The David Pakman Show - 1/5/23: McCarthy Loses 6 Times, GOP Civil War Explodes

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Dr. Gloria Mark, Chancellor's Professor at the University of California, Irvine, has studied attention and stress in the digital age for over two decades and joins David to discuss multitasking, attention span, stress, anxiety, and more -- Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy loses House Speaker votes a fourth, fifth, and sixth time on the second day of voting, despite "help" from failed former President Donald Trump -- A civil war explodes within the Republican Party over the House speakership, punctuated by a wild confrontation between Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity and radical Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who threatens to nominate Donald Trump for speaker -- Putting aside the optics and hilarity, the lack of a House Speaker is actually a national security risk -- Radical Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert's unhinged interview with MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle over the House Speaker fiasco goes horribly wrong -- Lying Republican Congressman-elect George Santos appears to forget his own name on the floor of the House of Representatives -- Lying Republican Congressman-elect George Santos lies about having been sworn in on Tuesday, January 3, which he was not -- Fox News guest and former David Pakman Show guest Steve Almond absolutely humiliates Fox host Laura Ingraham during a stunning appearance -- Voicemail caller calls in about anti-vaxxers swarming to the Damar Hamlin story -- On the Bonus Show: Millenials are shattering the older rule in politics, Southwest Airlines sued for not providing refunds after meltdown, court rules MAGA hat-wearing former teacher protected by First Amendment, much more... 🌳 Use code PAKMAN for 20% off HoldOn plant-based bags at https://holdonbags.com 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 💻 Stay protected! Try Aura FREE for 2 weeks: https://aura.com/pakman 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN saves you 10% at https://zippixtoothpicks.com -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Subscribe to Pakman Finance: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanfinance -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

. Republicans have yet again failed to elect a speaker of the House despite being poised to take control and swear in their new elected members like George Santos, who has not actually been sworn in yet, even though he said he was. We'll get to that later. Despite the endorsement of the failed former President Donald Trump, Kevin McCarthy has lost again and again and yes, again, that makes it six total times. And this exposes, number one, the complete inability to actually lead and get things done productively, even in the easiest of circumstances like we have control. Let's pick a speaker. It exposes increasingly the potentially

dwindling power and prestige to the extent extent that there was ever prestige of the MAGA portion of the Republican Party. And it also raises real national security questions. When you don't have a speaker, there are national security risks. We will talk about that later as well. Rolling Stone reporting McCarthy loses again despite nod from Trump. The House of Representatives has rejected the California representative for a fourth and probably not final time on Wednesday, subsequently rejecting him a fifth time and then a sixth time and then the sixth time. And then the voting set to pick back up again today. I'm sure by the time you listen to today's program, we may know

more. There may have been more votes. Now, the despite the nod from Trump is very interesting. Today's Thursday. Yesterday was Wednesday. On Tuesday, when the first votes for McCarthy failed, people NBC News went to Trump and said, do you still support McCarthy? And he didn't respond. Much later on in the day, Trump spoke to people, presumably checked out what Tucker Carlson was saying, Sean Hannity and others. And then he issued on Wednesday morning the following, not reluctant, but not exactly the most ringing endorsement of Kevin McCarthy saying on Truth Social Truth Central quote, some really good conversations took place last night. And now and it's now time for all of our great Republican House members to vote for Kevin, close the deal, take the victory and watch crazy Nancy Pelosi fly back home to a very broken California, the only speaker in U.S. history

to have lost the House twice. Republicans do not turn a great triumph into a giant, embarrassing defeat. It's time to celebrate. You deserve it. Kevin McCarthy will do a good job, maybe even a great job. Just watch. Not exactly a full throated endorsement. And it appears not to have quite been enough, not to be quite enough to get Kevin McCarthy over the finish line. Now, I wrongly assumed yesterday that it would become less and less entertaining each time that Kevin McCarthy lost each time that Kevin McCarthy failed. It is actually become more entertaining each time because he seems increasingly exasperated and desperate. Now, at this point, there are discussions of should Democrats make a deal with Republicans to vote present rather than to vote for Hakeem

Jeffries, who Democrats have been completely united behind the idea being or to abstain from voting altogether? And the idea here is Democrats aren't going to vote for a Republican for House speaker. But would Democrats help lower the threshold from the 218 needed votes lower so that maybe 212 gets Kevin McCarthy the numbers that he needs? I don't believe Democrats should do this. The idea that now it is Democrats who have to come to the rescue of Republicans because somewhere between 10 and 20 maggots in the House are holding the speakership hostage. It is not for Democrats to fix that. Now, I recognize there are national security risks to not having a speaker, but that's on Republicans. And I hope that Democrats

don't do that. The counterpoint would be, are there six Republicans who can be bought and who would vote for Hakeem Jeffries? Now, I don't mean a bribe. I don't mean literally take cash. But what I mean is, are there six reasonable Republicans in the House who are willing to come to the table with Democrats and say, listen, you guys have a mess on your hands. It's a bigger mess than, you know, whatever Trump is flushing 10 to 15 times or whatever analogy you want to use. You guys have a mess on your hands. We are united and we are ready to govern and we could have debt ceiling issues that come up. We could have a natural disaster that happens, which we need to respond to. We've not sworn anyone in. We don't have a speaker. This is a problem. Be part of the solution. We will be willing to, you know, bring forward for debate issues of importance to your whatever a negotiation like adults.

