The David Pakman Show - 7/27/23: GDP growth spikes, UFO hearings explode

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Valerie Fridland, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Nevada-Reno and author of the new book "Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English," joins David to discuss changes in language, the use of discourse-marking words, the relativism of language, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3q7fw3e -- Bidenomics continues to charge forward with Q2 GDP coming in 33% higher than expected at 2.4% -- The House of Representatives holds its much-anticipated UFO hearings -- Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appears to have a medical event during a press conference, inexplicably freezing in silence for about 30 seconds -- Failed former President Donald Trump tries to explain Trumpism in a bizarre video and fails badly -- 2024 Republican presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says that if he becomes President, he would put Robert F. Kennedy Jr in charge of either the FDA or CDC -- 2024 Republican presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis attempts to reboot his failing campaign by replacing "woke" with "narrative" during his public statements -- The Eggman jokingly wonders whether global warming might actually be the cause of myocarditis in men -- On the Bonus Show: Judge declines to approve Hunter Biden plea deal for now, judge vacates Bowe Bergdahl's conviction and dishonorable discharge, Elon Musk's Twitter rebrand of "X" gets site blocked in Indonesia, much more... 🌎 Babbel: Get 55% off your subscription (rules & restrictions may apply): https://babbel.com/pakman 📕 Pick up your copy of “EPP Method” at https://mpcauthor.com/ 🛌 Go to https://helixsleep.com/pakman & use code HELIXPARTNER20 for 20% OFF + 2 free pillows 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN10 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 -- 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

. By dynamics continues to see a very hot economy and I will place credit and lay blame regardless of who is in power based on what we understand about how economies work. What do I mean? Well, we have an incredible headline, particularly if you are Joe Biden, particularly as we understand that so much of a reelection campaign is based on the perception about the state of the economy of the voters. And along those lines, we learned this morning that in the second quarter, the United States grew in terms of GDP 33 percent faster than expected. Q2 GDP coming in at an annualized pace of two point four percent growth. The expectation was originally 1.8 percent. Remember that Q1 was 2 percent,

now 2.4 percent. This is very good news based on how economies measure how they are doing. We now have record low unemployment, record wage growth, record job creation, declining inflation for years now to the lowest point dating all the way back to April or March of 2021. More lowest point in terms of inflation in more than two years. Stock market near record highs and now GDP 33 percent higher than expected. So how much of this is thanks to Joe Biden? Well, you all know that this is not a show where we just play political games and throw political footballs when it comes to economic numbers.

I will tell you how much presidents control and how much they don't control. And many of the factors related to GDP are global issues or systemic issues beyond the control of the president. However, there are some factors that presidents do control. Presidents control fiscal policy, including government spending and taxation. The Inflation Reduction Act, which was put forward by Joe Biden and passed ultimately, is a factor in what we are now seeing. That is something that is on the Biden side, the regulatory environment. Presidents have influence over the regulatory environment, and that has an impact on the economy. Trade policy presidents significantly shape trade policy and trade agreements, imports, exports.

And this relates to GDP growth, monetary policy. You know, this is one of those in betweens. The Federal Reserve, which sets interest rates, does operate independently. But the president can appoint board members who influence the monetary policy. So monetary policy is always, strictly speaking, outside of a president's control. In reality, it's sort of a slight control infrastructure investment. That is very much something that Joe Biden has participated in. Then you have factors that presidents do not control. And there there are many and they are significant global economic conditions,

including, for example, natural disasters or pandemics and these sorts of things. The global economy is very much interconnected. And so when we look at the data, we see, including, for example, natural disasters or pandemics and these sorts of things. The global economy is very much interconnected. And so when we look at the data, we see, yes, inflation is down in the United States and inflation is down in all of the Western wealthy nations. However, it is down more in the United States than in many of those nations. So we would say the general global economic conditions have nothing to do with Joe Biden. The particulars may, for example, the Inflation Reduction Act technological advancements that impact the economy and GDP president has almost nothing to do with that business cycles. There are business cycles, recessions, expansions influenced by so many different factors, and

that includes consumer sentiment, business investments, market dynamics. Presidents really don't have anything to do with that. Demographic changes. This includes population trends, birth rates, immigration. Presidents do indirectly control immigration. They control less of a desire for immigration. They also control less of circumstances in for immigration. They also control less of circumstances in other countries from which people might immigrate to the United States.

Presidents don't really control those things directly. Commodity prices, right? Oil, metals, such significant factors impacting the global economy. American president has very little control over that. So big picture, the claims that Biden's policies would destroy the economy. Do I sound like Tucker Carlson yet? Very much wrong. Very much wrong. We are seeing an incredibly robust economy. Does the economy still have the systemic problems that predate Joe Biden and predate Trump of inequality of 40 percent of Americans can't meet an unexpected four hundred dollar expense. Of course, of course, we still have all of those things by the metrics that are accepted to measure how an economy is doing.

The Biden economy is doing extraordinarily well. This is politically a very good thing for Joe Biden and politically not a good thing for those seeking to challenge the presidency. We will continue to follow the numbers. Many of you said, David, you will not cover the UFO hearings in Congress because you're afraid. What would I be afraid of? This is so stupid. Of course, I'm going to cover it. It's very interesting. There were hearings held by the House of Representatives yesterday on UFOs slash UAPs. UFOs are unidentified flying objects. It's an object that flies, which has not been identified. Doesn't mean it's intelligent aliens.

