Episode 254 · The Ben Avery Era
#254 - Apocalypse Olympics with Abby Martin | The Tim Dillon Show
with Abby Martin
May 30, 2021 · 1:22:37 · 441,000 views · 19 segments, 140 moments indexed
Tim Dillon discusses the Tokyo Olympics, uplifting alternatives for failed Olympic athletes, and the Friends reunion/cancellation.
Watch on YouTubeDiscuss on Reddit
- 1 min
Memorial Day Fantasy: Dying Right After Getting Vaccinated
#Tim opens by musing about Memorial Day and jokes about the dark irony of dying from COVID right after finally getting vaccinated and the pandemic winding down.
3moments
- Tim opens with Memorial Day greeting and thanks for service
- Tim describes wheezing when breathing, uncertain of the cause
- The timing would be perfect—vaccinated a month ago, pandemic supposedly behind him, then just drops dead
- 3 min
Tim reads news about Japan's 83% public opposition to hosting the Olympics amid a COVID state of emergency, surface-to-air missiles on rooftops, and officials admitting they'll listen but not be guided by public opinion, plus a plug for the upcoming Miami Bitcoin conference appearance.
5moments
- IOC spokesman Mark Adams says 'We listen but won't be guided by public opinion' — the quote Tim identifies as defining all power structures everywhere.
- Japan has a state of emergency from COVID with hospital capacity problems and lockdowns, yet is proceeding with the Olympics anyway.
- Tokyo is installing surface-to-air missiles on apartment complex roofs to defend against terrorist attacks during the Games.
- LA had to move homeless people for the Academy Awards; Tim proposes letting them compete in the Olympics as a compromise instead of displacing them again.
- Tim is wearing glasses because the new studio lights are oppressive and hurt his eyes while he prepares for the Miami Bitcoin Conference.
OlympicsMark AdamsThomas BachLos AngelesSeiko HashimotoYoshida Suga
- 2 min
Does Anyone Even Watch the Olympics Anymore?
#Tim argues adults no longer care about the Olympics, reminiscing about watching with his dad as a kid, and questions whether international sports still serve any real diplomatic purpose.
6moments
- Tim asks when adults last watched the Olympics and whether anyone still cares about them.
- He argues the Olympics no longer represent diplomacy or sportsmanship that matters in international relations.
- Tim questions whether Israeli-Palestinian volleyball matches would actually improve their conflict.
- Adults don't watch the Olympics anymore—only children do, Tim claims, recalling watching with his father.
- The inspirational stories told about Olympic athletes have become increasingly hellish and disturbing.
- Tim wonders if anyone has ever met someone who actually came close to competing in the Olympics.
- 9 min
Tim reads and riffs on a CNN piece about shot-putter Raven Saunders' suicidal thoughts, turning it into an extended bit imagining increasingly horrific fictional Olympian backstories (rape, Nazism, eating disorders) as the new normal for inspirational sports narratives.
16moments
- Olympic athletes who don't medal end up destroyed—Tim's friend's sister went to the Olympics in volleyball and became a wreck with nothing to show for it.
- Olympic origin stories used to be heartwarming—now they're horror stories because life has become harrowing.
- Tim reads a CNN article about Raven Saunders: depression drove her close to suicide, and she discovered shot put.
- The article details Saunders sitting in her car, tempted to drive off a Mississippi highway drop-off into towering trees.
- Tim imagines CNN recreating her suicide drive, asking her to film the route and show them where she thought about driving off.
- If athletes don't place, it's curtains—Saunders came in fifth, so the spiral continued.
- Modern Olympics stories aren't cute anymore; they're all mental breakdowns: 'I wanted to hang myself, then I found synchronized swimming.'
- Tim conjures a backstory of an eating-disorder athlete who vomits everything but can compete because only her legs show underwater.
- After reading Saunders's story, Tim questions whether she should even compete—what happens if she loses again and ends up back at that highway?
- With COVID ravaging Japan, the Olympics will have memorials, lanterns for COVID dead, while people are still dying.