Are there six Republicans willing to do that? I think the answer is no, but it's worth exploring that if you are the Democrats before you're going to acquiesce to these absurd demands from people like Matt Gaetz and others. It's completely and totally pathetic. So that's what's going on. Six losses now for Kevin McCarthy. By the way, the record number of ballots, I believe it's one hundred and thirty three. And it was a very long time ago. So we're nowhere close to the record. But certainly for the last hundred years, this is this is a record. So that's where we are right now. Let's now talk about the explosively growing civil war within the Republican Party and

the right wing about what's going on. I'm going to show you some stunning video here. Propaganda Sean Hannity and radical, repugnant, reactionary Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert got into it last night on Fox News. Sean Hannity increasingly seems sick of this contingent of MAGA that is holding up what could be Republicans picking a speaker and getting everybody sworn in and moving forward. This is really good. This is the self-destructive nature of this party that is unable to govern, that doesn't care about policy, that is obsessed with cultural issues and going anti-woke and all of this nonsense. This came to a head last night when Lauren Bobear appeared with Sean

Hannity and Hannity went right after her. And I have to say, Hannity makes some statistically good points here. And I'll explain in a moment. Take a look at this. You said complimentary things about President Trump needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, sir, you do not. Sir, it's time to withdraw. Let me turn the tables. Congresswoman, Kevin McCarthy is 202, three votes. Your side has 20. So if I'm going to use your words and your methodology and your math, is it a time for you to pack it in and your side to pack it in? Considering he has over 200 and you have 20.

Now this is strictly speaking true. Hannity is completely correct. If you want to talk about who's being stubborn or obstinate or holding this up despite not having the numbers on their hands, it is a sort of tyranny of this minority of the Republican Party. Most of the Republican Party is united, but the rules are the rules. But the frustration that Hannity is experiencing because this is becoming a clown show is well placed. Sean, I understand the frustration, I promise you, but I'm not frustrated.

He did not answer my question. And we are hearing we are not frustrated. We are still voting with Kevin McCarthy. You're not answering my question of what we're doing and they're cheering us on. So there are more for us than are against us. And they are waiting for Kevin to. OK, you know, the American people are certainly frustrated by. I'm frustrated by you not answering a direct question.

You said to President Trump, you said earlier today that President Trump needs to tell Kevin McCarthy. You don't have the votes. Can I finish? Can I finish? You don't have the votes. We need to come up with a consensus candidate to elect a speaker at the House. You don't have the votes, and it's time to withdraw. He has 203. Your side has 20. Why is it time for him to withdraw and not you when he has so many more votes?

Well, Sean, he needs 218, and he does not have 218. We've been trying to work this out in private, as you said, for months. But Kevin McCarthy didn't even want to listen to us until his disappointing midterms. We all want it. Yeah. So Sean Hannity making a perfectly fine point. It is also completely OK for a Republican who doesn't want Kevin McCarthy to be speaker not to vote for him, but they need to understand the consequences that's for them to figure out. Then Lauren Boebert says, maybe I should nominate Donald Trump tomorrow. And at this point, Hannity just says, what you're turning

this into a game show at this point, your final choice for speaker. And if you can't get more than, let's say, 30 votes, will you follow your own advice that you are asking Donald Trump and withdraw? There are certainly names that are being floated around. And hey, maybe I should nominate President Donald J. Trump tomorrow. But Sean, I did watch your show last night. Is this a game show? Like we're going to pick on this motion. We're going to pick Jim Jordan one day, Donald the other day, Trump the next day?

I want to have the motion straight on this motion to vacate. Hannity is actually correct in assessing the cartoonish and childish nature of some elements of this. And this kept going. We don't have 30. I will not, Sean. I will not withdraw. Our apps were not petty of Kevin McCarthy.

They were not self-serving. We simply were asking for commitments on what the American people want to see. They want to see a vote on term limits, a vote on the Texas border plan to secure the southern border. Congresswoman, with all due respect. And for crying out loud, Sean, we ask for a vote on a budget that actually balances. With all due respect. Imagine, imagine a Congress that stops spending money that we don't have. So if you only have 30 people supporting you.

We are going to get this right, and we are going to get the right speaker, Sean. If you only have 30, to be clear, you will not withdraw. 30 is going to be a beautiful number. You're telling Kevin McCarthy and the and the 203 people that support him to withdraw because they don't have 218. That's what you're saying. Look, it's obvious by tonight's motion to adjourn that Kevin McCarthy and his supporters are already getting voter fatigue. And I asked you a simple question, Congresswoman. I she's not going to answer it. And Sean Hannity is right to point out that she's not answering it. Sean

Hannity is no better. I don't want Sean Hannity in charge of the House any more than I want Lauren Boebert in charge of the House. But the important thing that is of interest to us here is that this is really, really bad for them. Now, it's also bad for the country. Let's take it in two parts. Later, I'll tell you why this is so bad for the country and why it's a national security risk. That's the that that's one component in terms of the Republican Party. This undermines their unity and cohesion in a literal sense. Democrats are completely united, saying we want Hakeem Jeffries. We're all behind Hakeem Jeffries. And you guys are running a clown show on the Republican side. The Republicans are divided. They look disorganized there. It's Byron Donald's and then it's Jim Jordan and then maybe Bo Bear wants Trump or whatever. So this

will damage their reputation. It will make it less likely they achieve their goals if and when they finally select a speaker, which I think is great. Their goals are horrible. I don't want them to achieve their goals. It distracts from issues presumably they would want to be working on. It diverts time and energy away from things they want to be doing, which is great. I don't want them doing the things they want to do. It can lead to a really prolonged period of uncertainty and instability. And that is where it starts to become a national concern. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. And then as far as the atmosphere within their party, it's getting extraordinarily toxic. And again, I'm I'm saying why it's bad for them. I want it to be bad for them. But the atmosphere, their relationships, trust between members. Oh, we're going to support