UAPs are unidentified aerial phenomena. Again, it's aerial in the air. It's a phenomena. It's a thing. Doesn't mean it's intelligent aliens who have come to visit us. As many of you know, on the one hand, I am extremely skeptical of claims from people like those who we are about to hear from who make claims about the U.S. is covering up that we have alien bodies and all of these different things. I'm very skeptical of that

for a number of different reasons that I will enumerate. On the other hand, I also think mathematically based on the size of the universe and our very rudimentary understandings of the prevalence of different types of life, the conditions on which life as we know it could exist and the possibility that life as we don't know it could also exist under different conditions. I do think it is more likely than not that there is life elsewhere in the universe. How intelligent it is, how closely it resembles us is a very different question. So simultaneously, I'm skeptical of many of these specific claims because they lack evidence and rigor and often there is no evidence at all. But I do believe it is more likely than not that there is

life out there somewhere. Given all of this, we will now look at some clips from yesterday's hearings. One funny thing. We'll talk on the bonus show about the Hunter Biden plea deal. Yesterday, you could find people making the claim on X. They were zeding on the former Twitter that the UFO hearings were designed to take attention away from the Hunter Biden plea deal going wrong. And then there were those claiming the Hunter Biden court date was set to take attention away from the claims made at the UFO hearings. I think it's just coincidence. Call me crazy. All right. Here's the first clip. Former U.S. intelligence official David Grush claims the government is in possession of

non-human bodies, meaning the bodies of foreign to the planet life forms. Intelligence extraterrestrials. Something I can't discuss in public setting um okay i can't ask when you think this occurred if you believe we have crashed craft uh stated earlier do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted this craft as i've stated publicly already in my news nation interview biologics came with some of these recoveries. Yeah. Were they, I guess, human or non-human biologics? Non-human. And that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to that are currently still on the program. And was this documentary evidence, video, photos, eyewitness, like how would that be determined the specific documentation i would have to talk to you in a

skiff about gotcha um okay so and you may or may not be able to answer my last question and maybe we get into a skiff at the next hearing that we have but who in the government either what agency sub-agency what contractors who should be called into the next hearing about UAPs, either in a public setting or even in a private setting? And you probably can't name names, but what agencies or organizations, contractors, et cetera, do we need to call in to get these questions answered, whether it's about funding, what programs are happening and what's out there? I can give you a specific cooperative and hostile witness list of specific individuals that were in those. And how soon can we get that list? I'm happy to provide that to you after the hearing.

These are, of course, extraordinarily stunning claims. And on the one hand, this guy seems so extraordinarily confident in them. On the other hand, it's important to know he's not actually presenting any evidence. On the other hand, people wrote to me and said, how could he? It's all classified. So we end up in this kind of conundrum. It is also important to mention that this guy has said a lot of things that are pretty out there. David Grush has said that the vehicles the Pentagon is hiding could have come from a

different physical dimension than what is described by quantum mechanics. He has said the Vatican has been in on a UFO cover up. He says that some of these craft are football field sized, that a private contractor is currently storing a UFO, that UFOs have gotten aggressive at times, that people have been killed in order to keep the secret. Now, I am open to considering every single one of these claims, but some evidence has to be presented. And I'll talk later about what that evidence might look like. Congressman Jamie Raskin asked former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, another one of the witnesses, about another alleged encounter. Take a listen to this. Speaker 4 The two aircraft flew within about 50 feet of the object. And that was a very close visual sighting. And you were in one of the

aircraft. I was not. I was there when the pilot landed. He canceled the mission after I was there. He was in the ready room with all his gear on, with his mouth open. And I asked him what the problem was. And he said he almost hit one of those darn things. He said he was 50 feet away from it. Yes, sir. And his description of the object was consistent with the description you gave us before. A dark gray or black cube inside of a clear sphere, a dark gray or black cube inside of a sphere.

I mean, listen, Jamie Raskin is asking sort of like the right questions. But again, there's a question of what do we believe counts as evidence? Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asking if you were me as a member of Congress, where would you look for the truth for the answers? If you were me, where would you look? Titles, programs, departments, regions, if you could just name anything. And I put that as an open question to the three of you. I'd be happy to give you that in a closed environment.

I can tell you specifically. Thank you. Commander Fravor. I would say, and I've told people that you have to know where to look. They're not going to divulge it to you because of the classification levels. But if you know where to look and who to talk to, which is exactly Mr. Gresham point you, then you then you have them. So is anybody going to do that? Are we ever going to learn more about this? Here is Congressman Tim Burchett saying, has anyone been murdered to cover up the extraterrestrial technology?

Do you have any personal knowledge of people who have been harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal these extraterrestrial technology? Yes. Personally, have you heard of anyone been murdered that you would think that you know of or have heard of? I guess I have to be careful asking that question. I directed people with that knowledge to the appropriate authorities. So a lot of I've been told that someone else said sort of things. And that's really the bulk of a lot of this stuff. Congressman Robert Garcia asking about possession of UAPs. Here's

what David Grush had to say. Mr. Gresh, finally, do you believe that our government is in possession of UAPs? Absolutely. Based on interviewing over 40 witnesses over four years and where I know the exact locations and those locations were provided to the inspector general and some of which to the intelligence committees. I actually had the people with the firsthand knowledge provide a protected disclosure to the inspector general. So again, and I am I am really trying to analyze all of this unemotionally.

