because you're against this war doesn't mean you're against the soldiers.
[41:29.380 --> 41:30.960]  [SPEAKER_13]: Does it mean that you're against people?
[41:31.060 --> 41:32.460]  [SPEAKER_13]: Does it mean that you're against these systems?
[41:32.460 --> 41:55.100]  [SPEAKER_13]: I mean, and I think in meeting Jason and being the very unique and compelling artist that he is, the thing here that I would hope to offer to the audience and to the WBAI listenership, who I know are, like me, activists in so many ways, that this is an opportunity,
[41:55.100 --> 42:22.160]  [SPEAKER_13]: I think, to examine that and to actually take a look at something that you probably don't have access to or you may not have had access to in your life and reconfigure a little bit of how those arguments work because I think it actually makes a more compelling case for the anti-war movements or the anti-war effort to be able to make contact in the language that the military uses with them.
[42:22.160 --> 42:24.080]  [SPEAKER_13]: You know, this is about communicating.
[42:24.560 --> 42:29.300]  [SPEAKER_13]: You know, one percent, I think it's half of one percent of the United States has been to Iraq or Afghanistan.
[42:29.680 --> 42:36.520]  [SPEAKER_13]: Very, very, very small percentage of people, very specialized group of people have to carry all these things out no matter who protests.
[42:36.760 --> 42:49.240]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I think it's extraordinarily important to be able to make contact, to know how those two cultures work, I mean, to make contact between those two cultures because I saw this anti-war culture and this military culture not being able to talk at all to each other.
[42:49.380 --> 42:58.200]  [SPEAKER_13]: So hopefully in some small way, this begins to bridge that gap and that this begins to then take those issues in a pragmatic way and say, how do we resolve this?
[42:58.260 --> 42:59.380]  [SPEAKER_13]: How do we stop this?
[42:59.480 --> 43:00.640]  [SPEAKER_13]: How do we solve these problems?
[43:00.900 --> 43:02.560]  [SPEAKER_13]: How do we deal with this moral question?
[43:02.820 --> 43:09.220]  [SPEAKER_13]: You know, and because if you just shut the door and you say, I'm not going to deal with that at all, like many of my friends at THAW were saying, we don't need a military.
[43:09.360 --> 43:10.260]  [SPEAKER_13]: Why are you talking to that guy?
[43:10.360 --> 43:11.260]  [SPEAKER_13]: Why are you talking to those people?
[43:11.420 --> 43:12.880]  [SPEAKER_13]: I just thought that that was wrongheaded.
[43:13.080 --> 43:13.740]  [SPEAKER_13]: I really did.
[43:13.740 --> 43:24.000]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I would encourage the fear barrier to go away and do surrender and deal with surrender because I think it strengthens your ability to be an activist and to be a thinker because these are things that happen in the world.
[43:24.280 --> 43:25.840]  [SPEAKER_13]: You know what I'm saying?
[43:26.000 --> 43:27.480]  [SPEAKER_13]: That's where I'm jumping in.
[43:27.500 --> 43:31.080]  [SPEAKER_13]: The duality aspect of it, I think, is where Jason and I are meeting.
[43:31.080 --> 43:43.240]  [SPEAKER_13]: And where we're trying to discuss this is inherent contradiction and trying to deal with the thorny problems, the double emotions, the difficulty of the question that you asked.
[43:43.360 --> 43:55.440]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, the thing that I've always kind of approached with a lot of my writing is there's all these kind of irreconcilable things that occur simultaneously, such as the big question is, how can you be a good person and be a good soldier at the same time?
[43:55.660 --> 44:02.020]  [SPEAKER_16]: I mean, first, if you assume, which I assume, maybe some people will disagree, but I assume that there is a need for soldiers.
[44:02.500 --> 44:03.160]  [SPEAKER_16]: People will fight.
[44:03.320 --> 44:04.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: That's just the way mortality is structured.