Jordan and Donald and this, that, the other thing. And hopefully it will lead to a prolonged power struggle once this is done. And I'm guessing we've got another day or two of this. I don't know, but I could be wrong. I thought we'd have a speaker on Tuesday. This could lead to a continued power struggle over the next two years, which is great. And then lastly, if they finally get a speaker under these types of circumstances, it will be a speaker whose credibility and authority are not going to be solid. It is a very different thing to say. We all want Hakeem Jeffries.

Hakeem Jeffries is the speaker. The authority and credibility of Jeffries is untainted versus we had six, eight, 12 votes shifting around support for alternatives to McCarthy. We eventually acquiesce if that's what happens. That hurts the credibility and authority of the speaker, which, again, is bad for them. So I hope all of these things happen. Hannity seems to recognize that this is the way the ball is increasingly rolling. I'm sure many of you will have questions about this issue and others during our upcoming

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You can sign up at join Pacman dot com and you can use the coupon code. Twenty four starts now to get yourself a discount. Earlier in the show, I told you all of the ways in which this protracted fiasco in the House of Representatives, wherein Republicans have been unable to elect a speaker is bad for Republicans. Now, that's good. That makes me happy. I think the Republican Party is terrible for the country. I think their goals and ambitions are destructive. I want them to have a quagmire and to be unable to push forward their disgusting agenda. However, I don't want the country to fail. And as a general principle, not having a house speaker is bad for the country. And it's a national security risk.

And it is a source of instability on the bulwark dot com. Joe Perticone or Perticone wrote an article touching on some of these issues called House is paralyzed without a speaker creating national security risks and a shadow shutdown. Imagine if this impasse were occurring in a presidential inaugural year. And Joe very precisely and astutely points out all of the different ways in which this current status quo is very bad, including that no one has actually been sworn into the House of Representatives yet, even though George Santos said he was sworn in. He wasn't. And we'll get to that a little bit later.

And I think it's important just to be clear about the risks that this presents. It is, I would argue, even simpler than Joe Perticoni lays out. It's not that he's wrong, but it's even simpler. This situation in the House where no one has been sworn in and there is no speaker, it can lead to a functional breakdown of the House of Representatives. The speaker actually plays a critical role in managing and organizing the legislative process. And with no speaker, How does the House conduct business and pass legislation? Is it possible to do it is, but it's significantly more of a mess within government. No speaker and no one sworn in causes uncertainty. It causes instability. The speaker is one of the most powerful and influential figures or positions in Congress. And the American confidence in government is certain to decline. The our

perception of the ability of the House to govern is quite low accurately because this is what they're doing. And then you say, OK, fine, that's that's that's abstract. But in practical terms, what could that mean? Well, it can lead to gridlock or inaction on important issues. When you think about debt ceiling votes or if there's a natural disaster of some kind, a crisis, an emergency, the need for funding in a specific place, way or form without a speaker and without a sworn in house, it is significantly more difficult for the House to actually manage those things, to respond to unforeseen events and at the end of the day, to protect the country's interests.

Now, do I think that Republicans don't care about that? No, I think at the individual level, a lot of these Republicans would honestly say, no, I do care about that. I understand that I'm concerned. Does that mean they should compromise on their principles to the extent that this situation is is caused by or catalyzed by their principles? No, I'm not saying that. But we have to be factual.

We have to be honest. We have to be realistic. The longer this goes on, the more instability is accurately perceived by the American people. And obviously, the longer it goes on, the higher the chances are that something could happen domestically, internationally and in other ways that would require in normal circumstances the involvement of the House of Representatives, and they will then be chaotically scrambling to try to get involved, help or do something about it. So. The primary interest from the we have we have conflicting interests here.

Each faction of the Republican Party wants to reign supreme in terms of ultimately deciding who is going to become speaker of the House. I get that. That's politics. They don't want to be seen as the losers. They don't want to be seen as the ones who were impotent in trying to impose their preference of speaker. That's one area. The impact on the Republican Party we've already talked about. On the other hand, I hope that I'm accurate in assessing that the interest of the American people is to not have to think about the House of Representatives. And what I mean by that is, yes, there are some people who are more politically engaged than others who pay attention to when are the midterms, where is control of the Senate, where is control of the

House and are more involved in that, including people like those who listen to this program, who watch our clips, the vast majority of the country, even many of those who vote in the midterms, don't spend their days and nights thinking about this stuff. And so if it's sort of like referees in a in a sporting event, if you're noticing the referees, if you're thinking about the referees, if the referees are significantly present in the game, arguably it is because they are doing something wrong or too involved or whatever the case may be. You've heard these sports analogies before. And likewise, I would argue if the American people are thinking about the chaos in the House of Representatives, to the extent that it has been front and center for the last two, three days, it is it is a bad thing. It is the type of thing where we shouldn't really have to be thinking about it. The House is there. There's a natural disaster. They're going to act.