David Grush is not saying he personally has seen any of this stuff. He's saying, I've interviewed people who have told me and those were not assertions. He was actually able to verify. So here's the real reason for my general skepticism about these sorts of stories. They supposedly keep coming here. And they keep crashing and they get aggressive, but almost no one sees them for whatever reason. They're not improving their technology. They can get across the galaxy from far enough that we've never detected them to our knowledge. They get here essentially undetected and somehow on the last mile of the trip, the last fingernail of a wingspan of the trip, they crash

and they just can't seem to improve their technology to stop crashing. It's like they are the epitome of geniuses and stupid at the same time. And that seems difficult to believe. Now, when we say what would the evidence be that it would take to convince a skeptic? It's a sort of standard list, right? Multiple credible eyewitness testimonies that can be corroborated in some way. Well, the reason you can't do the corroboration, David, is because the government has evolved in a cover up and they're hiding it and people have been killed. Well, you've either got to provide some proof of the first thing or some proof of the cover up. We need something. What about high quality, verifiable visual evidence rather than videos that are sort of weird, extremely grainy. The photographs are

blurry. Many of them are similar to things that have later been confirmed to be hoaxes. We don't know that every video that they are now claiming to have is a hoax, but they are similar to videos that have ended up being hoaxes. What about radar data and sensor readings? Because if there were radar radar data or sensor readings from reputable sources that said, hey, you know what? The stories being told by these individuals match these data that we have that would bolster the case. Obviously, the ability to look at physical evidence, unusual metal alloys that reliable scientists can say this is not of this earth, for example, or physical

markings somewhere that are not like the crop circles which have been debunked as a prank. These are the sorts of things that we would look for, as is often the case with conspiracy theorists. The fact that we don't have that is cited as part of the evidence of the conspiracy. And at some point, and particularly for such extraordinary claims, I don't believe that that is enough. So, again, on a mathematical large scale odds level, I think it's quite probable, if not even likely, that there is life out there somewhere. Do I believe that these individuals actually are are the smoking gun? At this point, I am not convinced. And I feel as though I've given you the list of what it would

take to convince me. Let me know what you think. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube. Hit that subscribe button. Leave a comment. We'll review. Are you tired of using words like very all the time? Very good, very busy, very tired. Words can get monotonous. And if you're a non-native English speaker who finds it tough to learn new words and remember them and use them in the right way in context, maybe you just need to change your learning approach. I am a non-native English speaker. I learned English very young. But when I moved to the United States from Argentina at the time, speaking only Spanish and the right approach to learning new words is really useful for communicating in any context. You should look into a book by Michael Cavallaro called The EPP Method, Three Super Simple Steps to Build and Retain

Essential Vocabulary for Adults. They're sponsoring today's show and you can find it at MPC author dot com. This book will help you improve your English vocabulary tremendously, even potentially improve verbal scores on standardized tests. It's full of retention exercises, words arranged by themes, examples in context, antonyms, synonyms. My favorite chapter is called An Exploration of Death, which has words like lurid, martyred, macabre. It's how you learn new words quickly, but also retain them for longer. And the book is fantastic. Even if you are a native English speaker, start growing your vocabulary by picking up a copy of the EPP method. Go to MPC author dot com. That's M as in Mary P as in Paul C as in Charles author dot com. The link is in the podcast notes. I love my Helix sleep mattress.

I've been sleeping on Helix mattresses for years now, which is why I asked them to be a sponsor. You actually take their famous sleep quiz takes just a few minutes to answer questions about your sleep preferences, body type, sleep position, whether you have back pain and Helix will match you with a mattress that's perfect for you, which is really unique and helpful because a lot of people don't know where to start when buying a mattress. I certainly didn't. Their newest collection of mattresses called Helix Elite come with a built in Glaciotex layer to keep you cool at night. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like it, my audience also gets a whopping 20 percent off all orders, plus two free pillows.

Go to Helix Sleep dot com slash Pacman and enter code Helix Partner 20 at checkout. That's Helix Sleep dot com slash Pacman. Then use code Helix Partner 20 to get 20 percent off and two free pillows. The info is in the podcast notes. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suffered an apparent medical event yesterday during a press conference. This is really this is not a partisan story. This is really more a story of, quite frankly, the advanced age of so many of those in positions of power in the United States. Mitch McConnell inexplicably froze. He

just stopped talking for about 30 seconds in the middle of answering a question. One of his eyes sort of seemingly drifting up in what some are saying is potentially a stroke, some kind of neurological event. I have to tell you that the comments made by McConnell in the aftermath about how fine he is actually raise even more concern. So let's take a look at this. This is Mitch McConnell. There's going to be a silence if you're just listening during that silence. McConnell is just motionless. And then eventually other people around him start to say, hey, did you want to say anything else? Mitch sort of realizing something is not right. arts and cooperation and a string of. So at this point, Joni Ernst and Senator Barrasso start to approach.

They realize something's going on. They say, you good. Did you have anything you wanted to say? Did you want to go back to your office? Anything else you want to say? Do you want to say anything else to the press? OK, let's go back. So McConnell visibly confused and is escorted away.

At a certain point, he came back and he just basically with no explanation, says, I'm fine. I'm totally fine. Could you address what happened here at the start of the press conference and was related to your injury from earlier this year when you suffered a concussion? Is that no, I'm fine. Fine. You're fully able to do your job. Yeah. Okay. So not too much of an explanation. And then a little later again, Manu Raju asking about I'm sorry, this is not Manu Raju. That previous clip was Manu Raju, another reporter asking about what's going on. And again, McConnell seems confused. He seems

not to hear or understand the questions that are being asked. Well, the president called to check on me. I told him I got sandbagged. How are you feeling now, sir? How are you feeling now? Have you seen a doctor? Are you going to see what happened? Any idea what happened? I'm fine. So he's asked what happened. He says, huh? And then he says, I'm fine. So a couple of different things here. First of all, from from a political standpoint, imagine what right wing media would be doing if this happened to Joe Biden. Just just imagine that I'm not even going to dwell on that because it's not the main thing. This is genuinely scary stuff. I feel terrible for Mitch McConnell. Some of you know, I fainted on a plane, right? That was 300

people, 300 people at the max saw that happen. And really, it was probably the 15 people that were immediately around me. It was horribly embarrassing, horribly embarrassing. And this is on complete and total display. And so I really feel terribly for Mitch McConnell. Now, clearly, this was something Dr. Sanjay Gupta said that it was clearly some kind of a neurological event for which he should be checked out. There's an NBC report which mentions that McConnell recently fell at an airport prior to this freeze up and apparently suffered a concussion. Is that related?