[44:04.880 --> 44:09.940]  [SPEAKER_16]: So if you assume that you need an army, how can you be a good soldier and how can you be a good person?
[44:10.640 --> 44:21.680]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I hope that when people leave the theater, they feel on some level the same way that I did when I left Iraq was, well, I don't know quite what to make of this because they have these two things that just they don't...
[44:21.680 --> 44:22.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: I can't reconcile.
[44:22.840 --> 44:24.080]  [SPEAKER_16]: I can't resolve it.
[44:24.120 --> 44:31.300]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I think that causes you to really do some good thinking, frankly, and also when you start enjoying some of the stuff, too.
[44:31.500 --> 44:33.240]  [SPEAKER_16]: I think if you're really honest, that's another...
[44:33.240 --> 44:37.280]  [SPEAKER_16]: that's a fantastic question you'd ask yourself is, wow, why was that fun?
[44:37.820 --> 44:45.420]  [SPEAKER_16]: People, you know, for lack of a better word, if I were to be brutally honest about my experience in Iraq, the best word to use to describe it is fun.
[44:45.580 --> 44:47.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: It's not the most accurate, but it's the closest.
[44:47.780 --> 44:50.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: And a lot of people react that way, too, when they go to Surrender.
[44:51.120 --> 44:51.520]  [SPEAKER_16]: To the show.
[44:51.720 --> 44:54.480]  [SPEAKER_13]: And you can find out more about it at wowsurrender.org.
[44:56.040 --> 44:56.440]  [SPEAKER_08]: Absolutely.
[44:56.720 --> 44:57.900]  [SPEAKER_15]: I think that last point really...
[44:57.900 --> 44:58.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: Hey, Jason, I want to ask you something.
[44:58.460 --> 44:58.640]  [SPEAKER_15]: Sure.
[44:58.760 --> 44:59.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: Go ahead.
[44:59.840 --> 45:12.060]  [SPEAKER_15]: I think the last point you made was really, really touched on it is the same way I felt when I came out of the theater that I went through this week-long period of just thinking and thinking about, wait, and then coming to the conclusion that, wait, that was kind of fun.
[45:12.320 --> 45:15.400]  [SPEAKER_15]: And I was just so drawn back that I couldn't leave.
[45:17.320 --> 45:19.160]  [SPEAKER_05]: No matter how many times you were asked to.
[45:20.160 --> 45:20.800]  [SPEAKER_15]: Yes?
[45:21.620 --> 45:23.320]  [SPEAKER_04]: Jason, I wanted to ask you a question.
[45:23.660 --> 45:23.980]  [SPEAKER_04]: Shoot.
[45:25.080 --> 45:27.600]  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm here in Philadelphia where the U.S.
[45:27.660 --> 45:31.800]  [SPEAKER_04]: Army has opened its first Army Experience Center.
[45:32.280 --> 45:49.620]  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a theater-type environment where ostensibly teenagers and young people can experience the Army experience in a virtual reality setting, playing video games,
[45:53.260 --> 46:02.780]  [SPEAKER_04]: riding virtual Blackhawk helicopters and Humvees and firing M16s and that sort of thing.
[46:03.300 --> 46:04.580]  [SPEAKER_04]: Are you familiar with this?
[46:04.860 --> 46:06.160]  [SPEAKER_04]: I think so.
[46:06.380 --> 46:13.960]  [SPEAKER_16]: I think what the equipment they have at that place is something that it's the same thing that we are starting to use now in training.
[46:14.120 --> 46:17.960]  [SPEAKER_16]: So I believe that what they have there I have used on one occasion.
[46:18.780 --> 46:25.360]  [SPEAKER_04]: So do you have any opinions about how they are recruiting using this theater mechanism?
[46:25.500 --> 46:29.620]  [SPEAKER_04]: And have you checked that out yet?
[46:30.380 --> 46:31.540]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, it's interesting.
[46:31.720 --> 46:32.760]  [SPEAKER_16]: It almost seems...
