0103 Sir Gene Speaks with Chick named Faran

Sir Gene: 0:14

Joining me today is fair and balance, although that's not your real last name, right?

Faran Balanced: 0:20

No, it's, it's a Chicago Polish last name?

Sir Gene: 0:23

Ah-huh. what? Balance.

Faran Balanced: 0:25

No, my real last name is Faren Franza. That's my TV name. Yes.

Sir Gene: 0:30

But you go by Fair and Balance and you've been doing that for how long?

Faran Balanced: 0:33

Fair and Balance Since last. Okay. So we're right now, as of this broadcast, February, 2023. I've gone by it since like July, 2022.

Sir Gene: 0:44

Oh, so it's fairly new.

Faran Balanced: 0:45

I'm very

Sir Gene: 0:45

I thought you'd been using this for a long time, cuz it seems like such an obvious sort of nickname to have.

Faran Balanced: 0:50

I, okay, let me say this. When I had my little, like, reporter segment where I would call out both the left and the right media, I had like a segment. That's when my segment was born called Fair and Balanced, but I never went by it. But then that summer last summer when I started covering the Johnny Depp trial and all that stuff as like kind of a media analyst cuz I used to cover court cases that's when I used Fair and Balanced because I was like, Hey, why not? You know, kind of don't need to have my name out there on the internet too much. So, but yeah, no, last name is Franza Polish last name, no relation to Paul Franza. The baby that was, that was kidnapped from the hospital in Chicago back in the sixties. Although I get that, that's the one question that I get asked all the time. if I'm related to that person and I'm like, no, I think it's like very, very, very distant cousins.

Sir Gene: 1:40

Hmm. So I think when I first saw you, you were on RT America,

Faran Balanced: 1:45

Yep.

Sir Gene: 1:47

so we'll get to that, but let's actually start a little further back. So you grew up in Chicago, right?

Faran Balanced: 1:53

Chicago Born and raised, west side. So I, this is one of the things that's, that's funny about Chicago people. So if you have, when you're from Chicago, you and you meet somebody else like in the world and they ask you where you're from, you say, I'm from Chicago. If you're from Chicago, you immediately go, what part? Because we know that most people didn't grow up in the city. Cuz I come from that era where my parents actually grew up in the city, the boomers, and they moved out to the suburbs. So that's

Sir Gene: 2:29

you didn't grow up in Miracle Mile

Faran Balanced: 2:31

and that's again, we never called it miracle mile cause it wasn't a miracle but no, so I grew up on the west side Chicago, Catholic. Went to Catholic school all my life until I went to Purdue University. You know, one of six kids you know, your typical Polish, Italian, Irish Russian, you know, Chicago Mutt family.

Sir Gene: 2:53

Yeah. And I remember on the west side there, there's some, well, there, there was in the nineties when I to go Chicago, there was some really nice Polish restaurants out there.

Faran Balanced: 3:03

Oh yeah. And that's, that's one of the great finds now that I have, you know, when you're young with your parent or like when you're a kid with your parents, you're like, what is it? Like they're your parent. But as you get older, they're like your friend. And one of the things that my dad and I love doing now is we love going and searching for great, authentic polish restaurants. Like sca SKAs is a big one. On like, kind of the, the Southwest side. I'm trying to remember what the other ones, I mean there was one Warsaw Inn is a huge, that's my dad's favorite restaurant, Warsaw Inn. When they found out that they were closed for Easter, my dad almost like keeled over cuz it's just such great Polish food.

Sir Gene: 3:42

Yeah. And it, I think a lot of people don't really know what Polish food is or just how much variety there is that you can get an actual Polish restaurant beyond just calabasa and sour count and potatoes,

Faran Balanced: 3:55

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 3:56

And pierogi. But there is definitely a distinction between other Islamic foods and Polish foods and everyone's got their particular little, you know, niche and uniqueness. And Chicago, I think, is one of the American cities, if not the American city, that had the most authentic Polish food that I remember.

Faran Balanced: 4:19

Oh, a hundred percent. You know, and then a lot also a really great authentic Ukrainian and Russian food as well. I mean, there's a whole, you know, neighborhood called Ukrainian Village where, you know, there's, they're all Ukrainian there. I have a two sorority sisters. They were twins, born and raised in Ukrainian Village. Parents were Ukrainian from Ukraine. They spoke Ukrainian. You know, and then, then you have the Russians too, like with the Russian Tea room. Which, you know, my, my

Sir Gene: 4:44

Way overpriced. Way

Faran Balanced: 4:45

right but, well, then there's another one too. I think it's oh gosh, the name is escaping me, but it's not like the Russian tea room, like the bougie one. Like it's an actual, like, authentic Russian restaurant. Cause my dad is one side Russian, one side Polish, and my mom was the Italian and Irish one.

Sir Gene: 5:01

Yeah. Well, you're right about the month.

Faran Balanced: 5:03

Oh, yeah. But like, I will say this, we were more raised on Italian food. Like my dad, you know, my dad being super Eastern European first time he had pizza was when he kind of like, really met my mom. Now there's, there's also the, the, the thought too that my dad said was when he was 10 years old, he had pizza and then he puked after he had it, because he thinks it, and he, he was like, he thought he was allergic to pizza, so he never had it. But yeah, it was,

Sir Gene: 5:29

Well, and yeah, the, the pizza in Chicago. I'm a big fan of Deep Dish. I know it's not very popular in general around the world, but I, I definitely always enjoyed the deep dish experience. In fact the last time I was in Chicago was on a 15 hour layover between planes, and the first place I went to is to get some pizza. Now, I can't remember the name, the place, but if you rattle off something to Deep,

Faran Balanced: 5:56

oh. Say, well, first of all, what airport were you at? Midway or O'Hare?

Sir Gene: 6:00

I was at O'Hare.

Faran Balanced: 6:01

Okay. So you're probably, there's Gino's East, there's Pizzeria Uno, there's Lu Maltis, which is the best pizza. There's only one pizza, and it's Lu Maltis Connie's Pizza. Ganos.

Sir Gene: 6:12

S

Faran Balanced: 6:12

Yeah, that's, that's the one that I hate. It's cardboard cheese on cardboard Well, you know what it is? It's, it's just lu malati. What they do is they use a cornbread crust, and I never knew that until like my cousin who's really, really big into fitness and, and she lives in Corpus Christi now. She's like, I always ask if it's cornbread crust. And I'm like, what do you mean cornbread crust? What, what are you talking about? She's like, that's what Lu Malati does. It's a cornbread crust because she's super, you know, like health nut. And she's like, yeah. She's like, I don't need, you don't need the carbs. The cornbread crust is actually better for you. And I was like, huh. That's why I love Lu Malati so much.

Sir Gene: 6:47

Interesting. I'll have to check that out next time I'm up

Faran Balanced: 6:50

Oh, lube nineties. It's, it's, it's so good. So good.

Sir Gene: 6:53

But I, I, I got pizza and then I bought another one Frozen to take with me on my trip. So that was very nice.

Faran Balanced: 7:00

good.

Sir Gene: 7:01

But it's, it's hard to find good deep dish places. When I lived in Dallas, there was a place that was right near in lit, literally a block away, a deep dish. But you know, like how often can you really have it? Like, you know, once a month and then it takes several days to eat it.

Faran Balanced: 7:18

Well, not even that. I mean, you really have to, like you don't like those people that do the hot dog eating contests. Like, you really have to prep for a deep dish pizza because it's like a Thanksgiving dinner. You know, like, like these, all these New Yorkers, you know, where they're like, Hey, no, we got the best pizza. And it's like, yeah. You fold it and you're walking down the street as you're eating it. Chicago, it's an experience. You sit down you have a, you eat it with a fork and a knife for Pete's sake. And it's, it's, it's,

Sir Gene: 7:46

Yeah. Multi-layers of everything.

Faran Balanced: 7:49

Yeah. And then you have a major, major food coma nap afterwards, you know? So, but I do love New York pizza though, too.

Sir Gene: 7:58

yeah. Well, pizza in general I, it's, it's definitely a good tasty thing that you can overdo very easily.

Faran Balanced: 8:06

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 8:07

And stepping on the scale definitely demonstrates that. But it's good stuff. All right. Well enough about food. So you, anyway, you grew up in Chicago. You went to school. Did you go into journalism? Where'd you go to school? What was your major?

Faran Balanced: 8:17

I went to Purdue and my major was journalism.

Sir Gene: 8:19

You did. So what made you want to decide to go into journalism?

Faran Balanced: 8:24

you know, it's so interesting as a kid I was always a performer. I mean, I was the kid where you know, saying the ABCs, I remember there was videos of me as a kid where, you know, my mom had the ABCs, these little stickers on the wall for me to start learning them. And if I this was funny cuz if I started and I messed up a little bit, I was able to kind of just like roll through it and go to the next line. Cuz I knew the tune and my mom would stop me and be like, no, no, no, no. This is the one. And so there's one where sh I'm doing A, B, C, D. And she starts being like, no, no, no. Like, you know, to remember it, I'm like A, B, C, D, B, be quiet. Let me do it. And that's just one of those videos where my family's like, that's Farin. Like, she's just always kind of been that performer. So I always knew from a young age, especially, you know, when I was nine, I was on Broadway with Donny Osmond and Joseph with the amazing technical or Dreamcoat where I was with the kids chorus. And we were on stage. I mean, I was leaving fourth and fifth grade. every day at noon to go downtown and do a show. So I learned firsthand kind of, you know, the whole performance life and all that stuff. And I really thought that I wanted to do that. But then there was a moment where I missed Thanksgiving and Christmas. And as a kid, you know, I have so many cousins you know, again, a big Catholic family and I missed Christmas and I missed Thanksgiving and I didn't see my cou. And that's like the time when you see your cousins, because then after that you really see'em the next time at Easter. And I was like, man, like I really, you know, and that's what my mom told me. She was like, cuz my mom was a performer, but she was also was a nurse. And she was like, that's one of the things you gotta look at, Farren is you're gonna miss some stuff for this kind of thing. So I was like, ah, well maybe, you know, I, I used to watch Saturday Night Live with my dad every weekend. That was the big thing that him and I used to love watching. But then I would, you know, on my way to school where we were sitting and eating breakfast, I'd be sitting there watching the Today Show or Good Morning America. And my favorite journalist at the time was Joan London. I thought that

Sir Gene: 10:32

I remember her.

Faran Balanced: 10:33

I thought she was like just so beautiful. I loved her hair. You know, cuz I had really long hair and I thought her short hair was really cool. I liked Katie Keurig too when she was young and like, kind of, you know, vibrant. But my, my all time favorite, and I know every girl says this, I loved Diane Sawyer, but I really loved Barbara Walters.

Sir Gene: 10:51

Yes.

Faran Balanced: 10:52

another one that I loved was Jane Pauly. But either way I, yeah, I, I loved, yeah, B Bob 2020 but I also loved Jane Pauly too. So I, but either way, I gravitated towards all the females on tv and then

Sir Gene: 11:03

So journalism for you was always about tv, not, not the written word.

Faran Balanced: 11:09

the broadcasting. Yes. And so what really changed in, in looking at the news was when I saw a weekend update and I was like, oh, the news can be funny.

Sir Gene: 11:19

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 11:20

So my initial,

Sir Gene: 11:22

doing it when you first saw it, or that you recall?

Faran Balanced: 11:24

very first one I remember seeing was Norm McDonald,

Sir Gene: 11:27

Okay. Well, he was, I think, pretty much the best.

Faran Balanced: 11:30

right? Yeah. Him I remember him, Colin Quinn. I did love the Jimmy Fallon Na uh, Tina Faye era. And then even the Tina Fay, Amy Polar era.

Sir Gene: 11:39

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 11:40

But, but again, it was, it was a lot of the women though that really stood out to me. But so long story short, I thought I wanted to be the weekend update anchor on snl. And and I, and I saw that when I first saw Tina Faye come on. And and I'm trying to remember the lady who was in Coneheads too, I can't remember her.

Sir Gene: 11:58

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Faran Balanced: 11:59

one of them too, cuz I remember, I will never forget seeing it. They did an snl Best of Christmas. I was at my aunt's house, we were all in the basement and we were watching the best of, and my dad and I were the only people at the party sitting there watching the best of, and it was my favorite one. One of my favorite, you know, they where they had their like little correspondent where it was John Belushi and he, he talks about St. Patrick's Day

Sir Gene: 12:24

Yeah. Jane. Cur.

Faran Balanced: 12:25

Jean Cur. Okay. But yeah, she, she, she tosses over to him and he's like, yeah, you know, St. Patrick's Day and oh, they love their mothers. And he's like, you know, starting his whole bit. And I just remember seeing her react and I was like, oh my God, that must have been so fun sitting next to him. You know? So yeah, so that's what I thought I wanted to do. But then as I got more into watching the news, I mean, I just became obsessed with the news. I loved watching the news. Graduated journalism school started doing, I was, I I was dancing for the Chicago Bulls at the time cuz I was a professional dancer my entire life. And,

Sir Gene: 13:00

So when you say dancing, you mean you were like a cheerleader.

Faran Balanced: 13:02

I was a dancer.

Sir Gene: 13:03

So what, explain the difference to.

Faran Balanced: 13:06

Well, if you've seen the movie, bring it on. The guy says cheerleaders are dancers who have got retarded.

Sir Gene: 13:13

Oh,

Faran Balanced: 13:14

you have to have. major skill. I remember I auditioned against 5,000 girls

Sir Gene: 13:22

Wow.

Faran Balanced: 13:23

and only 25 make the squad. But by the end of the day, there's only about 300 girls that make it onto the training camp because those 40, what is it, 40, 4700 other girls that thought that they could make the dance team realize that it's more than just dancing at a club.

