The Present Illness

Diabolical Dictators and Online Trolls

• Season 1 • Episode 17

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The doctors thrive on spite; Nurse Alex Pretti; Iran Update; How cheap bots/trolls drive disinformation

Note: we had an audio issue for the first few minutes of the episode (4:55). 

Iran Update:

Alex Pretti, ICU Nurse:

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Thanks for listening to The Present Illness with Drs. Arghavan Salles and Alyssa Burgart!

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Credits

  • Production by Arghavan Salles and Alyssa Burgart
  • Editing by Alyssa Burgart
  • Theme Music by Joseph Uphoff
  • Social Media by Arghavan Salles

Alyssa Burgart (00:00)
you can't just say, well, I can't believe anything, so I'll believe nothing. And instead, what I'll do is I'll just make up whatever I want and fill in whatever story I want and place whatever I want on top of that story.

Alyssa Burgart (00:13)
Hey folks, little quick message from me. This is Alyssa. I am up late trying to edit this episode and you are going to hear that the audio for the first few minutes of the podcast when we're doing the intro, I sound so far away and you will find out why at around minute five. So hang with us. I'm so sorry. I will not make this mistake again. And I hope you enjoy the show.

Arghavan (00:44)
Hey there, fellow nerds. Welcome to another episode of The Present Illness, the podcast where two physicians try to make sense of the world that is like really sick and almost dying around us. I'm Markavon Paulus, a surgeon scientist in your friendly neighborhood, deemed Scroller in Residence.

Alyssa Burgart (01:02)
tracks health law and cases like their EKGs full of spikes and surprises. The present illness is where we dig into public health, politics, culture, policy, and ethics with a scalpel in one hand and a meme in the other.

Arghavan (01:15)
Big thanks as always to everyone who's listening, those who have subscribed, those who follow us on whichever platform, and a warm welcome to anyone who just stumbled in from the cancellation of Huda Beauty.

Alyssa Burgart (01:27)
Hood, okay, what's hood of beauty? What does this mean?

Arghavan (01:29)
Yeah, I hardly

know myself. ⁓ I was vaguely aware of this brand. It's a beauty product brand like makeup and so on, foundation, skin products, I'm sure. And the founder is an owner is a woman named Puda and she stepped in it. So as far as a lot of Iranians are concerned, she is canceled as of the last couple of days.

Alyssa Burgart (01:37)
Okay.

Mmm. Okay. ⁓ I'll have to look into that because I had not heard of this. But now I'll find out about huda.

Arghavan (02:00)
Well, well, if anybody wants to look it up, if you just

type it, it's Huda, H-U-D-A. ⁓ There are just so many videos of Iranians trashing their Huda Beauty products. They are opening up pallets and using like scissors and other products to break up every part of the pallet before throwing it in the trash or the toilet or whatever. People are very unhappy because the nutshell explanation is that Huda said,

Alyssa Burgart (02:06)
Okay. ⁓

Ha ha!

you

Arghavan (02:30)
the, she's heard mixed things about the Iranian regime, so she doesn't really know what to say. And this was after she posted pro-regime propaganda on her page. Yeah.

Alyssa Burgart (02:42)
So not going well.

Arghavan (02:44)
No, I think she's not having probably a great day. ⁓ And Iranians, not to make too light of it, I think Iranians are very hurt by that because she's got a huge platform. mean, this was on her personal page. Her beauty brand has, I don't know, over 50 million, I think, followers on either Instagram or TikTok, whichever one I looked at. And then a similar amount, I'm assuming, on the other. So this is a hugely popular brand. And for her to make a video that says,

Well, for her to post pro-regime propaganda in the first place is very harmful because it suggests that maybe the regime is okay when most definitely the regime is not okay, as we've talked about before. And then for her to be equivocating about it in a video, when all people in Iran are asking for is for support to try to overthrow their tyrannical government. And she's sitting there saying, well, I don't really know. And then she ends her video saying,

Alyssa Burgart (03:33)
Thank

Arghavan (03:37)
You know, it's so complicated. Like, I'm not going to say any more about it. And we should all be careful when we talk about it. you know, Iranians are just begging for people to talk about Iran. And so that kind of messaging not only undermines the cause, but also makes people feel like they shouldn't talk about Iran, which is the exact opposite of what we're asking for. So as far as I'm concerned, it is canceled. Not that I ever owned a product, but, you know,

Alyssa Burgart (03:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Well, everybody listen, we're glad you're here. We love having you back and

note to anybody who's new listener, Arghavan and I tend to talk about some stuff that can be a little intense, so if you're in the car, you're in with little ones, you might not want to put this on speaker, you know, might want to pop it in the headphones. And this week I'm excited, you're going to give us an update, Ardavan, on...

what's happening in Iran because I, as you have just mentioned, there's a lot of information out there, a lot of misinformation and disinformation. We are also going to talk about Alex Pretti in Minnesota. And then one of the things that you and I talked about that will be, I hope, really valuable to all of you listening is we're gonna talk a little bit about the ecosystem of misinformation and disinformation and how it's contributing in these, specifically to talk about these two things that have been in the news.

So, let's get into it.

Arghavan (04:55)
your sound is a little bit weird.

know why. Yeah. Your mic's not plugged in? Yeah. I noticed it just now. I didn't notice it before, but I was like, let me say something before we get too far. I think it's fine.

Alyssa Burgart (04:58)
off. You know why. I know why. Wanna know why? The fucking microphones. No, it's way over there.

you

Arghavan (05:14)
You

Alyssa Burgart (05:17)
I it's a hella good microphone if it was... I bet it does. I bet it does.

Arghavan (05:18)
⁓ now it sounds better.

Alyssa Burgart (05:26)
This is how much my brain is not functioning these days. I dutifully plugged it in.

Arghavan (05:29)
Yeah, the two of us.

We got a good thing going between the two of us.

Alyssa Burgart (05:40)
So listen, for folks at home, it's really important for you to understand that I literally had my absolutely fabulous podcast microphone and I had it plugged in and it looked great, except that I literally left the microphone like three feet away from me so that Arghavan could barely hear me. So I'm gonna do what I can on the backend to correct the audio, but listen, that's just funny.

Arghavan (06:02)
haha

We're firing on all cylinders at all times.

Alyssa Burgart (06:09)
⁓ I mean, well, you know, this is the I think being an American right now is a very There are some very unique stressors that are happening here Obviously you are navigating not only being an American but also being an Iranian ⁓ We're all trying to figure out how it is that we can you know, I say I want to survive out of spite despite the rise of tyranny

So we're all just doing our best.

Arghavan (06:41)
Absolutely

are and and you know when people ask me how I'm doing I say I am still here Yeah, anyway, all right.

Alyssa Burgart (06:47)
Still here. Still here.

Arghavan (06:53)
As you said, let's get into our first topic I wanted to give folks an update on what's happening in Iran. We had a great conversation about it a couple weeks ago and ⁓ It's really not getting as much coverage in the news as many of us think it should and I know that's easy for me to say obviously it's my country I

Alyssa Burgart (06:59)
Okay.