- Nobody believes anyone will actually make it to the Olympics—it's incredibly hard to qualify, so it doesn't motivate people.
- Tim hasn't heard anyone say 'did you see the Olympics' in ages; nobody cares who wins or whether America beats other countries.
- Olympic athletes are all on drugs—they have to test them nine times to stop them from skin-popping steroids right before competition.
- The Olympics is just a bunch of lab rats doping; Tim is uninspired and doesn't need to watch drug addicts run hurdles.
- Tim's take: skip the Olympics entirely—he doesn't need the stories about athletes raised by single mothers in the bayou overcoming adversity.
- On destigmatizing mental health: Tim begins a risky statement about who we should stop stigmatizing.
OlympicsRaven Saunders
- 6 min
Destigmatizing People Who Don't Want to Kill Themselves
#Riffing off the mental health angle in the Olympics stories, Tim argues society over-focuses on destigmatizing anxiety and depression while ignoring real severe mental illness like his mother's schizophrenia, and jokes about people fetishizing diagnoses from Instagram.
10moments
- Tim's pitch: can we destigmatize people who don't want to kill themselves?
- Everything now is about destigmatizing mental health, but they mostly talk about anxiety and depression, not serious illnesses like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
- People are self-diagnosing mental illness off Instagram and fetishizing it as their identity rather than understanding what they actually have.
- Tim has a mother with real, serious mental illness — not the kind that gets profiled in Rolling Stone or turned into content for young kids.
- Reading his mother's suicidal ideation over Olympic-style inspirational music: she considered driving off a road, drowning, or shooting herself every single day.
- Then she discovered pole vaulting and that changed her life.
- A boy whose parents raped him and sold him to pedophiles found redemption through running and hurdling, and later reconnected with his sister.
- His sister also raped him, which somehow gave him the strength to pursue his Olympic dreams.
- A young woman raised as a Nazi in suburban Georgia who posted in neo-Nazi gaming communities eventually became a swimmer at the Tokyo games.
- The Olympics this year will feature an ex-Nazi competing against a person whose parents repeatedly raped them — it's going to be horror beyond human comprehension.
- 1 min
Tim reads an ad for ExpressVPN, explaining incognito mode doesn't mean invisible and pushing the VPN for privacy and accessing other countries' Netflix libraries.
3moments
- Tim opens with the contradiction: Chrome's incognito mode doesn't actually make you invisible, despite Google's fortune being built on tracking users.
- ExpressVPN is presented as the actual solution to browse without companies tracking and selling your data.
- VPNs let you set your location to access content from other regions, like switching to UK Netflix.
- 1 min
Tim reads a Magic Spoon cereal ad, touting its low sugar, high protein content and joking about kids becoming drug addicts if they eat regular sugary cereal.
3moments
- Magic Spoon is tasty and everyone Tim knows eats it.
- Kids who eat sugary cereal from the grocery store will grow up to be drug addicts and murder you.
- Magic Spoon uses high-quality sweeteners like monk fruit and backs the product with a 100% happiness guarantee.
- 10 min
The Friends Reunion, Fat-Shaming Discourse, and Beverly Hills 90210
#Tim discusses the Friends reunion backlash, defends the show against claims of homophobia and fat-shaming (including the Chandler's dad and fat Monica storylines), and recalls a disturbing pilot scene from Beverly Hills 90210 about a fat girl being shunned.
12moments
- Friends reunion was completely unnecessary but was the biggest show when Tim was growing up.
- Tim preferred Frasier because it was smarter and better written than Friends.
- Friends is a time capsule of New York City with unrealistically large apartments for people who worked at coffee houses and never met a Black person.
- People are so miserable they want any joy tempered with misery and are disgusted by others being happy without something horrific introduced.
- The Friends cast wasn't castigated enough for problematic moments, but none of them are actually problematic when you look at the specifics.
- Chandler was called homophobic for gay panic jokes, but it's not inherently homophobic for a straight guy to worry about seeming gay.
- Friends was actually insanely progressive with storylines involving Ross's ex-wife being a lesbian and Chandler's father being a drag queen.