Sir Gene: 13:49

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 13:49

You know? You gotta be able to do, you know, advanced turns, leaps, jumps you know, you gotta have your timing. You gotta do this in heels, you gotta do it in gym shoes. I mean, it's, it's intense and it's, it's for actual people that have been dancing practically all their lives. So, but so I was doing that and then I was taking classes at Second City and I was, and I was doing improv there, and I learned very quickly the life of a comedian. And I saw that, you know, you're waiting tables during the day. You're going in trying to do as many, you know, open night mic nights as you can. Met some great com comedic friends and, and still to this day, remain friends with them. But I realized that the news pays steady and also I realized, you can't have fun in the news, you know? And, and it was my mother that actually told me, she's like, Faren, you remember watching all the morning reports on the Today Show where the puppies would come on, or they'd go and they would, you know, be with the, the Blue Angels or they'd go do the fun stuff in the morning. She's like, that's what you should do. So that's what I, how I started. I got my first job in Rockford, Illinois 90 miles west of Chicago. And I found out after I moved there, it was the ninth most dangerous city in the country at that time in 2011. And I, I always say my mom has every single gray hair on her head because of me during that time, because I was going from shooting to homicide, to burglary, to, you know, just, you can't even imagine the amount that I was covering. But the difference was is when I graduated, they told me that I was gonna have, you know, they said, you know, you're going into TV and, you know, I had internships and all that other stuff. They're like, you're gonna have a camera guy and you're gonna have a guy running the live truck. Like, it's gonna be fine. And, you know, I get there and they're like, okay, so here's your camera and here's this and this is how you're gonna operate it. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on. I, I don't get a camera guy. And they're like, no, you're gonna shoot all this yourself. And so I learned and I became like the guru of, cuz when you were shooting by yourself, a lot of reporters at that time didn't do what's called like a standup where you're in front of the camera unless they had a camera. well, I was able to rig it where I figured out how to do a standup where I would able to be flip the camera. I was like, you know how you see the beauty gurus where they, they focus their, their makeup product and put their hand behind it? I was able to figure out how to focus myself and started doing live shots by myself and here I'd be out at two in the morning at this homicide and for breaking news. And my mother was like, nobody's with you. What's going on? You know? But yeah, and I, I learned to like the excitement and the adrenaline of it all. And that's where I learned too. I can, there's like kind of like no really gray area for me. I either love like the super, super fun stuff or the super, super serious stuff, you know? But, and then went onto a bunch of cities after that and I was at South Bend, Indiana. I was in El Paso, Texas, Austin, Texas, grand Rapids, Michigan, and then Washington, And just every place that I went, I happened to kind of meet somebody that was a young buck at the time and then made it big. Like Pete Buttigieg in South Bend, Indiana, and Beto O'Rourke and El Paso, and then Justin Amash and Grand Rapids, and then, you know, DC and then I'm like home. All my friends are following me here, you know, or, and then, and what the, what's the of the weirdest part is when your friends start running for president. That's the weirdest thing.

Sir Gene: 17:15

Mm-hmm. So wait a minute. Put, you're, you're saying Pete Budges, friend of yours?

Faran Balanced: 17:19

Yeah. Mm-hmm. I used to cover'em all the time in South.

Sir Gene: 17:22

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 17:23

Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing is like when you're in these smaller towns, you get to know these people for, you know who they are and you're hanging out with them, you know, especially at Notre Dame games and stuff like that. It's, yeah, you, you see these people all the time.

Sir Gene: 17:36

Right. So how qualified do you think he was for his current post?

Faran Balanced: 17:40

Zero. Absolutely

Sir Gene: 17:41

we're on the same page there.

Faran Balanced: 17:43

Yeah. I mean, the one thing that's interesting is that, you know, people to judge, and this is, this is proven so this isn't like, you know, me speculating at all. Cuz there he did reports on it. And you know, there, there were times, you know, he used to, whenever we'd be out, you know, and he would see me and he'd be like, Fairen, you're a damn good anchor, but God damn, leave me alone. You know what? I just used to be like, I used to be like, Hey, we're not talking about work here. You know, but I mean, he, he understood, you know, he has got a great heart, I will say that. Really kind, sweet spirited guy. But but no, I mean, he's acts like he turned South, bend around and it's, you know, south Bend is, you know, so wonderful. And it was like, no, dude, like you sold and like, gentrified the rough and tough areas of Notre Dame or of of South Bend and sold it to Notre Dame. And now those are all, you know, Brand new high rises and new like off-campus, you know, apartment housing. Like you didn't help anybody you just, you just sold more to Notre Dame. But South Bend, I will say this is an amazing town. I mean, if you could ask me the two towns that I loved living in, it was South Bend, Indiana and El Paso, Texas loved it. Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 18:58

were you in El Paso?

Faran Balanced: 19:00

I was there for two years

Sir Gene: 19:01

Okay. Yeah. My only exposure to El Paso has been while staying there on a drive out west a few times. So I really haven't, like, I don't even know if, if I've seen downtown El Paso for that matter,

Faran Balanced: 19:14

you know, and it's so interesting because a lot of people tell me, they're like, there's only one reason why you loved El Paso Faren. And I was like, why? And they're like, cuz you had never been to Phoenix yet. they call it the poor man's Phoenix. But I, I had just loved and that was the one thing that I did love about journalism too, is that you, you can kind of go anywhere. Now granted, you know, hopefully there's an opening, but a lot of people don't understand how we're kind of nomadic and we gotta move around here and there all the time. You know, DC is the one job that I've had where I've actually been here the longest now out of any job that I've had. South Bend was the longest before that with four years. DC I've been here since 2019, so almost going on five. But.

Sir Gene: 19:57

how do you like DC as, not in terms of reporting, but as a place to live.

Faran Balanced: 20:04

You know, it's interesting if short answer it sucks you know, tldr it sucks. But I will say this you do meet some amazing people here. You do see how the sausage is made in ways that, you know, are unfathomable in some cases. And my parents even said, you know, they were always like, you were the kind of kid that always wanted to report what you heard or what you saw. Like you saw it first. And that's like my dad always says like, yeah, like, I knew you were gonna be a, a news reporter cuz you always had to tell me first. You know, he's like, he's like, you know, you'd run inside if something happened with your brothers and sisters and you'd have to come up and be the first one to tell me. So there is that knack where, you know, I love telling people how DC operates. Now granted, I haven't gone on the outskirts to like the more Virginia area like the, the northern area of Virginia where people say it's much more calm and people are more real there. But you know, one of the things that's so interesting about this place is that you know, when there's a recession everywhere else in the country, you don't see it here cuz everybody works in the government. Everybody's still gonna get

Sir Gene: 21:12

Right? Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 21:13

You don't see

Sir Gene: 21:15

How about when the government shuts down?

Faran Balanced: 21:18

and that's why they work really quick to make sure that it doesn't

Sir Gene: 21:20

Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 21:21

you know? But, but even with the government shuts down, it's not like they're not gonna really be getting paid. It's just they're not gonna go to work, you know? But they're still gonna get their salary, you know, they're paid through that year. It's just, and that's another thing that you don't know either, you know, like there's just it's just, it's just so strange the way things operate. You know, like another thing that a lot of people don't know is, you know, we're always thinking, oh, the next four years, the next four years here in DC they don't, they don't care about the next four years. They're looking at the next eight to 12 because they're slowly, I mean, they're always looking for like, that next new horse that they're gonna bet on. You know, Roger Stone was betting on Trump in the nineties,

Sir Gene: 22:07

Mm.

Faran Balanced: 22:08

you know, like, and, and if that doesn't tell you anything that, that's when it started. You know, and that was, you know, over 20 years ago now well over 20 years ago. But you know, here you, you can see where they're always starting to groom people. And that was one thing that I did see that not a lot of people did see with Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg was Pete Buttigieg when I saw him and met him for the first time. And the way that he acted as a. And then I went through and I looked at his resume and stuff. That was one thing that an ex-boyfriend told me that this, and this is like some of the best advice I've ever gotten, was he was like, always look at what people's resume and like where they went to school and all that stuff. He's like, because you'll always either be able to find a connection or you're, or you'll start to see a pattern. And I remember thinking like, what? You know, and he, he was a big business guy, you know, and I look and I see, you know, he went to Oxford, he's a Rhode Scholar, he's in na, he's in the Navy, the Navy reserves. And I'm sitting there and you know, I've studied the presidents cuz I'm a nerd. And I'm like, this sounds like a gay jfk. And I call, I said to my newsroom, I was like, you guys, he's gonna run for president one day. Like Faron, he's a mayor. He's not going to. And I was like, no, you guys, this guy is, as they say, this guy's fixing to run for president. And then when I went to Beto, O'Rourke's resume with him and you see who he's married to and I was father was a judge and all this other stuff of how he was able to get into Congress and how he was the Democrat, but was able to work across the aisle. Like your Joe Biden style, you know, came from humble beginnings. But then the father was a ju you know, you're like, oh, this is the new young, like j jfk, you know, like father's a judge. Father's very powerful. Same kind of thing, but just different, like the different parts of the story, if that makes sense. And you can, you can see these people shaping as as they start. And that was, that's been the funnest thing to, for me to, to watch is how these people slowly morph into what Washington needs and that's how Washington operates. They're looking at these people like Tim Scott, I, I was looking at him two years ago and already they're now talking about PO possible vp v to be on the ticket for vp and it's Nikki Haley that's looking at'em, you know, like it's these people, they, they groom them years and years out.

Sir Gene: 24:44

Yeah. Well, that makes sense. I mean, you pretty much have to.

Faran Balanced: 24:48

Right. But I mean, it's also, you know, you also then see in the media cycle too. Like all of a sudden you're, you're here, Gavin Newsom over and over and over again. And then he's gonna kind of go away, but then he might come back. It's just all these people, you're just like, it's, I understand what people say. Everything's fixed, you know, I really do get it. But you, but again, you can also see how these people morph and they turn into Washington and then you're just like, not you You know, I had hope, but not you. So

Sir Gene: 25:21

Yeah. So is, is DC gonna be the, the place you think you're gonna be? A long time?

Faran Balanced: 25:31

You know, right now for the way that it's going? Yes. It's, you know, even my dad. Cause I was like, there was one time I remember calling him and I was like, dad, I can't stand DC I hate this. And he is like, God, damnit Faron. He's like, you know, you love dc. He's like, you're just, just right now you just don't like it because you know you're in a lull or something. And I remember, you know, then I moved back home for like a quick summer because, you know, it was be when RT America shut down. And I was like, okay, I don't know where I wanna go next. Cause I, I have always loved the south. I did love living in Texas. And then I got the job back in DC and I was driving in and I listened to, I, I always do this whenever I drive into DC I listen to the House of Cards theme song. And I just, and I, and I drove in at night just like, this is of the first time when I drove in here and I moved here. And when you see like the, the monument and the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial and the Capitol, I just, I just started crying again. This the, this is the same, the same way that I did the first time when I drove in. Cuz you're just like, God, this is such a magical place. Then this, then it sets in where you're like, I hate everybody. But then, you know, you gotta get out a little bit and you know, and then remember how magical it is because it, it truly is a magical. and what happens here, but we'll see. We'll see.

Sir Gene: 26:57

Yeah. I mean, I, I can kind of see that, although I wouldn't call it magical, but it is definitely unique in the country. It's, it's it's the only place in the country that has that many bureaucrats all in one place.

Faran Balanced: 27:10

Yeah, it really is. And that's, that's one thing that you've heard a lot of Republicans talk about how they would wanna be able to move things around the country, and

Sir Gene: 27:19

Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 27:19

I understand that idea, but that would've been, that would be way too difficult and we would be wasting way too much tax money.

Sir Gene: 27:29

Oh, I think that's the least of my worries.

Faran Balanced: 27:31

that's, that's, this is true. Yes.

Sir Gene: 27:33

After. Oh, I don't know, a hundred years of this country. That's, that's really not a concern.

Faran Balanced: 27:40

Oh, for sure.

Sir Gene: 27:41

the, yeah. The, the interesting plan that I heard, which I don't think ever got very far, was in relocating the capitol to the center of the country for multiple reasons, which would kind of place it in, in St. Louis.

Faran Balanced: 27:56

Yeah. I think, yeah. They were talking like St. Louis or Springfield or like somewhere either way in Missouri.

Sir Gene: 28:01

Yep.

Faran Balanced: 28:02

Yeah. I mean, it, it could work. Again, it would, it would save, you know, flight times for a lot of these folks. But the other thing too is, is you know, folks, a lot of these people. they move their entire families up here and

Sir Gene: 28:18

Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 28:18

they're gone like when they win, they're gone. you know, you don't really see a lot of the people that sit back home, you know, like I do know Beto O'Rourke, his, his wife and kids, they stayed in El Paso and they, they, cuz they wanted them to go to the same school and stay there. But most of that, which actually was surprising to me because most of the time they move up here and they send their kids to

Sir Gene: 28:43

yeah. Private

Faran Balanced: 28:43

you know, the, yeah. The, you know, St. Andrews here where Trump's son went. Yeah, there's some of the, if not the best schools in the country,

Sir Gene: 28:50

Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 28:51

but

Sir Gene: 28:51

Yeah. It, it's I think. It's an interesting city cuz it's, it's also given how young America is, it's one of the cities that has tried to emulate sort of European architecture.

Faran Balanced: 29:04

Oh

Sir Gene: 29:04

And, and that doesn't really happen in most cities. You know, Boston's got a little bit of that, but New York, they've totally not Philadelphia's got a little bit, but in DC I think it was done by design because it, it really was a city kinda like St. Petersburg, Russia, which was built on a swamp.

Faran Balanced: 29:25

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 29:26

And so, when you design a city from scratch, you get to make a lot of choices that organically grown cities don't.

Faran Balanced: 29:33

oh.

Sir Gene: 29:34

which you also, I, I curse the name of the guy whose name I forgot. The guy, the guy who designed the, the road systems in DC every time I go there because they are just that I like grids, I like easy to understand road systems. And that road system is the opposite of that. It was a French dude, I can't remember his Know who I'm talking about?

Faran Balanced: 29:57

it was a surveyor named Andrew Ellicott.

Sir Gene: 30:01

Was it? Okay. Yeah,

Faran Balanced: 30:03

Oh wait, hang on. Oh, LA Lawn font. Lawn font.

Sir Gene: 30:05

That's right. Lafa. Yep. That guy.

Faran Balanced: 30:07

which there is a a, a metro stop lawn font plaza. Now, now, I didn't even know that. So I learned something

Sir Gene: 30:13

Yeah. Yeah, it's this is not how I would've designed it, but, you know, he got the job, not me. Oh, well.

Faran Balanced: 30:21

Well, and that was one of the things, I, I will tell you this it Chicago, it's Chicago is also a grid system. So I grew up knowing that and we always remembered, you know, state and state and Madison we're kind of like the, was where everything was North, southeast, west.

Sir Gene: 30:39

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 30:40

But here in DC they have like this number system and letter system. So it's, you know, first Street, second Street, third Street, and then A, B, C, D, G. So like, you know, my first job was, you know, on G Street, Northwest. but then you'll have G Street Southwest and it's like, there is no north and south. Like I just, you know, it was like, you know, south, south State Street or North State Street. No, I gotta, I gotta learn four quadrants now. And mind you, the capital is the center of it. So, and, and to me, I remember it was, I was on a date with this guy and I remember I was like, okay, wait a minute. So how do I get back? Because I had like, kind of just moved here and he is like, you know, it's pretty easy to get, you know, you just go four up that way and then another four and then over two. And I was like, no. See actually it's not easy for me because I look at this city and I'm like, why did you do it like this? You know?

Sir Gene: 31:39

Well, now you know who to blame.