We just don't know at this point in time. So obviously, priority number one is Mitch McConnell's health. Number two is sort of just understanding that there are a lot of elderly folks in positions of significant power in the United States. And there's just a sort of, you know, this this idea of the gerontocracy. It's not about ageism, but I do think that there is a desire to have more younger folks involved in some of these positions of power. And then third, of course, is the hypocrisy where the coverage on right wing media of this event, to the extent that it was even discussed by right wing media, was very different than what we would expect if the same thing were to have happened

to President Joe Biden. And we can leave it at that. Speaking of confusion, the failed former President Donald Trump attempted to give an explanation of what Trump ism is. This was scripted off of a teleprompter, the very same sort of teleprompter that he has criticized Barack Obama for using. And yet Trump still mealy mouth and unable to really explain what Trump ism even is. Take a listen to this and particularly pay attention to whether this rings true as an explanation of Trumpism. Trumpism, or as some people call it, America first is very, very simple. Is it low taxes and regulation, the most powerful military

tariffs and taxes on other countries who have taken advantage of the United States and which will make the USA rich, debt free again, in very quick order. Now, understand that those things are all misunderstandings of how basic policy levers work. Right. We're going to make ourselves debt free by putting tariffs on other countries and making them pay. Trump still doesn't understand how tariffs work. The tariffs that he famously put on China are paid by the American corporations importing Chinese goods. The long term economic idea is, well, if you make the total cost of those Chinese products more expensive, the American companies will then be incentivized to find a source other than China. And but it did not happen. And most importantly, Trump just doesn't understand how these policies work.

And if countries want to take from the United States, they must pay for the privilege of taking protection of our undersea. Second Amendment, great health care, low energy prices through energy independence and even dominance. And again, our great health care for the wealthy countries, we have some of the most expensive and least accessible health care when it comes to energy independence. The metric Trump is using to determine that is still in play under Joe Biden. Every single one of these things is a lie or a misunderstanding.

Parental power on school boards, life, strong borders and so much more. We will make America great again. Thank you. There you go. So a very confusing explanation of what Trump ism actually is. During the same video declaration, Trump added that China is controlling Cuba. Zero chance that China would be opening military facilities in Cuba. If I were president, very simple. If I were president, it wouldn't have happened. This is

also a horrible development for Cuban-Americans. No respect for Biden. China does whatever they want. They pay Biden and the family a lot of money and because nobody can be this bad and nobody can be this weak, but very unfair to Cuban-Americans because China is controlling Cuba. And once they control Cuba, you're not going to be able to go back. So you should never vote for a Democrat again. This is an extremely loose logic chain from Biden being president instead of Trump. So China sets up shop in Cuba. It almost certainly would have happened under Trump, number one. And number two, Trump clearly not understanding the dynamics of world respect. In fact, the country bottomed out in terms of global

respect under Trump by any serious metric. Gallup studies this Pew studies it and so do others. The respect for the office of the presidency has dramatically improved since Joe Biden replaced Donald Trump. Everything's backwards. And even a simple question like what is Trump ism, even when reading off of a teleprompter, Trump is unable to answer or explain in any coherent way. He can't even explain his own movement to his own followers off of a teleprompter. And he wants to be president again. Think about that. Staying properly nourished is just so important to feeling your best every day. Thank you. for the day. Half of Americans are deficient in vitamins A and C and magnesium. Not everybody has

time to perfectly plan every meal. And I don't know that any of us want to be spending a whole bunch of money on endless different vitamins and supplements. AG1 just simplifies it and it's more cost effective. I take a single scoop of AG one in the morning before my coffee tastes great with water, but you can mix it quite frankly into anything you want with that one scoop I'm covered for the day getting everything I want. It's easy and it's a simple routine that works. Go to drink AG one dot com slash pacman to get five free travel packs of AG one plus a free one year supply of vitamin D. That's drink AG the number one dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. Today, we're going to be speaking with Valerie Friedland, who's professor of linguistics at the

University of Nevada, Reno, and author of the new book, Like Literally Dude, Arguing for the Good in Bad English. She also writes a monthly blog in psychology today. Valley, really great to have you on. I appreciate it. Thank you. And you did so well with that intonation pattern for my book title. I love it. So listen, when it comes to language, every time that on the program we talk about language and we talk about less versus fewer or the use of literally to mean metaphorically or words like, hey, you know,

regardless and irregardless seem to mean the same thing or any of these things. Invariably, someone will write in and say, David, all of this stuff about grammar and vocabulary, it's it's all really relative. Right and wrong is only in a sort of culturally determined context that can change over time. It's not like one plus one equals two. And so what's right at the end of the day is just what is culturally accepted. To what degree is that analysis of language accurate? Well, scientifically and historically, it's very accurate. But from a prescriptive standpoint, I think you have a lot of people

