Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/19/25: Major Recession Indicator, Sheinbaum Hits Back At Trump, AOC-Zohran Bend Knee To Jeffries, Young Men Crisis

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Ryan and Emily discuss major recession indicator, Sheinbaum hits back at Trump, AOC-Zohran bend knee to Jeffries, young men in misery.  Van Lathan: https://x.com/VanLathan?s=20  America's Human Arithmetic: https://www.aei.org/research-products/book/americas-human-arithmetic/#:~:text=In%20America's%20Human%20Arithmetic%2C%20Eberstadt,their%20human%20arithmetic%20lays%20bare.      To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now.

Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here. I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA, and I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mail Room. And I'm Jordan, the show's producer. And like most guys, I haven't been to the doctor in way too long. I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking, but aren't. Every week, we're breaking down the world of men's health from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility. We'll talk science without the jargon and get your real answers.

to the stuff you actually wonder about. So check out the mailroom on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. On an all-new episode of IHeartRadios Las Culturistas, Emmy, Golden Clove, and Tony Award winner, Sarah Paulson, spills on red carpet hacks. We saw these pictures and you're like, what is the story with this?

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Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election. And we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today. and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media,

and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Let's move on to this new report about housing. This headline here, more than half of U.S. homes lost value in the past year. More than half of U.S. homes lost value in the past year, just to reiterate that. The story says, home values are falling for more than half of the nation, the biggest share in more than a decade, when the U.S. was still struggling to claw out of the Great Recession. As of October, 53 percent of homes in the country had lost value in the past year, according to Zillow data. Nationally, home price appreciation has been roughly flat.

But that figure masks large regional disparities. Home prices are falling in much of the southeast and parts of the west, while they're rising in many cities in the Midwest and northeast. Ryan, right off the bat here, what do you make of the jigger? graphic disparity? Yes. So you've got the southeast and the west and also Texas, like, and the southwest, like Phoenix, Las Vegas. So, you know, a couple of things going on.

Florida has its own, I think, somewhat unique situation where it's basically anybody who's watching this from Florida can testify to this in the comments. It's getting extremely difficult to get insurance. And they're probably going to need some sort of government bailout in the future to just make mortgages possible. Because to get a mortgage, you need insurance. And getting insurance in Florida now, they're like, wait a minute. You want us to insure this house? It's flooded four times in the last four years and was knocked over by a hurricane.

How about we don't insure that? That's not a good business model. You should take that up with the National Flood Insurance Program, which, subsidizes the rebuilding of homes. Right, so they're not just going to subsidize. They're going to think they're just going to completely cover it. That's my guess. Oh, yeah.

Rather than trying to deal with the problem. And those be some mediation as well. But yeah, so the West Coast, it's a different situation. That's more, you know, it's getting on affordable for people, right? And also the, and as this reporting alludes to, the interest rates are so stubbornly high that the gap between what the person's selling has on their mortgage interest rate between what you'd be getting makes it so that it's an unmatched market because the amount you have to spend a month to get a certain amount of home is completely different at, you know, 3% versus 6 or 7%. you could develop, and I was talking to somebody who does housing finance policy recently, you could develop a portable mortgage so that you could take, you could basically sell your mortgage. Which the Trump administration is thinking about, they say.

And they should do it. Like, it's, it would require you, because the problem is right now we bundle all our mortgages into these securities. We create these mortgage-backed securities. So the bank that makes the loan, sells the loan immediately. and they slice it up and send it out and securitize it. So the people who hold those securities don't want you to be able to have a portable mortgage. So you'd have to basically unroll those securities

by making those investors whole somehow or just seizing them. You have to do something so that the bank can kind of retake control of it and then you can move it. Then it's totally fine. You have a 3% mortgage. You want to keep it, you can keep it.

You have to move it. you can, you can sell. If you like your mortgage, you can keep the mortgage. If you like your mortgage, you can keep it. Yeah. If you ran on that right now, you'd have tens of millions of homeowners. You'd be like, yeah, I do like my mortgage. I would like to keep it.

That would go well, yes. Yeah. And I just want a different house. Right. And somebody else can live in this house. How about that? Called a market. Buy and sell things.

Instead, we've just completely frozen the market. Well, it would definitely help with the phenomenon of boomers who are in houses that they want to downsize from, but right now, it makes no sense for them to sell. They have to pay just as much for the smaller house with a 7% mortgage as they're paying on their 3% mortgage on their bigger house. Right. And they're in houses, which would be great for Gen Z and millennials, like younger families. And they know they would be great for younger families. They wish a young family could move into them, but it doesn't make any sense for them to sell, even though they want to downsize and other people want to upsize. So that actually would help with this disaster.

generational mismatch right now. Mm-hmm. Right. So, but it's like, but the question then becomes is the United States capable of actually governing? Like, can the United States do policy? Spoiler alert? No. I don't think so. Yeah. It's wild. Like we're just, we're just basically on like some type of cruise control. We're just just rolling. Like people can have ideas and the public can have a will, and demands, but the government just doesn't do anything. Aaron Wren, who's a really interesting sub-stacker, he just yesterday sent out a very interesting piece

on two dueling pieces in the Wall Street Journal, actually, where one is about the luxury economy doing just incredibly well, which is fascinating. I mean, markets are up, and the luxury economy is doing well. So, like, luxury hotels, charging more money, doing really well. But there's also a piece in the journal. about how people are now diluting their Clorox and their Windex to pinch pennies, essentially, because it's getting too damn expensive to continue buying more and more swiffer pads or toothpaste.

This is where one woman in the story draws the line at diluting her toothpaste. But these are two stories in the Wall Street Journal essentially at the same time. And it gets to, as he goes and quotes this financial time story that was very fuzzy when it came out, the top 10% of earners now count for almost half of all spending up from about a third in the 1990s. The layoffs are surging consumer sentiment has fallen by 30% year to year to near record lows, and three out of four Americans tell pollsters that the economy is in fair or poor shape. And they say the share of Americans who describe themselves as middle class has dropped from 85% a decade ago to 54% over 40% of Americans considered themselves lower a working class.

And so there's a lot that you could read into how we describe ourselves. It was true for years that most Americans, whether they were middle class or not, would describe themselves as middle class. That an 85% number was kind of a constant. And it was a cool thing, actually, about the U.S., that even people who weren't middle class were kind of aspirational middle class, or they felt like the word middle class described them because they felt like they were relatively comfortable. So the drop in people who consider themselves middle classes, I think actually very, very interesting in instructive phenomenon and a sad phenomenon.