Arghavan (07:10)
I care about it a lot. when I see and when those of us in the diaspora see the atrocities that are happening there and how little coverage it's getting outside of Iran and outside of social media, to be honest, it's really upsetting in part because the people in Iran with extremely limited connectivity due to the internet blackout, when they connect, they are begging us to talk about them. And when they connect and they see people

Alyssa Burgart (07:23)
Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (07:40)
minimizing what's happening there or suggesting, as we talked about before, that they're not really protesting in its Mossad agents or CIA agents in there. It's really hurtful. So I wanted to take an opportunity to update folks on what's actually happening.

Alyssa Burgart (07:53)
Well, and you know, I wanted to tell you, you know, I was seeing things on my feed about Iran a couple of weeks ago. And, know, when you and I were talking about it, ⁓ I have been quite struck in the last ⁓ in the last week or so. And I and I understand that, the things that are happening in Minnesota have taken up a lot understandably. But I've seen nothing, nothing about Iran. So unless I go looking for it, I'm not seeing it.

Arghavan (08:16)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and I'm sure that's true for most people. I obviously have looked for it and I continue to look for it. So I'm still seeing a lot, but it's clear to me that other people are not. And that's really from social media sources. I'm not seeing like, you know, whatever, NBC News, BBC, whatever major news organization you want to think of. I'm not seeing posts from them with regularity, but I am seeing from the sources that I usually go to about Iran, I'm seeing a lot there. And so I just want to give a couple bullet points. not going to go...

do a do super deep dive today, but I Want to give an update on the number of people we think have been killed The protests were really mainly on two nights January 8th and 9th And I think that when you and I last talked about it, I think the estimate might have been 12,000 people killed it's now Realistically probably between 40 and 50,000 but the numbers that have been reported are from the Documents obtained from within the administration that was reported by Iran

was 36,500 at least killed in those two nights. And again, based on what healthcare workers have reported about what happened in hospitals, what people saw on the streets with their eyes in terms of the number of bodies that were on the ground, the number of shots that they heard in cities all over the country, the estimate is probably, in reality is probably more than that, but that's the latest kind of estimate that we have is 36,500-ish in those two nights.

A couple of things that have struck me around that online when I'm seeing posts coming from people from Iran. Now, I'll just point out, can I formally verify that they're in Iran? No, I can't. People are connecting via VPN. So if you look at their location on something like Twitter, they might look like they're in Germany or whatever. A lot of the apps that we use are illegal and they're banned in Iran. So they can't even under normal times access them just by connecting to the internet like we do. But especially with these bands, the internet bands, mean the blockouts.

They have to find a workaround. So it's very difficult and it is possible that some of these people are not actually running I I can't tell you that but what I can say is that things that I see over and over again from different sources and there are things like That people have felt this was different from previous protests, know, the regime has always cracked down on protests like in 2022 in 2019 2009 We're kind of used to what their plan is how they respond and this time

Not only did they bring in foreign militias who can kill Iranians more easily because they don't feel any kinship with us, but also that there seemed to be less of an emphasis on arresting people. Like there weren't as many people with handcuffs and trucks to take people away, but there were a lot of military grade weapons with the intention, of course, of killing people. that people on the ground felt was different from previous instances. But there are a lot of things that are similar to what's happened before.

Healthcare workers in particular have been targeted as has been the case in the past. So I think I might have mentioned in our last conversation about this that the security forces go into hospitals, which is again, a violation of international law. Healthcare should be neutral. ⁓ They have in the past co-opted ambulances to detain protesters. That's also violation of law. They have prevented blood from getting to hospitals. Anyway, all these things are not.

strictly supposed to be happening in accordance with international law, but they happen there all the time. And so again, we've seen that kind of behavior of security forces entering hospitals. But from what I've seen, it seems again, much more severe than what I've seen in the past. Like in 2022, there were a couple of isolated incidents of abducting protesters from hospitals that I recall. But now it seems like it's much more widespread. So if you remember, we talked about the warehouses where they had bodies in body bags that people could go

families could go try to find their loved ones. Amongst those in those body bags, we are seeing photos of bodies that have EKG leads on them, Foley catheters in them, IVs in them, so open surgical wounds. So typically you wouldn't see that, right? You and I both know if a patient dies in a hospital, all of that is removed from their body before their body is sent to the morgue. So that suggests that these bodies, these patients were abducted before they died.

and then placed into these body bags. There were reports that patients were taken straight out of the operating room, like as they were being wheeled out that they were abducted from there. I saw at least one photo that looked like an abdominal surgical wound and there are, I don't wanna get too far into the details, but there have been reports for a long time that the Islamic Republic of Iran steals organs. Anyway, so that's all terrible. And as they've done in the past, they've arrested multiple healthcare workers and there are several physicians.

who have been arrested and one of them, as I have read, named Alireza Golcini, who's a general surgeon who does surgical oncology, has supposedly been sentenced to death for what they call, crimes, sorry, waging war against God because the supreme leader is a representation of God, so if you do anything like protesting, then you are committing a crime against God and the punishment for crimes against God is death.

Alyssa Burgart (13:41)
It's so convenient to be a representative of a deity. You can see why, you can see why, you know, leaders are into that. You know, like, no, I was selected by God. Trust me.

Arghavan (13:51)
Of course, yeah.

Yeah, so if you disagree with me, you're disagreeing with God, and if you do anything to hurt me, then you're hurting God, and we must punish that severely, right? So that's...

Alyssa Burgart (14:04)
And by hurting you mean offending and not showing sufficient respect.

Arghavan (14:09)
Correct, I'm not talking about physical assault, although I'm sure there's plenty of people who would like to physically assault that supreme leader. if given the opportunity. Dr. Golchini is the one I've seen already, I believe has been sentenced. It is very hard to get reliable information, but from the sources that I've seen, it sounds like that's already happened for him. But there's other doctors like Dr. Amane Soleimani, who's also been arrested. And I'll put a link to some other names as well. But.

That should never happen. I hope I don't need to say that that should never happen. People should not be getting arrested for providing care to patients. And this is all because they cared for patients who had been injured in the protests. And related to that patients, this happens usually and has happened in the past with these protests, too, that patients have a hard time or are scared of accessing health care because of these abductions that have happened in these detentions that happen in health care settings.

So what patients do, and this has again happened in other rounds of protests in Iran as well, is they contact doctors on social media and send photos of wounds and ask for advice. And so I'm in one of these chat groups with doctors who, mainly one person who gets the photos from different sources and shares them to the group for advice, like what should we tell this person to do? And that is how healthcare is right now in Iran, because people don't feel safe.

to go to the hospital or to go see a doctor and doctors who provide care to these patients can be arrested and potentially sentenced to death.

Alyssa Burgart (15:42)
I it's so, I mean, again, you and I are going to talk more about why some information gets suppressed and why some doesn't. And it does not take much to look at the behavior that we're seeing.

from ICE throughout the United States. know, obviously they're concentrated in certain cities at certain times, but the way that they're behaving in terms of going into hospitals without the need to be there, violating people's civil rights constantly, pulling people from vehicles, charging into people's homes. Someone tried to get into an embassy the other day. I mean, it's just like totally outrageous. I mean, Americans seem like they're starting to wake up to this. And I mean, if you

When I hear these stories from you about what you know as best we know what's happening in Iran like That's where we're going guys. We're on the train We're on the train to tyranny

Arghavan (16:43)
Yeah, think as we've discussed before I'm sure Donald Trump would love to be able to do all these sorts of things, right? Just have total control over everything. I obviously hope that the resistance to the extent that it exists here will be successful at preventing that. But yeah, I mean there's a certain way of thinking of these folks who think that they deserve total power and they thrive off of that, right? This idea that they can control other people's lives.

