Julian Dorey Podcast - #81 - We Left Nothing Off Limits. | Bill Facciolo

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

Bill Facciolo is a Developer, Computer Scientist, and an amateur meteorologist. ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Intro; The Divergent Society; Bo Burnham’s Special; Unusual Whales and the options mar...ket; Everyone’s fallibility with power  28:22 - Money is the taboo at the top of the food chain; Why money drives worldview; Motivation vs. De-motivation; Online commentary and pillow punching 40:16 - The thing that is dividing everybody right now; Talking Omicron & Delta; Julian tells a story about the post-election pandemic focus in 2020; The recent changes in Covid policy; Quarantine time reduced, kids and the Pandemic, States vs Federal policy shift, NYT Fat Cells Report; Julian went to LAVO and got the virus 1:02:45 - Candace Owens gets shut down by Trump; Someone check on Alex Jones; The Feynman Technique; Brian Williams mysterious sign off from MSNBC; Bill talks about the power of propaganda 1:26:30 - Jack Dorsey leaves Twitter; Comparing situation at Block to Twitter; Twitter’s new hilarious rule 1:41:57 - The Problem with Erasing history; Julian talks about a problem he had with a WW2 Video on TikTok; Safety Culture & The Physical World; Bill and Julian revisit Jonathan Haidt’s Book, “The Coddling of the American Mind” 2:04:25 - Moderna’s success during the Pandemic; The Amazon / Washington Post Conflict of Interest; The government oversold the public on purpose?; It’s like they want people to question everything; China, The CCP, and the Mafia; The Media’s role in the Israel / Palestine Conflict; Bill talks about Rome and the fall of Empires 2:23:42 - “Stiffen your upper lip” culture and its opposite; Comparing Jocko Willink and 21 Savage; Toxic Masculinity; How to achieve true equality among men and women; A surprising, sad current trend 2:39:28 - Our threat of a supply chain shutdown with China and life saving drugs; Mutually assured Destruction; Future wars will be cyber 2:59:32 - An uncontrollable-controlled herd; Why government matters; The hypocrisy of the states rights and federal rights political opposites; Julian talks about one thing that bothers him about the show ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q  ~ PRIVADO VPN FOR $4.99/Month: https://privadovpn.com/trendifier/#a_aid=Julian   Get $100 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover: https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier  Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:30 They want people to finally have a point where they say, where's my line? Who is they? I don't fucking know. Who wants people to question it? It's like Princess Diana used to say in the royal palace. There were men in gray suits that no one saw, and they really ran shit. It's the same thing in everything else. So here's my question, Julian.
Starting point is 00:00:48 Who stands to gain the most from us questioning the institutions that legislate, from us questioning the institutions that govern? Who stands to gain the most? what's cooking everybody if you are on youtube right now please hit that subscribe button hit that like button on the video and if you have a second would love to see you drop a comment as well to everyone who has been leaving likes and comments on these videos that is an enormous help so thank you so much would love to keep rolling, and YouTube's been going really well, so thank you to all of you who have been supporting there. To everyone who is listening on Apple or Spotify right now, if you haven't already, check out that follow button. Make sure you hit it on whatever platform you're on, and I look forward to seeing you guys again for future episodes. Now, I am joined in the bunker today by my very good friend, Mr. Bill Fasciolo. Bill is one of the smarter people I've ever met in my life. He's such an interesting character too, like very different kind of guy and a brilliant communicator, someone I really,
Starting point is 00:01:57 really enjoy talking with. So I was excited to bring him back in. He was here at the very beginning of this podcast. I haven't had him in here for a long time. And it was fitting because we recorded like the day before the new year. And it was kind of like a state of society. No, it wasn't kind of. It was a state of society episode. There are no topics that we left off limits in this. We talked about all of it.
Starting point is 00:02:19 If you are thinking about the controversies in your head that are going on right now in not just america but around the world yes we talked about all that so i'll leave it at that but these are the types of talks that have to happen and i hope you guys enjoy it that said you know what it is i'm julian dory and this is trendifier let's go this is one of the great questions in our culture. Where is the nuance? You're giving opinions and calling them facts. You feel me? Everyone understands this, but few seem to do it.
Starting point is 00:02:58 If you don't like the status quo, start asking questions. Ladies and gentlemen, Julian Dory is the next coming of the Mayan calendar. Of the Mayan calendar? Isn't that like the Nostradamus bullshit? Oh, yeah. Yes. When will the world come to a close?
Starting point is 00:03:16 All answers come through you. Oh. Tomorrow. Oh, and why is that? We're done. Yeah. Because it's almost 2022. That's when the world ends. Stop.
Starting point is 00:03:23 Just call me the Mayan calendar i'm calling it out but you and i were just talking maybe like 15 minutes ago before we got on camera and you said something and i was like hold that because i have no idea what the fuck you just said but it sounded really interesting you were saying that we feel like or you feel like we are in a divergent a divergent society that's it yeah what do you mean by that um i mean and this is we're diving right in real quick here that's what we do around here um so i'm of the opinion that we are living in two completely parallel yet disjointed societies right now heavily driven by media involvement are you talking about just america or the world primarily america um i'm sure that there are extensions to the to the greater global atmosphere
Starting point is 00:04:13 that i just haven't really you know collected my thoughts on yet yeah you're biased for living here and having to experience i have my own perspective yeah so you know, I think that the last year has tested the patience of many individuals from different walks of life and about different things. You know, year one of the COVID epidemic, the last time I was in here was about a year ago. We, you know, we had panic. We had panic, we had fear, we had a grieving process to begin for the loss of what was to be a large chunk of time of our lives, a disruption to our way of life. And people reacted to that very differently,
Starting point is 00:04:54 and unfortunately, I think society kind of splintered in the process, you know? There is a side of America right now that is very heavily focused on... justice and societal utopian values. And there's another part of society that is focused on what they believe to be the preservation of what has made America great.
Starting point is 00:05:23 And the two of them are listening to different echo chambers. And they see each other as making grave mistakes that are foundationally antithetical to what America is supposed to stand for. Neither one of them is perfectly correct. Neither one of them is perfectly wrong. But it's just interesting to see because as people continue to listen to conservative media, as people continue to listen to liberal media and they surround themselves with people who agree with them and they entrench their beliefs and they continue to progress unilaterally towards I'm right and fuck you. We're losing our ability to connect. We've talked about this before and i think it's worse now than it was a year ago when i was here before yeah that makes me sad i'm just remembering too because this is this is definitely worth noting you were here a week after the election
Starting point is 00:06:16 so like i was fresh and i was like okay you know we're gonna turn the page and you and i seem to share the opinion that you know it didn't seem like biden was exactly all there he was definitely older but this especially the end of the whole trump thing was like okay we can kind of get past this maybe we'll be friends now which benefit of hindsight that hasn't exactly happened and people you know can we can get a little bit more discussion into the political process because trump was so incendiary and made it impossible to start a conversation. It is now almost 14 months after that. That is not that long of a time. same opinion with respect to trump i'm never going to then hold the opinion that just because
Starting point is 00:07:06 we get another thing in there it's not also going to be bad and so with biden for me i mean it really crossed over he he never seemed to be the guy calling the shots don't get me wrong i mean he's old but the cynic part of me could say the first six seven months of his presidency okay this is not the worst thing i've ever seen like all right you know it's the bar was low but it's better than i thought and then the past five or six months really since like afghanistan happened and then we actually got more focus on the inflation and the things that have been going on long before biden but that he has not helped with at all it seems like everything's a giant clusterfuck and so i kind of sit here like holy shit this was a this was a vortex of like a last 13 14 months and it's symbolic for me that
Starting point is 00:07:52 you're now sitting in here to break it down and you open it up with that beautiful soliloquy you had right there monologue whatever the hell it is i don't know i wasn't a theater major but to hear that and think about what our worries and fears and expectations were at the time versus now it's it's fucking mind-blowing it's alarming i mean i in my own personal life have witnessed fractures of families over this divisions of friendships, livelihoods ruined over changes in sociopolitical climates over the last 12 to 18 months. I mean, people losing access to their revenue streams, you know, people losing their jobs, people, how should I put this, excising people that they disagree with from their life at a pace that I've never seen before.
Starting point is 00:08:48 I mean, we've talked about cancel culture in the past. We've talked about, you know, um, areas of society where people, you know, already had these rejection filters up where if something doesn't agree with
Starting point is 00:09:03 your paradigm, then you're just going to ignore it but what concerns me is the pace continues to increase and there was one particular and i can't believe i'm about to reference this right now but there was one particular comedy special that came out in the last year that kind of really resonated with me inside by bo burnham really i didn't see that i would recommend it i don't know if i've even heard of that so you know who bo burnham is yes i've heard of him yeah i'm not a fan or anything but i know who you're talking about yeah he's he's a pretty talented artist um in fact i would i would argue
Starting point is 00:09:39 he's very talented maybe a little too introspectively intelligent for his own good um he decided to go on this creative journey where he basically locked himself in his house for a year told himself i'm not leaving until this project is done and drove himself to the precipice of madness in the process of doing it but wrote some very poignant critiques of society. Like what? And put them in, uh, he has a slam piece on a, uh, I think one of his title tracks was about a white woman's Instagram and all of the, uh, you know, the frilly bits that go with
Starting point is 00:10:18 all of the overused cliches of how to gain popularity with, you know, taking well-lit photos while holding roses and things like that. Yeah. It's very pretty. It's very tastefully done. Um, but he also has this one particular piece that I think is horrifying and haunting, but... really holds some...
Starting point is 00:10:41 some prophecy to it. It's called Welcome to the Internet. And it's... it's... at least the way that I've interpreted it an essay on how our access to anything that we want in terms of information in terms of visual stimulus at the drop of a hat is ruining us yeah I'm gonna have to check this out because i know like you're you're given the broad strokes of what the themes are but i'd love to hear how he built these cases because on the surface yeah completely and mind you he does everything that he does through song so you're not gonna get an extraordinary amount of depth from this. But he's a lyricist.
Starting point is 00:11:25 He's a poet. And he's putting music to it. And he's doing all of this 100% solo. He shows images from between finalized pieces within the actual Netflix special. Where you get to see behind the scenes footage of him doing B-roll. Like getting outtakes. And one shot shots into the camera like this is not going well so you you see a really raw perspective of an artist as he
Starting point is 00:11:56 laments the advancement of technology through that piece at least that's how i've interpreted it and i i'm gonna have to maybe wrong no i'm it sounds so interesting to me i'm definitely gonna have to see this but he set out a specific timeline and had a specific project in mind that said without the benefit of having seen it myself, I kind of relate a little bit to how he was able to build this entire special. Because the weird thing about being in the seat I'm in is while I'm building and while I have been building over really the past two years, I started building March 2020, but I launched September 2020.
Starting point is 00:12:51 I'm kind of disconnected, right? I keep my sanity because my job requires me to be connected with people when we actually do it. Right. He didn't get that. But when I'm sitting here in the studio editing and to myself which is a lot of my time yeah I'm keeping up with things through the internet and studying sources and reading up on stuff and keeping myself from not going down rabbit holes by going down every rabbit hole I can find you know I have very strict systems of that like when I go
Starting point is 00:13:23 down a left rabbit hole then I'm I go down a left rabbit hole, then I'm going to go down a right rabbit hole afterwards just to see what the other perspective was. Everything in moderation, including moderation. plug and getting to watch all the other people around me and how they react to things while their lives are still going on even if it's during a pandemic and everything they're at least out there more than i am they are a little more maybe there's other things they actually have to worry about in their life whereas i'm lucky to be a little bit more laser focused on one thing right now in that way lucky unlucky whatever you want to say but like i see that and i'm like oh that's how it happens that's how it goes down i've even seen it with you a little bit waking up to some of the things that are going on or at least the way it appears with you and me going back and forth on twitter and i'm like damn like as time went on i'm like the opinions and perspectives that you
Starting point is 00:14:23 might have had when we were in here last versus now are just entirely different. And it seems to me like, and correct me if I'm wrong here, it seems to me like you are one of many people I've seen in my life who have kind of put up your hands and said, you know, fuck this shit. This ain't it. This has not been it for years now. I'm sick of all the bullshit I hear. I'm sick of the yelling at each other, like you pointed out already with the media. And I'd love to see you go deeper on that. I don't want to get off that.
Starting point is 00:14:52 So this is an invitation to do it. But, you know, you're a symbol of a wider group of people to me. And I'm curious how you guys, and all of you, not like y'all know each other but how you guys are thinking because I think it's very important and the final thing I want to say just to explain why that's like a little thing I wanted to go into is because you talk about these two teams and the way you said it out front one of the first things you were saying on here where you were like you have the people who want to correct my words here if i this up but they want to just live in a utopia and have justice on everything and you have people who want
Starting point is 00:15:30 to have america just be great and go back to what they view it as great and your connotation there was that you don't agree with either i agree with you i i think in the middle somewhere is probably where we need to be but how much of society are in those percentages that's the real question like is it do you see it as 80 of people are constitute that like two systems and there's only 20 of us who are like fuck this or do you see it as there's a much smaller percentage and there's actually a lot of people now like you who are like no fuck this we're going to talk about this and find a new way so i do think that you're starting to see the middle as you as we would put it you know people who have historically been relatively centrist i am lumping myself into that category are starting to get
Starting point is 00:16:20 pulled so i've had this discussion with um one of my friends that i went to high school with and we've had this ad nauseum sitting you know having a beer around a bonfire and i don't think it's 80 are in either one of these extreme or maybe not even extreme isn't the right word for it maybe vocal camps yeah let's even generalize and call it like more extreme type beliefs. Not extremist, but like extreme like there is no circumstance in which I would ever consider even trying to vote for the other side, let alone allowing them to continue to exist. So maybe not extreme, but fierce. Yes, that's actually a better word. Nice job.
Starting point is 00:17:04 Thanks. fierce yes that's actually a better word um nice job thanks uh so yeah i would say that the percentage of ferocity within the political landscape has definitely increased over the last couple of years but i would have said you know pre-trump pre-2016 election it was maybe like three or four percent on either side where you know you couldn't talk to them i think that that increased quite a bit over the course of the trump campaign we came in here there was some guarded optimism yeah things haven't necessarily panned out in that way i think a lot of that has to do with division around hot button issue these days is the vaccine and i think there are hot button issues around gun violence um institutional suppression of social justice has continued uh or at least uh objections there too
Starting point is 00:18:08 i'll say it that way yeah what do you mean by that i mean um you still you still see very much a lot of energy pushing forward among grassroots organizers to promote social change via dismantling our current policing system. Got it. That's what I'm referring to. I think that that has continued. Maybe a little bit of the fire has, at least from what I have seen, come out of that movement, but it's still very much alive. And I think that it's something that people drew a line on very hard in 2020 when things
Starting point is 00:18:47 reached peak unrest with you know ahmaud arbery and um ahmad arbery and george floyd there were some very uncomfortable and frankly necessary conversations that had to be had around that. And we had the conversation, continue to have the conversation, but it doesn't feel like progress is really being made, I wouldn't say, in a productive fashion. I think there's a lot of screaming from the fierce. What would be productive to you? I think if I had that answer answer i'd probably be a politician don't do that don't you won't come back in here after that you're out no i uh i have no interest
Starting point is 00:19:37 in running for office good good and it's sad i say that but i know but i may i may speak like that but power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely it does it's sad I say that, but good. I know, but I may speak like that, but power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It does. It's a scary thing, and I think anyone is susceptible to it. I don't doubt that I could be too. And perhaps that stems from a place of cowardice where I'm afraid I would be corrupted were I provided that power.
Starting point is 00:20:00 I'm a human person. Somebody puts a check in your hand for two and a half million dollars and says i'll feed your family for the next 60 years if you sign this bill that lets me dump a little bit extra waste in the lake next year you're gonna take that check me i probably wouldn't but i also don't have a family if i were there maybe i'd feel differently about this stuff i'm a little weird with money. And I'm entirely speaking in hypotheticals. You get the idea. I think for 99 or 98% of people, what you just said, yeah, the answer could very well be yes, even if they don't admit it.
Starting point is 00:20:34 And we critique politicians all the time, myself included. We don't see every single lobbyist that walks into those areas. We don't see any of them. We don't see every single lobbyist that walks into those areas. We don't see any of them. We don't know about closed-door deals and money that changes hands. And one thing I've actually – this is a little off-topic, but one thing that I've learned about in the last year or so, specifically from a we-don't-know-about-where-money-goes perspective, one tool that I discovered was this thing called unusual
Starting point is 00:21:05 whales unusual whales it's a it's a stock market tool that basically kind of acts as a poor man's bloomberg terminal okay keep going i'm gonna pull it up um allows you to track in real time options flow and basically tells you uh above like a certain filter size or like market cap or how much premium traders are placing on any particular position what option deals go down when they were executed for how much at what strike what's the bid ask spread explain to people listening right now who aren't sure about this okay just the basics of how options work obviously you and i know but it's like it's a complicated thing first time i've had to provide a yeoman's explanation for this so bear with me if it's not great um an option is an opportunity for you to at a reduced cost control the fate of 100 shares either in a buy direction or a sell direction
Starting point is 00:22:06 of any particular ETF or equity or security, I should say. Yeah, it could be like Amazon, for example. So, like, you could be sitting at your desk and, let's say, some very wealthy hedge fund manager. Yeah, hedge fund manager man let's say someone who goes by the name of like buffin war it or something submits a huge bullish meaning I'm all about this let's go forward play on a stock like Tesla and they say I want to purchase a thousand call options I want to control a
Starting point is 00:22:42 hundred thousand shares worth of Tesla and I I'll say, I'll buy a contract such that I think it's going to go over $850. Can I, I know Tesla's trading higher than that. Yeah, go ahead. Can I expand just to like bring it all the way home? I just want to make sure so that you can get right into it. But let's just say, and it's not, but let's say Tesla, keep it easy numbers was selling for a hundred dollars right now. And you were buying those call options you just talked about. Let's say today was January 1st. And the options you were looking at were March 1st, and they had a strike price of $150. And I really don't want to make this too complicated, but it is how it works. And you decide to buy one option, so 100 shares, for $1 a piece with an expiration of March 1st.
