Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/7/26: 100 Aircraft Destroyed By Iran, Pope Rejects AI Consciousness, Fox Ridicules Dr Oz On Inflation

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

Emily and Saagar discuss reports nearly 100 US aircraft destroyed by Iran, Pope rejects AI consciousness, Fox ridicules Dr Oz on inflation.   Charles Camosy: ​https://religionnews.com/category/opinion/columns/charles-c-camosy/​Rana Faroohar: ​https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Change-Americas-Arctic-Circle   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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coverage, upgrade the studio, ad staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Wednesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. It's good to see you, Emily. We'll do a pound here. What's up? I do here for whichever way the camera angle he wants. Obviously, our hearts go out to everybody this morning. No, absolutely not. In fact, I had to be talked out of a few different book stunts because it is October 7th. And our critics would have had a field day with some of the

screenshots. But all of that aside, before we can get to everything, we do have a very special announcement. Let's put it up here on the screen, A-0. You guys came through, 24 hour period. I am here on the show, and Ryan Grimm has accepted one ticket for the fish show in Richmond. So thank you to our premium subscribers for coming through. I was not a cheap skate. He actually was a homie and decided to accept the lowest cost ticket because at one point in our group chat, I go, oh my God, these tickets are $2,000. Because I said offhand. I'm like, I think the exact quote was, holy shit, these tickets are $2,000. So I was like, oh man, I'm about to have a very uncomfortable conversation with my wife at the budget meeting this month.

There's no way I could just bring it up. But Ryan came through and yeah, that's right. So thank you to all of our previous subscribers. He said his boys were already on the lawn. That's right. His boys were already there. So he was cool about it. But I did say, I said, look, man, I said I would buy it.

So you pick whatever ticket you want. Ryan will be on the lawn with the fish boys tonight in Richmond. And you're going to have to put up with the two of us. So thank you again to our premium subscribers. If you want to support Little Endeavors and the family that we have over here, breakingpoints.com, we have our free month trial. But in terms of what we got on the show today, we are going to talk a little bit about diesel. There is a new Congressional Services report out, which is very interesting in details. The number of fixed-wing aircraft that have all been damaged in the Iran were absolutely shocking numbers.

We're going to get also to a professor, a friend of Emily's actually, at Catholic University. And he was part of that, what is that religious confab where they stormed out and begged the Catholic Church to declare their AI-Claude models conscious. He's going to tell us about what some of these people are like behind the scenes because NDA finally expired. We're going to talk also about the midterms. Ken Paxson, new leaked audio. I feel like that's every show that we've done in the last week.

And this time around he's like, yeah, those gas prices, the Iran War, I don't know what Trump is doing. So either they're strategically leaking it to get ahead of a catastrophic loss, which I know is your theory, or somebody on his team really hates him, not mutually exclusive, not mutually exclusive. In addition to a very funny Dr. Oz moment, another crudet moment for our friend, Dr. Oz on the Fox News channel. We are going to get to Israel today, obviously, three-year anniversary of October 7th. So we're going to look a little bit about how October 7th has changed Israel and also how October 7th, obviously, has been devastating. for the Palestinian people in Gaza. Finally, Epstein, there's a fascinating story.

Emily, you are all over this. A Epstein whistleblower in the UK who alleged to have information on our Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnik, has committed suicide or has been said to have committed suicide. You are going to take us through everything that he revealed, some of the details, and some immediate calls for investigation in the United Kingdom. And finally, we're going to be joined by Rana Farroar, one of our favorite authors. She has a new book out. She's a Financial Times column.

She really is an incredible kind of observer of the world. She has a new book out actually on the Arctic. And specifically how the Iran War and changing ice, you know, like ice, what is it, ice patterns in the Arctic as a result of rising global temperature are actually changing the way that global sea routes work and a projection of global power with China specifically, creating something called a new Isk Silk Road. So it's absolutely fascinating to be able to get to talk to her. So thank you.

We already did the pitch, so I don't have to do that. If you're watching this on YouTube, hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you listen to the podcast, please share an episode with a friend. But let's go ahead and start, as we said, with that new Congressional Research Service report. Our team did an amazing job of highlighting this. So this was, I was reading through it a little bit yesterday, listed here in this new report are 81 fixed wing or rotary wing aircraft, including uncrewed aircraft systems like

drones reportedly lost or damaged in U.S. operations against Iran since February 28th, according to news reports statements by the DoD, U.S. Central Command, and the DoD Inspector General. So obviously, this is an official now U.S. government report from the Congressional Research Service. Congressional Research Service is an independent research service from the administration. So it reports directly to Congress. I think the reason why that this is so important is that they list some of the official costs of the war in September 2026 of the cost of equipment losses already, as of just August 1st, between $1.9 and $3.3 billion, depending on DOD plans for replacement. So nearly $2 to $3 billion in aircraft that have been, or in equipment. that has been lost or damaged in addition to 81 different aircraft that have been lost or damage. And Emily, I just don't think that the American people, you know, we have showed them

these images of the bases and we've showed, you know, various one-offs. But to actually see the full number is absolutely shocking because it highlights both they're being able to be shot out of the sky in the case of many of these drone systems. I believe, you know, what 10% or something in the entire fleet has been down. You also have it appears helicopters and others that they list inside of here. And then the most high profile is the shootdown of some of these aircraft. And so all of those compound into really a humiliating military defeat at a strategic level. And it also highlights just the immense cost. I mean, if you lose two to three billion in just six months of war, and again, in the most sophisticated aircraft systems that the United States has in its possession, that is no question. a massive defeat at a strategic level that will be studied, Russia, China, and others. And

obviously also highlights the asymmetry when you're using these, you know, missiles or drones, which cost a literal fraction, in some cases like 120th or 150th fraction of what some of these things go for. Well, I was going to say, I think this would go right over the heads of most of the public if they did not believe it was a defeat, right? Like, we hear these numbers and they're so abstract. But when you look at the progress of the war, quote-unquote progress of the war, that's where it's going to be so obviously difficult for everybody to swallow a number like this because they're still being asked to pay extremely high gas prices. He's safe for what? I mean, on the political side, a lot of Republicans believe