And those people don't matter at all. They're just numbers or pieces on a chessboard. I wanna mention two more things and then we'll get into the disinformation, misinformation part of it. So one of the main things that people from within Iran have asked us to talk about is what's happening to prisoners. So even though it seems at this time their main goal was not arresting people, they did arrest tens of thousands of people. But from what I can tell and what I've seen,

some number of them, potentially a very large number of them, are being held in warehouses outside of the prison system. And what has happened in the past when they've done that is then they have just mass executed those people. They're not being tracked, they don't have cases that are being brought, even in front of a sham judiciary. They're just outside the system altogether. And as flawed as the system is, that also means that their families don't know where they are. No one knows what has happened to these people.

⁓ And they have a history in the Islamic Republic of Iran of brutally terrorizing the prisoners within the prison system. There was actually a really well done ⁓ expose by CNN in fall of 2022 about the sexual assault of the systematic sexual assault of prisoners in Iran. So you can imagine if that's what they're doing with the people who they can track and who have family who know exactly where they are and what's happening with their cases.

You can imagine what they're doing to these folks who aren't in the system at all. And so people are very worried that they're just killing all these people and we just don't know yet because they're in some warehouse system. And related to that, we have seen very few bodies of women. The videos that we've seen of these bodies in body bags, bodies on the streets, very few women. And so a lot of people are asking, what are they doing to women's bodies?

And the couple that have been seen by people within Iran, the bodies have been severely disfigured. They have been violated. There are reports that their uteruses are removed. I don't know. I genuinely don't know what they're doing, but it is very concerning that we don't see these women's bodies. We don't know where they are. We don't know what they're doing with them. Some people believe...

And again, just because information is really hard to get, you know that I usually don't peddle in like conspiracies and rumors, but in this case with the internet shut down, it's very hard to tell what is happening. So I'm just communicating the concerns that people in Iran have. So what's happening with the prisoners who are in these warehouses? What's happening with the women's bodies? Some people there believe that the regime is holding on to the bodies in particular of women and children who are already dead and not releasing them to anyone, not telling anyone where they are.

so that if a country such as the United States were to attack Iran, they could dump those bodies wherever those attacks were and pretend that the United States or whatever other entity had killed far more people in order to gain sympathy for them, the regime, and play the victim. Like, we were attacked by this foreign entity. Look at how many of our people were killed by this war.

Alyssa Burgart (20:29)
I mean, that's

diabolical.

Arghavan (20:32)
Well, I mean, they're nothing if not that. mean, this is part of the issue that I think people have. So let's let's go into some misinformation.

Alyssa Burgart (20:37)
Well,

and there's a word for that too, though, like that technique. I ⁓ was just listening to this person describing it's called preemptive narrative inversion, where you're preemptively coming up with a story that you can use to actually impose. It's kind of like a different version of Darvo, ⁓ Deny, Attack, Reverse, Victim, and Offender, where the country that's being attacked or the institution that's being attacked

Arghavan (20:49)
Mm.

Yeah.

Alyssa Burgart (21:06)
can preemptively come up with a story that they can actually pin on their enemy. Anyway, just made me think of that.

Arghavan (21:10)
Yep. No, think

that sounds very relevant. I think part, so I want to talk about the misinformation and disinformation piece around all this because I see so much and all of us as Iranians, see so much on the internet that is really harmful to the people of Iran inside Iran because people are still saying things like none of this is really happening.

Alyssa Burgart (21:20)
Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (21:38)
this is all made up by the Mossad or it's made up by ⁓ the CIA or ⁓ none of this is real because we don't have, where are the journalists reporting? Somebody said that to me on my post yesterday. They said, I wanna see reporting from the journalists just like we had in Gaza. Well, you the thing is there is no freedom of the press in Iran. So the only journalists in Iran who can report anything, all of their reporting is vetted by the regime. So literally the only thing you will see

from journalists in Iran is what the regime wants you to see. It is not the same environment as other countries where, you would expect to see journalists coming onto their page telling you stuff. That cannot happen there. It is not the same environment that we are used to. But if you want videos and photos, that's out there. That's out there on a number of different ⁓ resources that exist. Iran International is one. There's a...

Alyssa Burgart (22:23)
Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (22:33)
company called Tavana, T-A-V-A-A-N-A. There's one called Manotto, M-A-N-O-T-O. There's Henga, which is an international human rights organization, or Harana, H-R-A-N-A. Anyway, point is, and we'll put links to these in the show notes, but there are a number of organizations that are based outside of Iran, but they're getting videos and images from inside Iran. And you'll see them, like we talked about this before about how do you know if a video is real or AI?

Alyssa Burgart (23:02)
Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (23:03)
things like

Alyssa Burgart (23:03)
Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (23:03)
the Kathryzak ⁓ Center, the Forensic Center, where there were all those bodies and body bags, we saw multiple videos from different angles from different people that were sent to these organizations. And that's how we're pretty sure that that's real. It's not a single video from a single perspective of a single spot or a single person. It's multiple views of the same environment that helps us to know that that's real.

Alyssa Burgart (23:15)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I really appreciate you having that list. Cause that was one of the things I was hoping you would cover is where are places that we can reliably get at least some information that.

wherever it's coming from, where folks who are close to this issue who are trying to really understand what to do and what information can be shared and how, I think that's really, really helpful.

Arghavan (23:53)
Yeah, and I totally understand that, you know, for anyone listening to this or who sees my post online, you're like, who are you and how do you know anything? Like, and I think that is totally fair. And like, if you look at my page or those who have been talking about this for a long time, you'll see there's lots of videos with screenshots from the things I'm telling you about or even videos of the things we're talking about, headlines from these news sources that are more reliable for getting information about Iran. And so people should take a look at

those things. You the types of comments I'm getting are like another issue that the people seem to be confused about is

Is, are you posting, like they're saying this to like are you posting all of this to manufacture consent for the US and Israel to go and declare war on Iran?

Because I have control. Yes, yes, I am in charge of the US military and the Israeli military. Who knew?

Alyssa Burgart (24:50)
I

listen, now that I know that, I have some notes. I have some requests and I'm gonna just send them straight to you. I'll text you. I'll text you.

Arghavan (24:58)
Yeah,

perfect. No problem. I'll take care of it. Apparently I have that power. ⁓ But yeah, I mean, and I understand, look, putting my, was very emotional reading these last night because it was really upsetting to me for people to doubt the slaughter and massacre that the Iranian government took out on our own people. And I see, part of the reason is I see every day the videos and photos of the young people, including children who were killed by this regime. And so for someone to come and say, you're just,

This is just propaganda to manufacture consent is very, hurtful actually. But.

Alyssa Burgart (25:33)
And we've seen the exact same narrative around Gaza. You know, we've been watching this video year after year at this point.

Arghavan (25:36)
Yes.

Right, exactly. This isn't exactly an original idea. And...

Alyssa Burgart (25:48)
Genocide, the sequel.

Arghavan (25:53)
Yeah. I thought we canceled that series back in the 1940s. ⁓ But I guess I was wrong. ⁓ So this person was like, how do we know the difference between what's happening and what Israel wants us to believe so that we'll go to war? I'm like, what about me? I mean, I'm just saying generally, like think about things like this when you're having these thoughts. It's fair to question. But what about me?

