Conspiracy Archives - The Rob McNealy Program

Christopher Brown – Failed State Transcript

September 29, 2020 robmcnealy 0:00 Comments Off

Christopher Brown - Failed State

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Hey folks Rob McNealy here. And today, I’m going to be taking a little deviation from our normal kind of interviews. And I’m talking to author Chris Brown. He’s the author of failed state. And this is a kind of dystopian novel. And, you know, I don’t only cover books and novels on this show, but I think the topic that he addresses in a very clear and concise way has a lot of parallels to what we’re seeing out there in the world in the economy today. And I thought his take was really, really interesting, and I thought he was worth having on the show. So Chris Brown, welcome to the show. How are you today?

Christopher Brown – Failed State
I’m doing great, Rob. Thanks for having me on.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, I appreciate you coming out. You’ve written some interesting fears. So I’m really want to hear you know what got you into this. But tell me a little about yourself. How did you get into being an author?

Christopher Brown – Failed State
I mean, I’ve been writing science for Rob, probably for close to 20 years now, but most of it was short fiction that I was selling to magazines. And then all I guess it was in the past decade, but really about five years ago that I started really trying my hand at writing novels. And I didn’t set out to write dystopian novels. But I wanted to write a novel that explored the scenario of what would it look like if we really had like a popular uprising in the United States? At the time, I was beginning to work on the book that became my my novel tropic of Kansas. occupy was kind of still in the air there was even like an occupy camp, and an old neon plant across the street from the place where I live in a kind of industrial neighborhood in Austin, Texas. And the Arab Spring was happening. I was like, what would that be like? What happened here and then immediately realized, well, that day happened here things would have to get a lot worse. And and imagining that scenario of things getting a lot worse, didn’t really turn out to be that hard because you can look at both kind of emergent trends in the world around you. And you know, available known history. And pretty quickly imagine scenarios where things could go a little loco so so it tropic of Kansas I imagined, which I wrote not 2013 2014 I imagined a charismatic CEO becoming a kind of authoritarian president. And there being a variety of factors that contributed to kind of a breakdown and then an uprising and in failed state which is the kind of follow on to that as well as the follow on to my novel last year, rule of capture, it takes in a little bit of a different direction it’s a kind of a little bit more utopian. I’m imagining like, okay, after we have the collapse of the American nation state, something that, to me feels like it’s a could plausibly happen. You know, the, the, the idea of the nation state is a kind of a 500 year old business model was starting to show its a turn into creak at the seams and various of its contemporary iterations. And I said, this is kind of like utopian legal thrillers like you might say, like Better Call Saul meets Mad Max, about a guy trying to play off to different factions that are trying to build a better future and, and kind of to the ultimate answer to your question. I’m interested in science fiction because I’m interested in that idea of like imagining what a better future looks like. I’m interested in the sort of literature of the possible and the idea that A lot of the really fundamental things we take for granted as kind of sacred institutions are impermanent things that have to grow and change and evolve. And and I’m interested in exploring where they can go and this particular sort of genre you know, that explores what happens in the aftermath of catastrophic events, if you will, also has the potential for a lot of fun and you know, a bit of adventure.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So I think you brought up an interesting point is that, you know, things do change in it’s part of the human condition, though, that we hate that. And I always tell people change is the most natural, you know, thing that always is happening, change is always happening. Yet humans hate it. It’s like, and to me, I think, I don’t know if we just, you know, don’t want to believe that or we are just in the West. At least raised to believe that change is bad. But people hate change. People really, I think tend to like routine. And I think they get really freaked out when things happen. And things can change very quickly. And I think, you know, here in the West, especially in the United States, we’ve had probably compared to most in all of history, we’ve had a really good run a lot of stability in one place as big as it is, for a long time. And that’s actually pretty unusual. You know, if you look at a country having stability as long as the US mostly has. And so to me, I think just almost, it’s almost inevitable, that we’re going to have some big changes, probably in my lifetime in the United States, because that’s just we’re gonna host it. It’s just a statistics thing, right? It just over time, things will morph and change. And I think a lot of people view that as dystopian in your books before we get into new failed state and kind of the aftermath What would you see? or what have you been writing about as far as what do you see as the central story themes of the things that cause or could cause failure in the United States?

Christopher Brown – Failed State
Oh, that’s a great question Robin and it’s varied and each book kind of tries to tackle a different theme. tropic of Kansas, the first book really focuses in on the appetite for power that some people have and how the accretion of power and and to a lesser extent well, but there’s the accretion of power and a single person that kind of like a single leader or a small group of people. To quote Lord act and you know, corrupts power corrupts and leads to the erosion of institutional strength, rule of capture focused on on one level, the justice system and the ways in which it masks often through the veil of reason, a system that’s really about power and conquest and its route, the way that you know, most real property rights are ultimately founded like in this country in particular on, you know, a form of staffed or you know, power at the end of the gun to the kind of conquering of the American continent and that’s also true history of most nations of the world. failed state tries to dig into a much deeper historical problem that kind of get back gets back to your, your comment of a moment ago about the inevitability of change, and our resistance to it and that’s about the relationship we have with the natural world and the way in which I think the way that the human apprehension about change manifests itself. Most notably when you kind of step back and kind of take the vantage point of the visiting Martian is through our desire to really control the natural world around us. You know, our entire civilization is based on control, you know, control of the reproduction of others, other species in particular, right, you know, pasture agriculture, grain monocultures. And, and all of these things we do to like, put the natural world in our service to sustain the growth of our population. And, and I think, again, you see in some of our current issues, the potential for crisis that can come out of an imbalance in relationship with the natural world. And so those are the kinds of Yeah, those are some of the kinds of core trajectories that I’m trying to look at as failure points and the kind of contemporary Yeah, it the edges of contemporary civilization that I think are showing real strain and that are fun to explore, as fictional counterfactuals

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
so as someone who, you know, thinks about these things, probably way more than I probably should, right. I always say, when I talk to people that are like these, you know, these different groups that are you know, now they’re called glue boys are the three percenters or you know, anti far these people that are, you know, at least on different sides kind of looking toward the same? I don’t know, ultimate conflict, right, I guess is the best way to describe it. Is is something is they say, we’re going to have this conflict and I always say what are you going to do afterward and you At least my reading of history, almost never do you end up with something better. On the other side of that, from a, you know, a governmental standpoint of freedom standpoint, when there’s a revolution, rarely is there more freedoms, it’s usually less. And what would be your take on that? Where do you see things going after a collapse? I don’t even know. I mean, we can talk about some of the ideas of what specifically could cause this. But how do you see us rebuilding and where do you think that ends up going ultimately from like the freedom and, and the governmental standpoint?