Trump has committed malpractice by never asking the American people to buy into the war really substantially. He gave that one speech when he was updating people on the fact of the war had begun. But other than that, he's basically been like, it's done, it's over, we won. And so there's numbers like this and information like this, even those pictures of the bases that came out. I think CBS had them, Sauger a couple of weeks ago. That is painful, politically painful and of course morally painful as well, because the quote-unquote progress of this war is not progress. And that's very easy for people to see. So this is not good for the administration. It's not really good for anybody. Absolutely. And in fact, the Wall Street Journal last night published some new

audio of the radio communications of the U.S. blockade. It's very long so we can. include all of it in our show. But if you do have the time, I encourage you to go and take a listen because you hear things like prepare to fire, and you see that you've got nearly 20 different U.S. Navy vessels all trying to enforce this blockade. And as we covered yesterday, there was now a historic uptick in the number of shots that are being taken in the Strait of Hormuz. And many of these shots are to disable and or potentially sink some of these carriers with multiple different carriers, even saying that they're just going to turn around and abide by the IRGC. blockade, which has actually significantly dipped the amount of oil that has moved through

the Strait of Hormuz in the last couple of days. And that's why we want to focus a lot on diesel and also on the overall economy this morning. Let's put this next one up on the screen. Golobov, the Iranian troll game continues. Which we had our friend Ryan Grimm, who is at the Fish Show tonight, to explain some of this. But I'll do my best. It is, boo, are you ready for those of you were listening? I'm confident you can do this. Yeah, it shows a ghost at the, and it shows kind of, what is it, a curve. And so at the bottom, you have junk bronze spreads, dated Brent, 10-year yields, diesel prices, and then on the downside, you see consumer confidence, foreign net purchases of treasury bronze, hyper-scalers-free cash flow,

and the housing affordability index. In other words, all of the bad things are going up and all of the good things are going down. I think Al Gore said something like that to the effect on the 1992 campaign trail. But just to show a little bit about what he's saying, let's go to the next one, guys, just so I can explain some of this. What you see right now is exactly the problem. They say oil is flowing from Hormuz again, but not the kind that the world needs most. And this is what we keep focusing on from our friend Rory is that the scramble is on right now for diesel, while damaged refineries and tight fuel supplies are keeping prices elevated all over the world. And so what they mean specifically by that is that even though ships are able to ferry a decent amount of crude oil now under the U.S.

enforced blockade in some of these corridors. They are barely moving any of the barrels that the world actually needs most, which is diesel. The distinction is paramount in American politics because of the all-time high that we have reached with California recording a diesel price average of $8.44 a gallon. And what they see right now, and actually our friend Rory has explained this really well, we don't buy crude oil. Like nobody is buying a barrel of crude. You're buying gasoline. You're buying diesel. These are are refined products. You are buying airplane tickets, which are influenced, obviously, by jet fuel. Well, all of that needs to be refined. And the world is an historic refinery crunch for a variety

of reasons, which are going to show all of you. It's not just about the amount of oil. It's also about whether you're able to take that oil and refine it. In the United States, we are already running these refiners at some 97% capacity. By the way, I just saw the news yesterday. Ryan Hall was saying that there is a potential new hurricane, which is moving through. the Gulf of Mexico, that always can impact refineries all along the Gulf where the vast majority of them are located. So that's our situation in the United States. On the other side of the globe, we also have the entire war in Ukraine. And so let's put A5 up here on the screen. This is shocking video that just came out yesterday. This was a massive fire that was reported

in the Russian Black Sea port of Sochi. And local channels have reported that a ship had exploded in the port area. And we don't know exactly what it was carrying, but we see that Russia's both refinery capacity has dramatically taken a hit. For the entire month of October, they have banned the export of all diesel. And even in this case, they're going after their ability to export oil. Let's also then turn to Venezuela. Remember, in Venezuela, it has long been touted by the Trump administration. Oh, well, our colonial expansion into the government of Venezuela is going to make up for all of the oil that we're not getting out of the Strait of Hormuz and specifically some of their refined products. A7 guys, we can take a look here

at the video. This just came out yesterday. This is the video of their second largest oil refinery literally exploding. And so looking into it, what it appears to be is some sort of natural gas line explosion where the state-run oil companies, said that it is evaluating the situation, the fire broke out in part of the facility for the largest complex. You could see, I mean, it's just literally booming. It started a gas line from the refineries diesel hydro-treater, forcing a complete shutdown of the entire facility, including the boilers. They have not yet given us a timeline as to when that will be back online. So I do think that this just demonstrates where disrupting the global oil market for the last six months has just

created this absolute shortage in these refined products. It will take many months, even if things were to sustain at the current level, to get back to where they are. And I think the TLDR, for everybody who's listening, is basically why does this matter to me? What it matters is, is that the diesel price is going to stay high. That's basically it. Right. Diesel price is going to stay high. And then it ripples into other places of the economy, as you were mentioning saga flight tickets, whatever else it is. I mean, it's everything. It's shipping, every good, all of those things. And so I think that's also partially why we haven't seen Trump be super motivated to end anything because he kind of knows that if the midterms

are the question on the table, he could end the war and prices are not going to immediately jump back up. I feel like people have kind of gone away from or misunderstood what would happen if Trump were just to declare the war over, which he's done, I guess, several times. But I think everybody knows what I mean, like actually finally seriously, say, we're done, go home, that sort of thing. it doesn't mean that prices would immediately jump back up and that the midterms would immediately be less of a bloodbath.

I mean, nobody understood that Republicans or nobody believed Republicans were going to win the midterms, but it's going to take months no matter what, assuming he does actually just end at some point. It's going to take months no matter what for prices to creep back up. And that reminds me, Sager, also, we're sort of lucky that it's been a light hurricane season. I mean, for many reasons.