Alyssa Burgart (25:54)
What a franchise!

Tch tch.

Apparently not. Apparently not.

Arghavan (26:23)
suggest that I have anything to do with the Israeli government or the, I mean, like really.

Alyssa Burgart (26:31)
Well, we've

talked though, ⁓ you've told, and correct me if I'm wrong, you've told me that a lot of people assume that you are Jewish because of the shape of your face.

Arghavan (26:42)
I have gotten, yes, that is true. I have gotten many comments. It's usually people who are pissed off at whatever I said in a video and then they think that calling me a Jew is some kind of slur, which of course it's not. It's the reflects their own bigotry and reflects absolutely nothing. Yeah, anti-Semitism was also supposed to be canceled. Yeah, absolutely. ⁓

Alyssa Burgart (26:59)
Again, a series we were supposed to cancel in the 1940s.

Arghavan (27:09)
And anyway, so like this same person when I replied to them said, are these massacres happening? I wish I knew. What do you mean? What do you mean you wish you knew? Like you can do, okay, so here's the practical point, because I could vent all day about the comments that people have made to me. But practically speaking, if you see something, let me make it more clear. If I see something on Instagram or TikTok or Twitter or Blue Sky, whatever, and I'm like, that seems weird. I don't reply back to the person.

and tell them they suck or that they're like a foreign agent. I go look for information, okay? Especially if it's something that is important to me or that I care a lot about. I will go do a Google search. I know, I know, mind blowing. And then sometimes I find that actually it was misinformation. Not that necessarily the person shared it with poor intent, but they may not have realized that it was misinformation. And then I just move on with my life.

You know, there was a person on Blue Sky who had posted about a protester in Iran who had been arrested and had been, they thought, sentenced to be executed. And then, again, hard to get news. So there were some reports he had been executed, which was obviously been horrific, but his family members were like, no, he hasn't. We just saw him yesterday.

So I had posted in reply to somebody who was not Iranian. It was like somebody who's kind of a reporter or maybe independent reporter type person who had said, I have terrible news to report. This person was executed. And I was like, but literally not. And I linked to the video of his family member talking about the fact that he had not been executed. That person never took down their post. That's whole separate issue. But that's what I do when I see stuff like that. go, look, I don't sit there and tell people like someone else did.

that my post is bullshit or that this other person's post is bullshit. I don't do that, especially when we're talking about tens of thousands of people who have been massacred. If you think that's not true, what I'm suggesting to our audience is look into it. Just take a couple minutes and all you had to do in this case, we're talking about a post of mine on Instagram, you can look at any of my many videos that I've made about Iran on the same page, the same page that you're on right now.

telling me that what I'm saying is bullshit, you just click to my profile and watch any of those videos and see the screenshots and the videos of the things that you think I'm making up.

Alyssa Burgart (29:36)
But Argonvan,

you think they care about you.

Arghavan (29:40)
No, they don't have to care about me. No, no, no. I absolutely know that they don't care about me.

Alyssa Burgart (29:43)
No, no, no, no,

no, but I mean, they don't care about I think this is part of the problem, right? It's like, you know, we talk obviously here about culture and social media and like, you know, human human behavior around these things. you think people are they're easily to get incited. I know you and I have both been, you know, it's it's easy to get pulled into certain ideas. And I think that ⁓

you and I really try to be diligent about like, wait, do I know that? Is that enough evidence? And yet, I think you and I also both know that ⁓ based on our many interactions with presumably real human beings on the internet, that is not something everybody does.

Arghavan (30:16)
Mm-hmm.

Well, for sure, 100 % agree. And I'm just suggesting that perhaps before people say things like, LOL, nice try, Masad, or a post made of nothing but screenshots from Twitter alleging things is not what I consider credible. By the way, all my carousels, anytime I post a carousel, they're posts from Twitter or Blue Sky, but same idea. I have never gotten this onslaught.

of comments that, well, these are just Twitter posts. How do I know any of it is real?

Alyssa Burgart (31:04)
Well, so, and this is, again, when you tell me about this issue in particular, and we have seen similar behavior, not just on your account, on my account, on other people's accounts, if it's about sexual assault, if it's about genocide, if it's about anything that is... ⁓

woke or white, you know, I don't know, like depending on how things are coded. But I'm actually curious, like, do you think that these are actual people? Like, I kind of am like, I don't know, this whole thing sounds like you've caught the attention of bots or scammers or whoever who are being paid to suppress this information. So I'm curious what you think.

Alyssa Burgart (31:53)
are these real people?

Arghavan (31:57)
You know, it's a great question.

It's so hard to know. I will say that often when I post really inappropriate comments that are made to me ⁓ on Instagram, when I post them to my stories, a lot of times people will say, it's just a bot. I don't know. You know, like I think that's a way to minimize that there are real people out there who have these thoughts. And you're absolutely right that the Islamic Republic of Iran pays for campaigns to influence

Alyssa Burgart (32:16)
for sure.

Arghavan (32:24)
people's thoughts. I mean, that's probably why Huda, who we talked about earlier, thinks that she's heard mixed things. Because the only way you can hear mixed things about this regime is if you're hearing things from the regime or the regime's supporters, right? Which are very few people who are usually paid by the regime. ⁓ And so I for sure know that they are influencing what people see and they have a specific narrative. I mean, they've been very successful with this CIA, Mossad,

narrative. was just seeing today text messages that they've been sending, the government has been sending to people in Iran and they're saying things about, you know, the CIA and the Assad, Israel, US, we've been successful at, you know, beating back these foreign invaders, that kind of stuff. And then, so I see that coming directly from the regime and then I see people on social media parroting that back to me and it's often leftists, by the way, it's often people who are supposedly in favor of human rights.

but they've gone so far around the corner on human rights that they're now pro-Islamic Republic of Iran and it is very confusing. But yeah, so I do think some of them are real, some of them are probably bots, I think you're right, but one of these women, it was a woman who had said something really insensitive about not believing that any of this was happening. I had posted her comment to my stories and I'd also replied to her and said, this is really hurtful to people in Iran who lost.

there are family members who had to search through corpses to find their sister, their brother, their daughter, their son. And you are sitting here, presumably in the US, I don't know where exactly this person is, saying, did it even happen? Imagine these folks in Iran trying so hard to get internet access to see what the world is saying about what's happened in Iran. And that's the kind of stuff they come across. In fact, one of the posts in my carousel was someone who says they're in Iran.

saying, look, I tried so many times to connect via VPN, I finally connect, and then I see all these people talking about how we don't exist and we're not real and it's all Mossad protesters. Yeah, it's hurtful.

So anyway, I don't know the answer. they real people? I think some of them are. I think some of them are organized campaigns. It's very hard to tell one from the other.

Alyssa Burgart (34:32)
So.

Sure.

Yeah, I mean, and I certainly am under no illusions. There are a lot of a-holes out there on the interwebs who feel like they cannot wait to just warm up the fingers and get on the typing machines. ⁓

Arghavan (34:53)
Yes, be a real man.

insulting a stranger on the internet. That's masculinity, guess. I don't know.

Alyssa Burgart (35:04)
I was looking at, there was a bunch of drama over the weekend with, around Brene Brown and whatever, it's like a side issue. But Portia Noir, who had posted some things about Brene Brown, has a post that I'd seen that was called ⁓ WAIT Wait, that you should ask yourself, why am I talking? And that online you can ask yourself, why am I typing? And I thought, I love that. I'm gonna keep that one up here.

