The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Rational Thoughts: Common sense improvements to life in America by Sam Galanis

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

Rational Thoughts: Common sense improvements to life in America by Sam Galanis https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Thoughts-Common-improvements-America/dp/B0F1GYBRXT Samgalanis.myshopify.com Rational Thoughts: Commonsense Improvements to Life in America positions itself as a comprehensive guide delving into the intricacies of contemporary existence in the United States. Within its pages, the book imparts insights into politics, finance, and both civilian and professional spheres, urging readers to engage in critical thinking and explore a spectrum of perspectives. Skillfully transcending superficial discussions, the author adeptly presents an indispensable companion, fostering positive transformations by promoting profound discussions on the interwoven elements shaping life in America over the years. The book encourages readers to reflect on their roles as citizens, consumers, and professionals, empowering them to contribute substantially to the ongoing evolution of the American way of life.

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Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roll. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, Vos is Voss here from thecris Fos Show.com. How you doing today, folks? Welcome the big show, as always.

So thank you, everyone for joining us. We certainly appreciate guys after 16 years and 27-900 episodes of the Chris Foss show. We are going to be making you more shows in, what is it, 26? Well, hopefully we'll hit 3,000 plus, and we'll do. just be going crazy. It's 17 years. I think we want to get to like 50 years. We want this podcast to be alive for 50 years. But I don't know. Then we may have to figure out some way to keep my head in one of those box like future ramas or future ram or something. But any time, I refer to to the show of your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodrease.com,

Fortress, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, force, s, Chris Foss. Facebook. Facebook. And that's about it. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of show, maybe by advertising on the podcast, but it's not endorsement or review of any kind. Today, we have an amazing young man on the show. He is the author of the latest book to come out March 11th, 2025 called Rational Thoughts, Common Sense Improvements to Life in America by Sam Galanis. We're going to get into some of his details, some of his journey through life and some of the things he's done, and we're going to find out more about him. And what are these rational thoughts?

Like, can't we just run around like crazy hair on fire, exuberant emotional cripples? or do we have to use our brains? What? Welcome to the show, Sam. How are you? I'm fine. How are you, Chris? I am excellent. Give us dot-coms or dot whatever so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, the book can be found on Sam Galanis. Dot my Shopify.com. And it describes the book. It gives you the opportunity to buy it. So Sam, you're in an author, advisor, an aviator with over five decades of experience, guiding both people and institutions towards smarter, more grounded decision-making, your lifelong believer in common-sense solution,

and you bring rare blend of financial expertise, academic insight, personal integrity to your aspect of your work. Tell us about what is this book about. Give us the 30,000 overview. Rational thoughts is simply a succinct primer on common sense improvements to life in America. And it does that through 31 chapters, but chapters are relatively short. And they end in the bottom line. It's called bottom line.

And each bottom line gives you a recommended solution or course of action for solving the problem that's brought up in that chapter. I like it. I like it. There seems to be a lot of victimhood and emotionality in our culture these days where everyone, it seems like there's a real victimhood competition where everyone's fighting to be the bigger victim. Like, no, you're not a victim. I'm bigger. I have more of it. You know, it seems like a lot of emotionality is in our, in our current mentality, and not a lot of self-accountability, self-actualization.

People who want to use their brains, seem like everyone just kind of scream with their hair on fire, maybe. I don't know. Is that impression come home to you, or am I just making stuff up? Well, that's true. There's a lot of truth to that. I do take some pot shots in the book. Oh. But they're politely done and with wry humor.

And even after went some politics, even after even after he even, even, even, he even, even, went after some politician, but with right humor and never with a sense of partiality. I think part of the problem is that people don't listen to each other. What? We don't listen to each other enough, and I try to sort of overcome that a little with a book. I always do that to my friends and my mom whenever. It's a stupid joke, but it's funny sometimes. But yeah, people don't listen to each other.

They're busy looking their phones and doing podcasts and stuff. But I'm listening to you because what you have to say is pretty interesting. So what was the motivation for you to write this book? This is your first book. Is that correct? Yes, it is. I think the motivation was my background. I have a varied background.