But also just to see the luxury economy taking off while people are literally being squeezed so much that they are a diluting windex to get more out of it. Now, some of you penny pinches have always done that. That's entirely fair. But more and more people just doing it. Yeah. Yeah, because like a cost of living is just outrageous. and now you have half of home prices around the country falling. And what's so scary about the stat that you're talking about there,

10%, the top 10% accounting for 50% of the consumption is that there's always been this hope among people that, okay, our elites, our betters do not care about us. But they need us because we're a consumer economy. And so they will take some baseline minimum level of care of the people, whether it's UBI or some other. We haven't figured out how they're going to actually do this, but there's some level of comfort that they're going to take care of people just because they need the people to take care of them by fueling the consumer economy. Right. But if you can fuel the consumer economy just with luxury goods, then all of a sudden you're like, well, wait a minute, what if they don't? need us. Yeah. So if 10% can account for 50% of the purchasing, what if they, that 10% can't buy everything, but they could push that up to maybe 70, 75%, and then the 10% underneath

them could account for another 10, 15% of the purchasing. So you wind up with like the top 20% consuming most of the economy. And so then if you're a consumer economy, you're like, oh, well, these one in five people are actually still buying stuff. So maybe we don't actually have to do a UBI or actually take care of the bottom 80% other than through surveillance and repression and distraction and authoritarianism and dystopia. Maybe let's just deliver them that and see if that's enough.

and if you need to like, you know, just keep them alive, you can give them, you know, you can expand SNAP benefits. And so Neil Ferguson had a piece actually in the free press recently where he points out this is where it gets really scary. Financial Times columnist Richard Sharma estimates that AI companies account for 80% of the gains in U.S. stocks this year. Not a surprising number if you've been following this, but a stunning number nonetheless. less. Ferguson goes on to say blogger economist, Noah Smith, knows that, quote, more than a fifth of the

entire S&P 500 market cap is now just three companies, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple, two of which are basically big bets on AI. Ferguson points out the Mag 7 account for more than a third of the S&P 500's market cap. Quarterly capital expenditures by these companies now exceed 110 billion, which is roughly three times what it was two years ago, nearly two-fifths of that total consists of purchases by everyone else of NVIDIA's graphics processing units. Ferguson goes on to point out how circular is basically illustrating what's pretty obviously a bubble because of how circular the spending on AI often is in the NVIDIA's circular investment scheme, which we are going to look back on after this bubble

likely bursts as being an insane way. You're going to look at it like subprime, like an insane way to organize an economy. But when you see runaway... We'll watch a documentary about it in three years and be like, wow, that was crazy. We absolutely will. And we're like the insane way that you have runaway luxury spending right now. So much of it is predicated on these tech stocks that are wildly inflated because, again, there's this like circular financing scheme happening.

And meanwhile, other people are, let's put this on the screen, this is C2. Home Depot is predicting a recession based on. Ryan, you found this story, some indicators as Home Depot can be a bellwether. They said the home improvement chain said it served fewer customers in the past three months than expected. This was on an earnings report, latest quarter earnings report from Home Depot. And Home Depot said it was, quote, hurt by fewer violent storms reaching American shores. Well, weird way to say you're hurt. More anxiety among U.S. consumers and a housing market in a deep funk.

And so when you see Ryan the juxtaposition of runaway luxury spending, a stock market that just keeps going higher and higher and higher. And on the flip side, people struggling on absolute basic spending, things look really scary. I like that side note, too. It tells you how damaging some of these storms are that just by the fact that we haven't had as many recently means that fewer people. have to replace all the stuff that gets destroyed by these storms. But yeah, the housing market, too. Like, when people aren't selling their home and moving, they're going to go to the Home Depot much less. Right. I mean, also the, and the anxiety that they say. Or put off refurbishing. Right. And then consumers just feeling nervous about it. The, there's also the kind of fast

casual collapse that is underway. We put up C3, Chipotle, Kava, sweet green. They have, They have all recently said that they're way, way down, like by high, high double digits, 10, 20, 30%. Also, why are we calling these slopped bull chains? That's in the business insider. Stop it. Stop it's good. This stuff is so good. It's all delicious.

Although Chipotle's problem is they got rid of the honey chicken. But in all seriousness, actually, Ryan, you have a theory on this being a Zembek related. I feel like there's some GLP1 going on here, too. So they're saying, and they know what they're talking about because they're saying, is their business, you know, they think it's partly, and I think absolutely they're right, that people are hurting and don't have the same amount of money. The number of people on some form of OZembrook or GLP1, though, is astronomical in this country at this point. And the kinds of people that would care enough about their kind of health to try to shed some

Wade. I would assume there's a significant overlap with the kinds of people that would eat it like Chipotle Cava sweet green. And when you're on these gLP ones or whatever they are, you just don't want a $20 salad because you're not hungry. You're going to eat like a quarter of it at most. Yeah. You can't like a giant burrito. You're like that's like a week's worth of food right Yeah, exactly. And that's adding up. When Ozambic first came in, like, the brands like Oreos and others were like, yeah, this is hitting us. Yeah. People are not. Yeah. But I think as it's gone from, at first was being prescribed to people like morbidly obese, now it's spreading the people who, you know, just trying to lose a little bit of weight. And I think in the economy, it's probably

a combination, because to your point, they're way, way down. So it's a purpose. So it's a perfect storm for Chipotle or wherever else, but it's also people are really pinching pennies because things are starting to feel very precarious. And if you're, you know, super overpriced salad company, no offense, I love all of those chains, but people realize they can, you know, do that a little differently. I love how people are trying to take the model to everything. Have you seen the Indian one down the street from here? You told me about this. You said it was good. It's very good. It's like, it's basically Indian food, but done Chipotle. style, you can get bowls or burritos.

I mean, Tandori chicken burrito. It's genius. The people that do that with sushi? Yes. There's sushi once like, guys, what do you? I don't know. I don't feel right about it.