But that is a great point. I hadn't even thought about that. With this impending hurricane, we may get a taste of what could have been much worse or could still get much worse. Yeah, I'm not a weather guy. The weather people say something to do with El Nino corresponds with lower amounts of hurricanes. I'll take it, you know, frankly,

like we don't need any more of that. Let's put A4 up here on the screen. This is another thing that was being passed around in the oil circles. And it was also referenced by Ghalabov in his tweet. He talks about something called the physical differential. Again, as I understand it, what it means is that the physical differential

is the price for a, physical barrel of oil as opposed to what it is currently trading at. And the current physical differential for a physical barrel of oil in, I think, I think, which is an aggregate price, is some $19 per barrel, which is the highest all-time physical differential in terms of what you can look at what the, you know, if I look at the Brent crude future price as of this morning, I'm looking at about $102 per barrel. Whereas if I look here, it's $19. So you can roughly put at around $125 per barrel, according to them for the dated Brent assessment. Apparently, again, why that matters is that you and I are not paying the future price. We are paying the

physical price because we are consuming stuff in the real world, right? And as as, you know, things get colder, temperature drops, heating, fuel oil, all of these other buys that many households across the country are making, you are going to see an overall increase in what that cost, not to mention what's happening in the rest of the world. world where all of those countries in the G7 were just forced by the Trump administration to release their emergency stockpiles of diesel and of their strategic petroleum reserve to keep the price even lower than where it is right now. And reminder, even with that release, you still see things trading at around $100 per barrel. And so that's just going to keep the price of diesel likely

from escalating even further, but it is not going to drop the price overall. And I think that's why it matters. And we have a few minutes, so I want to go through. You know, we're talking about the strategic defeat at the top. The world is changing dramatically. And I was reading some recent history about how the oil shock of the 1970s, it actually dramatically changed U.S. consumer culture and was a huge catalyst because people woke up after the gas lines. And they're like, we cannot live like this. And so the entire automotive industry, the strategic petroleum Reserve, really the way that people thought about gas and oil, which previously just kind of been on tap, you know, never really been at the forefront. It just changed. And it changed the efficiency

of cars. It changed the way the consumers, the government and others all thought about this because it was such a horrible and a shocking event. The world is now going through something very similar. Let's put A6 up here on the screen just to show you. In Britain, just literally last month, The best-selling vehicle was actually a Chinese car. So the Wall Street Journal writes how Britain learn to love Chinese cars, especially a look-alike range rover. And they specifically point, you know, to this new car. I apologize if I mispronounce it. It cherries JQ7.

And the JQ7 is a really interesting car. It has both a gas variant and a plug-in hybrid variant. And it is just a very, it's very fuel efficient. It's roughly the retail price it appears around $50,000, which is half of the price of a visually similar Rangerover model. And, you know, I mean, from a plug-in standard, basically you have it so that it's, like I was looking here, that many like the JQ7 are the conventional combustion engine or hybrid, and it's not the EV that China is best known for.

But it's a lower price, and it has the plug-in option. And that's what has made it both from a price and its efficiency standpoint. to just be very attractive. And I do think you've seen now this rise of the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, obviously China dramatic adoption as a result of this crisis, where consumers who previously, even though they already loved those cars, they may not have upgraded or moved to EV, the government, they have heavy incentives. You have EV sales. It appears to explode, really, across the globe, BYD and others. It's the developed world, remember, that always had much higher gas prices in the United States. And so I'm just looking at this. I'm like, wow, like, you know, we're not

going back to a world, I think, where people are going to be looking at gas guzzlers, or at the very least, in the rest of the world, they're going to be a lot more fuel conscious, cost-conscious about what's happening. And China's automotive industry is poised to fill that gap. The big question right now between the United States and China, and in fact, Trump has even said this, is he's being pressured by Michigan and all of the other auto states. They're like, do not let any of these Chinese companies in the United States. And he's considering it because they're offering, they're saying, look, we'll take the Japan deal, we'll build it all here, and be able to sell our cars. So I just look at that. And I wanted to end, I think, on it just because it is a very important

thing to see that the world can change dramatically as a result of these shocks. And maybe we just won't go back, or at least the rest of the world won't go back. I think everyone here will keep selling or we'll keep buying Ford F-150s. That doesn't mean, though, that everyone else will. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, obviously it doesn't get people entirely off the grid unless we're fully on renewables to have plugins. But BYD does have like 70% of the Mexican EV market. BYD increasingly popular in Mexico. I was in a BID when I was in Brazil earlier that they're slick. You can see why people like them, especially at the prices that they're offered.

So I think your argument that we're at the maybe the dawn of a total shift in the way people, at least in the rest of the world, see vehicles, is probably a correct one that maybe we look back. And I hadn't thought about this yet, but maybe we look back on the beginning of the Iran War is the time where that shift like was really, really accelerated or catalyzed because the trends are all pointing in that direction worldwide, especially in some of like Canada and Mexico, very good example saga. Yeah, absolutely. All right, we got our guests standing by, so why don't we get to him? An Iheart radio experience.

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Stream Carly's new album, Honest Woman. Available now. Lisa? We should tell them about our new show. Oh, my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi You Want You.

We're two best friends. 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not going to get anywhere fighting. That is wild.

I learned that about you today. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business, and I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, There would be so much more peace in the world. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree.

Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Liar. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't really care.

I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast. The True Crime Comedy Podcasts all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week I bring on incredible guests like Conan O'Brien, Iowa Deppery, Lamorne Morris, and Nicole Byer. Ooh, I scammed them. What? I can talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job.

And the scams run the gamut. I'm talking about scams from the 18. all the way up to today. I also warn you and keep you safe against scammers. Call your grandparents. Tell your parents to stop clicking on links, please. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. If there's a scam, I'm here to protect you.

And I'm also here to laugh with you. So if you like fun, if you like comedy and you like learning and protecting yourself from criminals, start listening to Scam Goddess on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. We're joined now by Charles Comosi. He's a professor of bioethics at Catholic University of America. Charles, thank you so much for being here today. Oh, it's great to be on breaking points. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we appreciated. So we covered this New York Times article on last Friday's show, and it was a big article. It caused a lot of stir in AI circles. And the headline was religious

scholars met with Anthropic. What they heard stunned them. Well, Charles, I read it. I recognized your name, and you were one of the religious scholars quoted in this article. So I have a lot of questions for you. I know Saga does as well, but just to catch folks up to speed, the New York Times reported, and you've written about this as well, we can toss B3 up on the screen. You've written about some of your experiences corresponding with these tech companies going back and forth with them as they try to bring religious scholars into their circles. Now, people may remember that New York Times article specifically talked about them considering whether or not Claude should be doing communion, doing confession, participating in the sacraments for Catholics. And the New York

Times wrote that you attracted the attention of Mr. Ola. He works at Anthropic. He's one of the co-founders, his friends for your nuanced ideas about moral status and care for animals. You guys met up. They say this marked the beginning of a year-long quest with Ola to engage religious thinkers on some of the thorny's questions facing humanity at the dawn of AI. Mr. Comosi, the New York Times writes, and Mr. Ola, began an extensive email dialogue going back and forth on how to understand Claude's moral status. Initially, the Times reports, you were deeply skeptical that Claude might be conscious. They talked about your work on what you see as the parallels between artificial neural networks and biological ones. Tell us a bit about your initial impressions of what Ola

and Anthropic was trying to do and whether or not your mind changed. And also, if you were under NDA, because that's what a lot of the buzz has been and the NDA has now been lifted. So, big question there. But were you under NDA and what were your initial impressions and did your mind change. Lots there. I have a lot to say about all of it. I'll try to be brief. So Chris and I, it's almost exactly a year since he first reached out to me. And actually, I was, I sort of became frenemies with Peter Singer during my time at Fordham. And I was debating him regularly on the moral status of the fetus at Princeton. And one of his TAs heard me talk and that T.A. was best friends with Chris Ola. And Chris Ola said, which Catholic should I talk to about this stuff?