Faran Balanced: 31:40

south. Yeah. Now I know. Now I know

Sir Gene: 31:42

Yeah. It's, it's, it's retarded is what it's, and I've been in DC I've never lived there, but I've been there a lot over the years for a variety of reasons. And I think every, about half the time I've been there, that seemed to be a snowstorm, a once in a lifetime snowstorm hitting,

Faran Balanced: 31:58

Oh

Sir Gene: 31:59

which always they're never prepared for. But I don't know. It's, it, like I love some aspects of dc but other things are just completely an athe.

Faran Balanced: 32:11

Oh yeah. I mean, I will say the one first thing that I had here, I had never been through a hurricane before.

Sir Gene: 32:18

Hmm.

Faran Balanced: 32:18

and I believe it was 2019 or 2020. Yeah, some are 2020. And my brother and sister were visiting me and I just remember it just raining and raining and raining and raining. And I was like, hurricanes don't seem that bad. See, I'm from the Midwest, so we're used to tornado warnings, you know, like, I was like, ah, this hurricane's kind of nice. Nobody goes anywhere. Y'all kind of hunkered down. This is like a Chicago snowstorm, you know? But yeah, I'd never been through a hurricane before. And yeah, I apparently sometimes DC gets it. But snowstorm, I have not been through that here yet.

Sir Gene: 32:51

Really interesting. Yeah. It's think I've been through three of'em out there.

Faran Balanced: 32:56

Wow.

Sir Gene: 32:57

Yeah, it, it, it, it seems I mean, definitely gets colder there than a does in Texas here. So when there's snow in Texas, people are, they're, they're afraid to even look outside the house because God forbid they might slip, fall and break their neck by looking,

Faran Balanced: 33:13

I know

Sir Gene: 33:14

growing up in a mid, you know, in Minnesota, that obviously is not a big deal. Like I, I learned how to drive on snow when I was five years old, like everybody in Minnesota. But it, it's a, in DC it's like in that in between region where it's by the water. So it always kinda stays warmer than other cities that are at the same latitude. But occasionally it will get cold enough to get a snowstorm going through there. So

Faran Balanced: 33:42

And you know, it's, it's always so funny to me when I would, when I lived down in Texas when I was in Austin there was an ice storm or like, they were, you know, saying like an ice, which I had never heard of an ice storm before. It was just, you know, snowstorm. But they're like, it's an ice storm. And I remember one of my friends, I was like, what the hell is that? And mind you, my friend was from Michigan, my best friend that lives down there, and she's like, oh yeah. She goes, these folks in their ice storms. And I was like, what did that, what does that even mean? She goes, well, apparently the snow doesn't stay since it's warmer. The snow doesn't, you know, stay snow and it turns to ice. And she goes, but it actually does get really slippery around here. And I saw, you know, where they don't drive, they don't literally Austin shut down,

Sir Gene: 34:25

Yep.

Faran Balanced: 34:26

but there was a snowstorm though there too. And the, the, the city still shut down. And I was like, with my girlfriend, you know, again from Michigan, I'm from Chicago, she's from like the Detroit area. and I was like, these, these little whipper snappers, like, oh, it's an inch. It's like, really? Is it three feet? You can still do it. You know, like gimme a break. You know, my grand, or my, my parents survived the, what was it, snowstorm of 70, 79 or something like that. I can't remember what it was. My mom said that the snow literally went up to their garage door.

Sir Gene: 34:59

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember a few of those.

Faran Balanced: 35:04

mean the top of the garage door, meaning that the top of the garage door.

Sir Gene: 35:07

Yeah. We're the, all the basement windows and all, and the garage door were just snow over completely. And it's, it's a combination of, you know, lots of snow, but also wind. Which in Chicago is there most of the year.

Faran Balanced: 35:20

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Sir Gene: 35:22

sometimes that's not a bad thing. In the middle of summer, have that wind coming off the.

Faran Balanced: 35:28

Oh, yeah.

Sir Gene: 35:29

other times not so much. You know what I really loved about being in Chicago, just jump back for a second, is at night, probably around like, about the time you're coming back from the bars and where I stayed and it was you know, like two blocks from the House of Blues off Wacker Drive. There was this great smell of chocolate

Faran Balanced: 35:49

Oh yeah.

Sir Gene: 35:50

yeah. And no other city has that, like, that to me will always be a Chicago memory.

Faran Balanced: 35:57

I actually used to live I lived on Lake and Canal, and it's literally across the, almost like directly across the like, area of where that chocolate factory is. And I used, you talk about smelling that, try smelling it every single day around like three 30, 4:00 PM in your apartment where you're just like, oh my God, that smells amazing. And that, that's one of the things though, I will say that I do love about Chicago in the sense that you know, moving here to DC DC's like child's play you want, when it comes to corruption. Like, I, I felt like I came here and I'm like, this is your corruption, but it's just kind of on a larger scale. Chicago, one of the, if not the most corrupt city in the country. And I, you know, people, and I think that's one of the things that a lot of people are like, Fairen, you're able to see all these different politicians and you're able to call this stuff out, like how they do on House of Cards. And I'm like, I'm from Chicago. Like I've seen this since I was a kid. You know, because a lot of it really does this, it's like the stories are the same, but they're different characters, you know? But a lot of the characters kind of run the same type of way as you know, many of the ones do here, as they do here in.

Sir Gene: 37:12

mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 37:12

But yeah, Chicago definitely groomed me. And, and I, and I'm very lucky and grateful for that. But yeah, Chicago was it was fun growing up watching it with all the alderman and then the dailies and watching all of that stuff happen and all the corruption, you know, my parents, they have a condo downtown and there was a whole airstrip where, you know, you could, and I remember the airstrip singing as a kid, cause we used to watch the planes go in and fly on this airstrip right off of like, you know, Lakeshore Drive. And all of a sudden they dailies got mad and overnight crews are in there pu digging up the whole airstrip, you know, totally messing everything up. You know, the whole thing that happened with Navy Pier at the, at, at the end and how there was all this corruption going on with who was gonna get the contracts. And you're just like,

Sir Gene: 37:54

Oh, yeah. It's the same stuff that was in Sopranos.

Faran Balanced: 37:56

yeah, exactly. And you're just like, oh, this is so, so this is how it works. You know? That's how the world works, you know, but

Sir Gene: 38:04

Yeah. Yeah. I, I remember driving to Chicago in a a black Cadillac in the mid nineties. And I mean, it was definitely a very Moby city even then. And it was there's a lot of, there's a lot of interesting characters that always seem to emerge when places have corruption. And Chicago was very much a a character city

Faran Balanced: 38:28

Oh, you wanna, you wanna hear a great story? So the, the suburb that I grew up in, west of Chicago, it's about 20 minutes outside of the city with no traffic. It's where all of the sports players lived because it's a little town called Oakbrook, Illinois, and it's actually where the first world headquarters for McDonald's were hamburger University. And all my friends' parents growing up, like they all were, you know, heads of something at sea at McDonald's. Like my friend's dad was the guy who headed the photo shoots for the food. And that's where I first learned about how, you know, in the commercials the cheese is actually, you know, rubber and, you know, yeah. And how all of that stuff works. You know, it's, it's, it's, you know, the, the friends, my friends and their parents, it, it was inter, it's an interesting area, but either way, the, the sports guys moved there because we have the famous Oakbrook Mall there. And they. get kind of a people at Oakbrook, I guess like their, their property taxes. It's something to do with the mall helps cover it, or it's something to do with property taxes or low either way. So you had like guys like Frank Thomas, Chris Cellos, Stan Makita who just passed away, r i p or Big Black Hawks guy you know, Dennis Sard. These are all I'm playing naming all Black Hawk hockey players and White Sox players. These people are probably like, I don't know. But, and then you had the mob. So a lot of my friends in school, their, their parents or their, mainly their fathers were involved in the mob in some way. It's a very, very Italian Irish neighborhood. And there was a guy Oakbrook Oakbrook is different. They don't have like a little downtown area. It's like a bunch of different subdivisions. Cuz there, it used to be a big Polo area too. Prince Charles actually used to go there and, and play polo at, at the Oakbrook. At the Oakbrook polo grounds. Yeah. And so, you also have Butler National Golf course where the Western Open used to be. But then when Michael Jordan got in it they had to move it because Butler National doesn't allow black people or women, which I don't know if they do today. I haven't been home in a while. But yeah, that was the one thing where every, it was a big, you know, a lot happened with Oakbrook. But, so it was one of the subdivisions and it was a big mob. and it was late at night and he was, it was a gated community, or no, I'm sorry. It was, it was a little subdivision. He's driving in at night and he had like a long driveway and he had his mailbox at the end and he goes to grab his mail, you know, it's night dark out and some guy went behind his mail, came from out behind his mailbox. It was like a big brick mailbox, you know, where he could hide and shot him in the face and ran off. And this was like in like the seventies, eighties, and at Oakbrook, Illinois of all places. And guy drives to the hospital still alive, ends up living all of a sudden, pays a bunch of money to the association, gets the community gated and has, and you could still see him, like we, we as kids used to go through and see like, if we could see the, the cameras. He had a camera in his mailbox and then lights going all the way down his driveway with cameras and each fricking lamp post. Oh yeah. I mean, and you're just like, holy cow. You know, like as a kid yeah, it's a big, big mob area, but the Chicago mob is kind of died out a little bit cuz I think the the kids don't have enough time now. you know, between all their gig working and whatever. you know, I think, I think, I think, I think the big thing that they're all in now is like logistics or so. you know, or like how logistics is like a big thing that you're seeing with a lot of mobsters now, but I don't know, I haven't been home in a while. But, but yeah, grew up with a lot of mobster kids. It was fun. I learned loyalty, you know, I learned loyalty very well, That's why I have such a problem when people aren't loyal.

Sir Gene: 42:21

Yeah. Well, and I, I think the Italian mobs, the, the Jewish mob, they tended to be more more into providing illicit services and controlling gambling and not so much into drugs and sort of the hardcore stuff. And that's where the I think the Mexican cartels really kind of picked up a lot of the,

Faran Balanced: 42:46

Oh

Sir Gene: 42:47

growth that they've experienced is because they were from day one, willing to do all those things.

Faran Balanced: 42:52

well, not to mention too, I mean, you really saw kind of your rise of the mob in the beginning with the Irish and the Italians. If you've ever watched like Boardwalk Empire, you see this where it was all during the bootlegging area, bootlegging era. In fact, that was one of the coolest things that I loved about working in South Bend. A lot of people didn't know that. You know, you have like your New York mob gangs and your New York cronies and, or like, not the cronies like the, the, you know, like the big mobster names like your to me. I know. Yeah, exactly. Chicago, everybody knows Al Capone. But there's the biggest, the biggest one that that created, basically the f b I was John Dillinger.

Sir Gene: 43:29

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 43:29

And the last I did a really cool it was for a sweeps piece. The last bank that John Dillinger ever robbed was in South Bend, Indiana, where he actually shot and killed two officers, but he spent time at the Michigan City Prison, which is just outside of Chicago. If you've seen public enemies with Johnny Depp in the very beginning scene, he's walking out of the actual Michigan City prison. And I actually have a standup there in everything. I mean, it was such a cool story to, to learn about him and his life. But all I, I then in South Bend did a ghost hunt. I used to love doing that kind of weird crap. And it was a ghost hunting investigation. And it was at this giant, it looked like a giant, you know, barn, but it was at actual like kind of a home, but it was an antique store and the basement was haunted and it was an actual underground railroad stop for the bootleggers. Not, like, not what with the slaves. It was, it was for the, the, the whiskey or like the, the moonshine

Sir Gene: 44:35

Yeah. Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 44:36

And didn't find anything with that. You know, it was kind of like, okay, what. but when I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I did another ghost hunt and it was the tavern where Al Capone used to hang out, and that's where I actually did feel like I, I, I went in as a skeptic and I'm not a believer but it was, it was another spot, another bootlegging spot where Al Capone and them would hang out and it was, you just see like all along that Chicago, Indiana, Michigan area, that's where all these guys would go back and forth, and they were able to cut corners and cross state lines super quickly, which is why then they ended up having to create the FBI so they could, you know, not have to rely on state to state, they could actually, you know, make it federal

Sir Gene: 45:22

yeah. There, there's a St. Paul was also a big destination city for them because St. Paul had a I don't wanna call it an amnesty necessarily, but they were during the prohibition, they were not prosecuting a lot of the mobsters, so a lot of them ended up going out there. Yeah. There was a, a nightclub in the 1930s during the prohibition that was in a literal underground nightclub. It was in the caves on the side of the Mississippi River that were dug out. And those caves it's a fairly large man-made cave that I think originally started as, you know, native American caves, but then got expanded during the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds to be a used as ammunition storage facilities. They were used as cheese storage They were used for a number of reasons, a number of different things. But during the prohibition age, the, the cave was owned by, I can't remember which of the gangsters, I think it was the bar, the Barker gang in West St. Paul. And they were set up as a speakeasy, kind of nightclub. And I used to hang out at the caves all the time back in the nineties because the current owners recreated the original speakeasy nightclub that the caves had back there. And so there was a bar, there was a stage, there was a big dance floor. And you're literally inside of a cave, like eight stories underground, but you've got this whole facility there. So there there's a lot of interesting sort of mob ties in the Midwest that a lot of people don't realize existed. People have heard of New York, a lot of people have heard of Chicago, but but also St. Paul, Kansas City had very active mob scenes and a lot of these guys were frenemies, you know, so they, they, they competed with each other as different factions of mob usually do. but they were also friendly with each other because they're in the same business, they have the same goals, and they're working against really, you know, the the law.

Faran Balanced: 47:37

Right? And, and the other one too. I remember hearing about was Wisconsin, cuz I think that's where like Babyface Nelson I think was shot. But the part that you, you learn in Boardwalk Empire, and like I said, you know, boardwalk loosely based, but you do see that part. And I think it's like season three or four where, you know, you know, Steve Buscemi the main guy out of Atlantic City, you know, where they're getting all of this stuff. You know, the guy who plays Al Capone, he is like, yeah, he is like, we don't, we don't need you anymore. We're we're gonna get it in from Canada now. And you see where he just gets pissed because, you know, he was kind of the line guy where it would go from him to New York, Chicago, everywhere. And you learn that. Yeah, like once Canada started coming into play that, that's when the New York and the Chicago mobs completely kinda like split.

Sir Gene: 48:24

Yep.

Faran Balanced: 48:26

But I love, I love that stuff. And then, then there was like a, there's a whole southern mob that I was learning about with this. I love Discovery Plus I just love, I'm a huge documentary nerd. I will literally, you tell me a documentary, I will watch it like in the next hour that, you know, you're like, oh, watch this one. And I'm like, all right, I'm on the list. But it's called Rebel Gold,

Sir Gene: 48:47

I've not seen that.

