Valuetainment - April 27, 2025


＂Socialism ALWAYS Fails＂ - Andrew Callaghan Confronts HARD TRUTHS About Power, Greed & Government


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

217.82213

Word count

2,037

Sentence count

196

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the fall of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps regime in Iran and the impact it had on the rest of the world. We also talk about the Cuban Revolution and its impact on the world, and what it taught us about human nature.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Are you a fan of Iran?
00:00:01.160 I would love to go back, but if we go to Iran, 0.72
00:00:04.180 you would be arrested by guilty of association with me.
00:00:06.920 Oh, they don't like you?
00:00:07.680 No, they don't like me, but they would entertain you.
00:00:10.820 Your family grew up there?
00:00:11.980 I grew up there.
00:00:12.600 I lived there 11 years.
00:00:13.880 After 79?
00:00:15.860 78 through 89.
00:00:17.480 So do you have a memory of that transition?
00:00:19.340 Vivid.
00:00:19.960 Geez.
00:00:20.440 Yeah, I mean, I remember the war.
00:00:22.180 Maybe not the transition, but I remember the war.
00:00:24.020 I remember what it was like.
00:00:25.080 You think that conditioned your thinking as an adult a lot?
00:00:28.080 Do you think that conditioned your way of thinking a lot,
00:00:30.960 just experiencing such a drastic regime change?
00:00:32.680 I value freedom, and I'm extremely paranoid
00:00:35.360 with the government having too much power.
00:00:38.420 And you know who I had here on the podcast three months ago?
00:00:41.420 I had the Islamic Revolutionary Guard founder.
00:00:44.880 Wow.
00:00:46.280 I had him here.
00:00:47.360 This is a guy whose direct report,
00:00:50.440 while they're in a building together,
00:00:51.960 he's on the fourth floor.
00:00:53.620 His direct report's on the first floor of the building in Iran.
00:00:56.320 Iran, the direct report goes and puts a bomb, 0.89
00:00:59.640 kills the president of Iran and the prime minister,
00:01:02.460 and then claims he's dead.
00:01:05.020 This guy claims that his ashes are everywhere.
00:01:07.860 The entire country mourns for the president and the prime minister.
00:01:12.020 You know, who was the people that they killed?
00:01:14.820 It was the president.
00:01:15.800 And anyways, they killed the two leaders that they have.
00:01:20.980 Two weeks later, they find that the killer's not dead.
00:01:23.320 So the ceremony.
00:01:24.000 Anyways, this guy, when I have it in our podcast,
00:01:26.980 we're having a conversation together with him.
00:01:28.800 I said, what's the first thing you guys did when Khomeini took over Iran?
00:01:31.620 He said, we have to confiscate everyone's weapons.
00:01:33.340 I said, why is that?
00:01:34.500 He said, well, it's the natural thing.
00:01:35.620 We have to make Iran safer.
00:01:37.980 I said, so you take the guns away from citizens,
00:01:41.100 scared the crap out of them.
00:01:42.020 Now you have the guns?
00:01:42.820 Yeah.
00:01:42.940 That's the part where, for a person like me that lived there,
00:01:48.920 where I saw what happened with a beautiful country
00:01:50.920 that fell all of a sudden like this,
00:01:52.520 because Iranians never thought this was going to happen,
00:01:55.160 ever thought this was going to happen.
00:01:56.380 And what's happened to the Middle East since then?
00:01:58.080 It's been a shit show.
00:01:59.340 What were the main promises that Khomeini promised to keep
00:02:02.860 as far as transforming Iran into a different society?
00:02:05.440 You ready?
00:02:06.180 Free food, free rice, free phones, free gas, free housing.
00:02:11.500 Sounded like Bernie Sanders.
00:02:12.500 So it was the promise of free services
00:02:14.540 without having to work for them.
00:02:15.940 Everything was given.
00:02:17.920 Take the money from the rich and give it to the poor.
00:02:20.440 And I've heard that message here many, many times.
00:02:23.520 You know how many times that's been tried?
00:02:24.840 Many times.
00:02:25.740 It always fails.
00:02:26.580 Why?
00:02:27.500 Because a person eventually gets so much power,
00:02:30.620 that power they start abusing.
00:02:33.520 And when they start abusing, it's not like,
00:02:35.120 yeah, I can do whatever I want to do.
00:02:36.460 The rest is history.
00:02:37.820 So, you know, for me, I come from a different life