Christopher Brown – Failed State
Now? Well, big question. I mean, there’s a lot to cover. There are a lot of different directions you can take that. I mean, I think you’re right about these divergent sides of the the imagined coming conflict. And they, they, they I think they all represent You know, a desire for like real change or desire for something that feels like a more authentically participatory democracy that they feel like they really have a stake in. I think both of those sides are expressing and kind of the sentiment like, they don’t feel like the current system really represents or includes them in any meaningful way. And so they turn to other means of seeking a mode of political expression or engagement and agency over their own futures. In terms of the others is saying in, in science fiction, that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than a real change in the political system. And I think I think there’s a lot of that you find even in contemporary science fiction and And I think when you get to these failure points, Rob, it’s it’s kind of like being in science fiction is full of these imagined scenarios of imagined revolutions. I mean, Star Wars is kind of all about an imagined revolution, right? But it’s like, well, wait a minute, what happens after the Ewok party? You know, I mean, there’s never any real politics to it. There’s never any real vision of what comes after. There are lots of great works of dystopian fiction. There are masterpieces of post apocalyptic fishing fiction, but the number of like really compelling utopian, science fiction’s is like, you know, I could kind of name on it, I can, you know, listen, you know, and on two hands. And so, my own vision is that I mean, what I talked about and failed state, I’m trying to explore exactly that issue, and It’s kind of bifurcated into two sort of extremes in a way that I have playing off each other. One is a kind of like, it’s almost like the Dallas utopia version of utopia, which is like corporate sovereignty. And people kind of banding together in small quazy corporate groups to kind of have a private property based version of the future. And the other is a more like communitarian. And an ecologically based approach that’s about rewilding and kind of hacking these problems that date back to the agricultural revolution and trying to figure out workarounds to that, that provide a more sustainable future. I don’t know if either of those are really the full answer. But I think you know, I think there are ways in which we need to both the one hand harnessed The power of the contemporary technological tools that we have to aid us in solving our problems, but at the same time, rediscovering authentic structures of community that I think have been a largely lost and kind of post World War Two world. And, and so kind of a mix of like the hyper modern or the cyber modern and the kind of modern primitive defined our new way.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Family structures is interesting, you know, in the United States. And I’m not sure where it went wrong, what why we don’t have for instance, multi generational families for the most part anymore. And that used to be a very important part of, you know, the American structure and many world many places, but the United States we seem to have gotten away from that. And I do think that’s a problem in a lot of respects. And I think, you know, the building blocks of community are Basically family groups first, right? And then they expand out where you get multiple families kind of living together and you create these villages. What do you think the stumbling block is to why we don’t go back to that, why? Why did we leave that multi generational family structure in the United States?

Christopher Brown – Failed State
Well, we’re kind of uprooted from connection to place in a really profound way. And I think the modern economy really accelerates that. And if you look at kind of pre industrial societies, people tended to live their entire lives in close proximity to their dead ancestors. Talking about multi generational families, you would live in the place where you would be connected through place and as the like repository of the trajectory of all of the people in your bloodline that had come before you. Right and And that, by its nature by bringing a lot of people together around this shared place would create a sense of air quotes family that was broader, and that would encompass Yeah, multiple generations of your living blood relatives and even other members of your community. Right. And we’re kind of tied together and a kind of a kinship. You know, now, I mean, you know, I think like my own life, I mean, I grew up in Iowa and went to high school in New Hampshire and went to college in Louisiana and lived in Washington, DC and studied in Europe. And now I live in Texas, I moved here with my you know, family and when we like literally didn’t know anybody, and you just start over and you’re just like, we’re like constantly cycling through social connections and friendships and familial connections in a way and and then you have the added disruption of cyber culture and network culture and of life. Kind of living online versus like living in meatspace, with real engagement in the life of your local community. Which is isn’t an intrinsically bad thing. But I think you need to have elements of both to have kind of a healthy community. So I think that’s the I think that’s the basic problem. And, and I, I feel like I don’t know, I’m sort of optimistic about those things healing themselves over time. But but maybe not until the aftermath of some kind of more intense crisis in which this condition of alienation in which somebody exists at somebody else exists now is all through an experience that makes us appreciate just how good we’ve had it and the lives of those of us who were, you know, born in the latter half of the 20th century or the beginnings of the 21st and then living rather comfortably in ways we don’t even really appreciate

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, I think, you know, even like today, we’re like, you know, I’m not trying to get political here, but like, how the country came together after, you know, 911. I mean, we really did band together in for at least some period of time, Americans were proud to be Americans and people felt like we were one country for a while. And then you come, you fast forward, you know, 20 years and you look at how now, the country is responding to say, the global pandemic with COVID. And now, you know, we’re at each other’s throats over, you know, this pandemic, and we can’t come together yet. You can look at other countries, you know, like New Zealand, comes to mind where their response to the pandemic was much more unified. They viewed themselves as Kiwis and we’re going to solve this problem. Whereas the United States somehow got politicized early on to a very, really bad level. And it’s interesting, you know, I don’t know how we fix that in this country. Like you say, without some other kind of collapse that makes people feel unified because right now I don’t think we feel unified as one culture anymore in this country.

Christopher Brown – Failed State
Yeah, I mean, there’s a wonderful book by Rebecca Solnit called Paradise Built in Hell, that takes a look at how people conduct themselves in the aftermath of catastrophe. Examples like Katrina, were the kind of the prevailing narrative of kind of Hobbes in free for all usually proves to be the opposite of what really happens, which is that people tend to help each other in those situations. And I think you see plenty of examples of that, coming out of the pandemic, notwithstanding our own kind of partisan sectarian freakout over you know, the people of the mask and the people without the mask. You know, I think you know, I hear you about 911. But I think when you look at, if you look at post 911 reality, I think you also see a kind of failure of the American narrative line in a way that is dissonant from what we expect and kind of fundamentally disappointing and, like, out of line with our own sense of identity, in a way that I think is kind of part of the problem of some of our, our current situations. I mean, the first couple of months after 911 were lives like everybody’s gonna, it’s kind of joined together and it was almost like the beginning of a Western like, we’re going to go get the bad guys and we’re going to bring them to justice. And, you know, we go and the you know, invasion of Afghanistan was kind of globally supported and, and, you know, we had, you know, Special Forces This guy’s drawing giant beards and riding horses through the desert and chasing down the bad guys and all that. And then you get to Tora Bora. And there’s this big build up, like it’s gonna be the final reel of the Western then it doesn’t happen the way it was supposed to happen. And then and then we’re just like, into this endless war and long emergency that like really has not ended, you know, and it’s, you know, 20 years is going on 20 years later, and you have, you know, lawyers can debate about the terms but you have, you know, people being tortured, you know, instead of brought in front of courts and what courts they have are these kind of like crazy, you know, military tribunals that, that they’re like martial law, fake courts. That’s actually what I use is the basis of my domestic version of such courts and rule of capture which is kind of like, you know, courtroom drama meets 1984. The financial crisis. Kinda like made people really doubt the, you know, utopian precepts of neoclassical economics. And, you know, we’ve had all these events from 2000 to 2016 to right now that make people anxious about whether like the electoral system really works. You know, like in 2000, we had an election, it was basically a statistical tie the presidential election, that’s kind of like, you wake up in the morning, you don’t know the President is Wait, this is weird, you know, and all of these things that I think create uncertainty about American identity and American reality in a way that’s unsettling for people. And so I think a lot of the current tomorrow, maybe rooted in that to some respect in the like desire to find, either to recover this identity that’s been lost, or that reality hasn’t kind of fulfilled, or to find a new identity and it’s one that feels like you have a sense of ownership of I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s kind of my take.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So In failed state, you have these kind of two factions that are trying to kind of self govern in kind of a very different way. How do those two groups coexist in the same area?