Faran Balanced: 48:49

Oh, it's so interesting. So allegedly journalist's, favorite word allegedly. When oh God, what's his name? The, he was the president of the Confederacy. God, what was his name? His name's escaping me.

Sir Gene: 49:03

yeah. I'm gonna get a lot of hate and mail for not remembering instantly off the top of my head.

Faran Balanced: 49:07

Oh, no. Well, I'm, I'm a Yankee

Sir Gene: 49:10

Ah-huh.

Faran Balanced: 49:10

I, I will, I will never forget hearing in the first time when I moved down south, somebody was like, well, yeah, you're a Yankee. And I was like,

Sir Gene: 49:18

Jefferson Davis.

Faran Balanced: 49:19

Yes. But they go, you're, you're a Yankee. And I'm

Sir Gene: 49:22

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 49:23

no, I'm a White Sox fan. And they're like, no, you're a Yankee. Like beating, you're a Northerner. And I was like, oh, okay. Whatever that means. But

Sir Gene: 49:33

That means he ain't one of us, is what it

Faran Balanced: 49:35

ex Exactly. That's, I learned that real quick. Just, it's just, it's so funny, like even like when I moved here to DC I went down to Fredericksburg, Virginia, which is literally 45 minutes outside of DC and you leave DC you start driving, you hit south, and there's just this giant confederate flag waving on this giant flagpole. And you're like, oh, okay. But it's like a, as a person that grew up, you know, the North, you're just like, oh, these peop those people are real. Okay. You know, like, it's just, you don't see it, you know? Cuz especially like in Austin, like, I didn't see it El Paso, I didn't see it. Grand Rapids, I definitely didn't see it, you know, like just all these other places. Surprisingly I didn't see it in South Bend, which is not far from the original birthplace of the K kk. But wait, no. So back to my point with Rebel Gold. So

Sir Gene: 50:29

Well, and, and what you're referring to is the Confederate flag is actually the Virginia Confederate Navy flag.

Faran Balanced: 50:36

Really?

Sir Gene: 50:37

So it's, it is a Virginia National flag

Faran Balanced: 50:40

Okay. Well, well then I went and covered a protest in Richmond, Virginia where it was all over two A and it was going against Governor Ralph Northam. And the people that I had never met in my life that, you know, some of them believe the South will rise again. I was like,

Sir Gene: 50:58

Hell yeah.

Faran Balanced: 50:59

you're just like, oh wow, okay. They, they are real. You know, and then I, I've met some people from Tennessee. One of my old co-hosts or co-anchors was from Tennessee, and, you know, her son was talking about all the different things that happened during the Confederate war. And he's like, yeah, he's like, you know, the War of Northern Aggression. And I was

Sir Gene: 51:17

exactly what it was.

Faran Balanced: 51:18

I was like, excuse me, I even had a friend, a friend from Miami who was a democrat. She's like, yeah, the War of Northern Aggression. And I'm like, wait, when was that? She's like, in the 18 hundreds. I'm like, wait, was there a war that I didn't? No, but I'm, I'm like the 18 hundreds. I'm like, is there a war that I didn't know about? Did I miss this in school? And she's like, yeah, like, we're the North fought the South. And I'm like, oh, you mean this Civil War You're just like, oh, the War of Northern Aggression. Okay,

Sir Gene: 51:49

Yeah. Well, this is a good time to plug my other podcast just to good old boys, where people like Farn can learn all about the South Rising again and the War of Northern Aggression.

Faran Balanced: 52:00

That's actually, well, so you'll love this rebel gold then. So, cuz I, I love history. I love a and i I love a good history story, you know, so I guess it's this group of guys that basically are like treasure hunters. And apparently, or allegedly, when Jefferson Davis fled I Richmond, which was the capitol of the Confederacy at the time they went down this one railroad track and then they stopped at certain parts in like South Carolina and Georgia to, to get him over to Texas. But as he stopped, he learned that there was Union armies, union Army I guess troops after him, cuz they had the south had just surrendered. and they knew that he was on a train with like a bunch of like gold bars and like all this, all these gold coins and everything. And along the way he stopped and he hid like a lot of the money and stuff. And so there is like a whole thing in Southern Virginia and North Carolina, South Carolina, that whole train route where people legit are looking for where he might have s you know, allegedly stopped and, and discarded some of the, the goal that they had. And that's where I learned they went to this one plantation where they had an, I don't know if it's like an ice house or what, but it's a place underground where they would build it, you know, and they would put a bunch of ice in there with all of like their meats and stuff. And it was to, they would take like the, the snow basically from the winter and try to keep it as cold as they could for. So then during the summer it would keep stuff preserved. I mean, it was just learning all of this stuff. You're just like, oh, people didn't do that in Chicago. Cause it was like cold a lot of the time, you know, But they, they do find like coins and stuff like that. And you realize like all these stories from the southern era, the southern side of, of the war are just super, super interesting. Because again, being from Chicago, you know, all we. was about the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, all of that, because even in Oakbrook, Illinois, it's called GRA Mill, it was a spot on the stop on the Underground Railroad.

Sir Gene: 54:17

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 54:18

And so that's, those are the stories that we heard, not the, how Jefferson Davis like hit his treasure along a railroad in the south, you know,

Sir Gene: 54:28

Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 54:29

So it's, but it's, it's, it's an interesting series and you learn a lot about the war and what happened and where he was taken in and by the union soldiers and whatnot. So it's, it's, I I love learning that stuff.

Sir Gene: 54:41

Well, and I, I would totally agree with you. I think growing up in Minnesota, Dan, I had, I'm sure a very similar history presented to me at school that, that you did about the civil war. But moving to the south and spending more time here and really like becoming friends with people whose relatives have been here for many generations. And they have tons of stories, family stories about the war in northern aggression and sort of the the carpet baggers coming down after the war, and really how the south was fucked. Big time as a result of that. And. Is a very different perspective than what is sort of standard accepted school history, which at this point, I, I have to imagine given everything else going on in, in the way that schools are teaching history it's probably not even anywhere near what we were taught in school at this point. It's probably a lot more fiction than the actual history that describes you know, a bunch of Trump lookalikes deciding to go and kill all black people. And then Abraham Lincoln saying, no, you're not gonna kill these people. And then he goes and defends everybody personally. I mean, that's what I envision history looks like in today's generations

Faran Balanced: 56:03

Well, I have, I even remember thinking about it when I first learned of like, you know, and everybody loves a good conspiracy, but one of the things that I, I really love studying are basically the best way to call it a coordinated United States.

Sir Gene: 56:24

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 56:24

Since the 1960s, the United States has been involved in over 62 different cos around the world to either take over a country, overthrow a country, and put in a dictator that we like, or a leader that we like. And a lot of Americans don't know that. When I first got to RT America, and, and mind you, I love my country. I have grandfathers that fought for this country distant relatives that fought and died for this country. My, my father's uncle was one of the first guys killed at Omaha Beach. You know, I love everything about this country. I love the freedoms we used to have. You know, everything, everything

Sir Gene: 57:04

That's a good way of putting it. That's a very good way of putting it.

Faran Balanced: 57:06

I, I, I have to give it homage to him.

Sir Gene: 57:08

Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 57:10

Jimmy Dora, his, he's the one that he says that, he's like, I love this country. I love the

Sir Gene: 57:13

Jimmy Do is

Faran Balanced: 57:14

to have. Oh,

Sir Gene: 57:15

He is really a funny

Faran Balanced: 57:16

that's one of my favorite lines that he says.

Sir Gene: 57:18

yeah.

Faran Balanced: 57:19

But when I found out about Gulf of Tonkin for the first time and hearing, and, and I remember, I, I was home one weekend and I went and, and you. as a kid, you know, my mom, like you would, there's this, we have a little third floor area and it's, it was like our study area and we still have like the bookshelf with all of our books, our history books and stuff, because, you know, a lot of them were hand-me-downs, from, you know, being all at the same school. And I remember looking and I was like, I'm just gonna go into my history book and see if there's anything about this. Not anything about it was fake. The United States lied about it. Nothing still there. A history book from 2001 all about how the, the, the damn Viet con, you know? And that was when I realized, I was like, wow. And then, so again, b b back to my point, I get to RT America and I start learning all of this stuff. And mind you, I, I had also, I also heard about Gulf of Tonkin, to be fair, from Joe Rogan when he talked to, I forget what Ci I think it was the guy who wrote oh God, what is it called? Shit, the name is escaping me. He wrote a book about how to overthrow ec confessions of an economic

Sir Gene: 58:39

Oh, yeah.

Faran Balanced: 58:40

Yeah. He had that guy on. And that's where I first heard of, you know, Gulf of Tonkin and how the United States, you know, c especially the c I a, was able to figure out how to, you know, drain countries of medical supplies or, you know, drain their economy and all that other. so,

Sir Gene: 58:56

Yeah. It's subversion tactics. It's basically a way to achieve your goals through non-traditional military means.

Faran Balanced: 59:02

right. Yeah. Basically to bring a country to its sneeze. And you know, when I first read the book, because after I saw that episode, I went and read the book and I was like, you know, it makes sense. Like if these dictators are so evil and you know, this is so bad, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was like, you know, that makes sense. You want these people, you know, to be okay. But then as I get to RT America and I start learning about what's really happening, like in Columbia and Chile and Ukraine and you know, Russia and all these, these other countries, and you're kind of like, especially Iraq, you're like, you're like, these people didn't need any help. We went in and screwed shit up

Sir Gene: 59:42

absolutely.

Faran Balanced: 59:43

you know? And that's where you start learning and you're like, and that was a big place where I learned, you know, I, I actually worked with more people that were from south America than they were actually from Russia, believe it or not. But you learn very quickly and, and, and people around the world, they don't hold it against Americans of today, meaning like the younger kids, but people around the world do not like the United States mainly during like the Bush years the Obama years especially because of all the drone strikes, I mean, There's a lot of things and a lot of chaos that we've caused around the world. So when they hear an American say, we're the greatest country in the world, they're like, well, yeah, cuz you screwed it up for everybody else. You know? And that was, that was a really tough cold rag in the face. And that's when I even learned, wow, I really haven't been doing journalism. Like, I really haven't been looking into this stuff because I've only been seen one side to all of this. And it really taught me how to look at a lot of other publications. You know, don't just read The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. No, no, no, no. You gotta read The Intercept. You gotta read the Gray Zone. You gotta read RT America, you gotta read France 24. You gotta read dw, you gotta, I mean, basically a lot of those are international sources, right.

Sir Gene: 1:01:08

Al Jazeera.

Faran Balanced: 1:01:09

Al Jazeera is another big one too. And you, you realize too, like after nine 11, Al Jazeera was deemed like a terrorist network. A, terrorist tv. They used to call it.

Sir Gene: 1:01:19

Oh, just like rt.

Faran Balanced: 1:01:21

Exactly. You know, over 20 years later. And you know, that's the one thing that a lot of people don't know. Who was the first person to call George W. Bush after nine 11?

Sir Gene: 1:01:30

who

Faran Balanced: 1:01:31

Putin, Putin was the first

Sir Gene: 1:01:33

immediately after it happened.

Faran Balanced: 1:01:35

ame. After, after it was all over. He was the first person to call George W. Bush and say, whatever you need will come and help.

Sir Gene: 1:01:43

Yeah. Well, I, I,

Faran Balanced: 1:01:45

at that time, he had just asked Bill Clinton maybe a year before that if he could be part of nato.

Sir Gene: 1:01:51

right?

Faran Balanced: 1:01:52

A lot of people don't know that

Sir Gene: 1:01:55

Well, more are finding out thankfully as a result of what's been going on in Ukraine, because more questions are being raised. US is still extremely isolated when it comes to news. It's,

Faran Balanced: 1:02:06

Yes.

Sir Gene: 1:02:07

really is the propaganda capital of the world where the people only see what is being fed to them by the government. But, and it's not to say that government runs these news media, it's just that it's a very well controlled you know, messaging that is going out. And everybody knows that humans are lazy by nature. And so these days, and this is horrible to me, and I think people, you know, around my age is seeing that the majority, over half the stories in media start off with a tweet. It's like, this is your source of information. Now this is where you're getting these stories from, is you, you're, you saw a tweet. Nobody's doing actual investigative journalists except for very small groups like Project Veritas used to be. Whatever their new name's gonna be I'm sure they'll continue doing it, but it's, it's certainly not the free media that people think it is.

Faran Balanced: 1:03:07

No, it's not. And that's one of the things that, you know, again, learning about a lot of this, one of the things that Americans don't do that we're not taught, and I say this as I'm like, you know, blabbing, on and on and on, but I mean, it is about me, right? but people don't listen to each. people talk through each other and think that they're gonna change your mind, or people just kind of look through you and just think like, okay, I'm just having this conversation, but I'm not really absorbing what the other person's saying because Americans are now taught to just be go, go, go, go, go. You know, I gotta go. I gotta get to this, I gotta get to that. You know, even though there are people that you know that don't, might not live in New York, we have that New York mentality of, I gotta get to this thing. I gotta go do this for myself. I gotta go do that. We are very isolated and we're very narcissistic, and I hate when a lot of people throw that word around, but we truly are. I talk to my friends who have grown up in Germany, Italy, Russia what was Yugoslavia? Venezuela, Columbia, and every one of them pretty much says the same thing about their news. You know, you wanna look at an United States newscast, okay? Has a, as somebody that used to create them and anchor them. You start out with your biggest story of the day. You go into your other big national stories or your local stories, you know, if it leads, it leads. Then you have your weather break. Then you have your D Block stories, which would be like you. oh, the cat fashion show and this, this, this, and then you go to sports and then you end with, and here's, you know, a squirrel, water skiing. Have a great night. Where in that at all in local news, do you hear anything about international stuff? Unless it's like the war in Ukraine, on inter in international local news, they start with their national news, then they have entire blocks of straight international policy news and what's going on, and then they end with the hyper-local news and then they, you know, end the show and, and

Sir Gene: 1:05:33

this is what built cnn, and again, I'm old enough to remember when Ted Turner first got CNN to get on the cable. And it was, you know, it was a powerhouse because the concept of a 24 hour news network seemed insane because, well, there isn't 24 hours worth the news to talk about because everybody's just used to watching their local news, which you just very, very correctly. Was using a formula that had been around for a long time and it's still being utilized, and now they're gonna have a network that is 24. Well, they're gonna have to just repeat things on and on. But what they did very early on was they started including more coverage of international news. And I think that was the first time a lot of people, a lot of Americans were exposed. You know, over half Americans don't have a passport.

