The Ricochet Podcast - Aliens Among Us

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

Settle in folks, this is a long one (and not in the Rob sense of the word). First up, Powerline’s Steve Hayward (and the host of the Powerline Podcast available on the Ricochet Audio Network) drops by to discuss the inauguration and preview the Biden administration. Then, a segment we have been looking forward to for a long time. Avi Loeb is a Professor of Science at Harvard University and the... Source

I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet. But if you threaten to extend your violence, this earth of yours will be reduced to a burned out cinder. I have a dream this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

I'll be right here. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lalex. Today we talked to Steve Hayward about the inauguration, Avi Loeb about E.T., and Antonia Okafor about Vice President Harris. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. It's the Rick and Jay Podcast number 528. I'm James Lalix, here in currently peaceable Minnesota. The expected crowds at our Capitol did not show up to raise the places to the ground and salt the earth.

And Rob Long is on the line. Peter Robinson is on the line. And Steve Hayward is on the line, too. Hey, Steve, welcome. Usually we chat amongst ourselves and say brilliant things, but we're deferring to you because your manifest brilliance comes out in that coral-colored shirt. Now, of course, in a podcast describing people's clothing, it's pretty stupid.

But I've got to say, you've got an iridescent, incandescent look to you that can only come from the joy we all feel now that the healing has begun. I cut myself shaving the other day, the day of the inauguration. By the time Joe Biden was done speaking, it had healed over without a scar. It's astonishing. The leaves are budding on our bare trees. It's a new age. It's a new world. So let's talk about the inauguration your impressions of it and peter and rob of course jump in say hello to everybody and let's kick off our podcast what you want me to go first yeah you gotta go first that's how that works you're the guest you get to go first so we can say i um i disagree with steve that's that's how this is

gonna go got it right okay uh so well if you thought the racial healing under the Obama years was great, just wait till you see what's coming at us now. I think despite the sort of warm oatmeal rhetoric of most of Biden's inaugural address, I think we're heading towards an administration that's going to be much more radical, really, than the Obama administration was. I think that's point number one. So, I mean, where do you go from there? I thought, and really, I should defer to Peter, he was the presidential speechwriter, that it was a fairly bland inaugural. In fact, some of the platitudes are recycled. There's one sentence that's almost word for word from what I think Bill Clinton said back in the 90s. But, you know, history is not always the strong suit of Democrats. I'd agree with all that.

You couldn't judge it. You couldn't tell it from the press, which was just in full swoon mode for hour after hour after hour. I would click on the front page of the New York Times, and it was truly, it was indistinguishable from subtle, not crude, subtle,

but still state propaganda. It was just astounding. But he got through it. The speech was okay. It was well enough constructed. Did any lines ring in your mind afterwards? This is like walking out of the Broadway theater and thinking, I don't think that's a hit because I can't whistle a single tune. It was a mess.

It was a mess. It was a mess. So, Peter, in other words, what I hear you saying, Peter, is that when you look at the media, that when it comes to their Democrat liberal leanings, the mask is finally off. I'm detecting bias. So the comedian David Angelou does a very funny thing on Twitter. He just takes quotations from, you know quotes pull quotes from you know msnbc or c or cnn or wherever and he puts them superimpose them over that i don't know her name but that you know the woman who reads the news in north korea and she's in the fancy north she's always in the north you know whenever they show the news the six o'clock news to north korea you know she's always in like traditional dress and she's smiling there's always a picture of the

kim jong-un or whomever is the dictator behind and she's smiling. There's always a picture of Kim Jong-un or whomever is the dictator behind her, and she's smiling like this is everything wonderful that he's done. He just puts the CNN quote or the MSNBC quote underneath that, and it's perfect. It's like, oh yes, of course. This is TV

Pyongyang. But on the other hand, there aren't that many presidents who get to come into office with this kind of a slipstream, right? I mean, George W. Bush in 2001 was inaugurated after barely winning. I mean, let's be honest, the coin landed on its side. Like that was the closest election any of us could remember. I mean, let's be honest, the coin landed on its side. Like that was the closest election any of us could remember. I mean, he did win, but a little bit.

And he is given this magnificent gift by Bill Clinton of those ridiculous, corrupt pardons. Bill Clinton's popularity plummets. George W. Bush looks great. Joe Biden is the president of the you knowknow-what lucky club, his predecessor is leaving office, depending on which poll you trust, at 25% or 30% popularity. I mean, my God, this guy, I mean, he's got karma on his side right now.

If I were a liberal and a progressive, which I'm not, just so you guys know, I would be, the next 150 days, I would be using this to pass every piece of crackpot left-wing legislation I could possibly find, and I'd be smart to do it, right? They're off to a good start at doing just that. Well, you're right. They do have a great gust in their sails

because already Joe Biden has approved approved three vaccines which is incredible and he's got a plan there was no plan before nobody knew what to do about anything and he's going to deliver 100 million vaccines in 100 days uh so it's astonishing but you know when steven said that uh it's going to be a lot more uh to the left than people thought who thought that joe biden joe biden would end up being the the piston that actually pushes an awful lot of what we regard as socialist legislation through the cylinder? Joe frickin Biden. Is it only because he's a figurehead and the forces behind him are actually yanking the strings? Look, Biden has always been a political chameleon. His superpower is knowing where the center of the Democratic Party is and where it's moving. And so, you know, I think I've mentioned this before to you guys, somebody that Biden in the 70s was a very conservative Democrat, not just on busing

Kamala Harris attacked him for, but he voted for all of Reagan's tax cuts. He voted for the capital gains tax cut in 78. He uttered all kinds of conservative sounding rhetoric on government management of the economy. And then what really shows you how he turns on a dime is Peter will remember this vividly and painfully. In 1986, Biden says to a reporter, if Reagan sends up Robert Bork, I'd have to vote for him. He's qualified for the president under Supreme Court choices. And if the liberal groups tear me apart, so be it. I'm not Ted Kennedy. That's what he actually said. A year later, he turned over his Senate staff to the left for that protracted character assassination of Biden that has turned our whole judicial process of nominations into the horror show it's been ever since. That's Biden for you. So where's the Senate of the Democratic Party now? It's moved sharply to the left. He's going to defer to all that, whether he's got all those marbles or not is irrelevant in some respects. So that's why. And I also think I'll just say back to Rob is I think his honeymoon is not going to be very good. I mean, agree with all

the reasons why you ought to have one, but he really won for one reason to be not Donald Trump. I think an awful lot of what he's pushing is not going to be very popular. Oh, I have a slight. If I may, may I amend your or I would like to offer an emendation on that. And then I have a question for you, Steve, if I may, as a historian, you I mean, or you as a historian, not for me. The emendation I would make is that he went for two reasons. One was that he was not Donald Trump. But the other was also was that he was also not Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. And now he comes into office and signs executive order after executive order after executive order that shows, oh, I was just faking it.