Arghavan (35:11)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Yeah, I love that. wish, I think that should be widely adopted just before you post a comment. Why am I typing? Is this really necessary in this moment?

Alyssa Burgart (35:45)
Why am I typing?

But what this story made me think about is, ⁓ I finally remembered what it was about, there was that podcast that you and I both listened to a couple years ago called Who Trolled Amber? Having to do with Amber Heard. And in that podcast series, which was absolutely fabulous, I recommend people check it out, ⁓ there was an episode that went through this whole convoluted thing about how it was that...

Arghavan (35:56)
Yes.

Alyssa Burgart (36:09)
Johnny Depp has a relationship with a very powerful authoritarian world leader. forget if it was somebody from the United Arab Emirates. can't remember the details of which leader it was. But they uncovered in this how easy it is to pay a relatively small amount of money if you really want to amplify trolling around a very specific, very niche topic.

Arghavan (36:27)
I'm here.

Alyssa Burgart (36:33)
I just fact-checked myself. was actually Saudi Arabia is apparently the area that is reportedly backed the bots that went after Amber Heard

And ⁓ in part, how this became so obvious was because

there was a group that was like touting how easy it was for them to be able to ⁓ effectively troll people.

Arghavan (36:53)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Alyssa Burgart (36:55)
And so I, we know that the United States obviously participates in things like this. I'm under absolutely no illusions. ⁓ And so I would not be surprised if many different actors who have ⁓ incentives to drive people to believe certain things about Iran.

to not have access to certain information are funneling money to specifically augment what messages are seen on social media and which ones are not.

Arghavan (37:28)
Yeah, and I do want to talk about I want to wrap this up so we can talk about Alex Freddie but the last thing I want to say about this Point that you're making with regard to Iran is, know somebody who was upset at me sent me a DM saying like how dare you be upset at me when we have this information they didn't use the word ecosystem, but really a really flawed information ecosystem and I'm just asking you for proof or more evidence or whatever that this isn't all driven by Israeli propaganda and

You know, they can have whatever concern they want to have. what I, the point I want to make is that not everybody's perspective is equal on every issue. Like someone like me who's been following what's happening in Iran for years now is from Iran, was born in Iran. But even if I weren't, like I follow this for a long time and there's this idea that like what's happening in Iran now is caused by a foreign entity.

Requires an invalidation of everything that's happened in Iran for the previous 47 years because the people of Iran have had multiple and I think we talked about this last time multiple times where they've had large protests nationwide protests including 2009 2019 2022 and now and so to suggest that this time doesn't count because this time it's orchestrated by other people really undermines the agency

of Iranian people and denies that entire history. So if you don't know that history, which this person clearly doesn't, it's okay. You don't have to know that history, but then don't come to someone like me and act like there's no reason to believe anything I have to say just because you didn't know it, just because you don't have that background, you don't have that history, and you didn't even take 30 seconds to look into it before you jumped in with, how do we know any of this is even happening?

You know, and I can tell you that the people whose family members are dead would be quite offended at the mere suggestion that this is all some sort of coordinated campaign that has nothing to do with Iranians and their demand for freedom.

Alyssa Burgart (39:30)
It's also really interesting. And this is again, kind of a sidebar, but like when people come at you on social media and they're basically trying to like assign you the duty of doing the Google search that they like didn't bother to do. Like folks click on over to that, click out of the Instagram, click out of the TikTok, go to a search engine. We know you have your faves. Try it, see what happens. No guarantee that you'll get like amazing.

Arghavan (39:56)
Yeah, I-

Alyssa Burgart (40:00)
investigative journalism immediately, but like, I don't know, take a look. Like, I don't know, ask.

Arghavan (40:04)
Yeah.

Ask, ask, see what's out there. I mean, there have been in this case, CNN, BBC, NBC, they've all reported somewhat on this story. So if you're questioning whether these people are dead or not, which is just a really ghoulish thing to do in the first place, look it up. Don't come to someone like me demanding that I provide evidence that by the way already exists on my page to the extent that we have it.

Anyway, with that, I wanna talk about the other issue that also relates in terms of the misinformation and disinformation in social media campaigns, but is centered domestically, which is what happened to Alex Preti ⁓ in Minnesota.

Alyssa Burgart (40:45)
I you know we certainly I mean we're recording this on January 29th. We're going to release this on January 30th. It's I'm so glad you agreed to talk about Alex pretty this week because I you know he was a for folks who are.

protecting your peace and not getting on social media and not getting on the news. Alex Preti is a man who was ⁓ murdered on the street by ICE agents. ⁓ He was an ICU nurse, highly respected, worked for the VA hospital in Minneapolis. I watched the videos. I do not recommend that people watch the videos. ⁓

If you choose to do that, that is up to you, but I do not recommend doing that. It is incredibly traumatizing and ⁓ many, many people have watched the videos. There's a lot of analysis you can read that does not require you to observe the murder of Alex Preti. ⁓

It's been very interesting watching the dynamics around this. Alex was attending a protest in Minneapolis.

⁓ the discourse around why Alex Pretti was in that particular area, you know, whatever, it doesn't really matter in my opinion why he was there. in the video, you can see him holding up a phone. ⁓ he is, he is armed. He had a license to have an, they have open carry laws in, Minnesota. So he had a license to

carry a gun, which he had. ⁓ Nowhere in the video. Yeah, it's holstered. And he had a license to have that. he was doing something that completely legal in the state of Minnesota, which is he had a license to have a gun. He had a license to open carry and he was open carrying. It was not in his hand. It was actually in the holster. And

Arghavan (42:31)
What's the holster? It was holstered.

Alyssa Burgart (42:53)
It's been really interesting watching the discourse around that because, all of this talk around for decades around, you know, where's the good guy with the gun and all of this stuff. you know, having that gun didn't save Alex Pretti's life. ⁓ Instead, what happened is he was wrestled to the ground by ICE agents. They were kicking him and...

One of them shot him and then two other people, it sounds like unloaded 10 additional shots. and there's a video afterwards where there is one of these agents shouting, where's the gun, where's the gun? Well, one of the agents had disarmed him before he had been shoved to the ground.

You you and I are abolitionists. We're not big, we're not like out there like, hooray, more police. But like, police officers clearly at least have some training in deescalation. There's some effort to ideally not pull out your weapon. ⁓ And you can clearly see in this, in the video of Alex's death, how

poorly trained and panicked these people were, these ICE agents.

Arghavan (44:07)
Well,

let's talk about that for just a minute because, you know, we know that ICE agents, they change the training down to only 47 days. And the ICE agent who shot Renee Good had been in DHS, part of DHS for, I believe it was either eight or 10 years, we can put it in the show notes, but for years. He was not a recent hire. I heard, have not confirmed, bro.

that was also true of the folks who were involved in executing Alex Preti in the middle of the street. So the reason I paused you there is I don't know that it's a question of poor training versus a question of that they were maybe trained to do exactly this. And for folks who don't know and haven't seen, Alex was only in that specific location so close to the ICE agents because they had just shoved two women to the ground.

Alyssa Burgart (45:05)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. He was defending one of them.