Faran Balanced: 1:06:23

Oh

Sir Gene: 1:06:23

They've never left the country,

Faran Balanced: 1:06:25

Oh yeah. I believe it. And see a lot of people overseas, the reason why they study international, they have a whole block of international news and policy is because you can literally drive from Italy to Germany and then over to like, maybe like if, if you kind of cut corners to Poland in one day, you know, or, or you can fly around, you know, you, you could, you could visit multiple countries in Europe in a day and guess what? It's like you all have to get along because you're all pretty much on top of each other over

Sir Gene: 1:06:56

And you've all fought each other for a thousand years.

Faran Balanced: 1:06:58

Which is why Americans don't understand when I say we're narcissistic,

Sir Gene: 1:07:03

yeah.

Faran Balanced: 1:07:04

when you look at the war in Ukraine. Okay? And I used to get a lot of crap for this when it first happened. I was like, you know, people were like, yeah, we gotta send bombs, we gotta send this, we gotta send that. I was like, you people don't understand that Ukraine has been under like 17 different rulers from the time of its inception, from the time of this earth that humans were around. You know, a lot of people don't even know the history of.

Sir Gene: 1:07:29

Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 1:07:29

I, I did a major deep dive and actually Roger Stone, or not Roger Stone Oliver Stone has an amazing documentary with Igor Lap Lapont, who I've interviewed who's amazing, amazing mind, brilliant mind, Ukrainian himself goes over the entire history of Ukraine and how there has been all these different rulers and how people don't understand that there are ethnic Russians in Ukraine, and then there's Ukrainians, but most people all speak Ukrainian and Russian, and then all of a sudden they stopped. They had it where you couldn't speak Russian anymore. But

Sir Gene: 1:08:02

Well, and then there's no such thing as a Ukrainian there genetically. There are no Ukrainians. It's just Russians. It's, it's different people with identical dna. There's DNA differences between people in Serbia and Poland. Right? They're subtle, but there are genetic differences. There are no genetic differences whatsoever between Russians and Ukrainians. And that's because the history of Russia is intimately tied to that region which is called Ukraine for a reason, which is borderlands.

Faran Balanced: 1:08:39

yep.

Sir Gene: 1:08:39

it's, it's a region of Russia that happened to have been occupied by a lot of different countries over the. From Mongos to the Tars to you know, I, like, I remember as a kid going to Crimea

Faran Balanced: 1:08:55

Oh wow.

Sir Gene: 1:08:56

see my my family's house down there. And you know, the history in Crimea was still recent enough, a reminder of the, the invasion of the Turks. Like there was, there were a lot of elements of the occupation of that region by multiple different ethnic groups, really, you know, you can call'em countries, but they're really different ethnic groups over the years. Because it's, it's a great location, and everybody wants to have good locations be part of their empire. But people that think somehow that Ukraine is no different than Poland, meaning it was a country that got taken over by the Soviet Union, they're, they have no concept of this history. That that part of Russia, and it is a part of Russia has been a part of Russia other than during the occupation for about 700 years. So the, the history of Ukraine is the history of Russia.

Faran Balanced: 1:10:01

A hundred, a hundred

Sir Gene: 1:10:02

separate'em.

Faran Balanced: 1:10:03

You can't, and, and that's why, you know, when they go back to, you know, the, the breakup of the Soviet Union. I mean, you guys, I always say my friends, Ukraine has been a country since 1991. Before that they were Russians, you know, and that's where you just get a lot of Americans that just don't know the history of it. And I don't blame them because, you know, you think, you think some high school kid who can barely pass a, you know, English class, you know, in some poor neighborhood, is gonna wanna sit and learn about the history of the Ukraine too. You know, like, I don't, I wouldn't blame them. But the point being though is, is yes, you're absolutely right. And there's been a lot of infighting, a lot of people don't know that, you know, they say, oh, Ukraine, the Ukraine's, the Ukrainians sided with the Nazis during World War ii. Well, some of the, yeah, but they were considered Russians. Then there were some Russian defectors that went with the Nazis, you know, and then that's where I will

Sir Gene: 1:11:06

Bun Bandera was the, the big

Faran Balanced: 1:11:09

Stefan Bond.

Sir Gene: 1:11:09

unifying force that was pro-Nazi. He was a Ukrainian regional nationalist, and he, he very much advocated utilizing the German invasion to. The Russians and the Poles out of that area. Because he was, you know, he, he was, I guess the best way to put it is if you think of like Florida having a certain personality or Georgia, or pick whatever state you want. Could be Maine.

Faran Balanced: 1:11:41

Think of Florida having a personality. Okay.

Sir Gene: 1:11:44

Hardy. Hard. But my my point being is like, there, there are states within the United States in this analogy that have certain attributes, certain characteristics, and let's pick Texas, cuz I live here, right? So people can say Texas, if Texas has certain percentage of people that want Texas independence back, and I, I think that'd be super cool. I don't think it's gonna happen, but I'm not opposed to it. But there are people that are really gung-ho for the independence of Texas and if they manage to pull it off because the United States defaults on its debts and China effectively owns large chunks of the United States. They can't hold the government together. I'm writing fiction now, right? I'm not predicting the future. I'm just like free, free forming ideas of a fiction novel. You could see different regions break off the United States and say, well screw you. We're gonna do our own thing cuz we actually know how to, you know, run a state. And now we're just gonna become our own little country. Well if that happens, You gotta imagine that not everybody on the first day in Texas is going to agree with that decision for independence. Not everybody in Texas is from Texas and has families that have lived there for, you know, dozens of generations. So there's, there has to be a lot of people that become separated from their families and, and their histories if they happen to find themselves in an area that is now no longer part of the United States. So, kind of take that analogy with what happened with the fall of the Soviet Union, where they took what were effectively Russian states. They were regions within Russia, the Empire, the Russian Empire. They were regions within the Russian Empire. When the communists took over, they kept those regions. And in a, in a move of frankly brilliance Lennon wanted to ensure that these different regions didn't turn into into regional nationalistic uprisings. So the idea of communism was, let's convert the whole country to communism instead of breaking the country up and having each little area kind of become their own little communist country. Cuz the communists didn't want to lose. And so they created their, the representative system that became the Duma in Russia, which which has representation and somewhat local control in each of these regions, and thereby keeping the, the whole country of what was the Russian Empire as the Soviet Union. But, but those moves were politically motivated. And so when the breakup happened finally in 91, the, there was a, a move for giving full autonomous control and effectively areas that had been regions for hundreds of years, all of a sudden became independent nations. And that was very welcomed by some people, but also it gave rise to a lot of nationalism and the growth of nationalism in Ukraine with the Bandera movement. The what do they call the right patrol? Wright Guard? I can't right guard. Yeah, that'd be a great name for a group. Wright

Faran Balanced: 1:15:09

Yeah, exactly. You'll never smell when you

Sir Gene: 1:15:12

yeah, yeah. But essentially Bandera influenced strong, nationalistic friendly towards Nazi Germany World War II types that started really growing substantially in. A lot more so than they did in other regions that were also previously part of the Soviet Union.

Faran Balanced: 1:15:31

Mm-hmm. And it's just, that is something, that is another example that is not taught in our history books here. You know, like we're taught that German's bad. Russians, Russians bad uk, K France, weak you know, Germany evil, Japan evil US ultimate

Sir Gene: 1:15:58

Evil. I mean, everybody's basically bad. It's

Faran Balanced: 1:16:00

But.

Sir Gene: 1:16:01

US is

Faran Balanced: 1:16:02

Yeah. Us

Sir Gene: 1:16:03

English speaking countries are okay.

Faran Balanced: 1:16:05

Yeah, us ultimate hero, you know? Whereas you find out that the United States kind of came in at the last minute and they also wouldn't have been able to win had it not been for the Russians,

Sir Gene: 1:16:18

Oh, absolutely. And, and I think there's an argument be made that the Russians would've won without the United States. Now, I don't think it would've been nearly as quick for sure. But ultimately Germany just did not have the manpower in the end. And the Russia was able to create supply lines and manufacturing to the point where they were making, you know, a tank every few hours coming off the assembly lines in Siberia with the German tanks were much better. No doubt. But they took much longer to make because those BMW and Mercedes factories just could not crank'em out as fast.

Faran Balanced: 1:16:55

Yeah. And you never hear about like how IBM helped, you know, make the list for those going into the gas

Sir Gene: 1:17:02

Oh, you hear that on my podcast, but yes,

Faran Balanced: 1:17:06

you know, but like, yeah, it's, it's like, that's why I say I love like the untold history of things, of how

Sir Gene: 1:17:12

Well, between Walt Disney and Ford and, you know, a lot of the big, and let's just use the modern terminology, big oligarchs in the United States were very much pro Germany and pro Hitler. And it was I, I don't, this is why I, I love the man in the oh shit. I'm, now I'm blanking, man. The high tower.

Faran Balanced: 1:17:34

Oh yeah, the, the show where it's if the Nazis won.

Sir Gene: 1:17:37

yeah, yeah. So it's, it's, it's a it was a book and then they made the show about it. But it's a, an alternate sort of very slightly sci-fi ish history of the world. The went in a different direction to where it was. In fact, the Germans that created the first atomic bomb, and that ended World War II with the surrender of United States. And so the, the Eastern United States, Became a German controlled territory. And then west of the Rockies was a Japanese controlled territory.

Faran Balanced: 1:18:14

Oh.

Sir Gene: 1:18:14

So the, the access powers effectively one World War II took over all of the regions in Asia and Europe and then in the United States was carved out in, in the, it wasn't even half, it was like two thirds, one third, but basically in half. And the, the movie I really, or the TV series, I thought was very good up until the last season where it kind of deviated from the book quite a bit.

Faran Balanced: 1:18:36

Mm-hmm. Always when it goes bad.

Sir Gene: 1:18:37

I know it's like they just, they cannot stand not doing one more season. That's the trouble with all these just completely skipping topics here. But that's the biggest problem I think with most TV shows. When they do good, when they create a very good TV show, their drive for more profit will not let them stop it. At a good point. They have to make that last season, which always is the weakest.

Faran Balanced: 1:19:03

Mm-hmm. and just ruins it. And it's like you couldn't, you couldn't just make merch or something.

Sir Gene: 1:19:07

it's un it's unfortunate, but, you know, this is this has been par for the course on everything and I think the biggest example of recently that we've had of this is Game of Thrones, which was heralded as one of the best TV shows ever made up until the last two seasons where it completely blew

Faran Balanced: 1:19:26

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:19:29

but Yeah. So anyway, you getting back to, I, and I've kind of talked more than I try to on these

Faran Balanced: 1:19:33

No, no, no. Cuz it's, I I, I love that World War II stuff, because I'll even tell you another cruel story that I

Sir Gene: 1:19:38

mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 1:19:38

out was my great-grandfather was in what would be considered the Russian Secret Service for Zara Nicholas and Zara Nicholas. My, my grandfather was born in St. Petersburg. And then I had another,

Sir Gene: 1:19:53

that's where I'm from.

Faran Balanced: 1:19:54

another great-grandfather who was born in Munich. So I'm like kind of Belarusian too, but again, it's all the same. And he was one of his Nicholas's, you know, top body guards used to chop wood with him all the time. And then there was the whole spiel where they were getting ready for him to escape. My great-grandfather was sitting there waiting for him in St. Petersburg to arrive, never did got word, and immediately fled for the United States. And that's kind of how the Russian side of my family was, you know, started. Yeah. And

Sir Gene: 1:20:31

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 1:20:32

but you know, it's, it's those stories that you hear about where here, you know, as a kid, like you always heard Anastasia, cuz they did the little, you know, the, the Dreamworks production, you know, of Anastasia. But you don't, you find out though, especially like with the Crown, And maybe they don't tell us as kids because they don't think that we'll understand it. And also, I don't think they're gonna tell a bunch of kids now, you know, kids, his cousin, king George could have saved him, but then just let him to an execution. And that's where we get the wonderful cartoon of Anastasia. Like, they're not gonna say that. But again, just all these stories in time, you're just like, what? And then this was my father's grandfather, the one that was in the Secret Service

Sir Gene: 1:21:15

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 1:21:15

My father was about three years old and he said three or four, I think he said. And he was in a little red rider wagon. His grandfather was pulling him and he tripped on the sidewalk. This is now in Chicago, tripped on the sidewalk and hit his head. And my father, who is grew up to be a neurosurgeon now knows it was a, basically a subdural hematoma.

Sir Gene: 1:21:40

Mm.

Faran Balanced: 1:21:41

my great-grandfather started losing, you know, started becoming paralyzed and losing feelings in certain places. And my grand, my dad said, you know, that you know, cause I think my dad might have been like maybe six or seven, maybe, cuz he's like, I remember certain things, you know, as far as the story and I'll, you'll understand why. And he said that his grandmother started, you know, having to take care of him more. And he started losing more and more feeling and becoming slowly. and he said he remembered leaving. Cuz in Chicago, you know, the immigrant families, you'd have like, his, his parents lived on the, the main floor. The grandparents lived above him, and then his aunt and uncle lived below him. You know, that's how the immigrants did it. You know, like these three story houses like these rowhouses kind of a thing. And he's like, I remember going out the back and going up the stairs to go see grandpa, and it was my Uncle Ed. And he said, you can't go upstairs right now. And he's like, oh, but I wanna see grandpa. And he's like, you can't see grandpa right now. You gotta go back downstairs. And it's like that Russian mentality that if they feel like they're a burden, they off themselves.

Sir Gene: 1:22:52

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 1:22:53

And my grandpa, my great-grandfather committed suicide,

Sir Gene: 1:22:56

Wow.

Faran Balanced: 1:22:57

and I believe he hung himself. And that's one of those stories where you, you hear about those generations, you know, and you're just like, wow. You know, like these people that, it's like, you, you see China and how they all celebrate their birthday on the same day, you know? Or like how everything is for the greater good. Like, that's how Americans and even immigrants used to be. Now it's like, well if it ain't good for me, I ain't doing it. You know, like, there's, there was this sense of, you know, the family I'm not gonna, you know, do that to all these people. You know, like it was this, this selfless. you're not saying that you gotta, if you're a burden, you gotta go off yourself. But what I'm saying is, is you know, you and, and plus he was also very old, but you just see there was that sense of selflessness that we used to have. And it always reminds me of the oh God, what's the guy's name in the second guy in Dumb and Dumber Jeff Daniels, when he is in the, the beginning, everybody always talks about, you know, the beginning scene in newsroom. Have you seen that show

Sir Gene: 1:24:02

Yeah. Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 1:24:02

where he, he's at the college and they're like, why is America the greatest country in the world? And they keep pressing him and he is like, all right, fine. America's not the greatest country in the world or like last in education. We're last in healthcare, we're last in this, we're last in that. And he is like, but we used to be, you know, funny story, true story. When I was at RT America my mentor Rick Sanchez, who used to be on cnn when newsroom was just coming out I believe is Taylor Sorkin is No, oh, Aaron Sorkin is with the creator. Yes. He followed, he the least, this is from Rick. He told me that he followed him around for a week and loved Rick so much that he kind of based the Jeff Daniels character off of Rick Sanchez at c n n when he was there after watching the newsroom again. I totally see it. I'm like, he totally.