They're going to they're going to help. They're going to fund. And that's where the national security risk comes here. We now have a balancing a coming together of how long are they willing to continue this and how tolerant will the American people be before approval rating, not only for the House as a body where the approval rating is always low, but approval for their individual members of Congress is going to plummet. I don't know the answer to that, but I'm guessing we're going to start finding out about that very, very soon. Lauren Boebert appeared on Stephanie Rule's program on MSNBC last night, and it was really humiliating, absolutely unhinged and humiliating for Lauren

Boebert. Lauren Boebert, of course, has been leading this anti Kevin McCarthy leading. She's been involved in this anti Kevin McCarthy movement to the extent that it's a movement in the Republican Party. They have suggested everything from she might nominate Donald Trump to who the hell knows what else she appeared last night with Stephanie Ruhle. And you can tell that she doesn't have any idea what's going on. She's stumbling around in the dark. She knows she's supposed to oppose Kevin McCarthy and her little constituency is opposing Kevin McCarthy.

But there is really no there there in terms of the substance. And Stephanie Rule makes this very, very much apparent. Know what these names are, but I'm sure that you're going to see a lot of names beginning to emerge because we're showing that we are willing to work to unify the Republican Party and get the. By the way, imagine that the idea. I'm fine with them doing this. It's self-destructive. But the idea that Boebert's actions are unifying is laughable. Right. OK, sure.

And maybe it's going to be me and Kim Kardashian and anyone else who can be out there. Would you like me to nominate you tomorrow? How long are you willing to wait? I mean, the American people voted you in. We could be here until the cherry blossoms bloom. You've got the power. And every day that passes that you are not doing your jobs, voters are saying, hold on a second. I voted you in to get something done. Right. Know what these and they're getting

absolutely nothing done, as I pointed out to you before and the national security risks that come with it and the self-destructive risks that come with it as well. Here's another portion of this interview. And again, Boebert just doesn't know what she's talking about. She, of course, barely won her race. She has no business being in elected office. And you can tell she's clueless. Actually, I look at it in a very different way. I see it as Congress not spending money that they don't have, because every day that I've been in Congress, we've done exactly that. So the taxpayers are actually winning here because Congress hasn't organized. Look, my conservative colleagues and I are. I want to, by the way.

This is, you know, when Marjorie Taylor Greene was kicked off of her committees, one of the things I told you is we see this as an embarrassment. You've been stripped of your duties. You're being sort of like sent home, whatever. If you believe that Congress really shouldn't do stuff, if you are actually one of these supposed small government conservatives where you kind of want Congress to do and government to do as little as possible, you actually see some of these things as wins. And what Boebert is arguing, I don't know if Republicans are really think voters are thinking about it this way, but she's saying, listen, we we run at a deficit. And so the longer Congress does nothing, the better it actually is

financially. Now, of course, the absurdity is taxpayer dollars are still paying for what's going on in the House chamber. It's just they're voting for speaker over and over again. It's still the same waste of money she claims doing stuff is. But she's trying to tie in that small government ideology in a way that's just laughable. I mean, I'm going to interrupt you on what the American people want to see. Sure. And with every passing day, it's not that Congress isn't spending money.

Anything that was put in place. OK, so Stephanie rule making the argument I'm making during Nancy Pelosi's term, none of that is going to stop. And until you put a speaker in place, nothing that you want to do is getting done right. Well, unfortunately, the Senate took away our authority to even work with a budget for the next nine months. Nancy Pelosi is ruling with a dead hand anyway. They just. Stephanie Rule is completely correct. I mean, just 100 percent completely correct. And then another funny moment here where Stephanie Rule

points out to Lauren Boebert, you barely won. That secure our southern border and balance a budget and. America, the American voter does want Congress to work together, right? Look at your last election. You represent a red district that Donald Trump handily won and you won narrowly. And the takeaway for the entire midterms is that the country said we are done with hyper partisanship. We want Congress to get to work and to work together. We saw today Mitch McConnell, President Biden, Mike DeWine, them working together, talking infrastructure in Kentucky. And what you're doing today is blocking your own party.

Is that what your voters asked you to do? So what I hear back at home all the time from my constituents is they're furious about what the Democrats have been doing all of this time. They're furious about the border crisis, the energy crisis, the historic inflation, and so much more. And we will handle these issues and conduct serious oversight real soon when we get the speaker's position right. It's been two days. It's not the end of the world. We are going to come together. We tried to do this privately.

Unfortunately, Kevin McCarthy wanted to take this battle to the floor. And that's where we're at right now. Yeah. So Stephanie rule accurately and precisely exposing that they don't even really know what the end game is. And as Lauren Boebert says, it hasn't been that long. We're eventually going to come together at this point. Enough damage has been done that I mean, listen, eventually there's going to be a speaker of the House if it is indeed a Republican speaker of the House, which most likely will be, although

there's a scenario in which Hakeem Jeffries becomes the speaker and just nothing gets done because Republicans would still be in the majority. It will be a weakened speaker. It will be, although there's a scenario in which Hakeem Jeffries becomes the speaker and just nothing gets done because Republicans would still be in the majority. It will be a weakened speaker. It will be a speaker lacking credibility and it will be a Republican Party lacking credibility as well. Hannity has been right by saying they're turning this into a clown show and they're turning this into a game show. And Boebert becoming almost like the spokesperson for this movement. She's already a clown show going in, making it even more so. And I have to tell you, it's horrible for the country. I can't control the fact that Republicans are doing this, and I would rather that they didn't. But to the extent that they are doing