And speaking of the tech stocks, we can put C4 up on the screen. Big antitrust win for META. Yesterday I'll read a bit from the CNBC story. Meta won its high profile antitrust case against the FTC, which had accused the company of holding a monopoly in social networking. What a shocking accusation. In a memo opinion released Tuesday, Judge James Boseberg, familiar name, of course,

Bozberg, he of the many Trump contentious Trump case is, right? Yeah, radical left judge, Bozberg, said the FTC failed to prove its argument. The case initially filed by the FTC five years ago centered on META's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. And here's a quote from Bozberg in this memo opinion. Whether or not META enjoyed monopoly power in the past, though, the agency FTC must show that it continues to hold such power. now the court's verdict today determines that the that the FTC has not done so a judgment so stating shall issue this day Ryan these were interestingly enough Obama error mergers and some of the big Obama era mergers that people just were blazed right through yep snatch them up

it's all fine and immediately you started to recognize the consolidation when meta snapped up those companies. But it was at the time the Obama administration was barely giving it second thought. Right. Yes. That was one of the huge turning points in our economy that the Obama administration was so corporate controlled when it came to its competition and anti-trade policy that they allowed this stuff to go through. I mean, effectively what the judge is saying here is that, well, maybe they were a monopoly then, but they suck so much now that people have moved into TikTok and TikTok is such a significant competitor and you got Twitter and I was about to say you've got threads but that's another meta one you got blue sky that there are some other options so so you're not

the only social network so therefore it's fine yeah yeah Facebook doesn't have a monopoly because of course YouTube exists yeah amazing argumentation yeah yeah but Trump's FTC is mourning this. So Joe Simons, it says, quote, we are deeply disappointed in this decision the deck was always stacked against us with Judge Bozberg, who is currently facing articles of impeachment. We are reviewing all our options. But that's an interesting little part of the FTC suit in this case, is that there really was in around 2020 in particular. You remember this. There's so much populist left-right anger at consolidation, which there should be because this entire segment has been about consolidation, basically driving up stock prices to unsustainable bubble levels.

And here you see exactly why that's happening. Yeah, and we'll see if the government has better luck on appeal or if they appeal. Yeah, yes, we will keep an eye on that for sure. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers. But it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. answers were there hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart

Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast health stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. Yes, I'm Dr. Priyanko Wally, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane Dibolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, do I have scurvy at 3 a.m. On health stuff, we're talking about health in a different way. It's not only about what we can do to improve our health, but also what our health says about us and the way we're living. Like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type 2? Extremely. Or our in-depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are.

Oh, it's hard to explain to the rest of the world that, like, your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible, but, like, you don't even know. You don't know. You don't know. It's going to be a fun ride. So tune in. Listen to health stuff on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Robert Smith. This is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast. podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want.

First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad.

And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Let's turn to. Mexico City, Ryan? Yeah, so last week or the week before, I forget

when time blends together. Saga and I reported that Donald Trump, when he was persuaded to take on Venezuela, was told that the reason that they were going to do this is because Venezuela was a major source

of drug trafficking, particularly fentanyl. So he asked his intelligence community to come back to him with targets. So, okay, you're telling me that there's enormous amounts of drugs coming out of Venezuela. Where? Where are they coming from? Where are they going? How can we kinetically, militarily, intervene here? What can I bomb to change this? The problem was that this was mostly a lie.

Venezuela is not involved in the fentanyl trade and barely involved in even the cocaine trade. There's a couple, there's a little bit of coca area along the like Venezuela, Colombia border, but it's kind of like a stateless area. It's not, it's barely active. accurate to say it's even Venezuela. And so the intelligence community came back, and this is the danger of these types of fishing expeditions. They came back with a list of targets in Colombia and Mexico, because those are actually the places where there's drug trafficking going on, which reminded me a lot of right after 9-11, in a meeting, Rumsfeld famously said that they shouldn't go after Afghanistan

but instead they should go after Iraq because Iraq is a target-rich environment and there's not enough targets in Afghanistan. Yeah. You mean like, well, hold on a second. They didn't have anything to do with 9-11. Why are we... You can't just bomb them because they have targets.

That's not how it works. Right. And Rumswell, like, no, no, no, actually... He's like, trust me, I know how it works. That's precisely what we're going to do. Yeah. So then that creeps you into a place where now all of a sudden,

discussing war with Colombia and Mexico. So Saga and I reported that a couple weeks ago. Strong confirmation of that emerged from Donald Trump talking about wanting to bomb Mexico because, you know, the things that he gets briefed on, you know, they don't stay secret forever. They vomit out of his mouth when he is surrounded by reporters. So let's roll D1. There's Trump. Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? it's okay with me

whatever we have to do to stop drugs Mexico is look I looked at Mexico City over the weekend there's some big problems over there if we had to would we do there

what we've done to the waterways you know there's almost no drugs coming in through our waterways anymore Colombia has cocaine factories where they make cocaine would I knock out those factories I would be proud to do it personally

I didn't say I'm doing it but I would be proud to do it because we're going to save millions of lives by doing it. So these Colombian cocaine factories, so that to me reads like a very clear reference to a target list that he was given. You can read our story to get more details about that list. He also, and this is where the creep gets dangerous too, mentioned Mexico City. He said, I saw what happened in Mexico City this weekend. So he goes from drugs, Venezuelan drugs, to Mexican drugs, to I saw what happened in Mexico. city over the weekend, and then would I bomb Columbia? Sure, I'd be happy to. So let's reverse

the record and go back to, okay, what happened in Mexico City over the weekend? And that's when there was this significant opposition party protest where they tried to like ransack their way into the presidential palace. A little bit of opposition from left and the right, actually, together. And the, the, people are skeptical that there was any, non-trivial left involvement here. But we can talk about that in a second. Claudia Scheinbaum, the president, still had like a 70-plus approval rating.

Yeah. Yeah. So she responded to Trump's threat to bomb Mexico. Here's Shinebaum. You want to read our queen here? As I said the last time, the U.S. intervened in Mexico. They took half our territory. True.

I've said it many times. In my phone conversations with President Trump, He has repeatedly suggested or offered a U.S. military intervention in Mexico. I like how she said and went from suggested to offer. Or whatever we need to combat criminal groups. But I've told them every time that we can collaborate, that they can help us with any information they have. So that's intelligence sharing.

But that we operate within our own territory. We will not accept intervention. All right. So that's a very typical line from Shinebaum and actually like Morena, that they are defending Mexico. can sovereignty and don't want any military incursions apart from intelligence sharing, which she just alluded to there, on Mexican soil, which is, you know, getting to be, I mean, Trump, the best case scenario here is that Trump is making threats that force other people

to clean up their own houses, whether or not he's in a position to do that is a different question. But when you have these major military buildups that arguably is the best case scenario is that it's a kind of piece through strength formula. But right now, he seems pretty eager, Ryan. And your reporting suggests that they are putting pieces in place that aren't mere signals of intent, but actually look like intent. Right.