Actually, I am Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And he's not even trying for a honeymoon as far as I can tell. All right. That's the emendation I'd offer. Here's my question and then I'll back away and let Rob and James maul you, but I'd like to get this question in first. You know this because you've written the definitive work on Ronald Reagan and because you've studied leadership in other people, including Winston Churchill. The presidency of the United States, a president has

an enormous staff, but to a remarkable extent, it still comes down to one human being. George Shultz was a brilliant diplomat, and yet even George Shultz, who just celebrated his 100th birthday, George Shultz will tell you that to some extent, the people who are uncomfortable with Reagan try to give him, George Shultz, too much credit. The central decisions get made by Ronald Reagan. One of the reasons that the George H. W. Bush White House took longer to make decisions was that it was a little less clear where the president stood on any given. All right. Now we have Joe Biden, who at his peak, as you have just said, was a purely transactional president. Nobody quite knew what he stood for because it shifted so easily, so fluidly. I read his campaign book in which he talks about his time with Barack Obama.

And wherever Barack Obama was is where he wanted to be. You just get no sense of Joe Biden in his own campaign book. Add to this, I've asked every physician I know, what do you see when you see Joe Biden? And they all say early onset trouble. If it develops slowly, he could be perfectly fine for four years and continue to function as he is now with a lot of staff help. But if it moves fast, he could be in visible trouble in as little as two years. How does the White House, let alone the federal government, function when nobody knows where the president is, where his mind is, where the buck stops if it's not going to stop on that desk? I think it's going to run by itself. And I think the key part is going to be the subcabinet appointees and the agency heads who all look pretty far left. His cabinet's more of

a mixed bag. But I mean, so here's the I think the problem's, though, even bigger than you stated, Peter. We're now going to get the presidency that the left said we had under Reagan, right? A creature of the staff, which was always incorrect about Reagan. I think that may now be the Biden presidency. And I'll sort of repeat or modify my comment about him being a political chameleon. It's one thing in the Democratic Party to match the color behind you if it's green and red, but America is divided. We have a plaid country. And I'm reminded of Franklin Roosevelt's famous story about his pet chameleon, which he said, turn green or turn red. And then I put it on a piece of plaid cloth. The chameleon died. That's what's going to happen to Biden, I think.

Can I suggest an analogy here? I mean, or just a comparison. Traditionally, Republican, not traditionally, but recently recent history republican presidents have been run as conservatives um and there's been a touch of populism or more than a touch in every single republic successful republican president and then they get to be president and they have all these conservative beliefs and the staff is sort of like saying well you know we're going to pull this one back well you know the staff has been the moderating influence on on a slightly less than moderate republican president it's the reverse for democrats right or it has been reversed democratic presidents whatever they run on to get in there and they're like well wait a minute we gotta like i gotta

split the difference here i gotta give half half half and their staff and the bureaucrats that they hire like no we're gonna go this is our shot we're gonna storm the barricades it does look like that is what's going to happen that is that that is the constructed scenario that joe biden for whatever reason i mean i don't i mean he may be demented he may not be demented but that is he this is his team he picked it he had a long time to pick it this these are his people that does seem to be the direction that they're going in and if i'm putting my on my progressive hat strategy hat i'm thinking this is the best possible time to get everything you want the government is spending vast sums of money the former president the republican president just you just left office was arguing for more money to give more money to more people so there's that you could get

everything you want what's another trillion dollars and you get to and and if you feel like you need to raise taxes you have an argument to make the american people and what are the republicans gonna say well we were to give two thousand dollars to everybody that's a lot of that's a trillion and a half dollars too so if i'm a if i'm a if i'm a progressive i feel like i've got a shot isn't this if you're not a progressive the most dangerous year coming up for mischief and nonsense and little creepy jones act laws? Yes, full stop. Sorry, I should have a better question. Well, the the the the upside, so to speak, is that Biden is repeating a pattern now familiar from the last two Democratic presidents, which is overreaching. In fact, the way it is back, you described, Rob, is I think

it has emboldened them even more than they already would have. And so, you know, Clinton overreached and Democrats got their heads handed to them in 94. Obama does the same thing in 2009. And I think you're seeing Biden do it now with much thinner margins. I mean, I was right with you, Rob, saying the day after the election, my goodness, this is not a bad bargain. Trump is going to go away and Republicans are much stronger than they were under either Clinton or Obama. And so I don't understand the pessimism I'm hearing from a lot of my readers and friends that, oh, it's over for the country. They're going to use their 51 votes in the Senate to end the filibuster. And they will try some of that and they will get some of that. But I think

there will be a typical brutal reckoning at the polls two years from now. Well, brutal reckonings are things that happen. I mean, Republicans, certainly Trump voters seem to think that brutal reckonings only happen to the other side. Only Democrats can overreach. Only Democrats can turn voters off. But it turns out Republican presidents can do the same thing. So who's who if you're if you're if you're like me and you're ready to fold right you're i'm ready to make a strategic uh alliance with somebody how how trustworthy can i be for joe mansion who's my second favorite politician in america after uh governor florida desantis yeah i don't put too much stock in mansion switching

parties or being no i don't mean switching but just meaning you know being the hey slow down fellas uh there i mean 50 probability is my rough guess uh if the left goes after him hard which is quite possible then he might break hard and he might even switch parties the way Jim Jeffords did 20 years ago that took the Senate majority away from Republicans. That could happen. I don't count. I think he's I think he's a pretty weak minded guy. Remember that Manchin voted for Brett Kavanaugh, but not until after it became clear that Republicans had enough votes to confirm him. Not exactly a profile in courage. No, no. But that's a classic west virginia politician i have to say i admire that he only after the interstate rest stop joe mansion uh uh state

park was was funded a great agreed okay well you know he's got robert bird's great example i mean if you've driven through west virginia everything's named for robert bird and so he's got quite that's why i think mansions for something like $3 trillion in stimulus spending. He's got a lot to, you know, we've got to repave every road in West Virginia before it'll be happy. Rob mentioned Brutal Reckoning, which of course was a straight to video Steven Seagal movie from a couple of years ago, but it also is what the nation will face if we continue to break norms, right? We're all very concerned about the norms that were broken. Now, first day comes in, Joe Biden fires the NLRB guy.

He doesn't want to quit. He fires him. Horrible norm-breaking right there. Horrible HR nightmare. As anybody can tell you who is in HR, those nightmares are expensive. Yes, when running a business, HR issues can kill you. Wrongful termination suits, minimum wage requirements, labor regulations. And you know, an HR manager salary, they're not cheap.