- Tim watched the Beverly Hills 90210 pilot and noticed extreme fat-shaming where a fat girl is visually repulsed by and excluded from sitting with other students.
- In 90210, the characters joke about eating under sweaters in Minnesota versus worrying about pool parties and essentially promoted bulimia.
- The Friends fat suit storyline shows Monica as insanely possessive of food, perpetuating the stereotype that overweight people eat constantly.
- The push to divorce fat from eating seems scientifically questionable since the two appear somewhat inextricably linked.
- Chandler got big at the Friends reunion and there's nothing wrong with that, though people speculated about his slurred speech.
- 4 min
Bitcoin Crash and Peter Schiff's Doom Newsletter Brand
#Tim talks about Bitcoin's price crash ahead of the Miami conference and mocks Peter Schiff and other perma-bear financial pundits who constantly predict imminent economic collapse to sell newsletters.
9moments
- Bitcoin has crashed and lost roughly half its value to about $35,000.
- Tim describes the longest bull market in history, artificially extended by COVID stimulus and cheap interest rates.
- Financial shows now introduce every guest as predicting total economic destruction within 72 hours, bringing out Peter Schiff.
- Peter Schiff is a libertarian living in Puerto Rico who gets excited whenever the economy is about to tank.
- Tim wants to bring Schiff to the Bitcoin convention to scream that Bitcoin will never be gold while people boo him.
- Financial YouTube thumbnails feature doomsday claims like 'people will lose everything' and 'crash coming sooner than you think.'
- These doom-prediction channels will eventually just sell merchandise that says 'crash.'
- Peter Schiff has predicted nine out of the last two recessions, always saying it's coming but it keeps not happening.
- The pitch always ends the same way: stock market going to zero, so sign up for the newsletter or course they're selling.
- 5 min
The New York Times Reporter Fishing for a Rogan Hit Piece
#Tim reads and reacts to an email from a NYT reporter trying to get quotes for a Joe Rogan profile, describes trying to call the reporter back to prank him, and lays out his policy of telling all press to respectfully f off.
6moments
- A New York Times reporter reached out asking for comment on a Joe Rogan profile, which Tim immediately dismissed.
- Tim explains that 'Rogan profile' is code for a hit piece.
- How reporters disguise hit pieces as approved, positive coverage by claiming they just want to share the love.
- Tim knows how people twist words, so he tells the reporter to do the work and watch the show instead.
- Tim's policy: he will never give quotes about anyone else that could be taken out of context or used to hurt them.
- His answer to the press is always respectfully fuck off, with one exception: UK tabloids when promoting his shows there.
Joe RoganNew York TimesStephen MillerPeter SchiffChelsea Peretti
- 5 min
Tim covers Cathy Wood blaming Elon Musk and ESG investors for the crypto crash, explains ESG, and riffs on the absurdity of defense contractor Lockheed Martin running anti-racism training for its employees.
12moments
- Tim notes Cathie Wood's doomsday brand works like a town crier warning that everyone will be dead and we'll return to bartering gold bars.
- The absurdity of a post-collapse newsletter offering investment advice when supply chains fail and there's no food, energy, or money.
- Cathie Wood blames Elon Musk and ESG investors for the crypto crash at a CoinDesk conference.
- Tim describes Wood as part of a weird Christian investor group similar to the Knights of Malta in the military, suggesting she might find the show vulgar.
- ESG movement pauses institutional buying due to environmental concerns about Bitcoin mining energy usage, which some reports compare to medium-sized countries.
- Environmental, social, and governance investing has become a growing methodology for companies seeking to appear as forward-thinking corporate leaders.
- Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor, now runs woke anti-racism training putting white guys in rooms to discuss their privilege.
- Tim observes that life itself has become the sketch—it's impossible to satirize what's already happening.
- Abby Martin's new documentary Gaza Fights for Freedom presents her investigative reporting from overseas conflict zones.
- Tim expresses fatigue with foreign policy coverage but remains interested in hearing Martin's perspective on Middle East issues.