And they certainly are putting the pieces in place, and that's the trouble. That's the fear, because once they get in place, it's very hard to slow them down. And we're seeing that now in the cruise. Caribbean. I was on Pierce Morgan. I saw you did that. Yesterday or whatever. Talking about war with Venezuela, which is, you know, Trump just keeps, or Rubio, I should say, just keeps ratcheting up the pressure. And it, you get, you move dangerously close to a place where

you either have to then completely climb down and capitulate and slink back to the U.S. without getting anything, or you then have to launch an actual war because your bluff has been called. Because Maduro keeps offering basically the entire store to Trump. But Rubio's refusing to take it. And Trump is not intervened yet to say, just take it. Like, he's offering you everything. Just take it. So in Mexico City, to talk about what's going on there, and to back up to the point about pressuring them to clean up, the previous Mexican government, under pressure both domestically and also from the United States, launched in full-on, all-out war on the cartels. And it was a complete and total catastrophe. And it did nothing to reduce drug trafficking. And it only ended up strengthening

the cartels in the end. And so when Lopez Obrador came in, he was saying, we're going to try to take a different policy. We're going to try to reduce drug trafficking. We're also going to reduce violence. We're going to make Mexico livable again. Like entire places, we're just absolute Afghanistan-level war zones. Yeah, absolutely. And if you look at the data around violence in Mexico, it's way, way down. Now, the idea that you're going to eliminate drug trafficking when you have a wealthy drug-hungry country right next door is a fantasy. Somebody's going to feed our noses. Well, part of the Mexican economy is built up around trafficking.

Yeah. I mean, it's just... And the American economy is built up around consuming the drugs. Definitely. But there is obviously also that's baked into Mexico as well now. There's cartels for years have been built up on this infrastructure. related to trafficking. I remember I asked Yohan Grillo

early in the Trump administration. He's a great journalist down in Mexico City and was doing some excellent coverage and getting tear gas done in the Sokolow over the weekend. But he pointed out if the Trump administration shuts down the mass human trafficking that was going with migrants throughout Mexico, up through Central America.

But, you know, Mexican cartels, Sinaloa, they were all very heavily involved in that. Where else do they find profit. He was like, what do you talk? Like, they'll go back to heroin. They'll go back to, they will find, they will make up that lost revenue with drugs. They've always done it. They're used to doing it. And so the right wing in Mexico, the kind of upper class in Mexico has always hated Lopez Obrador. They do not like Shinebaum. They had been agitating against her over the last, you know, several weeks and months. And then in early November, Carlos Manzo Rodriguez, which the mayor,

of Europon in the Michel Khan state, which is a cartel-heavy state, was assassinated November 1st at the stay of the dead event. And he had been militant. He had been aggravating for more. He was trying the old style that he's going to bring the hammer down. He's going to go to war against the cartels. He was trying to push Scheimbaum in that direction. Yeah. And so, and he was assassinated probably by the cartels. Yeah, Helisco. Yeah. And so that generated understandable outrage that it looked like you're headed back into this area. Now the idea that that justifies that you should go back to a military war against the cartels is I don't think the country agrees with. But so the protests then started adopting some of the cartel.

We need to crack down the cartel rhetoric too. These are opportunistic protests. They're trying to create scenes in the street that that suggests that Mexico is a repressive place and like um shine bomb's a tyrant and and then the u.s should then intervene and get rid of her and replace you know put the upper classes uh candidate back in um they this was sold as like a gen z protest yes yes you can look at the crowd itself like very few young people in the crowd um this is as they're trying to take enter the palates and if you look you can see this guy who's kind of like bossing around these other um goons i interviewed a Mexican reporter yesterday at DropSite

who said that it's well known that there are these elements of organized crime in the city that are for sale for protests. It's like if you need a goon squad to cause trouble at a protest, we will bring them.

And he said he could just tell by the way that and that's one of the videos he took, by the way that they were operating that they were one of these organized goon squads. Like he is somebody who's on the left. He knows the black block. He knows the anarchists. It's like they were not there. It's like, you can tell the anarchists from the organized crime goons.

Right. And the anarchists were not there. Or there, but I mean, what I saw from a couple of journalists who were there was, they were in small numbers. It wasn't, like, a huge comparison. It wasn't a huge, it wasn't equatable. Right. You're always going to have a couple for sure, like, you know, somebody. But like that violence that you saw was, you know, organized.

crime figures, ironically, saying that we need to crack down on organized crime. We put up the final element, too. This was one of the funniest photos that was circulating. Is this producer Griffin? It's Griffin. It is. So Griffin was down at the Mexican protest in his one-piece t-shirt. People thought that this was Vicente Fox.

He's claiming it's not. It does look like him. Whether it is or not, it's just comical. Like the late middle-aged dude with the hat and the glasses, the stash, and a one-piece t-shirt is giving the most hello fellow kids energy that you could ever possibly imagine. Steve Bouchemy skateboard. Yes. Like the only thing he's missing is the skateboard.

Yes. So, yes, the Gen Z were out in force. Demanding regime change. The reporter, we had this on our drop-site stream yesterday, the Mexican reporter interview. a whole bunch of these old people at the rally and they're just right-wing rich white people who are old, which is fine. Those people are entitled to not like Claudia Shinebaum

and be able to protest her, but you can't also call yourself Gen Z. Like, come on. Gen Z. Words have meaning. You're not young, sorry. I mean, on a serious note, of course, and one David Rojas pointed this out in his great piece in Compact, there have been, you know if violence is going down overall mexico great there have been a lot of killings of mayors

and journalists the violence of mexico is still absolutely horrific so when you see the the killing at a day of the dead it was like a candle lighting ceremony just in front of other people of a local mayor horrific but also part of an ongoing pattern so still a really really serious situation for the people of Mexico, of course. But Shinebom's approval rating is hovering around like 70%. It's very, very high. You can't even imagine that in the United States. Even on the question of violence, she has a pretty high, of cracking down on cartel violence, she has a pretty high. Juan points out her approval on handling of public security has more than doubled to over 50% since she assumed office. So the question of whether this was some type of

referendum on Shinebaum herself, it obviously wasn't. So that's important to point out. Yeah, for sure. All right, Ryan, let's get to talking about the Democrats. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him?

I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer. The investigation into the most notorious killer in New York since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast Health Stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. Yes, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane Dabolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, do I have scurvy at 3 a.m. On Health Stuff, we're talking about health in a. different way. It's not only about what we can do to improve our health, but also what our health

says about us and the way we're living. Like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type 2? Extremely. Or our in-depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are. Oh, it's hard to explain to rest of the world that you, like, your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible. But, like, you don't even know. You don't know. You don't know. It's going to be a fun ride.

So tune in. Listen to Health Stuff on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith. This is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people. horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business.

Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show.