Starting point is 00:23:28 So to review, $100 a share right now on January 1st for Tesla, a call option is being purchased that expires March 1st at $150 a share. You just bought it at $1 a share, so you paid $100 for this, right? That means that on March 1st, by March march 1st could be way before that too but let's say midnight before march 1st when it goes to expire or four o'clock whenever the market closes tesla is trading at 151 dollars per share if you exercise that option you now take possession of those shares and you get out even right meaning you spent a dollar on each of them at $150 valuation, and now it's at 151. So you got out even. Whereas if you took out at 175, the person who sold you those shares now has to sell them to you at 150 instead of the $175 price that day. So they technically
Starting point is 00:24:21 lose. And it works the same way in a different way kind of in the opposite direction yeah the the risk on that side is you know if tesla never gets above 150 like you wanted then you're sol and you have nothing you what shit out of luck okay go ahead so i was a bit slow my bad but anyway you were talking about this the reason we were explaining this was because of the unusual whale tracker tracks something with options and big guys trading it. It basically allows you to see... What's up, guys?
Starting point is 00:24:52 I'm going to keep the ad short today because this is a very dense conversation and I want to get right back to it. But you guys know the drill with our two sponsors of the show. The first one is 8sleep. The 8sleep Pod Pro cover comes in Queen or King sizes. It goes right on top of your current mattress, depending on what size you have, and it changes your life overnight. It literally adjusts to your sleep in the first night of use because the technology that Eight Sleep has that goes right into that cover through their proprietary app will adjust around your sleep stages, and when you wake up in the morning,
Starting point is 00:25:21 you will feel like you slept eight hours, even if you only slept six. So if you use that link in my description, along with the code TRENDIFIER, that's T-R-E-N-D-I-F-I-E-R, at checkout, you will get $100 off your own 8 Sleep Pod Pro cover today. our newest sponsors. We just announced them last month. To put it very simply, Revato VPN is one of the few VPNs out there that actually doesn't make you lose any speed while you are using it and using the internet privately in the process, which is what a VPN is supposed to do. I have been using the product since the end of October. I've known the team since August. It is terrific. I can use it on 10 different devices if I wanted to at a time. Not that I have that. I basically have two, but I can go back and forth with them whenever, have them live on both at the same exact time. It's beautiful.
Starting point is 00:26:15 So if you hit that link in my description and you go to my landing page with the company, you will see a plan that says $4.99 a month. That is the same one I use, and if you buy that, you get the product for yourself, and you also support the show. So check that out. Really, really like what I'm hearing so far from the people who have bought it. And thank you to all of you who have supported to this point. Moments of unusual activity in the stock market that generally precede big news drops that hit the wire.
Starting point is 00:26:45 It's kind of like I view it in a way as almost like a tipping service. I don't have it myself, but I've, you know, seen demos of it on YouTube. And like, there's a bunch of people on Twitter that use it on a regular basis and post about crazy gains, because that's all anybody who ever trades in the stock market is going to tell you, don't believe that they're all winners. And I find all of this very interesting because i still work for a financial institution where i don't really engage a whole lot in the market but i keep my eyes on it because it's my it's my industry it's my sector you have a very interesting seat like i do with your whole background people learn later because we talked about it last time like what your background is but i just want to throw that in it's been it been an odd background, man. There's been a lot of left and right turns.
Starting point is 00:27:26 Yeah. But this discovery for me came in the last few months, and it's interesting because I heard as a tagline for it, like a marketing pitch, somebody always knows. Yeah. Somebody always knows. And so when I discovered this, I started realizing that's true. Somebody always knows. The stock market moves so fast today, deals are made so quickly, that money moves hands before reporters can do their job. Yes. It can happen in seconds too sometimes i should say more like minutes but yeah but still
Starting point is 00:28:07 i mean it's it's substantial and so if things move at that pace in a heavily regulated industry that has a specific branch of the government that is overseeing its affairs. Things move that quickly just in the stock market. Imagine what kinds of financial transactions are taking place behind closed doors that we can't see off exchange. You know, and you worry about the pressures that come with that and how that impacts the decisions that leaders make. That's why i brought up the point that i'm not an incorruptible force and that's why i don't think that i necessarily have the stomach to go for something like politics oh there's a lot of directions we can go with this take your pick there's a lot of directions we can go with this let's stay on the on the backroom dealing, though, and the money. How about it? There's a few themes that come up on not half of podcasts, but maybe on average one out of four that I love.
Starting point is 00:29:13 And I love to at least just repeat them in the one line because it kind of beats it back into my head. And then I hope we all have that feeling, like if you're listening to this show. But the line, follow the money, which the first guy who really said that in here just like as a point on his whole life and career was Jim DiIorio. That is the truest goddamn thing ever. And it's a really simple fact. Everything that we see comes back to some sort of financial decision because the taboo idea that no one wants to talk about but it's true is that if I ask you what the most important things in your life are, most people will say my family and my health and I'll look right back at them and say your money pays for both. That is the unfortunate reality.
Starting point is 00:30:03 You know, you go onto the streets of new york city and you look at people who are living homeless right now if you're on the west coast and you go to san francisco what any city it's it doesn't matter what city it is you go anywhere and even in towns and you see people that they don't have a home they are living on the street think about how their life got them there they all have different stories some of them may have similar themes, but not all of them are the same. And if they had some money, however it left their life, don't know, but if they had access to some resources, maybe they could be an entirely different person. And that's like a very simple example, but take that to a more societal-wide example of people who – everyday middle-class people who are just making decisions to try to get to their retirement the right way. As in like do I have enough money to fund it? Are my kids going to college without them taking on $200,000 in debt? Things like this and how that trickle effect then changes their
Starting point is 00:31:05 outlook on not just i'm not talking about how they vote or anything like that i'm talking about like their day-to-day lives and their worldview and their prioritization of what they see around them you know like we have a lot of people out there who may have beliefs towards the right or towards the left who i may sit here and go what the fuck is wrong with you at first thought and then if i actually look at their situation if i happen to know them and and be like okay well why might they be this strongly in that direction i can usually find the one two or maybe three things that are primarily motivating them that have caused them to get behind the one two or three things that then make them be on
Starting point is 00:31:45 whatever side they're on yeah very quickly and moreover most of the time i mean it's over 90 percent of more than nine out of ten times i can completely empathize with it well that's talent that's talent not everybody can do that it's learned if it's a talent it's learned i didn't have that i think i think i think people could learn how to do that. Well, people have to be willing to talk to each other. Yeah. Root of the issue. Mm-hmm.
Starting point is 00:32:11 I mean, that's what we're trying to do in here. But, like, this is one place. We're two assholes in a podcast studio. Yeah, right. You know, the hope is that the extension goes to the people who are also listening, too, to, like, feel like they're a part of this. That's my goal with this and it sounds like so far so good in that direction but it's one show yeah you need a lot of people
Starting point is 00:32:31 doing this yeah and i don't know i've said this before but i don't know if it's like a podcast or whatever it doesn't even have to be broadcasted you need people you need people engaging in long form conversations just as part of their life because they want to expand their horizons. That's really the key. If you're talking about wanting to enact, you know, some sort of change for the better where, you know, people are more willing to level with each other, take time to listen to each other's perspectives, understand their driving motives, and then empathize. It patience patience is a virtue that we are sorely lacking my personal opinion on that matter and I touched on this
Starting point is 00:33:10 last time I was here is that a lot of that has to do with intrusive technology but I don't want to launch myself down that tirade again yeah no for people that didn't hear that, it was an early episode. It was episode 21. You were in here. There were a lot of gems in there. And also, I'm happy you're doing this now again, because last time you came in here and you played host the whole time, and this time I'm getting you talking, which is great. Absolutely. You had a few rips in there that, in my opinion,
Starting point is 00:33:44 will continue to age brilliantly they already have fingers crossed but they will and and that was one of them because you and alex horowitz actually touched some similar things in that department which was he was number 17 so also early days but people are so quickly motivated on things they're so quickly turned and so quickly demotivated what do you mean by that that could mean a couple different things uh i'm saying that actually let me let me ask a question before i delve further into that when you say they're so quickly motivated are you referring to hair trigger reactionary response or are you referring to people have excess energy to go? Actually, maybe both.
Starting point is 00:34:31 I didn't – I was not thinking of the second part. But if I could add to it and say the idea that more people are at home or working remote or pissed off in general at the way things are going in their life financially and therefore probably personally and how long this goddamn pandemic's going and how angry everyone is yeah they have more energy because they're more likely to be like a wound up ball in their house so yes but the first part that hyper reactivity is of course the the core of what i'm getting at it's like you can't see a tweet and not immediately be like what the fuck you know it's never like well let me give a nice long dignified three-page document response it's like no fuck you please go die like that's what people type out next maybe they don't type that all right well like it's craziness i have a proposition you approach wow all right my upbringing is about to
Starting point is 00:35:25 absolutely show through here. For those of you guys who don't know, Julian and I met at a Catholic middle school and proceeded to go through an additional four years of Catholic high schools at separate institutions. Oh yeah. Catholic. We read
Starting point is 00:35:41 tweets like we read the liturgy of the word. what scripture verses a reading from the book of twitter and yay i disagree with you remember what that was and lo it was awful how do you feel my point is uh and i am not necessarily a practicing catholic today or necessarily even a particularly religious person but i found through reflection in the last year that there was merit in what i guess i'll refer to as like that section of the mass between when you did the readings when the priest did the homily,
Starting point is 00:36:25 and then you just kind of sat there for that awkward second before anybody else did anything. We had this moment of pure silence. Thinking. And reflection and critical thought. You know, you heard a whole bunch of doctrine and diatribe and yes,
Starting point is 00:36:42 you can agree with it or disagree with it, however you see fit. I take what I think leads you to be a good person and try to incorporate that into my life and I reject the rest. I would encourage anybody else to do the same. But we sat there with words and we let them hang in the air. And we had expert analysis, I guess you could call it, as whatever the priest's homily would have been after the direct reading from the Bible. But you sat there. Words hung in the air.
Starting point is 00:37:15 You thought. You reflected. You considered, how does this impact me? Is this something I have control over? Does this bring me serenity to ponder? Do I have control over this issue, or do I have the wisdom to know the difference? I was just looking at my watch when that was going on,
Starting point is 00:37:34 but I'm glad you got something out of it. I'm fucking with you. I know exactly what you mean. Yeah. We will not stop overreacting until we make time to process to stop overreacting. We will not stop overreacting. Myself included.
Starting point is 00:37:51 I overreact at everything. I could drop this coffee and drop a fuck bomb out there because that's, I don't want to. But I am a klutz. I've done that a couple times in here. Rip. Yeah, sorry. That's the way it goes. Anyway.
Starting point is 00:38:06 The point I'm trying to make is, well, first off, Twitter's evil. But we react. We don't think. And then part two of what I was saying comes in. We motivate quickly. We demotivate quickly. We react. We get our rage out there we process our emotions very quickly and then we never think about it again we write an angry reply
Starting point is 00:38:32 to a guy on twitter tell him to fuck himself and then we never think about that person again you get that dopamine rush back yeah wow and we don't we don't let their thoughts hang there consider is this something i have authority to opine on is this something that i can bring value to and steer this person towards good or whatever your perspective of good may be or am i just gonna say fuck you kick him in the face with your energy legs and leave here's the the difference. And it's the internet thing. This is what the internet, the negativity of what the internet brings into our lives. When I get mad at shit to this day, like really, really mad, like in a rare type of once or twice a year type rage at myself or something that's going on, I go and I beat the shit out of a pillow if i'm not about to work out in box when i do that the poor little innocent pillow didn't feel shit because it's not alive
Starting point is 00:39:31 and i put all that energy into an inanimate object and i kind of like get it out and i say well are you happy all right a little more cool and then i can at least be functional with the internet we are now able to make pillows out of other people that we can't see and we suddenly feel like that means that they must not exist because they are behind a keyboard somewhere else and fuck them they might even be a bot and in reality we're not thinking about the fact that we're making a victim in that scenario by taking our rage and placing it into them even if they did it does to start it's neither person's right and for someone who doesn't necessarily get slammed on social media a lot i feel like i have
Starting point is 00:40:10 far too many opinions about this but i've seen i've seen it really impact people's psyches and that bothers me that's that's why i'm passionate about that topic yeah and sometimes it does i've been talking about this recently like trying to get to the bottom of it and like put it out in words and see if someone else can grab it from me and make it make sense for me but sometimes it does really feel like these things are like you can see the train crash in slow motion as it's happening and you can't stop it but you know exactly what's going down the die has been cast yeah and one thing i totally missed completely missed so this was not me seeing
Starting point is 00:40:52 a train crash in slow motion before the vaccine came out maybe it's because i've never been someone who talks about vaccines or cares i was vaccinated my whole life and everything i got this one and all that like i didn't think about how this could be used as like a great this isn't a word i don't think for this but divisor like the source of division right i gotcha and it is almost set up that way when you look at it and try to think about like how did this go down and how did we get here it's it's it's so bad you almost couldn't make a movie script out of it you know like it's like well this then that then this then that then this then that and boom here we are look at that and hindsight's always 20 20 so i't foresee it, but I think a lot of other people maybe couldn't have seen it the whole way. But all you need is a little fracture in the stone for people to be able to beat away at it and turn it into two boulders that roll down a fucking mountain and kill somebody at the bottom who's not looking and reading their fucking GPS or sending a tweet.
Starting point is 00:42:03 I don't know. A political butterfly effect. Right. Exactly exactly like a butterfly effect of the rock the fracture was there where you had people who were pissed off enough at the political system to be able and then and then the political system also worked in branding around medical experts and stuff like that such that you could create teams within your existing democrat and republican teams and then get these people to start to go at each other directly about this and then start to go down rabbit holes where they believe the worst of the worst of the worst of both sides which i also happen to agree as i look at this data all the time i think both sides
Starting point is 00:42:41 are wrong in in what they argue but if you think about where we are now one of the last days of december 2021 we're recording this about six days before the episode is going to come out and then you look at where it was even january 1st let's say two months after they announced it and like a month after they started actually putting it out wow is that like i mean the rocks are down the mountain oh yeah things move fast they moved way fast i mean what what's what's your thought been there regarding what is my stance on the vaccine or what is my thought on the social response to it actually either i was more going for the the second one but you can say whatever you want i think that whatever medical decision anybody decides to make regarding whether
Starting point is 00:43:32 or not they should get the vaccine is a discussion that they should have with their physician should take into account their holistic health and pre-existing conditions should consider the risks of the long-term effects of whatever the vaccination may be, and should also weigh that against the societal pressures of what the vaccine represents to helping other people in terms of whether it's slowing transmission, if or whether or not it does that anymore. There was some empirical evidence to suggest
Starting point is 00:44:03 that it did with early waves it may not so much anymore but it certainly also helps save lives and decreases the severity of infection and that can decrease the strain on our health care system so there's benefit there i think the data does support that yeah absolutely and like as a quick cyborg and we can come back to this but like not for nothing the one that it seems to not work at all against or whatever i don't want to say at all but it doesn't work as well as the whole omicron one which happens to be of all these strains we've seen that can get nasty i mean the data suggests and this is the cold which is like like it's the first time like well maybe this one this is not such a bad thing you know what i mean that's from my understanding and i am not a trained and licensed virologist and i am
Starting point is 00:44:51 throwing that disclaimer out here i do have some general understanding of biology and i know that over time the way that viruses generally tend to propagate as they evolve to become more infectious and less lethal. Because if a virus kills its host, it ain't going anywhere. It's not going to continue to survive. Viruses thrive on quick infection, quick transmission, and then, you know, they move on to the next. So if you keep killing your host, how are you going to find the next victim? How are you going to, you know, conquer and multiply? Why was the Delta then, which was a a later strain why was that one worse that's why i've been confused
Starting point is 00:45:31 like it should have been better but then it was like more damaging from what i have seen and what what i have analyzed and this is all my personal conjecture i am not a professional i am disclaiming this to the nines yeah i'm to do a disclaimer for both of us right now once again. I can't believe we have to do this. But while you were number one in your class, and what was it again? Don't worry about it. It was some really smart, like, big brain shit. But
Starting point is 00:45:56 neither of us are scientists, as Bill said. Neither of us are doctors. Please review your own shit. We're not giving our opinion. I'm not telling you to take the vaccine i'm not telling you not to take the vaccine we're going to talk about it and have a dignified conversation and feel free to disagree in the comments i'm always down for the arguments if you want to drop some data that's even better thank you i'm open to all of the sources sources
Starting point is 00:46:17 welcome yes from what i have seen the lethality with each passing strain has decreased but the infectivity has continued to increase what i mean by that is there's this uh there's this but not for delta though it kind of did really it kind of did that was the worst one here's what you have to consider the first strains of covid that came out you know kofid the the original, the alpha strain, the iota strain, they were some of the earlier ones that were circulating. They were particularly lethal because we didn't yet have mass issuance of the vaccine. By the time Delta came around, 60-ish percent of the population had received at least one dose and probably had some degree of antibodies within their system that was like june maybe yeah and in my opinion delta delta was far more infectious than the alpha variant or anything that came before it far more infectious
Starting point is 00:47:20 but like i said viruses generally progressively evolve to become less lethal the lethality rates per case incidence with delta didn't necessarily seem to be quite as bad as the early unvaccinated rip that we had with the initial covid strain um can we back this with some data too that's cool i will do whatever I can to try to find this and back you up. You know what? I got it. Oh, you got it. I got it behind you.