Christopher Brown – Failed State
Well, they’re like in different geographical areas, and one is and Dallas. And it’s kind of in doubt, the idea is that, you know, there’s a kind of a multifactor breakdown that that is comprised of, you know, climate failure that starts with causing, you know, failure in certain regions the Tropic of Kansas, that’s, you know, the title of the first book that’s, that’s a place it’s like a pejorative name people come up with for the kind of ecologically and economically exhausted heartland of the US and so you have like internal refugees coming to places like Texas that are a little healthier, but you have, you know, storms, you know, wiping out places like Houston and New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. And food crisis coming from kind of farm failures, and then a political breakdown and a kind of a general uprising as things tighten up in Washington to try to kind of maintain order is all of these things are causing multiple failure points. And so by the time we get to failed state it’s like a couple of years after there’s been this uprising and the President has been removed from office by a mob and they have any male figure out someone to replace him with a they’ve like outlawed one of the political parties. And so Congress is kind of a shell of itself and, and the judicial system is kind of broken in our heroes, basically, like in state court trying to you know, it’s a rundown state court in Texas trying to settle scores of the past. And so in Dallas is like one of the places that sort of still like ecologically, essentially healthy, you know, they get bad summer storms and so on, but they’re okay and kind of lie to people. With money have gone there and and a New Orleans is basically like it got drowned and they just never even ungrounded never drained it. It’s it’s the swamp that it once was it’s kind of back and that people are living there basically the most radical of the rebels who were almost like what you would call in contemporary parlance like eco terrorists, and they’re letting the city go wild and trying to build some like green experiment from the future from the from the ruins. I mean, and but the problem at the heart of it is that there’s a solution to the food crisis, which is has to do with some GMO seeds for grain crops, and that the Dallas people have a patent on and the people in New Orleans the wacky eco poets, as my friend Paul McCauley would call them. They have gotten some copies of the seeds Now they started hacking. And that’s kind of the deeper heart of the story.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
How realistic Do you think that could be in the United States? You see something like this really possible?

Christopher Brown – Failed State
Um, well, I’ll make a couple of comments in that one. With each of the last two books, I wrote them, and I was like, Wow, this is so implausible. Nobody will ever buy this. And then like, stuff starts happening. I mean, like, the 2016 elections, and they kind of the, the, let’s just say that we get, again, without kind of getting into politics, just the feeling of division, and you know, what you saw in places like Charlottesville in the summer of 2017. And then, you know, and then things like Portland or Maine, you know, I thought the idea of New Orleans being an autonomous zone is sort of like pretty far out. And then you have people’s thinking, you know, big chunks of cities in the Pacific Northwest and making actual autonomous The sounds and the strengths and weaknesses of those kinds of little more micro experiments in urban self governance and you know block by block sovereignty are really interesting to watch and then you’ve got the like, stuff in Portland of these, you know, basically unidentified Border Patrol agents on the legal theory that they’re within 100 miles of the ocean aka the border from trolling you know, around federal buildings in Portland and just like showing up in crisis or grabbing grabbing people off the street without due process or an arrest like it’s Argentina 1975 or something. That’s like straight I was like, the plotter will look after I was just like, and so all summer is has been getting in my mentions, like, you know, treat me like I’m Nostradamus or sounds like oh, no, I mean, it’s just, you’re kind of like reporting what you see in a way and putting a funhouse mirror up to right The failed state stuff. I mean, I think both of the elements that I described in those different communities have elements of reality to them. I think corporate sovereignty, I mean, I have a background as a corporate lawyer, I think it’s a very real thing. I think that I mean, you look at it right now look at how investment capital is fleeing government securities, for Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, these big corporate institutions that are now viewed by like, the serious, you know, financial wizards is the one remaining like safe harbor and the storm and be that in precious metals, right? At least for people who don’t believe in crypto, right. Or who are, you know, not in a fiduciary position where they’re at liberty to put the other people’s money into crypto and so on. There’s that aspect and you have an emergent, you know, I think, Ben, what is wrote a great book a couple of years ago about how technological developments around things like drones, and you know, space based weapons, and all of these things are giving individuals access to the means of kind of military production that has never before existed in human history. There’s interesting stuff there, I think. And then on the kind of rewilding side, I mean, I think that’s happening all over the place. I mean, I’ve done it right here at my own house. It’s like taking a lot that was a rundown petroleum Brownfield where there was a pipeline used to run through it and turning it into a restored prairie. And, and all over the Midwest and kind of the Mountain West people are doing these kinds of experiments and trying to bring back something like the conditions that existed before and in the American context. That’s kind of like relatively easy. To do because really the history of the putting our landscape under the plow or into pasture is really relatively short. And most of the plants are still there and pockets and little fire and a little latitude. It’s pretty easy for that to come back. And people like the Land Institute up in Salina, Kansas are doing really interesting experiments with taking the Native American grasses that are like really attuned to recharging the soil with really deep roots and complex kind of micro raizel and rhizomatic structures, and hybridizing those with the major grain crops that are the core of our food system to create like really Hardy, you know, apocalypse re wheats, if you will. So I think there’s a lot of truth to that. There’s a narrative convenience Kind of like, you know, you know, having it like two warring gangs, right? That part maybe is a little bit of a stretch. But that’s the idea is that the, to me those like, two dipoles of like our experimental possibilities as a country do so solve our own problems without relying on government to help us because I really don’t think regardless of your politics, I just don’t think, you know, the system that was invented in the 1780s is necessarily the path to the future. looking, looking to these other examples for a toolkit of real change, I think is a way to build you know, elements of a plausible, plausibly interesting future you might actually want to live in.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So you talk a little bit about this whole corporate kind of, you know, team pride, you know, corporate kind of like a corporatist Kind of genre and we I would view that as like a centralized entity. I’m wondering if there’s a third rail is there can you have elements of both and I mean this from I look at it from a you know cryptocurrency blockchain decentralized technologies descending like a down tenement like a dow and you know it’s funny because you know I put together every year we have a conference here in Salt Lake called off chain that’s a mixture of self reliance crypto and prepping and those and we kind of bring those two kind of topics together and mash them up and in a lot of these conversations like to me I’m I’m a capitalist I like you know, I’m an entrepreneur, but I also have an urban homestead you know, we have big garden you know, we have irrigation like you’d Laffy sama most people would don’t even know what’s in my backyard because it looks like a, you know, full blown farm at my house. But I’m also a big believer in decentralized systems and technologies and I’m wondering, is it Going forward in the United States, are these new thousand decentralized organizations that are starting to come out of the blockchain world? Is that a different rail that could maybe go to the future?