He says, I don't know many Catholics. Maybe you should talk to Charlie. So Chris Ola emails me. I have really no idea who he is. I had to reach out to people in my circles who know who he is. Like, Chris, Ola, reach out to you. Come on. You got to get on this.

This is the guy you got to be talking, one of the most important figures to be talking to on this. And the email conversation we had is private. But I can say in a very general way, we had just an amazing conversation. I learned so much. I came in, as you mentioned, very skeptical. I leave the conversation very skeptical.

Actually, I leave more certain, actually, now that Claude does not have a significant moral status than when I win in because I understand it and thought about it a lot more soberly and carefully. There's been a lot of talk, frankly, about Anthropic trying to manipulate people or trying to, you know, get religious people on their side or something. Well, religious people like to try to convert people to their perspectives too because they think they're right. And a lot of people at Anthropic also think they're right. And they want to try to reach out with their ideas. And I receive nothing but a genuine attempt to exchange about ideas. And frankly, I think it's something else that they were interested in a Catholic moral theologian and other religious thinkers to engage on this question.

Speaking, frankly, we don't often get these kinds of invitations from powerful people in the discourse. But I'll just say it was a really illuminating set of exchanges. Yeah, Charles, so one of the headlines that really came out of the article was like this confrontation where they kind of demanded the acknowledgement of, the personhood, or I guess, of the humanity of the model, which, you know, sparked then the Pope to put out, I believe, his most viewed post of all time, let's put B1 up here on the screen. He says, in this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images

is created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity for this reason the church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity in addition to kind of highlighting the humanity and the lack, I guess, of personhood that could be ascribed to AI. So could you talk to us a little bit about that for people who are not, let's say, Catholic, why he felt like it was very important to highlight this, and particularly why you think that your interlocutors are really kind of obsessed with this idea of personhood, of consciousness, and I guess of well-being, if you will. Yeah.

Great questions. When I last saw that tweet or that post, I guess, we're supposed to say now, it had well over 24 million impressions in the English version, and even the Latin version had well over 2 million impression. So it went mega-viral. And I think one reason it went mega-viral is because we're a lot of the way. lot of people have their head spinning on these questions. And even if you interact, inverted commas with a large language model, you can sort of be gobsmacked. I know I first was

when I first interacted with Claude. And it can sort of take you for a ride and throw you for a loop. But I think in light of all that head spinning and confusion, the kind of message, clear message the Pope had about the spark of humanity and the ontological difference between a large language model using millions of images of cats to produce an image of a cat versus an artist drawing or taking a picture of a cat, right? Those are two ontologically different things. And that's a very simple message, and it's something the church has been speaking out about

with regard to AI for years now, but it's hitting home at a time right now. With regard to your second part of your question about what's going on with Anthropic, first of all, Anthropic is a big place, the tech community is a big place. They don't all share the same views about these questions. But I will say, and it's been public for some time now,

that disproportionate numbers of people in Anthropic want to take those questions seriously. when Chris Ola was on the dais with the Holy Father, when the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas was released, he said it out on the dais with him. He said, you know, I got to say, I don't necessarily agree with the encyclical's claim that tries to shut the door on these questions.

We see other data in the artificial neural networks, which suggest things that we don't quite understand and maybe point towards some kind of significant moral status. And the Holy Father actually responded saying, yeah, we disagree with you about that, but we still want to work with you on all the other major issues. of the day regarding AI, which this show so carefully covers, which I really appreciate. And so that's one thing I want to drive home in today's discussion is, despite the disagreements

over the moral status of Claude, we have to find a way to work together. The Catholic Church has already positioned itself as a major force through Pope Leo and through its global institutions to try to rein in and try to humanize the prospects of AI, the AI revolution, just as we did with Catholic social teaching and the response to the previous industrial technical revolution of the late 19th century, early 20th century. So we have to, this is a disagreement. It's a sexy disagreement. It's a fun disagreement. It's a complex disagreement. But we have so much we agree on that we have to move on together. We shouldn't let this disagreement derail that.

Is interesting that you can I just, sorry. Can I just one follow-up question to that is, you know, the disagreement appears to stem from this encyclical, which again, is very long and people can go and read it kind of if they wish, but it does kind of come back to these principles, which you just outlined. What I am just kind of, what I am interested in is why the emotion from their like core belief, at least in your discussion, that there is a genuine consciousness to these models. Obviously, they're much closer to these than we are. We only have a consumer version, which is released. They have a much closer, you know, the research and the research stuff and the cutting edge, which we can't see.

It seems to be a genuine core conviction. So first of all, why do they think it? And then on your side, why is it something that you and the Pope and other Catholic scholars don't really ever feel could be in the discussion? So let me say this. I think there are two levels at which this is happening with the people I've engaged with. This is just my sense of things from engaging. So it won't take it as one person's point of view. There's a level of actual argument on a basis of evidence.

And with presuppositions to interpret the evidence, one of those presupposition is the artificial neural networks that make up these large language models mirror in some sense, and there's a disagreement about just how dramatic the mirroring is, organic neural networks, the neural networks in our brains. And so if one starts with two assumptions there that this mirrors our neural networks and our neural networks are sort of like machines, we've been talking about ourselves as machines and our brains as machines for a very long time now. I think that's a terrible mistake and I have big anthropological mistake and we need to really interrogate. That's actually one of the good things about the AI revolution is these sorts of anthropological mistakes are being foregrounded in ways we can actually revisit them and talk about them.

Like maybe it was a mistake to think of ourselves as machines because. This is leading good-hearted, I think good faith people to interpret what's going on with Claude as sort of like what's going on with us. And one could be forgiven for having that mistake. This is making that mistake, given the second part of what I want to say, another level on which this is happening, which is just on the level of emotion. I think when one is engaging with a large language model, which imitates human interactions so very well, it's just perfectly natural that one would be emotionally attached. We see this all the time with children who and even adults. who get emotionally attached to their chatbots, fall in love with them, right? Want to, quote, marry them, travel over the country to be with them.