that argue with it. It's really hard for us to get out of what we've been taught as children, what we've learned to believe socially and see language from a more distance perspective, from where we step back and we think, what did, can history teach us? What can science teach us about the way that language evolves and how natural that is? But that's really hard for us to step back and get that perspective. And I think that's a really smart person who's writing in, but it's not an opinion shared by most everyday talkers, right? It's not what we think about when we're telling someone it's not me and him went to the store. It's he and I went to the store when our parents correct us. They're not thinking, oh, yeah, science tells me differently. When it comes to words that enter the lexicon as sort of the word like has done in many situations as a kind of placeholder or the use of literally when

you don't actually mean literally. What are the what is the mechanism through which these words appear and sort of replicate themselves in the language? The mechanism is really our tendency as humans to constantly be using language in novel ways. And we push the boundaries of meaning because we have either a new experience we want to describe that some aspect of meaning of that word fit, or we repurpose it because some parts of that meaning are important to what we want to say, but it doesn't work how it was. I mean, I think a great example is today you see a lot of kids say, oh gosh, adulting sucks. And people make fun of that because of course it's taking a noun and making it to a verb. But this is a tendency we've had through the history of language. In fact, Shakespeare's famous for doing this. And parenting

is a verb that came from a noun only in the 20th century. For centuries prior to that, people didn't do parenting. They were parents. And it's only in the mid-20th century we start to see that expansion. So it's just our natural tendency to be metaphorical. We use language metaphorically in everyday ways, not in the way of ninth grade when you were analyzing Romeo and Juliet and you had to pick out the similes and the metaphors. We think of metaphors as being this big thing that's hard to do, but we speak metaphorically all the time. And that is what drives language change forward. There is a ton of I guess we would call it value judgment applied not only to certain

accents and dialects, but also sometimes the simplicity with which some people speak. For example, there were linguistic analyses done of the former President Donald Trump, and it would be discussed whether it's true or not that he would deliver most speeches that would be considered a fourth grade level and how we measure that we can talk about and how accurate that is may vary. But there were those who use that to say this is a deficit and it points to a deficit in terms of the substance of what he is saying. Others who said, actually, it's an incredibly useful and smart way to speak to people because you're ensuring that no one is going to feel left out because they either don't understand the words or they don't know what there's these kind of two sides to it.

What are some perspectives we might apply to think about those two sides? That's a really, really interesting question, because I think there are two different angles you can take here. There is the idea of what we want leaders to talk like, what we expect CEOs to sound like. And then there's the idea of being able to reach people and have people empathize and see your point of view. And I think politicians have been really adept at managing those two things where certain politicians, I think Trump is certainly one of them. Sarah Palin was another. Reach people by being people, by feeling reachable, by talking like those people, by sort of clinging onto the casual, colloquial, informal nature of language. It's a mistake to see that as simpler talk, because that's really not true. That's not

what language, how language works. There is no such thing as simpler talk. It's simply different talk. But I think what we talk about when we're measuring complexity is lexemes. We're measuring vocabulary and the amount and range of vocabulary. So how many different words do they use? How many more educated or learned words do they use? And that's a little different of a measure than just saying, is someone's speech structurally simpler? And certainly his speech wasn't structurally simpler, but I think he didn't use as many vocabulary items and the diversity of vocabulary that other people did. And that was used as the measure. It depends on what you want

in a leader. And I think if you identify being a man of the people as what you're aiming for, then Trump really has that one in hand. If you are identifying someone who's a leader and can sort of speak at a level above the everyday person to solve world problems, for, then Trump really has that one in hand. If you are identifying someone who's a leader and cancer speak at a level above the everyday person to solve world problems, that then maybe he doesn't. So it's really different perspectives on what we want. Speaker 1 What you said may be simpler isn't isn't the right word to apply, at least in some of these cases. If we think about literature and you think about, I don't know, just to pick two different styles of fiction,

not that these are the ultimately representative examples, but if you think about like, for example, the writings of of Proust or Proust, depending on your preference of pronunciation, and then something like Harlan Coben. And I love both. So I'm passing no value judgments. But there is a facility with which you can page through a Harlan Coben novel that you can't with Proust. It seems that it is partially vocabulary, partially structure, partially that Coben tends to write more dialogue and just present tense. Here's what's happening, whereas there is more characters thinking out loud in Prusill. What are the factors that make literature easier or more difficult to read, I guess,

is the way I would ask it. Speaker 1 Well, I think, you know, one key question, who sold more books to see which one has been more successful? But I think it's really important here to mention that there are measures of literary skill that differ. And a lot of it is take what we were talking about with Trump and oral speech and compare it to two different pieces of literature because you learn how to write. No, no two year old knows how to write. I mean, they play and they scribble, but they don't know how to write innately. It's not something that is emergent as a skill, but babies are essentially born talking and no one teaches a baby to talk. They absorb input from the environment that triggers their linguistic abilities. But a two year old can talk quite well.

A three year old is amazing and they've never gone to school, but they can't write. And when we look at literature, the history of writing is thousands of years younger than the history of spoken language. And in fact, mass literacy didn't exist until about 100, 200 years ago. So fundamentally different skills. But literature differs on the learning of those skills, the practicing of those skills. And language is very different. And when it's spoken, everybody practices languages every day, right? We're all talking all the time. So there's no measure of I'm more practiced at this.