That's why I was able to take such a macro viewpoint. In the past, I went to medical school. I went to pre-med. I got accepted the med school. I decided not to go. Then I got a master's in international relations. I worked as an insurance adjuster. I worked as an area sales manager for Aristotle on NASA's for Olympic Airways in St. Louis.

And then I became a pilot later in life. And when I became a pilot, I have flown a lot of wings of mercy missions, which is where we pick up a patient in their hometown and take them to an appointment at a hospital. And then we pick them up at a hospital, bring them back to their hometown. and then I became an investment advisor for 53 years. And this experience gave me a good overall view of a lot of areas which could be improved upon. You know, Wings of Mercy, I think I ran a Wings of Mercy, but we push my enemies out of the plane. I'm just kidding.

That's not something nice to do. But we called it a mercy. Anyway, I'm just going to leave that joke. I'm just going to end that joke there. That's not that funny. So you have a lot of experience in your past. I mean, flying, you have to be really smart on your toes to be, to fly planes and do aviation. You know, you've got to do those pre-check flights.

You've got to make sure all the, all the science and math works out. That's why I never got into flying planes because I would skip, you know, I would skip the steps. I'd be like, ah, you know, we don't need to check the wind shear or whatever in the weight and stuff. I just fly this thing out of here. It's 2026. and I get everybody killed, including me probably. So do you find that a lot of your career and your upbringing is kind of what keeps you in this logical, reasoning, rational thought sort of mindset?

My upbringing was important. I had the good fortune to be born and brought up in this country, which gave me the opportunity. I had the good fortunes to have loving parents. I had to stay at mom home. and my father was a very value-oriented person. It was very important for him to tell the truth, to find the proof, to help others, to be polite, to be so, to be considerate. So I was brought up with those values, so I had a head start.

That was a big head start. And, you know, logic and reason, do you find that, what do you think is the biggest impetus right now? Maybe one of your favorite topics that you talk about in your book, what's one of your favorite suggestions in your book that you want to share with people maybe and we can delve into a little bit. Well, I want to add one more thing, if I may. Sure.

A big influence has been my wife. We've been together for over 50 years. She's a retired cop, so she keeps me in line. When they get out of line, she gives me definite signal. She gives me different signals when they're in the house and a different signal when we're out in public. But I always heed that signal when I get it. Yeah, the handcuffs and the waving of the gun and the nightclub, right?

No, no, it's more subtle than that. Oh, it's more subtle. The in-house signal is she gets up and walks away, and all I see is her back running to the next room, the second room, the third room, the next county. And if she's really mad, she goes fast enough for her, where in wiggles quite a bit. That's the in-house signal.

The public signal is when we're in a restaurant or something, and I piss her off. She gets up and heads to a door that says, well, to them in, and I really know I'm in trouble with it. Oh, boy. And most people, you just wait for her to say, you go, are you okay? And she's like, I'm fine. Is that a signal after 50 years?

Or it sounds like you have a different set of signals than some people. No. I'm having trouble little hearing her right now. Are you? Maybe talk a little of my, I don't know if you got a volume button on your end. But so. Yeah. Okay.

Go ahead, Chris. So tell us about this signaling thing. How does this apply to what you've written about in the book? or doesn't. I run thoughts by her and if she doesn't like it, she stands up and walks away and gives me a signal. Are the thoughts about her? It sounds like you might need a,

do we need to bring a relationship coach in here or something? Well, let me tell you something. She's pretty much spot on. She's a retired cop. Yeah, yeah. She doesn't take shit from nobody. Yeah. So she's pretty much spot on.

She's very focused and very common sense based. In the book, do you have these separated, like, different issues that you like, that you want to talk about and flesh out? There are 31 chapters with different topics, but I think the most, if I have to choose a most important chapter in the book, Chris, it would be the one in elections. Ah. Basically, one of the problems we have in our democracy, it's becoming an oligarchy to some extent. In other words, the elected representatives of the people don't always represent the people. They're elected by people that can't vote for them because of all the money pouring in. So one of the things I stress in the chapter in elections is you shouldn't be able to contribute to a candidate unless you can vote for them.