00:02:40.740 that I witness what happened.
00:02:42.180 And they got rid of this guy, Shaw,
00:02:44.700 who made Iran an incredible place to be at
00:02:47.080 where Frank Sinatra performed a concert in Iran in 1975.
00:02:51.400 You probably don't even believe that.
00:02:52.940 I do.
00:02:53.400 I mean, the same thing in Havana.
00:02:55.020 It was Vegas 2.0.
00:02:56.060 That's what he called the godfather, too.
00:02:57.340 So similar stories.
00:02:58.260 Iran and Havana is actually a good combination.
00:03:00.260 Good comparison.
00:03:01.360 Cuba and Iran. 0.88
00:03:01.940 So do you think there's something about human nature
00:03:04.240 that just, you know, once people hoard a tremendous amount of power,
00:03:09.160 they just naturally gravitate toward corruption and human rights abuses?
00:03:12.380 You planning on having kids one day?
00:03:13.960 Yeah.
00:03:14.440 Okay.
00:03:15.100 It's one of the greatest gifts in life.
00:03:16.500 There's no love like how a kid loves you.
00:03:18.360 Nothing.
00:03:19.320 Not mom, dad, brother, sister, cousin, girlfriend, husband.
00:03:21.800 Nothing.
00:03:22.180 Nothing like a kid liking you.
00:03:24.620 And you like girls or you like guys?
00:03:26.120 What?
00:03:26.740 Oh, girls. 1.00
00:03:27.220 Are you gay or straight?
00:03:28.040 I think girls.
00:03:28.640 I mean, you're pro-gay. 1.00
00:03:29.780 I thought maybe you're...
00:03:30.340 No, no, no, no, no, no.
00:03:31.240 Are you fully...
00:03:31.860 You're a girl.
00:03:32.460 I've got a girlfriend.
00:03:33.420 She's a girl.
00:03:33.960 Real human woman.
00:03:35.080 But is she like a girl that...
00:03:36.720 A guy that identifies as a girl? 0.88
00:03:38.200 No, no, no.
00:03:38.640 She's a straight up lady. 1.00
00:03:39.920 Hair and everything.
00:03:40.920 Fantastic.
00:03:41.440 Yeah.
00:03:41.820 Congrats, bro.
00:03:42.320 Thanks, bro.
00:03:42.700 I'm proud of you.
00:03:46.120 I appreciate the respect with which you asked that question.
00:03:48.860 You're like, wait, you support gay marriage.
00:03:50.880 Are you gay?
00:03:52.900 Listen, you can't assume nowadays, man.
00:03:54.860 That was your number two point.
00:03:55.960 I imagine if you were like, what's her name?
00:03:57.320 And I got really offended.
00:03:58.220 Larry.
00:03:58.680 Are you serious?
00:03:59.340 Why would you say...
00:04:00.140 She's a girl.
00:04:01.260 She's probably watching.
00:04:02.040 Yeah, but when you have a kid, let me tell you what happened.
00:04:04.840 The way you're going, you're going to make a lot of money.
00:04:06.920 Yeah.
00:04:07.320 You're going to make a lot of money.
00:04:08.640 Again, if you don't screw it up.
00:04:09.800 But the way you're going, you're going to have a lot of great opportunities for you.
00:04:12.840 Because you're likable.
00:04:14.020 You have that it factor.
00:04:15.380 You've got the charm, charisma.
00:04:16.840 You're very interesting as well.
00:04:18.440 So when money comes, probably by the time you're 45, you're going to be worth anywhere between
00:04:24.340 $20 to $200 million.
00:04:26.140 It's going to be your network, whether you like it or not.
00:04:28.000 That's going to be your network.
00:04:28.740 It could be higher, but that's a number that you're going to have, right?
00:04:32.160 You're not going to just say, hey, kids, when you turn 18 years old, mommy and daddy
00:04:35.400 is going to give you all the money.
00:04:36.400 You're going to put some controls in place, right?
00:04:38.620 I want to make them work a regular job.
00:04:40.500 Thank you.
00:04:41.380 So that's the part.
00:04:42.540 You're going to have to earn a way to go while daddy worked.
00:04:45.860 Daddy put his life on the line, went to Mexico and freaking tried to swim over and almost 0.65
00:04:49.820 got killed.
00:04:50.920 That's work.
00:04:51.740 That's not easy.
00:04:52.360 You risk a lot of things, right?
00:04:53.740 To me, a part of that with here, where we are, I think we got to be, you know, the system
00:05:03.680 of socialism and some of the ideas that they had.
00:05:05.620 But it's tough if we don't expect people to have to earn it themselves and kind of give
00:05:10.180 things out away to them without having to earn it.
00:05:12.800 It's a troubling place to be.
00:05:14.680 It's a challenging place to be.
00:05:16.160 And I'm overly paranoid if we do end up getting there one day.
00:05:19.340 I don't want us to get there.