There might be a measure of I'm more institutionally educated and pick up the words that are associated with that institutional education. And I think that's the same in your comparison of literature. There's someone that's writing to be approachable and they're writing in everyday, more spoken colloquial style. And then you have the literary canon, of course, with writers that practice it as a skill who rewrote 50 million times and who are aiming for a stylistic approach that's a little different. Let's that's that's super interesting to take a specific example that's kind of in the political cultural discussion right now. There's a lot of discussion about the use of the singular they when we're talking about an individual whose gender we may not know or who identifies as

non-binary. And defenders of this say that actually hundreds of years ago, there was a much a relatively common use of singular they in older English. There are others who say that it's some kind of a destruction of the language in this context that you write about and talk about of the sort of evolving nature of language. How would we apply that to the use of singular they for this cultural reason that we're seeing? Absolutely. I mean, singular they is a great example of a place where we should look back at history to understand the current moment. And pronouns have always been caught up in cultural change. And this is not true of just today.

It's been true many times in past centuries. And in fact, they is not even a native English pronoun. I don't think people realize that the pronominal paradigm or the types of pronouns we had in Old English were actually quite different. And they came from the Vikings. It was a borrowing from Old Norse. And in Chaucer, in fact, you can see Chaucer switching between they and in the accusative case. Instead of them, he used the Old English pronoun hem. So when you say go see them, that's actually a remnant of old English hem, not them. So it's really a fascinating evolution. But if you look at the pronouns in the early modern period where we went from having thou, thee, and you, and ye, and ye, and you, to just having you, that was actually driven by social cultural change. It was massive changes into in the social structure of London that brought a

rising middle class and it made society more democratic and egalitarian, which it really hadn't been prior to that. So you didn't any longer want to recognize status with your pronouns because you could get in trouble. You could insult someone. You know, you could be challenged to a duel because you pissed someone off because you vowed them, which was an insult if it was someone that was your equal or higher. And in fact, Shakespeare plays with this all the time in his plays. If you vowed out to him some thrice, it shall not be amiss is in fact a line from Shakespeare, where he's saying if you vow him and it's incorrect, it could be a problem. So you became the symbol of equality. And this was actually not well accepted by grammarians or by some of the religious groups,

because they felt that it was an insult to God because it was putting people above God. So this idea of pronouns bothering us is not new, nor is the idea of pronominal shift. And they was used as a singular they as far back as Chaucer. We see Chaucer using it this way. So from the 13th century on, there are cases of this. The novelty today is it's used as a non-binary pronoun, and it wasn't used that way 700 years ago. It was used as an epicene or all-gender pronoun. So that's, I think, what's bothering a lot of people is this use with words that we have marked for gender. So instead of saying everyone should check their ticket to see what time it's at, right, where that they sort of sneaks in and it should be a he or

she, you know, grammatically, prescriptively, but we use they, everybody does that. But Kelly likes their coffee with cream and sugar. That's the type of they that bothers us. And that's probably because Kelly in many people's cognitive grammar is marked for feminine gender or marked for masculine gender, depending on your experience with that term. And so it's semantically incongruent with they for people that aren't versed in practiced and using it that way. And I think when people find it uncomfortable grammatically in their mental stages of of accepting a new thing. It feels bad.

It feels wrong. But as soon as people are practiced and accepting of it, sort of millennials and younger, it doesn't seem as wrong. And research bears that out. Millennials don't have nearly the trouble that us old folks do. Last thing I want to ask about on that note, what are some of the linguistic shifts that we're most prominently seeing among Gen Z? Well, I think there's a couple of things I will predict we will not be around in another

decade or two, and that is the subjunctive, because we have was were leveling. No one ever says if I were a rich man anymore, if I was a rich man is really the change. And these are subtle changes. That's what I'm more interested in as a linguist rather than new vocabulary. The other thing is adverbial L.Y. is going the way of the dodo. So, you know, you don't drive slowly anymore. You drive slow. And I think that is definitely in younger speakers, the more prominent pattern. Interesting. I have not noticed that. And I think I mean, obviously, I'm not Gen Z. I'm a millennial. But that millennials are still very much using the L.Y. Right.

I wouldn't say very much. I think you can catch a millennial not using it as much. But what we do see is a drop off in its use as the generations because language change goes slowly. So it's usually started in one group and continuing another. The other thing I think Gen Z is incorporating is a lot more variety from which they draw the new forms and fashions that they're using. And for example, African-American English is much more prominent in Gen Z language than it is in older groups. And that's regardless of location or just on average, it's more

prevalent on average. A lot of the new vocabulary. And I think a lot of that is Internet access has really made those types of words that are prominent, new and African-American English become accessible for young people in the white suburbs that want to sound cool. Very, very interesting. The book is like literally dude arguing for the good in bad English. We've been speaking with the book's author, Valerie Friedland, who's a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Thank you so much for talking to us today. Speaker 4 Absolutely. It's been a blast. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1 One of our sponsors today is Zip. X nicotine toothpicks. Thank you. I've seen that around. This is an easier and less messy way to curb the cravings. And you can use Zypix just about anywhere. Zypix is available in six flavors with two or three milligrams strength. The nicotine and the flavor are long lasting and Zypix has helped countless people kick the bad habits and they are bad habits. Zypex toothpicks are FDA registered.