- Tim mentions wanting to put Abby Martin and Bari Weiss in glass boxes to debate each other, then notes he's booked on Weiss's show June 9th via phone.
- BetterHelp plug: Tim advises dealing with mental health as people emerge from quarantine and encounter people they don't want to see.
- 1 min
Tim reads a BetterHelp ad about online therapy services, discount codes, and the growing counselor network.
1moment
- BetterHelp ad read begins, promoting online professional counselors available securely within 48 hours.
- 1 min
Tim reads a BlueChew ad for chewable erectile dysfunction medication, joking about men eagerly awaiting their discreet package.
4moments
- Tim pitches BlueChew as the solution for a great summer of sex, emphasizing the hard dick requirement.
- The entire BlueChew process happens online with no doctor visits or pharmacy waits.
- Men get excited to see the postman because when your package arrives, your package has arrived.
- Tim argues it's time to get off the couch and go back to work with the help of an upgraded tool.
- 2 min
Tim reads a promotional plug for 'Another Podcast Show,' joking about the hosts' persistence despite repeatedly rebranding the show.
5moments
- Tim recommends "Another Podcast Show," the literal name of the podcast.
- They made a dogecoin-style investment in Tim Dillon back in late 2019.
- Tim respects that these guys keep doing it despite going through 90 versions of the show.
- Podcasting keeps them occupied instead of doing something horrible like shooting people in the street.
- Tim urges listeners to support Another Podcast Show on YouTube with comments and reviews.
Another Podcast ShowDylan Rand Patrick HickeyNick DavisFake business
- 2 min
Tim jokes about looking rough compared to Abby Martin who looks great despite reporting from war-torn countries, then introduces her and her documentary Gaza Fights for Freedom.
3moments
- Tim comments on Abby Martin's appearance versus his own, having spent time in war-torn countries while he sits in the suburbs.
- Tim identifies Abby as one of the seven or eight legitimate journalists remaining in America.
- Tim asks what Americans don't understand about the Middle East conflict beyond the simplistic 'two groups that don't like each other' narrative.
- 7 min
Abby Martin details the West Bank military occupation, settler colonization, and the siege of Gaza including lack of clean water, medical supplies, and mobility restrictions for Palestinians.
11moments
- Israeli occupation is subtle colonialism: a state founded on top of another people, taking their land and ethnically cleansing them daily.
- West Bank military occupation makes Palestinian life horrible with checkpoints and blockades comparable to the height of US occupation in Iraq.
- Extremist settlers colonizing the land are state-sanctioned, protected by the Israeli government, armed, and financed by the US government.
- Settlers taking Palestinian homes are directly funded by US NGOs and the Israeli government to squat in those properties.
- Gaza is a dumping ground for refugees ethnically cleansed during Israel's foundation, with people sent there as punishment and unable to leave without permits.
- Gaza lacks basic human mobility, medical attention, clean water, and electricity—97 percent of the water is unpotable and the main source of disease.
- Fuel and construction materials are blocked from Gaza, making it continuous torture and punishment for 2 million people, half of them children.
- Israeli officials openly say there will be no Palestinian state; they plan to annex the entire territory while US politicians pretend to support a two-state solution.
- Israel's justification for conquest is that Jews worldwide with Jewish heritage have an ordained biblical right to colonize the land and take citizenship.
- Israeli political opposition ranges from the right wing to the fascist right wing; even Netanyahu's electoral opposition like Benny Gantz is an unabashed war criminal.
- Tim asks why the US so steadfastly supports everything Israel does despite the troubling nature of the occupation and ethnic cleansing.
Benjamin NetanyahuGazaIsraelPalestineBenny GantzUnited StatesIsraeli-Palestinian conflictHamas+2 more
- 7 min
Abby Martin discusses Netanyahu's fascist tilt, Israeli public support for the Gaza war and shoot-to-kill border policy, weaponization of anti-semitism accusations to silence critics, and speculation about Mossad involvement with figures like Jeffrey Epstein and assassinations in Iran.