And I notice, for example, in the inauguration of President Trump, who was sitting in the front row quite a few billionaires. So that goes back to the point I just made. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, with the loss of Citizens United, the SCOTUS ruling many years ago, decades ago, decade and a half or something, there's been a few other rulings of SCOTUS that basically made it so you can buy your own politician. I mean, the elimination of Citizens United basically gave a signal to everybody that, hey, you can buy a politician now. You got money. I couldn't agree more. really made things worse for our democracy, as you say, because now it's just whoever has the most money can control the most votes. You know, we saw the abuses during the 2005 run up to the presidency where Elon Musk, a billionaire, is out offering people, you know, a million dollars or whatever.

I don't remember what it was, but it was a significant amount of money just to vote in a lottery system for the candidate. And, I mean, that just became cartoonish. at that point. I mean, can you imagine what Madison, and I'm sure you've read the Federalist papers by the founders? Didn't even think of that one. There's some crazy stuff that went on there. Yeah, you have to take money out of the elections,

and you also have to have elections only on election day, and you have to show photo ID and paper ballot, because if it's not a paper ballot, Chris, it can be easily hacked. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, in today's world with AI and stuff, it's starting to look like that's going to be an even bigger problem with things being hacked. I think recently we just found out that Elon Musk's Doge had turned over our most secretive sensitive data to aviCy groups, the Republican trying to overturn the next election. and he gave all of our data to them. And I'm just stunned that we, you know, we all kind of guessed that that was happening

because they were in stuff and there were some whistleblower reports. But God knows what they're going to do with that muckery. And then you see, I don't know if you've been reading the news today, but Donald Trump just came out and said the GOP needs to make sure there's not another election. He just quoted that on, it was a podcast with the guy he just kicked out of the FBI or resigned from the FBI,

whatever, whatever they want to call. Dan Bonino. Dan Bonino. Or no, not Dan Bonino. Oh, yeah, Dan Bonino. See the guy who's bald and he always looks like he's coke up, coked up all the time. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking of the bovino, bovino. There's too many bees, I guess. But yeah, he appeared on his podcast and said, yeah, we need to do this. I mean, he told his voters that vote for me. There won't be another. You won't have to vote ever again.

So it's kind of interesting. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, consider it's top of news. I'll listen to you on that one. Huh? I will listen to you on that one. Yeah, well, I don't know. I haven't read the story and I haven't had time to digest it, Chris.

I'll let you take the time to digest it. But yeah, it's definitely a lot of the signaling we're getting about, you know, the FBI just walked in last week to the Georgia rolls. What the Trump administration is doing is being threatening a lot of Democratic states that they will create the Minnesota experience of them just shooting people without warrant or will. In fact, they just announced today that they don't need warrants to rest people anymore. Ice doesn't. And so what they've done is they've been threading through Bondi.

If you've seen the, I mean, she sends these emails out. You can look them up online that basically say, hey, we're going to bring the Minnesota riots and experience to you with ICE if you don't turn over your voter rolls. and what they're trying to do is subvert Madison's system. The reason Madison left and the founders of our Constitution left the voter rolls and the voting in control of the states is because they knew that someone eventually would come along like Donald Trump and declare themselves as king and try and control the election like Putin or any of their despots around the world who basically have sham elections. They're trying to do that here. Yeah, it's a really dangerous point for our elections and our society. society. What are some other ways you feel we can make our elections better, more safer,

I don't know, more contained or controlled? Well, there are two other things. One of them is upbringing. The breakdown of the family, the breakup of the family. Yeah. So many males, so many young men growing up without a father figure, I think is a major thing. Yes, I agree with you there. I think the other major issue, Chris, is colleges. They've gotten away from using the Socratic method, which basically you stimulate critical thinking by uncovering beliefs and exposed gaps in reasoning by asking questions. Yeah. Question, question, and eventually you get to the truth.