Christopher Brown – Failed State
I mean, yes, I think distributed modes of social and economic and political organization are, are kind of a fundamental part of that future. And in fact, in traffic of Kansas. I mean, when I set out to write that novel, it was kind of all about that about the idea of like, distributed democracy that was like more network based and like distributed direct democracy that broke down the centralized systems of the, you know, the 1780s constitution in favor of something that had a lot in common with the kinds of ideas that you see articulated through things like, you know, experiments with dows. And, and in the context of the pandemic, I mean, corporate life, you know, the organization of entrepreneurship is like, really super distributed now. And we’re saying like, you know, independently of, you know, people building those kinds of systems on the blockchain, you have people who are really proving the capacity of productive activity on a cooperative, collaborative corporatized basis being done kind of in a way that’s totally uncoupled from geography from physical presence. And, and I think that that’s, I think that’s interesting. What I concluded writing traffic of Kansas, through the eyes of my characters who were kind of dealing with very similar problems is we’re dealing with real world is that those kinds of Organizational innovations play a really important role. But you’re not able to really take full advantage of them unless you first take care of the ecological problems that are the kind of the really the root causes and mentioned the injustice is in the inequality in our society.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
I think it’s interesting, and you hit on a good point there is that these distributed systems now, you know, allow us to be more geography independent. And, you know, my wife and I had that as a goal, you know, 10 years ago that we wanted to be geography independent for our livelihood, because we like to travel and we like the flexibility and freedom that that gives us. And I’m wondering is if some of this, these distributed technologies that we’re seeing even just like talking a resume like we’re doing right now, allow for people to go Back to small towns in rural America. And, you know, you tend to find that people that tend to do the higher end white collar jobs tend to have the higher education levels. So there’s like, there’s a big disparity, you know, level of education between, you know, urban areas and rural areas. And, and I’m wondering if part of this, you know, if what could come out of COVID, in this pandemic is people one, learning that they can be productive from home or from a different location, and how that might, you know, be part of the seeds that are going to grow into a new society going forward? I personally would rather live in the country myself, and hopefully in a couple of years, you know, we will move on from where we live, but I’m just wondering, is it Where does it you know, if the pandemics and interesting pivot point right now, I see that..

Christopher Brown – Failed State
I think I think that’s a really great and insightful point. Rob is, I think I think there’s some there really is something there because that that you know, small town America again, going back to the book, tropic of Kansas. I mean, that’s partly about just how like, I mean, if you go you drive through the rural Midwest, like where my folks live in southern Iowa, there are a lot of towns all over the heartland and the rust belt that the 21st century is kind of left behind. There have a lot of empty and beautiful but empty buildings and you know, places that feel a lot more Mad Max than anybody would care to really admit and that are really ready for some fresh infusions of people and economic and cultural vitality. And that you know, are still full of good people, those who are hardworking and and i think that the there are many examples have places like that, in the past 20 years that have started to occur. I mean, there’s a kind of a an odd one and Texas which is the town of Marfa, which, you know, basically got taken over by artists by like, high end you know, New York conceptual artists, people like that kind of sculpture and conceptual artist Donald Judd. And that took a town that was historically just a, you know, cattle ranching town, you know, in the, in the kind of way down to the Big Bend region of West Texas. Right before the, you know, the last network connection runs out and turned it into this incredibly vital place where the legacy community and the kind of new inhabitants have created something really interesting. And you’re starting to see that in some allies like little towns closer to Austin, where similar things are happening in the Midwest. You have a lot of people starting to Yeah, I mean, you know, move out to these kind of outer like bedroom communities but which are like small towns and I think that the potential that represents to help people escape from the debt prison of home mortgages, and these things that I think are really like the enemies of freedom that people get really hooked on by our kind of socio economic model. Those are the things that keep people chained to the treadmill and limit people’s life options and if you can go to you know, get people around the idea that like you could go to some small town and buy an old building or a beautiful house and repurpose it for your own needs and, and also in the process also become part of a small enough community where you can kind of really know your neighbors and sort of, on the one hand, be participating through networks. You know, electronic communications networks and some kind of national economic or global economic and cultural life, but also be part of like, a real, vibrant community. I think there’s tremendous possibility there.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, I try to be optimistic about the future, as much as I do see, challenging times coming ahead. For a lot of people, I think there’s going to be a lot of opportunity for those that are flexible and adaptable and embrace the changes that are coming, because they are coming. There’s no doubt about that. We’re not living I don’t believe we’re living a sustainable culture in the United States right now in a lot of different levels. So are you working on any other books? what’s the what’s the next book idea you got coming out?

Christopher Brown – Failed State
I think for the next book, I’m gonna be doing a different take on the novel of catastrophe. One that’s not so much about kind of failure political systems, but really engaging with our relationship with nature. A kind of Almost like eco horror, if you will, a kind of horror novel in which the thing that’s scary is our fear of the future, especially our fear of the climate future. We have a kind of rich literature out there. There’s a story type in science fiction called the cozy catastrophe where there’s, you know, a good weather sort of one or a small group of survivors who usually are, you know, kind of affluent, educated people and the world has ended and everybody’s dying off, but there’s a few people that seem to actually be kind of well prepared and having a good time of it. You think of like all those Charleton Heston movies from the 60s and 70s, like the Omega man where it’s, you know, it’s like apocalypse is fantasy, which I don’t think I don’t think those fish really entirely tell the truth. But they’re interesting and they make good story. And I want to take that kind of story type and turn it on its head. So that’s what I’m working on now. So I’m reading a lot of these great novels of catastrophe right now. Especially have like climate catastrophe and from Maven across different cultures and it’s a pretty interesting undertaking. But in the meantime, I’m just launching failed state and trying to connect with readers about that new book which is you know, people can find about on my website Christopher brown calm or in any any any bookstore, online or in real life as it were. You beat me to the

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
punch, I was gonna ask you, where can people get the book? But I will have all those links available as well as all your socials up at Rob McNealy calm. And Chris Brown, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I’ve really enjoyed talking with you.