10moments
- AOC having to prove her Jewish credentials before discussing Israel policy
- Tim asks why politicians fear being called antisemitic when discussing Israeli occupation
- Israel constructed a narrative of victimhood that makes questioning Zionism taboo
- Israel's military actions in Syria, Lebanon, and continuous Gaza bombardment undermine the victim narrative
- Israel has weaponized accusations of antisemitism to silence legitimate criticism
- Comparing Israeli forced birth control of Ethiopian Jews to Nazi eugenics gets her smeared in every biography
- U.S. politicians and journalists prioritize access and power over human rights advocacy
- AP journalist fired for college membership in Students for Justice in Palestine; Atlantic editor was IDF prison guard
- Americans grew up seeing Israel as an extension of U.S. and sympathize with its war on terrorism
- 35 states passed laws restricting free speech and boycotts of Israel, violating the First Amendment
IsraelJeffrey GoldbergBenjamin NetanyahuAlexandria Ocasio-CortezPalestineHamasWhitney Webb
- 8 min
Abby Martin lays out the collapse of the two-state solution due to settlement expansion, discusses the one-state alternative, and details anti-BDS legislation in 35 US states restricting speech about boycotting Israel.
11moments
- Guest says she's banned for life from Gaza and was called an Iranian agent by Israel when applying for entry.
- Tim recalls 2012 incident when Israel shelled a journalist tower, with RT cameraman's leg blown off, then justified it as targeting Hamas.
- Guest describes Al Jazeera's 'The Lobby' documentary showing Israeli surveillance and subversion operations against Palestinian solidarity activists.
- Mossad recently conducted automatic weapons assassination of Iranian civilian scientists in a Breaking Bad-style operation.
- Guest argues people accept false narrative that CIA no longer does dirty wars and assassinations, ignoring surveillance capitalism advancement.
- Netanyahu is emblematic of Israeli society; his poll numbers shoot up after Gaza operations, with 95% of Israeli Jews supporting the war.
- Tim notes 80-85% of Israelis support shoot-to-kill policy at border, equivalent to Americans executing migrants—contrasting with 75% American support for migrant execution.
- Two-state solution would require Palestine to trade freely and have right to movement, but Israel helped create Hamas to undermine secular Palestinian movements.
- Oslo Accords promised West Bank as future Palestinian state, but it's been atomized by settlements; only 17% of West Bank is Palestinian territory without Israeli soldiers.
- One-state solution would require stopping occupation, lifting siege, and giving 5 million Palestinians basic democratic rights and one person-one vote.
- One-state solution would contradict what Israel fundamentally is as a state.
Benjamin NetanyahuIsraelWest BankCIAHamasMossadRTGaza+6 more
- 6 min
Abby Martin recounts winning her lawsuit against Georgia's anti-boycott contract requirement, Netanyahu bragging about the laws, some lighter banter about her brother Robbie leaving Twitter, and closing plugs for Gaza Fights for Freedom before signing off for Memorial Day.
10moments
- Israel's 70-30 demographic law creates an artificial majority requiring ongoing expulsion of Palestinians.
- Tim compares historical atrocities like native genocide and slavery to ongoing displacement happening now.
- Israeli lobby interference in U.S. democracy mirrors the hysteria around Russian interference.
- Anti-BDS laws forcing workers to pledge never to boycott Israel are flagrantly unconstitutional.
- Abby Martin won her lawsuit after refusing to sign a contract banning her from boycotting Israel.
- The judge ruled the contract unconstitutional because it forced adherence to a specific political belief.
- Netanyahu bragged on social media about passing these laws and threatened to boycott whoever boycotts Israel.
- Tim asks Abby if she ever relaxes and has fun given how serious everything she does is.
- Tim jokes about calling Abby's brother Robbie at 3am to hunt down 9/11 truthers on Twitter.
- Gaza Fights for Freedom documents a peaceful Palestinian march where snipers mowed down protesters as a covered-up war crime.
Abby MartinIsraelBenjamin NetanyahuGazaPalestinian resistanceJoe RoganWhitney Webb