And that's disappeared from college and colleges have been replaced by lectures. And a lot of emotionality. I mean, women have flooded colleges. Men are no longer to college as much. and to see the woke extremism, the far, far left extremism of woke in colleges where you can't have discussions. I mean, some of my, I love comedy and comedians, and a lot of comedians can't even go to colleges because they get shouted down or, you know, no one can take a joke anymore there. And I think it's a big deal. I mean, especially with comedy.

Comedy is a great mirror to who we are. and it's a way of bringing sort of levity to that situation where, you know, we take ourselves pretty seriously and life is pretty serious, but, you know, you need some comedy to laugh a little, and sometimes that's the best mirror when we laugh at ourselves and we go, yeah, maybe we should, you know, when you look at that from a funny aspect, maybe that isn't the best behavior we should be doing whatever it is. But, yeah, they can't even go to comedy things. So that's definitely, it's definitely an issue when you reach a point where we can't have

discussions anymore and everyone is so at each of the throat about everything really which is kind of where we're at now i couldn't agree with you more just today i think i saw in the news that charlie kirk's outfit had a gathering a meeting in sam in university of california and berkeley i believe and they had a call of police to to enable the people to attend the meeting and to leave the meeting and they were hurling insults at them and using profanity and uh and i'm i'm not saying this support of Charlie Kirk's outfit, I'd say this in support of any outfit. You should be able, as an American, to get together with people you want to listen to in exchange ideas with. Yeah. And that was kind of the concept of the politics of our thing. But, you know,

now we have politicians saying that there are certain domestic enemies of the state. They have to be Democrats. I'm an independent voter, but I do lean Democrat and I'll vote for anything, anyone who supports the constitution and voting for another four years. But yeah, when you have people calling the other party enemies of the state, right now they're making an FBI list of Democrats. They just instruct the FBI to do that. It's pretty crazy what's going on right now. And I think we need like what you say, more reasoning and logic as opposed to emotions and stuff. Because, you know, between, you know, everything that we see. see. It's just crazy right now. What are some other improvements that you like to, that you have in your book that maybe can improve America?

Well, one big thing would be a flat tax. Oh, yeah, that'd be kind of cool. I think a flat tax would, you wouldn't have any IRS agents coming and knocking on your door anymore because you would need a lot fewer IRS agents. You'd have no exceptions, no inclusions, no deductions, no deductions, nothing. Everybody would pay. just a flat tax above the poverty line. And some people would say this benefits the rich, but it doesn't. The rich top 1% get about 22.2% of the gross, adjusted gross income, but they pay 42.3% of the taxes. So the rich do pay their fair share, but where they get away with it is tax loopholes,

deductions and everything. And there's billions of dollars in that, and they no longer have those deductions. Those deductions would support Harvard University or the Sierra Club would go, like Bill Gates does, for example, those deductions that money would go to the public. You would be the charity. Okay, so I would make that change. Go to flat tax, Chris. And if you're familiar with the Laffer Curb, Arthur Laffer, who's a well-known economist, he has, shown where if you start lowering taxes, the tax revenue increases.

The tax decreases generally more than pay for themselves. Oh, well, you know, I think a flat tax would be good. You know, as a business person who's been in business all my life since 18, I mean, it is nice to have all these cheeky deductions and you can hire, you know, we've had people on the show that have talked about how the ultra-rich can hire the most powerful attorneys to not only find the best, you know, ways to do the code, you know, you see stuff like companies like Apple hiding, all their profits over in like Ireland. There's like a post office in Ireland where all the big companies have their offices at. And it's like a no tax free zone that Ireland

created. And so they'll park out of the money over there and won't bring it here because then it's a higher taxable rate. You know, scams like that. But, uh, I, I would love to have a flat tax, especially from a business aspect. I may end up shoot myself on the foot because maybe I won't get as many write-offs. But, boy, it sure would make life easier between, you know, taxes are just like a, what do they call the prison system, giant mechanized industrial state? That's kind of what taxes are between the tax preparers,

the charge you a fortune, the attorneys that charge your fortune, the IRS, that, you know, you've got to sometimes deal with them or the rules and regulations, you know, you always got to read the book. It's a lot of expense and work that you go into it. If you can call all that out, I don't know how you get rid of all those, those accountant's jobs or accountant tax, tax return season, folks.