Sir Gene: 1:24:51

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 1:24:52

because Rick was that kind of news anchor at RT America that now I knew he's a Cuban immigrant. That was the type that would say like, no, we're not the best. Like, look at this country. Look at that country. Look at how, look at how some socialist countries have much better healthcare than capitalized healthcare here. Like, look at some of these countries. Look at some of that, those countries. And just by saying that, I get people, oh, so you're a socialist. It's like, no, but why does our healthcare system suck? Like, why aren't we fixing that?

Sir Gene: 1:25:22

Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 1:25:23

You know?

Sir Gene: 1:25:23

And I, I think, I think that it's literally impossible to make this statement the greatest about any country or even any person. I think there are aspects to every country that are better than others, aspects that are worse than others. I think the US is absolutely had up until now anyway, had the best secret service in the world. We've been managed to, like you mentioned, to instigate you know, revolutions if you want to be nice about it or overthrows in 68 different countries. We've done a great job of ensuring that the that all these countries are in line with the interest of the United States, which leads to the prosperity of the United States. The United States absolutely figured out how to cash in on World War II with a long-term benefit and not just a short-term one. And I think in a lot of ways, the sort of what people are referred to as the deep state in the United States, and you don't have to like the deep state to agree and acknowledge that no other empire has managed to pull this off in a way that the United States has. The, the British Empire was a good one, but their method of operation was very different. It was effectively, we leave you guys alone and we just give you taxes to pay. But for the most part you know, you, you now have the protection of the British Empire. You know, it was not a a complete optimization of the other country for the sole benefit of England. There were aspects of that, but that they were a lot more interested in territory and access to more natural resources than they were in actual deliberate control of the population. And I think the United States kind of took that model and expanded it to say, well, we can do both. We can get the raw materials, but if we can also control that population to not resist what they clearly see as their, their resources being stolen from that. So the United States has been very effective in that. You can say that's not a good thing. I don't, I wouldn't necessarily say that it is a good thing, but it is effective.

Faran Balanced: 1:27:45

Yeah, absolutely. And you see that in, they're also very effective at telling the people in their own country that it, it, it's gonna be effective for that country too. You know, like, for example, like, you know, oh yeah, we're gonna, you know what, there's this thing called NAFTA

Sir Gene: 1:28:05

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 1:28:05

and it's the North Atlantic Free trade.

Sir Gene: 1:28:08

Yep.

Faran Balanced: 1:28:09

you know, this is gonna be great because we're gonna be helping out people in Mexico and Canada, and it's gonna be great. Your businesses are gonna boom and yada, yada yada. Your, your towns are gonna get bigger. There's gonna be so many jobs, and you're able gonna, you're gonna be able to trade everything over the border of Canada and Mexico. It's gonna be great. And then it's like two weeks later, four GM Chrysler. See you later going to Mexico. And you're like, wait a minute. Hang on a second. You know? And th this country is so good at, at telling, you know, it's people and, and they, we just blindly believe. But I, that's where I think we're at a, at a, at a turning point in this country, is that with the internet, with, with more and more call them citizen journalists, independent journalists, whatever you wanna call them out there that are, that are growing in numbers people don't take you for your word anymore. And, and politicians have to learn how to be a little bit more skillful in what they tell you. And people have learned how to ask tougher questions and demand the answers. You know, like the one thing that I always talk about with my audience is what irks me to the bone is the amount that these folks and Congress and, and the. how much they make and how often they have time off. Okay? I did a whole fair and balanced report on this when I was at RT America where these folks get 170 to$175,000 a year. Speaker of the house gets$225,000 a year. And that's just your base, okay? That's like in, in sales. That's your base. We're not talking about your lobbying money or all your donor money and all that other stuff. That's, that's a whole different, you know, file folder. But these folks get every single federal holiday off, which they don't just get the federal holiday off. They get the week of that federal holiday off. They get a spring break. They get the entire month of August off and they get the entire month of the Democratic and the national I'm sorry, the Democratic and the Republican National Conventions off, which is why you always see them in two different months before the election. Notice one is like at the end of September and the other one's early October. Like it's so they all can get a month off cuz both sides get a month off.

Sir Gene: 1:30:43

Yep.

Faran Balanced: 1:30:43

They basically work, the house works 135 days a year. The Senate works 165 days a year, roughly est on average. And what irks. is the amount that they do not work and the amount that they get if I am on Capitol Hill. And you know, you always see it, these reporters where they'll be, they, they see them walking into the house or the Senate and they're like, Hey, you know, can you answer this, this, this, you know, like, you know, like a A O C or a bunch of them and they just keep walking, don't even stop to answer. And I look at that and I'm like, you know, you really have to give it to them. They think they don't have to stop and answer a question. And that's where, you know, I love guys like Alex Stein, and this is why, like, I, I first, when I first saw him come on the radar from Tucker Carlson and I saw him where he was talking about, you know, do it for the Ukraine, put a bullet in Putin's brain, you know, like where he was doing that. And then when I saw him going more and more to city councils, there's one where he goes to, I believe it's McKinney, Texas.

Sir Gene: 1:31:58

Yep.

Faran Balanced: 1:31:59

And he's like, yeah, I just wanted to know Mr. Why is it that you won't answer any of the questions about, you know, the finances? Because I have a thing here where you were a Dallas City Council member and you were embezzling money and they just, they try to shut him up. And he goes, no, no, no, no, no. And he goes, you know, see, you work for me bucko. He's like, I'm gonna go after all of you. He goes, Karen, you don't know what the hell you're doing, Brian, with your, with your weirdo tie. And he just goes after all of them. And I, I've talked to him about

Sir Gene: 1:32:29

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 1:32:30

I'm like, the reason that I would show your videos in my newscasts when I was at RT America was because I wanted people to see, look, you can go up to your city council members, get in their face and say, you work for me. What are you doing? There came this. And, and I don't think it's that, that it's, it's a passive thing where people don't want to hold these people accountable. It's just people don't have time. People are working more hours for less money. People by the time, you know, both parents. Now, if you want your kids to go to good schools, both parents are gonna have to work. Do you wanna have a nice house? Yeah. You, you know, it's, it's, it's basically, you know, designed so that, you know, like when people say, oh, they're, they're, you know, like, you know, I will say Marjorie Taylor Greene does answer questions, but when I see her being like America, who here, they, they are bringing socialism in this country. And I'm like, bitch, it's already. it's already here. Again, both parents working. You know, you wanna see, you wanna know why kids, like you see all these videos of these kids where they're acting out in school. Like, I saw this video yesterday of this kid yelling at his Chinese teacher being like, oh, Mr. Chung, Mr. Chung. And he's like, yeah, get out of my fucking face. And he's yelling this in his teacher's face. You wanna know why these kids are like this cuz there's no parent at home. They're working, you know, and, and they're working. So this little asshole can go to a good school. Mind you, there's no discipline happening because.

Sir Gene: 1:34:01

yeah. It's not just that they're working and it's also parents suck right now. They, they don't like, we're at a point where now the people that are parents were not taught by their parents how to actually raise children, because that was a whole generation of Dr. Spock Never touch a kid. You can't spank'em, you can't make'em feel bad. You gotta understand what they're trying to say and all this bullshit that is just created within the last 50 years. And we're now in a second generation of kids going through it. So it's, it's absolutely no surprise whatsoever to me. And this is why we have things like the I'm sure you saw the, the commercial comparison between the commercial for the US military that starts off with a woman talking about her two moms and how she learned the importance of protesting. And now she's going into the military you know, with that kind of upbringing in mind. And then compared to the Russian ad, which is do you, you know, do you, do you like to kick ass and kill wolf with your bare hands and then eat it raw? Well, maybe you should come and join the military. It's like

Faran Balanced: 1:35:17

and, and, and you know, that's the one thing that when a Russian has a gun to your head, they're gonna ask you, how many times did you protest last year? Like, what, you know, like, gimme a break.

Sir Gene: 1:35:31

It, it is it really is a decline of America and there are, there's a few of us that are seeing it and recognizing it for what it is, the fall of the American Empire. And there's a very much, a majority of people that are just, maybe they dislike some of the things that are happening. They dislike some of the the, the balkanization that's happening. But for the most part, they don't really see this as a major shift. It's just like, oh, it'll get back to normal. I, I don't think it will because I, I've studied enough American history as well as histories of other countries to see where we are today in America and where we are is heading in a direction. Where the glory Days of America are behind us and what we have to look forward to is unpredictable at best, and dystopian at worst.

Faran Balanced: 1:36:28

You know, I, I my God, God bless his soul. My little old Irish grandpa, grandpa Tom, you know, he was this, this guy Irish. said the rosary every day. Went to church every Sunday. You know, was a virgin when he got married. And I think he was 21 when he got married. Worked at the docks at Proctor and Gamble his entire life. Had four kids, my mom being one of them, you know, had a car, had a great house. My grandma Joan, who was this fiery cracker, an Italian woman, if you ever wanna know where I get it, it started with her then my mother than me. But, you know, here, I, I always used to kind of, I, I sometimes like look at what America is now and I think, what would Grandpa Tom say, because he died in 2016 right after Trump won. And he was, he was all for Trump. He was a, he was a Reagan democrat. And that's where like whenever I talk to Roger Stone, I'm always like, it was your thinking cuz he, Roger Stone identified the Reagan Democrat. If you've ever watched get me Roger Stone. It's amazing. But I always say you're the one that turned my family Republican. I tend to lie all over the board because I, I don't no party is for me. But

Sir Gene: 1:37:49

Yeah, they all want to kick you out.

Faran Balanced: 1:37:50

exactly. But like I was even thinking the other day, it's so funny you say that the, you know, the whole this great American country and I was watching this thing about this teacher being like, you know, I let my kids pick their gender and, you know, that those, these, you know, libs of TikTok where they show those and I was like, I wonder what Grandpa Tom would say with all of this. And he was a very funny guy. You know, that old Irish humor and you know, from the greatest generation and I even remember, you know, and then this guy, like never swore, never drank, you know, literally just pure

Sir Gene: 1:38:23

Hold on, hold on. Now I know you're lying. In the Irishman who never drank.

Faran Balanced: 1:38:27

You know what's funny is his father actually, so the Irish, when they make their confirmation, they have to make a vow and his father's vow was to never have a drink. And he never did. My grandpa's, I don't know what his was, I think that kind of ended Ron when he was a kid, but he didn't drink a lot. He'd have like a beer or two, but he wasn't a big drinker. Cuz you know why he saw a lot of the Irish drink a lot. He just wasn't like that. Plus he was always working, you know? But yeah, like I, I was like, oh my God, what would I, well, what would grandpa say if, you know, I came home and I told him that I feel like I'm in the body of a man, you know? Or like if my brother told him, Hey grandpa, I think I'm gonna be a girl now, you know, and, and he would make the funniest faces and I'd just, he'd be like, what? you know what, what do you mean? You know, like just this, this idea and how, you know, and, and I see I don't have kids right now, but you know, I was just talking to my girlfriend the other night about this cuz she's got three kids in high school out in New York and she's like, Faren, she's like, our, our we're done. She's like, this country's done. Cuz her and I talk about the demise of, of America too. And she's like, and she's like, and one way they're doing it is through porn. And I'm like, you're gonna have to explain this. And she's like, Faron, do you know the average age that a kid sees porn for the first time now is, and I was like, no. And she's like nine years old

Sir Gene: 1:39:52

Wow.

Faran Balanced: 1:39:52

and there's a great doc. Here's another documentary. Cuz she was like, you gotta watch this documentary immediately did. It's called Generation Porn, I believe it's on H B O and Twitter is like the number one place for porn. Twitter has zero checks when it says, are you 18 and older when you sign up for an account? You know, so they show where a 13 year old boy can sign up and he can immediately go to like PornHub on Twitter or any, any one of those kind of porn websites and just start watching. And she's like, Farin. She goes, they're our girls now that you know, and I don't know how graphic or real you wanna get. She's like, but she's like ferret. When you learned about. you know, she's like, what did you learn about it first? And I was like eighth grade. It was always the big talk. She goes, yeah, these kids already know about it. Well before they get there, she goes, and by high school they're talking about how they wanna do anal. And I'm just like, and she's like, my kids told me, told me what a t m is and, and how, oh mom, that's not the money shot. And I'm just like, oh my God. And that is one of the things that you do see, like where the fall of empires where like the social standards and stuff like that start getting thrown out the window. This whole gender talk and, you know, every, it's been going around on the internet, you know, cuz you know, Putin is so bad. Yet this latest speech he did, he's like, look at what they're doing over in the West. Boys are girls, girls are boys, you know, no family values. No, no. You know, I, I don't think he said Christian, but I think he said no religion, you know, and it's, it's, it's so true. So true.

Sir Gene: 1:41:36

Yeah. No, there, there's a lot of I think assumptions being made by Americans about why people that are, are referred to as being bad or evil in America are that way. Like a lot of people talk about, you know, how bad China is and all these bad things in China. And there again and I've had this conversation with a number of, of people on, on my podcast and others, is that I, I challenge anybody that has a negative view of China to prove to me that they actually know anything about Chinese history because they don't. No American has bothered taking the time to research the 8,000 years of history in China that allows you to understand the character of China, which allows you to understand how China got to be where they are right now. People's take on China is based on a five minutes of news over the years. That's all it is, because people don't care. They're like, oh yeah, Chinese food, you know, what we call Chinese food in America is actually American food cooked in by Chinese people originally, but created for an American audience. We don't have real Chinese food here. And I know maybe I'm nitpicking on one certain aspect of it, but I'm just using it to illustrate point, which is that the American perspective is extremely. Internal. It is based around American ideas and about other things outside of America without any actual study or research of the things that are outside of America. And I, I think that's very sad. Like I was, I've never understood why more people don't want to be multilingual in this country. Why so many people just think it's fine just speaking English and nothing else,

Faran Balanced: 1:43:26

Yeah. And I, I love the people, like when you go overseas, where they, they think like they, they, they will start speaking English at somebody and they'll look at them like, probably like, I don't speak English. And then they, like, they're just, they say it louder and slower. Like, like, you know, do you understand? And you're like, yeah, honey, they, they don't speak English. Like just, just going as slower and louder makes them feel like you're an idiot or actually makes them think you're an idiot.