Starting point is 00:47:47 Yeah. So what's one thing I want to check before I say this? Please. Let's just start with the context so that people don't take it out of proportion. We have what? 350 million roughly people living in America? Give or take. I think it's a little shy of that
Starting point is 00:48:05 but yeah okay because i didn't google that i just googled something else i wanted to google south africa's population as of 2020 their population was 59.31 million people according to position zero on google which is the source is the world bank got it the reason i say that is because we have a chart right here of seven day average of south africa covid statistics which i guess what does that date say right there bill that's march 27 2020 okay so this is from effectively the beginning of the pandemic and i will put this image in the corner you can get this who's who's the guy to read this jason carp i don't know who that is but some guy named human carp at human carp k-a-r-p human like human this is a chart that he tweeted out on december 21st that is the seven day average of south africa covid statistics i think i already said that we're just repeating things now but it has the cases and
Starting point is 00:49:00 the deaths and this is why i'm looking at this so you see a surge at the beginning in you know heading into like may and june which i guess they were a little behind us with the surge of 2020 where the caseload and the chart of the and again if you're watching you can see what i'm talking about but if you're listening it's a little harder the caseload and also the death number moves in a solid proportion so they're moving up while there's different variables meaning the deaths are way lower they have two sides of the chart on the y-axis that shows the numbers and they are moving in proportion yeah that then happened again in 2021 which I believe and this I might be misremembering, but the Delta variant, I know Omicron started in South Africa.
Starting point is 00:49:48 The Delta variant may have also had... I don't want to speak out of depth there. I can't say where the origins of Delta were. I believe they had it earlier. I'm going to check that after I'm done explaining this chart. But I believe they had it earlier in at least africa okay then we did here which would make sense we'll check it but it would make sense based on what we're seeing with omicron i actually forgot to go back and fact check what i just promised i was going to fact check
Starting point is 00:50:14 so now after the podcast i want to make sure i put it out there correctly the delta variant initially started in india in october 2020 this is according to data I literally just pulled up from CNBC. Feel free to check it out for yourself. On the podcast, I was thinking of the beta variant, which according to the same CNBC article, initiated in South Africa in approximately May 2020. So just want to make sure we're clear there so there's no misinformation. And that said back to the podcast but once again when that spiked in call it february march whatever of 2021 similar proportion another spike happened maybe this one was the delta who the fuck knows this is this is just about as the year's turning over going into 2021 yes third wave that you're looking at right here, that might be Delta.
Starting point is 00:51:05 This is Delta. Okay. This is absolutely Delta. See, I'm an idiot. That's why you don't listen to me on everything. Check the sources. But you see the Delta chart also, once again, very similar in proportion cases to deaths.
Starting point is 00:51:18 Now look at the Omicron chart. Oh, there's no denying that Omicron is substantially lower on the lethality rates than previous strains. And this is early data, but yeah. Yeah, I will amend my previous statement. Early data is heavily suggesting that Omicron is a far less lethal variant. I think with Delta, we saw a little bit of a middle ground starting to emerge, at least in the anecdotes that I experienced personally. And that is Delta was very severe from an illness perspective. And I think a lot of long COVID cases as we've come to acknowledge them as, you know know people with lasting respiratory
Starting point is 00:52:05 difficulties or decreased energy levels after having contracted the virus people who got severe cases it really you know kicked him in the nads I think there were a lot of those in the gonads your balls they kicked him in the balls I know I say weird stuff all right very entertaining I think I think you find a Sorry, go ahead. I know I say weird stuff. That's great. Very entertaining. I think you find a lot of those within the Delta strain.
Starting point is 00:52:35 And you look at this chart. See that initial peak there of the blue? Yeah, for people not watching. In the Delta variant? It's basically Omicron. The blue, which is the caseload is through the roof and for the first time the red which is the death load is down towards the very bottom of the chart meaning big spread so you see this wild parabolic upward spread of the delta variant but the death started lagging this never got to the same height or peak but it was sustained
Starting point is 00:53:09 it was a sustained mount the area you're talking about delta now yeah delta the area under the delta curve a little smaller than it was here but not by much yeah i'll also say the when you're looking at the proportion of the caseload, though, is still pretty similar, maybe not at the very beginning, that looks like where there was at least the first sign of a little spread, but then the spread between cases and deaths was consistent with the earlier ones. It just, It's interesting. And we're we're grasping at straws here, buddy. We're two non trained epidemiologists, being twitter warriors looking at the chart right
Starting point is 00:53:45 and that's why i and i always it's sad i gotta say this but also like there's part of me that understands too because there are a lot of people just say a bunch of shit and they have no idea what they're talking about but again like i can't speak like i'm an expert i'm out there reading and researching as best i can as i hope a lot of people are. A lot of people probably aren't. But, you know, I remember when you were in here last, because as we said, that was a week after the election. I think it was the same day that you were here. That night, I went downstairs and I turned on the TV. And I think it was CNN because Tapper was on. Okay.
Starting point is 00:54:24 And they were talking about some shit around like the transition or something like that and it was maybe 30 40 minutes of talking about the transition and that weekend before it had been like everyone was celebrating in the streets after the result was given on saturday that you know biden won and all that and no one was complaining about the social distancing problems that were going on neither was i i thought it was fine whatever but they hadn't been talking about any of it and then like a light switch like boom like that out of nowhere 40 minutes of watching it suddenly tapper goes into like the news reporting mode which is what he's supposed to do he's a newsman he goes and now we have to talk about covid cases today and they went talking for 30 minutes about how it's
Starting point is 00:55:10 getting more deadly we need to we need to get more strict with whatever all this this and that and that was a huge eye-opening moment for me because i had been kind of living in this malaise during the build-up to the election where i was like oh this is just all a part of the election politics and stuff it is what it is whatever i'm busy building this we're gonna be fine and then i see like oh shit trump lost and they're turning the focus back to covid and they're making it sound way worse than it was before which that part definitely isn't true i'm like oh this is not going to be done anytime soon and it wasn't and so now what's weird is that theme continued for whatever it was like almost
Starting point is 00:55:54 a year to the day a little more than that and in the past week and a half now we have seen i want to make sure i had this i made a note of this in my Twitter drafts. I'm a Twitter drafts guy once in a while. Look at this guy saving thoughts. There were multiple things that happened all at the same time where this is what it was. In a period of like a week, you had the CDC come out and move the quarantine time down from 10 days to five days which is like
Starting point is 00:56:28 the first time we've seen a sustained shortage of something i think at some point quarantine was 14 days and they moved it to 10 and there wasn't a lot of fanfare particularly for international travel it was 14 maybe i remember that maybe but at some point i think because it was 10 like when i covered a month and a half ago it was 10 days days. And I think a while back it was, you had to be 14. So at some point they did shorten before, but it wasn't a lot of fanfare and it wasn't 50%, 10 to 5. Because the other thing is now we're even seeing sports leagues that after this announcement are moving for unvaccinated players as well to not have to quarantine for more than five days. So they're doing it for both, which is like, well, well wait a second this is the opposite of what we've been saying they're trying to say like if you're unvaccinated you need to be like locked in your home forever and this would
Starting point is 00:57:12 this would seem to be the opposite another thing that happened was biden was on a call with i guess the governors i don't know i'm not sure but he was on a call that had to do with like states who were asking for help on covid and he said covid is not a federal problem it really needs to be up to the states now which total 180 yo like thanks president biden i like that a lot total 180 though right yeah and then you had this one was a few weeks ago maybe like a month and a half ago time kind of stays together new york times comes out with a report that was seemed to me to be pretty brilliant where they talked about how covid attacks fat tissue which would make sense with a lot of the data on a lot of fatalities we've seen and is also by the way in line it's not just covid a lot of things like if someone fat or
Starting point is 00:58:00 overweight got the flu in the past they're much more of a risk than someone who's in shape same deal having excess adipose tissue places strain on your organ systems it that's a fact we've known for decades correct and then two more things happened you had the what was the one oh yeah there was like now there's a conversation that's been happening on some mainstream outlets i think the new york times was one of them trying to remember there were a couple international outlets too where they're talking about how vaccine passports aren't are suddenly now not correlated with covid being more deadly or more cases or whatever it's it's literally like we're fucked anyway and i'll say this i took my vaccine i got my vaccine i've had it for a very long time i took my vaccine passport up to vax only new york to go to a vax only wedding just to fucking come home with covid along with i don't know 30 or 40 other people who went to the same wedding for the first time in the
Starting point is 00:59:03 two years that covid has existed right that was a little brain damaging the same night you know because your boy went to new york city that's i'm the fucking unofficial mayor of that place but sorry de blasio go fuck yourself but anyway that same night i go to the club and i go to to lavo up on up on 39th street yeah and i knew based on conversations i don't know why people were talking about this so out loud in front of me maybe they don't give a fuck but i knew based on conversations happening in front of me that like whatever group of people that was right there they all had fake fax passes every single one of them got in no problem because it's a fucking piece of paper we're using a piece of paper in the year 2021 and this is like the big deal
Starting point is 00:59:43 is this a college campus and were they 20 years, and this is like the big deal. Is this a college campus, and were they 20 years old? No, this is like, this is fucking Lavo. Shout out to Lavo. Love that place. But, like, you look at this, and I'm like, it's gonna happen. So now they're at least, like, admitting it. And then the final thing, and this was, this is the thing that warmed my heart. But in the same week, we saw my very good friend brian
Starting point is 01:00:08 stelter oh boy it's not really my friend but we saw brian stelter of cnn along with i don't know some old bag on cbs i didn't i don't know what her name was but come out with these monologues on different shows where they were saying that we need to think about the damage that we are inflicting upon the children and the youngest generations from an and the meta theme call it was the interpersonal communication standpoint which i have been pounding the table on for months and how bad this is and so i say all this because all of these things that are happening, mostly minus the New York Times fat report, whatever it was, the fat tissue report,
Starting point is 01:00:50 that came out wrong. No disrespect. But minus that report, all these things I just said have happened in the period of the last two or two and a half weeks. And it's the opposite of the quote unquote conspiracies that people throw around of the media just wants to make this last forever it seems like they're moving it in the other direction out of nowhere which also then does make me very suspicious because it's not like i trust these people i think they're full of shit but i digress collecting my thoughts yeah that was a lot. Collecting my thoughts here. So the very first thing that I want to say is that I am not dismissing the gravity of a global pandemic here. And I'm also not saying that you shouldn't take precautions to avoid Omicron. There are people who have
Starting point is 01:01:39 compromised immune systems that we should still be cognizant of, and we should still be cautious around and take, you know, those who are less fortunate than yourselves into account i second your thoughts on a broad level yes yeah absolutely as long as we don't go like nazi level not not the i am you know what i mean i know what you're talking about you know what you're talking about um that is to say that i am intrigued that, you know, viruses are going to virus and then suddenly the media is turning itself around and saying, well, maybe we're going to start laxing some of these passport constraints as you've alluded to. You know, people are going to fake it. People are going to find ways around rules.
Starting point is 01:02:27 People break laws all the time. So unless we enforce whatever mandates we have in place and decide that that's the route we want to go as a society, people are going to continue to subvert those mandates. Sure. And I'm not advocating for policing of vaccine mandates here. I am not advocating for that. Let me make that perfectly clear. Neither am I.
Starting point is 01:02:54 So, you know, it's a complicated issue, but such are the parlance of our times. You know, if you try to oversimplify an entire pandemic into a jab bad or jab good, you're probably going to miss the mark. Yeah. And the whole teams thing has even devolved into representing breaks in the foundation of said teams. Boulders are down the hill, buddy. Yeah. Like, did you see the whole Trump-Candace Owens thing?
Starting point is 01:03:34 No. Oh, my God. This was fucking hilarious. This is new to me. This was hilarious. Okay. So Candace Owens has on Trump. I want to see if I can pull this up.
Starting point is 01:03:43 She has on Trump for some interview. Okay. And full disclosure, I've often said this, but I want to make sure that people know my bias. I'm not a fan of Candace Owens. Okay. But she has on Trump and, you know, her relationship with him as the media works these days, people are in it. Like if they're right or left left they fawn over the people on their respective team and they treat them like a god so she treats trump like a god but
Starting point is 01:04:10 well the thing is either they're either they're god or devil yes the thing is trump did was president for operation warp speed and i've always said his ego is going to come first it just does and so we were the first to disseminate all the vaccines we did a great job no one's ever done better so sorry i've been waiting to be able to use that it's gone out of style that was pretty good but it's the best it's the greatest we we got the jabs pfizer did a good job moderna's an american company i prefer the moderna but uh dolly parton she was great she donated a lot of money shout out dolly parton she was wonderful instrumental in operation warp speed all right i'm done i'm fucking crying i gotta stop myself or that's never gonna end i gotta i gotta change the audio i just found another one
Starting point is 01:05:02 while i was looking for this i'm so i'm to start with this video of Candace with Trump. But Candace is a huge not vaccine person. Okay. You know, she has decided that this propaganda campaign, which is what she calls it, must mean that this is the death of people. And I will also say this in Candace Owens' defense, she is a black woman as well. And I do very much understand where the black community is coming from
Starting point is 01:05:37 on the anti-vax sentiment. Misgivings with... Yes, I have to say, I don't care who it is, whether it's Candace owens or any other tuskegee comes to mind yes there's a lot of them man yeah it's like i get it like generational trauma is a real thing so i will give her that but she got trump in there thinking that trump was like gonna agree that like this vaccine like doesn't work and whatever and remember the man wants to take credit we We talk to a lot of people.
Starting point is 01:06:05 So let's roll the tape. Vaccine is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. I came up with a vaccine, with three vaccines. All are very, very good. Came up with three of them in less than nine months. It was supposed to take five to 12 years. And more people have died under COVID this year, by the way, under Joe Biden. And more people took the vaccine this year.
Starting point is 01:06:28 So people are questioning how the vaccine worked. But some people aren't taking the ones. She's like, fuck and go to the hospital. The ones that don't take the vaccine. But it's still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you're protected. The results of the vaccine are very good.
Starting point is 01:06:44 And if you do get it, it's a very minor form. People aren't dying when they take the vaccine, you're protected. Still their choice. The results of the vaccine are very good. And if you do get it, it's a very minor form. People aren't dying when they take the vaccine. What about the masking of children? That's a true one. You just had to turn it right around. She's like, fuck, fuck, abort, abort. All right, so we'll cut that off. That was interesting what they were going to say.
Starting point is 01:06:59 I don't want to get off topic. Just before we talk about this, can we please check in with alex jones is an emergency christmas day warning to president trump you are either completely ignorant about the so-called vaccine gene therapy you help ram through with operation warp speed or you're one of the most evil men who have ever lived to push this toxic poison on the public and to attack your constituents when they simply try to save their lives and the lives of others. We're about to lay out the basic incontrovertible facts that what you told Candace Owens just a few days ago is nothing but a raft of dirty lies. Trump's the enemy! He's the enemy now! He's goddamn globalist Scott to Trump. So now it's even at a point, though, where the guy who everyone who's been...
Starting point is 01:07:57 There's been people across the entire political spectrum who have certain feelings on this, but we've seen a lot of people decamp from teams over the vaccine and so one of the ways that even those people who decamped who don't like trump at all and never want to see him in office again one of the ways that they've at least defended their stance is like well fucking trump ran this thing through like you didn't like him a year ago you still don't like him now i don't like them either why the fuck are we trusting this thing like that's their logic right there and then you see the guy come out and be like well yeah everyone's gonna have their choice but the vaccine's great you gotta take it candace i know you're gonna take it you're gonna take it right off camera and now suddenly it's like wait is this the thing that we're like oh now like people like candace
Starting point is 01:08:42 are like oh now we gotta abandon them don't worry you can't abandon me I brought an entire team of black suits with me they've got the Pfizer they've got the Moderna you can take your pick we do a mix and match here it's wonderful it's great it's a wonderful experience but it very interesting to see Alex Jones pull a 180 there. He was calm too. Yeah. Look, I've got some interesting opinions on Alex Jones as a performer. The man has charisma.