Arghavan (45:05)
And he went over, prior

to that, he was down the street just filming what was happening, just an observer filming what was happening. And when they attacked these two women, he went to help them stand up and to check if they were okay. That's why a lot of people say his last words were, are you okay? And then because he dared to help these women with his phone in one hand and his empty other hand, they pepper sprayed all of them.

Alyssa Burgart (45:34)
Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (45:35)
And there's a photo of Alex standing like this. So those who are on audio, he's got the phone in one hand up somewhere between his shoulder and his head and his other hand is in front of him, kind of protecting himself from the pepper spray. And then it's after that, that they just grab him and throw him down. And the moment, I don't wanna get too graphic here, but I wanna say that it was clear he was not a threat. He did not push back. Like when you said they rushed him to the ground, he didn't fight at all. And he...

Alyssa Burgart (45:57)
Mm-mm.

Arghavan (46:02)
They put him on the ground. He was down on his knees. And in fact, the photo that I saw, had one knee on the ground, one hand on the ground. He was off balance. He was in no position to fight anyone or cause anybody harm. And he's not in a position where anyone could perceive, anyone rational would perceive that he was a threat. And to your point, they removed his weapon, was the only, and he never, by all accounts, never even moved to grab. And then they executed him right after that. So.

Alyssa Burgart (46:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (46:32)
What how this I mean, it's obviously and there's so many layers to this tragedy including that I don't know if you had heard this but Alex's parents found out when an AP reporter called them Because the government had no interest in notifying them. They they had a hard time getting any information about where his body was Because that's how disrespectful our federal government is that they took away this man's life and didn't even bother Calling his family didn't think they needed to do that. They didn't even

Alyssa Burgart (46:42)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (47:01)
try CPR after they had killed him. ⁓ The woman in the pink jacket who took one of the films and you can see her in one of the other films said that as she watched, all they did was come and approach him and turn his body and count the number of bullets like he was a deer. They had shot, sorry, shot a number of bullet holes.

Alyssa Burgart (47:20)
Well,

and before they even got to that, they rained down all of these bullets on this unarmed man who they have just shoved to the ground and they scattered like cockroaches. They could, ⁓ just completely backed away. And then you finally have them go and examine his body again, clearly not, I mean, they knew they'd killed him.

Arghavan (47:47)
well, it's obvious. mean, before they, the scattering that you're talking about. So for folks who haven't seen it, so they kill him, they step away and they're standing in a line, I don't know, five, six feet away. And then they fire a bunch of more shots into him when he was already dead. And then they come back and examine the body. And all of this is, ⁓ it's really horrific, but it's important to talk about because

Of course, the government's version of the story is totally different and you would have to not have watched the video, not have seen any of the news coverage, not listen to the interview with the lady in pink to have any reasonable chance at believing them. But the vast majority of us did see some videos or analysis or the interview that Anderson Cooper did with the lady in the pink jacket. I'm sorry, I'm forgetting her name. We'll put it in the show notes. Cause she was so brave to capture that moment.

from the view that showed very clearly he had no gun in his hand, even though that's what they said. They said he was there to, this is what Kristi Noem and Greg Bovino said, that he was there to cause, inflict maximum damage. That's the phrase they used. Maximum damage.

Alyssa Burgart (48:59)
god, I heard them say that

and I just wanted to vomit in my mouth.

Arghavan (49:03)
Yeah, I would suggest to folks humbly that anyone who trying to inflict maximum damage would at least draw their weapon that they had on their body. And we have to use some, at least minimal critical thinking skills here to understand whether the things we are being told are even remotely plausible based on the evidence that we see and hear and from eyewitnesses who are there at the scene.

And so ⁓

Alyssa Burgart (49:34)
When this gets and this gets to your to the

things that you were saying about Iran, right? It's like,

yeah, there's a lot of uncertainty, but there's also evidence that can be cited and reviewed and that journalists need to have access to and that

you can't just say, well, I can't believe anything, so I'll believe nothing. And instead, what I'll do is I'll just make up whatever I want and fill in whatever story I want and place whatever I want on top of that story.

And you know what?

I'm just gonna believe whatever the government feeds me.

Arghavan (50:08)
would definitely be a terrible strategy. If you care about the truth, holy smokes. I mean, the thing is, I would encourage folks to look at this video that somebody had put together. I'll try to find it and put it in the show notes. That they overlapped Greg Bovino's comments immediately after this happened with Kristi Noem's comments immediately after they happened. They are the same.

Alyssa Burgart (50:09)
Mmm, this meal is terrible.

I saw that.

So gross.

Arghavan (50:30)
They

had a script that somebody wrote and then they both just read the script. I mean, in the early moments after this calling him a domestic terrorist, talking about inflicting ⁓ maximum damage for a man who by all accounts, like there was a piece that his childhood friend wrote about him. There's been, you know, his sister put out a statement, his parents put out a statement. By all accounts was just a lovely, lovely man. There's a video that's gone viral of him. ⁓

⁓ I don't know what the right word is for what it was but what a veteran had died and he's reading these last if they're considered last rights or what but ⁓

Alyssa Burgart (51:02)
Yes.

It's

like it's a statement honoring their contribution.

Arghavan (51:11)
Yes. I mean, these are the things that we see and hear about this man and they want us to believe that a man who didn't draw his weapon even as his life was at risk was there to inflict maximum damage. We as people have to have the ability to call bullshit on that.

Alyssa Burgart (51:29)
Well, it's also something where, you know, listen, are there health care workers who are not good people? Yeah, sure, sure. But the vast majority, people who are nurses, nurses are helpers, okay? Like nurses, doctors, like we are people who were like, ⁓ I could make a bunch of money by going into finance. I know what I'll do instead. I would rather go in and take care of people in their bodily fluids and make sure they don't die.

I would actually much rather do that. the building is burning. It's like people go to become firefighters. Like, the building's on fire. Let's run in there and save people. Like people who are helpers, like ICE is not helpers. Okay. You look at that. I mean, and that's one of the things that I think of when I found out that that Alex Pretty was a was an ICU nurse, I was like, wow, what a what a what a stunning irony that we are trying to be, you the government is trying to feed us this lie over and over and over again.

that ICE is there to keep us safe, that they are the ones who are gonna get rid of the bad people in this society, those bad immigrants who just come in here and taking your jobs and doing bad things. And it's like, no, actually, we just watched a bunch of goons who are not helpers murder a helper, murder a person who is genuinely trying to make the world a better place as many immigrants in this country are. I saw a video actually, I wanted to send it to you, but I decided to wait so I could talk to you about it here. ⁓

Arghavan (52:40)
Mm-hmm.

Is this a-

Alyssa Burgart (52:53)
But there was a guy who had been on a flight and he kept it pretty vague because he doesn't want to identify this physician. But basically it was like a trans, sounds like it must have been really long flight overnight, many hours. And this physician, somebody, you know, they say, there a physician on board? This guy goes, I'm a doctor. How can I help? Ends up spending hours in the middle of the night taking care of this man as we do, as we do. And

He's apparently wearing a t-shirt that says immigrants make America great. And the guy who's making the video apparently was his like seatmate. And so talk to him a little bit about what had happened. And he said, yeah, you my parents, he said, I like, I like your shirt. And he says, my parents were both immigrants. And, know, I'm so blessed that I could be in this country and I could become a doctor. And I just really want to make my parents proud and whatever. And as he gets off and it's an international flight, the

Arghavan (53:24)
Mm.