Christopher Brown – Failed State
Thanks so much for having me. Rob. It was a really interesting conversation.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
I think we’ll do it again. Let me know when the next book comes out. We’ll have you back on.

Christopher Brown – Failed State
All right, right on it was a blast. I hope you have a great weekend. Thank you.

Don McEnroe – Dinosaurs Are Fake Video

December 18, 2019 robmcnealy 0:00 Comments Off

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Don McEnroe Dinosaurs Are Fake Transcript

December 18, 2019 robmcnealy 0:00 Comments Off

Don McEnroe Founder of Dinosaurs Are Fake

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.

Rob McNealy
Today I am talking to Donnie Mack he is with dinosaurs are fake.com. And this is going to be a fun interview today, we’re going to look all about we’re going to learn all about the dinosaur conspiracy theory. Now I’m pretty new to this theory. And I’m not sure I’m buying it all because, you know, I grew up in a science based kind of environment. But, Donnie, welcome to the show. How are you?

Don McEnroe
I’m doing great. How are you, Rob?

Rob McNealy
Good. So I want to say a shout out. I got some swag you sent I got a little dinosaur shirt on. dinosaurs are fake. So I am definitely interested in what you had to say. I love the logos, by the way. So tell me a little bit about yourself. How’d you get involved with this? Where did you come from?

Don McEnroe
You know, I’ve got a background that’s mostly in entertainment. And I don’t I don’t really view The dinosaur site as you know, as an entertainment venture, it’s it is I do view it as scientific and not a conspiracy theory. But, you know, I come from I’m from California, I was born and raised in San Francisco. studied English at Georgetown. And since then I’ve worked in mostly in, in entertainment in mostly in mostly in film. Lot have worked at Netflix for a long time. And or for several years at least. And now I do mostly consulting on the on the creative side, and the and the dinosaurs dinosaurs. I’ve been working on the site for you know, for a couple of months now, but the topic has interrupted me for a few years.

Rob McNealy
So what kind of got you in got interested in this thing? I mean, I just I knew like, you know, I thought I knew everything about You know, I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy or not, but, you know, conspiracy theories, I’m usually pretty well versed, like, you know, I’ve studied them all. And so I just heard about this one. And that’s pretty interesting because it’s like a new new thing for me. So, educate me a little bit what is what is the theory that dinosaurs aren’t real?

Don McEnroe
You know, okay, the, the way I got interested is, was sort of one step at a time. And, you know, how, if you, you know, on on your phone or on your computer, if you click on certain articles, you start to get, you know, typically, that feed starts to appear more and more based on the algorithms based on you know, sort of the sites and browsers and things that you’re using. And, and what happened to me a few years ago, I, you know, I, at one point, I can’t remember which one it was, but I clicked on some dinosaur article and it I believe you know, it’s what I think it was, and it could have it could have been a different one. I think it was a Turandot on find that they were that they were talking about and I read the article, you know, and at the time I believed in dinosaurs, I mean, you know, I was a kid I was bombarded with dinosaur stuff and just didn’t think anything of it, I believe the dinosaurs, but I read this article. And it, you know, internally there were conflicts in the article and I was just sort of scratching my head saying, Okay, this, this is a little little fishy, but it’s just, you know, it’s just one article. These could be something funny going on. And I and the other thing that jumped out at me is I saw the picture of the dig. And, you know, it was a whole bunch of people all you know, standing around happy with their pickaxes, standing by a bunch of stuff and it wasn’t it wasn’t a Turandot on it was just stuff and but they had it in this article with all these pictures of their renditions of what Taran anons look like and You know, they sort of just made it into this. The big thing like it was this big, Turandot on fine. And meanwhile, there’s a bunch of rocks and people standing around with a pickaxe and so, I remember at the time thinking, you know, this is just this is fishy, and, you know, there’s no Turandot on in this picture. And if they found a trend, and why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they show it? Or if they found a bunch of trend about so then what happened to me? So this was a few years ago. And what happened is, you know, since I clicked on that article, and maybe a couple others like it, I started to get a lot of these articles into, you know, into my, my feed on my, on my phone on my computer, where when they had a find, they would, you know, I would see the article and so I would click on it. And, you know, I was in, I was always looking, you know, after a while I just, I just felt like there were too many internal contradictions in the articles themselves about what the people said. But I always also noticed the same thing that would be You know, whenever there was a picture, it, it didn’t look like, you know, it looked to me like, okay, there’s a rock or something or somebody is holding up a rock that is shaped like maybe shaped like a tooth, you know, or something. And, and I was never convinced by the visual evidence. So that’s when I started looking into a deeper and I started to say okay, well what’s what was going on here and I started to look into Richard Allen and Barnum brown and, you know, the rest of the industry and I started to listen to what the paleontologist themselves said, and, and just look really carefully at each find and the practices of the museums. And sadly, you know, because I, I love dinosaurs, I have nothing against dinosaurs. I think T rex would have been really cool if he existed. But sadly, I’m just I’m not convinced. You know, I don’t I don’t think based on the evidence that is put forth and based on the practices of the museums and the paleontologist and so on and so forth. I just don’t think that exist.

Rob McNealy
So that would help and literally like 180 years of like, accepted science to say that dinosaurs don’t exist. There’s museums all over the planets. There’s governments all over the planets that, you know, put money into looking for dinosaurs and fossils. And, you know, just paleontology in general. Why? Why would they be doing this? If dinosaurs were nothing?

Don McEnroe
No. And that’s, that’s what happens. So when you come out and and take the step to say, hey, dinosaurs are fake, or dinosaurs never existed, when, you know, immediately you get blasted with and I’ve only been on dinosaur Twitter for for a month, you know? And, and I was, you know, so I was new to sort of the public discourse before, before I, before I sort of went public with it. This was just me, thinking about it and reading and evaluating but what What happened is when you say that you get immediately hit with the tag of conspiracy theorists you know like like like any any of these any anything that you say is out of the ordinary if you say Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself, you get tagged with conspiracy theorist or whatever. So So I noticed that but I you know, the way I envision the dinosaur you know, what I call the dinosaur hoax or the dinosaur industrial complex, the way I envisioned that evolving wasn’t as a conspiracy theory where a bunch of people sat down and said, Hey, we’re going to make up we’re going to make up dinosaurs and build industries and products and and an academic field around it. Nobody said that. Nobody did that. It you can you know, it was it was a snowball effect conspiracy, but really started with one man, Richard Allen, who was competing with Charles Darwin for attention in the scientific community and Obviously, everybody knows Darwin had a ton of it, and no one had his own fair share. But he wanted more. He was a he was a competitive and very interesting guy. And he was the one who coined the term. And you know, and so I would sort of dispute the notion that it’s bending 180 years of science, it’s bending 180 years of popular thought, based on, you know, based on Richard Allen making up the word and then, you know, suddenly a few years later, after he made up the word and made some drawings and made some, you know, wrote some papers and did some things about what he thought these creatures were, then suddenly, people started finding them, you know, and it’s sort of like, you know, a self fulfilling prophecy if a popular scientist creates an entire category of animals, and there’s money to be made in fossils and books and all the things you know, later on. Obviously later, the bigger industries, the toys, and the and the movies and all that stuff. Certainly that didn’t happen immediately. But I don’t think it was I don’t think it was science. I think it was, you know, popular storytelling started by Ellen. And I don’t think it was a vast conspiracy. I think it was one that just built sort of one person at a time and you had you know, Richard Oh, and starting it and then, you know, so and so building on it with a fine and then suddenly you had characters like farnum Brown out there, you know, magically finding dozens of dozens of fossils, even though he’s, he was also involved in, you know, with the intelligence agencies and with the oil industry. So, so I view it as up ending, storytelling, and 180 years of storytelling regarding dinosaurs and Tyrannosaurus Rex and Brontosaurus which they they change to Diplodocus and Triceratops and all these creatures that they sort of just got into the popular imagination and then pounded home with, with propaganda via storytelling. And, you know, to the point where most people never questioned it because they’re hit so hard with Dinosaurs when their kids don’t have the ability to, to, to step and I was the same way, you know, they didn’t have the ability to kind of step back and say, wait a minute.