And so I think those are those two levels. Quickly to say why we would disagree with this is just a metaphysical claim about what consciousness is. Consciousness isn't from our neural networks. We've been looking for consciousness in the brain for 50, 60 years now. Most people agree that consciousness doesn't exist in the brain. In fact, philosophers of mine like Daniel Dennett, who just passed away, he thought consciousness must be an illusion because we can't find it in the brain, which is kind of a bizarre claim. So from our perspective, consciousness is a product of the union of body and soul holistically considered,

and it doesn't come from neural networks, whether they're organic or silicon. Yeah, and that gets to this kind of significant divide or question about what's happening in Silicon Valley right now, is to whether they are fundamentally materialists or whether some of them are being kind of seduced into an almost pagan relationship with these chatbots. An I-Heart Radio experience. Carly Pierce, live at the Opera House, October 16th. Win your way in to the exclusive IHeartRadio sound check party, an intimate pre-show performance and Q&A.

And then stay for the full show. Harley Pierce, live in Toronto. Enter now for your chance to win at iHeartRadio.ca. Stream Carly's new album. Honest Woman. Available now. Lisa? We should tell them about our new show. Oh my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youan. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart.

And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not going to get any of your fighting. That is wild. I learned that about today. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. And I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree. Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can

Fight. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Liar. Listen on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I don't really care. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman. Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhane. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal. I don't know. Have you guys heard of faux journaling?

Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So we don't like to use that word anymore. Okay. A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No! I've been dying too.

I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore. That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland Bookstore. yesterday and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark 30. No way. You have to come to the last bookstore, though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday.

A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists.

on artists, on artists, on artists, on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the questions that I had is interesting that you characterize Chris Ola's efforts. Again, he's the anthropic co-founder, as good faith because I think a lot of people on the outside, Christians on the outside, myself included, look at this and have really cynical concerns. It sounds like they're trying to potentially capture different thinkers, bring them into the orbit, convince them that it's good faith, and then, of course, start even talking about things like organic. neural networks versus, you know, what we would always consider just neural networks. Organic consciousness versus machine consciousness, those sorts of things. Even the kind of language implies that there's, I mean, I don't totally have a problem with the language, but you can see people can make the semantic argument that it cheapens

the kind of human nature of consciousness or neural networks or those sorts of things. Anyway, sort of beside the point, I'm curious what your response would be to people who look at this cynically and wonder, you know, is it really good faith and how do you think about engaging with these folks in a way that also doesn't necessarily enable, allow for, or a rubber stamp, not that it does, but I know that's probably a complicated thought process. And if you could walk us through it, that would be great. It is. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about it. Those of us who attended, some people thought, well, this is a no-brainer. How can you not want to engage, how can you not want to learn, how can you not want to evangelize? One of the things

that some of us who attended, who are in the Catholic Academy, joked, is we did a lot more praying at the Anthropic meetings than we do at the Society for Christian Ethics annual meeting or something like this. So, but I think in terms of the sort of us getting rolled and getting, you know, sort of manipulated into things, plenty of us came away very interested in the ideas, but plenty of people came away just like me, interested, engaged, wanting to pursue common goals, but not at all on board with the, in fact, I would say I can't speak for everyone there. I would say a clear majority of people came away with not with something other than the view that Claude is a person like us or something like this. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So I think maybe this actually

gets to something that people may have a bias about with regard to religious folks. Or like we're rooms or not really seriously intellectual or we can get rolled easily by people with lots of money or give us fancy dinners or something like this, this simply is not going to happen. In fact, one of the frustrations that many of us had is we didn't get a chance to talk as much as we wanted to from our perspective. We heard a lot from Anthropic and it didn't exactly go back the other way. And as I was discussing with you over email earlier before this, there are plenty of other companies in the frontier who invite us to talk to them. I'm leaving tomorrow to visit OpenAI in San Francisco,

and they want to hear on our terms, on my terms, on the Catholic terms, on Magnificuantos terms. Two weeks ago, I gave a talk to Google DeepMind on the encyclical. So it's actually something that's breaking through in a way where we get to be heard on our own terms, and it's not, I think the narrative that somehow the big, bad tech companies are rolling the core religious rube just doesn't work. It's not, it's not really good.

Yeah, it actually, it kind of seems like you guys are the ones who are standing up and be like, hold on a second. We're going to use this as an opportunity to kind of educate people, really, on our view of consciousness. I'm curious, actually, because you are a person, you wrote this book about throwaway culture, an idea I totally agree with, which really gets to this root. And I know, I believe it's rooted in a phrase that was previously used by Pope Francis. And I wonder how you think about meeting with the frontier technology when I would say the technology itself has enabled and created the consumer or at least at the very least it has exacerbated so much of the consumerism, the throwaway culture, the optimization, the productivity. We had a big discussion yesterday about AI agents and the use cases are like, oh, it can check in for a flight for you or book or dinner reservation. I'm like, I'm sorry.

This is not a problem in my life. and to the extent that it is, it is extremely minor compared to how I think about the relationship between my daughter and technology. Like, that's something I want to spend a lot of time thinking about and not just outsourcing, let's say, thinking or even for her building a theory of mind. So, you know, a big loaded question, but, you know, when you're meeting with them, do you worry in some sense about legitimizing, like you're being very respectful to them? And I haven't met any of these people face to face, but my default really is, is like, you're building something which is, quote, useful, but may just be very, very, very bad. And I'm not so sure that useful itself is actually a very good metric at all when looking at human flourishing.

I agree with that. And one of the things, at least, that I've tried to make my career about engaging with people like Peter Singer and others with whom I disagree strongly on the level of ideas is to try to keep a culture. of encounter present, which is the opposite of throwaway culture. So you're right, Pope Francis came up with this idea of seeing things through the lens of a throwaway culture, a culture of seeing even people who are less than useful as discardable like trash. The opposite of that, the counterculture to that is a culture of encounter and hospitality, which is the culture of the gospel, actually, in the culture of Jesus, who of course went to the marginalized, who went even to the very sinful, like the tax collectors,

who weren't very good folks, who weren't doing very good things, right, with the structures and systems of the day. So I think what it actually does is through those encounters, through those relationships, through the spirit of mutual hospitality, we actually get to have conversations. I'm so looking forward to my conversations. I'd open AI tomorrow and Friday. I just can't, I literally can't wait.