Might cause a recession with all the. Yeah, we need to figure out way to retrain them into AI or something. I don't know. But AI might replace them too. A.O. is replacing everything right now. I mean, thank God I didn't even. the Chris Vos show. It's a little hard for me to put a robot on here. Although some people say I talk like a robot sometimes. So there's that. But yeah, we need, I think we need,

you're right, we do need more logic and reason thinking. We do need to listen to each other. We need to, we need to compromise more. You know, I remember I had, what's his face? He used to run hardline on CNBC. He worked under Tip O'Neill. And under Tip O'Neill and Reagan, you know, they were at odds with each other and butted heads. But, you know, at the end of the evening, they would sit down and have dinner together, have a drink together. The off of politics, they got along and they would find compromise. And Tip Hone was the last of the compromising speaker of the houses.

And after that, it just became a shit show. You know, with the next speaker of the house, I forget his name, he just turned, I mean, really started our politics down the toxic road if you want to blame somebody. and it was all or nothing in the house. It was my way of the highway, and pretty much the Speaker of the House crossed the bridge that the founders of our nation forgot to note that one of the problems of the Speaker's House

is they wouldn't always stay independent. They become a arm of the president. That's not how their powers are supposed to be set up. Their powers are supposed to be set up to where there are separate power competing or putting a check on each other, just like we have with the SCOTIS court. And so it's been interesting the failure that came from that.

And it's continued with both parties where basically over a speaker of the house is basically an arm of the thing, a rubber stamp instead of a, no, we're a separate house and we're going to do oversight on the president. As it were. And you've kind of had that ever since Tip O'Neill. Whoever the next guy is, Newt Gingrich. Yeah, Newt Gingrich was the guy who took us down this toxic route. If you remember, he got really shitty and ugly and call people names. And he really took, he really took it. We went from being decent politics to just garbage.

But one good thing he did, along with President Clinton, as they managed to reach a balanced budget for four years in a row. Yeah. That was the last ballast budgets we had. Yeah. That was pretty good, man. You know, there was, I don't know, we're way off the balanced budget. But map had never coming back probably at this pace.

I don't know. What are some other things that you discussed in the book that maybe I should ask you about or we should get out there teased out to me? Well, I stress that a balanced budget is important because, you know, if you own a private company, you can't spend more than you make for too long. A government can do it for a while because they can print money. Yeah. What does that do?

It distorts the supply demand curve. It creates more demand than supply and you have inflation. It's not a good way to go. In one of my chapters, I discussed FDIC insurance, and it was 250,000 in 2008. It's still 250,000, but it's only worth $180,000 today because of inflation. You have situations like that, but the second most important chapter in my book, Chris, would probably be mental asylum. What was that again? Give me that again.

Mental asylylums. Mental asylums. That's what the Chris Vos shows on Fridays around here. And the reason I think it's important, in the 50s and 60s you had mental asylums and they had a lot of people that needed help. Now they've all disappeared for various reasons. Mostly Reagan. They've disappeared.

But here's a fact. In 1965, when you had mental asylum, you had in prisons, Chris, 185,000 inmates. Yep. Today you have 1,900,000 inmates. Mm-hmm. So what you will find is that of all the inmates, about 25% have mental health issues. Yep. And the largest mental health providers in the United States today are Cook County Jail, Los Angeles County Jail, in Rikers Island in New York.

