Why Are We Like This?

The guys discuss news and notes from things we missed during the summer break, including the Barbenheimer phenomenon, the brutal effects of manmade climate change on our Florida summer, declining tourism and our slumping economy that is also experiencing a skyrocketing cost of living.We finish up with a check-in on Governor Ron DeSantis' spasming and thrashing presidential campaign as it lets out its death rattle. Meanwhile, things keep getting worse at home, where we've decided to let Dennis Prager teach our kids about slavery. Great stuff, folks.

Carlos Guillermo Smith (@CarlosGSmith) joins us to discuss the bizarre and hateful obsession that Ron DeSantis and Republicans in the Florida Legislature have with the LGBTQ community and their collective efforts to further marginalize these communities. Our interview with Carlos comes at the 12:40 mark after a quick cold-open where the Gerald and Thomas do their best to convince David to re-join Twitter after quitting cold turkey last week. Carlos is running for Florida Senate District 17, and you can get involved by visiting carlosguillermosmith.com to volunteer or donate!

DONATE: You can contribute to Danny Agnew's family's Go Fund Me here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/celebrate-the-life-of-danny-agnewThey're calling it... "The Freakshow at Wilkie Ferguson..." In this episode we break down Donald Trump's no-good, very bad day in Miami, the media circus that followed it, and how Trump turned lemons into lemonade -- and then forced a bunch of restaurant-goers to pay for those lemonades. We also covered Miami Mayor Francis Suarez's quixotic, idiotic run for president, the reaction from another reactionary Miami former-mayor, and some of the dirt and scandal that promises to plague his nascent campaign.

Professor Mark Paul (@MarkVinPaul) is a former-Florida Man who is now Assistant Professor of Economics at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. His new book, THE ENDS OF FREEDOM, outlines a new economic bill of rights that cuts to the core of many of our nation's problem. We discussed this, and how much a state like Florida would have to gain by this reorientation of American priorities.

Joe Carollo. Francis Suarez. A broken city government. First amendment violations. The same old names. A lighthearted episode about some dark-hearted stuff today as we're joined by Billy Corben of Rakontur and Because Miami to discuss some of the biggest scandals heading into and coming out of Thursday's commission meeting. We wrap up the show with a rousing game of Guess The Grifter, so stick around until the end!

It took years of fighting and organizing, but New York has finally passed Build Public Renewables Act, which is being called one of the most transformational green energy jobs initiatives in the United States. The legislation aims to scale up New York's renewable energy production and is a major step on the path of putting utilities back in public hands. Joining us to explore the implications of this groundbreaking law are Dharna Noor (@dharnanoor) and Aliya Uteuova (@aliyaute) of the Guardian, who have closely followed the bills path to law.

We go Director's Commentary-mode on the 42 minutes of leaked audio from a recent DeSantis 2014 donor dinner, and get under the hood of a campaign that seems to be flailing and failing from all outside (and now inside) appearance. Credit to Florida Politics for breaking the story of the leaked audio.

Are you wondering how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' official presidential campaign event went off? Well, we're not saying it was anything like hanging out on-set with Will Smith and Kevin James in 2005, but there were definitely some Hitches. From an aborted Twitter Spaces launch to the absolute glazing of Elon Musk's entire genitalia by a procession of right-wing freaks, to said freaks lobbing softball after softball at the Gov, it was a dispiriting night for some, pure entertainment for others. And the WAWLT boys have the play-by-play!While DeSantis' collection of meager bootlicking goons was depressing to behold, Thomas brings us news of a Downtown Miami anti-DeSantis protest he took part in and how it does not augur well for Ron's chances.

We were joined this week by McKenna Schueler (@SheCarriesOn) about the successful attempts by Florida's GOP to ram anti-labor and anti-renter bills through Tallahassee, and the affects they will have on unions and the cost of living crisis we are experiencing across Florida. Check out McKenna's reporting at the Orlando Weekly.

As a native Miamian, Andrew Otazo (@AndrewOtazo) has seen the Magic City go through heartache and pain, but its current incarnation -- fueled by a new type of radicalism that feels foreign to many of us -- feels different. He talked with us about that, Miami's future, it's past, and his book/project The Miami Creation Myth (available at a bookseller near you).