[46:32.760 --> 46:33.540]  [SPEAKER_16]: Almost seems...
[46:33.540 --> 46:35.580]  [SPEAKER_16]: It does seem kind of crass in a way.
[46:35.780 --> 46:37.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: I mean, it's just a video game.
[46:37.940 --> 46:42.100]  [SPEAKER_16]: It's not a great one, but it's just like any other game you might play what's a first-person shooter.
[46:42.240 --> 46:53.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: But for us, in training, it's a very effective tool to work on how soldiers communicate and how they do things collaboratively, even though the word collaborative is never used, but how you do things together.
[46:54.360 --> 47:00.920]  [SPEAKER_16]: But yeah, I think we also realize that, well, this is also just kind of fun because it's like a video game and we can maybe use this as a recruiting tool.
[47:01.620 --> 47:02.160]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I...
[47:02.160 --> 47:03.920]  [SPEAKER_04]: This isn't the video game.
[47:04.000 --> 47:04.820]  [SPEAKER_04]: This isn't what you...
[47:04.820 --> 47:05.220]  [SPEAKER_04]: Let me think.
[47:05.360 --> 47:06.240]  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not just a video game.
[47:06.240 --> 47:08.400]  [SPEAKER_04]: This is actual virtual reality theme park.
[47:08.600 --> 47:19.540]  [SPEAKER_04]: You physically go into this building and you physically sit in a Humvee and you physically hold a replica M16, but it's a virtual reality type setting where there's...
[47:19.540 --> 47:20.560]  [SPEAKER_04]: It has like the headset, right?
[47:21.080 --> 47:21.800]  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[47:22.040 --> 47:22.820]  [SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, I've used that.
[47:22.920 --> 47:35.140]  [SPEAKER_16]: It is interesting because when you fire the weapon, you're in a turret of a Humvee and it actually physically rotates and you physically have to move this gigantic like, you know, machine gun and it's good for training.
[47:35.220 --> 47:41.080]  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd be curious to know if you can actually die in the video game because I think that would be pretty poor recruiting tactic.
[47:42.800 --> 47:43.400]  [SPEAKER_16]: Like what?
[47:43.520 --> 47:45.460]  [SPEAKER_16]: String yourself on the VR cable?
[47:45.920 --> 47:49.900]  [SPEAKER_17]: No, I meant in the context of the video game if you could be killed.
[47:50.260 --> 47:51.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, well, you can absolutely be killed.
[47:52.340 --> 47:56.420]  [SPEAKER_17]: But do you think in the training center that they've shut that off or do you...
[47:56.420 --> 48:00.920]  [SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, I think they did like a Kirk and Star Trek two kind of thing, right?
[48:01.020 --> 48:03.640]  [SPEAKER_16]: Where it's the no-win scenario, everyone wins and is a hero.
[48:03.980 --> 48:05.280]  [SPEAKER_16]: That's a good question.
[48:05.380 --> 48:06.080]  [SPEAKER_16]: I wonder how they do that.
[48:06.080 --> 48:07.260]  [SPEAKER_13]: We have to go and figure this out.
[48:07.380 --> 48:10.720]  [SPEAKER_13]: I mean, it's a possibility that we will be able to bring the show to Philadelphia.
[48:11.520 --> 48:14.440]  [SPEAKER_13]: So, at that time we'll check it out.
[48:14.560 --> 48:24.740]  [SPEAKER_13]: I mean, let's go down there and check it out because I think that this, you know, it does sound a little bit like Surrender without all the bad stuff that could happen to it.
[48:24.840 --> 48:27.520]  [SPEAKER_13]: Surrender or the repercussions, you know?
[48:28.420 --> 48:33.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: Speaking of recruiting, tactics, this is one of the things I tell people when I describe Surrender to Them.
[48:34.020 --> 48:41.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: But basically, it says in the print when you're reading up about the show that there is no physical exertion and nobody's going to be yelling at you.