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Get your free HR audit today. Go to bambi.com slash ricochet right now to schedule your free HR audit. That's bambi.com slash ricochet. It's spelled B-A-M to the B-E-E dot com slash Ricochet. And our thanks to Bambi for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Anyway, here's another norm steam that was shattered. When Joe Biden signed the executive order that killed the Keystone pipeline, and that'll probably come back. That thing has been dead and undead, dead and undead again. It's interesting that nobody said we've just alienated a key ally, Canada, our close partner, right? We've just emboldened Putin by taking a supply of energy off the market that helps him. We just fired 11,000 union workers tossed out on their

keister by this guy. So if this was Trump doing this, we would have ally insulting anti-union. And also, we should note that the Keystone Pipeline people had dealt and had a committee of indigenous citizens who were there to shepherd this project through. So it's a threefer. He, you know, it? It's going to be a wonderful thing because of the imminence of climate change and the decision to make climate change not just a scientific thing we all got to do, an economic thing, but a matter of equity. And that's my question to you, probably before we let you go with this afterwards. I know Peter's got one more. We're hearing a lot about equity instead of equality. Do you trust anybody in the media to phrase Biden's actions the way I just described? Of course not. But do you trust anybody in the media to actually parse that difference between equality and equity and what it is going to mean? Oh, of course not. I mean, here we have to insert the familiar axiom that if liberals didn't have

double standards, they wouldn't have any standards at all. Look, the keystone thing, I'm not clear whether Canada may have some legal remedies. That's a legal question that get John, you back on to talk about. I think. Yes. Take us to the world court. Take us to the world court. I mean, they love the world court. So let's have Brussels hand, you know, bang down the gavel and say that the United States is acting illegally. Well, actually, I think I'll say one sentence about it. I think they may have a good claim in the U.S. Federal Court of Claims, as it's called, where you do contract disputes with the federal government. And that's been a conservative leaning court for since the Reagan years, actually. Anyway, I think the real purpose of canceling Keystone on day one

was not necessarily to kill the pipeline because it may yet be revived under with legal challenges. I think it's to send out the unambiguous message. Nobody even thinks about building another pipeline in this country as long as I'm here. And we need a lot of we need to modernize our systems. And I think that's what the real because it's going to make no difference to greenhouse gas emissions. The Obama administration concluded that eight or nine years ago. And so this is purely symbolic, and it's also hardball politics. I've got just dozens of questions for Steve. I know I can't go to dozens, but may I ask a

couple more, James? I'm looking in your... Go? Okay, listen. So I'm struck by a couple of things. We've already discussed one, that the executive orders yesterday, boom, boom, boom, boom. Every one of them driven by and delightful to the left of the party. There was no, let's unify the nation. There was no, let's come, zero. I'm also struck by an executive statement that didn't get made. There's time, of course. He's got four years. China just crushed Hong Kong. Crushed Hong Kong. First, they tried putting Jimmy Lai in jail, and then he was released,

and they put him back in jail. Always looking. I think we can conclude, we can assume, always looking to the United States, how much of a fuss are the Americans going to make? Not much, it turns out. Even under Donald Trump, not much. Trump gets into trouble. He loses the election. The Chinese go in and arrest 53 dissidents and lock them up. Hong Kong is done. Clearly that's a test to the then incoming and now president, Joe Biden. Not a peep. I put this to you. This is the way it seems to me, but I put it to you because I want to hear what you have to say about it. You think more deeply and spend more time on these things than I do. If the Biden administration doesn't object to Hong Kong pretty darn quickly, and by the way, they just gave China a sop yesterday. We're back in the Paris Accord. And everybody who looks at

that thing knows it's wonderful for China. Not great for us, but wonderful for China. The Chinese are going to start moving on Taiwan. They're already building enormous military forces across the state. This is serious. And there wasn't a peep about it yesterday. Stephen? Yeah, I think that's not just an omission or accident. And I'll double down on you, though, Peter. The one thing I'm watching for is the last day an officer, so Secretary of State Pompeo, what he gave the official State Department designation that China is practicing genocide against the Uyghurs. Watch and see if the Biden State Department undoes that designation.

Ah, OK. There's the first test. Right. They're silent about that. I think it's big problems for them if they do. And if they do undo it, it will be done quietly. There won't be a big announcement and we'll have to read about it in some obscure federal publication. liberals, meaning liberal in the old-fashioned classical sense, were very pro-Trump. And that's because they could tell what side he was on, even if his policies were erratic and counterproductive or however you think about his trade policies. And a lot of them were saying to the New York

Times reporters, we like Trump because he's against political correctness of the kind that we know here in China from our cultural revolution. You know, we've missed a huge opportunity. Trump might have done more, I don't know but certainly the biden administration will not take advantage of what essentially is the equivalent of the soviet dissidents in the cold war and the charter 77 people and people of that kind i think there's a lot of mischief to be made in china over hong kong over the uyghurs uh over the larger questions of individual liberty. And I expect nothing useful from Biden on that. Steve, can I, boys, jump in here. I'm yakking a lot, but Steve is a, I mean, Steve's just an old, old friend and we don't get to chat that often.

The trial in the Senate. Question number one is, what about the constitutional question about whether the Senate has the right to try a former president? Is that going to be litigated? It has to be the Supreme Court. But the Senate, including McConnell, are just steaming along, scheduling this trial as though that weren't even a question, which baffles me. question is really straightforward they need 17 republicans to get to 67 senators to vote to convict and um i count maybe uh romney murkowski of alaska collins of maine ben sass of nebraska probably i don't want to speak for anybody but i count four 13 away why are they doing this i think they want to do it for several reasons it keeps the pot boiling it keeps the republican party divided and in turmoil uh it rallies and pleases the democratic base that is going to continue hating trump forever uh the same way liberals you know couldn't resist beating up on Joe McCarthy 40 years after he was dead. It is very peculiar, though. This news out today that they're going to refer the impeachment article soon for a trial is really baffling. If I'm Biden, I'm not

really for this while I'm trying to get up and going and hoping that Congress will confirm my employees and start moving my legislation. Second, if I'm a cynical Democratic political operative, I'm scratching my head here a bit and thinking, on the one hand, it's great to keep dividing the Republicans and making them cast tough votes. On the other hand, what if 17 senators do go along? Why would we want to solve the Republicans' problem for them by disqualifying Trump from running again in 2024? know if i'm a democratic strategist i want twitter to turn his twitter feed back on right and i wanted to be eligible to run in 2024 right i see rob nodding his head because absolutely yeah but why would you not want of course you want that right um he he uh

the worst that happens is he wins the nomination which he won't. And then you run against four years. You run four years again. It's fantastic, right? He was beaten the first time, despite the fantasies of those who want to believe a delusional nonsense. He was beaten soundly the first time. And he probably won't win the nomination. I mean, he'd probably be running against Pence. I mean, I would bet he would.

I bet a lot of money he'll be running against pence steve you see what we have to live you would then leave which he lays even even trump's ardent supporters accept the fact that he's a delusional ego ego maniac maniacal uh crazy person he would run as a third party he would hurt the he trump can continually hurt the republican party as long as he draws a breath why would you ever want to stifle him if you're on the other side i think progress what about the what about the put it back on twitter the patriot party there's been talk about that that trump wants to start the patriot party and peel off all of his voters supporters from the gop steven you think that's a, is that a starter? Is that going to continue in the rich, successful tradition of third parties

in the 20th century, 21st? I doubt it. So first of all, remember that the Republican Party has been called dead twice before, at least in my lifetime, after Goldwater, after Watergate. And both times the party was way, way, way down to the point that in 1974, the Republican National Committee actually considered whether it should change its name. Now, you might remember, I was just recently doing research on this for a totally unrelated reason, but in the mid-70s, there was

this push to start a third conservative party, hopefully to be headed by Ronald Reagan and George Wallace. And I was recently in the archives of the American Conservative Union and discovering that that was a very serious idea to the point that the American Conservative Union wrote to the secretaries of state of all 50 states about what are your ballot access requirements. And it's in the book I'm working on right now. Okay. And so you will be able to read it in the fullness of time. I was starting to see this. And of course, what they found was very difficult. Ballot access for third parties is cumbersome and require a lot of money. Who knows if Trump has a lot of money anymore, whether he wants to start a TV network and so forth. But this is not a simple thing to do. I keep asking questions in the form of statements because I just feel this urge. I have an old