Hmm.

Alyssa Burgart (53:50)
some border patrol agent was posturing and scoffed at this man's shirt, basically just verbally harassed this physician who has just spent the evening, rather than sleeping on this plane, helping a stranger. mean, the disgusting irony of it is not lost on me. ⁓

Arghavan (54:03)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Burgart (54:15)
There's I don't know how why I didn't think about bringing this up before. There's a wonderful newsletter from a woman named Jen Bud. And I'll put a link in the show notes. Jen is a former Border Patrol agent and she writes extensively about misogyny and harassment and abuse within the Border Patrol and worked there for many years before this administration and is no longer there. Has written

Jen has written some incredible commentary, highly recommend. ⁓ Especially, know, if you're somebody like, I do not generally, unless I shows up in the hospital, I do not have a lot of interactions these days ⁓ with people who are in border patrol, you know, other than like at the airport and very, very rarely, I hope never again at the hospital. So.

Arghavan (54:59)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Burgart (55:08)
You know, having insights from people like Jen, feel like has been really helpful for me in terms of contextualizing it from somebody who's really lived in that world.

Arghavan (55:17)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, that sounds like a great resource and I hadn't I hadn't read her work. So I will definitely be doing that I also want to connect this back to our earlier conversation and say that You know with what our federal government is putting out I am certain that they are also running organized campaigns of people posting things that align with their narrative on all of these platforms and what you may or may not have heard about that

Alyssa Burgart (55:32)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (55:46)
very specifically relates to this is the sale of TikTok that went through last week, I believe on Friday. And many people have noticed a change ⁓ in their algorithm. Now, some people believe that the change is due to the censorship of specific topics, including any commentary that's critical of ICE. Others...

Alyssa Burgart (55:50)
I

Arghavan (56:13)
think it might have been just a transitional issue. TikTok itself, the US version now put out a statement that they were having some like data warehouse problems. I don't know, but the reason I'm sharing it in this context is that a lot of people are very concerned that actually this version of TikTok that's now owned by Larry Ellison is going to be actively censoring any perspectives that don't align.

with him basically and his personal views. ⁓ And if people recall, the supposed reason for the sale of TikTok in the first place, which was owned previously by ByteDance, a company based in China, was issues related to supposedly national security and censorship, Chinese censorship. And it seems...

early days, right? But at this point in time, people are very concerned. This is far, far worse than anything we were dealing with in the past, which just for the record, I've been posting videos on TikTok for several years now. I've never been concerned about Chinese censorship on the app. I have other issues about how they manage reports and all that kind of stuff. But I have that issue with Instagram too, a US based company. anyway, it's ⁓

It is a period of transition for communication on TikTok where people are really not sure if we're going to be able to speak openly about any criticism of our government the way that we used to be able to do when the company was owned by China. So that's an interesting thing to keep an eye on. And when we see on whichever platform these comments that are like suggesting, for example, there's a whole character assassination campaign against Alex Preti trying to pull him.

as some kind of like terrible person somehow based on obviously zero evidence, which again is so hurtful, right? To his family and friends to see that stuff online. They already lost a 37 year old man because these ICE agents either just intentionally chose to execute him or have such poor emotional regulation that they just lost it and did it anyway. I don't know, but whatever the reason, he's now gone.

and they are mourning him and then they have to see, in particular his parents and his sister have to see the character assassination that's led by the government that was supposed to be protecting him and whatever army of bots or whatever else they've employed to make sure that their narrative is amplified even though the vast majority of us saw what happened. And we are not going to be convinced by a tweet or whatever that's put out by any of these people.

⁓ I think Stephen Miller called him an assassin. What are you talking about? What kind of assassin are you gonna pull their gun? Like it makes no sense. It makes no sense. And I guess my plea to folks, if they're listening to this, they probably already do this, but you know, engage the critical thinking. I mean, really, like we have to, in general, we have to be more critical, even though like we started out talking about how it's so frustrating to me that people wanna undermine my post. ⁓

I do think you have to look at what the source is and what are they saying and based on what ⁓ and what are their motivations. And we have to think about, and it's really hard, and we've talked about this before, like it's so hard now in the information system we have to know what's real and what's not. And we all have to work at it to try to figure it out.

Alyssa Burgart (59:52)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. ⁓ One of the things that I'll just put a cap on it. I've been really interested and kind of horrified to see how people's grieving for Alex is being ⁓ received. And so there was a piece in the Washington Post yesterday on how VA leaders, Veterans Administration hospital leaders have basically barely acknowledged

Arghavan (1:00:24)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Burgart (1:00:25)
Alex

Preti, who was an employee, ⁓ and that apparently the Minneapolis VA hospital employees wanted to have a memorial and were initially told that they couldn't. And it's only after the backlash that that decision was reversed. ⁓ And I have some colleagues who, ⁓ in several hospitals, had put on ⁓ relatively spontaneous ⁓ candlelight vigils or memorials or other ways to recognize

the loss of a health care worker, the murder of a health care worker by our government, and being approached and saying, well, this isn't a sanctioned event. You guys need to disperse. Don't grieve this way. It's very interesting. ⁓

Arghavan (1:01:07)
Hmm. Hmm.

Disturbing I would

use the word disturbing and For folks who haven't seen there is video of the VA hospital where Alex worked of his co-workers in a hallway There's video of his Of him being wheeled out of the hospital one last time and it's it's a beautiful It's a beautiful moment. So people want to see that and and remember him in that way. I didn't know him I'm just an emotional person. So anyway, ⁓

It is a beautiful video and we should have the right to commemorate these losses. And ⁓ I know that you did not mean it this way, but I just wanna make sure that folks know his death wasn't more important because he was an ICU nurse or because he was a healthcare worker. The death of any person at the hands of our government is equally tragic and equally horrific. And we mentioned Renee Goode earlier, there was also Keith Porter.

on New Year's Eve and there is a list of actually, I think it's at least 10 people just in January that ICE has killed. And I'm sorry that I don't have their names right in front of me, but we will put a link to that in our show notes. And every single one of these people mattered. And I am glad to see that people, a lot of people are saying this is not okay.

to the point that you mentioned this to me earlier before we started recording that there is an organized strike planned to happen Friday, January 30th. So if people can not go to school, not go to work, not spend money, whatever way that you can engage with this, I certainly am gonna do my part. I already was taking the day off, so it's easy for me. I'm not working and I'm gonna not buy anything and I'm gonna...

observed.

Alyssa Burgart (1:03:08)
am working and I am going to do the work of taking care of many of our immigrant patients and they're gonna get just exquisite anesthesia care from me. I will not walk out of the operating room. But again, I completely agree and folks who have the ability to walk out, that is a way for us to demonstrate ⁓ our power, our collective power, especially in terms of

not purchasing things, stepping out of work, especially if you can do it in an organized fashion with ⁓ a number of your colleagues. And I will find a way tomorrow while I am at the hospital to honor this issue. ⁓ it's been interesting. ⁓

in a horrible way. ⁓ You know, we take care of so many patients at the hospital who they're either they're either immigrants or they're, you know, from mixed families where some people are immigrants and some people are not immigrants. ⁓ People from, you know, different who feel that they have different amounts of security or not in being here. And I am finding myself needing to do a lot of

Arghavan (1:04:17)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Burgart (1:04:26)
coding when I'm talking to my families ⁓ about, I see you weren't able to get your prescriptions. Would it be OK if we had them filled here while you're here so that you could go home and already have them? Because they're afraid to go to the pharmacy. They're afraid to pick up these life-saving medications for their children because it's like, well, will my kid have a parent if I leave and go get these medications? ⁓

Arghavan (1:04:39)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Burgart (1:04:53)
We know that lots of families are not coming in for care because of this behavior from ice. ⁓ So it is just absolutely terrible. ⁓

So we have to do Take Two and Call Me in the Morning because again, we can't just end on more death and destruction as is our way.