Their customer service is second to none. It is one of the most cost effective alternatives. Also check out their B12 and caffeine toothpicks. See for yourself why so many people have switched to Zypex toothpicks. You can only get Zypex online. Quitting has never been easier with Zypex nicotine toothpicks.. sent off. The info is in the podcast notes. Ron DeSantis was recently interviewed on something called Outkick. And now remember that Ron DeSantis is presidential campaign is not going well. He's actually lost more than 40 percent of the support he had within the Republican primary, down to now about 18 percent of the Republican primary. That's going to make it tough to win the primary. And it

would certainly make it tough to win a presidential election. But let's not put the cart before the horse. DeSantis is attempting a bit of a reboot. We'll get to that reboot a little bit later in terms of what it means stylistically. But first and foremost, when it comes to policy and action, DeSantis has come out with two big ideas on the outkick show. Idea number one is criminally prosecute Dr. Anthony Fauci. Idea number two is make Robert F. Kennedy Jr. either the head of the FDA. Or the head of the CDC. I know, I know. Let's start with his first. I mean, this is truly nutty stuff. This is nuttier than you and whatever. Here's the Santa saying, yeah, Fauci should be prosecuted. If you were president, do you think Fauci should be prosecuted? Yes.

I mean, he's he is guilty of lying before Congress. I mean, give me a break now here. This raises an issue that you know, when I when I look at kind of, you know, how do you get good policy to stick? Whatever. What are what are kind of the pressure points? Yeah, absolutely. Prosecute Dr. Anthony Fauci, a very popular line with Trump. So this supports the idea that DeSantis is approaches. I'm going to be there. And if anything happens where people get away from Trump, then I will be there. And if they want prosecute Fauci, I'll do prosecute Fauci. Why not? And then we really get to the crazy idea. He said, well, he would not choose Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

to be his vice presidential running mate. He would make him head of the FDA or CDC. And this is this is unhinged. Yes, the medical stuff. I'm very good on that. So that does appeal to me. But there's a whole host of other things that he'd probably be out of step with. And so in that regard, it's like, OK, if you're president, you know, sick him on the FDA if he'd be willing to serve or sick him on CDC. But in terms of being Veep, if there's, you know, 70 percent of the issues that he may be averse to our base on, you know, that just creates an issue.

Yep. Isn't that great? Why on earth would you make Robert F. Kennedy Jr. head of the CDC or head of the FDA? What qualifications does he have? Remember in that crazy video where he talks about covid being ethnically targeted to be more serious for blacks and whites and less serious for askan, as the Jews, as he said it and Asians, even though I don't actually think the paper he later referred to even mentions Asians.

I think it was some different during that crazy video. He says, I've been working on a book for years. That's not a qualification. That's not a qualification that actually is of any value. And the idea that you would put the guy who says it's been proven that vaccines are connected to autism in a causal way. He says that's been proven and that no one really wants to study it. Actually, it's been studied extensively and the link has been debunked. That's the guy that DeSantis would put in charge of the FDA or CDC. And it shouldn't really come

as a shock to us because DeSantis has that surgeon general of Florida, Dr. I believe it's Ladapo, who is one of the most whacked out voices when it comes to medical science and covid and vaccination that we've seen since the start of the pandemic. So incredibly nutty stuff. This is part of the DeSantis reboot. It's disturbing. But let's now look at the stylistic changes that DeSantis is doing as part of the reboot of Ron DeSantis is failing campaign. He seems to be substituting the word narrative for the word woke. We've played for you these woke comas that Ron DeSantis has been afflicted by where sometimes in 20 seconds he'll use the word woke six, seven, eight times. And he has been making a big deal out of Florida's where woke goes to die.

You know about the whole thing where it's all about anti woke. It seemed like this was not a good strategy because maybe that will play well in Florida, maybe not. But at a national level, the country is on the woke side. The country is on the so-called woke side with regard to should educational professionals or random parents decide what gets taught in class? Most of the country is on the side of the educational professionals. When there is the question of what should we be doing to foster inclusivity and respect and equal status, a level playing field for trans people when it comes to discrimination and scapegoating, et cetera. The majority of the country is on the

so-called woke side. So for a while, I've been telling you it just doesn't seem as though this anti woke platform is going to win it for DeSantis. And of course, when you look at the polling, it's not winning for DeSantis as DeSantis continues to decline. And again, I've shown you these numbers before polling peaking above 31 percent in early January. Then we saw DeSantis his announcement and Trump's indictment and another Trump indictment. And it's all been very bad for Ron DeSantis. Donors are bailing. Everybody's bailing. DeSantis now down to about 18 percent, losing about 40 percent support. So that gets us again to clips from this DeSantis interview with Outkick. This is part of the DeSantis reboot.

And in this segment, this is a nice little compilation from Ron Filipkowski. DeSantis no longer using the term woke, but instead it's narrative, narrative, narrative, narrative, bonded to a fake narrative. That's right. The false narrative. Right. And it weirded pair to create a narrative. They're bonded to a fake narrative. That's right. A false narrative. Right. And it created a narrative. Sometimes I'm not joining again, they're creating a narrative. But you know, you actually now are in an era of narrative journalism. So it's all about what narrative they

can spin. Sure. They want their narratives. This does not fit their narrative because they want to focus. So their narrative is to try to ding me in terms of their narratives. I mean, I've been the number one target archer from the narrative as well. And I got attacked for doing that at the time. So their narratives on. There you go. So narrative is the new one. I don't know if the idea is we'll talk about a left wing liberal narrative rather than woke. And it's basically meaning the same thing. You never know whether this is something DeSantis came up with on his own. You don't know if it's some of these.