We caught up with our own Thomas Kennedy after he and a group of other protesters who occupied Governor Ron DeSantis' office were arrested in Tallahassee on Wednesday. Along with serial #WAWLTmafia pod guest Ryan Ray (@ryanray_fla, Tropical Depression Podcast) we talk about how the governor's office has become a well-worn path for lobbyists, special interests, and political climbers -- everyday voters and citizens need not enter.

Eighteen months out from what promises to be a torturous, awful Presidential election, the race is beginning to take shape and, wouldn't you know it, Florida is at the center of it. We talked with Tallahassee's finest, Ryan Ray, about the role Florida plays and some other news and notes from the past few weeks. This episode started as a grab bag about Twitter, Trump eating pizza, and Heat-Knicks, but ended up being about -- who else -- Ron DeSantis. Yawn. You can find Ryan on Twitter @RyanRay_FLA and subscribe to his podcast, Tropical Depression, on Patreon.

Maybe no state has benefitted from immigration more than Florida. From agriculture to hospitality, tourism and food service, the Sunshine State runs largely on people who either a.) are not from the U.S., or b.) have parents who were not from the U.S. That hasn't stopped the state from putting a target on the backs of the undocumented with a brand new bill that aims to punish family, friends, social groups and churches that lend them any material aid. The bill before the Florida Legislature is maybe the most punitive in recent memory, and like so many other legislative priorities here the cruelty is the point. We talked with Paula Muñoz and Yareliz Mendez-Zamora from the Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC) about the bill and the man behind it, Gov. Ron DeSantis. You can learn more about FLIC at https://linktr.ee/weareflorida, and you should join their day of action this Tuesday if you can get to Tallahassee. 

With the ripe stench of fascism in the air, we envision a future that could be better with one of the people who can help make it happen. State Rep. Angie Nixon joins us to talk about the potential for the Florida Legislature's rules to be levied against her or fellow legislators. We also got into the rightward lurch happening in the world of online black tabloid media outlets, and why it's happening.

You'll forgive us if we're a little distracted this week, if our attention is somewhat scattered. In this super-sized episode, we catch up with returning guest, State Representative Anna Eskamani, to talk about her effort to cut through the media's obsession with indicted ex-presidents and turn focus on the dangerous precedents being set in places like Tallahassee and Nashville. Later, we talk with Jordan Zakarin about Florida's most famous big-boy resident's made-for-TV arrest, the circus that he witnessed firsthand, and how news coverage could better meet these critical moments by dismissing positions that deserve to be dismissed. You can follow Jordan on Twitter @JordanZakarin and read his work on More Perfect Union and on his Substack, Progress Report. He's also got a project alongside our own Thomas Kennedy, which is called SWORD. So go follow all that stuff!

Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the absolute finessing that its stakeholders ran on the Fed to get all their deposits back, we talked with The Nation contributing editor Doug Henwood about what this failure means for our banking system, and how a SVB's fallout could affect folks 3,000 miles away in Florida. Doug hosts Behind The News with Doug Henwood, which you can find here. He's also on Twitter @DougHenwood.

In 1972, then-unknown actor Burt Reynolds approached Florida Gov. Reubin Askew about bringing director John Boorman's new feature, "Deliverance" to film in Florida. Askew declined, and what happened next changed the course of movie and television history. Today we explore an alternate future where Florida (and specifically Miami) became the de facto home away from home for Hollywood, the economic benefit it could have meant, and whether or not our state is too corrupt and short-sighted to support the industry. But first, join David, Thomas and Gerald for their assorted takes from Hollywood's big night - The Oscars!

Joined by Matt Lech (@MattLech) we take a look forward at the raft of legislation coming online here in Florida and the implications of how it could take hold nationally should the man behind all of it, Gov. Ron DeSantis, find his way to the Oval Office. But before that, let's talk Twitter files, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, and some of our other favorite free speech warriors. You can follow Matt at Left Reckoning (www.patreon.com/leftreckoning) and also on the Majority Report.

