Links referenced in this episode:
Jesse Hirsh's latest episode of Metaviews, titled 'Paulie and Heat', offers a unique blend of personal anecdotes and critical commentary on the current political landscape. As he navigates through the challenges of podcasting, including technical issues and the demands of producing content, Jesse reveals a more intimate side of his creative process. The episode begins with a light-hearted introduction featuring his cat, Paulie, who symbolizes the domestic chaos that often accompanies creative endeavors. This personal touch not only humanizes Jesse but also sets the stage for a deeper exploration of the themes he plans to tackle.
What follows is a thoughtful discourse on the political climate, particularly focusing on the upcoming discussion about Trump and the distinctions between fascism and populism. Jesse thoughtfully draws parallels to historical contexts, urging listeners to reflect on the implications of these comparisons. He emphasizes the necessity of understanding our current socio-political environment, which is characterized by anxiety and uncertainty, and encourages a critical examination of the narratives that are shaping public discourse today. This thematic focus is further enriched by his commitment to radical honesty in future episodes of Metaviews, suggesting a shift towards more direct and unfiltered conversations about pressing societal issues.
In a pivotal moment of the episode, Jesse introduces a commercial for Signal, advocating for the normalization of encryption as a means of safeguarding privacy in a world where personal freedoms are increasingly under threat. This segment reinforces his overarching message about the importance of protecting civil liberties, making it clear that the fight for privacy is not just a niche concern but a fundamental aspect of our collective struggle against authoritarianism. As the episode concludes, Jesse invites listener feedback and participation, fostering a sense of community and collaboration that is central to the Metaviews experience. The episode encapsulates not only the challenges of podcasting but also the pressing need for informed discourse in a rapidly changing world.
Takeaways:
a:5:{s:22:"transcription_uploaded";s:4:"file";s:18:"transcription_html";s:91:"https://transcripts.captivate.fm/transcript/9a99e50c-42a5-4300-b368-d17a4a3c66f3/index.html";s:18:"transcription_file";s:95:"https://transcripts.captivate.fm/transcript/9a99e50c-42a5-4300-b368-d17a4a3c66f3/transcript.srt";s:18:"transcription_json";s:96:"https://transcripts.captivate.fm/transcript/9a99e50c-42a5-4300-b368-d17a4a3c66f3/transcript.json";s:18:"transcription_text";s:15067:"Jesse Hirsch 00:00:01
Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsch.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:03
Welcome to Metaviews, recorded live in front of an automated audience.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:14
And we're trying out a new theme song today.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:18
Maybe the song should be called Paulie and Heat.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:21
I'm calling this episode Paulie and Heat.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:25
Cause Paulie, our house cat, is just crying all day and all night, and I'm kind of expecting her to be picked up on the mic, but she may be tuning into my voice right now, which is having her calm down just a tad.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:42
And this is the first solo Meta Views episode in a little while.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:48
Yeah, here comes Paulie right here.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:52
No, Paulie's not into it, but maybe she'll hang out.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:56
Yeah, we've.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:57
What is this, episode 36.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:01
It's been quite a few episodes since the last time I did a solo.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:05
Let's check here.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:07
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:08
So, yeah, that's 20 episodes in a fortnight, essentially.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:13
It was kind of designed to be a grind.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:16
It was designed to really work out some of the kinks, try to find some of the technical issues.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:22
Haven't found all.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:23
Ran into some audio issues earlier today, but I.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:28
I think we're making good progress.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:29
And so I felt it was time for a check in.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:32
But before we do that, you know, as with every episode of Metaviews, let's get into the news.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:40
And today's news actually isn't published yet, so I'm giving you a preview in that I'm recording this on Wednesday night and Tomorrow, Thursday morning, January 30th.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:52
I'm talking about whether Trump is a fascist or a populist.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:57
Spoiler alert.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:59
Anyone paying attention to Metaviews knows the answer that we're going to be focusing on.
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:04
But at the same time, we draw an interesting distinction between 1930s Nazi Germany and 2025 TRUMP America, because that is a parallel a lot of people are trying to make.
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:18
And while on some levels, history does rhyme, the difference, of course now is the size of the state, the capacity of the professional managerial class.
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:29
And that's why Trump's executive orders, a great number of them, really focus on instilling terror and compliance within the civil service.
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:39
So tomorrow's episode, we sort of get into that now.
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:43
You know, of course, our next segment of MetaFuse is WTF or what's the Future?
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:50
And, you know, that's where we're coming to meet Jesse.
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:53
Hey, what's the future of Metaviews?
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:55
As a podcast, you've been doing a crazy pace lately.
