915 - Hero Hedge feat. Joe Weisenthal (3/10/25)
We start the show discussing the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil in a glaring escalation of attacks on American civil liberties in behalf of Israel & its supporters. We’re then joined by journalist and co-host of the Odd Lots podcast Joe Weisenthal to take a shockingly timely (for us) look at markets, tariffs, crypto, and economic policy under the 2nd Trump administration. Is there a plan here? Who’s actually in charge? Will these tariffs ever actually happen? Are we careening toward a recession? Joe shares his thoughts on these questions and more with us.
Listen to Odd Lots wherever you get podcasts, and find Joe’s work at Bloomberg here: https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/AQ0VXvE12t0/joe-weisenthal
Go see Eephus as it rolls out to your neck of the woods, search for showtimes @ https://www.eephusfilm.com/
Comments (142)
Every time i hear the word factory it activates me and i install hearts of iron 4 again
No one will ever read this comment but I have coined a name for the mindset that people like Elon have: Submarine Syndrome. Named after the OceanGate guy, who was so stupid that he put himself and his son on his own doomed submarine and literally died from hubris. These people are not only evil, but deeply stupid, and so arrogant that they think they can't die.
As a Columbia grad who met my partner in my program who was an international, the university seems to go out of its way to fuck foreign students who stay in the U.S. The insane irony is the career office held a Visa workshop for international students and when they were asked about advice they said “why don’t you just marry an American?” Well apparently if you do, they can still disappear you without ever committing a crime.
What is Chapo’s connection to Eephus?
They put that stupid Elissa Slipknot clown on TV to have sex with 1000 natsec lanyards in 24 hours after the SOTU. Their response to this is to fuck 1001 natsec lanyards.
There are going to be a lot of libs/k-hivers/ boomers saying atodaso and that we KH wouldn't have done this. FUCK THEM. THEIR ONLY SOLUTION IS TO VOTE FOR TERRIBLE POLITICIANS. There are better ways to solve this problem than voting for Reagan-lite.
At the very least, the next dem president could do 100 ruby ridges in their first year, and put the fear of government back into the republican base. Go find some RW militias and lock them up until they can prove they're not spies and were born in the US. Even if it doesn't work, you can still fuck with them until a judge tells you to stop. OR use the IRS to harass all the smol business owners in the country. OR convince/coerce Sydney Sweeney to get a breast reduction. As St Christman has said quite often, all politics is about spite now. The democrats won't fix that, but they should at least play hardball.
Biden's promise of "restoring the soul of this country" should have meant abolishing ICE. Mark my words, these authoritarian regime forces will indeed be used on natural born US citizens eventually.
Abolish ICE. Abolish the police. ACAB, etc.
Felix you are an embarrassing man-child and the worst part of Matt's absence is that you are what's filling that void. I could just about grit my teeth through "I appreciate actors who phone it in" during the last episode, but that moronic call to action immediately following has me about done with this show. Your bullshit is starting to rub off onto Will in a really noticeable way, and I have zero interest in listening to a podcast staffed entirely by barely motivated nihilists who only do the occasional PSA out of a sense of obligation to a political brand. My honest advice would be to just start gaming during recording again, because at least that was more charming and honest than whatever the fuck that was.
Fuck you and every lib loser who came out of the woodwork for this episode. ✊
Cant wait for the quebequois ira, its gonna be so cool
if FLQ was so good then how come they didn't make FLQ Deu-
Every pro-israel POS that ostensibly opposes trump is responsible for this. They laid the groundwork for it. Fuck them.
Glad to see my rep Delia Ramirez on that letter for Mahmoud 💪💪
Hard to follow this guest when he keeps interrupting himself mid-thought every couple sentences. Y'all have the patience of a saint.
I want to join the FBI and be the agent who comments on the Chapo Patreon on how Trump 2.0 is Will and Felix’s fault cause they didn’t take January 6 seriously
Best I can do is put you in as an assistant for a guy who lost his left arm in Ukraine who needs help with capital letters and the like.
Whole body deodorant is great. It's just a slightly better name for "anti-swamp ass deodorant that won't burn your junk"
Called my house rep and both senators.
A lot of of hr tttr
I like how the only times Chapo gets serious and vulnerable is when it's about Palestine. Literally nothing else. That being said Free Palestine.
It's one of the few real pieces of policy left
Why are people so hard on Felix and Will? It’s just a podcast.
Fantastic episode, and love Joe. Read his newsletter for a long time at Bloomberg. Killing it boys!
We are the ultimate bad asses
Joe is a good get— chapo boys are bad interviewers, they need to get better at it. Ironically Joe and Tracy are good interviewers, especially Tracy.
Will is a great interviewer wtf
Did not enjoy this.