friend on here and I feel the urge to see if he's been thinking the things that I've been thinking. How badly did Cruz and Hawley hurt themselves by voting to challenge the electoral results from certain states? And I'm going into what they actually voted for because it is flatly untrue, as all the journalists who have been writing it know, that they voted to overturn the result of the election. That is just not true. In any event, they voted to challenge. They did. Several others joined them, but those are the two who caught it in the neck from the press and how how how pleased are you by tom cotton's performance and the performance of ron de santis i find myself falling in love way too early but i find myself falling in love yeah well i'm a big fan of tom cotton and know him some as you probably do uh and so i thought

he was very uh uh i it was quite right the way, the position he took. I think Hawley and Cruz have hurt their presidential ambitions, probably. We'll, you know, again, we'll see how events unfold here. But I have been tweaking some of my liberal friends who are all up in arms about Hawley and Cruz. And I've been saying, ah, makes you want to treat Jesse Helms with strange new respect now, doesn't it? And they're not smiling, but because they're humorless people. But we needed Jesse Helms with strange new respect now, doesn't it? And they're not smiling, but because they're humorless people. But we need a Jesse Helms around every comment. We have two of them now, I think so.

So and the two of them are you and Holly. Who's the Holly to Jesse? You think Jesse Helms would have voted to to I don't know. Yes. The technical term, I guess, is open up a debate to challenge the right of the electors of Pennsylvania to cast their votes. But do you think that Jesse Helms would have done that? I don't think he would have. I think he probably would.

I mean, who knows? I think he would have. Remember, the thing about Helms is he would often, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, block nominations that all the other Republicans on the committee were for. It didn't matter if he was a minority of one. was going to block it because i think that the fundamental bedrock belief of jesse helms for better or for worse sometimes for worse is states rights and it was hard to argue that there's a well we don't have to relitigate this but it's hard to argue there is a connection uh between a belief in states rights and what holly and cruz espoused on the floor of the senate yeah that's a perfectly cogent uh assessment of it you might well be right about it we'll never you know we can't prove these

counterfactuals you might well be right about it that is as close just for your information that is as close as the blissfully affable stephen hayward ever comes to rolling his eyes. I don't think so. I think he was being polite to another member on this podcast. So, Steve, the filibuster. They could end it if they wanted to. What do you think? I think we'll get a halfway house. I think there will be filibuster reform, and it will make it either a lower vote threshold or some clock that limits how long a

filibuster can go on before legislation or a nomination must go to the floor. Something like that, I think, is what will happen. They won't get rid of it completely. Steve, if you're looking at American politics right now, sort of the national political map, and you're a senator, it feels to me like the national political map in the Senate favors Republicans. And I understand how you could be a Democrat in the Senate and think we're winning, and the people on the winning team always think it's inevitable they're going to win. But if you've been around for a while, if you're Chuck Schumer even, you're thinking, well, you know, this place could turn. This thing turns all the time this the gone are the days where the party lock on a house

on a chamber in the congress right isn't it just sort of good politics to reform filibuster maybe but keep it i mean it seems to me like every single sitting senator except for one or two uh has in their recent memory what it's like to be in the minority. In true spirit of the filibuster, Stephen, you have 26 seconds to answer that question. So, right, right, right. Look, the filibuster is a prized prerogative of individual senators. I think there are lots of them on both sides who don't want to give it up for the same reason they don't want to give up having a veto over federal district court judgeships. You know, we got rid of the filibuster for appeals court judgeships, but they wouldn't, and the blue slip process with, you know,

technical thing, but they wouldn't get rid of it for district court judgeships because senators in both parties says, no way that has a powers of Senator. I want to keep, I don't care what the partisan politics of it are. Right. Right. Well, a concise coaching thing that came in at 27, 20, Steven, you're a pro. We thank you for joining us today. We'll have you on as often as possible.

It's always a joy to see you and have a great rest of the rest of January. I will. I thanks. And then I'll sit back and take lessons from the master Rob and segue interruption duties. Steve. I also appreciate not all. Most of the people will be listening to you rather than seeing you but i appreciate this zoom shot because working historian though you may be there is not a single book in the picture but i count one two three bottles of booze yeah i see

i see two at least i don't see yes look over the look over the left shoulder there's one oh yeah there's one peeking out behind the left shoulder. Yeah, good for you. You're a good man. Emergency reserves. Those are your strategic reserves. Right. Talk to you later. Bye.

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you're doing and what you're preparing for. To receive your free personalized retirement planning report, go to smartasset.com slash ricochet. Your report will provide personalized insights into your retirement readiness. So get started, get on it, smartasset.com slash ricochet today. And thanks to Smart Asset for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Avi Loeb, Frank B. Baird, Jr., professor of science at Harvard University, chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy, founding director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative. And don't send them an email because it'll just hang in the black, you know, event horizon in an elongated fashion. And director of the Institute for Theory and Computation within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In other words, a fellow who knows of which he speaks.

And we're here because his new book is Extraterrestrial, the First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth. Welcome to the podcast, Siri. And the first sign is that strange cigar or maybe pancake-like object that wandered into our neighborhood a little while ago. A lot of people looked at that and said, that's really unusual, but it was poo-pooed and waved away. No, no, no, it's just ordinary space stuff. You believe differently. You think that it actually may be an artifact. Tell us why, and we'll go from there.

Thanks for having me, first of all. One illustration of the way that the community reacted was a seminar that took place at Harvard, where we heard about this object. And when I left the room together with a colleague of mine that worked on rocks within the solar system for a long time, for many decades, he said, I wish this object never existed. It's so weird. And to me, that illustrates the problem. So this object is called Oumuamua. It was discovered by a telescope in Hawaii that surveyed the sky and by chance in October 2017 came across this one. And this object was unusual because it moved too fast to be bound to the sun. So clearly it originated from outside the solar system. It's the first object that we identified near us from

far away. And at first astronomers thought, oh, it must be a comet, just like those rocks that we find in the solar system that are covered with ice. So when they get close to the sun, the ice evaporates and you end up with a trail of gas behind them, gas and dust. But we could see no trail of gas and dust. There was no cometary tail. So then astronomers said, okay, well, it's not a comet. Maybe it's just rock without any ice on it, which is called an asteroid from another star.

The only problem with that is the object exhibited an extra push away from the sun, which for comets is provided by the rocket effect of the same gases that evaporate. But here, there was no evaporation. So what gives it this extra push? And beyond that, the geometry of this object was very unusual. As it was tumbling, it looked as if the light that it reflects from the sun changes, the amount of light changes by a factor of 10, by a lot. And that means the object has an extreme geometry. So even if you imagine a piece of paper tumbling in the wind, you rarely see it edge on.

And changing the area that you see by a factor of 10 as it's tumbling is extremely unusual. And the best fit to the amount of light reflected as a function of time was of a flat object, not a cigar shape the way it was depicted in some cartoons. So you have a pancake-like object that is being pushed by an extra force. And the only thing I could think of is it's a very thin object, like a sail on a boat. So a sail is being pushed by the wind bouncing off it. In this case, it would be the sunlight bouncing off it, can give it the extra kick.