So, and what made situation in the world, it were if she had a legal opinion, I think it was in a federal district court called Lassard v. Schmidt, which stated that you couldn't incarcerate someone, and you couldn't put someone in the mental asylum unless they were in extreme likelihood of hurting someone. That's a very loose rule, I mean, extreme likelihood is hard to prove in court, so you have a lot of people who are really potentially dangerous roaming in the streets with no place to go, and they do become great, dangerous at times. So what I would do is I would bring back Manloa asylum. I agree

with you there. If you're not familiar with the history, we've covered it ad nauseum with lots of authors in the show. One of the rule of law, quote unquote, the things that Reagan brought back with his illiberalism that started the descent of this country in the middle class. You can trace it back to Nixon,

but Reagan really put the foot down is they closed all of those social services that were helping the poor and minorities. And it was a war of minorities. I mean, if you understand the Reagan background and how basically they were going after immigrants. It was the big immigrant start.

And so they closed all the mental health facilities and they increased the police. And that's how we got to this prison complex, industrial complex that we have today where everyone's in prison because we quit helping people and then getting them fixed. And I grew up in the age you're talking about.

I grew up where there was a local, there was county, mental health clinics. I had some friends that were in school that, I don't know, I think one dropped acid and went a little bat shit, didn't do well for him. And a few everyone's just had mental problems and they would go and they would, you know, have a stay. They get fixed up. And then you'd see him out and you're like, hey, how was the mental institution? You know, but I'm better now. And, you know, I mean, you can't throw away people. And that's kind of what we switched to doing was we just started throwing away people into prison. And of course,

everyone made money off of that, the people who do private prisons, and that's still going on to this day. The private prison system is out of control. So, yeah, we need to bring those back because I remember what that was like when there was a place those people could go and they could get help. You know, I remember one of the authors we had on the show, she's a top attorney, and she was actually an attorney who gets a lot of people out of jail that were wrongly imprisoned or didn't get adequate representation. In fact, she worked with Kim Kardashian. and during Trump's first administration, Kim Kardashian convinced him to let some of this lawyer's people out of prison for, you know, bad, bad court, whatever, you know. And so she told the story about how she was a kid. As a child in the South, her mother was an alcoholic, but she was functioning.

She was an working alcoholic, but she was still an alcoholic all the same. But she could work because she would have support from a social system. She could get whatever drugs maybe she needed. I think there's something they give alcoholics to keep them from drinking. It makes you sick or something like that. But she could get help and support. She could get money for her kids. She was a single mother.

And then the Reagan administration came in and they basically wiped out all the social support and flooded the city with cops. And next thing you know, she was in prison doing 10 to 20 years. and that's why we have the problems we have. A lot of people, it's really funny. They don't logically and reasonably, like you talk about in your book, understand how we got here and the things that caused this. And until you can fix those things, you can't really fix the problem.

You have to go back to the origin and go, what caused this problem? What did it do? Oh, it did this? Oh, well, that didn't work out at all. But yeah, it was the same kind of 2.0 that we're going through here right now. attacking minorities and immigrants and stuff. And it never ends well. We end up paying for it ultimately, really.

We're paying for it now. You can see it in the prices. I mean, all of our fruits and vegetables and groceries have gone through the roof. You know, we've got, the people won't show up to pick. They won't show up to construct homes. The immigrants are afraid of being arrested. And so now we're all going to pay twice as much for everything. Good job, America.

Got off your nose to spite your face. What can you do? Another chapter that I like very much, Chris, is the one on saving water. Saving water, yeah, that's important. And basically in that chapter, I come to the conclusion at the bottom line at the bottom of the chapter that we should go to tankless water heaters. Tankless water heaters. What do you do? How do you heat the water on a tankless water here?

Is that those little ones that I see? Yes, you eliminate the tank and all you have is heated pipes. So you'll never have water in the floor again and you're a kitchen or anything like that because there's no tank that don't leak. So you heat the pipes and the water goes through the pipes and it has a

if it has a recirculation pump where it recirculates the water, it takes even less time to heat the water. Oh really? If it has a condensing capability, it takes even less energy. So you have a situation where you turn on the faucet and you don't have to wait 15 seconds,

the 45 seconds to get warm water, you get instantaneous warm water. So you're saving on water, which is a rare resource, and you're saving on the electrical cost of electricity. I think it's a brilliant idea. Pardon? I think it's a brilliant idea. I've been up visiting my mom in Utah here for a while, and all winter long, she has not had any snow.