We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is getting a challenge from Chi Ose, who is a city counselor in New York City who represents Bed Stey and parts of Crown Heights. He's also a Democratic Socialist, but he is not getting the support of the most prominent Democratic socialists in the cities or on Mamdani or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to talk about what this means for the Democratic Party. We're joined by Van Laithen, friend of the show, and a host of Higher Learning. And as people know, Manabout Town, Van, delightful to have you on the program. Finally, we've been talking about doing this. Glad to get you on here and hope to have you back again soon. But welcome to Breaking Points.

Oh, man, you guys have no idea what it means to be here after having watched you guys for so long, watching Matt Walsh squirm over Haiti. There's so many things I could bring up. Let's get into the issues of the day. All right, let's do it. Excellent. All right, so Ose, apparently had a bit of a falling out with the Mamdani campaign. It was reported that he was not at the election night party as a result of this.

I did not see him there. Can't confirm if he wasn't sneaking around somewhere else. And so right out of the gate, after Momdani's win, And there starts, there's starting to be rumors that he's going to challenge Hakeem Jeffries for the, for the congressional seat in that, in that area. You then get reports that Mamdani doesn't want him to do it. And now you have, and we can put up E1 here. So AOC was asked about this and she said, she told Axios in a brief interview at the Capitol,

quote, not aware that he was challenging, which is kind of crazy because it's been quite public. But she added, I certainly don't think a primary. challenge to the leader is a good idea right now. Norma's amount to unpack here. What was your reaction to, like, AOC and Mamdani telling this challenger, Chi Ose, that now is not the time? A couple of things. One, before I even get into it, I want to shout out Chi Ose's dad, who's passed away,

Reggie Ose, Combat Jack, pioneering, pioneering. black hip-hop podcaster, maybe the first black hip-hop podcast. I remember going on Cheez's Wikipedia and seeing that Combat Jack was his dad and going, oh, my God, man, I knew your father. What a, what a son of a legend. So, you know, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree as far as making an impact. This is what I'd say. I sometimes feel for the average progressive constituent.

particularly the young ones, because they have to wake up one day to the sober and reality that all of these people become politicians. They are political operatives, and they make deals, right? I need Hakeem Jeffries gone. I need that wing of the centrist. I need him gone. I need him, Schumer, gone. I need people that are clearly anti-genocide and clearly pro-health care.

care those my my bar is so low right now guys i just want you to be clearly anti-genocide and clearly pro you don't have to go broke because you got cancer reasonable that's that's the bar that's it okay um however in understanding how these things work i'm sure there's some sort of deal that's been cut between mom donnie and jeffreys uh in terms of you don't support a primary a challenger to me and I help normalize you to the Democratic centrist elite base and we try to get some things done. So everybody out there that is still looking at AOC and Zoron as crusaders and not politicians that make deals, I think they're going to be continuously disappointed in sort of their stomach for actual revolution. This is not to say that these people are not

useful. I'm not saying that at all. This is not to say that they don't represent the politics that we want to see. But they're politicians. So they're going to do some things that are going to disappoint you. And it's better that they do it earlier than at a time when you're really expecting them to come through. It's an interesting question about Jeffries, too, which is like, is it, if you topple Jeffries, who comes in Jeffries's place? And are they better or worse than Jeffries would be if you're already cutting deals with Jeffries? You could have asked the same question. And AOC had to confront this many times as Ryan is. written about extensively with Nancy Pelosi. So I guess that that's a question in and of itself is

that, I mean, right now is a right moment. So it's tempting, of course, to just go full French revolution and knock everybody down. But then there's a question that way. But you know, you know what I'm saying? Like it is a good moment. Like this was the Tea Party did to John Boehner. Get rid of leadership. But then you get Paul Ryan. So that's a. question, I think that's probably worth confronting as well with Hakeem Jeffries. Yeah, I mean, I get it. And once again, this is the difference between someone who's in the inside and someone on the outside.

No one watches Star Wars and then goes, I wonder who's going to come after the emperor. We can't do this. Like, somebody worse might be on the other side of the dark side of the force. They just go, emperor gone, movie, we win, right? But when you're inside of the thing, you have to make those. political calculations. So, yeah, there's a whole bunch of things that you have to think about, but this is what people don't want to believe.

What people don't want to believe, and this is what's running up or what's sort of enmeshed in all of this. People don't want to believe that as business as usual. The thing that people are most afraid of is the business as usual aspect of politics, which is, you know, in 2008, everyone's unemployed, the system looks like it's crumbling, and somebody comes along and says, hope and change. And you buy in. You go, all right, hope and change.

We are the ones that we have been waiting for. Still, the coldest line any politician has ever up. That's up there with fear itself. We are the ones that we've been waiting for. You looked at yourself in the mirror. I went to tears streaming down. I was like, oh, me? I, oh, us.

together. And then what do you get phew drone? So like my like the business as usual thing is what sours people to the belief that we can actually live in a different type of world. And so that is kind of what AOC

and Mom Dhani are up against is we elected them. They promised a revolution that was worker first, affordability first and look at them now. They were Hakim Jeffries. And that is going to be chilling to a lot of people.

And it's up to them. Last thing I'll say, I'm typically more long with than this. You guys are getting a brief version. It's up to them to make it plain to their constituency that that's not what's happening here, although it's a tough sell right now. It's especially a tough sell because of the history here, which makes it almost even more deflating because AOC in 2018 knocked out Joe Crowley, who was the caucus chair on his way to becoming Speaker, when he's knocked out, there's then an election to replace him, and it was

Barbara Lee versus Akeem Jeffries. And, you know, AOC got behind Barbara Lee. It was a pretty close contest, you know, lost by 10 or 20 or so. But Akeem Jeffries, who was Crowley's deputy, you know, takes the caucus chair position and then is next in line, and that's how he, you know, eventually becomes leader. So to go from there to then, well, it's not time. to take him on, I think it's, you know, it's got to be frustrating for, for a lot of people. But like you said, they're making a different calculation. Like, Mamdani at this point wants to take on real estate developers. He wants, he's got his agenda that he ran on. He wants to get that accomplished. And he sees that going after Jeffries as not just a distraction,

but maybe a hindrance. My counter argument might be sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Like if you've got, if you've got Jeffries on his heels, and if you've got Jeffries and his allies, then defending this position, then maybe they have less time to mess with you the whole time in City Hall. So, I mean, that, so just, even if it's all about pragmatics and we're not revolutionaries here, maybe pragmatically going on offense might work. Like, when has backing off helped? I say never. I tend to agree with your assessment. You know, Mamdani's in the position to where he's not just governing for himself. He's governing for a collection of ideas and for an approach to politics to where he is sort of

proof of concept of something. And if it fails, he will be the example that it cannot work, right? And sometimes I wonder what that pressure or what that spotlight is like. Now, listen, I don't give any quarter to politicians. I believe that you are basically like a waiter in a restaurant. If I go into a wait, shout out to all the servers and restaurants everywhere, okay? But if I go into a restaurant and I say, hey, I want my food and the waiter is very charming and very nice, but I don't get what I want. I'm going to say, hey, man, look, I'm glad that you told me about your family.