And that was the interpretation, but it has to be very thin like a sail. And that is not produced by nature. That must be artificial in origin if indeed it's a light sail. We are currently developing this technology ourselves for space exploration, because if you have a light sail, you don't need to carry any fuel with the spacecraft. You can be pushed just by light.

But another civilization could have mastered it. I should also say that there was an object discovered in September 2020, just a few months ago, and it was given an astronomical name, 2020 SO. And then the astronomers figured out that, in fact, it's a rocket booster from 1966 that was launched and kicked into space. And this object also exhibited an extra push away from the sun without a cometary tail because it was thin and hollow. And here is an illustration of an artificial object. We produced it. We know where it came from. The question is, where did Oumuamua come from?

That is the question. Because when you look at the speed, for example, of the object, a light sail is not something that's going to get you zipping from solar system to solar system in a matter of Star Trek seconds. So if we look at the speed that it's going, can we extrapolate out how far it was launched? Because if this was a probe that was sent to us by an active civilization, a probe sent with intention, then you'd have to assume that they're fairly nearby in the neighborhood. If it's a piece of detritus that was just cast off and managed to stumble and wander into our backyard, then it could be traveling for who knows how long.

Right. So the one other unusual fact about this weird object is that it was parked in a local public parking lot. There is this so-called local standard of rest, which is the frame that you get to when you average the random motions of all the stars in the neighborhood of the sun. So each star has some speed in some direction, and you average over that and you get to the local standard of rest, okay? And this object was at rest in that frame, sort of like a buoy on the surface of an ocean. And the sun bumped into it, just like a ship bumping into a buoy. So it didn't come from another star, only one in 500 stars. Oh, okay. Right. Only one in 500 stars is so much at rest in that special frame. So that's another peculiar fact about it. You might wonder,

what is it doing in that frame? You know, no star can be one in 500 stars is so much at rest. So one possibility is that you have this grid of objects in interstellar space, and it's being used for navigation, like road posts, or you can imagine relay stations for communication. Who knows? It could be just also a surface layer of a spaceship that was torn apart. Or we don't know what it is because we didn't take a photograph. It was too far. We couldn't really resolve it. We didn't bring our phone.

It was running away from us when we identified. It's sort of like having a guest for dinner that you recognize is very interesting only by the time that that guest lives through the front door into the dark street. And that's the experience we had with this one. But the good news, there should be many more. Since we looked at the sky for a few years, we found one, so there should be many more. And with a future telescope that is much more sensitive that will come online in three years called the vera rubin observatory we should find one one per month such object and then if we find one that approaches us we can send a a a cube sat that with a camera that will take a photograph of it yeah i have i have any question you want yeah i have three sort of big questions here. One is, I mean, one of the things that always sort of freaks me out about space, right? And I don't know anything, is that I know that the light from the stars is from a long time ago.

Yes. people on that distant in that distant solar system aren't seeing that light anymore that light might may not even exist anymore i mean in sort of you know well it's just because the distances are so great you know when you look at the mirror i should tell you when you look at the mirror you're looking at your image from a few nanoseconds ago a small fraction of a second ago right you always see yourself the way you were younger yeah it's better so we and we all and for us we always think of being visited by aliens or foreign you know ets and they come to us in their real time into our real time but in fact what you're suggesting is that this this thing that we saw if it is what you say it is is from a long time ago oh yeah i mean it takes it

10 000 more than 10 000 years to traverse the solar system i mean the old cloud the outer part of the of the solar system so obviously i mean whoever sent it, whoever produced it, did not have us in mind because it takes so long. And 10,000 years ago, we didn't have anything to show for. You know, we were rather primitive. We are still rather primitive, I would argue. One reason I look for space, for intelligence in space, is because I don't find it here on the ground, you know. But it's true that a lot of the civilizations that may have existed in the past are potentially dead by now. And, you know, the sun is one of the stars that formed late in the history of the universe.

Most of the stars that look like the sun are older. They formed before the sun. And so there could be a lot of dead civilizations out there. But, you know, we had dead culture on earth, you know, and we cannot get signals from them. But what we can do is find evidence for the relics they left behind in archaeological digs. That's what archaeology is about. You know, we search for the Mayan culture by finding relics they left behind. So we can do the same thing in space. And, you know, if this is a message in a bottle, the sender of the bottle may not be around anymore, but we can still read the message.

The message is still important. So a personal question. Did you believe that there was or had been life, civilizations, and outer space before you started studying space? Or did you study space and think to yourself, you know, what happened first? Well, I worked throughout most of my career on the universe, you know, how the first stars formed and the black holes. I was not even thinking about the extraterrestrial life, not even thinking. Only over the past five years, I started to be interested. And then Oumuamua came and I wrote this paper. I wrote other papers since then.

That was sort of at the beginning of my interest that it came about. And it's the evidence that led me in this direction. So in difference from a lot of people that talk about aliens and so forth, they have a preconception of what reality should be like, and then they look for evidence. I started the other way around. The only reason that we are speaking is because there was this evidence, this anomaly, and I want to talk about it. My colleagues prefer to ignore it and do business as usual, but I think it's important to discuss it because it will motivate us to get more evidence in the future. And, you know, evidence is the foundation for science. It's not prejudice.

And a lot of people confuse and think, oh, yeah, first we have to have an idea and then we go out and look for it. That's not a good approach. Yeah, go ahead. Let me ask you, you are quite literally a Harvard astrophysicist. That is a synonym. People say things like, hey, I'm no Harvard astrophysicist that is a cinematic i mean people say things like hey i'm no harvard astrophysicist but i know how to do my taxes something like that all right i presume that there's like an area in the harvard astrophysical department where you all kind of

gather in the before covid you'd all gather around the curry or whatever it is and have your coffee and chit chat about whatever oh did you ever did you ever have a few colleagues one or two or maybe all of them maybe department chair pull you aside and say hey listen i'm the department chair but by the way okay can we not talk about the department chair yeah okay can we not talk about the spacemen you know we have funders we have donors it's making us all look kind of nuts has anyone or is it is it an understanding in the astrophysical community that, oh, they're out there. They're out there.

These aren't just- Well, I can tell you the response, what happened to me, and then you can decide for yourself. I'm not sure what people say behind my back. Just yesterday, I was invited to discuss this subject at the gathering of the alumni of the graduate school at Harvard. And by the way, the department chair at the time that I was doing this work was me.

Nobody could have taken me. I'm not doing it for any other reason than the standard procedure of science where you are confronted with an anomaly and you are trying to put on the table the possibilities. And some of the mainstream astronomers try to explainate something that we have never seen before, like a frozen hydrogen, a big chunk, like the size of a football field, a chunk of hydrogen. And then when it evaporates, you can't see it because it's transparent. The problem with that is that this hydrogen would evaporate during its journey. It will never make it. There was another suggestion. It's a collection of dust particles like a dust bunny that you find at home size of a football field spinning around every eight hours

and also a hundred times less dense than air to me that doesn't sound like it will maintain its integrity and so i deal with this this anomaly this this object that looks weird i deal with this anomaly, this object that looks weird. I deal with it just like I deal with any other scientific anomaly. And I don't really, you know, change my opinion based on what my colleagues say. You know, just like basketball coaches, they say, keep your eyes on the ball, not on the audience. Right. So that's the way science should be done. It should be without prejudice, driven by curiosity. And I'm surprised because in theoretical physics right now, you know, there are lots of speculations.