[48:41.500 --> 48:52.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the very first thing that happens when you arrive is that somebody's yelling at you and you're being told to do certain things and told that if anyone told you that you weren't going to be yelled at and you weren't going to be told to do push-ups or something like that,
[48:52.640 --> 48:53.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: they were lying to you.
[48:53.840 --> 48:58.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: And that's exactly what happens to people when they enlist in the military, is it not?
[48:58.240 --> 49:06.880]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, one of the big jokes when you get to boot camp is there's always some, you know, kid that says, but drill sergeant, I was told that I would get this.
[49:06.980 --> 49:08.780]  [SPEAKER_16]: And the drill sergeant, your recruiter lied.
[49:08.900 --> 49:10.960]  [SPEAKER_16]: And it's like, it's kind of this joke in the military.
[49:11.080 --> 49:12.780]  [SPEAKER_16]: There's all these things you were promised by a recruiter.
[49:13.060 --> 49:15.300]  [SPEAKER_16]: I didn't write the text for our card.
[49:15.400 --> 49:19.220]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I'm like, oh, wow, it says that there will be no physical exertion and no one yelling at you.
[49:19.320 --> 49:20.820]  [SPEAKER_16]: So I thought, well, this is an excellent time.
[49:21.960 --> 49:25.120]  [SPEAKER_16]: Everything that I say in the first act, by the way, I don't make up.
[49:25.120 --> 49:32.060]  [SPEAKER_16]: I'm just regurgitating that the abuse that's been inflicted on me in the military, and just, you know, I'm completing that cycle of abuse.
[49:32.440 --> 49:34.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: And one of the things you say is, yeah, your recruiter lied.
[49:34.420 --> 49:35.520]  [SPEAKER_16]: But it's still, whatever, it's fine.
[49:35.640 --> 49:36.920]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, I might raise my voice, big deal.
[49:37.060 --> 49:37.560]  [SPEAKER_16]: You'll live.
[49:37.680 --> 49:38.020]  [SPEAKER_16]: It's not that bad.
[49:38.040 --> 49:40.080]  [SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, well, actually, I don't think of it as that bad.
[49:40.220 --> 49:44.380]  [SPEAKER_13]: I think it's true that the recruiter lies a little bit here.
[49:44.500 --> 49:44.580]  [SPEAKER_13]: Yeah.
[49:45.280 --> 49:46.340]  [SPEAKER_13]: I'll ask these guys.
[49:46.480 --> 49:47.040]  [SPEAKER_13]: They went through it.
[49:47.100 --> 49:47.680]  [SPEAKER_13]: I'm not sure.
[49:48.340 --> 49:54.440]  [SPEAKER_13]: But it doesn't feel like it's... I think that there's an inherent sense of real respect for the audience.
[49:54.780 --> 49:59.420]  [SPEAKER_13]: So when you're... We're not going to, like, not do it all the way.
[49:59.420 --> 50:01.060]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, look, pain becomes pride.
[50:01.320 --> 50:09.420]  [SPEAKER_16]: When these stories of, like, your recruiter lying to you, you don't have a soldier, a real soldier, say, oh, I was... It's like, that's the stuff... That's the good story.
[50:09.500 --> 50:10.800]  [SPEAKER_16]: He says, guys, you know what my recruiter told me?
[50:10.880 --> 50:11.880]  [SPEAKER_16]: And then you laugh together.
[50:11.940 --> 50:15.720]  [SPEAKER_16]: It's like, that's some of the best part, you know, is that... Come on.
[50:16.460 --> 50:17.280]  [SPEAKER_16]: You think it's like the worst thing?
[50:17.380 --> 50:18.280]  [SPEAKER_16]: Oh, I had to push for this.
[50:18.340 --> 50:19.040]  [SPEAKER_16]: I had to push for that.
[50:19.040 --> 50:22.420]  [SPEAKER_13]: I've had audience members come up to me and say, I really wish they were harsher.
[50:22.680 --> 50:23.900]  [SPEAKER_16]: We get that a lot.
