Yes, there were mandates — but limited and specific. That's what I explain to this YouTube comment.

Photo: RFJ Jr., a famed anti-vaxxer, swimming in some sewage water. Ostensibly, we are supposed to take medical advice from him.

NOTE: This interview is completely unedited, and both Thomas G. Waites and I can be opinionated. This interview is also available in interview form at this link: https://pophorror.com/thomas-g-waites-reflects-on-the-thing-1982-and-his-new-music/

That interview piece is fine, but here you get to potentially see the interview as it happened.

The intro to that article:"Respected actor, writer, director, and musician Thomas G. Waites has spent decades building a career that spans film, theater, television, and now music. Best known to horror fans for playing Windows in The Thing, Waites recently released Heartbreak Waites, a raw and soulful album blending rock, blues, Americana, and deeply personal storytelling."

The episode is potentially (though not necessarily) offensive.It explores Michel Foucault’s idea that “monsters” are not simply outsiders to society, but political tools used to define what counts as normal, human, and governable. Through the concept of biopower, Foucault argues that modern states manage populations by separating acceptable lives from “abnormal” ones.

Historically, intersex people were framed as “monsters” because they disrupted binary categories, while today transgender people are often targeted through similar rhetoric.

[WARNING: I do use an outdated term here and there, as I go into the history of some topics. So, no offense is intended. Also, I forgot to mention that, even though I live in a "rural" area, I know trans people. One of my cousins is transgender, and I have had a few co-workers who are trans...and no, I was not deliberately trying to have LGBT co-workers, or whatever. They are just people that exist, sometimes at workplaces.]

This episode also examines a unique topic I may have mentioned before, relevant to me as a Finnish American: How Finnish immigrants in early 20th-century America were racialized and “othered” in an attempt to suppress labor movements.

Ultimately, the “monster” is revealed as a social construction created to justify surveillance, exclusion, and state control.

Ted Kacsynski (AKA "The Unabomber") wasn't always right about everything. Who knew?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scared_to_Death_(2024_film)

This episode is about something dystopian fiction understands deeply: the moment a government stops seeing people as human beings and starts seeing them as resources.

Not citizens.

Not neighbors.

Not individuals with memories, desires, or histories.

Just functions.

A labor unit.

A reproductive unit.

A security threat.

A statistic.

And once that shift happens, identity itself becomes dangerous...

Some bad news for potheads...but how bad, and how true is the bad news? And who cares anyway?

Who is Omeed Malik and why is he so lame? This episode's about that.

Some songs define a genre. Others define a feeling.

Portishead’s “Glory Box” is both.

Today I'm talking about a film that still feels unsettling more than twenty years after its release. A movie that refuses to explain itself, refuses to comfort the audience, and refuses to turn tragedy into entertainment.

That film is Elephant, directed by Gus Van Sant.