Sir Gene: 1:43:53

reality is most people in the rest of the world do speak English, even in

Faran Balanced: 1:43:59

multiple

Sir Gene: 1:43:59

Right. Multiple. Exactly. Exactly. But even in African countries and stuff where you, you would not expect it as much, the odds of finding out somebody who speaks English are, are much, much higher because you know, most countries education systems know that if you wanna live in a global world, you're gonna have to interface with people in a common language. For better or worse, United States has been the dominant country of the world for the last 40, 50 years. And they speak English and they don't speak anything else. And therefore, if you're gonna pick another language anywhere else in the world to learn English makes the most reasonable sense to learn first, and then you learn the other languages.

Faran Balanced: 1:44:46

Yeah. It used to be Spanish. I started when I was in kindergarten

Sir Gene: 1:44:49

yep.

Faran Balanced: 1:44:49

and was fluent by the time I was in eighth grade. Now, like growing up, like my, my then it, like my brother's five years younger than me, he minored in Mandarin.

Sir Gene: 1:44:59

Yeah. And I think that's great. And I, this is one thing I've always thought was very smart of Ivanka is to teach or not, well, she's not the one teaching'em, but to ensure that their kids learn Chinese from the get go,

Faran Balanced: 1:45:14

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 1:45:14

That it's a, that's gonna be an important language to be fluent in for a lot of reasons. And she was getting a lot of shit for that from people. I was like, why the hell she am in their kids learning? You know, that communist Chinese language.

Faran Balanced: 1:45:27

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 1:45:28

It's just, it's, it's seems so crazy because even if you look at China as an enemy, and there are plenty of reasons to do that, don't get me wrong. But even if you do that, is it not better to understand your.

Faran Balanced: 1:45:44

That is a point that I have tried to make to people so many times in, in the sense of where I say like, do you understand like the Russian mentality? Do you understand how they feel pressured because NATO keeps growing. Do you understand how, you know other countries like China feels? Do you understand why India now is starting to side with Russia and China? Do you understand why Saudi Arabia, Arabia really doesn't care about us not having oil anymore? Because they're looking at China being like, goldmine. Like,

Sir Gene: 1:46:18

Yep.

Faran Balanced: 1:46:19

do, do you guys not understand that? And they're like, no, they're just all bad. If they're, if they're not with us, they're against us. And it's like, and don't you wanna know why? Like, but. It's cuz I think it's just people don't have time or it's too much or they just don't wanna hear the other side. I think that's, like I said, like it's, it's a combo of a lot. But I think a lot of it though too is that people don't wanna hear that they're not liked, we're not liked around the world by a lot of people, you know,

Sir Gene: 1:46:49

And their response is usually, well, they're just jealous.

Faran Balanced: 1:46:53

Right. Okay. That's like, that's like, that's like, I'm not a bitch. Everybody's just jealous of me. Okay. Everybody. Everybody just hates me cuz I'm so pretty. Okay.

Sir Gene: 1:47:03

Exactly. And much like the using your natural gifts, That were given to you by genetics and not anything that you actually accomplished. This is the problem with relying too much on beauty, which is America's been relying too much, I think, on having a really been the only major economy undamaged in the World War ii. And that provided a, a huge boost forward for America. And now, if we get into a little more of a conspiratorial thought, some people would say maybe I, I'm not necessarily one of these people, but some people would say that the destruction of Nord Stream and really the push for Europe getting on board with all the sanctions that ultimately do more harm to Europe than they do to Russia, is actually a strategically calculated move by the United States to prevent the growth of Germany and to some extent the eu, but mostly Germany by crippling it with this whole Ukraine narrative, because Germany was getting too big for its britches. What, what do you think about that?

Faran Balanced: 1:48:22

I mean, I think that anytime the United States sees a country starting to do well, it's a problem. You know, like for example, you look at Africa, right? You had Mo Omar gfi. How was it that he came in like a freaking baller, gangster,

Sir Gene: 1:48:41

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 1:48:41

started getting everything back in, in shape. All of a sudden other countries, Egypt, everybody else, they're all doing really, really well. And then all of a sudden he's like, you know, why don't we all get together and create one form of currency for Africa called the Golden?

Sir Gene: 1:49:02

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 1:49:02

and everyone's like, great idea, great idea. We can, we can compete with the dollar and we can compete with yon and all this. All of a sudden, dudes dragged through the streets, sodomized with the sword. See you later. No good. No goldar anymore. What was, what was it that Hillary Clinton said? We

Sir Gene: 1:49:21

came,

Faran Balanced: 1:49:22

we saw he died. Yes. Mm-hmm. it's

Sir Gene: 1:49:27

And then she cackled.

Faran Balanced: 1:49:28

Yeah. I say, ha ha ha. Which is so Satanic heard her laugh, man. But you know, I just, I look at it and it's just like, you know, I, I understand, I understand keeping other countries, or let me, let me backtrack. I understand the entire piece through strength mentality that, you know, Reagan, you know, boldly coined. However, you know, I was, I was, I I was immediately thinking when you said, you know, we haven't had, you know, a total economic collapse since 1942. Right. If you said that to any other American, you know, cuz I, I know that that's not true, right? I, I know my history, not all of it, but I know a good amount of it. if you said that to any American, they'd say, oh yeah, we have, we had a recession under Clinton. We had a recession under Obama. We had a recession here. And it's like, yeah, but did your country's economic funds completely collapse? Like, Columbia or Nigeria or, or like, did you, like, did we lose our banks? Did we just all of a sudden have$0? Like no, we didn't have a collapse and, and our

Sir Gene: 1:50:50

Chile or Nicaragua

Faran Balanced: 1:50:51

Yeah. Like,

Sir Gene: 1:50:52

any, any number of Latin American countries where the United States had altered the government for the better. The United States.

Faran Balanced: 1:50:59

right. And it's like you, you woke up with money in your bank account still, and just things were more expensive. That's not an economic collapse, you know, and that's, again, another ignorant American thing we do. It's our, our worst days we think are, are like we, we don't understand that those are actually days that countries would like kill for, you know, eggs are$6. Tell that to you know, Zimbabwe or you know, Bambi or something. Like tell that to a country right now, you know, Ethiopia right now who's literally undergoing a civil war and we are helping fund the rebels,

Sir Gene: 1:51:37

Yeah. Or Sudan.

Faran Balanced: 1:51:40

right? And the people don't hear about how we're sending troops to Africa. and people are like, yeah, you know, my, my one friend. She's like, yeah, my son's, he's, they're going to Africa. And I'm like, where in Africa? She's like, Ethiopia. And I'm like, oh, okay, here we go. You know, people don't hear about that because it doesn't, it doesn't register because you know, you have to talk to people, you know? It truly is that idea of if you're, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room,

Sir Gene: 1:52:10

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. I've, I've always thought that.

Faran Balanced: 1:52:13

And, and you, I, I really have always tried to live by that. I mean, if I, I, I love knowing everything or trying to know everything, but I don't wanna be the one in the room that, that, that knows it all. You know? And trust me, I remember my, my siblings growing up a yet Oh, Farn. And know it all farn and know it all. And I'm like, no, I just, I try to learn as much as I can because the more you know, the more you're able to see shit. And that's how it's gone through with journalism, you know, is the more that I have done deep dives, watch documentaries. And mind you, people will say, oh, well, if you'd watch a documentary that's only one side, of course, which is why, then I go to find and research to see what the other side is.

Sir Gene: 1:52:54

Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 1:52:55

You know, everybody

Sir Gene: 1:52:56

The, the solution to avoiding one side isn't to watch nothing or read nothing. That's not the solution.

Faran Balanced: 1:53:04

Exactly. Exactly. And you know, my, my second favorite band of all time, number one is Queen. The Beatles actually are, are number three. But my second favorite band is Extreme. Very underrated band. I'm a big music person. I play

Sir Gene: 1:53:19

what do they do? I can't even think of what they've done.

Faran Balanced: 1:53:21

More Than Words,

Sir Gene: 1:53:24

Hmm.

Faran Balanced: 1:53:24

than words. You know, that song Say I Love You more

Sir Gene: 1:53:32

I probably heard it. I just can't picture them.

Faran Balanced: 1:53:35

They're a very, very underrated band. Actually. I would probably say they're my third favorite. Beatles are probably up there cause I know more Beatles songs than I do Extreme, but I know a lot of extreme songs. But either way they have an album that's actually could be like, put into like a, it, it's like from start to the album goes from start to finish where it could be like a rock opera. And it's all about, you know, government. It's about, there's a song called Peacemaker Die, where it has parts of MLK's. I have a dream speech in there. Warheads. It's, it's all about kind of like the military industrial complex. You know, the race riots you know, like, again, the peacemakers always are the ones that killed, as Carlin said, you know, why is it that they're always the one that gets killed? John Lennon and Martin Luther King Gandhi. And it's, it's such, it's like the perfect title to an album. It's. Three sides to every story. And the album is broken up into three parts and it's called Your Side. And that you have this song like actually I can look up the discography, but the, I know on the, your side it's warheads where it starts. The whole thing starts with, you know, recruit. When I give you the word and then you hear a little kid like, yes, daddy, yes daddy, yes daddy. And then it goes into the, it starts the whole rock, you know, the really good rock group. Then it's my side, which is you know, where it's I forget what it's called. I think there's one that's Tragic comic. There's a bunch of songs where it's, you know, about an enemy. And then the third part is the truth, and that's where you have the song Peacemaker die and all that other stuff. And so it's, there's three sides to every story. Your side, my side and the truth. And that's what I tell people. You know, cause people are like, well, where else should I look at? Or What else should I, should I listen to or talk or, you know, investigate? And I'm like, just look at the other side. You know? Look at your side, look at the other side. And the truth is somewhere in the middle

Sir Gene: 1:55:28

Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 1:55:28

you'll figure it out. You know, cuz everybody's truth is a little bit different, but you'll figure it out, you know?

Sir Gene: 1:55:36

Well, and it's a, it's a group, but you, most people including news have a financial incentive. And so getting your objectives to line up with your financial objective sometimes is not an easy thing to do. And I think this is where we see some, what appeared to be disconnect between people's actions and words. But if you start looking at where the, it's the old saying, right, follow the money, because that's where you see that it's not really a disconnect. There's an alignment between their financial interest. and what they're doing, even if that, that isn't agree with what they're saying.

Faran Balanced: 1:56:22

Mm-hmm. And, you know, that's, that's the other thing about it is where, when you talk about financial incentive, I like to think that I am one of the last classes in journalism that really went by the Walter Cronkite method of, of really being fair. You know, a lot of people don't know this. Walter Cronkite was a closet socialist, which is why he hated Democrats and Republicans. He voted for the Socialist party pretty much every election. And Walter Cronkite said before. right before, you know, TV started to change and this is what did change it. And he warned us about it. He said, the minute that you start having ads come into the news, you've lost the news, you've lost the truth. And it's the, it is the truth. You know, the minute that ads came in, everything changed. Everything. I, I remember I was

Sir Gene: 1:57:22

You have segments brought to you by Pfizer.

Faran Balanced: 1:57:24

yeah, exactly. Well, I remember I was a morning news anchor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and there was a GM recall where it was something with the pedals where it was like the one pedal, it's, it's stuck to the floor. And they had to recall cuz it was a, you know, basically the accelerator, it would stick.

Sir Gene: 1:57:48

Yeah, that's not good.

Faran Balanced: 1:57:49

No especially for this one victim that I talked to who ended up having to slam herself into a tree and she lost her leg.

Sir Gene: 1:57:59

Wow.

Faran Balanced: 1:58:00

And for those that you know, are not an amputee like myself I learned that, you know, you don't just like strap on a fake leg and just start walking. You actually have to learn, relearn how to walk. And so, I, I go through her story. I, I go, you know, I learn everything and I go to my news director and I'm like, I have, you know, and I, I say this, you know, I'm a little jaded from the news, but I say this, you know, with all respect, you know, I'm like, I have the best story for this recall. I'm like, she's a victim. You know, she had, you know, gone through this traumatic experience, having to relive her life, learning how to relive it, and all this other stuff. And or learning how to live a new life. I'm sorry. And my news director's like, I love it, but it's never gonna get past sales.

Sir Gene: 1:58:50

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 1:58:50

And I was like, what do you mean? And she was like, Faron, we live in Michigan. She was like, our biggest donor is gm. And I was like, wow. And that's when I realized that the news really has changed. Now, granted, I will say this, there is still such a need for local news because, and it's, and it's weird to say that after saying that, but that's, that's where, you know, local news is in between a rock and a hard place, because the only funding they're getting is from corporations.

Sir Gene: 1:59:30

Mm.

Faran Balanced: 1:59:30

But it's still such a necessity to keep your city managers in check, to keep your county officials, to keep, you know, police and, and. anybody that's working in public service, they're needed to keep these people in check. You know, we have lost so many local newspapers in the past 10 years alone to where people have no one to keep checks and balances on their local leaders. You know, I, I was, for example, I was home with my mom over, I think last Christmas, and they were talking about, you know, something about

Sir Gene: 2:00:15

And then your parents are still in Chicago?

Faran Balanced: 2:00:17

Yep, mm-hmm. they were talking about something with the new budget and people weren't happy about it and all this other stuff. And I was like, well, let me, let me just take a look at the budget. You know, like, let me just see what it says. And my mom's like, I don't know where it's at. You know, you could probably find it online. So I'm like, all right. So I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm looking, and then here I'm looking. I find it.

Sir Gene: 2:00:36

Your, your mom sounds like March Simpson.

Faran Balanced: 2:00:39

Yeah, exactly. And so I, I finally find it and I look and I'm like, Hey ma. I'm like, how much do you think the chief of police makes here? She's like, I don't know, like one 50. I'm like, try 3 94.

Sir Gene: 2:00:55

Okay. That's.

Faran Balanced: 2:00:57

And she's like, what? And I'm like, it's right here. She's like, let me see that. And then you can actually click cuz. And folks, this is all public record. Mind you.

Sir Gene: 2:01:07

Yeah.

Faran Balanced: 2:01:08

and I'm like, let's look at his breakdown. You see, he gets money for his car, gets money for his three different cell phones, gets money to go to the shooting range. I mean, this guy,

Sir Gene: 2:01:24

I'm all in favor of

Faran Balanced: 2:01:25

that's fine, but I mean, I guess, you know, in little Oakbrook, Illinois, I mean, they did have a shooting at the mall, but I mean, do you need to go like, you know, every day? I don't think so. Either way, this looks like he was, this was looked like it was a budget to go every day. I'll just say that. You know, what was the other thing? It was to install something for his house. I mean, to the stuff that this guy was getting,

Sir Gene: 2:01:49

yeah.