Starting point is 01:09:18 Oh my God, yeah. Unbelievable charisma. And yes, he gets ahead of himself a lot and he spews some absolute nonsense very frequently i also think he does this thing where he kind of like gets into bit characters and doesn't know when to stop them totally um but doofus or not he's he's charismatic he's a magnetic personality there's a reason he draws such wild amounts of viewership that earned or unearned. I'll leave that to your personal opinion.
Starting point is 01:09:51 He's a card. He's a card. He is. The thing that helps him is that he's funny. I mean, even if I can't stand a lot of things he says and think that there's a lot of damage that comes from it, there's two other things I can say. One is that he's funny. So it's entertaining. Look, I've never gone on to Infowars.com to watch, but I see the clips on social media.
Starting point is 01:10:17 I usually laugh my ass off when I see them. The other thing is, once in a while, he is right about something. And it's not like a light thing. It's like, oh, Epstein's taking people down to the island and fucking taking pictures of all these famous people raping little girls. And, I mean, he was right about that. You know, same guy comes out and says what he said about Sandy Hook, completely wrong. That's the thing. He has no credibility. Because when he's wrong, it's like, I mean, it's so beyond wrong.
Starting point is 01:10:43 It's like, I can't believe a human being just said that. Now, to retrace to some of the points that we talked about earlier, you said there's a lot of harm that comes from some of the stuff that he says, especially when he's off the mark like that. And he does contribute to a lot of this sensationalization of media and fast Twitch responses and the reactive nature of social media. He absolutely plays into that and uses it for his own personal gain. And that I'm not necessarily a huge fan of, but I guess that's just kind of being a media mogul.
Starting point is 01:11:19 Sadly, that's what gets rewarded. It is. I mean, it's the same thing you brought up at the very beginning, like with the extremes. The loud is. I mean, it's the same thing you brought up at the very beginning, like, with the extremes. The loudest voices, therefore, do win the attention. And that's a loud man. That's the loudest fucking guy on the internet, even though they're trying to cancel him off the whole internet. But, you know, I just get so confused watching all this because I...
Starting point is 01:11:41 How do you not? It's like in real time, I watch these people just continually decamp and moved it's like little crowds moving to the next thing like wait no that's right all right we'll go over here and then they go over there they're like yeah and then they're like oh wait no that's wrong oh we'll go over here and they're like yeah and then they're like well fuck we thought this was you know what the next one's gonna we'll go over here, yeah! And how many times are we gonna do this? Not everyone's in a rush to be right about the right stuff. Everyone's just in a rush to be right.
Starting point is 01:12:14 That was deep. I'm just a very sophisticated individual. Yeah, clearly. Clearly. I have monkeys clapping cymbals up here for everybody who is questioning that what was the one thing you and I were talking about a month ago
Starting point is 01:12:31 trying to remember you just reminded me of it where oh it had to do with like making things complex to make a case that's what it was what the fuck was the guy's name it's like the Friedman the guy's name where did we go with that it's like
Starting point is 01:12:45 the friedman technique or the freinman the feinman technique that's it simplifying learning explain that okay so the the feinman technique is and i'm i'm gonna butcher this so you might want to put a link to it okay but um it was it was basically understand the crux of the issue, de-emotionalize it, like remove your perspective from it, explain it like I'm five years old, provide applications for the issue at hand. So, you know, demonstrate the solution in action and then analyze make your conclusions and extrapolate to other concepts if i remember right that was the crux of the findment so i'm gonna find menu right now i'm gonna make that more simple than what you did the whole point of it minus the actual steps which i think you were eli pretty correct about is that the theory is try to simplify everything and take away all the color and the bullshit and the three dollar vocab words and figure out exactly what
Starting point is 01:13:55 they're saying you do have a lot of three dollar vocab words I'll give you that I do I try not guy but like you know we're gonna find them in the fuck out of you before we're done here as you should but like the the implication of that final result when you use that technique is that most talking heads in anything and this exists on every part of the political spectrum by the way people most talking heads make things far more cloudy with bullshit details and phrases and directions and emotions and shit alex jones is a perfect example by the way where they they really are masking the fact that they're not really fucking sure what they're talking about and they don't really have the best data to support it they're just trying to sound really smart and saying it i'll add to it that there's even people now who have just decided to not give a fuck so much that they just are openly completely wrong by saying something in one sentence that sounds absolutely fucking a word we're not allowed
Starting point is 01:14:54 to say anymore but you know what i mean like there are people like that but go look at like some of these news clips you'll see on different channels go look at fox news go look at cnn watch these people build their cases and like intellectually a lot of these people are smart they went to great schools like they they know how to read a book right and they know how to use the written word or the spoken word i should say and they know how to write it ahead of time so it sounds a certain way watch how many twists and turns they'll make even in in a 90-second clip, to try to make a point. Or I saw one a few weeks ago that was 30 seconds. And, like, they will, by the end, you're like, wait, what the fuck did I just listen to?
Starting point is 01:15:36 And then if you really break it down, you're like, they just said nothing. I can't wait for people in the comments to do that to us. Oh, I'm sure. They do it in the comments all the time. It's okay. I have fun with it. I gotcha.'s great but you know you know what i'm saying absolutely i mean the the reality is that modern day news the 24-hour news cycle was not created for the dissemination of information it was created for ratings it was created for engagement and it became a profit
Starting point is 01:16:07 machine entertainment and news is a business it's not just about fact reporting it's about it's about getting more people to watch your show people like brian williams had millions of watchers because they were charismatic. They delivered the news in a way that either, you know, there was a time when news broadcasters were popular because they brought serenity to a living room as people gathered around the television to watch the nightly news. And then that dynamic changed. You know, people stopped spending quite as much time with their nuclear family units. People, you know, had individual courses of action and then news had to become more entertaining to compete for people's attention. News had to be on at different times of day. The 11 o'clock news hour became a thing. Entirely dedicated news channels like Fox News and CNN and, you know, MSNBC and CNBC
Starting point is 01:17:08 rose to their existence because there was more demand for news. And as there was more demand for news, there was more demand for entertainment. Because then the television news cycle started fighting the internet. And the internet, as we all know, is the greatest singular source of dopamine that you could possibly ask for. Instant reward. You pick up your phone, oh look, I learned something today. Put it in your pocket. How the heck is a TV going to compete with that unless you have blaring graphics, high intensity, big bass, you know, sound effects leading you into good evening i'm brian williams in 2020 as he has to spin a yarn while reporting facts it's not just a fact it's not just an art of reporting anymore it's an art of entertaining and rapturing as they do it and that is difficult it's really fitting
Starting point is 01:18:04 that you're using brian williams throughout that entire example i think he used him twice because i don't know if you saw this but he just i believe announced his retirement yes he did yeah did you see how he did it i did i saw his send-off and it is chilling it's fucking incredible it's chilling And I don't care what people think about what channels or who's on them or what these people think of different people. We could sit here and never play anyone who's on Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC. But when shit is right, I don't give a fuck who says it. I'm putting it out there.
Starting point is 01:18:40 And Brian Williams absolutely nailed this. This video, dude dude i think i watched this like 10 times it's incredible i'm gonna put it in the corner of the screen and we're gonna let it play please well look at the time i'll try to keep this brief after 28 years of peacock logos on much of what i own it is my choice now to jump without a net into the great unknown, as I do for the first time in my 62 years. My biggest worry is for my country. The truth is I'm not a liberal or a conservative. I'm an institutionalist.
Starting point is 01:19:14 I believe in this place, and in my love of country, I yield to no one. But the darkness on the edge of town has spread to the main roads and highways and neighborhoods. It's now at the local bar and the bowling alley, at the main roads and highways and neighborhoods. It's now at the local bar and the bowling alley, at the school board and the grocery store, and it must be acknowledged and answered for. Grown men and women who swore an oath to our Constitution, elected by their constituents, possessing the kinds of college degrees I could only dream of, have decided to join the mob and become something they are not while hoping we somehow forget who they were. They've decided to burn it all down
Starting point is 01:19:52 with us inside. That should scare you to no end as much as it scares an aging volunteer fireman. First of all, I learned in that clip that he was a aging volunteer fireman as did i it was interesting i did but just very quickly the the first part the one thing he said there i could guess about what he meant but like institutionalists if he meant like an establishment of how everything is within like free market society and all that i mean i'm not going to totally agree with him there because that's a very complex thing and that's probably a generational difference but it's not a big deal the overall point he's making what was the line where they're burning us while we're still inside the uh the uh our politicians and elected officials who have the types of college degrees
Starting point is 01:20:43 he could only dream of have elected to burn it all down with us inside and that should scare you to no end those were his words i'm gonna tell you how i took this i took this as a shot at everyone i took this as a fuck everyone you guys are out of your mind we have whatever it is 535 or 534 whatever it is is, down in Washington, D.C., in the House and Senate, regardless of party, who are tribal scumbags. And they are – maybe there was even a wink-wink in there, and I don't know this, where he's saying they're tied to us. And fuck this. I can't be a part of this talking mouthpiece shit anymore. And I'm going to go out into the night
Starting point is 01:21:25 and i hope you you guys out there all can see what's happening because i'm trying to fucking tell you i mean that that address was basically him riding off on a horse into the sunset saying good luck it's in your hands now it's over it almost felt like it's over like i hate i hate to use that kind of defeatist term for it, but I certainly feel that. Certainly feel that. I think we are in a critical, critical moment in our evolution as a country where we get to make the decision just as we made in 1776 and just as we made in the 1860s where we get to decide is what unifies us and what gives us a common identity more important than what divides us say that again is what unifies us and gives us a common identity more important than what divides us yeah okay no i heard it right and i think that's what brian williams meant by being an
Starting point is 01:22:40 institutionalist if that's what he meant then you know he suggested my opinion on that at least the way i interpreted it was and i think i just added another did it to interpret it but um he professed himself as an unyielding patriot and he said his love of country yields for no one or something along those lines. I took that to mean that he believes in the American identity of the country. I didn't necessarily take that to mean that he believes in all of the logistics of how the machine works. But he believes in the concept of the American institution. Like, okay.
Starting point is 01:23:24 Yeah. Like the concept. Maybe that was right. And I misheard that part. I don't know. Maybe, okay, yeah, like the concept. Maybe that was right. And I misheard that part. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. This is why an address like that is open to interpretation.
Starting point is 01:23:32 But, you know, we reach that question of, are we unified or are we divided? Which one do we choose to focus on? Which one leads us toward a better tomorrow? I just want to know what it looks like back there i want to know back where that let's just say that one area what does it look like in the hallway not the hallways but in the in the cubicle desks at msnbc or fox news or cnn and all these mainstream outlets that have clear points of views in one direction or another what does it look like when they're setting up how they're going to paint a picture is it just a message from a voice on high that they don't see or hear and maybe they know
Starting point is 01:24:20 who it is or maybe they don't maybe it's not the head of the network but it's someone else or is it like these little meetings where they're like we're doing this because we're getting paid this and that means that this must be our stance on it and here's what's going to rile people up the most to get the most headlines i think that by the time it reaches those cubicles in that studio those decisions were made several legs before sure i, I'll agree with that. Yeah. I just want to know how the conversation goes, though. Because these people aren't like, again, these guys aren't dumb. Like, they're not total morons.
Starting point is 01:24:56 Like, they're educated people. Like, they can think about some shit. Like, I'm talking about the reporters and stuff. Propaganda works. Propaganda works on smart people. Propaganda works on dumb people it's why it's learned behavior it's it's human it's innate repeated exposure to a stimulus conditions a specific response that's basic neuroscience pavlov's dog kind of shit exactly mike spear
Starting point is 01:25:21 brought that up and if you if you continue to be exposed to the same messages again and again and again, and that has shaped your point of view, anytime new information or new and is inelastic, is unable to conceive of possibilities that are not within your preexisting narrative, then you are going to perform the role of a spin doctor yourself. I think that applies to media consumers, but it may also extend to some very intellectually intelligent people in those newsrooms oh yes oh yeah that's what i'm not just in newsrooms though either yeah i i think you're right and and i think that's i think that's how you do get to that end result i wonder if they ever watch themselves or watch tape of themselves which you know someone who makes content it is a
Starting point is 01:26:21 i have to edit it because i'm doing this my goddamn self but it's a cringy thing to do but i gotta imagine like the pros they at least like say like all right i'm gonna go listen to this one that i just did to see how bad i was or what i can fix if any of them do that i'm curious if they ever have a moment that they catch themselves like wait why the fuck am i do i think that because it seems like they don't and that right there that brian williams did was the closest thing i'm not even speaking for just him i'm saying like him looking at his network and all the other networks that was the closest thing to someone being introspective for the entire let's use his word institution of the media and being like, what the fuck are we saying? Question for you, because I think that this is tangentially related.
Starting point is 01:27:09 What do you think of Jack Dorsey's resignation? And if that's too far off topic, we can table that. No, this is great. You're making my brain fry a few times tonight. Not with that one, but like, we've gone in different directions and we've also gone into little territories to make me nervous that, you know, we're not going to say the wrong things
Starting point is 01:27:28 as far as like dropping wrong information or anything once again people that's why i tell you to please always go check that stuff but jack dorsey who i and more specifically what do you think of the person that he has allowed himself to be portrayed as after his resignation i don't know that he has a say in that matter minus the fact that he you know as a not related item he did own twitter but or ran it but he has a big twitter account nothing to do with the company but he always tweeted on it and now he's tweeting on it again and he's having some a little more extra fun it seems like since his resignation because maybe he doesn't have to think as much about the shackles are off yeah yeah in in that way so
Starting point is 01:28:14 other than that and that just creates some fun meme wars with people where they're like you know jack's based or whatever like all this shit minus that i i don't think he like anyone else has control over how it's going to be framed or how he's going to be framed especially someone with that much attention but he is jack dorsey is i didn't plan this but i have to admit this is just kind of the case now he he is a bellwether of this podcast here because he is somebody that I have theorized about at length on an extensive basis it's been at least six to eight times in the context of all the episodes we've done the first time was when we moved to the full guest mode towards the beginning with number 16 with mitch i brought that up and talked about it for about 10 minutes and how he was such a conundrum to me because politically jack dorsey
Starting point is 01:29:24 in my opinion if if you look across all the different things he said over the years and where he seems to stand he's like a liberal libertarian-ish type like he's bottom left on that compass chart yes gotcha yes not not not extremely so but yeah right like he's frankly he has a lot of overlap with me and I never thought about it that way. But recently I've thought about that more. Maybe that's a part of the little thinking on the same brain length kind of thing and looking at themes here that I was thinking about in a different way without realizing it. I don't know. Kind of complicated. But I've been talking about him a bunch. And while he was at Twitter over the last 15 months, 16 months, I would say a lot of things that happen, especially out of his company, are antithetical. I've never looked up if that's really a word.
Starting point is 01:30:18 It is. It is? It is. I've said it a lot on this podcast. I make up words. You're spot on, i got you these actions are antithetical to what he then openly represents with his own words in belief systems so just the easiest example and i've used this one before obviously make this case this is a guy who loves was trying to build a twitter without guard rails called i always forget it's not blue ocean it's
Starting point is 01:30:47 something i'll look at i always forget what it is i always had to look it up but parlor no i'm kidding that's a joke people but but he was trying to build this thing that basically allowed all speech every fucking thing no censorship no censorship okay and this is also a guy who has been one of the oldest voices as a proponent of bitcoin and the freedom that it represents and the anti-governmental institutional aspect of it right and more recently an anti-venture capitalist as well against web3 yes and now that and i don't know what i still gotta look at that because that's not what i was thinking but maybe there's a point i gotta look into that i'm not gonna get into that right now but you know he would do these things and like they're censoring think what you want to trump and what he did and all that but they're censoring a sitting president united states
Starting point is 01:31:37 guys speaking at a bitcoin conference six months later still you know he didn't argue a lot at all when he was getting body bagged by tag cruz it was like he knew it was going to happen i've cited the case of him volunteering to go on rogan with tim pool volunteering he's a smart guy he knew he was going to lose those arguments oh yeah like he's It's almost like he was Morse coding us. He was trying to say, like, blink twice if you're a hostage, and he was blinking fucking a thousand times to make sure we saw it.
Starting point is 01:32:13 But then the actions that were coming out of the company, maybe he helped them be less severe, which it does appear that way, given how fast Twitter has taken a lot. Increase in advertisements, increase in advisory notifications on sensitive content as deemed sensitive by twitter's new governing bodies but i i guess to like answer your full question which i believe was what do i think of them yeah what do you think of
Starting point is 01:32:39 jack and specifically what do you think of post twitter jack the full answer is i still need time is going to be our friend with this we need to see how this plays out but Specifically, what do you think of post-Twitter Jack? The full answer is I still need time. He's going to be our friend with this. We need to see how this plays out. But my takes on him in particularly are some of my takes that have actually so far so good, knock on wood, aged very well by seeing what we are. And the biggest thing that he did when he left Twitter is he went full-time hardcore into his other company Square and immediately renamed it Block. And he's trying to – I mean they're on the financial side of blockchain and trying to decentralize that. Like say we're creating a company and take it out of the company's hands.
