Secretly Incredibly Fascinating: The United Nations

Episode notes

Alex Schmidt, Katie Goldin, and special guest Jason Pargin explore why The United Nations is secretly incredibly fascinating.

Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week’s bonus episode.

LINKS FOR JASON PARGIN:

• BUY the new paperback edition of I’m Starting To Worry About This Black Box Of Doom, the latest novel by Jason Pargin!
• Jason Pargin on Tiktok
• “Bigfeets” (1900HOTDOG and Apple Podcasts)
• Jason’s website
• Jason’s Substack

LINKS FOR KATIE GOLDIN:

• Katie Goldin on Bluesky
• @ProBirdRights on Bluesky
• ‘Creature Feature’ podcast (iHeartRadio)
• When Is a Bird a ‘Birb’? An Extremely Important Guide (Audubon)

RESOURCES USED TO INFORM THE EPISODE’S LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

• native-land.ca
• U.S. Department Of Arts And Culture
• The True Native New Yorkers Can Never Truly Reclaim Their Homeland (Smithsonian)
• “Finding Lenapehoking” (YouTube / Hudson River Maritime Museum)
• Why Do They Call It Beacon? (The Highlands Current)
• Dutch & Native American Heritage In The Hudson River Valley (National Park Service)

RESEARCH SOURCES:

• United Nations: The First Fifty Years by Stanley Meisler
• The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present, and Future of the United Nations by Paul Kennedy
• The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam
• Paper Moon: The United Nations shoots law into space. (Lapham’s Quarterly)
• U.N. website index of growth in United Nations membership over time
• Outer Space Treaty (Center For Arms Control And Non-Proliferation)
• Latvia will become 60th nation to sign Artemis Accords for peaceful space exploration (Space.com) — this is another example of the U.N. not controlling space law, beyond the ramifications of the Outer Space Treaty which many countries agreed to.
• Secretly Incredibly Fascinating: Apollo 17
• The Main Organs of the United Nations (Georgetown Law Library)
• How the United Nations is funded, and who pays the most (Pew Research Center)
• America’s departure from the WHO would harm everyone (The Economist)
• Trump withdraws the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council (NPR)
• US is working on doubling aid to Argentina to $40 billion by tapping private funding sources (The Associated Press)
• GTA 6 Development Began ‘In Earnest’ in 2020 Following the ‘Massive Success’ of Red Dead Redemption 2, Take-Two Says (IGN)
• The Lakers sold for $10 billion. What’s behind sports teams’ billion-dollar valuation? (NPR Weekend Edition Saturday)
• X.com video upload by user Dave Keating: “‘We cannot leave the security of Europe in the hands of voters in Wisconsin every 4 years’ says France’s Europe Minister. ‘Let’s get out of collective denial. Europeans must take their destiny into their own hands, regardless of who is elected 🇺🇸president'”
• Archive: “United States Signs the Kyoto Protocol” (U.S. Department Of State)
• Fact Check: Is the Paris Climate Agreement Unconstitutional? — False. (Newsweek)
• Trump is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement (again), reversing U.S. climate policy (NPR)
• Dan Carlin’s Blueprint For Armageddon (Hardcore History)
• Japan Withdraws from the League of Nations (EBSCO)
• Holocaust Encyclopedia: Germany rejects disarmament and international cooperation (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
• In Hindsight: Applying to be a Member of the UN: The Palestinian Case (SecurityCouncilReport.org)
• Why is China a Permanent Member of the U.N. Security Council? (Newsweek)
• Americans Support Working Through the United Nations (The Chicago Council On Global Affairs)
• Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist (The Guardian)
• What do 5G networks, Bill Gates, Agenda 21, and QAnon have in common? Sources, engagement, and characteristics of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories (Grady College Of Journalism and Mass Communication / University of Georgia)
• Top pro-Israel evangelical leader sees ‘wellspring’ of support for Jewish state (The Times Of Israel)
• Left Behind Fandom Wikia entry for The United Nations
• Left Behind Fandom Wikia entry for Nicolae Jetty Carpathia
• Secretly Incredibly Fascinating: Bastille Day
• Can the United Nations survive the Trump administration? (NPR Morning Edition)
• The fledgling UN tried to rein in mass-scale misinformation. The world turned its back and is now paying the price (The Guardian)
• “Peace through Truth? The Press and Moral Disarmament through the League of Nations” by Dr. Heidi J.S. Tworek (Harvard Library / Medien & Zeit)
• YouTube Quietly Erased More Than 700 Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations (The Intercept)
• Fox News Falls for AI-Generated Footage of Poor People Raging About Food Stamps Being Shut Down, Runs False Story That Has to Be Updated With Huge Correction (Futurism.com)
• Fox News Ran AI-Generated Racist Videos as News, Then Tried to Cover It Up (The Present Age)
• Fact check: Israel spends vast sums on propaganda ads (DW.com)
• Untangling Disinformation: How Israel tried to use AI to covertly sway Americans about Gaza (NPR)
• 8 in 10 Israelis view United Nations unfavorably (Pew Research Center)
• ‘Change course now’: humanity has missed 1.5C climate target, says UN head (The Guardian)
• UN slavery estimate raises question: Are 50 million people really enslaved today? (The Conversation)
• United Nations Ceiling — Geneva, Switzerland (Atlas Obscura)
• The story of the Universal Postal Union (Swiss National Museum)
• U.N. website blog: “Celebrating 150 years of the Universal Postal Union”
• archives of The Harvard Crimson, January 10th 1923: “HOLD FIRST MEETING OF INTERNATIONAL ASSEMBLY TONIGHT — Fifteen Nations Will be Represented–Committees on Investigation to Make Report”