Like, I think there's been a little flurries here in the valley once, but other than that, there's been no snow on the ground. I've had my huskies up here and they're not happy. They like snow. There's a little bit in the mountains, but we're just like, we're actually having our first winter without any snow, which is bad for water, as you know. Yes, it is.

Yeah, because we kind of feed the runoff that goes into Lake Mead in Las Vegas where I live, and then down into California, that water goes. And man, if we're not getting it at the source by having a drop up here, we're in some trouble maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Section 230 was another chapter that I liked. I like them all actually, but you're familiar with Section 230 and basically it gives

social media platforms exemption from liability for contents that they put on their social media sites. But there's a section 230C2, I believe, it gives them, allows them to, carve out areas where they can not put content on there, like if they think it's sex trafficking or incitement or rioter. And so what happens is they do not, they moderate or they block some content and they're still not liable. They should be liable, in my opinion, if they moderate or block content, what they should do is put all content on there and they would be immune from liability and let somebody

sue the person to put the content on there, not the social media. companies. But I find that a violation of free speech when they suppress stories because of incitement or riot, sex trafficking, because of these things are largely subjective in many areas. Yeah. Yeah. I think there needs to be like a third party oversight. You know how like TV stations and radio has the FTC, is it FDFDFDFDFDFDT Communications? FCC, Federal Communications Commission. Yeah. There's not really one for social media. And I mean, you have, I mean, they recently, I think, they recently, you know, there was a bunch of them that had kids that were under the age, I think it's 12 or 13, that it's, you're not supposed to be on

social media. And so they're breaking those, it was TikTok, I think, about a year or two ago, two, three years ago, two years ago, they've been found that they were just letting anybody get on it. And you're only supposed to be like, I think 13 or something. There's an age that they put on it. But I think there needs to be an oversight board of social media. media and of course the billionaires are going to be happy because they all on social media. But one that talks about the stuff like you're talking about and maybe regulates it or at least,

you know, I can file a complaint because right now I can't file a complaint against Facebook. You know, if Facebook wants to do something, I'm just screwed. There's no real oversight or policing of them. And I think there needs to be and there needs to be some checks of balances. I don't know whether that needs to be a political committee or a business committee. or something, but, you know, they just, they just, especially now after Trump took office, they're really concerned about just keeping billionaire control. You've seen them circle the billionaire wagons.

We're kind of an eat-the-rich moment. You know, people have been saying for several years, like, why are billionaires building doomsday places now to hide out in bunkers? They're doing it because we're at the eat-the-rich position in the thing. This is the time where monsters roam. This is the dark time. You go through about three or four cycles of the good times, and then you hit the weird times. And so I think there needs to be that rained in.

I would totally agree with you. I'd like to see some sort of oversight to them, like a third party oversight. At one point, there was supposed to be. At one point, Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook would have an oversight thing that would have oversight. and it was like this, it's this appeal division that they have. It's kind of a joke in and of itself. And then he scaled it back

what he promised it was going to be. So I agree with you there. I think there needs to be that. There needs to be a check and balance system put on social media. Definitely. So as we round out the show, anything more you want people to know,

anything else on your website, any other services maybe, or consulting or speaking, you're doing any future books, maybe you're working on? I'm not working on any future books, but if I did, I was thinking of what I would have in a future book. One chapter I would probably have is a chapter on losing your home

because you don't pay your property tax. I would eliminate that. And I have a personal experience with that, and that's what started me on it, Chris. When I was a young man in 1943, we lived in a corner, and all of a sudden in the middle of winter with the snows, people were driving by the house and looking at it. And people would drive out and walk around the house and look at it and take notes.