In the '90s, Miami's hip-hop scene was undergoing a radical transformation that would evolve the then-Booty Bass-obsessed city into a critical outpost for a new MC/lyric-driven iteration of the genre. Names like Pitbull, DJ Khaled, DJ Raw and many more would come to define "Miami Hip-Hop" in the years after 2 Live Crew and Luther Campbell blazed trails. John Cordero was there, editing the underground Miami rap magazine The Cypher, and this week he recounts some of the stories from his recently released retrospective, The History of Miami Hip Hop: The Story of DJ Khaled, Pitbull, DJ Craze, and Other Contributors to South Florida's Scene, which you can find on Microcosm Publishing or at your local bookseller. We made a companion Spotify Playlist to go with this episode, which you can find here. You can follow John on Instagram @Omen305, pick up the book at Lucky Records in Wynwood, and meet him on March 18th at Soul Garden in Wynwood where he will be signing copies.

This week we’ve prepared a comprehensive case file on maybe the highest-profile criminal occupying public office in our state, his role overseeing what has been called the largest Medicare fraud in history, how he’s used his vast fortune to buy three statewide elections despite enjoying very little popular support, and his (maybe just a bit overly ambitious) plan to run for president. Welcome to our extra-super-sized Senator Rick Scott episode, baby. We also talked about Matt Gaetz being “exonerated” by the Department of Justice for being ick, the Doral Airborne Toxic Event, and the legislation that promises to be the final nail in the coffin of calling racists racist and calling transphobes transphobic. 

Thanks to supermajorities in the state legislature, Gov. Ron DeSantis has full, unfettered control of Florida's legislative agenda -- and he's using it. Last week, DeSantis' friendly coterie of lawmakers sent him a slate of bills aimed at burnishing his national credentials for an eventual run at the Presidency. Alongside Jason Garcia (@Jason_Garcia) from Seeking Rents, we explore DeSantis and the legislature's joint efforts to punish asylum seekers, Florida taxpayers, formerly incarcerated voters, and We also talked with Thomas about his finger-lickin' chicken of a weekend at the expense of wife-beater Joe Carollo.

It's been a few months since we talked about the confounding case of Eric Silagy and Florida Power & Light, and while deductive reasoning could lead some folks to the conclusion that the nation's largest public utility engaged in election tampering at the behest of its CEO, we generously extend the benefit of the doubt. We're joined on this episode by Mario Ariza (@marioarizabaez) whose recent reporting alongside the Floodlight News team presaged the announcement that Silagy will step down from his post in April. We talked about that and more on this super-sized episode. Follow Floodlight News FloodlightNews.org.

In Manatee County, teachers have their marching orders. Educators and administrators are clearing books from not just school libraries but class libraries. We talked with Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) from Popular Information about his reporting on the pressure teachers are feeling from our censorious government and education department, and the reaction they have gotten for raising red flags. You can read more of Judd's reporting and subscribe to Popular Information at popular.info.

Our humble podcast achieves the rare Eskamani Trifecta as we welcome back Ida Eskamani to help us preview what promises to be Florida's most unhinged legislative session in living memory, with GOP supermajorities in both houses and a governor focused on earning national conservative bona fides. We discuss the threats to groups like renters, LGBTQ Floridians, Black communities, and undocumented immigrants and their families. Super fun stuff, but we wrap up on a high note with our Oscar picks.

We’re back for a new season and year, and the Gods have smiled on us with a series of increasingly ridiculous Florida-adjacent stories. We touched on former-Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s Florida winter that landed him in a hospital while his supporters in Brasilia stormed the capital. We also caught up on kitchen table issues — literally — talking about the GOP’s new fixation on gas stoves. Also, eggs, wtf. Our main story is a local one about how members of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party’s are attempting to coup chairman Robert Dempster over what amounts to little more than trivial bookkeeping errors, and the real history of inter-party animosity in a county that appears to be lurching hard to the right as a hub for global fascism. 

The United States is the largest art market in the world, and with its unique combination of rich people and light oversight, Florida is a natural nexus for art-related fraud. This week, Tess Davis, Executive Director of the Antiquities Coalition, guides us through this new and foreign world of art, antiquities, and the fraudsters who bring their chaotic energy to Art Basel Miami each year. Come for the interview about daring art heists, stay for a rousing game of Baseled in Miami!You can learn more about the Antiquities Coalition at theantiquitiescoalition.org and across all the social networks. (Also, while Picasso’s Visage aux Mans has not been recovered according to the Internet, it does appear to be for sale on Sotheby’s website!)