People talk about extra dimensions, about super string theory, about the multiverse, things that have no foundation in experimental evidence. And that is considered part of the mainstream and that is allowed there is no taboo on that there is a taboo on discussing uh technological signature i don't think it's right i think that's right yeah yeah and i can't tell you i don't i'd leave you my colleagues here but i can't tell you how refreshing it is to have a conversation about something that's really big and huge that would be if even worth exploring is a is a a monumental moment in human history and human consciousness and it has nothing to do with the united states government and i just feel like that's so

refreshing well now now if they ask us to take a to take them to our leader we have a leader right well yeah you and i agree on that um all right james i'm sorry you could or peter i think peter's got some dumb questions i have a couple of dumb questions but first of all professor lobe i am so distressed i so wanted you to be like christopher in Back to the Future, an obvious madman. And here you are, self-evidently brilliant and well-spoken and composed and what makes it even worse, charming. Okay, so I just, I'm a layman and I'm a skeptical layman. A, I just doubt that there's anything up there. And B, who cares?

This is just my starting point. Oh, we care a lot. You have work to do. So can I go back? You said earlier, this is, I'm sure I didn't quite get it, but this is the first object from beyond the solar system that we have spotted in our own solar system. Yes, yes.

And again, how do we know it came from beyond the solar system that we have spotted in our own solar system yes yes and and how and again how do we know it came from beyond the solar system because it was moving too fast to be bound to the sun you know there is how does a rocket escape the gravitational pull of the earth if it moves fast enough out it escapes and goes to the moon you know and and the same thing this in the same way if you see an object moving too fast near the sun, you know that it cannot be bound gravitationally to the sun. This was an example. Okay, so right there, I am forced to conclude that something dramatic, I think in terms of history and culture and politics, I would tend to say something historic has happened. Oh, yeah.

The first time ever we have spotted something in our solar system that came from outside yeah and by the way it's not because the object is special it's because we didn't look i mean there was never a survey like pan stars that covers the sky and searches uh for objects of that size the size of this object is roughly a few hundred feet, and that is the minimum size of objects that the Congress tasked NASA to find if these objects endanger the Earth. So these are called near earth or objects and nasa asked was asked to find 90 of them above a size of a few hundred feet um and the panstas was the first to the challenge was the

first survey telescope to look for such objects the next one the vera rubin observatory will find two-thirds of these objects and we care care about them because, you know, the dinosaurs didn't have astronomers to warn them. And then there was this giant rock getting bigger and bigger on the sky above them. And it must have been a beautiful sight to see this rock coming. But then the fun stopped when it hit the ground and Chicxulub crater was created, you know, and so we are smarter than the dinosaurs were. The human brain is much smaller than the body of a dinosaur, but it's much more valuable for survival, you know, it turns out. So we can have astronomers find those objects before they hit us, and then we can try to deflect them before they hit us.

So if I understand, I've got just another couple of questions, and they're both really dumb, because I just don't understand the way your field operates. But again, I am forced to admit that I'm dealing with an obviously intelligent and furthermore charming man. All right. So you have something here. You're not claiming, well well you're interested in possibilities you do enjoy

speculating about where it might have come from and indeed who might have sent it but we get to that next what you insist on is this object that we spotted is just anomalous yes it doesn't fit what we understand about objects in space. It's moving too fast. It reflects light in the wrong way, on and on and on. Now, the little bit that I do understand about science, that's the kind of thing that science loves. Exactly, exactly. And is that the reaction?

It's clearly your response, but is that the response within the profession? No, because you have to understand, we didn't discover something new in a particle accelerator, okay, that we constructed and that theoretical physicists with very sophisticated math were making forecasts for and so forth. What we found is an object, and there were people looking for objects, and this field of astronomy was quite dormant you know looking at rocks in the sky is not a very exciting you know frontier uh looking at black holes or searching for gravitational waves or studying the early universe were exciting frontiers but this one was sort of dormant and you have this community of people that are rather conservative. They resemble, in my opinion, a caveman that is presented with a cell phone. So a caveman is used to playing with rocks.

You're speaking about the colleagues. No, I mean, let me finish. A caveman is used to playing with rocks. And the cell phone would look like a shiny rock. That's the natural way that you interpret things based on your experience. I'm not surprised that they didn't, they, they are refusing to discuss anything else, but I'm trying to argue that they should know that other people should pay

attention to this object because it's anomalous. And, you know, nature, science or physics is a dialogue with nature. Nature tells us things that we couldn't have imagined, right? So it's a learning experience. We should be humble. We should be modest. And you see it again and again in the history of science where people thought they know the truth, that the Earth is at the center of the universe. And they didn't want to look through Galileo's telescope.

And that just maintained their ignorance, you know. And I think science and our understanding, our knowledge should be driven by data, by evidence. We shouldn't have a prejudice. And so here comes nature and tells you, I present you with something that you have never seen before. What should you do? Okay, you can say, okay, maybe it's a rock of the type that I've never seen before. Like the cell phone is a shiny rock. You can say that, but I'm trying to tell you

that this is not the only way to think about it. So the community, of course... If I could just, I want to nail down this distinction in my mind again. String theory, for example, exists on chalkboards. You're talking about a fact that nature itself has sent our way. You are talking about science in the cleanest, purest form. It is responding to reality as it exists outside us, not the reality that we invent in our heads. Exactly. And, you know, I play the role of the kid saying the emperor has no clothes. That's my role. Now, the analogy with the kid is not Academies. I'm the director of two centers.

I was for nine years the chair of the astronomy department. But that's really irrelevant. I mean, it is relevant for people that do political calculations that say, oh, I should be careful at saying that. But that's not the way I operate. And everyone that knows me would tell you that. What you see is what you get. And if I see something unusual, I will talk about it. Why would I back down if my colleagues want me not to speak? I mean, that makes no sense. I mean, suppose I had one plus one equal two, and someone would tell me,

you're not supposed to discuss the number two. I would say, okay, forget about it. Then what's the point? You know, I will say what I think is, and the only way that I will back down is if someone shows me a better interpretation of the data. So someone would go to the data, analyze it and shows a natural way of explaining all of this data with an object that we have seen before.

And if it's an object that we have never seen before, that's as speculative as technological origin. Technological origin, I should say, is not speculation. It shouldn't be at the periphery of science because the sun-Earth system is common. We now know that there are many Earth-sized planets around sun-like stars at the right distance to have life. And why would we start from an assumption that we are special, unique, and alone,

rather than from the more conservative assumption, saying if you arrange for similar circumstances, you get the same outcome. That's the most mainstream approach. And I'm trying to represent this mainstream approach, but the mainstream of astronomy is regarding it at the periphery. It's saying we should not fund this research. We should not encourage young people. We should bully anyone that raises such possibilities. And I find that like stepping on

the grass and saying, look, the grass doesn't grow. You know, if you don't fund searches, if you don't allow people to speak about it, obviously nothing will be found. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is completely inappropriate given the interest of the public in this subject. Right. Last question, Doc. You mentioned before that a primitive cave dweller looking at a cell phone would might think that it's just a piece of obsidian. But're not we're better than that because i mean we literally have fiction and movies about cylindrical strange objects wandering into our solar system between rama from arthur c clark and star trek 4 we got it we we and james have them all on we've imagined on the hard drive well but you have to understand that these are not in the realm of science.