And then one day, the neighbor across the street was home to see his parents, Jerry Scarborough, he was a lieutenant in the army. He knocked in the door and said, Jim, my dad, he said, you know, your house is up for foreclosure. Oh, wow. So we went down to the county building in downtown Detroit. And my dad was the strongest man I ever met. He was a sectioned foreman on the railroad.

His fingers were twice mine, the sons of mine. But a hat and hand, a very polite person, you know, and found out that we owed a bill. I can't remember it was $17 or $70. Oh, my God. Previous owner of the property before the house would have. Oh, really? So they were going to foreclose us. Wow.

So anyway, it was settled. We paid what we had to pay, and then we closed the door of the office and we're outside in the hallway, and dad said, son, do you understand what just happened? And I said, no, Dad, what are you talking about? And he said, he was from Greece. He was an immigrant from Greece. He said, in Greece, you cannot lose your house for not paying property taxes. But here in our country in the United States, you can do that, and that's wrong.

And I saw it play out in the northwest suburbs of Detroit, where there's some nice lakes, where people that live there for generations. And all of a sudden, that got gentrified as the metropolitan area expanded, Chris. and they couldn't afford to live there because the property taxes kept going out. So one chapter I would have if I ever wrote a new book is Eliminate, you can't lose your home for non-payment of property taxes. Yeah, and the other thing I would add to that, I don't know if you thought of that in the book, HOAs,

you can't lose your house because you don't pay your HOA fees. I've heard stories where people, they didn't pay an HOA fee, and they lost their whole house and hundreds of thousands of dollars with the equity, over, I don't know, a couple thousand bucks or something. I'm aware of that because I'm in Florida right now and they're wondering. Oh, yeah. You know what's going on in Florida with that new law they passed that made it so that there's all that you have to have reserves now, I think, and it's all from that building that collapsed.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. And everybody's, it's killing everybody. All these retirees went there to, you know, enjoy. There's low taxes there, I guess, for personal. tax. But now, you know, it's just, it's just crazy. And they're being, I mean, they're being asked to pay these extraordinary bills that, you know, I don't know, I don't know how, you know, a lot of them are just having to get up and move. And, you know, they put their life savings in some of these

homes. And I think the, I think it's starting to hurt the resale market, isn't it? There's a lot of them there on the market. That's what's being said by realtors that it's starting to hurt, They're starting to hurt the resale market. A lot of people are not even outside of HOA's. Insurance has risen so much in Florida that people are self-insurance. They're not buying insurance. Yeah. There was a bunch of people that got canceled by State Farm in California on the California Coast fire,

the Palisades Fire. We'd had on, like a year before, a guy who is, he works with independent homeowner or insurers and tries to get insurance for homeowners when they were getting kicked off a state farm. And a lot of those homes that were lost in that fire, the people were kind of older, maybe they didn't have as much money. They're on a fixed income, retired,

and they decided to self-insure too. And they lost pretty much their life savings was in there, and their retirement was in the equity of their home. Yes. And they lost everything. And, I mean, that's a real hard thing to lose when you're 60, 70, and I can't imagine it's everything at my age,

let alone any age. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on. Give people your final pitch out on how they can reach out to you, get to find out more where they can order the book, et cetera, et cetera. The book has two positive recommendations, the Midwest Review of Books and the U.S. review of books, and they can get a good description of the book

and a good description of where I come from and what I do by going to my website. which is sam galanis dot my shopify dot com well thank you very much for coming on the show and uh i love your book we need more logic we need more reason less emotions and hate and we need more love but that's kind of like an emotion isn't it anyway we need to think more about being loving see what i did there so thank you very much sam for coming the show really appreciate an honor to meet you thank you chris it's been my honor thank you and thanks to

to our audience for tuning in. Order up his book wherever fine books are sold and it looks like it switched screens on me. It is called Rational Thoughts. Common Sense Improvements to Life in America out May or I'm sorry March

11th, 2025. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com versus Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com, YouTube.com, Facebook.com. Fortress Chris Foss on all those things. I think I'm going to start saying it that way. It's faster. Be good at each other. Stay safe. Try to get along.

We'll see you next. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed. All right, there we go, Sam.