How lucky you are that the Universe exists to make you happy! Enjoy it! It won't last long . . .
Can't help but hear this guest doing a Jimmy Stewart impression every time he speaks.
Felix and will can go fuck themselves. The stroke took the wrong host from us.
?
I called that dickhead Ted Lieu who somehow represents Venice beach. Would rather have a clown on stilts or a fire breathing Rasta man or a Jim Morrison impersonator repping us
Joe is a big get. Perhaps Mark Blyth next?
Very brave of 2 podcasters to tell union Columbia employees to kill themselves while their jobs are being attacked. Once again they aim their anger at all the wrong people. How about Felix puts down the vape and Will pauses the movie for a full minute to do anything themselves?
Bravely standing up for hypothetical cowards. You are meeting the moment
As a 37 year old trying to get my shit together… I feel attacked, Felix.
don’t worry he didn’t mean us we’ll be fine
Truly terrible episode
Do better, if you can! I'm waiting . . .
Crypto is just MLMs for bros it's like the government deciding to join Amway.
Felix asking an audience how much they are willing to sacrifice etc.. fuck off.
For real. He raises the question? How uncomfortable are you willing to be? Also— I have to work on my metal gear solid podcast.
This guest really likes the sound of his own strange voice..
This guest’s voice is brutal
you can tell trump is doing a phenomenal job as president because you can only call to complain between 11-3 Tuesdays-Thursdays
Big news for the Chapo to Tooze pipeline
oh god please but only if he does radio war nerd first
The crossover we didn't know we needed
I think the detention of Mahmoud Khalil is one of the few times in 8+ years of listening to Chapo that they’ve seemed legitimately bothered/disturbed?
definitely one of the few. Charlottesville was another.
The orality/literacy comment was late to the party of prescience, but an absolutely wise observation. Read up on Ong and McLuhan kids, chiasmus is a comin.
I feel very seen and vindicated seeing this. My Player Hater Degree dissertation is about the shift to a new literacy beyond that divide, imagetic literacy, which is also a return of sorts to pre literate societies and we see that in our moment with the dismantling of gov bureaucracy, the institutional forms of literacy
“Chinese economy is dependent on the American consumer base” rofl the China understander has logged on.
The Chinese brainpan is naturally predisposed to trade finished goods for Pounds and Dollars. It's simply in their nature. They would not survive, as a species, without a steady supply of Western currency.
Will is right. 2008-2013 was the heyday for 3 in 1 shampoo
Is Eephus coming to Canada or did it get caught up in the tariff thing
baseball is an inherently colonial tool of american propaganda, they can keep this shit
It is always worth calling these jabronis
Odd Lots x Chapo is blowing my fucking mind
Will echo the praises for Eephus, I thought it was absolutely lovely. The whole crew did something special with it. Run, don’t “walk” (baseball term) to see this one folks!
Uhh but I thought Amber A’Lee Frost said that people at Ivies had nothing to worry about because of bourgeois class solidarity???
I suspect future classes of Ivy League graduates will be gutted of Palestinians. Wouldn't be surprised if they're hollowed out of anyone who isn't WASP or adjacent.
Wrote my representative again this morning, appreciate the energy get mad and doing something always better than sulking
Please let us know if / when you secure UK / Ireland distribution for Eephus
Called my senators and Gillibrand’s office didn’t even pick up.
I think that’s a sign phone lines are flooded with calls.
Whoa they got Spaceman Lee in that movie!
[guy who only read Reaganland] democrat "return to normalcy" president is instantly unpopular because of a foreign policy gotcha, is mostly embattled by inflation, loses to right-wing death eater, then a rate hike business cycle recession happens ... same as it ever was ...
I emailed my rep, that idiot Auchincloss who was discussed a few episodes back. He won't do a thing but I did make sure to insult him for having AIPAC as his number 1 campaign donor and asked if he had to clear any statement with them.
my feeling is that Elon wants a recession to drive those wages down down down. Trump just likes tariffs, he probably feels the same about wages but thats not his primary motivator.
Trump's philosophy of governing is "I like pulling the levers and pushing the buttons". He's like a baby playing with those bead on a wire toys.
Just rounded out message leaving for my congressman and Senators with a message for Fetterman. Pretty sure he is gonna about face on Gaza after he hears it.
The important thing is making him feel a little worse.
I don't think people have seriously grappled with how reliant our food system is on Mexico. Like, Mexico supplies about 60% of fruit, vegetable and nut imports, which comes out to about a quarter of all fresh produce consumed in the U.S. When you consider how much of our other food imports are passing through Mexico (Chilean grapes, Peruvian asparagus etc), the immediate impact on supermarket shelves would be dramatic. It's also too late in the year for U.S. farmers to significantly change their crop plans, so there won't be any expansion in domestic production for at least a year. Combine that with an unpredictable and frightening deportation regime probably constricting farm labor supply in at least the short term, and we would see long-lasting price spikes and availability shortfalls that very few restaurants and small retailers are equipped to survive.