He fired one third of his staff two days ago. Maybe he got rid of the one third that was saying, keep talking about woke and instead let's refresh the messaging by talking about a narrative. None of this stuff is landing, but we know what the strategy is. It's very clear. The strategy is let's wait around for Trump to fail and I'll try to suck up to his supporters and see if they will support me. Here is DeSantis citing Ford pardoning Nixon to suggest he will pardon Trump if he ends

up in that position. Take a listen. Action even happens that you would look at that. I think you said on our show before you'd look at pardoning all the January 6th. Well, my view, I mean, with respect to like, you know, do we really think it's good for the country to have an almost 80 year old former president in prison? Like, is that is that going to be good for us to come together? Yeah. You know, that's the thing. It's like, you know, there's divisions in this society, but there is some opportunity, I think, to come together on some things. But it's

like when all this is going on, that makes it very difficult. So, you know, I look back at like Nixon pardoning Ford. He took a lot of heat for it. But I think it was the right decision to just move the country beyond that. And, you know, they could have tried to get a pound of flesh out of Nixon. And it wasn't that Nixon was above the law. It was just weighing how does that, you know, provide fissures to society for this? But it's a type of thing where in terms of ending weaponization, I think wielding pardon power is definitely part of it. So listen, the comparison to Ford Nixon is not a great comparison. It's really quite specious. And the pardoning of Nixon by Ford is also very controversial.

Number one, it allowed Nixon to avoid accountability for his involvement in the Watergate scandal and potential criminal activities related to it. It's short circuited investigation. So we probably never even really learned the full scope of that conspiracy. It certainly eroded trust in the government when people see, well, if a government it's a sign that you really are above the law in certain positions because you are able to get out of that accountability because of cronyistic, you know, Republican pardoning Republican, whatever the case may be. You're undermining a legal process because when you pardoned Nixon, when Ford pardoned Nixon before criminal charges were even filed, Ford's action under actions completely undermine the investigative and judicial process

because they're saying, listen, he's immune. OK, just don't even bother. Don't even bother. And then there can be political fallout. I don't know what the political fallout would be of DeSantis pardoning, pardoning Trump in this situation. There are arguments that some have made in favor of Ford pardoning Nixon, and they mostly are different than the circumstances today. So even if you look at the reasons why folks thought it was good for Ford to pardon Nixon, one was national healing. We need we need a pardon. it was argued by Ford to promote healing, to move away and beyond the Watergate scandal, which divided the nation. The Watergate scandal was not a fundamental attack on democracy the way that all of the things Trump is accused and suspected of doing has been. It wasn't good. We're not defending the Watergate scandal, but it's a different type of thing. We would get healing this time by Trump being held accountable.

So the situation is dramatically different. It's wild that this is what the Santas is saying. And it is all part of this idea that the Santas wants to set himself up to appeal to Trump voters. Chris Christie is taking a different approach. Chris Christie is also pulling 2 percent. So maybe the Santantis is right, although he's lost 40 percent of his support to his name. But DeSantis his approach is different. And whether it will get him the nomination if and only if Trump fails on his own remains to be seen. But the reboot no longer woke.

Now it's narrative. And yes, I would pardon Donald Trump. It doesn't exactly have strength written all over it. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. The Eggman called in with another one of these. I'm just asking questions sort of ideas, the likes of which we saw after Bronnie James, the son of LeBron James, suffered cardiac arrest and immediately the anti-vax people said, clearly it's the Vax absent any evidence.

Here's the egg man with his own idea. Hey, Dave, myocarditis in adult men is really increasing. And I think it might I'm just saying it might be because of global warming. I mean, I'm just asking the question here. Right. The global warming heat wave myocarditis. I don't know questions. And by the way, no one wants to study it, causing men to have heart attacks and freaking die a lot more now.

Look, I'm just asking the question. You know, some people don't want to hear that question, but I'm just asking. We get to what I have said for a long time about this whole just asking questions? And here's the pernicious nature of just asking questions. On the one hand, if you argue those questions shouldn't be asked, you're accused of silencing, you're accused of censoring, et cetera, et cetera. Fine. On the other hand, if you say all questions are endlessly valid, even if we've determined that they're being asked in bad faith or that they've already been answered or whatever the case may be, you then are attacked as saying you also want to suppress. There is no problem with asking any question you want.

You know, there's this funny thing. There's a correlation between the length of women's skirts. And I don't remember what it was in the 70s. And it's sort of like the classic example of correlation doesn't equal causation. Ask any question you want. Do vaccines cause autism? Is it possible there is something about, you know, about women that makes them better suited to certain professions? In principle, just a question isn't a problem. The problem starts when you realize that the motivation for asking the questions is bad faith, that the answer has already been presupposed and a consequence already attached to it. Or if you're simply lying that the question hasn't been answered on vaccines and autism, the anti-vax people love to say you're not allowed to study it.

It's been studied so extensively in so many different ways at population levels, at more specific levels, and it has been debunked. The link has been debunked. So you now are actually causing a problem where you say they won't let you study it. Big Pharma won't let you study it. Nobody studied it. No, that's not true. It's been studied. We saw this with ivermectin. We saw this with hydroxychloroquine. We saw it with remdesivir or rum reservoir, as Trump used to call it. And with some of these things, we saw some utility when it comes to covid. And with some we did.

OK, I get the Eggman's joking about global warming and heart attacks. But and by the way, extreme heat can cause cardiac events. So at the end of the day, it's one of those where like there actually might be something there to look at. But ask any question you want. If it's been answered, be honest about it and be honest about your motivations for asking the question as well. We have such a great bonus show for you today. We are going to talk about what happened with the Hunter Biden plea deal. This was yesterday in court. We're going to talk about the vacation of Bo Bergdahl's conviction and his dishonorable

discharge. This is a story many of you I know have been following because you've emailed me about it and we will talk about how Elon Musk's rebrand of Twitter as X has gotten it blocked in Indonesia under laws related to sexually explicit websites. It's it's it's one misstep after another for Elon Musk. All of that and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. Get instant access. Get all of the great member benefits.

I'll see you.