Rob McNealy
So you say that they never really saw dinosaurs before until they kind of found the first one. And then people started finding them everywhere. Could that be accounted for? Because maybe they never looked before? And then all of a sudden, they had a reason to go lucky for them.

Don McEnroe
Yeah, it absolutely could have been that’s what happened. I mean, I think that is that accurately. What happened? I would just dispute the notion that they that what they found was actually dinosaurs. So yes, there was a Gold Rush so to speak, or, or an attention rush or a science rush to find dinosaurs, and that would, you know, incentivize people to get out there and do it whereas there they weren’t before, I would just take the next step and say that the that what they did was manufacture the you know, essentially turn you know rocks or or other bones of other animals into into what they wanted to find to fit to fit the narrative that was sort of commercially and academically or quote unquote, scientifically by

Rob McNealy
so I’ve been to a lot of natural history Museum’s along the ways. You know, I go to the Natural History Museum here in my hometown in Salt Lake City. And actually they got all sorts of dinosaur bones and fossils around on display. So if dinosaurs are all fake, would you say that everybody at that museum is actually in on the hoax or they try perpetrate a fraud, then is that I mean, is that because it sounds to me if that’s what’s happening, you know, that they’re all trying to just take people’s money is I mean, would you say that, you know, you know, every natural history museum that’s out there that has these bones on display? are actually they know that they’re fake and they’re putting him on anyway.

Don McEnroe
Now not at all, not at I would not say that at all. I think there are a ton of I would say there are a lot of good faith actors in the dinosaur industry who believe in dinosaurs and have, you know, have have good intentions. I think. I would, I would think, and I have no way of knowing this. This is just a guess. But I would think that, you know, well over half probably well over three quarters, maybe even over 90% of people in the modern. You know where we are today are good faith operators. They believe in dinosaurs. They’re holding up a thing that they really think There’s a tooth of a of a Tyrannosaurus Rex or whatever. I think that the there have been bad faith actors along the way that you know that they get it started and people you know, people are trusting people, people trusted Richard Allen, when he, you know, when he said what he said and sort of created the category people trusted, Barnum Brown who was, you know, very, very obviously, obviously, to me at least I mean, I guess, you know, anybody can debate what they want. But, you know, this guy was obviously a huckster and obviously a fraud. And he was out there, quote, unquote, finding dozens of skeletons of dinosaurs. And so I think that the bad actors are more limited. And there’s a lot of good people and well intentioned people in the industry today that have simply built, you know, and sort of piggyback on stuff that they didn’t necessarily know like everybody else they didn’t necessarily know was a fraud.

Rob McNealy
So would you say that all the fossils that you would see at a museum then they’re all just fake? Like, like completely just not real or do you think they’re Miss identify? Do you think there’s some other kind of animal creature or category that we were, you know, not aware of yet?

Don McEnroe
Yeah, I don’t think there was obviously a lot of in a lot of cases it’s disclosed that the replica so that there they are made or not, you know, it’s not like they pieced together a bunch of, you know, cows and mammoths and giraffes and whatever. And that’s what we’re looking at their it’s known that they’re that we’re looking at replicas, I would just, you know, so my, my position on the replicative themselves, is is not not really that they’re fake. They’re replicas, they’re just they’re myth. It’s a combination there, Miss constructed. They’ve extrapolated, you know, they’ve extrapolated entire animals from something You just can’t extrapolate an animal from and especially when you’re dealing with. Remember, in a lot of cases, they’re making these replicas from rocks because they’re saying, Okay, these these things are 60 million years old, so it’s not a bone anymore, it’s then it’s gone through this process. It’s fossilized. And so, you know, I think in a lot of cases, if, if you’re trying to extrapolate a whole animal from one sample, which believe it or not, does happen, though, they’ll find, you know, one thing that they call a bone or a tooth and build an entire animal around it. I think that, you know, if you’re doing that the, your margin for error is, is just, you know, I mean, your tendency towards error, I should say, is just incredibly high. And you can’t do that you can’t take a rock that you say is a fossilized bone, and then and build an entire, you know, build an entire animal around it with any kind of certainly, especially when you don’t know, you know, there’s no way to know how old it is. And I know they say the good into that, you know, 60,000,065 million years old blah, blah, blah, but you can’t, you can’t date a rock with any with any kind of scientific certainty. You just can’t do it. So I think, you know, again, it’s kind of the same thing. I think that it’s not bad faith all the way around on the displays. I think that, you know, it’s a combination of building into a system that people believe that many people believe in, and that they’ve been, you know, programmed and conditioned to believe. When you when you grow up, seeing shows and movies and books and toys of Tyrannosaurus Rex, to the point that you don’t question it at all. And then you’re tasked with building a model of a T rex for a museum. That you know, that’s based on a bone or a ticket. You don’t feel you don’t really feel any qualms about doing it. At least I would imagine. I’ve never done that.

Rob McNealy
Sure, sure. And and I agree with you, if you’re you’re replicating dinosaurs based on like, you know, a little teeny fragment. You know, I think there there is probably a lot of possibilities that there’s some, you know, margin of error there. So I guess the question I would have, you know, I just kind of understand your worldview of things. I know that in certain religious circles, like there’s a lot of questioning about things like evolution and flat earth and things like that, and I’m not saying you believe those things, but, you know, is some of this you know, are you in? Do you believe in evolution? Do you believe in creation? What would what’s your background?