it and are damaging themselves, I welcome it. We'll have all of the clips I played here on our Instagram, which you can find at David Pakman show. And of course, all of these clips will be on our YouTube channel. Make sure that you are subscribed to the YouTube channel, youtube.com slash the David Pakman show. Let's make it to 2 million YouTube subscribers. This calendar year would be a major accomplishment. Don't allow the bystander effect to make you assume someone else will subscribe. Be the person who does it. You might remember that a few years ago, the show got hacked and many thousands of dollars were stolen. We never got it back. It's a terrible feeling. It can happen to anyone. But a couple of years ago, we got aura,

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Today, we're going to be speaking with Dr. Gloria Mark, who's the chancellor's professor at the University of California, Irvine. She studied attention and stress in the digital age for over two decades and is also author of the forthcoming book out on Tuesday, January 10th, Attention Span, a groundbreaking way to restore balance, happiness and productivity. You can find out more about it at Gloria Mark dot com. Really great having you on. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this. Thank you for having me. So it's almost become cliche now to repeat some of the things that have been written many times. There's no really such thing as multitasking.

What you're doing is quickly switching between tasks. It's also, you know, if you want to find opinions that social media and smartphones are killing our attention span, you can find it. But now there's the next layer, which is, hey, you know, maybe that's not actually true. When people do these digital detoxes, they don't really seem to have the benefits. Some claim you can basically find someone making every claim at this point in time. So maybe to start, we can just zoom out a little bit and say over the time that you have been studying these issues, are there definitive trends that we can start with about the impact of

modern media, smartphone, social media on attention, on stress, on anxiety? Yes, there are. So I've been studying this empirically for almost two decades. Now, let me very quickly explain how I study attention. Yeah. So, you know, we started out using stopwatches and shadowing people. And every time someone switched their attention or switched screens, we would note that. We then later switched to computer logging techniques, which are very precise, very objective and unobtrusive. So we can get precise measures of how long exactly people's attention is on any screen, whether it's their computer or smartphone. And we find that over the years, people's attention on any screen has diminished their length of attention. And in the last five years or so,

we find that it's gone down to about 47 seconds on average. If we look at the midpoint, it's called the median, that we find that half of all of our observations of the length of attention is actually less than 40 seconds. 40 seconds is the median. That means that people switch their attention very fast. They don't spend a lot of time on any particular screen. And we know from when we first started measuring this, that the length of attention spans have gone down. Now, it sounds like that's a bad thing, but maybe that's an assumption that we should actually try to prove in some way. Right.

I mean, one one could say, OK, that's true. That's what's going on. But it's just a result of the way that the world is. It doesn't objectively mean that there is a cost or a negative. Is there a cost or a negative to that reality? Speaker 5 Yeah, unfortunately, there is a cost because we find a strong relationship between the frequency of shifting attention and stress. So stress goes up as attention is shifted. Now, going back to years of laboratory research in psychology,

we know that when people switch their attention, when they multitask among, you know, switching among different tasks, blood pressure goes up. There's a physiological marker in the body that also indicates that people are under stress. We also know that when people are probed with validated questionnaires about their subjective stress. Their perceived stress also goes up at times when people are shifting their attention, multitasking fast. So there is a cost. Yes.

When we talk about the stress and anxiety component, it seems important to distinguish for to take one example, to take social media. On the one hand, we have these aspects of the rapidity with which you can switch between things when you're scrolling social media, the distractive element of picking it up and looking at it when maybe you should be spending an hour consecutively working. So that's one side. We then have the stuff that people like Jonathan Haidt and others look at more, which is the effect of the content and does seeing people's best moments when you're just sitting at home in your pajamas and comparing or right. There's the content aspect when it comes to kids in school, the way that some bullying

has moved into the social media space. These are two different things. How can we distinguish the impact of one from the impact of the other? Yeah. So you you would have to do some controlled studies. So you'd have to basically give people social media that has positive content and then give them social media that might have negative content. And then you look at the differences. So you're controlling that. And then there's other things you can control too, such as the length of posts and see what impact that has. But there's absolutely no question that social media is it's two sided. Right. There's there's benefits. We can't deny that there are benefits for young people. They can have they can be socially connected to other people, especially during the pandemic. Right. It was really a great benefit for a number of people, not not just young people. But of course, there is a negative side as well. As you mentioned, cyberbullying,

there's misinformation. So there's absolutely no question that there is, you know, it's a double edged sword. So if we assume that the majority of my audience kind of understands the the guideposts here of the concern and of the reality of what's going on. Let's talk a little bit about sort of like how one what safeguards or behaviors one can kind of cultivate for for themselves. Neil Postman in his book, Technopoly, you know, like 30 years ago, wrote about whenever there's a new technology, there's good and there's bad. The idea of saying let's only allow the good through regulation, it rarely works. And we really just need to kind of think through the best way to welcome these technologies in total. All right. And sort of limit limit the damage that they can