Billy Corben, director of hit documentaries like Cocaine Cowboys, The U, and most recently HULU’s God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down A Dynasty, joins us to talk about Miami’s undisputed status as the capital of crypto scams and million-dollar ape jpegs. Come for the crypto convo where we dissect Art Basel’s role in supporting the wheezing, dying collection of scams that we consider the “crypto industry” and stay for a rousing game of Guess The Grifter, the new quiz show that was made just for Miami. You can follow Billy on Twitter @BillyCorben and you can stream God Forbid now on HULU and Disney+.

A bit of a palette cleanser from politics and midterm elections this week. It’s Thanksgiving week, and we’ve pulled a story from the annals of Florida’s violent recent past that centers on one family’s tragic holiday, a salacious story that may have retreated from public memory but one that we hope to use as a backdoor to talk about the state of mental healthcare in Florida. But first, we kick off the week with three big stories from Florida that will make you, too, ask the question, "Why Are We Like This?" Follow Thomas Kennedy @Tomaskenn. Follow David Quiñones @david_quinones. Follow Gerald Doherty @TostoneSopran. Music in this episode is by David Rosen.

(Ok, you'll probably notice that we recorded this shortly after the midterm elections, as various races that are now settled were still up in the air. But we turned out to be right so stick a sock in it.)With the midterm elections a week in the rearview and a bit of perspective, we talked with Kartik Krishnaiyer (@kkfla) of the Florida Squeeze (@Flasqueeze) about the disastrous failures of the Florida Democratic Party to mount anything resembling a fight in the recent cycle and what that portends for the future. We got into the shambolic Party leadership, weak candidates, corrupt consultant class, and other variables that diminished Democrat outcomes in Florida. Can it be reversed? What would that look like? Listen to find out!

Following yet another crushing defeat for Florida Democrats, we caught up with Danny Rivero (@TooMuchMe), a Miami journalist at NPR affiliate WLRN to figure out exactly why our politics are like this.One issue that Democrats ceded ground on was immigration, where conservative narratives dominated, centering around crime, demonization, and midnight flights to Martha’s Vineyard. Danny talked with us about the contemporary landscape of immigration as a political football, and about his limited podcast series Detention By Design, exploring the dark history of the US’s use of prisons to detain tens of thousands of immigrants today. 

We talked with Ida V. Eskamani (@ida_v_e) about Florida's place in the war on LGBTQ+ rights, and the moving target that is straight-cisgendered hate for nonbinary people. Schools and scholastic sports are the new battlegrounds, and it all comes to a head with the passage of the "Don't Say Gay" bill in 2022.

There’s machine politics, and there’s micro-machine politics. In Florida’s state capital, you can find both right across the street from each other. Ryan Ray, Aide to Tallahassee city commissioner Jeremy Matlow, stopped by to discuss his boss’s efforts to address rampant corruption that has seen high-profile prosecutions and indictments. We got into the push to take Tallahassee back from a powerful group of political elites and a class of consultants who see public service as little more than their own personal ATM. We also veered into the topic of how the City of Tallahassee's proximity to state power can be a toxic pollutant for municipal governance and the culture at city hall.You can follow Ryan on Twitter @RyanRay_Fla. Ryan is also helping Josh Johnson in Johnson's run for Leon County Commission, so check out voteforjosh.org and lend a hand if you can.You can follow WAWLT on Twitter @WAWLTShow.This episode features music by David Rosen, @ByDavidRosen.

“I want you to make his life a living hell. Seriously.” The quote is from a 2019 email the chief executive of Florida Power & Light, Eric Silagy, about Florida State Senator Jose Javier Rodriguez, who had been a thorn in the side of the utility monopoly. Rodriguez was pushing policy reforms that would allow Florida consumers to more easily access solar power outside the confines of FPL’s monopoly. One year later, Rodriguez was out of a job, the victim of an actual election fraud, where dark money operatives funded a ghost candidate with the same last name. In an election that featured more than 200,000 votes, the difference came down to 32 votes. In this case file, we talk with Alissa Jean Schafer (@alissajean) about how FPL has affected political outcomes via media and elections to further their own interests at the expense of their customers. It goes deeper and gets dirtier than you can imagine. You can follow WAWLT on Twitter @WAWLTShow. This episode features music by David Rosen, @ByDavidRosen.The post CASE FILE: Florida Power & Light’s Corrupt Election Hustle first appeared on Why Are We Like This?.