So scientists... No, that's my question is, I mean, what is it going to take? What is the data point, the undeniable fact that will tell, that will finally tell the people who are automatically skeptical of this stuff, that no, this is from another brain, from another... It's very simple. A photograph is worth a thousand words. So if we sent a camera on a CubeSat that gets close to an object that is approaching us,

rather than receding away from us, and we take a photograph and it doesn't look like a rock, nobody can argue with that. That's what I look forward to. And on that day, we're going to have you back so you can tell everybody, I said, I told you so. As long as this experience doesn't kill me, it will make me stronger. The next time they name one of these things,

choose a catchier name. Aum Amuma is nice, but it sounds like a lyric from Surfinbird. Well, Omuamua means a scout in the Hawaiian language. And they gave it that name. I accept whatever they tell me. Scout from another place, though, isn't it? Yes. Right.

A messenger from far away. Yes. A messenger from far away. Well, we appreciate you being a messenger from very close to home, and we hope to talk to you again soon. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you.

Extraordinary stuff, and I could just wrap your brain around that. The thing of it is, is that we think that our age is characterized by the news of the day, but if something wanders into our solar system and announces itself, that will be the thing by which this era is known. Not Trump, not Biden, but that. Because life has a way of turning on you without making any announcements at all. This time last year, did any of us say, oh, yeah, I can see a pandemic and lockdowns on the horizon. That's going to happen. No, I didn't expect to see my hometown become a site for riots. And we never anticipate the accidents or the sudden illnesses that can take us from our normal days into a chaotic world.

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a gun rights activist and current director of outreach for the Gun Owners of America. We understand that you're out in Vegas right now shooting in the desert, which means you either have a future career as a mob enforcer, but I doubt that because you're married to a pastor and you recently became a first-time mother as well. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us. We wanted to talk about something you put up in Speakeasy. Unlike this podcast, which goes on for hours, yours is a fairly concise four and a half minute description of how you felt about Vice President Harris's ascension, your conflicted feelings about it. You know, I really should just shut up here and tell people to go listen to it. But let's maybe, what's the controversy that she's brought? And how in your mind, perhaps, isn't that the entire story when we look at Kamala Harris?

Yeah, definitely. If you are looking at policy and what she's done, what she will do, there is definitely no hiding or sugarcoating the fact that policy wise as a conservative, I absolutely do not agree with pretty, probably 99% of what she agrees with, particularly on the gun, uh, gun control avenue as well. But, um, but if you are more nuanced, which some people tend to be sometimes, uh, the fact of the matter is, is that she is not only the first woman, first female vice president, she is a first female color, rather black person, black woman VP as well. And so it does make a difference when it comes down to the fact that, yeah, there's more people that look more like me or at least are different than what we usually see. And that helps everyone. I agree with that. The interesting thing, though, is that, I mean, you started out your podcast by saying,

I see color, which is sort of in contrast to the line of people who say, I don't see it at all, when obviously we do. Obviously, we make all sorts of judgments. It's human nature to look and categorize and do the rest of it. So I get that part of it. The interesting thing, though, is that you would think that Harris's ascension would be a refutation of the left's narrative about America's systemic racism, prohibiting such a thing from happening. But as it is, they're going to sort of view her as the one person who managed to survive this cauldron of hatred and that anybody who attacks her is going to be seen through that prism so instead of seeing her as an exemplar of what america believes it is and wants to be we're supposed to now we're expected to look at her entirely through that and if we don't we're

racist aren't we right and the left's retort without for that would probably be if we had a leftist on the show right now. We got Rob. We got Rob here. Oh, OK. OK. Well, I'm assuming. Also, I used to be a leftist, too. Me too. That it would be, well, that's an individual case. You can't use one example as, you know, completely dismantling systematic racism, right? Which I agree, there's definitely absolutely in history and in now, too, people who are racist who make decisions that keep people from advancing to the highest levels. Does that happen every single time? Absolutely not. And obviously Kamala Harris is a perfect example of that. And you can't just throw that out. So I definitely don't agree with that.

But I do think it is just like with Obama. There are people who grew up never knowing that there could be any other type of president that you couldn't be a black president. Right. That's not something that the eight year old, the 10 year olds and who grew up now thinking, well, I had a black president most of my life. That's not an issue when it comes down to racism, right? And that's a different perspective that somebody wouldn't have had just a decade or so ago. So I think advances like that is definitely important. But, yeah, it definitely doesn't it's not going to change the narrative that we're going to see still in the next, at least next four years of that racism controls everything. And then there's no such thing as being able to get out of the systematic racism. Obviously, Kamala Harris is an example of how it's on the ricochet network got a lot of listeners here right now well um what's going to be your beat like what do you really want to talk about because you're doing it with uh sure michael who was our guest in i don't know in the summer sometime um but and

we were just i was talking that this is the was the future thing so now that it's not a future thing it's a real thing um What can I expect when I, when I subscribe and listen? You know, so our, the beginning of our short intro says tough conversations, honest answers. And we continue to be focused on that.

I think we're on our 19th episode now. So almost 20, I don't know how you guys, I'm sure you guys are like in the hundreds or something. So you guys are babies. Can you tell? Bab babies. So maybe we'll get to that point soon, but yeah, definitely. But yeah, so we are definitely focused on, I would say more. So if you, for most of the episodes, actually we've had mostly black conservatives as guests. Um, sometimes not even on purpose. It's just,

we usually talk about topics like, you know, race and culture, but particularly something that sure. Michael and I both saw that was not involved or rather not a conversation. A lot of conservative movement, at least conservative movement, media and podcasts and conversations,

which is talking about, look, race is like I said, I see color. People see color. And like I said, in my, in my spoken word that even if you're colorblind, you see black and white. And that's essentially where the color lines usually go towards when it comes to politics in America. But I think we can add a conservative lens that a lot of leftist media tends to not tends to. They purposely leave out, even though a lot of African-Americans are just, by definition, moderate to conservative in their beliefs. And so there's not been an actual presentation. So that's going to be blunt.

Some of you has been in the media business for a long time. Often we think when people sort of the sort of management level think okay well this is a black show okay this is yeah this is a black show and then this is for all of our listeners who are black or african-american they can listen to this show but this is really not what this is i mean this is actually i mean when i'm listening to it i kind of feel like i'm listening to a conversation that I wouldn't hear otherwise that is really fascinating. I mean, oh, thank you. And I would argue that it's really, really a show that white conservatives should listen to. Right. This is the Rosetta Stone to if you care about the future to a group of Americans that we've had a hard time as white conservatives connecting to. Absolutely. And that's the intent. And that's why you guys said you had Shermichael in the summer.