do. What should people be doing? Is it, you know, practically, is it you put your phone in a different room, you set a timer and use these techniques where you work 25 minutes? I think it's the Pomodoro technique, 25 minutes and then a five minute break, and then you switch to something else. And is that is it practical to think people can really do that regularly? Yeah. So, first of all, consider there are individual differences. So personality absolutely plays a role in people's ability to self-regulate. Some

people are born lucky. They have good abilities for self-regulation. Other people are not born lucky. But if you're not born lucky, there are things you can do to change. People can develop agency over their behaviors. And if we draw from the work of a very famous social psychologist, Albert Bandura, he's found that people in a number of areas can develop self-efficacy. So with stopping smoking, substance abuse. And so I believe that it's very possible for people to have control over their attention. How can they gain agency? There's different ways. First of all, you can learn to be more intentional in your behavior. So we do a lot of automatic behaviors. For example, we check our smartphones, you know, just automatically without thinking. We check email,

we go to social media. What you can do is you can learn to probe yourself, to bring your unconscious actions to become more conscious. I'm a professional observer of people when I study them, and I've learned to become a professional observer of myself by probing myself, probing the reasons why I'm doing things. So whenever I have an urge to go to social media, I recognize that urge. I ask myself, will I get value out of being there? Why do I have this need to go there? Am I bored? Am I doing a hard task? Right? And anyone can develop this skill to become an observer of themselves. And once you recognize reasons for why you're doing things, you can change, right? And if you go to social media to take a break, then again, you can probe

yourself and say, am I still getting value or am I just getting marginal returns? And if you're just getting marginal returns, it's time to get back to work. Let me mention another technique that people can do is to practice what's called forethought. Forethought means imagining your future self. And it could be in the very near future, like at the end of the day. If you go on social media now, how is that going to impact your life at 10 p.m. or midnight? Are you still going to be working on that deadline? Or are you going to be relaxing, have a glass of wine, watching your favorite show? Think ahead, Right. Another technique that people can do is to maintain their higher level goals in their mind. Goals are a great shield against distractions. If because

because attention is directed to what our goals are. And if your goal is that you're going to work on this deadline and finish it, then your attention will be directed to it. One of the people I've interviewed before is Cal Newport, who writes a lot about carving time out for what he calls deep work. And of course, at the very minimum, that means you're not checking your smartphone during this time. But ideally, also, you're limiting other distractions in other ways. And, you know, we've talked with him about that. One of the things that seems to apply in the diet world

that may also apply here is whatever you're doing needs to be sustainable, it seems like. And that's one of the better arguments I've read against the total sort of like social media sabbatical of sorts, which is that it creates what's really an artificial situation that that nobody says is going to be the long term situation and that therefore it might be sort of of limited value, whereas maybe there's more value to saying, hey, you know, I know I have a tendency to do my best deep work in the morning. So from nine to eleven, I'm not even going to have my phone in the room. And so now I'm at least getting to 11 without any distractions. And then from then on, I will do X, Y or Z, that type of thing. Can you talk a little bit about is it better to jump right into modes that are sustainable

long term or do these short term experiments have their place? No, I don't think that realistically we can think about doing digital detoxes for a very long time. You know, if any individual does a digital detox, essentially it penalizes themselves because they're cutting themselves off from important work communications, from family, from loved ones. And you're right. Absolutely, it's not sustainable. We live in a digital world. The ship has sailed. We can't back away from it. We can't pull out. So what we need to do instead is to think of solutions that can enable us to live in this world and to maintain well-being. Now, it turns out that people,

you know, you can't maintain sustained focus for a lengthy period just in the same way that you can't lift weights for an extended period of time. We use up our mental resources. Now, people have peaks of time during the day when their mental resources are at their utmost. And for most people, it's mid to late morning and it's mid afternoon. If you can become aware of when your personal peaks of attention are and you can start with with these times that I mentioned, then you can gear your work around those times when your attention is is at its best. Yeah, that's been super useful for me. We're very you know, I used to have a list of things that I sort of plan to accomplish after taping my show each day. And I learned that I would get only to a fraction of that list just because of sort of like mood and who knows other things that that

maybe I can't necessarily identify. But I found that the more I plan to do before filming each day, dramatically more efficient, dramatically more productive. And so now I kind of tail. I know that if I get to my desk 15 minutes earlier, I'm going to do way more than if I think of doing that at 3 p.m. Now, I have the benefit of a job where I'm completely in control of my schedule. The reality is a lot of people are squeezing these things in around shift work, for example, and that becomes very difficult. That's right. Absolutely. So so that's right. You know, every person is different. Everyone has their own personal rhythm. And you need to gear your work around what your own personal rhythm is for your attentional resources. And, you know, for me, I can't start work immediately when I get up. I

need time to ramp up. So I do easy things when I start. You know, I will take care of email, I'll read the news. And then, you know, I'm a little bit geared up and then I can start diving into doing hard work. And then I'm at my peak. Now, you know, people can discover their peak by, you know, finding out what your chronotype is. Some people are early type. Some people are late type. It can serve as a guide, at least to get you started. But become aware of when you start

feeling exhausted. And the best thing you can do is pull back, take a break, get replenished, and then you can go back in with with a full tank of resources. We have been speaking with Dr. Gloria Mark. The book, which is out on Tuesday, January 10th, is Attention Span, a groundbreaking way to restore balance, happiness and productivity. Productivity. You can find out more at www.GloriaMark.com. Really appreciate your time and your insights today. Oh, thank you so much for having me.