Don McEnroe
I’m not a I’m not an expert on either of those. I’m not okay. And so, I’m not an expert enough on evolution to say that I believe in it or I don’t believe in it. I don’t really know what the theory is. I’ve never studied in depth enough. I think that you know, from my from My view of things I think that evolution, you know, I think that evolutionary tendencies or evolutionary characteristics are pretty easy to see when you look at different species, or you look at, you know, the way things have gone. So. So I would say without endorsing, I don’t I don’t know, enough to say that I believe in evolution. I just don’t know what that means to say that. But I would say that I do believe that in evolutionary trends or in it in the fact that species have evolved. So in other words, I’m not endorsing any macro evolution theory because I haven’t read enough Darwin to know whether I whether I buy it or not, I don’t I don’t know I never really cared that much about about Darwin. So on evolution, so I would say I don’t know if that makes sense. But I believe in the notion that species evolved without endorsing Any sort of big, big picture or particular theory of evolution, which I don’t know what it is? And on the other question, I’m 100% not coming at the dinosaur angle from a theological perspective at all. I am a Christian. And but I’m not, you know, when I looked at dinosaurs in the first place, I didn’t even realize I’m this far removed, removed from that world. I didn’t realize that there had been an existing debate that that sort of a theological and and that’s just not my angle.

Rob McNealy
Well, that’s what I was going to say is that among the group of what they referred to as young earth creationists where there’s a certain segment of Christianity that believes you know, the Earth is like 6000 years old. So you’re not saying that the earth is only 6000 years old?

Don McEnroe
No, that’s not that’s not my angle at all. My my skepticism towards dinosaurs evolved since Believe from looking at what they said. So like I said, looking at the articles looking at the fines, looking at what they said about, about dinosaurs and just not buying it, you know, it had nothing to do with with any bigger, bigger, you know, theological worldview. And, you know, I don’t know how old the earth is, and it’s not that’s not that interesting to me to even, you know, to try to figure out if the if the earth is 60 million years old or 6000 years old, I don’t know, I don’t really care. It doesn’t really affect me. But what I do care about is if I see sort of what I view as, you know, systemic propaganda being pushed in what for whatever the reason, and and I think that we have this issue with a lot more than than dinosaurs where something is just repeated over and over until you can you know, until there’s no questioning and then they can just sort of get away with saying whatever they want. So that’s, that’s my take on it. It’s not it’s not a theological disagreement, and it’s not a it’s not an attack on evolution. I think that, like I said, I think that you can see evolutionary characteristics and trends in species across the board.

Rob McNealy
Do you think that all fossils are faked or miss identified? So for instance, you know, I know a little bit about rocks in sedimentary rocks, like limestone has all sorts of seashells in it. And would you say that those aren’t actually seashells or those aren’t actually fossils do? Are you saying that fossil the process of what is called fossilization? Is that not a real thing? Or do you think that just some things are fossilized, but some things are not?

Don McEnroe
Yeah, I would think that no, I’m certainly open to the idea of fossils. I don’t have anything I have no reason to believe that there are fossils of This, that and everything that actually existed. So my point is only that the that what they’re saying, you know that that these particular fossils that they’re saying came from and belong to dinosaurs. I don’t buy that. It’s that simple. But in terms of other things being fossilized, sure, why not? I have no reason not to believe that.

Rob McNealy
So do you. So when they say dinosaurs, do you think that some at some point some animals that are not dinosaurs that might just be like big birds might have been fossilized and then call the dinosaur?

Don McEnroe
I mean, whatever they whatever they are, you know, I definitely I think that, you know, there’s obviously animals. I should say, if I believe strongly that there’s animals that existed before that maybe don’t exist today or animals that have been fossilized I’m just specifically saying that I don’t see enough proof for the cat, you know, for this particular category of animals as mostly represented by the popular ones so the T Rex, the Diplodocus Brontosaurus type loans, the Triceratops, you know, I’m definitely open to I mean, we know reptiles exist because we can see him so I’m, I’m open to like, you know different type of reptiles are different type of turtles or whatever you know, or crocodiles or even things that that don’t exist today that you know that existed in the past. I’m open to all of that it’s just I don’t see evidence for these creatures in particular.

Rob McNealy
Okay, I can get that. So, you know, there’s a lot of things. There’s a class that’s, you know, the Extinct Animals called megafauna. Are you familiar with that term? Yes. During the Nice to see an era which would have been the last ice age, you know, 10,000 plus years ago that 40,000 plus years ago. Would you say that those are different than the things that you’re concerned about called dinosaurs? Would you say like megafauna. Like, for instance, they’re uncovering, you know, you know, 567 thousand year old things in the tundra up in Siberia, of different types of animals and dogs that don’t exist today and mammoths and things like that. Would you say that those are real or those part of the dinosaur coax as well?

Don McEnroe
No, I never said I would say that, you know, and I haven’t done a deep dive on on mammals but I would be inclined to believe I would be inclined to believe them because in them because of the what I’ve heard, and I haven’t seen statues of my own eyes, but when I’ve heard about the quality of the preservation also, it’s a very believable animal in the sense that we you know, we know elephants exist and we can so we can extrapolate and say okay, you know, this, this would make sense if if something like this This woolly mammoth and also we have a nice specimen of it here. And the story lines up so, so absolutely, I think that, you know, it goes, it goes back to it comes back to the quality of the evidence and and just just, you know, the fact that that, you know, it makes sense. And we’re not asked to make a leap from Oh look, here’s a here’s a rocker or something that we’re calling that to or a theme or whatever and boom, there’s a big, you know, Dragon like lizard, you know, that, that walks on two legs and has, you know, sort of the all these characteristics imputed by Island, you know, so, absolutely, I’m open to mammoth to different kind of dogs, all that stuff.

Rob McNealy
So you’re saying that dragons can’t exist either because that’s going to really make me disappointed as dragons.

Don McEnroe
Well, that’s that’s what everything but I mean, you know, I’m not going to go so far as to say that dragons don’t exist because I I don’t know. But but I’ve never seen proof. I hadn’t seen proof of them. I you know, same with giants. I can’t say that there were there were no giants. But I can’t say that I have proof that they existed either.

Rob McNealy
So I know you’ve raised concerns before about like a massive meteorite strike. Do you believe meteors exists?

Don McEnroe
Sure, sure. I think. I don’t think meteors are out of the question. You know, what the problem that I have is with the growth of the particular Meteor theory that now is prevalent on, you know, in the dinosaur industry where, you know, if you look back at the literature, it wasn’t that long ago that people would say, well, we don’t know how the dinosaurs went extinct. It was it was an unsettled question, and I’d have to go back to put an actual date on it, but it wasn’t that long ago. And suddenly, something happened, you know, in whatever period of years these last year, I don’t know if it’s five years. 10 years. 15 years. But were they they settled in on this theory that it was definitely a meteor that killed the dinosaurs. And that I don’t by, by the possibility of a meteor hitting the planet. I 100% Do Not Disturb. Do not by the fact that it’s conclusive that a meteor struck the planet and wiped out this whole class of animals that we just you know that Richard Allen, essentially, whatever you want to call it invented in 1841 1842. I don’t I don’t see how we get there. I’ve read a lot of stuff about it. I’ve read a lot of what they what they put forth. I just don’t get there.