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:58
Are you going to keep it up for the short term, perhaps.
Jesse Hirsch 00:03:02
But this has always been a Kind of warm up for the Red Tory podcast that I'm doing with Alan Gregg.
Jesse Hirsch 00:03:09
And I'll mention that a little later in today's episode, but I think Metaview's moving forward.
Jesse Hirsch 00:03:15
We're going to be a little more explicitly radical.
Jesse Hirsch 00:03:18
I think we're going to be a little more not so much hard edged, but honest about the political economic climate we find ourselves in.
Jesse Hirsch 00:03:27
I recorded a couple of episodes in the last three days that I'm just not going to publish.
Jesse Hirsch 00:03:34
One was with a young guy who had some interesting perspectives, but in the end it just wasn't something I was comfortable putting out to the Metaviews audience.
Jesse Hirsch 00:03:45
And then again today I recorded an episode that quite frankly just wasn't up to snuff.
Jesse Hirsch 00:03:53
Just didn't kind of not only repeated content that we've had previously, but even kind of contradicted it without substance, without provocation.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:04
And I would totally publish an episode from someone who disagreed with me, with us, who offered a dissenting view.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:11
But this wasn't even a view really at all.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:14
It was just kind of saying the same old stuff just to say it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:18
And I'm not trying to be disrespectful, I'm just thinking more about what it is I'm trying to accomplish here with meta views.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:26
And one of the things we are trying to accomplish is anticipate the future, anticipate where we see society going, where we see the politics going.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:38
Because a lot of the concerns that we're hearing from folks are that they're stressed, that they're anxious, and there's always hope, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:48
There's always a light at the end of the tunnel.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:51
Unfortunately, it does feel as if this tunnel happens to be particularly dark and particularly long.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:57
But I don't think that that should be an obstacle necessarily, although I do recognize it can be pretty intimidating.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:06
So I partly wanted to do tonight's episode to kind of share some news, reflect a little on the past 20 episodes we've done.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:16
But I wanted to try that new intro song we had.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:19
And I've made a commercial because it's about time we had sponsors, even though technically this is not a sponsor, this is just a commercial.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:27
So let me know what you think.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:31
Oh, I forgot to.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:34
I forgot to.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:35
I have to start that again.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:36
Sorry.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:37
And I'm not even going to edit this.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:38
I had that muted.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:41
So when I do it again, I got to start it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:43
This time I'll have the audio playing isn't just a relic of the past, it's creeping into our present.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:51
Surveillance Censorship and control thrive when we give up our right to privacy and the first step in fighting back.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:59
Normalizing encryption.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:02
Enter Signal.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:03
It's not just for whistleblowers or journalists.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:06
It's for you.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:07
For texting your mom, for sharing memes with your friends, for planning the revolution or just dinner.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:14
Because here's the thing.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:16
The more we all use encryption, the harder it is for authoritarian forces to target the vulnerable.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:23
Privacy isn't just for those with something to hide.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:26
It's for everyone.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:28
All the time.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:29
Signal makes it simple.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:31
It looks and feels like any messaging app, but under the hood, it's built to protect your conversations.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:38
End to end encryption.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:40
No data mining, no creepy tracking.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:43
So whether you're chatting about your weekend plans or organizing mutual aid, do it on Signal.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:50
Because making encryption normal is how we push back against those who want to control us.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:56
Download Signal today@signal.org Talk to your friends, talk to your family, talk about anything.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:03
Just make sure it's encrypted.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:07
So I hope that came across.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:10
I certainly won't know until I listen to this, after I throw it up into the feed.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:14
But I thought that that was a very relevant commercial.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:18
You know, if you're not using Signal to chat with your mom or chat with your kids, what kind of revolutionary are you?
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:25
So, you know, maybe we'll get the Metaview Signal group back going again.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:30
But first we need to do some propaganda to prime our audience to start thinking about encryption as a basic in life rather than just an anti fascist tool.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:42
The other thing that I've been thinking about is doing more history.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:46
Of course we had the David Fingroot History of the media Collective episode and I'm happy to say we've got Anna Melnikoff coming up with another angle on the history of the media collective as well as her own analysis on the spiritual and political crisis that we find ourselves in contemporaneous.
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:06
But I've been thinking about some other history of sharing it and doing these kind of monologue issues.
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:12
So this is where I ask you, Dear audience, post a comment, send an email.
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:18
Let me know if you like episodes like this or episodes like the one I did on the history of meta views where there's no guest, it's just me just rambling at the end of the night.
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:31
And I think the opportunity here is there's a lot of stories, a lot of business stories that I've never really shared anywhere.