Starting point is 01:33:18 That's the idea. That's what he's trying to do allegedly to give power to people right and so it's a total shift from where he just was and what was allowed to happen even if he was running it i find that an incredibly challenging undertaking for him specifically because block is already a publicly traded organization yeah you really think that the stock market full of historically successful bulls over the last 18 months is really going to allow him to prioritize putting power in the hands of retail for lack of a better way to put that versus Wall Street profits? Great question because the answer is – I mean it's like a hard no. He's going to find himself in a Twitter situation. He's going to get locked up with his board of directors, which I presume is probably what happened at Twitter.
Starting point is 01:34:07 Keep talking. I'm going to look at. And I think that that's just an area where he's going to end up getting stymied. I think that that's a very difficult situation to be in. And maybe he's just a glutton for punishment who hasn't learned his lesson about taking companies public yet um but then again here i am a middle-class schmo from delaware critiquing the actions of a very successful multi-billion dollar entrepreneur who's launched two basically fortune 500 ish companies so you know not a whole lot of room to talk here yeah i i can't find it a key there is gonna be how much voting shared is because he's on the board and the ceo i did not know he was on the
Starting point is 01:34:53 board of block i believe he is i couldn't find it as fast as we were talking there and this is when i have a producer eventually this stuff is not gonna be a problem but i do my best to try to pull things up in the moment but when i can't get it exact or like it's not gonna be a problem but i do my best to try to pull things up in the moment when i can't get it exact or like it's not gonna be clear i just hedge and say please look it up yourself but let's assume he is for a minute it also does depend like does that mean he has one eighth of a vote on the board which means like it doesn't fucking matter overrule yeah or does it mean like he has his own people on the board that he's really planted and not just like put them there to check a box for investors and stuff like that. I don't know, but this is a very valid question you asked that we're going to have to see because I think a lot of us haven't paid attention to Square like the inner workings of it at all. Like we have Twitter.
Starting point is 01:35:38 How much of what he's quote-unquote trying to do here is even going to be possible when you do have not just the stockholders i'll add to what you said and i'm curious to know if this is going to exist at square as well but my theory around him has been the man in the black hat theory that is what i didn't say in my explanation when i have brought him up on this podcast it has always come back to he ain't the guy calling the final shots on this shit somebody comes and knocks on his door i don't know who they're from where they're from but you say follow the money could be an agency could be other parts of government could be foreign entities could be the heaviest stockholders who have governments behind them i i don't know and it's
Starting point is 01:36:23 a tinfoil hat theory in that way but when i look at the actions and would see the things he would say versus what he would do at twitter and the lack of fight he would put up for it i arrived at that conclusion and now i'm just wondering if it's going to pass over to square as well lack of visible fight we don't know what fights he had behind closed doors oh sure but like he lost yeah if he did right like they did this shit i mean just ask sir parag agarwal current ceo of twitter yeah i don't know anything about the guy so he was i do know that he was formerly their cto their chief technical officer. And I also...
Starting point is 01:37:05 Technology officer? Yeah. And I know that as time has gone on, their dependence on AI and algorithms for content screening has only increased. Because let's face it, content moderators are expensive. And it's a draining job. And it's really difficult to keep people in those seats unless
Starting point is 01:37:26 you're paying them exorbitant amounts of money and i don't think anybody's really willing to do that for mods so it's not even possible yeah i think you've got hundreds of millions of people spouting whatever shenanigans come to the top of their head in 15 seconds you have to have some sort of automated sifting for that i get it it's dangerous did you see the rule they put in like day one of jack being gone the media was that where you can't you can't dox people was that the rule no it's not even like that would you agree that memes are like the most powerful form of quick comedic but to make a point communication there is maybe on the internet right now yeah okay absolutely they're poignant so memes have pictures of people in them including
Starting point is 01:38:11 people who aren't celebrities and stuff like that and without their consent you can no longer share them so hypothetically if you share a meme and the person who's in the picture reports to twitter oh take that down because i'm in it and i don't give my permission. Those memes under Twitter's quote-unquote new rule and what this is supposedly make it so that Twitter not only can take it down, but they could even ban your account if you do this a couple times or something like that. And this includes celebrities too. So if Brad Pitt doesn't like a meme going around with him, he can have every account banned or whatever because of that.
Starting point is 01:38:43 And they instituted this rule it's not just memes it's pictures or videos of any kind they instituted this rule with no ability to actually fully police it do you know how many people would be reporting this every day and do you know how many people who hate this rule are now going to make it their life's calling to spam the fuck out of them with reports just to prove that they can't police this it's insane yeah it's it's basically shooting their user base in the foot um it's an interesting point i hadn't thought about that but you know let's let's say that they do end up, you know, finding a way to police it.
Starting point is 01:39:30 I don't know that I want to go down that road. Cause I don't want to give them ideas. Nevermind. Yeah. I don't think they're gonna, but the point is, I think, I think if you enforce something like that,
Starting point is 01:39:43 not only do you take a little bit of the wind out of Twitter sales, because Twitter is just a giant meme dumpster. Not only do you take the wind out of its sales, you remove some of its value. Completely. You. Twitter's supposed to be the fastest way for people to communicate things en masse, right? It's supposed to be the bastion of instantaneous communication. The world's group text. That's a good way to put it.
Starting point is 01:40:18 You take memes away from that. What's going to happen to Dogecoin? What if that Shiba Inu comes in and says their owner i don't like this picture their owner doesn't like the picture that is definitely my dog i want it all down how is elon musk gonna move the market you're not i haven't seen them i mean maybe they are enforcing it and i haven't seen it but i haven't seen it successfully enforced yet or like reports of it being enforced which might be like an about face i'd love to see data but it just feels like these these places get into such a bubble that either they're doing this to openly provoke us into into some sort of weird reaction that is going to end their business meaning they're a suicide squad. Maybe they're
Starting point is 01:41:05 being forced to do that. Or they're just so removed from everything that they're so crazy that they're huffing their own farts and actually believe that what they're saying is the way to go and it's going to work. Let's explore that. Let's explore that second one. Okay. Let's say they're truly full-on san francisco sticking the sticking the wine glass back there giving it a little hop um thank you matt stone trey parker for that one um the the virtue behind it is supposed to be complete autonomy over your own public image you know yeah i don't like this image it doesn't represent me in a good light let me get a band gone erasure of the bad preservation of the good as defined by the individual that's how they're looking at it you only allow the internet to see what you want them
Starting point is 01:41:59 to see it's their way of competing with instagram instagram's been doing that for a decade doing what allowing people to portray visually themselves in the way that they wish to be seen yes i thought you were talking about the band oh no not the band not the band i'm referring to the the virtue as as i'm sure it would be referred to in a uh fart sniffing boardroom yeah it doesn't work long term it pisses people off if you erase history you're doomed to repeat it you don't let people see mistakes they won't learn from so i had an issue with tiktok back in the fall for it lasted over two months i had a problem and the data backed it up where i had my first video band yeah in september and the big blessing is that in in december In December, finally, TikTok became a luxury and not a necessity for me because finally I got the assets that I knew worked on TikTok.
Starting point is 01:43:12 I got YouTube to start to pick it up. So thank you to everyone who's been helping with that. But hopefully that train keeps rolling and YouTube appears to be a lot better in this department than TikTok. But I had a video banned that was about Operation Paperclip. It was a 29 and a half second video about Operation Paperclip. Are you familiar with the OP? Okay. So you probably heard about this before, but...
Starting point is 01:43:35 I just might not know it by name. It was at the end of World War II, the United States was very concerned about the Soviet Union, obviously, for a whole host of reasons. The Cold War was literally beginning with each passing day. And so a very unfortunate reality is that Nazi Germany did have... The best scientists in the world. Exactly.
Starting point is 01:44:00 They had brilliant scientists and technologists who also happened to be card-carrying motherfucking Nazis. I mean, like... Inglourious bastard status Nazis. Oh, yeah. Like, bad motherfuckers. Not just the people who are like, I was following orders. Like, the people out there saying, which one of you can run fast? Okay, shoot all the others. Like, disgusting, horrible people. Eugenicists. Yes, completely. horrible people eugenicists yes completely and so in an effort to prevent the Soviets from getting
Starting point is 01:44:28 their hands on all these people the United States grabbed up a bunch of them and instead of then prosecuting them for their crimes employed them correct and the biggest example of all that everyone and their mother sites with Operation paperclip was Werer von braun who ended up for all intents and purposes running nasa he was the head engineer of nasa so he wasn't the director but he was he was the guy that built the fucking rockets on the moon yes and so it's like well fuck the guy ended up putting us on the moon warner von braun was a bad motherfucking nazi bad nazi and so i put out a video where i quickly talked about this and summarized it about how the and the intonation of it was. This was bad. We should not have done this. We could have found another way. If you were so concerned about Soviets getting them, no problem. Go get them, put them in prison, prosecute them for their crimes and maybe maybe i could get behind
Starting point is 01:45:25 you making them fucking work in prison and answer a few equations if that actually works otherwise don't fucking put them in a mansion and give them a whole new life and say we're gonna you you what's the line they have an inglorious bastard he's like well i'm afraid you're gonna go home and hang up this here jacket in your closet and suddenly no one's gonna know around town that you're a goddamn nazi so i'm going to give you something that you can't forget right that's essentially what we let them do my video was saying this was wrong but it was banned for hate speech by tiktok right now it's banned for hate speech by tiktok because i use images in my videos that That's how I tell a story. And so don't you think if I'm telling a story about World War II,
Starting point is 01:46:09 and I've since researched this, a lot of accounts on TikTok that try to make World War II history accounts have huge problems because, you know, there's imagery. Because don't you think if I'm using this imagery, there's probably going to be a lot of things that tell the story of what actually happened, which happens to include very bad people like Nazi Germany. And don't you think there's probably going to be imagery that happens to include their very, very evil symbol on perhaps the flags in town of Berlin? Just wouldn't know. Okay.
Starting point is 01:46:35 Kind of hard to avoid. Kind of hard to avoid. So not thinking anything of that, and I'm very familiar with the community guidelines on TikTok. I had reviewed them. I didn't take any chances with this shit my video got banned for hate speech because it showed imagery of nazi germany and the algorithm immediately did not take my appeal i press enter on my appeal and said appeal denied instantaneous response appeal denied this video should be deleted it has already been taken down it cannot be put up
Starting point is 01:47:11 it even said it violated law somewhere which i'm like holy fucking shit and the scary thing is that the smallest things will trigger this on platforms like tiktok to the point that you started this all this whole thought process here by explaining that we're getting to the point where history isn't being taught so it's just going to be repeated that is quite literally what happens when something like that goes down and so i have not put that clip on YouTube because YouTube, and I'm going to give YouTube credit here, speaking with a woman who runs a team that I'm in communication with at YouTube with other creators, speaking with her directly about this, she explained that their algorithm, like put a human face behind it their algorithm may tag some stuff she doesn't know if that would be tagged but it may make assumptions about certain things and she's like maybe for like shorts you avoid that whereas apparently with longer form content i mean people post world war ii content all the time on youtube it's no problem it might come with a disclaimer if it shows like
Starting point is 01:48:19 crazy shit but like it doesn't get banned or anything maybe some of it gets demonetized which is sad i've had titles that include like world war ii that have gotten limited monetization because of it which is interesting but either way like it at least gets shown yeah she was saying like just be careful on the shorts on tiktok where everything's a short it's way worse than even this absolutely you know girls can they'll let girls show their tits like a hundred times and then suddenly ban them because they know there's going to be a million of them right behind them. They just use them like churn and then say, look, we ban people that show their tits. They don't really do that.
Starting point is 01:48:51 If it's tits or it's something like that, not that I'm complaining. I love that. You know, whatever. Don't let it go. But God forbid you teach history. No, no, no. We don't talk about that. That's a sensitive topic.
Starting point is 01:49:04 Titties are not a sensitive topic no they're not they don't but no we laugh but like it's true like they don't they don't want things i'm talking about tiktok specifically here but think about this on other platforms they are now down to the point where things are sensitive to us to use your word they are oh my god you're gonna be damaged if you see that unfortunately the same parents that were complaining about their kids seeing shit on the internet in 2009 2010 now may need to come around on the fact that holy fuck we need to be able to let them access everything even if we have to just try to police it ourselves as parents because
Starting point is 01:49:40 the downsides of this are we lose the ability to even fucking communicate important things. Many thoughts just came to me. I plan on not talking for the next 10 minutes. So I hope you can fill the time. Oh, buddy. Go ahead. Okay. Earlier in this, we had discussed the damaging impacts of the pandemic to children.
Starting point is 01:50:08 You had brought that up, that, you know, decreased social interactions and, you know, having 90% of your life lived through a screen is producing damaging impacts on our youth, not just from a socialization perspective, but also from a mental health perspective. You know, like we have a pretty wild mental health crisis in our country right now. And it's pervasive, and it's probably a lot closer to home than you realize. But what's interesting to me about that is when you live your life through a screen and when you start limiting the life that you can have through the screen by censoring
Starting point is 01:51:02 sensitive topics and not allowing people to set their own horizons or god forbid allowing parents to have autonomy over the content that their children are allowed to be exposed to you know we've castrated parenthood in this country we did it first with schools now we're doing it with social media um that's a bold claim and i'm gonna catch heat for that but whatever uh maybe we'll we'll get back to that but yeah uh the point is there there are damaging effects of that not just in terms of stifling curiosity of youth but also in terms of equipping our children to handle adversity to handle contrarian points of view to handle sensitive issues to to deal with the fact that history is not sunshine and rainbows it's filled with atrocities it's filled with
Starting point is 01:51:56 the darkness of mankind but it's also filled with heroism it's filled with you know both the yin and the yang there's the good and the bad and if you only teach the good sure you can emulate it but emulation does not breed ingenuity and ingenuity breeds success if everything were the utopia that some people want to believe the world could be there would be no meaning to life because life would just be a series of sunshine and rainbows the truman yeah actually i didn't even think of that but yeah and that's that's terrifying because you don't like and it's not to say like we need evil in the world right like god, we fight to not have it. But that never-ending chase the dragon that is eradicating evil or bad things, it's not meant to go down to 0% because we wouldn't have the stories of human persistence and, to use your word, ingenuity and discovery and figuring out new shit.
Starting point is 01:53:12 In order to get fire in this country, a bunch of fucking cavemen had to die. Because they couldn't figure out, like, wood, wood, fire. They couldn't figure that out. And then one day they did and boom! Fire hot. Fire hot. Right? And that's a beautiful thing now. Yeah. wood wood fire like they couldn't figure that out and then one day they did and boom fire hot fire hot right and it's that's like a beautiful thing now yeah but at the time when fucking caveman x was losing his cousin over there or whatever we didn't let the kids know that the leaves burnt but they also burnt his hand no i'm kidding um that's pretty good actually it's deeper
Starting point is 01:53:43 than i was gonna go but you know what i mean like you know we weren't gonna like that tragedy didn't last forever yeah that life went on it sucks you know he lost his cousin you're never gonna see him again and we learned from it and we now teach our kids not to put their hands on the stove because fire hot. Correct. At what point though, here's another question. Where do we get too careful? Oh, this is the big problem. We get so afraid, like we get down to the whole,
Starting point is 01:54:16 if one person dies, it's all over, that we legislate on, I was just talking about this with Lil Twin, but we legislate on everything to avoid even one that we fail to even face life itself which is a giant symbol of a lot of the overreaction to certain aspects of covid the the two concepts are not disconnected. And what I mean by that is the coddling and whitewashing of history that takes place that leads to that culture of emulation that I was referring to rather than a culture of ingenuity, that aligns with the over-legislation. That's merely a, um, what's the word I'm looking for?