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Promo code Pacman saves you 10 percent. The info is in the podcast notes. All right, let's look at a few other things that happened yesterday. George Santos seemed to forget his own name on the floor of the House. Multiple times his name was called a four vote on speaker of the House on the fifth ballot. He seems not to recognize his own name, which is just funny because, of course, his full name is George Anthony Devalder Santos. And it raises a question of whether does he even really go by George Santos normally? Maybe he goes by Anthony Devalder or George Devalder or Anthony Santos. I don't know. But here he is. They call him multiple times. Doesn't seem to recognize they're calling him for a vote. The guy to his right seems to tell him like, hey, that's your name, sir.

Santos. Santos. Sarbanes. OK. And they move on to Sarbanes and then he holds up his hand and yells out that he's voting for McCarthy. Jeffries. You even you even see Matt Gaetz come by just kind of like, what is it that is even going on here? So just kind of weird. Everything about Santos is strange. For all we know, he's used to being called some other name. I don't know.

And it seems that he is continuing to struggle to sort of build community in the House of Representatives. And I don't really know the end game for Santos. I the first 48 hours are not sustainable, running away with a huge backpack, running away from reporters who want to ask him questions, sitting by himself in the floor of the house, picking his nose, not recognizing his own name. And it's it's all just truly bizarre. But I also have kind of like a morbid curiosity. We're like, how how awkward can this possibly get? And you all know I love awkward. So we're going ahead and going to go ahead and follow that. And by the way,

the lies from George Santos haven't stopped since he arrived in Washington, D.C. Let's talk about that next. George Santos lied about being sworn in on Tuesday. I don't know how else to explain this to you. George Santos was not sworn in on Tuesday. Nobody was. But he put out a press release saying he was sworn in. It's very binary. It's not a matter of opinion. It's not a technicality. He was not sworn in on Tuesday, but he posted a press release saying that he indeed was the office of George Santos publishing on Tuesday press release swearing in as member of the 118th Congress. U.S. Representative George Santos was sworn in as a member of the United States House of Representatives by the speaker of the House on January 3rd, 2023.

Hilariously, not only is that not true, there was no speaker there. They're voting on a speaker. The whole problem is there's no speaker. And he's like, oh, yeah, the speaker swore that I was sworn in by the speaker on Tuesday. No, it didn't happen. If you now go and look at Santos's website, this press release has been deleted. It now says access denied. You are not authorized to access this page because it's not true. They had to remove it. Swearing in, of course, happens after the speaker has been elected, after the speaker has been elected. So my question to you about this is the following. Does Santos know that he wasn't sworn in and this was published as a lie because he must have staff? You would think if he goes to

his staff and says, hey, please publish that I was sworn in. You'd think someone would say, oh, you weren't sworn in. You haven't been sworn in. That happens after the speaker is selected. So I don't really understand how this ends up being the thing that happens. It's very, very strange. Tell me what you think. Was it a lie? Was he confused? Whatever. Steve Almond has been a guest on my program multiple times, and I don't like calling Steve a sports writer because he writes about so many things. But Steve does sometimes write about sports. Laura Ingram on Fox News thought it would be a good idea to bring Steve Almond on last night to talk about what's going on with

DeMar Hamlin, who suffered a cardiac arrest during the game on Monday night. We've talked about it already to some degree. This was a very, very bad idea for Laura Ingram. He brings up that Fox News has thrown money to settle sexual assault claims in sort of making an analogy to how the NFL will settle brain injury stuff without actually changing the underlying circumstances of football that allow the brain injuries to become common. Everything about this interview is absolutely fantastic. And eventually, Laura Ingram just cuts it off when he tries to bring up Laura Ingram's past misdeeds when she taunted Parkland shooting survivors, leading advertisers to flee her

show. This is really good. Let's go to the first clip. Putting monitors and helmets to try to make sure that people aren't suffering too many concussive or sub concussive events. These are things the NFL could do tomorrow, but they're not going to do it until there's an economic incentive. The reason they settled that lawsuit is because they had a PR problem. It's like at Fox News when you have, you know, hosts who are allegedly sexually harassing people. Fox News throws money at that to make that PR problem go away. That's what happens. So do you know operations are right. So people.

Well, nobody, nobody has done more. I mean, you know that, right? You know that. That's a cute little mo, but I'm. I love it. Every time guests call out Fox on Fox, these hosts have some line like, oh, that's cute. That's a cute move. No, he's showing up and he's pointing out that that which you are criticizing someone else for your employer also does. It's not about being cute. It's that they don't know

how to handle it when guests actually point these things out. Let's go to another clip here. They have enormous fans. What happened during George Floyd? They had enormous amount of influence on corporate America, the actions of corporate America, the actions of the NFL. I mean, they changed the whole corporate approach to race and equity and all the things that happened two and a half years ago. So you

say the players don't have all that much influence. I would say the players have an enormous amount of influence, maybe not as much as they want, but there's huge economic upside for everyone here, correct? Well, I know you're focused on the players. I'm focused on the fans. And what I essentially believe is not that any government ban is going to make football safer and certainly not some mythic woke mob that you mentioned to try to scare your viewers. I think it's going to happen. I'm not trying to scare the viewers. Football is not about politics. It's not about politics. Oh, I think that's your entire economic model. What?