But in some ways, the ground has already been prepared in a way where there's an expectation of listening to each other, of engaging with each other. And of course, there will be critiques. Like, I don't think Sam Altman has made every good decision in the world in putting his company together, right? And I will, I will, whether there's mistakes, I will speak my mind, and I'm sure they won't agree with everything I have to say either.

But if we're going to get through the next year or so, which is very critical the next year to try to shape AI in various ways, we have to find a way to listening to each other. We have to find a way to engage with each other. There's really no other option other than, I think, maybe some sort of catastrophic event that maybe could unite us. But let's not let it get to that point. We have to find a way to say, hey, this is where we're coming from.

And I got to say, the people who are on the frontiers feel a little trap. They feel like if they stop, it's not going to really stop anything. Their competitors in China are simply going to go on. And so they feel like they have to win in order to have the good guys win, as it were. and they're scared by this prospect. They're frightened by this prospect. In fact, I've seen people like Chris over the last year, almost their countenance change.

You can see it on his face and in his mannerisms, the kind of weight and stress that this brings with it. And they need help, and we need to be there to engage and to help them with our ideas and with our support, but also with criticism when it's appropriate. I'm sort of worried that they're not the good guys. That's kind of my big concern, Charles.

I mean, listen, you don't have to, you're jumping on this, but so many of them seem creepy and transhumanist, and I don't know if that's been your experience with it. I'm not asking about anybody in particular, but you wrote this great article recently, before we can put it up on the screen for the Washington Examiner, about the human purpose of medicine and how AI could totally change the way we see medicine, that maybe it'll be helpful with efficiency, but this is really like your bread and butter trials is writing about how humans are not just, and creation is not just about efficiency, obviously, that there are important ends to things like medicine. And I guess I wonder, I mean, I think it's good,

like you're persuading me in this argument that it's good to be an open conversation with them, that some of them probably are genuinely curious about all of this. But is there, I guess, fundamentally a concern that you still have? They are pushing us in a direction that is actually could be just as bad as what Chinese AI would do. I'm not talking about how it would be implemented on a policy level by the governments, that sort of thing, but even just like on a basic conceptual level that there's maybe a transhumanist characteristic to this

and an anti-human characteristic to all of this that is still what they agree with, that they want to hear your different ideas, but they are still really wedded to and attached to this idea that transhumanism is not necessarily a bad thing. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely that strain of things. And I didn't meet with every single person at Anthropic, not even close, right? And I'm not meeting with every single person at OpenAI, I'm sure.

I'm not meeting with every single person. Not every single person at Google, Deepline came to my talk. There are important, I just want to emphasize this. There are deeply, profoundly bad things on the horizon if we keep on the path that many of these companies have set us. on, including with healthcare. So if I can just briefly say some things about what's the path we're on with health care right now. For some time, actually, before AI, we've been governed by the efficiency mongers and the profit

margin seekers and we've been getting more and more humanity out of the system and more again, efficiency and profit making into the system. And AI is going to already, it's supercharging that. And you can already see the bean counters look and say, hey, we can save a lot of money. We can increase our profit margins if we have no phlebotomists. The FDA just produced a machine that can take blood without any human in the process at all. A patient's blood without any just also this week, I think maybe yesterday, a day before, a company in Utah said that they are now going to have an AI, quote, doctor without any human in the in the loop, be able to take a picture of your face. and prescribe you acne medication, right?

They're touting it as the first AI doctor without any human in the loop. You can just get your acne medication without ever engaging with a person at all. About two months ago, Ezekiel Emanuel, architect of Obamacare, wrote an article in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, saying, hey, guys, if we keep on the trends we're on now, and he thinks it's a good thing, we're going to have workflow, in healthcare, massive workflows in health care without any, it's not going to just be take a picture of your face and get the medicine. It's going to be massive workflows in hospitals and clinics all over the world done by AI without any humans in the loop. So what the path we're on

right now with health care is to undermine the very nature of health care itself, to turn it into something that frankly isn't care, right? A machine cannot care for someone. But that's the path we're on. And so we have to decide this. We have agency here. Again, we respond. responded to the Industrial Revolution with the labor movement and the minimum wage and environmental protections and all sorts of things that mitigated that revolution in favor of human beings, in favor of work, in favor of labor of the dignity of work, in favor of the dignity of work that's human that engages with others. We have to revisit that. And that's exactly what Leo did by taking the name, Leo the 14th. He connected himself to Leo the 13th, the Pope that wrote Ram Navaram that responded to the first industrial revolution. And I have a lot of hope that we can do it again. Maybe it's Pollyannish. Maybe I need to be a little more cynical.

But I at least want to try. I want to give it to good old college try. Cool. Well, it's cool to have people like you out there who are meeting with these people because I don't think it would go as well. They met with me. Thank you very much, sir. We appreciate your time.

Thanks very much. Most companies are privately held and largely inaccessible to most investors. Expand your playing field. With Segarred's private investment solutions, visit S-A-G-A-R-D.com slash invest. Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh, my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast.

It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi You Want You. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa DiGulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not going to get anyone fighting. That is wild. I learned that about you today.

Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. And I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree.

Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously, I would do what I think. think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Liar. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I don't really care. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman. Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhane, Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The improvised character comedy podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft.

Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal. I don't know. Have you guys heard of faux journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So we don't like to use that word anymore. Okay.

A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No! I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore on 14th. That's crazy.

I went to the Wonderland Bookstore yesterday, and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark 30. No way. You have to come to the last bookstore, though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up?

He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen. Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to the midterms, we have another piece of leaked audio from Ken Paxton, the Senate candidate, as a slew of polls show him continuing to fail in that election. Here he is in another piece of leaked audio, saying that the Iran War is driving up gas prices and he doesn't know what Trump's.

is doing over there. Let's take a listen. So what are the issues that are dragging on you? I mean, do people, what are people thinking about terrorists? Did they see that in any connection? What are they thinking? The war, it's gas prices, it's diesel. It's over $6 a gallon of diesel. I mean, it's put money.

They have a lot of trucks in a diesel. for healing the pension. So I'd say that's probably the biggest problem and that push up to food prices and everything else. Everything comes up. Something that's growing. So that's by far our biggest problem. And I think that's why we're having a hard time with the numbers. Ken Paxson very eloquent there as always, right, Emily, where you can always decipher exactly what he's saying. If you couldn't exactly, it was, I don't know what's behind some of those decisions. It's the war. It's gas prices. Emily, you have a theory that his team is just leaking all of this just so they can get ahead of a potentially humiliating loss.