So really, this started from George Floyd, from Ahmaud Arbery. Our first episode was on Ahmaud Arbery and the history of lynching and et cetera. It's to give a perspective that I think a lot of black conservatives feel like they can't actually talk about because they feel like they have to be on one side uh talking about racism and and how that completely controls the narrative uh and their and their destiny right as a as an african-american in america which isn't true but then also yeah we you do see color we all see color and so we're not there's nothing wrong with being able to talk about the differences that are, you know, as a black conservative, as a white conservative. That's nothing wrong with that. The problem is, is that when we completely ignore when things that are obviously true about racism, like Ahmaud Arbery, like George George Floyd, and even statistically, when we do see police brutality, when we don't talk about

those instances, people, we lose credibility completely from those on the left who think that we only have one agenda and it's not to talk about people who don't, who look more like me, right? And so there are people who are more, quote unquote, in the middle, who can see both sides, who are conservative in their beliefs. You hear Sher Michael on the show. He's definitely, we make fun of him all the time, being the conservative nerd on there, talking about things I've never

heard of before that I should have probably as a conservative. Listening to you guys with your astrophysicists, I was just talking about conservative intellectualism is not dead. Thank you, guys. It is a feeder. It would be if I had anything. So, yeah, it's it's essentially saying, look, yes, we are conservatives.

But look, there are problems that we're not going to say just completely don't exist anymore. And we're not the typical black conservative narrative that people like to push. And but we exist. and i think we do have an avenue of getting more people who think our way um but don't vote our way because um they seem to they they see the hypocrisy when we don't really need to have a hypocrisy out there antonia could i ask a question that has nothing to do with anything, but everything to do with everything? Oh, okay. Sure. Motherhood.

Oh. Has it changed your thinking? Oh, absolutely. I want to say it's changed my thinking philosophically as a conservative, but it has definitely shown a reality. For example, George Floyd, even more so, I would say actually McClain, the boy that was killed in Aurora, Colorado, which is lesser. People don't talk about him as much, but I saw perhaps my future son. I have a son and he's mixed, but he's going to be seen as a black boy. And so it definitely gave me a perspective of, does it really matter at the end of the day, whether my son is conservative

and has all the beliefs that are important to America, et cetera, or whatever, or the person that is behind that firearm or that person who wants to harm him. Does that matter if they only see color, if they only see him as a dangerous threat? So I wanted to be real about having conversations like this so we could have solutions that were conservative bent instead of only hearing from people on the left and only getting leftist solutions to these very real issues and things that happen in the world. So yeah,

motherhood has changed me, especially when it comes to talking about the issues that I think are going to impact the future generation, but particularly my own son and my children going forward. These leftist framings that you describe have come to characterize, to swamp the entire conversation. Because now, as we were talking about before, the term equality has been replaced by equity, which is loaded and implies an agenda. Somehow the idea, there's been this elision, this conversion of the term racism, it's not enough to be opposed to racism. You have to be anti-racist, which is a specific, you know, if you go back and read your Kendi, that's an agenda. And these phrases are being used without a complete understanding of what they actually entail. And so before,

when you had the civil rights movement grounded in basic American values and virtues, these are the things in the Constitution that these people obviously deserve. Now we have a different ideological foundation here, and I think that that's dangerous. And I'd like to say I want to have you back on the show to discuss this, but no, what we need to do is just tell everybody to listen to your podcast where you discuss it and other things as well. And then, you know, we'll have you back at some other point too.

But, yeah, so know, we'll have you back at some other point too, but, uh, yeah. So pitch the podcast again, tell us, uh, your little short description of it and, uh, we'll wait for the signups to come. Yeah. So, uh, we would love you guys to subscribe. Very important subscribe to speak, uh, hyphen easy. So when you guys are searching that speak hyphen easy um it's essentially a show where for the most part we do talk about um the issues of race and but from a conservative lens

i like to say if you're an npr listener um which i suspect there are some people here who do listen to npr um and they watch or listen to code switch that is definitely a conservative say, that podcast Code Switch, which a lot of people do love to listen to. But like you said, it has a very clear agenda. They had a gun episode a couple of episodes ago. And their only source was The Trace. For those who know the gun world, The Trace is definitely not gun rights for me. So it's been nice to have a balanced perspective. And we have people who are on the left on our show, as well as people on the right

who are black or white. But just to give balance to a topic, an issue that people don't like to give balance to. Great. Subscribe, listen, and we're glad you're part of Ricochet. Now go out in the desert and shoot some bullets at things. Oh yeah, I will. I'm about to do right that. After this, I'm going to change into my clothes and go out into the desert after this. All right, bye-bye.

Thanks Antonio. Thank you so much. Well, you know, the thing of it is, is we've had, I mean, a wide ranging, fascinating, long discussion here. What a typical Ricochet podcast, right? We had Biden, we had the election, we had the inauguration,

we had the executive orders, we had space. We, we had space. It's been all over the place. And it's been too much for Rob, who I apparently exploded in a shower of something or other, because we've lost him. But that's okay, because we're at the end of our time. Anyway, we got to get out of here. I do want to tell you, the podcast is brought to you by Bambi, Smart Asset, and Ladder. Support them for supporting us. And, of course, listen to the best of Ricochet, hosted by me. It'll be this weekend on Radio American Network. Check your local listings, as they say. And I did actually have somebody who sent me an email saying that he'd given us a five-star review on iTunes.

That's one. It's now up to you. And, Peter, you going under an assumed name a dozen times and doing it yourself doesn't really count. Sorry to hear that. I keep trying, James. Right. So join Ricochet if you haven't already, because if you were part of this podcast earlier on Zoom, you saw Peter with his adorable new dog. It's absolutely lovely little poodle.

And good luck with that is all we can say, because we know the early days of dogdom can be a little trying on the whole family. Yes. My daughter's puppy, actually. She has the brilliant idea that it's better to housebreak the dog in our house than in hers. Okay. Lots. Well, if newspaper sales are up in the California area, that's why. Thanks, everybody, for listening, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0.

Next week, James. We are unsure when they stop to think. People are not worth a life now. They are obsolete. We're dying to be invaded and put the blame on something concrete. Waiting for the UFOs. Waiting for the UFOs. We are waiting for the UFOs. We'll be right back. with anything the government is holding back they won't say and when do they ever

is that a light in the sky or just a spark in my heart can I accept this as evidence or will that tear the whole act apart waiting for the U-Boat we are waiting tear the whole act apart Waiting for the UFOs

We are waiting for the UFOs We are waiting for the UFOs We know that they're there They're there This new obsession is turning us alien too Much more resounding, my heart just stopped pounding for you Waiting for the you Ricochet!

Join the conversation. Waiting for the you, oh Waiting for the you, oh conversation. The traffic is quite luminous and is exhibiting some non-ballistic motion. Over. Roger, Ares 31. Continue to send it to your discretion. Over. Okay, Senator. Senate pilot's discretion is approved. The traffic is approaching head-on, ultra-right, and really moving.

And right by us right now. Now, that was really close. Ares 31 is out of 340 on the traffic. Ask them if they want to report officially. UWA 517, do you want to report a UFO? Negative. We don't want to report. Ares 31, do you wish to report a UFO?

Over. Neither. We don't want to report one of those either. Ares 31, do you wish to file a report of any kind? I wouldn't know what kind of report to file, Senator. Ares 31, me neither. I'll try to track traffic to destination, over.