[50:24.040 --> 50:24.600]  [SPEAKER_16]: A lot.
[50:24.780 --> 50:25.520]  [SPEAKER_13]: A lot.
[50:25.820 --> 50:27.960]  [SPEAKER_13]: I really wish they'd made me push more.
[50:29.220 --> 50:30.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, I mean...
[50:30.200 --> 50:35.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: There's so much we can learn just by talking to people who are in these situations, like Jason has been in.
[50:36.160 --> 50:43.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: One of the things in the book that really stuck out for me was your description of the ID cards that get handed out to military personnel.
[50:44.960 --> 50:45.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: Is this true?
[50:45.680 --> 50:50.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: They're really, like, handwritten and laminated with tape or something?
[50:50.280 --> 50:53.440]  [SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, there was... I had to get a new ID card while I was in Kuwait, I think it was.
[50:53.580 --> 50:58.980]  [SPEAKER_16]: And it's like, you know, it's some, like, little E-Ford, probably, you know, 19 years old, is running the machine, and, like, the laminator wasn't working.
[50:58.980 --> 51:02.500]  [SPEAKER_16]: So I have this full-on military ID, and it's like, well, the laminator is broken.
[51:02.560 --> 51:06.820]  [SPEAKER_16]: So he took a piece of packing tape and covered it with packing tape.
[51:06.820 --> 51:12.520]  [SPEAKER_16]: So then I had, like, this is, like, my primary ID, and I show it to whomever, and they're like, you've got to be kidding me.
[51:12.600 --> 51:15.060]  [SPEAKER_16]: I'm supposed to think this is real, it's a military ID.
[51:15.320 --> 51:15.940]  [SPEAKER_16]: The U.S.
[51:15.980 --> 51:19.560]  [SPEAKER_16]: Army, the DOD doesn't have the money to buy a freaking lamination machine.
[51:19.700 --> 51:24.860]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I'm like, you try to explain, yeah, because it's run by some 19-year-old who, you know, totally messed up.
[51:24.920 --> 51:26.620]  [SPEAKER_16]: It's like, they don't believe you, but you know what?
[51:26.980 --> 51:31.200]  [SPEAKER_16]: Being in the military, you start to realize it's amazing that anything ever gets accomplished.
[51:32.620 --> 51:34.180]  [SPEAKER_16]: Because it truly is.
[51:35.880 --> 51:36.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: Yes, it's true.
[51:36.940 --> 51:40.380]  [SPEAKER_16]: I had, for a year, an ID card that was covered with a piece of packing tape.
[51:41.580 --> 51:41.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: Awesome.
[51:42.060 --> 51:48.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: There are so many stories that we can learn just by opening up our minds a little bit and hearing what people have to say.
[51:48.320 --> 51:51.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, again, the blog is located where?
[51:52.380 --> 51:53.180]  [SPEAKER_16]: Justanothersoldier.com.
[51:54.060 --> 51:57.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the book, Just Another Soldier, is available everywhere.
[51:58.400 --> 52:00.460]  [SPEAKER_05]: Surrender starts on January 7th.
[52:00.540 --> 52:03.280]  [SPEAKER_05]: Do you want to give us details how people can become part of that?
[52:03.280 --> 52:03.760]  [SPEAKER_13]: Sure.
[52:04.560 --> 52:05.600]  [SPEAKER_13]: Well, you buy a ticket.
[52:06.220 --> 52:08.960]  [SPEAKER_13]: You go to the website, wowsurrender.org.
[52:09.040 --> 52:10.540]  [SPEAKER_13]: There's so much information there.
[52:11.200 --> 52:14.200]  [SPEAKER_13]: Their tickets are on SmartTix, so you can charge them over the Internet.
[52:14.980 --> 52:22.680]  [SPEAKER_13]: So it's January 7th through the 25th at the Flamboyant Theater, 107 Suffolk Street, which is in the Clemente Soto-Velez Cultural Center.