Starting point is 01:55:05 Um, it's, the word's not manifestation, but I'm gonna go with that, of that culture in a different setting. You know, we're afraid of exposing people to the past because we don't want to traumatize them. And that's a reaction based on fear. And we over-legislate to avoid atrocities because that's a culture based on fear. It's prevention. We are removing or we're establishing a floor of safety in the hopes that that will be impermeable. And the message I'm trying to convey here is that that floor is not impermeable
Starting point is 01:55:47 the government is not infallible and we cannot legislate everything one because we don't have the resources to do so and because the government is made up of people who i've already established are infallible and are prone to corruption myself included and then we also have this this concept of risk tolerance and i'm watching that as we become a more cyber-based society our risk tolerance for things in the real world has shrunk to nothing boom nothing nailed it you fucking nailed that that's it that's what i couldn't get out earlier you just nailed it it is it is the direct it is the direct correlation of moving digital to also moving to risk-free zones and how many people in america do you think could camp overnight successfully and i fucking hate camping but not many and i i would know how at least how many people do you think could have
Starting point is 01:56:45 40 years ago 95 we're afraid of the world around us we're afraid of outside you know what this hasn't come up in a while two things first thing is a theme that came up in some episodes in the 30s and maybe the early 40s of like the number episodes of the show i think brady burkett was the first guy to bring it up in number 32 or 33 sorry for repeating all your old content no it's no it's okay because i'm glad like we haven't we need to hit this more he talked about how navarro navarro ravikant and others have said i think peter teal also said, we are afraid to innovate. We have made tremendous strides in the last 20 years or so in software, but not in the physical world. Because in software, it's not physical risk, it's only cyber risk. And in the real world, don't try to go to mars because one astronaut might die
Starting point is 01:57:46 we are so afraid of it and we sensationalize it and make it all this huge fucking thing and this is horrible and we can never let this happen again oh my god and then we we we get we get people to think in that method and kovat's like the ultimate example of that where people take it too far and it's like well this is bad this is not something we've seen before we got to figure something out here take precautions but like no let's shut down the whole world forever you know like you listen to certain people discuss this on tv who are somehow still on tv at this point being asked these questions as if they're an expert and they're really not at all but you know they'll they'll say like we have to we're gonna we're gonna wear masks on airplanes forever yeah we are gonna you know god forbid you god forbid you're you're touching family members who are
Starting point is 01:58:38 unvaccinated like it's crazy and one of the things you and I talked about, which I have really missed on not bringing this up myself enough because it's something I had at least brought to the table from things I had been fortunate enough to read, was the whole Jonathan Haidt theory on the word safety. You remember that book, The Coddling of the American Mind? Yep. We literally talked about this when you were in here last, but I I'm gonna bring it back up on purpose because it's just so spot-on here Jonathan Haidt wrote this book in 2000 I think it came out in 2017 and
Starting point is 01:59:15 He's an NYU psychologist Who's like kind of your classical? liberal psychologist brilliant guy yeah and he charted out what was happening on college campuses with like the quote-unquote woke culture and what it meant and it was scary how much how accurate in hindsight as i was reading it i realized he was like when he was studying this like the year by year how it went down because i was in college while this was happening right and his over one of his overall points was that we are so focused on safety this is scary to hear now that covet
Starting point is 01:59:51 happened after this but we are so focused on safety that to the same thing robicont and teal were saying we our fear of loss which is a more powerful motivator, and I do talk about that a lot, but our fear of loss is so disproportionately over our hope of gain that we're almost like basking in hopelessness. Like we enjoy it. And so you look at the people who seem to like be excited about the perpetual lockdowns and like they almost want to be in the middle of it and constantly have it. And then I look at where some of these people are in life and I feel bad for them because I understand that they're actually in the same boat that a lot of the people who are fighting against it are in, which is they feel hopeless. Like they can't make money. The American dream is dead. The wealth gap is out of control. There's a bunch of rich people who run everything and we're fucked anyway.
Starting point is 02:00:44 So in the case of the people trying to everything and we're fucked anyway so what in the case of the people trying to stay inside why even go outside this is way better the government's going to pay me off and everything and they're not thinking about that the same people that they're supporting the government and the machines are the establishment that they hated in the first place that got them here and so you roll over belly up and admit defeat and but they don't think they're doing that it's terrifying it's complicated it is terrifying how do you change the opinion
Starting point is 02:01:17 of 35% of people who are locked and loaded they are just on their literal island good luck getting them off i'm not saying it's that many but it could i mean it's at least 25 percent of the country thinks that way so that's where we've landed on that what percent is the fierce what is what is the fierce as we called it earlier and that is do you think it's continuing to get worse?
Starting point is 02:01:48 Do you think more people are being overtly polarized? Or do you think that we're turning a corner? And my personal opinion on that matter is it's too early to tell. It's too early to tell. There are signs pointing to maybe we've hit, and I don't want to call it peak woke, because that's trivializing an entire belief system within the country that has its merits within its foundation. So I don't want to call it peak woke, but I think there are signs that we've reached peak division. You know, as the Omicron rips through the country. Yes, I know I called it the Omicron. It's the Omicron variant.
Starting point is 02:02:34 Okay, I'm not a fool. I was calling it that forever too. So join the club. I do that in jest. As Omicron rips through America, as people are getting sick and people are concerned for their loved ones and some people, a lot of people are recovering from Omicron and they're seeing new light. There's a sparkle in people's eyes after they get through COVID and they're like, hey, I made it through it. Made it through.
Starting point is 02:03:04 If that can't take me down, what can? So do people come out on the other side? That's my wonder. And I am very fortunate enough to not have knowingly caught it yet. It's obviously possible that I had it. Stick around. I'll give it to you. Please, no.
Starting point is 02:03:23 That's a hard no from me, buddy. I don't have it. I'm good. I just had it to you. Please no. That's a hard no from me, buddy. Yeah, I know. I don't have it. I'm good. I just had it a month ago. Yeah. I got my vaccine. I have my defenses.
Starting point is 02:03:31 But I was like seven months out of the vaccine. Apparently, it's like waned at that point when I got it. Well, you know, at least you caught it when it was becoming a little less fashionable. Maybe. Yeah. But as far as like the end result being so bad you know you know what though i got because i'm a high risk whatever because i have at the moment severe asthma so my doctor was like how you feeling i'm like i feel fucking banged up he's, well, do you want to get monoclonal antibodies? I think you should get it. And I was like, well,
Starting point is 02:04:08 fuck yeah. And I went and got him. I'm telling you, man, 18 hours later, it's incredible. It's gone. So my whole thing is like,
Starting point is 02:04:16 all right, let's talk about the vaccine, but let's like, and people have been getting on Joe Rogan because apparently he's been saying this for months and months and months. I've heard it recently too, where he's been hitting at it.
Starting point is 02:04:25 So I don't know how long he's been doing it, but I'm going to say it's probably been a long time where he was saying that. Why are we not also like fine vaccine? But I don't know if he thinks that about the vaccine because he's like not about it. But either way, like, let's assume he's like fine with that. But also let's talk about like if someone does get it vaccinated or unvaccinated, let's give him the treatment to upskill the whole toolkit to deal with it i'm with you dude i'm gonna live it i was dude i went in there i wasn't gonna die don't get me wrong i was like i was okay but i was bang the fuck up yeah and 18 hours later i was like i want to work out so whoo all right uh can you do me a favor can you depends can you go to finviz.com and pull up a one-year stock price chart for moderna
Starting point is 02:05:15 hold on what are you doing to me bill what are you doing to me i'm not on whatever you said because i already forgot what it was i'm on google but here's the one year okay i'll put it in the corner screen can you overlay like what their what their price was back here look at that moderna a well-known vaccine distributor stock price so on january uh january 4th, 2021, their stock price was $111.73. Now, mind you, January 4th, 2021, the first rumblings of the possibility of an unusual illness are just being whispered in Wuhan. This is not when COVID has hit America. This is a couple of months beforehand when
Starting point is 02:06:05 wuhan is getting a little little squirrely over there all right wait when when did you just say that was january of oh i'm sorry you're in 2021 my bad yeah i want this to go back further i want you want it okay all right so we're gonna go back to... Uh... Time scales are important. My bad, guys. All right, let's go to January 10th, 2020. It was $19 a share. $19 fucking dollars a share. Moderna's price today is $241 a share. You want to tell me that this vaccine distribution
Starting point is 02:06:41 was solely about the protection of the American public and didn't also include a giant mismanagement of federal funds to put profits in the hands of a few people at the head of three major biopharmaceutical companies in Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna. I'm not defending Moderna or Pfizer or anything or being a big pharma guy. Let me just play like unreasonable cynic in the middle please please i encourage that everything has an aspect of money to it do it do follow the money right yeah but like whoever was gonna get the vaccine and it was three well now it's really two because they say don't get the j and j but like
Starting point is 02:07:20 they were gonna win like the stock price is to go up because people know they have it. Yes, and I understand that. But you just, you look at the, how do I put this? You look at the push job. You look at the media campaigns around it. You look at the encouragement, the social good that comes from getting the vaccine. And I agree that there is merit to it. You look at the encouragement, the social good that comes from getting the vaccine. And I agree that there is merit to it and it should have been pushed. And I understand that there are financial implications of this, but I wouldn't expect a company to grow 10x
Starting point is 02:07:56 just from the federal support of a vaccine. Something stinks to me there. I understand. And maybe that's just my own lack of experience in the market that legitimately could just be me being a novice but it doesn't sit well yeah and you know your shit now too i will say that is one spot where i'll call it out and say that doesn't surprise me in the slightest of course it could 10x because and moderna was smaller than pfizer i don't know how much smaller but i mean pfizer was a well-established company
Starting point is 02:08:29 yeah moderna is not on that level correct you know they got something that got distributed in moscow that had free branding from the government of course it's going to go up but like anything that was helped by covid went up that's why you go back to the question of why was the washington post owned by jeff bezos and in fairness to them like a lot of different publications actively calling and supporting continued lockdowns for a long time there i think they might still be but i haven't seen it recently so maybe they're not but for a while they were when whether or not it was a coincidence their owner is the number one profiteer of lockdowns nobody's winning more than amazon between revenue and data and you know by closing down physical not that that shit wasn't already
Starting point is 02:09:19 going away of course it was but like you whoops sped it you took out and and you took out even like online competitors who weren't set up as well for speed and and convenience and optionality of products you took them out by people just saying well fucking amazon has it operation warp speed oh god yeah but like you see it it is it's on every level it is and. And it does make, like, I don't want to be the guy that questions, and not questions, that says the motives of everything are fucked and all these people are evil. Like, that's what Alex Jones does. But some of them have to be.
Starting point is 02:09:58 And who? And is it just money? Or is there, like, a weird global conspiracy behind it? Like, I don't know how could we and that comes back to the topic of serenity from earlier what do we have control over what don't we have control over and do we have the wisdom to know the difference but people and i'll admit i have no control over this i shouldn't let this rile me up. It does.
Starting point is 02:10:27 It bothers me. It feels like... When they brought this vax out, and they were... And I parroted it. You can go roll the tape i repeated it word for word what they said and they they gave these insane like in a good way percentages that it had the 97 percent effectiveness i think i said i lines, and I definitely said this a few times, it is the most effective
Starting point is 02:11:05 vaccine that has ever been created. That was such a high bar to set it at. Yeah. Why did they do that? When they knew, it was created fast enough that like, you shouldn't say, in hindsight now, you shouldn't say that because you don't know yet. You haven't seen it over a long enough period of time, which was something I questioned before the vaccine came out. Culture of fear. Right. That's why you said it there. That's why't seen it over a long enough period of time, which was something I questioned before the vaccine came out.
Starting point is 02:11:26 Culture of fear. Right. That's why you said it there. That's why you said it there. Culture of fear. Now they've had to move the goalposts. So what does that do? That fuels the fire of people who want to think that this thing's evil to have something to point to and say, well, look at the data and how it changed.
Starting point is 02:11:40 And I can't look at them and say, you're wrong. Well, there's a couple of factors at play there. One, viruses evolve faster than humans. Congratulations. You're going to build something. It's a virus. It has such a small amount of viral RNA that any singular point mutation in it is going to have a vastly different impact on the way that it functions biologically than we know or can plan for english pull it back into english okay virus make tiny change body react big different um across different people
Starting point is 02:12:13 yes yes every person's good yes thanks keep calling me out i'm a good translator by telling you to translate absolutely no it's important i i get ahead of myself sometimes um so the the point is we came out with those statistics and maybe at the time with those in situ trials meaning like everything is very controlled everything is in one singular location they were right they might have been right yeah maybe you can't i could see you can't publish a statistic like that in the present have it be accurate and expect it to stand the test of time knowing that a virus is going to out evolve that singular treatment it's just going to happen the reason we postulated that it was so effective, that that vaccine was so good,
Starting point is 02:13:08 is because we were in a situation where America was crippled by media sensationalist fear and by people dying and by ERs being overloaded. You know, this was a medical emergency of a nature we hadn't seen since the Spanish flu. It's a fact. Yes. Millions of people were at risk. And genuinely, without the propagation of a vaccine, this could have been far worse. Yes. It could have been far worse. people might argue this but from a preventative standpoint we absolutely still can easily and
Starting point is 02:13:50 confidently make that argument yes where i have to cede some ground and say like okay is when you see like the hardos with the vaccine going out there and the fuck is going on outside i don't know what that is i mean some kind of truck anyway but like when you see the hardos of the pro vaccine crowd coming out and saying like oh because you're unvaccinated i'm vaccinated and I got it because of you. When the whole point, like this is where they start to go so extreme that like, well, that's not how it's supposed to work. You're supposed to be in a perfect world, which it never is in fairness.
Starting point is 02:14:38 You're supposed to be fully protected and you should be worried for them, the unvaccinated and not the other way around like it's not a a it doesn't appear to me to be a virus of the unvaccinated at this point it appears like we've had the different strains that we talked about and certain things have broken through and you are more protected if you have the vaccine they they wouldn't have too much argument if they just said it like that. And didn't say like, no, you must have it because you're fully protected. And then change it so many times that people then question it.
Starting point is 02:15:13 It's like they want people to question it, in my opinion. They want people to finally have a point where they say, where's my line? Who is they? Who wants people to question it? It's like Princess Diana used to say in the royal palace. There were men in gray suits and no one saw and they really ran shit it's the same thing and everything else so here's my question julian who stands to gain the most from us questioning the institutions that legislate from us questioning the institutions that govern who stands to gain the most i've never been in this position because i would argue right now that it's international stressing my body i would argue that it's international on international conspiracy
Starting point is 02:15:54 no i i to suggest that everything that happens in america happens in a vacuum is very american what is that you know what here's a dumb question i don't think i've ever like people have said in a vacuum in so many different ways i've never thought about how many different use cases there are for that without external influence okay that's that's all i mean by it but people use that a few different ways no well you could mean in a literal vacuum okay i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm being a dunce um i'm sure that there are other ways to use it i'm admittedly fixated on the one that i just used okay so if you think about people that stand to gain the most from us not having faith in our own government i would argue that those are two foreign international powers china and russia yes sir specifically with interests in taiwan and the ukraine i never thought of that wow wow we were yeah that's the 500 pound elephant in the room and i am not well enough versed on foreign affairs
Starting point is 02:17:13 to dive into five hours on that so yeah well we're not gonna do five hours on anything but i got you you you get what i mean though it's just a question that is in my head, and maybe I'm tin hattie for that. I don't know. No, I don't think you are. And for all the economic benefits that their country enjoys on a macro level, their people are victims of who runs the country. And there's a lot of Chinese people. And so there – we hear about the GDP growth, which is cooked and all that. But we also don't see all the people over there who are fucking miserable and want to get the hell out and you know can't and unfortunately the decisions do come upon the government and what they do and their ability to propagate it by controlling things as a communist government through speech and and all
Starting point is 02:18:16 that there's no doubt that the flow of information has one-wayed itself throughout this pandemic period it comes from america to china but the information that comes back we don't we don't see it it's behind the scenes and i don't know how or what or how much but we know their influence in the world i look at actions china goes up and on a governmental level buys up everything to make them own places. They go to countries that they know can't pay back debt. They give them something big so that they're – it's like the mafia. They go get someone who's never going to be able to pay their debts so that they have them on the hook forever. And so if they do –
Starting point is 02:18:58 Just remember I did something good for you. Yeah. Remember. Vinny had your back right so you know the baseball bat to the knees is them coming in and saying oh that was your canal it's ours now because you didn't pay your bills what's to say that they're not doing that all over the place behind the scenes with different institutions and stuff like that you know like i mean another example that's curious to me is that one of the old criticism stereotypes that some people had had in the past about pro-israel media
Starting point is 02:19:36 was that people would be like well all of all of the a lot of jewish people run the media and so of course they're going to be overly pro-israel and it's like well okay but i also by and large appreciate the friendship as a country and i i appreciate the fact that there's people who know how to stick together and are loyal to their to their homeland great could i see where that maybe went too far and people had a had an opinion like maybe we should have a little more balance on this in the media over the years I'm talking? Yeah. Sure. Yes. I'll agree with that. What's interesting to me is that now it appears to be – I don't want to say the opposite, but now like the media by and large is very, very aggressive at Israel. And I'm like, like well suddenly did Jewish Americans
Starting point is 02:20:26 stop running the networks no there's a lot of them that are still there so does that mean that there's money coming in that's forcing them to do other things I don't know maybe that's full tinfoil hat but like these are the things I look at and I say well where's that money coming from? Who's doing it? Go check Unusual Whales. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, exactly. But you wouldn't be able to tell, right?
Starting point is 02:20:52 You wouldn't know who it is. How would we? I don't know. I think they probably, with the pandemic, China has influenced a ton. I just, I don't know what I don't know. And frankly, a lot of you people out there, including people who claim to have the answers, you technically don't either.
Starting point is 02:21:10 I can have my suspicions, but I don't know. And the unfortunate reality of that is we will almost assuredly never get that clarity that we so seek. And so, if you allow the lack thereof to drive you batty, that's how you end up in a rabbit hole. Yes, which is what I actively seek to avoid.