can you go back to the kitchen and maybe bringing the steaks out? Very charming, very nice waiter that lets me down in a very eloquent way. I'm like, no, at some point, bring the meat. All right. That's basically what Bill Clinton did for President Trump, allegedly. At some point, like, I want the meat, all right? Bring the stakes out. Mdani has to bring the stakes.

he has to deliver the protein to the people. And the question is, what else is he going to need to do that and how much disappointment can you endure from the political process on the way? I tend to believe like you believe. I tend to believe that upheaval is the best way to progress. Clean the trash off the street and you drive down the roads easier. But it's just hard to do.

These people are entrenched. They've been around for a very, very long time. they carry an intense amount of favor, and they are very good at promise-making. And there's also, I mean, you see this on social media a lot, an understandable impatience on the populist left and the populist right with their proof-of-concept type politicians. And I'm curious how you see the left's expectations going into the Mamdani mayorality, because he's now going to be in this position of great power, not just over New York City, but also over the trajectory of the party.

And he's a politician. You know, you like him. You'd be a great waiter to continue your metaphor. But the expectations of like the young generation of the left are on his shoulders. And that is, I mean, nobody can meet expectations that high. So I guess I'm curious how you see people right now preparing to treat Mamdani as a politician. I saw a good tweet on this, a great tweet on this from Mia Khalifa. Mia Khalifa, actually, like, actually, I saw the smart lady, I saw her tweet, she was like, okay, everybody's for, was for Maldane, everybody wanted to see this happen. And it wasn't just because of the collection of policy. It was because, you know, I don't have any problem with, I just can't see anyone having a problem with, like, free buses, grocery stores and affordability. Like, I don't have any problem with making services more ready available to people, bringing costs and prices down. I just don't know.

know what was so scary to everyone, but, you know, political differences and economic outlooks. Aside, the people wanted to believe that there was somebody that was brave enough to say what we all know is that this isn't working. This religious allegiance to the most cutthroat brand of American capital is not working. It's not working. People are being left behind. People can't live where they grew up. People have to move to the outskirts.

People aren't finding. It's not happening. Everything is too expensive. We're not looking at the Americans that didn't make this country great, that are making this country great every day. And he said that with a lot of zeal and with a lot of compassion and with just he was a devastatingly good communicator. All of that. He's not an angel.

He's not a deity. He's a politician. He's a local official that now became a mayor. And what her tweet said was, let's not put him on a pedestal. Let's not make our entire lives and our entire belief system. Let's not get two down in the dumps about the obvious political disappointment that's going to come at some point from this guy. Let's try to be realistic about what he's up against, what he's going to have to do. and who he's going to have to be.

Let's try to, like, let go just a little bit. She says, let's not put him on a pedestal. He's a politician. We're going to have to do that, and that's going to be hard. But part of that, though, I'll say is this. Part of that is the media's responsibility, and this is why, speaking of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, now I'm going to do it to you guys a little bit.

This is why independent media is important because of the long-form investigation into topics, the context that is given, the sometimes sobering realities that can be had when something is deep dove into to where you can come back feeling like everything is not a zero-sum game. And so to me, this is the whole deal

with all of this stuff. Do I envision a world that's closer to Mom Donnie's world, sure I do I absolutely do but do I think that he has unilateral authority he's all powerful to blink and make New York into the vision of New York

that he wants it to be he just doesn't he doesn't and so there are going to be some things that he is going to win on and some things that he is going to be lose on if you lose complete hope in him then you're losing hope in that brand of politics and I think that that

would be a tragedy Meanwhile, so Hakeem Jeffries was asked about O'SA's primary challenge. We can roll E3 here. New York City Councilman Chi O'SA filed paperwork today to run against you to represent Brooklyn. He has said that Democratic leadership has failed to effectively fight against President Donald Trump. What's your response? Come on in. The water is warm.

Water is warm. I think it's water is nice, is the phrase. Okay. I was talking to a high school friend yesterday, actually, about Jeffries, and he's not a committed, he's an independent, but he was like, you guys got to do something about Hakeem Jeffries. I'm like, what do you guys, by the way, first of all? He's like, but he's like, that guy's fault. You guys bad for the, he's like, every time I see him or Schumer, like, I just dislike Democrats more. He's, he's hurting, he's hurting what you guys are doing. Even that, it's like, And Jeffreys' thing when he came up was that he was supposed to be this great communicator. Like that was his selling point. It's, I don't know what happened between now and then. Just for fun, since you mentioned Epstein, our man did find himself, unfortunately, in those files.

If we can roll, not in the way you're thinking. Basically, a consultant of his was reaching out to Epstein to do a fundraiser, and invite him to a fundraising dinner. But here's E4, him getting dragged into these files. Another email shows Democrat fundraisers invited Epstein to an event or to meet privately with Hakeem Jeffries as part of their 2013 effort to win a majority. So Hakeem Jeffrey's campaign solicited money from Jeffrey Epstein.

That's what we found in the last document batch. The files underscore why former President Trump must appear for his deposition. we've subpoenaed him to date the Democrats have done nothing to help us secure his appearance. I support full transparency. The Oversight Committee will continue to work to get the truth to the American people and to get justice for the victims. That's our goal of this investigation. With that, I yield back. Now, I don't even know if Jeffries had any idea who Epstein was, but bad luck for him that his fundraising consultant reached out to Epstein to try to hit him up for money back in 2013.

Telling, Telling Epstein, you really need to meet this guy. He's a rising star. He's going to be a top Democrat. Yeah, so I don't know. Hakeem Jeffries, what's going on with this party? A couple of things. Number one, it's very hard to be a good communicator if you are measuring every single word, right?

If you're measuring every single word, if your brain is cue testing every single word, are they going to like me? Are they going to like me? Do I come off cool? Do I come off like the cool guy? Am I, is this cool? The swag?

Come on in. I bet he thought he killed with that line. He was, he was, he walked off stage and he was like, did you see what I said? Yeah. I said, I told him, come on in, the water is warm. And there was some,

there was some staffer that was like, boo-ya! Like, he thought that was so cold, I bet when he walked off. Come on, man. You know, like, Be yourself, like believe, say the things that you believe. Living your authenticity, it shows when you don't, I promise.