I don't think it's necessarily mutually exclusive from a lot of people just don't like him. And a lot of his donors are also upset because from what I hear, he doesn't work very hard and they're mad. At least some of the people down in Texas, they're like, look, this is a potentially winnable race. If you put your pedal to the medal, Tala Rico is blasting everything and blanketing the state. He's doing all these different events. We could barely get you to do some of the same stuff. But what do you think of all this? No, I think that's right.

I don't think these are necessarily mutually exclusive things because what could be happening, these are coming from donor conversations is my understanding. So he's at like donor events. And that means anybody could be recording and then leaking to media. So it could just be broadly somebody in the Paxton camp, like a donor friend of his or an ally of his in the state. I mean, state politics are so messy and dramatic and crazy that you can kind of see where just an aggrieved person in the Paxton camp,

wouldn't necessarily be acting in concert with the campaign. Maybe they're texting Paxton themselves, but it's not really conspiratorial. It's just the idea that, like, he may realize that it's almost nihilistic to try at this point, which is not true. I mean, he may think that. Like, he could, even if he's about to lose,

he could probably at least lose less embarrassingly, or maybe you can even try to win. But his point might be in leaking this stuff, And I don't know who's leaking it, of course, but his point might be in leaking this stuff that the president is what's making it difficult. So it could be to start trying to run away from the president. Obviously, Mike Rogers, Michelle Tofoya, have both started running away from the president on Iran, which is especially surprising in the case of Mike Rogers. But it could be him trying to lay the groundwork to run away from Trump, to distance himself from Trump, or to soften the blow to frame what would be a historic loss because now you'll already have, it would actually be a pretty smart thing to do. you would already have all of these leaks to the media of Paxton sort of accidentally admitting that the real problem all along was Donald Trump. And the media, as you and I both know, the day after election, November 4th, is going to look at all of that and say Paxton was consistently frustrated with the president's drag on the ticket.

And there you have it. Like, it's been framed. So I don't know where it's coming from, but I wouldn't be one bit surprised if these are actually coming from people who support Paxton and are frustrated at and pissed with Trump. who basically called him dumb and ugly both nights at their little convention. So it doesn't seem like a guarantee to me that this is coming from anti-Paxon world. You could be mad about Trump's lies, but when he's telling the truth, I mean, come on. So you're going to take it for what it is.

He was right. I mean, he's empirically correct. All right, let's tell her this is originally what we wanted to start with. Dr. Oz of Crudite fame, one of our probably all-time favorite clips ever in Breaking Points history, longtime viewers. We'll know that. We did it several times at the live show, too, back in the day. So here he is with another one on the price of butter where even Laura Ingham goes, come on, man. What are you talking about? We should also tease, if you're listening to this, he brought props to the five people.

Yeah, he brought it. Right. Exactly. All right. Let's take a listen. So you have no idea what things are going to cost. I brought you something as an example. We went grocery shopping. Stick a bag of peanuts. Butter in America, it's about a buck for a stick like this. If I charge you $10. Or are you shopping? It's not a buck. Well, I just bought this. So it was close to that. Maybe I got it. Maybe it's going bad.

Okay. The Mondani story about it. So even Laura Ingraham's like, what are you talking about? Well, where are you shopping? Where is the butter a dollar? So I just looked it up. The national average retail price of butter August of 2026 is $4 a pound. I guess he's trying to narrow it by saying I bought the stick.

I don't know. Right. But he did buy the whole pack. Is that a pound of butter? I was going to say, I don't know what the unit measuring. is exactly for one of those things. The point just remains is he keeps trying to minimize things, right? He picks peanuts and butter, which, first of all, is that the, is that in the CPI index? Is that exactly what people are upset about when we talk about groceries? People are mad about the

agriapies and specifically the increase in eggs and in meat. And meat, especially where you've seen the highest price increase and you have seen no downturn whatsoever as a result of whatever this cheap meat that Trump, the Trump administration let in. So, Yeah, I mean, I just thought it was so ridiculous where they're even, even Fox and Laura Ingram is like, what are we doing here, man? What exactly are you trying to say? You're the CMS director. This is not even in your purview and you can't even make something up, which is clever whenever you're trying to fight back against this inflation argument. You should just lie and say it's Joe Biden's fault. That's honestly less insulting than what this is. So I went and looked at my, the Aldi by my parents

in Wisconsin. The cheapest butter, I think, was like three bucks. Maybe I'll be. a little bit more than that. So it's not even, he's not even close. So the fact that he got the prop and brought it to Fox News tells you there was intentionality in making this insane political error. And it does hearken to the crudite bit

because once again, there was intentionality in making his point about crudite, which I know we pulled, but just a complete level of insanity to bring what he said was a stick of butter. It's a pack of butter. I don't think anywhere. that's going for anywhere close to a dollar.

It's probably three times as much, just about anywhere that you can get a pack of butter. And, Saga, this is not out of the, not out of character for Dr. Oz, because, of course, I believe you would love to revisit the beautiful moment from that election. Let's do it all together.

Let's listen. I thought of this grocery shopping. I'm at Wegners, and my wife wants some vegetables for Cruterte. Right? So here's a broccoli. That's two bucks. Not a ton of broccoli here.

There's some as spares. That's $4. Yeah. Carrots. That's four more dollars. That's $10 of vegetables there. And then we need some guacamole. That's $4 more.

And she loves salsa. Yeah, there's salsa there. $6. Must be as short as a salsa. Guys, that's $20 for croutes. This doesn't include the tequila. I mean, that's outrageous. We got Joe Biden to thank for this.

So, first of all, the crudite, There was so much there, if you recall. So first of all, there is no such thing as Wegners. I think it's Wegmans and there was another store. I forget. It's like Redner's, something like that. So he confused the two and he called it Wegners. Then he said, I'm shopping for some of my wife's Crudite.

First, and I think we also even brought this up, which was, dude, don't you, don't people just buy those pre-prepared platters? Because that would probably be cheaper. But the entire thing obviously made him look ridiculously out of touch. And he ended up losing in what should have easily been. I think it was a winnable election. He lost by five points, especially when you consider what some of the, yeah, so it's 2020.