Faran Balanced: 2:01:49

I was like, mom, you need to go into the next city council meeting and say, why is this your salary when? And I was like, let me look at, I was like, let's look at the chief of police salary in the next town over. And I look it up and it's like 1 78

Sir Gene: 2:02:07

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 2:02:08

chief of police. And I'm like, mom, you need to, and she's like, oh, stop. I don't wanna get involved in this shit. You know, because there's this fear that if I go and I start causing problems, then shit's gonna happen to me. Right. And

Sir Gene: 2:02:22

Every city needs an Alex Stein.

Faran Balanced: 2:02:25

and that's when I started watching Alex Stein.

Sir Gene: 2:02:28

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 2:02:29

and I was like, see mom look. And, and it was literally that week that I was there that I saw him on Tucker. I was like, see mom, this is why you need to go look what he's doing. And she's like, I don't have time for that shit, you know? But I think it's a lot of people too are just scared. They're scared for blowback,

Sir Gene: 2:02:44

Oh, sure. And that blowback does happen. We've seen plenty of that, like in California with uh, the city council meetings doc, the school board meetings where the cops are called in to clear them out because the, the board doesn't like hearing what the citizens have to say. And it, it is crazy. And then as far as salaries, I remember a few years back when the, the whole defund the police thing was going stronger. During Covid. I remember looking at the police salaries in a number of different locations, including orange County, where like the average beat cop was getting 180,000 a year.

Faran Balanced: 2:03:18

Wow.

Sir Gene: 2:03:19

I mean, there's a certain point where the salary of the, the enforcement force can't be more than three times higher than the average salary of the people that they're quote unquote protecting. Because as those salaries keep going up, the types of people you're gonna. Are gonna see a distinction be even more so. I mean, cops are a ac us and them, if it's not blue, then fuck you. That's, that's a very common cop attitude. But beyond that, when you've got cops that basically are buying brand new Teslas and you know, a hundred thousand dollars F one 50 s that are supposed to be patrolling neighborhoods where the, the average population is making 60,000 a year at most, they're not gonna get outta their cars. They're not gonna help anybody. They're not gonna do jack shit other than collect money for the department by writing tickets.

Faran Balanced: 2:04:19

Yeah,

Sir Gene: 2:04:19

That's not a, that's not a police force. That's a an arm of the the revenue service at that point.

Faran Balanced: 2:04:26

Exactly, exactly. And that's where, you know, while, while I get, you know, people should be able to have good salaries and whatnot many of these salaries are very, very inflated. Very inflated. And and yeah. But, but that is one thing that I, I do tell people that, you know, if you want to see a difference in your community immediately, or I'm sorry, if, if you wanna see where your vote matters the most immediately it is with local government, because I even said those are the people that are gonna decide masks or no masks. Six feet rule, or no six feet rule. Lock down or no lock. And I, and I say this because we saw this during the pandemic. I mean we saw it happen immediately. You know, jab or no jab the, these were the people that decided it for you locally. You know, the governments could have said, you know, oh, there's the mask mandates. But what they were saying was, is states, we want you to do the mask mandate. And then it came down to the states cuz when Texas was like, nah, we're done. Or I'm sorry. When Florida was like, now we're done. The government didn't come in and stop him. So that just goes to tell you, that was just a suggestion. They didn't say a mask mandate,

Sir Gene: 2:05:40

absolutely.

Faran Balanced: 2:05:40

they have to use that word so that people think a see, I have to

Sir Gene: 2:05:46

But this is where the press also is absolutely a tool of the government because I love those compilations that people make and like, no, no. Agenda podcast plays all time where somebody will take. A dozen or 50 different news channels, local news, and then make a compilation of them saying the exact same sentence, exactly the same way. And it, and then it becomes obvious that this is not a coincidence. Th this is targeted messaging that is being put out there and delivered on a local level, but originating from a national level.

Faran Balanced: 2:06:22

Well now I will say this cuz I know firsthand cuz I was there when Sinclair Broadcasting did that whole thing about. we all fake news and da da da. And they all had to read that statement that was handed down by the c e o,

Sir Gene: 2:06:37

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 2:06:38

Who is a Trump supporter at the time, who made them all read that. My friends, my friends, my friends that are news anchors had to say that,

Sir Gene: 2:06:46

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 2:06:48

which I was so grateful at that time I was in El Paso, that I did not work for a Sinclair station. However, I will say there are times yes, where you'll see the news anchors read the exact same story. And I'll tell you why. A lazy journalism and b, either lazy or very young producers there is a problem in the news today where, you know, it's why people don't stay in the news. The pay is absolute crap. Even for anchors now, it's not even worth it, you know, working holidays, nights, weekends, around the clock getting, you know,$65,000 a year, and they don't pay for hair and makeup anymore. They don't help pay for your wardrobe, but yet you gotta come in looking like, you know, you just walked off like the LA strip. You know, like it's one of these things like or the Hollywood Strip or whatever the hell it is called. I can't remember. But like you, you just, you're like, why am I doing.

Sir Gene: 2:07:50

yeah.

Faran Balanced: 2:07:50

like this is more stressful to me. What's even worse is you have producers that they hire. The producers Pay was the first ones, and they're the ones that sit, they help write the newscast.

Sir Gene: 2:08:01

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 2:08:03

They got their pay down so low that now they basically just hire college kits or they hired just outta college

Sir Gene: 2:08:11

Well, they're not gonna need that. They're gonna have the AI doing it all.

Faran Balanced: 2:08:15

Well, eventually, however, there, well, I mean, you still need a person though to, to put it all in there and do the timing and everything. However, cuz there might remember local news is different in each, you know, each market. So you're gonna have to have somebody there at least covering like the local part of it. But, you know, like Rick's the last time I talked to Rick Sanchez not too long ago, he was like, yeah, he is like, I was with an old producer buddy of mine in Miami, that's where he is at. And he is like, and we're at lunch. And he's like, and he asked the waitress, Hey, do you, because she was talking about the news and he is like, Hey, do you ever wanna work in news? And she's like, well, it's what? And he is like, I could make you a producer. And he is like, are you kidding me? Like you know, like they're out getting waitresses at this point if they wanna be a producer, you know? And I went to school for this

Sir Gene: 2:09:00

It's, it's the same thing as banks where your Lowies employee has the title Vice president.

Faran Balanced: 2:09:08

Yeah, I guess so. I never worked at a bank, so I

Sir Gene: 2:09:11

Yeah. No, it, it's like if you ever hear somebody that was a VP at a bank, keep in mind that that's not a VP at a normal company, because at the bank, literally everybody that is just one level above a cashier is a vp.

Faran Balanced: 2:09:25

did not know that.

Sir Gene: 2:09:26

historically the way it's it's always been set up. And I, I think there was some legal r rationale behind it at some point. I don't know if it's even necessarily a thing, but Yeah, literally, like if you're a cashier, you work there for a year, you get promoted to being like the head of, of the cashiers you know, for that, that branch, all of a sudden your title is vp.

Faran Balanced: 2:09:48

Wow.

Sir Gene: 2:09:50

So titles don't mean a whole lot. It's what people actually did. And this is where I'm a huge fan of Musk's approach where he says, education doesn't matter. Titles don't matter. What matters to me are your accomplishments.

Faran Balanced: 2:10:02

Well, and that is one thing I will say that Fox News does is Fox News even says in their hiring thing, like, we don't care if you went to college anymore. Like, if you have a passion for the news and you have a drive, we'll take you. And I look at that and I'm like, good for them. You know, because any kid today looking at the amount of death that they'll occur after going to four years of college, when now everybody has a degree, it's basically just four years to party. Now granted, there are some people that go do work hard. I I see them too, you know, but. I, I, for example, like one of my ex-boyfriends was a surgeon and he walked out of medical school with$300,000 in debt.

Sir Gene: 2:10:47

Mm-hmm.

Faran Balanced: 2:10:48

It was a surgeon. And surgeons do not live the life that people think that they do anymore. Surgeons aren't walking around Flash and Benjamins

Sir Gene: 2:10:59

depends if you're a plastic surgeon.

Faran Balanced: 2:11:01

Well, even there, they, they're having some different difficulties now too, because people have seen how everything is, you know, they, they, you know, they take everything and they'll take it cash. And now insurance companies are looking at that and they're saying, no, no, no, no, no. We want a piece of that pie. So now they're having to pay larger insurance fees in order to run, you know, ev every, every insurance companies don't let anything get by.

Sir Gene: 2:11:26

Yeah. Well that's the thing is if I, a buddy of mine said this years ago, and we always kind of chuckled about it, but it's so true, is that if your goal is to make money, you need to be in the money business.

Faran Balanced: 2:11:38

mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 2:11:39

makes money like the money business. You gotta be a bank, you gotta be, you know, somebody that is actively engaged in making money, everything else, you just get paid a salary.

Faran Balanced: 2:11:51

Yeah. Yeah.

Sir Gene: 2:11:55

Well, I, I know I've been going for a while here. So I, I think we should probably wrap it up, but before we do, I wanna ask you a couple of questions. One is, is there anything that we didn't cover that you wanted to bring up? And then two is where can people find you?

Faran Balanced: 2:12:12

that I didn't cover that I wanna bring up. You know, and it's so funny, I, I will say this, it's so funny you asked me this question because, you know, I've mentored a lot of young journalists, even one, just the other day, who interviewed a number of people that are in East Palestine right now, east Palestine, Ohio, with that whole chemical train crash. And he was like, you know, what are things that, you know, what do you think I should ask? You know? And I was like, well, the biggest thing is, is you just listen. That's the one thing with interviews is, is a lot of people don't listen. So I will say it is a little bit weird being on this side of it versus how, you know, but I was like, he's like, you know, any, any last advice? And I was, you know, I was telling him about, you know, different, the interview process and just kind of, you know, you ask the two punch questions as we call in journalism where it's, you know, you ask kind of a fact and then follow it up with an emotion so that if they can have their answers a little bit longer. But I was like, you know, then always, always end with, is there anything else you think we should. for anything else you'd like to add. And I told him, I was like, cuz those were the times that I got the best sound bites, the best. You know, I, I'm doing this interview with somebody and then all of a sudden I ask anything else you, you want us to know or you wanna add? And then all of a sudden they'd start crying or they'd start, you know, I would just get this ringer of a sound bite. And I was like, and when I learned that technique, I was like, I'm doing that every single interview. So it's, I just find it funny now that you ask that because it's like, you know, I have nothing else to, I have, I have nothing. No zinger for you though. But no, I, I appreciate the having you have me come out. I, I could do this all day, but like I said, you know, whatever you need to guess for sure. But I love talking history, the news. I, I truly think, if there's one thing that I could add is it's stay informed folks, you know, the news and it doesn't have to even be with the news. Just ha develop, just, just develop an idea, like this passion for just always wanting to learn. My dad is extremely successful and I once time asked my dad, you know, dad, what do you think? What, what makes you so successful? And he said The simplest terms. I never stopped. And I think that if more and more people have that idea, again, I don't know everything I know that, you know, I know what I don't know or what is, how does it go? I know. Is

Sir Gene: 2:14:50

Yeah,

Faran Balanced: 2:14:51

know what I don't know.

Sir Gene: 2:14:53

Yeah, I mean, that's the distinguishing characteristic generally of intelligent people is that they're, you know, people generally, everybody knows what they know and then something people. They know or they don't know what they know as well. And then some people actually, a lot of people don't know what they don't know, but the most intelligent people actually know what they don't know, which is a way it's a, it's a, and I probably butchered it, but it's a way of saying, I understand my limitations and my incompleteness of knowledge. I'm not and therefore I'm always looking to improve my knowledge. People that are not particularly intelligent say things like the science is in

Faran Balanced: 2:15:43

right? Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 2:15:44

and, and any, any type of vista's already been decided, kind of conversation is generally a, a sign of lack of intellect.

Faran Balanced: 2:15:54

Yeah. So I, I think that's, that's, that's what I've seen. And my journey is, is, and even hearing from my own father is, you know, never stop learning. And it, it was the, the, the slogan at RT America. But it's so true. Question more don't take things at face value. You know, like if, if you think that, you know, for example, you know, you know what this law means or you know, like for example, like what's fair use when it comes to copyright law and you have a very staunch opinion on it. Go and watch a couple of different videos. Have an open mind look at it and say, is this really what I think it is? And, you know, question everything. Don't just say, yep, I know it, and that's it. Question everything. And don't be afraid to question yourself because sometimes you might be proven wrong and that's okay when you're proven wrong. What I've learned, cuz it's happened to me a lot, you'll never forget it.

Sir Gene: 2:16:58

Yeah. And I, I really encourage people to play devil's advocate with others who share their opinions, because when you surround yourself with a group of people where everybody agrees, with everybody else in the group, you're isolating your ability to learn more. Like you're, you're preventing yourself from growing further and understanding more. Because if everybody's in agreement, there's nothing more to be said.

Faran Balanced: 2:17:24

Yeah. I, I remember,

Sir Gene: 2:17:26

even if you don't believe it, just play devil's advocate sometimes, and you'll be amazed at what kind of insights you gain.

Faran Balanced: 2:17:32

I remember in a my college rhetorical criticism class where we had to do speech and we had to pick a topic, you know, and it was a controversial topic. Mine was, should sports teams be allowed to have Native American mascots? And I was all for it. I was like, yeah, it's honoring them. It's this, it's that, you know, all that. We all give our speeches. And then he goes, okay, now for next week, I want a speech arguing for the other side. And I was just like, what? You know, and I'm not gonna lie, that was a moment in my life where I was like, wow, I have been so like narrow minded because, you know, now, now I, I still do sometimes think that it's okay as long as it's taken seriously, you know, like with these mascots and if the, and if the tribe is okay with it, like go for it. You know, not to like veer off topic really quick, but like, you know, but learning about, you know, the suffrage that a lot of these Indians went through when the Americans fir or when of Europeans first got here and all that other stuff. There are some people, you know, that if, if I was Native American I might get pissed at some stuff too. And it just makes you put yourself in the other person's shoes. And it sounds so simple, but it sexually not until you have to argue. You know, and I will say, that's why I think lawyers can bullshit the right way out of anything because they can put their selves in, in anybody's shoes and figure out how to win it for them. You know, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're the best

Sir Gene: 2:19:06

Well, good lawyers anyway.

Faran Balanced: 2:19:07

Yeah, true. Yeah. Good lawyers. But yeah. So yeah, question more and then never stop learning and then you can find me anywhere at Fair and Balanced Fairen, F A R A n, balanced dot com or on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, all that stuff. So I'm around and I'm, I'll always be, I'll never stop covering the news. That's one thing I will never stop. I know that.

Sir Gene: 2:19:28

Well, I appreciate you being on Faron and giving your honest opinions and takes and everything and, and it's fun hearing about your history and kind of the path you took to get to where you currently are.

Faran Balanced: 2:19:38

Thanks for having me. I'll come back anytime.