Another thing is this. I want to make sure that everybody on the right, everybody everywhere understands this. I'm going to speak for myself. It don't matter who is in the Epstein files done with all of them. There's not a person that could be in those files right now, then I'm going to be like, nah, man, we need to start. them out. Everybody's like, well, what happens when you, when you find out that Bill Clinton is in there? I'm like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? Oh, no.

Like, who cares? What is it, 99? Like, who, like, who cares? And I just want everyone to know this because I said this on TMZ in 19, and this was one of the things that I got in trouble from all the things I said on TMZ. I said this, I said, the death of Jeffrey Epstein is Washington's most bipartisan accomplishment in decades, right? And that is a thing. It's a fact. Everyone is commingled in this. I want people to take a step back and look at what this actually is.

This is the connection that you guys have always feared. It's the elites. It's the people that cover for each other. It's the people that make easy soft beds for each other to lie. It's the thing that you've been talking about. And when people have been saying, hey, the left is involved in this, the right is involved in this, at least in terms of the political structure and the political elites, and they're like, no, our guys are the great guys. Our guys are going to drain the swamp. Our guys are the ones, no, it's a class thing.

It's a thing that's, there's a political ruling class and how they get on with each other. So sit back, watch it fall, and don't get connected to these people. They're not the LSU Tigers. They're not the Yankees. They're not the Lakers. They're not political teams. These are people with agendas. And sometimes those agendas

involved dealing with people like Jeffrey Epstein, however horrible and disgusting that that is. Yep. Van Lathen, really appreciate you being here. I'm happy to have you back anytime soon.

Yeah. Check about higher learning. There's something else I do in the morning. I want to tell saga or something. When I get up and I do my Andrew Huberman thing, when I walk around the neighborhood, there's something else I do. in the morning, Saga, and you're not going to like it.

In the morning, I can go, ha, ha, Saga. There's something else. Hoo-hoo! Sager, I'm about to go get into it right now. Don't get mad. I'm still productive. There's something else I like to do, Saga. I want you to come on and tell me why generations of Lathens are wrong.

I believe in them. We've been doing this for a long time, Saga. This would be a fun segment. That would have to get you on with Saga. Yeah, that would be good, actually. No problem. Thank you, guys. That would definitely make it happen.

Take it easy and enjoy whatever you're up to next. Thank you. Every morning. Same time. Peace. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight.

So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York. since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast Health Stuff, we are tackling all the health questions

that keep you up at night. Yes, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane Dibolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, Do I have scurvy at 3 a.m? On Health Stuff, we're talking about health in a different way. It's not only about what we can do to improve our health,

but also what our health says about us and the way we're living. Like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type 2? Extremely. Or our in-depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are. Oh, it's hard to explain to the rest of the world that you, like, your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible, but like, you don't even know.

You don't know. You don't know. It's going to be a fun ride. So tune in. Listen to Health Stuff on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith. This is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money.

And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever.

There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses. along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked.

Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. We are joined now by Nicholas Eberstadt, who's the author of the new essay collection called Human Arithmetic. Very, very interesting new book. Nicholas Eberstadt, thank you so much for joining us here on Breaking points this morning. We appreciate it. Hey, thanks for inviting me. Yeah, of course. I wanted to start with a section here from the introduction of the book, where you talk about how the damage from America's men without

work problem, which you have written extensively on, quote, radiates outward. Their unnatural condition makes for slower economic growth, wider income and wealth gaps, increased welfare dependency, reduced social mobility, more fragile families, and a weaker civil society. And you go make some really interesting points here, but I wanted to ask that in the context of this news report. We can put this from Wall Street Journal up on the screen. The headline here, companies predict 2026 will be the worst college grad job market in five years. And I thought this was a good place to start, Nick, because you've been following this particular problem, and actually you've been helping us understand it with data and explanations, socioeconomic explanations for a

long time. It seems as though this problem is poised to get worse. But I'm curious, if you agree with that, what you're seeing in the data right now and how people should be thinking about it. Well, it would be a little bit more helpful if the government were actually producing the monthly data on the jobs reports that we kind of like to analyze. But we've been seeing a a gradual flight from work by men and by older people, that the other people part is new. We're also seeing a somewhat weaker job market now, and that's probably not surprising, given some of the uncertainties real and perhaps needless that we see in the job market now, economic outlook. Some of this is policy created. Some of this is business cycle. I don't think I

would make generalizations about long-term trends from a single year. Let's just say that. I mean, so what are you seeing overall when it comes to when it comes to young men? And what has surprised you? And has anything surprised you about it as somebody who's been kind of monitoring this for some time. Well, I mean, the only thing that's a surprise is that so many people seem to be surprised by it. This didn't start yesterday. This is a historical trend that's been underway since the 1960s. But because we are still fighting the last war with our employment numbers, our jobs reports were, our framework was developed in 39 and 40 to track the Great Depression. when it would have seemed outlandish to think that a guy who didn't have a job wouldn't be looking

for one. So we have a set of numbers that are great for looking at unemployment. But nowadays, for every guy who's out of work and looking for a job, there are over three who are not looking for work. And if you are using just the unemployment metric, you're missing over three quarters of the problem. We have a work rate for 25 to 50, four-year-old guys today that is basically at the 1940 level, which is the tail end of the Great Depression. So we've got a great depression scale problem for work for guys. And if we don't look at it, we're going to be surprised by a lot of other things that are happening in America. And it's amazing how it lurks under the surface and gets so little attention in the ways that you describe it, because you've studied

for a long time, the effect, particularly that deindustrialization, but also, you know, welfare programs, and you and I may disagree a bit with Ryan on that. But if we focus on deindustrialization, just specifically with this AI transformation of the economy coming, we've seen the effects that, you know, these rapid changes in jobs have had in, you know, places like where I'm from, the Rust Belt and outside Milwaukee, for example, is that? is something people seem like they're about to replicate at an even larger scale with AI. How are you thinking about the changes that are about to appear like they're about to happen in the American economy with the examples we've seen in the last several decades?