Do they land in Mexican ports?
Lmao I cannot believe you got Joe Wiesenthal. I love this.
I called my congresswoman, you should too
Trump’s tariffs aren’t backed up by any sort of progressive industrial policy. We’re not going to get Redwing-bootified high quality goods. It’s a political-patronage based system, they are going to shovel money to Musk companies and the car dealership class at your expense.
yeah that’s the rub, right? every time i hear this discussed by economists, the either stated or between the lines message is “something like this could be something, but not with these dipshits in charge”
NO MORE TREATS NO MORE AMERIKKKAN TREATLERITES
I’m a little disappointed with the pods economic analysis about Trumps tariff policies. Seems to me something more sinister is going on than what the pod has articulated in this episode.
The US management class is decades-deep into Private Equity Thought. Do people think they’ll suddenly say “ok, we can charge artificially higher prices thanks to the tariffs, NOW we’ll be nice to the American worker and improve the quality of our products”???
I sent an email to my car dealership owning rep who I’m sure gives a shit
I did a thing and called my senators. Gillibrand's staffer was very polite, Schumer's office just had voicemail.
The Eephus webpage mentions a voice cameo by “Frederick Wiseman”, whoever that is, but no mention of Will Menaker. He should ask for his money back.
Fifty-fourth and GAY!
picturing my immigrant ancestors stepping off a boat and spraying their balls with full body deodorant makes me so fucking proud.
lol is he drunk?
Yet another illustration of the monumental misjudgement and stupidity of your response to Trump's ceasefire in January, celebrating and crowing at the 'victory'. Will and Felix actually (appeared to) believe that Trump was going to be good on Palestine. Should cause you to do some serious introspection, although it won't.
Me when I lie on the internet
The government hedging against the government collapse- they're getting close to the truth. Read/listen to Dave Troy
Someone help me out here - what was the Matt quote about the apocalypse starting but not being here yet?
What month was that?
Joe Weisenthal? In this economy?
Fellow content hogs- long time lurker, first time poster. I know we are done with electoralism here, but a friend of mine (also hog) is challenging a loser corporate dem from the left in Richmond area primary for VA house of delegates. Hoping to make some noise at the local level, at the very least. Save your donations for a better cause (see this episode), but take a look at the link when you have a chance, flip it to someone else if it hits, and most importantly just let us know if this even resembles a way forward to you. Thank you my 🐷 friends and enjoy your slop. https://www.justinwoodfordforva.com
Free Ratchmond
i will be contacting my representatives but my representative is mike kelly and my senator is fetterman so i dont think mr eyebrows or the guy mainlining liveleaks are going to listen to constituents lmao
Nice crested gecko fellow Pennsylvanian.
Every time I hear that yoshi sound clip at the beginning of the show I get so hyped idk what it is maybe I’m retarded
love that most episodes these days go past the hour mark, little a reverse shrinkflation for the hogs
Weisenthal the GOAT! Crazy crossover
Ty guys for the opening on Mahmoud Khalil, really powerful words and so so important
You guys should do an episode on the Mar a Lago Accords. Which answers your question, “shouldn’t the government be against the collapsing of our currency?” Well, collapsing our currency is the goal!
insane crossover
thanks for the opening bit about Mahmoud gang - as someone who has been involved with the protest movement in the UK with my 25th national march coming up this Saturday, if you can get involved with your national solidarity movement I think you should. I am an officer of a local Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch on the basis that I think the larger organization needs to drastically change what we are spending time and energy on. I have a lot of criticisms about what these marches and our organization have actually accomplished in the face of our country's unending direct armament of a genocidal state, but there are also hundreds of thousands coming out every month to oppose the government's continued disregard for basic human rights. If you want to make these organizations stronger and more radical, they will need to have you, the person that is critical of them, inside of them working to change tactics and approaches. The people of Palestine don't get to give up, neither do we, come out in London on March 15 https://palestinecampaign.org/events/national-demonstration-for-palestine-15-march/
Hey Felix, quick tip on interviewing from someone who’s done a fair bit of it: don’t set up every question with three paragraphs. The point is to let the guest talk occasionally, you fucking goof.
🤓🤓🤓
White Jewish Americans aren't going to get deported, this is an immigration/ethnicity/citizenship issue in that respect. Pro-Palestine Jews or anyone else who criticises Israel will face other spurious charges and violations of 1A rights following the precedent of the persecution of Mahmoud Khalil though.