With our guest Jordan Zakarin from More Perfect Union, we dive into the enigma that is Florida’s Governor and his myriad scandals, missteps and misadventures. You can follow Jordan @jordanzakarin and subscribe to Progress Report here. You can follow WAWLT on Twitter @WAWLTShow. This episode features music by David Rosen, @ByDavidRosen.The post CONVERSATION: The Ron DeSantis Riddle Feat. Jordan Zakarin first appeared on Why Are We Like This?.

Following last week’s conversation and exploration of education, we talked with Jennifer Berkshire, a journalist and podcaster who covers education policy and politics. Along with her co-host Jack Schneider, she co-authored “A Wolf At The Schoolhouse Door” in 2020. Her podcast — Have You Heard — has helped many a parent like me navigate the recent acrimony and decline of public education in a post-COVID world. You can follow her on Twitter @BisForBerkshire, and you can subscribe to her show’s Patreon on patreon.com/haveyouheardpodcast. You can follow WAWLT on Twitter @WAWLTShow. This episode features music by David Rosen, @ByDavidRosen.The post INTERVIEW: Education Part II feat. Jennifer Berkshire first appeared on Why Are We Like This?.

This is the story of a multi-million dollar heist of taxpayer funds into private hands that has played out for more than a decade and shows no sign of slowing down. As the school calendar flips throughout Florida, we look at how Charter Schools and “school choice” have successfully played into the American (and Floridian) dual ethoses of “freedom” and “choice, creating a system where there’s no freedom to fix what’s broken and the only choices are bad.  We explore the powerful, well-funded political project that aims to harness conservative anxiety and grievance into an anti-education movement, molding American secondary schools into a caste system where the kids with means pay for-profit schools for the privilege of attending a decent school, and the rest get the underfunded, neglected leftovers. Sure, they’re undermining the public/community school model that has educated generations of kids, but who’s profiting from it? Our guest is Jen Cousins (@JenCousinsFL), founding member of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which can be followed on Twitter @FLFreedomRead, and the Students’ Rights Coalition, @SRCforEd. You can follow WAWLT on Twitter @WAWLTShow. This episode features music by David Rosen, @ByDavidRosen.The post CASE FILE: Proud Boy’ing Our Public Schools first appeared on Why Are We Like This?.

Before its bloody and violent present, Florida had a bloody and violent past of colonial brutality, racially motivated terrorism, and politically motivated bombings (oh, the bombings!). We spent an hour talking with Matt Christman from Chapo Trap House about how Florida became what it is today, and, as a conservative political project, what it portends for the U.S. at-large. You can follow Matt on Twitter @cushbomb and you can find Chapo Trap House at www.chapotraphouse.com. The Chapo boys are coming to Fort Lauderdale’s REVOLUTION on Oct. 30, their first and probably only live show in Florida, so get tickets here. You can follow WAWLT on Twitter @WAWLTShow. This episode features music by David Rosen, @ByDavidRosen.The post CONVERSATION: A People’s History of the Sunshine State feat. Matt Christman first appeared on Why Are We Like This?.

As a coda for this new show, we take a 10k foot view of why Florida is the way it is, the forces conspiring to implement creeping authoritarianism in recent years, the anti-democratic sentiment guiding right-wing “culture”, its status as a laboratory for the American conservative project, and how bulwarks like Miami-Dade, Broward and Central Florida are barely holding on. And the whole conspiracy starts with one uninsured bungalow in Coral Gables…  This week’s guest is Anna Eskamani. You can follow her @AnnaForFlorida. You can follow WAWLT on Twitter @WAWLTShow. This episode features music by David Rosen, @ByDavidRosen.The post So, Why Are We Like This, Anyway? first appeared on Why Are We Like This?.

The true crime podcast where Florida is an active crime scene. Politics, culture, history, crooked cops, scumbag politicians, zombies and more. Join hosts Thomas Kennedy, Gerald Doherty and David Quiñones as we get to the bottom of America’s id and answer the question, “Why Are We Like This?” Subscribe today and visit www.wawlt.com for more. The post Why Are We Like This – Coming September first appeared on Why Are We Like This?.