The Plebeian Power Hour

For some reason we've got World War 3 on the mind, and that's what we ramble on about in this episode. With the issues going on in Ukraine, the Middle East, Taiwan and North Korea we're a little on edge about World War 3 and we spent some time looking into things, and I, for one, came out none the wiser. We dust off the tin foil hats, go off on some ridiculous tangential rants, and overall have as...

On this episode we talk about the recent actions by North Korea and their increase in rhetoric and actions that point to a coming conflict with South Korea. We've had a lot of focus in our episodes about all the things pointing towards WW3, and this is another in the list. Apparently the doom and gloom of WW3 holds some sway over our attention for some reason, but in this episode we're focusing on...

In one of our more contentious episodes (which is a little surprising since we both seemed to agree on the main issue of the episode) we give our take on Trump being removed from the presidential ballot in Colorado and other state(s). We ramble all over the place and talk about Korea, Israel, an imaginary Hawaii secession scenario and more. I think my anti-authoritarianism gets me a little riled u...

Welcome to our 2023 year in review. We discuss what we consider the biggest stories of 2023, from politics to politics by other means (War), AI, and a recap of my favorite alien stories of 2023.

A massive undertaking that took the lives of over 25,000 people, took over twenty years to build, and a true modern wonder of the world, welcome to the Plebeian take on the Panama Canal. This little 50 mile canal has 5 % of all global shipping pass through it every year, employs some 9500 people, and operates 24/7 - 365 days a year.

In this episode we talk about the 2023 moon landings. Moon Landings may end up being a bit generous, as there was only one successful landing (so far... We're rooting for you SLIM), but it was kind of a big year nonetheless. There were multiple planned lunar landings, and with a couple crashes and some cancellations, there was still a successful landing by India, the Chandrayaan 3 landing which ha...

Due to the situation unfolding in Israel we tried to see if looking into the history of Israel, Hamas, and Palestine would help us understand what is going on any better. The answer was no, and the history was a lot bigger in scope than we imagined when we decided on the topic. It's a tragic situation, and I hope we don't make too much light of what people over there are going through. The situati...

In this episode we ramble through the spy world, ranging from individual spies like Robert Hanssen or Aldrich Ames, to spy gadgets like photo taking pigeons or dog poop transmitters, to talking about the high tech capabilities that governments use. It's not all like the movies, but to be fair some of it is like the movies, like when a secret message hidden in hollowed out nickel led to a prisoner...

China's been implementing a social credit score system, similar to a financial credit score but for social interactions. We discuss some of the reasons, (including horse hair soy sauce... you'll have to listen to get more info on that), rules (Firecrackers -5 points), and repercussions (no soup for you, come back one year). We had a good time, and lowered our social credit score several hundred po...

This episode we look into the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) alliance and the concept of de-dollarization. The de-dollarization concept has to do with removing the US dollar as the dominant currency in all (Not just U.S.) international trade, being used in 88 % of all international trade. At the end of the day I don't know whether to believe the doomerist view, that US currency...

In today's discussion we go back to a bit of obscure history with the story of the Jonestown Massacre. In 1978 918 people were killed in a strange tale of murder suicide. A religious / communist group from the US calling themselves the People's Temple go to live in a commune that they built from scratch in Guyana. We discuss the life of Jim Jones, the charismatic leader whose followers built Jones...

We talk about the fires in Maui that have left thousands without homes, and thousands dead or missing. But we really start getting into the crazy conspiracies that have popped up regarding the fires. There have been more, and crazier, conspiracies around these fires than there have been around top US officials suggesting we have alien space craft (I guess people tire of the same old conspiracies a...

This episode we went off on some strange tangents around politics. The idea for the podcast came from a simple question that we never really answered, and don't know how to answer. How did we get to where we are now politcally? Or more specifically how did we end up with the two least popular presidential candidates in 2016, followed by 2020, with a pretty good indicator that 2024 is setting itsel...

On July 26th, 2023, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications in National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency" and it sounded so fun we thought we'd spend some time talking about it. UAPs are the new UFOs, and they're making a comeback. The bombshell congressional hearing dropped some serious accusations about a government...

We're following up on our last two episodes discussing the US China relationship, and get to modern times. We give our hot takes on the current relationship between the US and China for whatever those are worth. Are we headed to war? I can tell you for sure that we don't have any clue, but we had a good time discussing it.

We're picking up where we left off, around the end of WW2, and we discuss the Communist Party taking over and the policies they enacted while in power. We talk a little about the conflicts, Korea, Vietnam, as well as the conflicts surrounding Taiwan.

We'd already talked a little about US China relations in a previous episode, but in this episode we focus more on Chinese History, starting around the opium wars in the early 1800s, and going until just after WW2.

After seeing on the news that there were Russian tanks barreling towards Moscow we got really excited and decided that would be the topic of our next podcast. Whatever was happening with that fizzled out, or more specifically didn't live up to our expectations, but we had fun with the topic anyway. Please note that any comments about bombing countries to smithereens (sic) are in jest, and in addit...

We go on another meandering trip around another topic that's probably a little too big to fit into our podcast. We get into the labor wars of the late 1800s, talking a little about the formation of labor unions, the labor conflicts that led to 100s of deaths, and end with a little tie in to the mafia. Somehow we even cover an assassination plot against Lincoln (not the successful one).

We're back with another overlong episode where we do our best to give you the plebeian take on the civil war. We discuss the causes, (spoiler, it's slavery), some of the major battles, and ramble on about topics like the morality of secession. We had a good time learning, or relearning, a lot of this and we hope you have a good time too. We come in under two hours, which is definitely not enough t...

After the immigration episode, and after hearing that presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy proposed tying voting rights to those under 25 to the ability to pass the civics exam, we take on the civics exam. We go through several of the questions that appear on the civics exam to see if we'd be able to pass. We didn't study at all before hand, and I think we did okay. But that's an interesting que...

This episode we get into the history of US immigration. We try to cover a lot of the laws that were passed as well as talk about some historical and current immigration statistics.

We spend some time talking about the history of the Olympics as well as some memorable moments from the Olympics. We were looking for something a little more upbeat, and the Olympics is all about being uplifting.

We go deep into tin foil hat territory again with a rambling discussion on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The story has everything that makes for a good conspiracy. the death of a powerful figure, conspicuous evidence, conflicting witness statements, multiple government investigations, multiple confessions made years after the fact that contradict the official narrative, signs pointin...

We discuss a little history of the Supreme Court, a few landmark cases, like Marbury V Madison, a landmark case from 1803 where the supreme court suggests an act of Congress, the Judiciary Act of 1789, is unconstitutional, or more recent cases like Students for Fair Admissions V Harvard, as well as a few in between. Then we go off track for the last half hour with some discussions marginally relat...