00:05:19.900 That's very reasonable given your life experience.
00:05:21.820 And that's the part, you know, and I kind of wanted to know what your family life was
00:05:26.800 when you said your parents used to be conservatives.
00:05:29.200 Your father was conservative.
00:05:29.920 No, no, no.
00:05:30.340 My parents were never.
00:05:31.020 I mean, so I grew up in Philadelphia.
00:05:32.760 I moved to Seattle when I was 12.
00:05:34.200 But my grandparents were, you know, fiscally conservative.
00:05:37.280 Grandparents.
00:05:37.860 Reagan era.
00:05:38.400 But you got to think, too, their parents were, you know, World War II veterans who,
00:05:42.320 after the GI Bill, were able to build homes in suburbia.
00:05:44.800 And so the baby boomers were the first suburban generation who got to experience that life 0.56
00:05:48.800 with no wars until Vietnam.
00:05:50.000 But there was a solid 15, 20 years of real American prosperity for them where everybody with
00:05:54.780 a good job was able to afford a house and live a fulfilling life.
00:05:57.560 My parents were probably a little bit more conservative-oriented when I was really young.
00:06:02.780 But I think that the war in Iraq really transformed that perception.
00:06:06.600 The war on terror post-9-11.
00:06:08.400 I think the early war on drugs and, you know, U.S. intervention in Latin America as well
00:06:11.880 really changed their perspective on things.
00:06:13.760 So they were big-time Al Gore vegetarians.
00:06:17.400 Even today, they're not very political.
00:06:19.360 But my early political thinking was definitely more progressive.
00:06:23.320 When I moved to Seattle, I started hanging out with a bunch of, like, anarchists in more
00:06:26.480 left-wing circles in high school.
00:06:27.980 I went to school in the South.
00:06:29.460 I went to New Orleans for college.
00:06:30.900 And I got to know a lot more conservative-leaning people, learned about, you know, the Second
00:06:34.100 Amendment and stuff like that, and got more exposure.
00:06:36.440 And now I've lived on the road and, you know, between different cities for a long time.
00:06:39.300 So I'm definitely, like I said, more left-leaning.
00:06:41.340 But I'm very open to all perspectives.
00:06:44.660 And also, I think that most people are generally well-intentioned.
00:06:47.640 And I think that also, as a country, what we need to be able to do is let some of the stubbornness
00:06:51.980 go a little bit.
00:06:52.700 But, you know, when you've committed to a certain way of thinking for a long time, it's
00:06:56.260 very, it's kind of an ego blow to change your mind.
00:06:59.040 And I think that's kind of where we're at, where a lot of people don't want to accept
00:07:01.740 new information or different ideas because they've committed and they have so much emotion
00:07:04.920 and passion behind this way of thinking that they've kind of nursed for a long time.
00:07:09.020 And so, like I said, if something positive happens in the next four years, I'll report
00:07:12.700 on it.
00:07:13.400 I just know that maybe communism, socialism isn't the way to go.
00:07:16.880 Probably not.
00:07:17.660 I don't know.
00:07:18.160 I just know that what's happening right now isn't really functioning that well.
00:07:21.180 And so I think that's why there's so many different political ideas happening right
00:07:25.040 now.
00:07:25.640 In my opinion, there's more diversity of political thought now than there's been.
00:07:29.620 And guess what?
00:07:30.480 I love that.
00:07:31.160 Yeah.
00:07:31.440 That's why I say I'm excited about what you're going to be doing.
00:07:33.600 I think you're very important.
00:07:34.720 And I think you're going to inspire a lot of younger guys that are going to want to do
00:07:37.640 what you're doing as well that are interested.
00:07:39.400 My 13-year-old son would be fascinated by you.
00:07:42.140 Yeah.
00:07:42.300 Literally, my 13-year-old son would have a 30-minute conversation with you and enjoy it because of where
00:07:48.440 you're at.
00:07:48.680 There's a lot of guys nowadays that are going to look up to you, 12-year-old kids that are
00:07:52.860 looking up to what you're doing because it's entertaining.
00:07:55.300 It sounds fun.
00:07:56.460 It's a little edgy, but also you're in pursuit of something.
00:08:00.040 Let me see what they're going through.
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