Starting point is 02:21:35 I don't like to assume that it's all this or all that. But empires fall and a lot of times they fall because the battle comes within like you've heard you've heard if you're on tiktok if you're on youtube shorts especially all these quotes that like the the two main quotes that joe rogan has repeated over the years again and again are being played left and right for millions of views and people are hearing them. And I wonder if they're actually truly thinking about the meaning of this, like all the people listening. And one of them is, I'd rather be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. And another one is, hard times make hard men who – and I'm paraphrasing this isn't perfect hard times make hard men who lead and make soft times that make soft men and then the forth turning stuff
Starting point is 02:22:36 yeah yeah he took the words out of my mouth and so you know that's a theme i like coming back to but is that where we are because we are so concerned with all the things including a lot of things that matter a lot but we are ignoring some of the most important things and we are ignoring psychologically what's happening to us and is that psychologically what's happening to us coming and emanating from places that aren't even here so if you want to don the tin hat again it's on who's uh who's the controlling conglomerate of tiktok okay yeah bite dance yeah bite dance and that's as far as i'm going to go down that road china um but the point is it all comes back to culture of fear it all comes back to culture of fear. It all comes back to culture of fear. It all comes back to censorship,
Starting point is 02:23:27 lack of exposure to the negative, that decreased risk tolerance. You know, that's how empires fall. They don't fall because, you know, suddenly world changed. We're done with this. Now, bye. I mean, maybe the indus river valley
Starting point is 02:23:45 civilization did that whatever that's ancient history you look at rome rome got complacent yes rome got complacent they got lazy they got scared they didn't advance they weren't still taking risks they rested on their laurels what does that sound like to you yeah yeah and and look there's that's a bitter pill to stare in the face and we it is incumbent upon us i'm referring to you and me our age group group, our generation of, you know, millennials and Gen Zs to make the decision about our own character. To make the decision of do we want to roll over and settle for being mediocre or do we have any fire left in this soul? Can we stay on top?
Starting point is 02:24:49 And are we willing to put in the work, the sweat, and the gruel to do so? I think a lot of people don't even think of that, though. And so the question is, how do you encourage us to take a good hard look in the mirror and say, stuff's tough. i tougher i mean it's it would be a total opposite of where we've gone it's like you can't this is why we can't have nice things man because the minute you start to realize that stiffen up the upper lip stop being a pussy is not always a great answer and can actually damage a lot of people which i agree with it can it can it can you go so hard the other way that you lose all the positive parts of stiffen up the upper lip mentality right it's like you have to be a hundred s talk about this all the time with shit but it's another example once again of you have to be 100 miles an hour or you have to be zero and And I just want to go 50. That's an interesting analogy.
Starting point is 02:25:50 That's a really interesting analogy. You know what I was looking at a few weeks ago? This is going to put an image on it. And I haven't said this on the podcast yet, so who better to throw it out there than you? But I was looking at some pictures and videos from virgil abloh's last louis vuitton show which was two days after he died down in miami okay and you know i'm a creative individual i i love that i very much understand how artists think because i am one in a lot of ways and i have i can get overly emotional in reaction to stuff and that's where i get wrong about some things and people will call me out for that but i have at least
Starting point is 02:26:33 some ability to be pragmatic at the highest level on certain issues so i have some of those things like if you look at democrats who are too emotional and republicans who are too pragmatic i'm generalizing but you look at that like liberal conservative that tends to be that whatever i do have a nice little balance of those two things i may still lean too emotional but i at least have some pragmatism in me of course and so i love the emphasis we have on the ingenuity and creativity and what humans can come out with and i love like looking across at people and saying damn like why do you why do you look like that or like why do you why do you enjoy painting this thing or making music like this i mean people can hear it on this podcast right like that's why i fuck with someone like ashton larold so much
Starting point is 02:27:22 because like literally in appearance, he's creative. Like before he even starts talking and then he's even more creative. Like I love that shit and I want to give it its place. But I'm looking at this imagery at Virgil's last show and it's showing Kanye who I like a lot. And I think 21 Savage, maybe Pharrell was in this shot. I know he was there and there were some of him. Maybe he was in this shot too. I'm not sure if I can find a picture of it or a video of it
Starting point is 02:27:47 I'll put it in the corner if not we'll just move on here but I gotcha I'm looking at this and I think it was 21 Kanye was doing his regular thing I don't think he had the mask on anymore like the full face mask and all that but 21 Savage was in like a one piece like
Starting point is 02:28:03 fashion statement suit and mind you they're at this what became a memorial for one of the greatest people within fashion an icon who had just tragically sadly whatever it is died i mean he died young and unexpectedly to a lot of people on on saturday and they're honoring him so like course, it's a fashion show too. People go all out. They do their thing. I understand that. But I'm looking at people in this image and I'm seeing a bunch of, I'm seeing everyone completely celebrate this image.
Starting point is 02:28:37 And then I have this thought. I go, what if I put Jocko Willink next to these guys in this picture? What if I put a Navy SEAL next to these guys? Would the vast majority of the younger generations on the internet celebrate him in that shot? Or would they kind of make fun of Jocko Willink? Or ignore Jocko Willink and look at the guys with the loudest costumes in the
Starting point is 02:29:06 room and this is where I have the issue in my opinion 70 years ago that same scenario happens everyone's making fun of the guys in the costumes and saying Jocko's the man that's what we want that's America that's what it is and I'd be saying well yes but also let's appreciate this too this is really cool both of them have value let's appreciate this too. This is really cool too. Both of them have value. Let's have both. Yes. Now I think we're at the point where only the dudes who do the craziest shit, who I also happen to fucking love, are the ones who have value.
Starting point is 02:29:35 And then it's almost looked down upon to be a tough guy on some things and pick yourself up on certain aspects. And all I'm asking for is the balance. You just brought up an interesting concept. Did that make sense? It does. It does. And the question becomes, what aspects of masculinity are toxic
Starting point is 02:29:59 and what aspects of masculinity are productive? And are we societally able to divorce the two because there is a lot of toxic masculinity bashing with good merit but we forget to celebrate what makes masculinity valuable grit drive determination the perseverance to say no fuck you you can't tell me what i can't do and to be clear like and that exists within both genders but that's what i'm saying like women should be able to do that too exactly you're not saying that's confined to masculinity it is historically attributed to that sex and i'm sure i I'm going to get myself lambasted here. No, I just covered for you because I understand exactly what you're saying.
Starting point is 02:30:49 And I don't want people to mishear that. It's like as a society as a whole, including women, they should be able to do that, too. Absolutely. And it should be like, OK, well, women are taking on a nice masculine trait that that we should celebrate as well. And I think to an extent we're starting to see some of that. I think that the feminist movement has brought a lot of that backbone and initiative into the limelight and that has really promoted equality in a lot of valuable ways i think we're doing so at the expense of see wait if women are allowed to do it you are seeing that in the world where then men are not no no the two can coexist that's the problem but you're saying right now that's not the case right
Starting point is 02:31:37 now it's not the case okay all right you twisted me for a second but sorry okay yes i agree i realized that that probably wasn't clear we, I was producing while you were talking. That was a prime example where I couldn't listen all the way. Disincentivizing male ambition at the cost of promotion of women, and that's because women have been an underserved community within our country, and that's not without value. We're leaving guys behind. Right. you we're leaving guys behind right and this is where i love that the way you just introduced that
Starting point is 02:32:09 like making the point of good promotion on women but let's also not do that in a zero-sum game where you just destroy men i agree completely we need to take society where we say hey in 1900 what was everything wrong with it like who was fucked in society and like right away you think highest level you think like well minorities especially the black community in america and then you go to women like they couldn't even vote in 1900 and you're like okay let's make a list like i'm just talking hypothetically right now let's make a list of every fucking thing that was wrong that men could do that's legal by the way in today's standards we want to get rid of shit that was legal back then that they couldn't do like maybe maybe back then it wasn't and i don't know if this was the case but maybe in 1900 in some states like a man could slap a woman or
Starting point is 02:32:57 something like let's get rid of that shit right let's get rid of all the crazy shit but then when it gets to like common sense simple shit that is like accepted in the male gender, let's make a list of all those things. And let's make a list of all the things that women and black people and other minorities or other groups can't do at that time period. And let's make sure their list of can't dos is at zero compared to the list of men. Everything's evened out. That I like. is at zero compared to the list of men everything's evened out that i like what i don't like is when you do the one side and you add everything to women or minorities and and then on the male side you just take away to make sure they're down below that's antithetical to society
Starting point is 02:33:41 and it shouldn't be like oh that's advocating male supremacy no i am advocating equality not to say i'm also not saying that like we currently live in a world where women are way more powerful than men that is not the case at all you are pointing out and i am agreeing with the trend that we seem to want to detract in order to add or subtract in order to add and we really need to just be adding on the one side while maintaining the status quo of everything that's not literally illegal and actually toxic on the mail side i want to thank you for providing clarity to my thought that was okay well done um and then we face a bit of a conundrum. Because how? How do you advocate for that without it becoming a zero-sum game?
Starting point is 02:34:30 Because the current societal trend suggests we legislate the shit out of it. Oh boy. And as we've discussed here before, legislation generally comes from a culture of fear. Which does not breed ingenuity and advancement. It allows us to rest on our laurels and promotes a zero-sum game, which worsens things like a rapidly intensifying mental health crisis among males, where male suicide rates are 4x those of females. Really? 4x, buddy. Go look it up it up yeah i'm gonna look that up really 4x and that's the thing like when we start bringing up shit like that and i'm not gonna rip you here because i understand why you're saying this i'm talking away from the mic because i'm on the computer like when we start bringing
Starting point is 02:35:16 up shit like that it that's the kind of rhetoric that continues to create the teams like look we're dying a lot faster than the women are. And I don't intend for that to be a divisive statement because I am not anti-feminist. In fact, I would consider myself to be a feminist insofar as the definition of promoting equality among everyone and equal opportunities and equal recognition of talents and accomplishments.
Starting point is 02:35:42 And well, shit, I believe in the equality of people but i'm not kidding about those statistics there is a mental health crisis among men i think it is contributed to by calling men toxic and not and not just acknowledging toxic male behaviors straight up calling men toxic, boiling down their entire identity to just say, you're bad. My only regret about this podcast is that I'm not doing the third mic yet, and I don't have a female sitting right here with us. I wish that we did. I want to get one in here immediately after this podcast,
Starting point is 02:36:22 and I want to have a requirement that they listen to all the points you and I made before they come in here too so that they fully know the context of the conversation and can have all the information to be able to make cases. Because I think these are hard questions. But I do want to say I did pull this up while you were talking, American Psychological Association. This is what blows my mind. This is from 2015. This is not even new. This has been around four times the suicide rate among American men than among American women, according to data. I'm reading from this APA, but according to data from the Centers for Disease
Starting point is 02:36:58 Control and Prevention, women are more likely to attempt suicide, but men are more likely to succeed, which actually, actually side note if i remember this correctly part of the reason for that is because women are and this may actually detract from our argument a little bit here okay but women are tend to be more concerned about the appearance of their suicide meaning men are more likely to just grab a gun and pull the trigger and blow their brains out women are more likely to think how will i look when i'm found what do i want my body so they may do something that takes longer like cutting which in and of itself poses societal questions that i don't necessarily like like why do they care about their appearance if they're offing themselves why
Starting point is 02:37:52 have we ingrained that as such an important societal concept that's interesting i i think it's again i would love to have a third mic right next to us i think it's just you know not to rip on us as men but i think women are they are more conscious of making sure their environment is well put up for the people around them like why when i throw a party at any point in my life i buy some food some fucking kegs you know and make sure there's not like shit stains on the floor and we have a banger right when women throw a banger they fucking not to say i haven't cleaned the place before i think we all do that to an extent extent but women make it spotless they have a buffet they have fucking labels on everything it's way frankly it's way
Starting point is 02:38:41 better right it's way better and you know they they do a good job of that and i think it's just that's a male weakness and a female strength i i just think it's inherently that so it just in an extreme scenario like committing suicide which is like a wild thing it happens to slightly extend to that and again i'm remembering that i think my source was talking to strangers malcolm gladwell i think there was a chapter that talked about that but please check what i just said because that was not on this article but that was why so it gives people a longer enough time like if they're doing methods like cutting there's time it's not like boom trigger i'm dead it's like i cut it could take eight minutes nine minute whatever it is and people could find me. And so they don't die. So more women attempt or like make a scream for help, whatever it is, like something bad where their life is in shambles.
Starting point is 02:39:31 But more men are successful and therefore the rate is higher. And I realize we're talking about really heavy stuff here and some very controversial topics here so if anybody who is watching this wants to check me check you or check any of the statistics or the lines of reasoning that we've had here i open that discussion i i'm absolutely open to learning more about this because these are complicated issues and i don't want to come across as a blowhard here so there's my there's my little disclaimer about happiness bill i i really didn't want to do this man but i i think i need a drink i'm all right with that all right this is like look and i i appreciate yeah i appreciate the you being cognizant and checking stuff too and what we say cause you know
Starting point is 02:40:25 you have a plot form you don't want to fuck it up but my brain's been hurting tonight and we've been talking about a lot of important shit and you have my mind racing I need a fucking drink talk to the people while I get some alcohol I miss performing dude
Starting point is 02:40:42 I really do stick around I'm gonna keep performing on here. Well, you stay tuned long enough, I might just have a channel of my own. Yeah, I think you need one. Yeah? I'd listen to you. Well, you're interesting, and you're also like, you know, you're less of a... of an absolute... what's the word I'm looking for? Neanderthal, like me.
Starting point is 02:41:06 Oh, don't worry about it, dude. I've got the pronounced brow, and I have my club at the ready. I have my club at the ready. Well, if I get canceled, I'll blame it on you. At this point, that might be fair. But if you get canceled from this, what makes you think I have any shot at making a channel?
Starting point is 02:41:24 Doesn't matter, because you don't have one shot at making a channel doesn't matter because you don't have one yet asshole you got that nice stream of income i am playing with house money thank you my friend cheers salute it's all over world's ending i mean we're talking about china too in there yeah i think when was that like 20 minutes ago had to have been i don't know but some i was talking with somebody the other day and i hadn't looked into this apparently there's like books written on it but everyone's been talking about supply chain and all that shit but there's some sort of stories simulated statistic where if we were to shut if we were to have our supply chain of drugs pharmaceuticals shut down from china like at the snap of a finger maybe the government got
Starting point is 02:42:16 mad and they said no more drugs to us there'd be millions of deaths in the united states within three or four weeks or some shit that's terrifying right like that that reliance is like we we can't keep treating the chinese government like we can count on them and i think we do because we treat the country like we can count on them and even if we like a lot of the people there in business who are great and you can count on them, if their government comes in and says, fuck you, it doesn't matter. Go ahead. That's a good point. I mean, one of the questions we have to answer though is, can you trust the Chinese government as far as you can throw it? Can you throw the Chinese government? Increasingly, we're finding that the answer to that question is no.
Starting point is 02:43:09 And I'm starting to wonder, what's stopping them from just saying, well, F you, America, no more drugs for you? I'm starting to ask that question. And again, some of that comes from uncertainty, because we don't hear a whole lot about the global affairs and the interworkings of our foreign policy and how we interact with China's agenda. So it's a tricky question, but there is certainly a global interdependence and china is in many ways reliant on us for their economy because we provide a lot of the investment capital up front that sparks their manufacturing initiatives and we provide consistent demand for their products i'm glad you brought that up
Starting point is 02:44:06 because this is the counter argument to any point of mass worry that i've ever been able to raise and i listen to it because it's true like when i've talked about like the dangers of having our grid shut down by hackers people come right back and say with a lot of merit by the way i'm not saying they're wrong they may very well be right and that's why it's worth repeating they'll say well if that happens to us we'll just fuck them over same way that the nuclear bombs haven't gone off between countries since we've had that problem because it's the deterrence of everyone has it yeah knock on wood but like let's be honest it's been 80 fucking years here we haven honest. It's been 80 fucking years here. We haven't had a problem. We're almost 80 years and we haven't had a problem because countries know like, well, if I do it, they're going to do it to us and we're all fucked.
Starting point is 02:44:51 It's like that prisoner's dilemma or whatever it is. Mutually assured destruction. Yes. And so what's to say it's, to your point, any different with a supply chain shutdown with China? Like if we say fuck you, then they get fucked. My only question is are they actively plotting for that by buying up all these other places around the world that in the event of where they had a major stress event of, the United States shutting down our flow to them, it wouldn't kill them, and they could therefore shut down their flow to us and kill us, because we are too reliant on them.
Starting point is 02:45:36 Excuse me. And that is why common yokels like you and I are playing checkers while national leaders are playing chess. Don't give them that much credit. Ah, that's fair that's okay well while the men in the gray suits are playing chess as you would have said earlier to uh extend that quote from Princess Diana yeah and it's not like that's a new thing then I mean if you if you draw this all the way back to the atomic age you know we witnessed that the face of war fundamentally changed after the atomic bombs you know we found that after we were able to deliver enough physical and explosive damage that could absolutely ravage countrysides
Starting point is 02:46:27 and destroy the livelihood of an entire nation in one fell swoop. We said, let's not do that because we get one shot at a planet. Let's find other ways to fuck each other over. So we started doing it. We started engaging in international espionage. You know, that's when three-letter agencies kind of started to hit their heyday. And we've been meddling in international affairs, I presume. I won't claim to know any of that.
Starting point is 02:47:00 And I presume that other countries do the same thing. And so the face of war changes and maybe you know we referred to it and its incipients when trump was the president as a trade war we literally used that phrase trade war it was so minor that i always thought that that like what if that was a precipice i appreciate that that that like what i have was a precipice i appreciate that trump was like the first president in a long time to recognize the threat that the chinese government posed but i felt like his implementation policy wise was was fucking wrong and i think that's valid criticism right like he wasn't he was not focused at least publicly on nearly enough on the tech side of it, and he was worried about $100 billion here and $200 billion there over fucking raw materials.