Your entire economic model is to scare your viewers. What other sport? That's your whole gig. I mean, Steve, you really want football to be banned. Yeah, you want football to be banned. No, I don't. You play this game. Oh, come on.

You want football essentially changed into I don't know what. Like, I don't know, you have a sensor in the helmet, I guess. Okay. Propose one. Go speak to the players. Is that technology troubling to you? No, not in the slightest. If, propose one, you know, it was that is that is that technology troubling to you? No, not in the. If you're concerned about the. Not in this life, why wouldn't you want them to play in a way that is safer? You're not concerned about the play. The thing about people like Laura

Ingram is Steve Almond accurately points out it's it is about scaring viewers. It's all about scaring viewers. And when it comes to football, the way they see the really scary thing about football. And I now have friends who have kids who are sort of starting to get curious about football. And they're like, oh, my goodness, the last thing I want is my kid to play football. So they're trying to find a balance between straight up saying you were not allowed to play, because then that can cause this kind of reaction where the kid goes, well, I really want to play if I'm not allowed to play. Just kind of finding the right way to dissuade, softly dissuade their kids from wanting to play football. The thing about football

is it is fundamentally dangerous. The brain injury stuff is completely off the charts. It's shocking to me that football even still sort of exists at the college level. And I think it's possible that if and when the lawsuits start at the college level, it will really, really damage the prospects of football. I find it mildly entertaining. There's other sports I like better, but it just seems crazy that it's still a thing. Laura Ingram and her model in the model of Foxes, we've got to scare the audience. We have to scare the audience and ideally about what the left or someone external to our movement is doing. So with football, it's they want to have a nanny state where they ban a sport or they want to overregulate football by saying, oh, you've got to do this. You've got to do that. You've got to force players out. Concussion protocols are too

strict or sensors in the helmet. It's all crazy or what it all has to be fear, fear, fear. They're going to take it away. And with football, there's also the patriotism angle, which they love, which is there's something patriotic and manly. It's both patriotic and manly. And so any skepticism about football and football's viability is not only sissy, it's also anti-American. This is the whole sort of narrative. But when it comes right down to it, Laura Ingraham kind of has no choice but to say, no, I mean, I guess I'd be fine with a sensor with a sensor in the helmet that indicates, you know, what were the what were the G forces? Was there a possible concussion or whatever the case may be? Because these are these are perfectly logical things as half measures to really dealing with football big picture. Now, this is not the hill

I'm going to die on. I'm not going around looking to end football. It's shocking to me that anybody lets their kids play football at this point. And I know let them, you know, what that that's a whole difficult premise premise as well. But this is how these folks operate. Make everybody afraid. Steve Allman's completely right. When it comes down to it, you go, well, it's not so much that I'm opposed to thing number one or two or three, but we should be very afraid of what they are trying to do. Here's the last segment during which Steve Allman points out she had a problem with advertisers fleeing for things she said. And then she just ends the interview. So thrilling. The reason that people change their behavior is because there's an economic incentive. A couple of years ago, when you talked to the survivor of Parkland mass shooting, you apologized only because advertisers withdrew from your show.

Speaker 1 Nice try, buddy. I appreciate it. Speaker 4 It's cut. It is cut, cut, cut. Yeah. So other guests have done this stuff before. And the reaction from the hot Fox hosts is is very similar. It's cut it, laugh it off and say it's an ambush or it's cute or it's funny or whatever the case may be. Standard M.O. They all seem to know how to do it, but very nicely done by Steve Almond. And I mean, listen, this is Steve Almond's bailiwick, right? To invite him and think he's not going to do this is really the thing that shows you don't really know who he is. Really nice job. We should have him back on the show soon. We have a voicemail number and that number is two one nine two. David P. The anti-vaxxers have immediately swarmed over what happened on the field on Monday where a football player, Damar Hamlin, suffered a cardiac arrest. And here is here's a call about exactly that.

Hey, David, this is Joffrey from the Philadelphia suburbs. Yes. Calling about something that I've seen circulating around the Internet over the past few days since the DeMar Hamlin medical scare earlier this week, the safety from the Buffalo Bills who had a cardiac arrest. In certain areas of conspiracist right-leaning social media, there is this attribution that it's because of a COVID vaccine rather than the fact that a 6'4", 220-pound opponent struck him in the chest running full force. Right. I am a medical doctor. I can tell you that one of those causes is far more likely, and I think it has more to do with the one that's going to knock you on your back rather

than needing a band bandaid on your deltoid. However, I don't think you need 10 years of postgraduate training to know that. I think so. Yeah. And again, we do not even know the vaccination status of DeMar Hamlin, or at least we didn't as of yesterday when I last read about this. And there are so many leaps in logic that are being made here that it is really it's truly a scary thing that these folks for whom, again, they've got a

hammer, which is vaccines are bad. That's their hammer. So everything is a nail. Someone gets covid. Oh, it's because of the vaccine. Someone has a heart attack. It's because of the vaccine. Someone dies. It's because of the vaccine. Someone dies. It's because of the vaccine. Everything is the vaccine because all they've got is a hammer. And it's a really sad situation. We've got and a destructive one, I should add. Great bonus show for you today. We'll talk about something interesting going on with millennials in politics. Southwest Airlines involved in a controversy. A MAGA hat wearing teacher has been, in a sense, vindicated legally. All of it is on the bonus show today.

Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Yeah. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. Sign up at join Pacman dot com and we will see you then.