I don't want to make a fool of myself in front of you by making categorical predictions about AI. Because it's evolving so rapidly that I'm not sure that anybody knows exactly where it's going to be in five years, much less 15 years. What we can say in general, looking at past technological innovations, is that people who have skills are able to kind of harness the new technologies and multiply their productivity and their incomes, and people who don't have skills are more likely to be displaced. So under any circumstances, we'd want to be skilling up our young people. but in the face of this new AI wave that makes it, I think, even more imperative. I should say that one thing we also miss about what's going on in the United States

is the extraordinary variety, disparity of circumstances from one community to the next. When I was a young guy, we'd talk about the Deep South or Appalachia or later the Rust Belt. But, again, this is something that kind of escapes us because we don't collect good information on it all the time. Three quarters of the difference in work rates and workforce participation rates for, you know, young adults, for young guys. It's now within states. I mean, you go 10 miles and you find radically different employment prospects, community prospects,

all within given states in the USA. And we're kind of blind to this because, number one, we don't collect the right information for it. Our information systems are way behind the times. Number two, we need journalists who will actually go out and talk to human beings and take a bus and go from one community to the next. Because doing that, you get the kind of the human face on this nerdy sort of number stuff that I do in my basement, so to speak. And so you talked about there being three men, what, you say 25 to 34 or 25 to 44? 25 to 54 as the usual. So 25 to 54, so for every man who's looking for work and can't find it in that category,

there are three men who aren't looking for work. And I think all of us can answer this question kind of anecdotally and make our own guesses at it. But what do the data say about how those men are surviving? Like, how are they, where are they living? How are they getting by? How are they feeding themselves if they have families? How are they feeding their families? Well, as best one can tell from the limited information we have, that's numbers and things that I, you know, sift through.

They get by with help of their, you know, by the help of their friends. They get by with the help of their family. And they get by with the help of their uncle. and his name is Sam. There's over half of the guys who are neither working or looking for work seem to be obtaining one or more disability program benefits. I'd be a little more informative about this,

except that our crazy quilt of disability programs don't talk to each other. And so there's nobody in Washington who can tell you exactly how many Americans, much less prime age guys, are obtaining these disability benefits. You can't live a princely life on them, but quite evidently it is possible to live a life where you do not engage with the labor market anymore. And you also, oh, Ryan, do you have a problem?

You also write sort of about the effect this has on the spiritual condition of the country, on young men in particular. And in light of the news yesterday, we can put this on the screen. This is ProPublica reporting that the Trump administration appears to have attempted to help Andrew Tate. The ProPublica headline is White House intervened on behalf of accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate during a federal investigation. But, Nick, there's so much discourse at the moment about Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate and young men. And just because you're somebody who studied this for so long, what's your, I guess, perspective on this swirl of controversy? Is the economic well-being related to the spiritual well-being of young men in a way that seems to be fueling any of these

trends? What do you make of it? Well, you know, I'm a grandfather. I'm a couple of generations removed from of this stuff, but I've got ears and eyes. There's a world of hurt and loneliness and despair out there that wasn't at all comparable, you know, when I was that age. We've got a lot more loneliness. We've got a lot more family breakdown. We've got a lot more spiritual angst. We've got a lot more dependence on substances than we had back then. And if you are isolated, if you're cut off from work, if you're cut off from family, for whatever reason you're cut off from faith and from your community, you suffer for that.

I mean, there's a reason that people, that a lot of people think that solitary confinement is a cruel and unusual punishment. So we've got to do, I think we've got to do a much better job of, you know, reaching vulnerable groups in our country. country, and part of what we've got going on, I think, is this monumental empathy gap between the describers and deciders in the United States and little people who are suffering. So have you seen anything work, any pilot programs, any efforts by communities to, you know, prevent plant closures or, like, you know, in places where you have, like, you know, workers take, you know, they're going to shut a plant down or the workers take it over. and keep it going, I think you have some famous cases of that.

A couple of thoughts. One is we could look around the country and see where there are healthy communities and where there are communities that are really struggling. Because there's an enormous range and disparity of social success in communities in the United States. And they're mostly within states, not across states, as I mentioned. And a little bit of curiosity about human beings might help at this point in our national history. I mean, that's one thing to mention. Another thing to mention is the extraordinary problem of ex-cons in America.

Because ex-cons are almost invisible in our country, and yet it is, a gigantic army at this point. We do not collect information on ex-cons. Once they're out of the correctional system, they're invisible as far as our stat guys are concerned. But my own back of the envelope, working on some, I think, pretty good research by some of my defiant nerd demographer colleagues, suggest that one in seven adult guys has a felony record in his background. Do we really think that this has nothing to do with the circumstances that we find ourselves in today? Shouldn't we be at least a little bit curious about this, how people live, how they reintegrate

into society or repair their job reputations? It's all anecdotal now because we don't collect the information that would allow us to see what's working and what's not working. Yes, I've always thought that if you actually, for people who are serving time in prison, like, you know, there's some people can get work release, but most people are going to either, you know, be reading books or be at the gym. or just be stuck, you know, either in the common area or just, you know, frittering away, you know, years and years of their life. Has there been any effort to say, you know, let's actually bring some genuine education here? Like, if you do three years, you should come out, you know, knowing how to do carpentry or as an electrician or with your associate's degree

or maybe or an undergraduate degree. I know there's some programs in that direction that are very small, but have you seen any of that work to intervene in this? Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of good people working to try to help with reentry all around the country, but this is all a sea of anecdote at this point, and it doesn't have to be that way. It really doesn't have to be that way. And we talk about the mass incarceration situation in the United States, and that's true as far as it goes. But what we don't talk about is that for every person who's in prison, there are 10 people with a felony in their background in our general society, and they're just basically kind of invisible.

We can do a lot more with, a lot more with skills in the United States. We've got, even with the economy softening, we have so many millions of unfilled positions, right? And some of that is a skills gap. You don't have to go to college to come up with the skill set that's going to give you a good income and let you pay for a family and a home. Nick Everset, thank you so much. The new book is called Human Arithmetic. We really appreciate you stopping by to break some of this down for us. Thanks so much for inviting me.

Of course. Really big show today, Ryan. We covered a lot of ground and had some great guests. We did indeed. What is the saying? The real victories, the friends you made along the way. That's right. Exactly. Very true today. Yes, indeed. And so we'll see you on Friday. If you're a premium subscriber, we'll see you right now in the live AMA. If you want to get access to the live AMA is to the second half of the Friday show and get the show to your inbox, no commercials, no ads, nothing. day, go ahead, head over to breakingpoints.com. We'd love to see you there. We love answering your questions. So head on over, and Ryan and I will see you Friday. See you then.

A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there hidden in plain sight, so why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer,

the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here. I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA

and I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mail Room. And I'm Jordan, the show's producer. And like most guys, I haven't been to the doctor in way too long. I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking, but aren't. Every week, we're breaking down the world of men's health from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility. We'll talk science without the jargon and get your real answers to the stuff you actually wonder about. So check out the Mailroom on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. what up y'all it's your boy kev on stage i want to tell you about my new podcast called not my best moment

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