Starting point is 02:47:56 And it's like, yeah, China doesn't like that. It's a dent. It hurts. But I felt like the way I was reading it was china was then acting all pissed off about it like how dare you do this and behind the scenes they're like yeah let's keep them right here this is good you know because in reality like the future wars you talk about the face of war it's happening in cyber it's happening in information which is in cyber it's happening it will then cyber will then extend to the quote
Starting point is 02:48:27 unquote supply chains and shit like that so like i i think steve jobs talked about this with the with the supply chains so you even had like the early and this was years ago you even had the earliest visionaries of tech pointing out how the speed of communication and worldwide transportation and technological innovation that allows all this shit to happen is then going to punish us by making us reliant on things that we get with ease that in the future if they were taken from us we're fucked i'm gonna try to find that clip but ahead. No, that makes a lot of sense. Right. The deadly sin of sloth brought about by the overabundance of creature comforts destroys our resiliency.
Starting point is 02:49:15 Whoa. English. The what? When you have too much, you start to forget how to fend for yourself what's the other one the that's why i like rich kids stereotypically don't have the dog in them that maybe they're the generation before them that built the wealth did because the generation before them understood struggle hard times build hard people yeah it goes back to that. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:49:46 I really, really want this clip bad. Oh, here it is. I believe in you. Trust the process. I got it. This is Steve Jobs. Okay. Talking about foreign supply chains.
Starting point is 02:49:58 And this is from, what year was this? 1991. 1991. 30 fucking years ago. As we look at the types of computers we're building today and project in the next few years, a disturbing fact is that even though most of the computers are assembled here in the United States, a significantly large number of the dollars that one pays for the components of those computers, to build those computers, flows overseas. The
Starting point is 02:50:31 most expensive part of many computers is the display, whether it be a color cathode ray tube or whether it be a flat panel display. That's changed. And almost all of those dollars flow to Japan. One of the, the second most expensive component in most computers is the dynamic memory. Again, most of those dollars flow to Japan. The third most expensive component is the hard disk drives. Most of those dollars flow to U.S. companies even though the disk drives are mostly built in Singapore. One of the things I think we need to keep our eye on the ball
Starting point is 02:51:01 of is to manage those most expensive components back to America. I think that need to keep our eye on the ball of is to manage those most expensive components back to America. And I think that that's going to take some real effort, especially in the display and the DRAM area. It's going to take some effort because those are capital intensive products. The factories to build the displays or DRAM are now costing a half a billion dollars to a billion dollars a piece. And the engineering required is also something that one doesn't build up overnight.
Starting point is 02:51:29 But it's, I think, essential that we don't continue to be hollowed out as an industry where even though the assembly of the final products, the printing of the manuals, the bow on the shipping carton gets tied here in the U.S. Most of the dollars don't get sent across the shores. You're in a very fortunate position. Wow. And I don't want to overstate the credit and say that he said in this, in year X, there's going to be war with country y because supply like he didn't go all the way there but he effectively rooted out the earliest positioning of the problem at a time
Starting point is 02:52:14 where computers were not mass adopted yet this is 1991 the internet was not around yet i think what year is the internet officially 94 93 somewhere in there yeah but was it officially invented like a year or two either way like most 99.999 of people in the world had never used the internet or really knew what it was and yet he understood where the speed of innovation going up with technology was going to take all this on a way more mass scale and then create a bigger portion of the economy create this reliance and a problem and then naturally and again maybe stretching what he said here to give him more credit than he deserves but yeah it's going to extend everything else too well i guess in that
Starting point is 02:52:58 respect it would have been impossible in 1991 to truly understand the scope in which technology would permeate our lives on a day-to-day basis on a second to second basis i mean don't get me wrong people had visions of flying cars by 2025 in that time frame and i get it you know people had ideas but i don't know that anybody really could have foreseen or at least did foresee the mental dependency impact that we have on technology and how it has impacted our daily lives. an economic threat to our cultural stability as jobs would have forecasted in 1991 then yeah as you suggested that the the the retraction of that creature comfort like if we lost access to technology because china said fuck you no more tech for you that would cause massive disruption it would it's the medicine thing that really has me held up like what do you mean that's like lifelines i'm not talking about you're talking i'm not talking about the farm i'm talking yeah i'm talking about the life and death drugs yes someone can't get cancer drugs i I keep going back to tech, but yes, you're absolutely right.
Starting point is 02:54:26 Because it gets shut. I just, I can't get my mind off that. And I, I don't know if we're already at the point where if they did it, that mutual warfare thing is already tilted in their favor. I, they could take it where we said, well, we're shutting our shit down too. And they could be like okay bet like i mean that's just that is just scaring the fuck out of me man what gives me hope what gives me hope in that respect is the ability that we displayed you know through cooperation with the crown to assemble a solid team of scientists to respond to an emerging biological threat
Starting point is 02:55:07 in the last two years. And that is through the rapid development of the vaccine, through Operation Warp Speed, however you want to attribute the credit for that. You know, we displayed that in the evidence of a completely novel threat to human health and safety, we were able to produce at least a mitigating response at a minimum we also printed something like I'm gonna up how to say this but we
Starting point is 02:55:38 increased the M1 money supply by what like 70 or 80 or something just last year alone I didn't want to go into that like in order to do all this shit we've set up ticking time bombs that are probably already fucked but like how much more fucked could you get like imagine if you had to do that for everything that's one vaccine right there now imagine i said every drug under the sun that's keeping people alive in hospitals right now we gotta produce all of it we're done you can't just pull that off and by the way and and here's the thing it takes how long the vaccine was warp speed they started the process the end of january 2020 they had it and i think they had it done a month before or something whatever it was
Starting point is 02:56:20 either way they had it done nine ten months later nine ten months in the process of not having life saving drugs they're all dead already they've been dead for fucking all that time so you've got two options on how to respond to that either you accept the losses and try to preserve who's left and keep plugging forward as i would argue the historical spirit of America would suggest that we would do. Or roll over and put your belly up and give up. Which America do we want to be if that were to happen? The point I'm trying to make there is that, you know know if that true scenario were to come to fruition where no more drugs from china people are going to die whether we start working on making it so
Starting point is 02:57:12 that fewer people die or we don't those losses might be inevitable it would make us stop fucking fighting over who uses what bathroom. I'll tell you that. Like, this is just, you know, it just feels like those are the distractions and they just continue to get bigger and bigger. And it's like, I just, and people are free to have their own opinion. Obviously, I just don't give a fuck about that. It's not a concern for me, right? Like, I'm more concerned about myself and the people closest to me you know and everyone has to have that responsibility i don't care
Starting point is 02:57:50 like all these social issues we make about this person i don't fucking care we're fortunate we don't have yes everyone can do what they want because the more we focus on that and actually fight over it and tell people what they can and can't do which i just find usually to be bullshit the more we're going to create those mountains out of mole hills and the less focus we're going to have on the shit like this and we're going to be caught with our pants down whenever it happens i mean shit well maybe covid was the first wave of that where you know this pandemic happened and people weren't not that you can expect to be ready for what happened. But like mentally, I mean we just weren't equipped as a society at all to handle it. And our politicians all failed on every level, on every level. That's why Trump got – that was the death knell that put Trump out of office and fair.
Starting point is 02:58:44 Yeah. Fair. Not denying that denying that just fucked up everything about it he got like two things right and and that was it and then everything else was wrong and then the state levels the people who had opposite opinions of him they didn't do any better over there yeah everyone just got it wrong and and society somehow just ran from place to place and said yes yes yes no no yes yes like a controlled uncontrollable but controlled herd uncontrollable but controlled an interesting phrase to use for america they're uncontrollable but controlled who was it in history that used to say that the greatest strength of the American military was that the American military didn't know what it was doing I believe that was a
Starting point is 02:59:32 Winston Churchill quote I don't know that quote that might you might want to check me on that um it was something to that effect that the greatest strength of the American military was that the American military didn't even know what its own plan was. Didn't know what it was doing or something like that. It may have been. For some reason, that quote is burned into my memory, and I just cannot properly attribute it. I can't find it right now.
Starting point is 03:00:02 That's okay. So it's fine. If I find it, i'll post it in the comments yeah whoever whoever said it either way the point is taken um an uncontrollable but controlled herd is that is that who we are i mean it's not like these other places are different though are they like i am not well traveled i can't say for certain i mean just using common sense the chinese people live under a communist regime the russian people live under putin they're controlled they're controlled too if by nothing else then by large kodiak bears in siberia you know like i don't know if it gives anyone an advantage but it's not good like america's
Starting point is 03:00:50 supposed to represent where freedom of thought ideas and innovation exists but you know we can sit here and rip the government all day, and I do. Where I break with libertarians heavily is the extreme libertarians who are like, literally no government. And I'm putting some words in their mouth there. It's probably a little exaggeration, but not really. They're like, men want to live free. Women want to live free. Let everyone do it.
Starting point is 03:01:21 And it's like utopian viewpoint it's not someone is going to have the buck where it stops and whatever group it is is going to have power and power is going to corrupt you are not going to have a perfect scenario whether it's government or tech platforms or whatever whoever has the buck is going to have negativity to them you just try to check the negativity and not let it be out of control so to me i think the best option still is where we have elected representatives that do that i just want to check them more on certain things i want to i want to say well maybe you shouldn't have all that power there but what i don't want to do is say well put it in the hands of the free market because the free market will
Starting point is 03:02:02 just be every man for himself operating at a fucking profit and calling it a day and then we fucking, we lose everything. This is why the concept of federalism was invented. This is literally why 400 years ago, people were sitting around and talking about what's the best style of government and they decided, let's have a national government that has three branches that can check each other
Starting point is 03:02:26 equivalently in a rock paper scissors style and then all powers not delegated to the national government are federated to the states that is the definition of a federal government is not not that the national government controls everything It's that all powers not expressly granted to the national level of government then fall to the states. Because the acknowledgement there was that issues, many issues, would be geographically isolated in nature, local in nature, regional in nature, or perhaps not pertinent enough to 100% of the population that they warranted national level action. What I would suggest that we have allowed to happen is a scope creep of the national branches of government, and we have not appropriately empowered local and state governments to uh govern as they see fit well you know what here's a good hypocritical point then yeah like i'll sit here and say
Starting point is 03:03:33 these places that are imposing like vaccine passports and stuff are actually doing the opposite of what they supposedly seek to do they're making the people who are against the vaccine even more against the fucking vaccine right and what is it these are state and local decisions and so the alternative is that the federal government says fuck you everyone's doing the same thing to fix it right well didn't they try i don't didn't they try didn't president biden issue a federal mandate that all companies with over 100 employees had to require that 100% of their workforce was vaccinated. Did he do that? There was an issuance of a statement a couple months ago. And it was considered as a decree and many large multinational corporations abided by it.
Starting point is 03:04:20 He didn't sign a piece of paper for it. I do not recall him doing so. But it was heated. Right. decided by he didn't sign a piece of paper for it i do not recall i don't think he did doing so but it was it was heated right so it was heated but that's what i'm saying like and i it was heated to the point that people within um reach of federal jobs including extensions to federal contractors were terminated for refusal to comply but this is like a lot of the people who are arguing viscerally against states that impose these types of things are the same people who want other things have asked for the power to be in states to do you see what i'm saying
Starting point is 03:05:01 there's hypocrisy in all of it including probably in myself and some of that i i don't i haven't been like as strong as a lot of people are i'm kind of like well this shit's all crazy whatever it seems like bullshit but i don't know like i live here i do what i want to do like and i'm a vaccinated person so i don't really doesn't really affect me yeah but like likewise where does it someone is in order to be right someone also always has to be wrong about something retroactively it seems like zero sum but no i'm just talking about it yeah for themselves yeah yeah yeah um it's tricky and everybody's a critic because it's easy to criticize. It's hard to fix. And therein lies our hypocrisy. Yeah, I'm guilty of some of that, no doubt.
Starting point is 03:05:51 I often say I'm the guy that starts a conversation and tries to empower people to spot the problems and try to spot some myself, but fuck finding a solution. Well, there's value in that, dude. Somebody's got to get it. Someone has to kick the ball rolling. I guess. Don't devalue that. value in that dude somebody's got to get it someone has to kick the ball rolling i guess don't don't devalue that episodes like this shouldn't make me
Starting point is 03:06:10 nervous and they don't like i don't know i have a very fatalistic view on life but nobody gets out of the life like the fact that you even have to say like oh my god think of the stuff we just talked about with even the slightest grain of what could happen is sad i mean i think everything we've covered today has been pertinent questions again with me pointing out a lot of problems and not necessarily giving you the solution but it's worth the convo so that people can talk about it. I have hardcore pro-vaccine people listening to this show. I have hardcore anti-vaccine people listening to this show. And you know what?
Starting point is 03:06:54 I'll bet almost every show in the country to some extent can say that, including ones that are hardcore left-wing or hardcore right-wing. I hope that's true and and yet most people have a stance of like demonizing one or the other and i don't i don't do that i kind of just i think the whole thing is just but you know sometimes i feel like the like the the things that pop into my head like oh this is going to be this is going to be taken the wrong way or possibly viewed the wrong way it's like that's almost like an impure thought like that shouldn't even come into my head like it shouldn't come into my head when
Starting point is 03:07:39 you bring up toxic toxic masculinity that i'm like oh these are two cisgender white males talking about this who are vaccinated like like and that and how could all those things be used against this conversation that shouldn't pop into my fucking head it should be like all right he brought that up bet that's a interesting topic let's let's see let's see how right or wrong we can be about this and let everyone else fucking decide for themselves that's a really good point because i internalize a lot of that anxiety about those kinds of things i you know i think a lot of people do they they worry about the limits of their speech and you should always consider the
Starting point is 03:08:19 ramifications of your words particularly for those that are around you you know if you yes if you are conscious of that and if you care about people's feelings i get that there is a degree of social self-awareness that you need to have words matter the words do matter yes you should still be free to explore thought in a civilized fashion yes you know what else matters and i talk about this all the time so i won't dig into it, but intention matters too. And intention is easier to tell than we make it. If you really just sit down, like if someone has a 15-second bit of them going online from the opposite group, you know, if... If Anderson Cooper has a clip going around and everyone's tweeting out, like, look how evil Anderson Cooper is. And it's 17 seconds long.
Starting point is 03:09:09 Go find the full five-minute clip. Go watch the context. And make sure. You know, or see if, no, no, they took that. That's out of context right there. You know, look at that intent. You will usually be able to tell. Not all the time, but you will be able to tell. And we have gotten to a point
Starting point is 03:09:25 where that no longer matters and people just want to say good bad or do you know why why because it moves too fast yeah yeah it's the first point you brought up one of the first ones tonight but this conversation has inspired me in some ways. And I genuinely mean that because one of the things you've got buzzing in my head is that we've brought up a lot of large scale problems, big problems that I can't fix. And I've talked about serenity a couple different times within this episode. Having the knowledge to know what you can and can't change and the wisdom to know the difference. We can't sit here and solve global issues by ourselves. Can't do it.
Starting point is 03:10:11 We can postulate about them. We can sit here on our holy pulpit and just spew our thoughts and our intentions and our hopes and desires and dreams for our visions of the world as it moves forward to be a more peaceful equitable and happy place but we can't do that ourselves our responsibility is to go out find problems that we can fix and fix them and problems that we can fix yeah you're already doing it bud you said it yourself You have a mission statement here to start the conversation. Yeah. And you should keep doing that, and you should draw inspiration from that. As long as they let me.
Starting point is 03:10:51 As long as they let you. And I hope to God they don't stop letting you. It's a great spot to end it. Well, thanks for having me. I'm fried. Thank you for doing it, man. I'm glad we got to do this finally. You were one of the early day guys you know you and i had a phone call before you came on last time where as earliest days i had two
Starting point is 03:11:11 people listening to this yeah and you talked about how you get to that point where how did you put it of course i'm forgetting on the spot but i think about this a lot where people start to spread the word like something like like there's a crossing point you use some term like that where people start to then spread the word of what you're doing and you'll know right then like when you bring people on and i'm not here yet but when you bring people on how much did their social credentials quote unquote go up how much of your audience then goes and follows them on youtube or something when do you then have the power you have a platform bump correct that is the exact term you used and i think about that a lot because i'm not at that point but the spreading the word part the
Starting point is 03:12:02 first part of it we reached that point probably over the summer and then hardcore late in the fall you know moving into december and it's a beautiful thing to see but when i sit here worried about how this comes across or the intentionality or if we're doing a good job or whatever i will say i do at least get some beautiful reassurance from that like we're in the right direction doing that whole thing starting the conversations and having a fair and balanced discussion here with different perspectives by seeing that those very things you said are going to be the bellwethers are happening right even if i still gotta get to the second one but you understand my point you'll get there like Like the steps are in place, you know?
Starting point is 03:12:46 That's what matters. Yeah. So thanks for pointing that out. I never forgot that. And I hope you never do. I won't. I'll see you at the top, buddy. All right.
Starting point is 03:12:54 You're coming with me if we go. But we'll leave it there. My brain's fried. Your brain probably is too. Oh, I'm shot. Yeah. The listener's got to be like, holy fuck. I hope it was entertaining. Yeah. I'm going to it's the listener's gotta be like holy fuck but i hope it was entertaining yeah i'm gonna check on the edit we'll see but that said you know what it is
Starting point is 03:13:11 give it a thought get back to me peace

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