Joe sounds like he is autotuned. It's crazy
There's more to life than cheap goods, but not more to capitalism
Echoes of Carters malaise speech. My first reaction was consumable cheap goods is literally most Americans identity.
Generously speaking: the "strategic crypto reserve" is for market manipulation. That's if it's not just to be stolen. Anyway, Monero and Zcash are the only cool cryptocurrencies because they know what crypto is really for: CRIME! Filthy lucre from and for crimes. To buy drugs and women with!
The C.U.M. zone (Canada, United-States, Mexico) will live!
Good morning Krusty Crew
Reading about Mahmoud's abduction has been sickening. I'm a green card holder and participated (insufficiency) in my campus' protests, so I should supposedly meet the Trump admin's qualifications for deportation. I highly doubt that it will happen to me (I'm a white Canadian), but this escalation is still unnerving. I'm certainly not feeling reassured by the non-response from Democrat leaders (in his statement "defending" Mahmoud, Hakeem Jeffries insinuated that he is an antisemite and this is an improper way to dispense his punishment). I'm keeping Mahmoud in my thoughts, we cannot allow this abuse pass on without protest.
The idea of the US having a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is stupid for a number of reasons. Not the least of which because the CIA almost certainly made Bitcoin in the first place and is already sitting on a massive stockpile of cryptocurrency it uses for black budget operations so they'd never require congressional funding or any sort of papertrail ever again.
The fact that Satoshi Nakamoto can translate as "center of intelligence" is such an obnoxious wink
This is a big get
I'm hearing sell. Because the quarter is fucked, possibly the next 99 years worth of quarters. I am at this moment slightly regretting using podcasts to receive most of my news. These guys know that crypto is only worth what it is because mostly people with dollars are holding and buying right? The hedge against the dollar would be the yuan or euro. Personally I'm vesting into Xibucks.
Will misinterprets the latest Gallup poll on Israel/Palestine a bit. Unfortunately a majority don’t yet support Palestine, but it is the first time a majority didn’t support Israel, now 46%. Support for Palestine is the highest it’s been at 33%. Looking at partisan breakdown, Republicans have remained strongly pro-Israel for years and Dems have flipped from pro-Israel to pro-Palestine in the last 5 years or so https://news.gallup.com/poll/657404/less-half-sympathetic-toward-israelis.aspx
Thanks for checking that, I thought it sounded too good to be true. Will probably just read the polling among Democrats and got it mixed up.
Masterful gambit sir
Glad to see Joe on the pod. A long way from being John Carney's aide de camp.
Felix begins speaking at 2 minutes and 52 seconds
Right before this episode the UBS declared Tesla a "sell" stock and Trump immediately made a post on Truth Social clearly trying to pump Tesla stock back up.
Also this goes without saying but if you can lose $132 billion in net worth because the money store wizards willed it, then you never had $132 billion dollars. Everything that makes Elon the "world's richest man" is a mirage.
Rendition is the perfect word to describe what happened to Mahmoud Khalil. It puts what happened in the proper historical context, snatching someone off the street for supporting “terrorism.” The ghosts of the Bush/Cheney “War on Terror” continue to haunt the United States.
East Asia is not comparable for implementing tariffs from what I remember(very little so maybe I'm wrong, please correct me). East Asian countries like Korea(THERE IS ONLY ONE) implemented tariffs to protect developing industries. They didn't complete development, outsource, then start development domestically again. In the UK and Germany, do they have any comparable history of what the US is doing? Wouldn't the smart move be to just spend money developing a factory in countries other than China and Mexico, like for instance India and Myanmar or Nigeria? I don't think tariffs have a history of developing domestic production capacity when the reason it's gone is because it reached the end of the capitalist development cycle and was outsourced. I also think we need to normalize saying death to Israel. Fuck those nazis.
This is the kinda shit that really makes me miss Matt. Terrence from Trillbillies did a little thought experiment months ago, and all he could see (which made sense to me) is the attempt totally failing for market reasons and necessitating the return of working conditions that caused war to break out at Blair Mountain just to keep the capitalist structure intact. I'm no expert, but thaf might be where we're going, or something stranger and weirder considering that the e/acc group is seeking to detach capital from the state, which frankly is either impossible or just a recipe for warlordism in the long term. I miss our boy
The detention of Mahmoud is not just free speech but a due process issue, and due process is a right conferred to all persons on U.S. soil. Very worrying
Doomberg news
Hey guys how are you today? I just shidded and cummed
“Slop me up, I’ll never stop” -M.Jagger
Fuck Israel, free Palestine
Get a job!
Slops early tonight Fam!
THANK YOU KINGS
YESSSSS I have so much laundry to do tonight thank you dry boys
I have to take the trash out lfggggg
ACAB, ICE ICE