Yeah, I guess a little bit better for the Democrats. But if I recall, they had it either tied or Oz by plus two or plus three going into that. And so he threw away, I got a pretty winnable election. To John Fetterman, we should add. To John Fetterman, the ogre. who had a clear conspicuous brain damage at that point in time. Yeah, so ridiculous. Let's then take a look at how all of this is kind of cascading through the midterms

as we get closer and closer, less than a month now, to Election Day. Here we have Trump, where, as we've seen now, remember, Paxson in one of his previous leaked audios, had said, yeah, actually Trump coming to Texas kind of screwed me. My poll numbers went down. Here's Trump saying the opposite in a midterm rally. Let's take a listen. By the way, I'm going around doing rallies. The Republican Party started to go right through the roof.

Somebody said that I wonder why. Well, I started, I had to get out. I had to do it. We had to explain what we're doing. Taxpayer funded ads. And will you reimburse the government for the millions of dollars already? The ads were really good. They were promotion for the country.

Done by many presidents before. So we'll decide. So there he is. He's saying his rallies are actually saving the country. Let's put C3 up there on the screen. He tweeted it as well. My rallies are saving the Republican Party again. Just to show you how much they're saving.

Let's put C5 up here. They say exactly from Cook Political Report, which is actually one of much more conservative organizations that forecast elections. They say that they have moved Kansas from lean Republican to toss up, North Carolina from Lean D to Likely D, New Hampshire from Tossup to Lean D, New Hampshire from Toss up to Lean D. So nothing really breaking Republican's way. And Emily, you and I talked a lot with Logan yesterday about some of these outlier elections like Kansas and South Carolina.

We're learning a little bit more about South Carolina. I'm really curious for what you think. Let's put it up here. The next one, this is C6, is that the current fundamentals, they say, this is from a local South Carolina reporter, still seem in Darling Graham's favor. Trump carried it by 18 points. But multiple pollsters here tell me the GOP lead in generic. is just about five to six points, and that the word is that her fundraising is abysmal.

So, I mean, if you have only five or six, and then you underperform Emily across from where the rest of the GOP generic ballot is, that actually could put things in dangerous direction for her. And it explains why, Senator $5 million, which we covered yesterday, and Trump is out there attacking the opponent trying to gin up some of the Republicans who are actually in the state to come out and vote. So what do you think overall? Well, yeah, they're obviously freaked out, and that's what Mark Halperin and others have been saying. Steve Dees, the conservative radio house said that he was seeing this. And he's not even a reporter like Halpern. He was just saying he saw this on the ground in Iowa. So people are worried about the safe seats because if you end up

and Sager, you and I have seen this many times. If you end up, well, not many times. I mean, it's fairly rare, but it does happen where the polls undercount because of an enthusiasm gap or because, you know, in states like, we talked about this with Logan yesterday, too, a place like North Carolina where you had a lot of people moving post-COVID who aren't traditional like North Carolina voters. They're new to the state. And that's harder for pollsters and demographers to fully wrap their heads around. And then you pair that with an enthusiasm that may be undercounted dem enthusiasm and overcounted Republican enthusiasm to actually get out there and vote on election day. And was also perhaps, I mean, this was another focus group

result that I think it was on MS now just in the last couple of days with Trump voters. in Texas who regretted voting for Trump, if that's not something polls are picking up on, what you can end up with in a situation like South Carolina is a Democrat eking out a win because Republicans didn't put a lot of money behind the candidate because Darlene Graham didn't debate because Darlene Graham ran from the cameras. And so they're having to rethink their entire strategies in places like Kansas where their Senate Leadership Fund is now steering $14 million to Roger Marshall, who they thought would be perfectly fine and perfectly safe.

I think what they're worried about, Sagar, is that possibility that you look at an electorate that is different. It's just composed of different voters. It's not being picked up on by polls. They're seeing some of this in their internals. And that's why they think even if something is showing up in the polls within a few points, that might actually mean the Republican is losing. So they're trying to overcompensate for that possibility.

Whether they can actually overcompensate in a way that helps is a different question, of course. This is where Trump, too, is actually just screwing. them like Tripoli, both from tariffs and from the war. But the insistence on rallying, because these candidates, sometimes, they don't have a choice, right? He just comes through. He's like, look, I'm coming to your state, right? I'm going to do this for you. And so he comes, jets in. They're basically forced to make a choice of pissing off the president or not when he's actually a huge drag on them, at least in terms of what we see right now. Look, I can say this, you know, to always give the other side of the case. Everybody said this similarly in 2016.

Obviously, Trump wins a shock, upset election. It would be, I mean, what, one of the biggest polling misses of all time. And I have covered two out of the three bowling misses, the biggest polling misses literally of all time in modern American history, I think in just the course of doing this show or in my career over the last 12 years. So it's not like it can't happen. And we should always kind of caveat that this would be an extraordinary situation. And of course, the blue wall fell apart in 2016.

A lot of people didn't think that it would. Maybe Kansas lean D or toss up, you know, is a ludicrous fashion and some things can tighten during election day. The thing that Logan did say, though, yesterday was traditionally in September through October. You would actually start to see that rally effect around the GOP. And you instead seem the opposite of bleeding, which is almost certainly ascribed to Trump and the continuing pressure from the Iran War. So the lack of motivation, the lack of enthusiasm.

behind a lot of these Republicans. At the very least, what we can come back to, Emily, is let's put all the polls aside. Ken Paxton and the candidates themselves, they seem to believe repeatedly behind the scenes, off the record, in secret audio and in the money. They are telling you we have a problem. Nobody spends money in Texas unless they think they have a problem. These people have hundreds of millions of dollars, secret polling, things that they think that they can shore up.

They know a little bit more than you or I do. They don't know everything. but at the very least they are behaving as if they think that they're going to lose a big and they're trying to mitigate losses instead of actually make these things competitive. And just a reminder with Beto and Ted Cruz, that race, Ted Cruz led Beto O'Rourke in the RCP average every step of the way in that race. It ended up being within about two points. James Tolariko has never, ever been behind in the RCP average.

It's the complete opposite, whereas Beto never led in the RCP average. Tala Rico has never been behind in the RCP average this time around. He has always been the lead in the last couple of months in the real care politics average. So Paxton is the underdog at this point in Texas. There's no other way to look at it. He is the underdog. He is behind. He is losing this campaign.

So it would not be a surprise at this point if James Tala Rico is the senator from Texas. And that should be causing Republicans to have absolute panic. Lisa. them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa DiGulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lacey Mosley,

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