Arghavan (1:05:15)
Ha ha!

It is really our strength, know, the death and destruction. ⁓

Alyssa Burgart (1:05:22)
From a strengths-based assessment, the present illness is really good at talk about that tough stuff.

Arghavan (1:05:29)
Talk about terrible soul crushing stuff. Okay. I want to share a few pieces of good news Okay, one is folks who who may recall I was following the journey of a man who's learning how to do the dougie JB star

Alyssa Burgart (1:05:41)
yes, yes.

I did the effort to go watch some of those videos and I was very amused.

Arghavan (1:05:47)
Yeah. So I would like to report back that JB Star has made excellent progress. ⁓ I think his his Dougie is pretty good. ⁓ You know, he's got to still work on his swagger a little bit, but it used to be that he would do it reliably for like one or a few beats and then lose it immediately. And he's not doing that anymore. So, you know, we're all very happy and we're all very proud of JB Star for his progress on the Dougie. And

Alyssa Burgart (1:06:09)
⁓

Arghavan (1:06:16)
Two more kind of serious news related things that are wins. Back to Iran real quick, the Islamic Republic of Iran has an armed force that's called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And they run pretty much all the terrorist activities of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And we have been asking the EU to put the IRGC on the terror list for years, and it happened today. So, yeah.

Alyssa Burgart (1:06:41)
⁓ congratulations.

Arghavan (1:06:44)
Thank you. ⁓ It's not obviously going to solve all the problems, but it's a really important step to indicate that they recognize these activities are illegal and there are real consequences for those members when they are in the EU. They could, I think, potentially be arrested. Their assets could get frozen, so on. So that's a win. a topic that hopefully we'll have time to talk about more another time is that folks who work in higher ed or even actually K through 12 might have

noticed or heard about last year, almost around this time, it was February, what is the date? 14th, oh yeah, Valentine's Day. February 14th, 2025, our government said that basically any organization that does any sort of DEI is gonna lose their federal funding. And of course there were legal challenges and I know people roll their eyes at legal challenges these days, but this legal challenge was successful. It was brought by the American Federation of Teachers, the American Sociological Association and a school district in Eugene, Oregon of all places.

And they brought this lawsuit and the judge ruled in their favor in August of 2025. And it was just reported last week that the government, our federal government is not going to appeal that decision. So they are not allowed to tie federal funding to the lack of DEI. So they're not allowed to basically require that organizations don't have DEI in order to access federal funding as per this lawsuit.

Alyssa Burgart (1:08:10)
I'm so happy to hear that. I'm not going to be a downer and talk about why it takes so long. I'm going to stop.

Arghavan (1:08:16)
I know we have lots more to say,

yes, and we have other, there's lots more related to that topic. We could maybe talk another time. But it's a win. It's a win and we need wins.

Alyssa Burgart (1:08:21)
Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that more in more detail another time. I agree. It's a win. It's

a win. Take it delicious. Love it. ⁓ OK, so if people are like me and they're really pissed about ice, like real pissed, this fabulous video came across my feed and it's this woman who's a marine biologist and she's like.

Arghavan (1:08:30)
Yeah. All how about you? What's your recommendation for both?

You

Alyssa Burgart (1:08:49)
You know, there really just hasn't been hardly anything happening in the news, marine biology news. And so I thought I would show you, and she shows this video of ⁓ otters eating ice and crushing ice and demonstrating truly how weak the ice is. And you get to watch, I mean, it's really, it's, tongue in cheek and you get to watch otters be adorable who are then like, they're amazing. very cool creatures. ⁓

Arghavan (1:09:14)
Mm.

Alyssa Burgart (1:09:19)
And I'm going to share that with all of you because it's just, it's a nice little way to be like, you know what, we need to take collective action and we can appreciate these otters doing this work and let those otters remind us of how weak ice is. Yes. ⁓ I also have been appreciating, ⁓ I've been appreciating a lot of these videos. There's a, there's sort of a cadre of creators who do either devil impressions

Arghavan (1:09:34)
Yes, I love that.

Alyssa Burgart (1:09:49)
And they're like on the phone with God being like, hey, I need to talk to you about your followers. Yeah. And then there's a couple of different creators who pretend to be Jesus or they pretend to be like St. Peter, who's like sitting at a desk at the, at the pearly gates ⁓ and just like assessing folks as they come in and they're like, I think you're lost. you want to make an appeal? Let's go over it. But like in the, in the way that like someone at the DMV might.

Arghavan (1:09:52)
⁓ yes, yes, yes, yes.

Yes, yes.

Alyssa Burgart (1:10:16)
Like a salty person at the DMV might take in your information. So I will provide one of each of those for our listeners enjoyment.

Arghavan (1:10:25)
Thank you and shout out to Taryn Delaney who I'm pretty sure is the inspiration for all of those videos because she's the one who started the series of, ⁓ what is the name of this character? She created this character who is like the secretary at heaven at the gates of heaven. she was, I mean, she's so talented. She's got tons of these videos. They're funny. Some of them are really sweet because people ask them to make one for their child who had passed. And so she's like welcoming this child. Anyway, I am.

pretty sure, now I don't know what's in the brain of every one of these creators, but I am pretty sure that all of that has been inspired by Taryn Delaney's series. So I will put a link to one of her videos in the show notes.

Alyssa Burgart (1:11:00)
Hmm. Well.

Love it. Love it. Okay, well that's it.

Arghavan (1:11:09)
That's it!

Easy peasy, everything's fine.

Alyssa Burgart (1:11:17)
Y'all, there's so

much, there's so much news. Like, Arghavan and I have like a little mini meeting before each episode to be like, what terrible things have happened that we might need to change and talk about. There is an entire list in our notes of stuff we just cannot talk about today.

Arghavan (1:11:31)
Just haven't gotten to it.

Alright, well, on that note, that's it for this week's episode. If you didn't like what you heard, this has been the Huberman Lab Podcast. If you liked it, don't forget to subscribe to The Present Illness. Please, if you don't mind, leave us a review or rating and tell other folks you know to give us a listen.

Alyssa Burgart (1:11:50)
You can follow us on all the places we're on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube at The Present Illness, and you can stay on top of all of our TPI-related news.

Arghavan (1:11:58)
We will of course be back next week with more headlines, hot takes, and doom scrolling, hopefully wrapped in some laughs.

Alyssa Burgart (1:12:04)
Until then, agitate, hydrate, take a nap. We will see you next time on The Present Illness. Production by Arghavan Salles and Alyssa Burgart editing by Alyssa Burgart, social media by Arghavan Salles, original music by Joseph Uphoff. Don't take medical advice from random people on a podcast. This show is for informational purposes and it's meant to be fun, not medical advice. So please take your medical questions to a qualified professional.


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Alyssa Burgart, MD, MA

Host
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Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD

Host