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:38
And I don't know, I think it would be good for me to figure out if I still have those memories.
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:44
But I think it could be entertaining in and of itself.
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:47
So this is me polling you, the handful of listeners, including my parents, whether or not you think this would be valuable in terms of the huge grind of episodes and volume that I intend to put out.
Jesse Hirsch 00:09:01
And that really is the last point I want to make about history, that I don't know how long any of us are going to be alive.
Jesse Hirsch 00:09:09
Hopefully it's a long time from now.
Jesse Hirsch 00:09:11
But under fascism, you really can't make any assumptions.
Jesse Hirsch 00:09:15
And that's kind of why I think being prolific at this moment of history makes sense, because you never know what's going to be erased, you never know what's going to be saved.
Jesse Hirsch 00:09:25
You never know when it's going to end.
Jesse Hirsch 00:09:27
So this seems like a good moment to be documenting history in a radical, in a unfiltered, in an unapologetic way.
Jesse Hirsch 00:09:36
So maybe you, listener, have some stories to tell.
Jesse Hirsch 00:09:39
Want to be part of this history?
Jesse Hirsch 00:09:41
Hit me up if you want to be a guest on Metaviews.
Jesse Hirsch 00:09:45
But as I alluded to at the start, Metaviews really is kind of just a warm up.
Jesse Hirsch 00:09:50
My real motivation here is a podcast I'm hoping to launch imminently with my good friend and in many respects mentor, Alan Gregg.
Jesse Hirsch 00:10:01
And this is a podcast called redtory.
Jesse Hirsch 00:10:04
I've started initially working on the website, which you can check out@red-tory.com and I spell that out so that the AI listening and transcribing to my words might get it correct.
Jesse Hirsch 00:10:17
But we're also going to be doing a podcast that combines interviews, combines overviews, underviews, you know, both looking at the substacks that I and he will be producing.
Jesse Hirsch 00:10:32
But what I like about Redtory compared to Metaviews is, you know, there are times when I'm interviewing people in which I kind of wish I had someone to help, in which I could play the bad cop and they could play the good cop, or I could play the radical and they could play the straight person, or vice versa.
Jesse Hirsch 00:10:49
Or I could just be as incoherent as the guests sometimes are, for fuck's sake, just to kind of throw a wrench in it all.
Jesse Hirsch 00:10:57
And I think that's where Alan and I share two relevant overlaps.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:02
One is a desire to make sense of this moment in history, of where we are.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:06
But the other is to just kind of fuck with people and respectfully troll, politically troll, but really try to counter some of the stupidity and rigid ideology that is preventing us from getting through this tunnel to the light that's at the end of It.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:23
So this is me giving it another little preview, another little ramping up the hype for Red Tori, as in really Red Tori.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:33
So, yeah, keep an eye on that on your metaviews feeds and the other metaview stuff, you know, which I guess brings us to the end.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:41
Brings us the shout outs, I guess.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:45
I have to be true to the episode and shout out Paulie.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:49
Paulie took off.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:50
I haven't yet been able to bring her on camera.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:52
Harriet often comes on camera just because she wants to get a T R E a T, you know, and shout out to Jeanette, my partner who keeps the farm going and who's probably waiting for me now.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:05
So we'll watch the last episode of Slow Horses, or at least of this season.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:10
So, yeah, those are my shoutouts for tonight.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:12
A relatively quick episode.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:14
Wanted to try some things, including a new outro.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:22
Yeah, I dig it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:24
You know, I.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:25
I think I'm gonna keep.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:26
I'm not sure I'm ever gonna stick to a solid intro or outro song here on Meta Views.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:31
I think, you know, fundamentally part of the goal, part of what I'm trying to do is this is the experimental podcast, the, you know, late, late night podcast and Red Tories, more of the prime time.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:45
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:46
The, you know, where I'll put a lot of the polish versus, I think the experimentation, the iteration.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:54
It has a place like Metafuse.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:56
So let me know what you think about the last 20 episodes.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:00
If you've heard more than one.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:02
If you've only heard one, listen to another before you give any feedback just so you can get a little bit of contrast.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:09
Yeah.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:09
Any other feedback?
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:10
Any other thoughts?
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:11
If you want to be a guest, hit me up.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:13
Otherwise, you know, will you.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:16
See you soon.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:17
Eh, Have a good night.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:20
Talk to you soon.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:21
Oh, and I got another sound effect.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:25
Oh, wait, I gotta turn the music off.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:29
Okay, here's the last sound effect.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:35
Oh, yeah, you're gonna love it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:36
You gotta love it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:38
All right, thanks, everybody.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:41
Good night.
";}