[52:23.160 --> 52:24.680]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's a beautiful, beautiful theater.
[52:24.820 --> 52:25.980]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's one of my favorite theaters in the city.
[52:26.080 --> 52:28.940]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's not known, but it's huge and vast and grand.
[52:30.640 --> 52:35.420]  [SPEAKER_13]: And wowsurrender.org, all the information you need is right there, wowsurrender.org.
[52:35.760 --> 52:39.420]  [SPEAKER_05]: And Josh, I believe you're involved in a new project involving energy or something?
[52:39.660 --> 52:44.660]  [SPEAKER_13]: In fact, actually, yes, this is something that I'm hoping we'll talk about more in the future.
[52:45.660 --> 52:47.540]  [SPEAKER_13]: Boy, I don't even know where to start or how.
[52:47.540 --> 52:56.960]  [SPEAKER_13]: But if those of you who are curious, right now, our water system in New York and in Philadelphia is under severe threat of natural gas drilling.
[52:57.140 --> 53:05.020]  [SPEAKER_13]: I'm making a documentary about the proposal to drill for gas in all our watersheds in the upper Delaware River Basin.
[53:05.140 --> 53:07.940]  [SPEAKER_13]: And that's all at waterunderattack.com.
[53:08.700 --> 53:12.860]  [SPEAKER_13]: Basically, the 2005 Energy Bill deregulated natural oil and gas drilling.
[53:13.600 --> 53:18.900]  [SPEAKER_13]: And it's caused a huge problem out west with pollution of water tables and air and causing massive health effects.
[53:18.940 --> 53:21.220]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I went and documented that throughout the summer.
[53:21.540 --> 53:23.740]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I'm starting to edit that together.
[53:24.120 --> 53:28.020]  [SPEAKER_13]: All the footage for that film, waterunderattack.com, that's where it's at.
[53:28.680 --> 53:30.540]  [SPEAKER_13]: And it's very, very, very serious.
[53:30.740 --> 53:32.300]  [SPEAKER_13]: Very few people in New York know about it.
[53:32.360 --> 53:35.000]  [SPEAKER_13]: I would love to discuss that at any given point in the future.
[53:35.000 --> 53:37.880]  [SPEAKER_13]: I think I'm out of time as far as this show goes.
[53:37.880 --> 53:41.320]  [SPEAKER_13]: But at waterunderattack.com, please go take a look.
[53:41.420 --> 53:41.960]  [SPEAKER_13]: There's trailers.
[53:42.480 --> 53:43.860]  [SPEAKER_13]: There's clips from the film.
[53:44.760 --> 53:49.260]  [SPEAKER_13]: Basically, they're proposing 100,000 gas wells in New York and Philadelphia's watershed.
[53:49.260 --> 53:53.220]  [SPEAKER_13]: And what that does is it pumps millions and millions upon...
[53:53.220 --> 54:00.760]  [SPEAKER_13]: actually, billions of gallons of toxic chemicals directly through the aquifers and into the ground in order to extract natural gas from the shale.
[54:00.880 --> 54:01.880]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's deep shale drilling.
[54:02.540 --> 54:04.340]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's something invented by Halliburton.
[54:04.460 --> 54:06.200]  [SPEAKER_13]: And it's an extraordinarily toxic process.
[54:06.200 --> 54:08.100]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's a threat to New York City's water system.
[54:08.220 --> 54:15.000]  [SPEAKER_13]: And I've been working with city council a little bit on their environmental board, as well as a lot of other people on this film.
[54:15.160 --> 54:19.980]  [SPEAKER_13]: So that'll be coming out or actually just rolling out slowly over the Internet at waterunderattack.com.
[54:20.120 --> 54:21.480]  [SPEAKER_13]: So, yeah.
[54:23.200 --> 54:23.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[54:23.880 --> 54:27.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, I just got locked out of a room where my other phone was, so I don't know what time it is.
[54:27.460 --> 54:28.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: Are we out of time?