Rob McNealy
Have you done any public debates with anybody in the industry?

Don McEnroe
You know, I have, I have not this is my first podcast I’ve done it was my first you know, sort of public speaking on dinosaurs. I started the dinosaur Twitter account a year ago. I’m sorry, a month ago, I started looking into dinosaurs, you know, only a few years ago. So I’d be happy to do it. I’ve seen you know, I’ve watched some of the YouTube stuff of you know that there was a guy on Joe Rogan, I forget his name, but he was he was a paleontologist, it was debunking a different guy that said, dinosaurs don’t exist. And, you know, I’ve just got a little, you know, I’ve got a little different take on it from sort of the people that I see out there. You know, for the reasons we talked about I don’t have a an anti evolution bias. I don’t have I’m not making a theological argument. It’s it’s more of an empirical argument based on you know, what is being put forth directly by the industry. So I’d be happy to do it. I just haven’t done it. This isn’t you know, this is I’m partly doing this for fun and, you know, it’s it’s something that it just You know, we live in this, this mass media era where things become truth through repetition. So this is just one little attempt to say, you know, Hey, wait a minute, this this story that everyone’s been hammering home for the last hundred and 80 years, it might not be true and what else is true? It’s kind of one of those things. So I haven’t debated anyone publicly, but I’d be happy to do it.

Rob McNealy
Well, that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you in the first place is that, you know, oftentimes the the people that are espousing what would be considered anti science perspective on you know, something that most people considered settled science, right, even though I hate the term settled science personally, because science is a process. But you know, when they come from a religious background or religious bent on these things, it’s really it is easy to dismiss them out of hand of having their own, you know, faith based bias. And so that’s why I was interested in talking with you because I did I mean, when I first started looking at your Twitter account and stuff, I’m like, okay, I’ve never heard this before. This is kind of a new thing to me. And so but you weren’t espousing the normal, you know? Oh, well the earth is 6000 years old. Okay, well, okay, well we can fundamentally right there that kind of disqualifies people in my mind, or when they say the earth is flat. You know, I think to me that that makes me a little more skeptical. But you’ve come off from an you know, a more of an empirical perspective. And so it’s intriguing to me To be honest, I I’m gonna look more into this this this belief because I’m it’s just kind of new to me.

Don McEnroe
Yeah, yeah. Now and it turns me off, too. I mean, I you know, but I think here’s the interesting thing. I think that’s what’s being used against me more you know, for example, I i’ve never, you know, I the Twitter’s pretty young, you can go back and I mean, you’ve seen it, but the amount of times that you know, I make put forth an arguments say, hey, look, you know, I’ll post an article and say, this, this this doesn’t add up. This doesn’t make sense what they’re saying. And oh, by the way, this picture is baloney. Right? Then what comes back at me is Oh, you’re a flat earth or you’re a religious fundamentalist or whatever. And I’m kind of like, you know, now are you are, you know, they’re bringing up the moon or, or they’ll bring up, you know, stuff that has nothing to do with what I said. And so it’s interesting, because I think, in my case, the shoes on the other foot in the sense that the arguments that are being used back at me are either just hand-waving, like, no, it’s, you know, everybody knows dinosaurs existed for 180 years, or attacks based on things that have nothing to do with. And so, so I think that, that it’s interesting, because I’m not I’m not interested in theological debates, there’s I mean, I am in different context, I can maybe you know how to have that discussion, but that’s not what this is. And I interested in what people in the industry are posting and saying that they found and the evidence for it. And you know what I, you know, when I really started looking into it, I was very shocked as a guy who grew up believing in dinosaurs having no reason not to believe in dinosaurs because they quote unquote, day, you know, were telling me that these existed. I was shocked at how flimsy the evidence is. And it’s really, you know, it’s really that simple for me.

Rob McNealy
So are you blacklisted from any museums?

Don McEnroe
Yeah. They always check my pockets on the way out because you know, they, they can joke about that, but I’m not blacklisted from from anywhere. I did. I did get I don’t want to say roughed up by you know, I was out at the archives in London trying to read Richard Allen’s papers. And they gave me a pretty good thorough checking on my bag, my bag and everything on the way out the door. mature I wasn’t trying to steal anything, which I wasn’t. So I’m not not blacklisted people you know, most people keep a pretty good spirit about it and I’m not you know, I’m not attacking anybody or or whatever. Most people there are a few people that get really angry right away and start screaming and yelling about flatter or the moon or, or science denier or whatever, but most people are like, you know, though, they’ll listen to, you know, to what you have to say. And when, and obviously, if you you know, if you say something stupid, they’ll say, hey, that’s stupid. And, and I’m comfortable with that kind of back and forth because then I can say the same thing when I see someone holding up, you know, an object and claiming it’s something that I just don’t see how it is. Then I want the right to be able to say, you know, I’m not buying that.

Rob McNealy
One last question. Is Pluto a moon or Pluto a planet?

Don McEnroe
Look, I mean, simply Pluto is a planet because he was upon it and and, you know, I don’t know if you want to hear my reason for it, but it’s, it’s really just because I grew You know, when I grew up so there was a planet and I don’t have any reason to change that I haven’t done a deep dive into into it. And, you know, I sort of like to still hold on to things that, you know, that I was told, and that I believed as a kid, you know, to as long as I can, unlike dinosaurs.

Rob McNealy
Well, you and I can hang out then because as a Gen X or I still believe I’m in team planet Pluto. So that’s kind of my litmus test. You know, it’s not you know, it’s not a moon it’s planet. So. So, Donny, where can people find out more?

Don McEnroe
You know, on, on our Twitter is @DAF1842. And that’s for the year the dinosaurs were invented. Our side is dinosaurs are fake.com. And we have a little bit of writing up there. But we’ll be we’ll be posting some stuff, you know, periodically, every single post on Twitter here and there. And we’re going to be doing some more deep dives in terms of our of dissecting articles that are put out there by the paleontology industry, and just sort of calling out some of the, you know, some of the things that they assert without what we would call basis. And so we’ll be out there just just, you know, trying to get the message home to question these things and question What question what you’re told.

Rob McNealy
Donnie, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I’ve had, I’ve had a really good time and I live think I’ve got something else to look at now.

Don McEnroe
I do appreciate it. I’ll talk to you soon.

Rob McNealy
You have a good day.

Don McEnroe
All right.

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