[54:28.480 --> 54:31.740]  [SPEAKER_02]: We have about, I don't know, two, three minutes, four minutes.
[54:31.760 --> 54:31.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[54:32.080 --> 54:34.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, do you guys in the studio have any other questions or comments for these guys?
[54:35.740 --> 54:36.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: It sounds great.
[54:37.400 --> 54:37.760]  [SPEAKER_13]: Thanks.
[54:39.320 --> 54:39.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[54:39.760 --> 54:40.880]  [SPEAKER_05]: It really is fascinating.
[54:41.780 --> 54:45.420]  [SPEAKER_05]: I just want to thank everybody for listening to this rather unusual program.
[54:45.600 --> 54:48.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're a little bit off the beaten path of what we usually discuss here at Off The Hook.
[54:48.460 --> 54:56.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: But I think it's something of interest to many of our listeners and certainly something that I encourage people to investigate further.
[54:56.940 --> 54:58.040]  [SPEAKER_13]: Well, thank you so much.
[54:58.140 --> 54:58.820]  [SPEAKER_13]: Thank you so much.
[54:59.020 --> 54:59.660]  [SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, thanks, man.
[54:59.780 --> 55:02.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: If you have any comments, oth@2600.com.
[55:02.480 --> 55:03.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: That's our email address.
[55:04.380 --> 55:05.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm here in Berlin.
[55:05.800 --> 55:12.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: Actually, you know, I didn't mention this at all, but I've been at the Chaos Communication Congress, which takes place every year at this time in Berlin.
[55:12.140 --> 55:14.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: And it's a great gathering of hackers from all over the world.
[55:15.120 --> 55:18.420]  [SPEAKER_05]: This year, for the first time, it sold out completely.
[55:18.680 --> 55:20.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: They had to refuse people entry.
[55:21.180 --> 55:27.300]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I just think this is proof that the hacker community is getting bigger and bigger and more involved in various things.
[55:27.520 --> 55:32.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: So definitely you'll be hearing more about what happened this week over in Berlin as well.
[55:32.920 --> 55:37.840]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, a bunch of the interesting talks have actually been kind of trickling out via the Internet, obviously.
[55:38.400 --> 55:40.140]  [SPEAKER_02]: and have a chance to look at some of those.
[55:40.380 --> 55:44.220]  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's been some pretty interesting stuff going on during the conference that we've been hearing about.
[55:44.440 --> 55:46.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: And we have two events coming up next year.
[55:46.840 --> 55:53.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: We have the Hacking at Random camp in Holland, and we have the Tour camp in eastern Washington State.
[55:54.740 --> 56:01.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: Tour camp taking place in July, over the July 4th weekend, I believe, and horror taking place in August, again, in the Netherlands.
[56:01.600 --> 56:04.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: So that's a couple of things to mark on your calendar as well.
[56:07.020 --> 56:07.620]  [SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[56:08.240 --> 56:10.760]  [SPEAKER_02]: I think we're pretty much out of time tonight.
[56:11.020 --> 56:14.280]  [SPEAKER_02]: But thanks, everyone, for listening, and thanks for everyone being in the studio.
[56:14.880 --> 56:19.060]  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'd just like to wish our listeners and everyone here a very happy new year, a happy 2009.
[56:19.200 --> 56:19.460]  [SPEAKER_11]: Happy new year.
[56:19.640 --> 56:20.240]  [SPEAKER_02]: Happy new year.
[56:20.840 --> 56:23.480]  [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, and enjoy that free second.
[56:23.860 --> 56:25.000]  [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, free second.
[56:25.220 --> 56:26.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: There's a leap second this year.
[56:26.040 --> 56:26.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, there's a leap second this year.
[56:26.900 --> 56:27.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: From 2009 in the future.
[56:28.400 --> 56:28.560]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[56:29.100 --> 56:29.460]  [SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[56:29.760 --> 56:30.260]  [SPEAKER_02]: Good night, everyone.