The Ricochet Podcast - Cheese and Cigars

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

This week, we go it alone. And by that we mean no guest, just our guys performing some Rank Punditry® on the news of the day, energy on Texas, WandaVision (well, James tries to talk about it), Rob’s recently completed trip to Kenya, Peter’s sojourn in Wyoming, and various other personal and political points of interest. We’ve also got new Lileks Post of The Week, courtesy of David Foster (our... Source

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. More likely, Liz Cheney just knows what she needs to say in order to get what she wants. What Liz Cheney wants is an expanded American military presence around the world. More wars in the Middle East. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lileks and our guests today are James Lileks, Peter Robinson and Rob Long.

Guests, we don't need no stinking guests. It's the Ricochet Podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 533. I'm James Lallix in Overcast, Minnesota. Peter Robinson is in his castle keep in Wyoming somewhere, and Rob Long, having just blessed the rains down in Africa, has joined us. And I'm back. You're back,

and I understand that you told all the stories that need to be told about Africa on the GLOP podcast. Oh, you know what? They're not as interesting. You know, they don't want my political insights, put it that way. Yes. The GLOP people? Yeah. Your political insights about Africa?

Yeah. No, not so much. Well, we'll get to those. But right now, the news seems to be, for those people who are worried that the Joe Biden administration was going to be this far left organization. Hey, look, 13,000 unaccompanied migrant kids in detention facilities and airstrikes in the Middle East. It's Obama 2.0 without the press getting particularly upset about it. How do you guys look at these two stories and the fact that it seems to me that the unaccompanied minors who are not in cages, they're in boxes, and just going over there and killing some people in Syria is getting a big shrug from the press. As a matter of fact, I saw one tweet that says, it's so nice to have military action under the Biden administration because there's none of that middle school taunting tweeting.

It's just professional and they get it done and I trust they need to do what they need to do. There's nothing apparently that Joe Biden can do wrong. But how do you take a look at these two incidences and what do they spell for the immediate future and the way our media is going to cover them? Peter, Ron? I'm happy to let Rob go first on this one. Well, you know, how the media... We're less guaranteed to disagree these days yeah i know i how the media covers them i just feel like that's sort of a that's a tiresome subject we all that's all the first thing we think about i mean i sidestep i'll just get cut to the chase they're gonna can't cover it but they cover everything that it's all okay

now because it's joe biden doing it um nothing that is absolutely not news to us if i want to but i think it's a big problem for our side that we do this all the time if i want to know what some crackpot liberal is saying or what they're saying on msnbc i only have to watch fox news that is the one entire subject of fox news has one subject that's what the liberals are saying probably the same thing on the left but i don't really watch that so i don't know look i the the strikes in in syria strike me as um theater or pointless or um uh you know a signal flare that um we're back we're gonna that that that uh that conflict is on the front burner from for now for us um typically for americans typically i think for the west when we get involved in a decisive in a decisively in an awful civil war these days we tend to do it at the end when it doesn't really matter that's what we did in yugoslavia we waited until everybody

was pretty much dead and then we strode in there and said oh well you know you guys stop this nonsense and it's probably what's going to happen asad has won he won he is in control of syria i don't think anybody can doubt that i mean it's that's just what it is um and doing anything about it now seems like hey this is the red line that obama talked about uh 27 years ago whenever it was i mean i could be wrong but that that's just my cynical take on that um but peter probably disagrees no no i don't disagree with that on the contrary no no i agree so far i've agreed with everything oh god that's a little bit worse than you say because now uh asad not only has he won but he has a backer a state sponsor

well equipped with nuclear weapons russia is now the sponsor of syria so i almost feel as though we could do it we could start doing a public service, or at least a service for each other on Ricochet, by posting about substack voices, reporters that are actually doing a good job or asking the interesting questions. Here, Rob and I could come up with, and James too, could come up with half a dozen questions right away. Did we act in coordination with the Israelis? How much warning did we give them? Did we actually coordinate with them in a genuine way? Were we using some of their intel? Did we warn the Russians? Did we take the Russians by surprise? How much of this was to protect our forces and how much of this was a warning to the Iranians?

How much were we trying to push back the Iranians? There were all kinds of questions here that, as far as I am aware, reporters are simply not asking. By the way, every single one of the questions I just asked had no ideological content whatsoever. No. Everyone knows they have tremendous ideological content. What are you attempting to do? No. I mean, if we're coordinating with Israel, then we're coordinating with an apartheid state that is denying the Palestinians the vaccine. And that's bad. If we are coordinating with Israel, then that's good because it shows that Biden respects our allies like allies like Trump didn't, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, I know Rob is tired, really tired of the how complaining about the way the media spins the post. But it's germane because if the media is allowed to frame absolutely everything in the next four years,

according to their druthers, then the, you know, all we're not talking about a Overton window. We're talking about an international style building with a hundred Overton windows that are, can I say two things? Can I,

let me just say to that one, one about the substance and one about the media. It's a problem, but the substance of it with the most interesting thing about all of Peter's questions. And I think they are all true. Whatever the answer to those questions is, it has nothing to do with syria so the question you have to ask yourself about american policy is what was who what was the

audience for that bombing it could have been the audience could have been the israelis it it's hard to imagine that there's going to be a more friendly administration to israel than the trump administration right my feeling is probably it they they didn't let Israel know or they let them know in a desultory fashion to put the Israelis back in the back and where they belong. They could be also sending a message to Putin. They could also be sending a message to Iran, although the message that they seem to be sent to Iran or come on, hey, we're all friends now. So who knows? But what's the most amazing thing about this? And this is true for the Middle East in general, and it's not a political point or partisan point.

Is it often or maybe I'd say more more than half of the actions that people take on another people have less to do with the specific conflict and more to do with sending a message to sort of satellite of quasi allies, which is one of the reasons why that right where that region is so incredibly messed up second thing i'll say just about the media thing is we can't change how often the new york times gets it wrong right and we aren't going to correct that record we only have a certain amount of time with the attention of our readers or our listeners and if we spend all of that time complaining about the other side is saying we have lost our microphone, the entire right wing, it seems to me right now is only obsessed with one thing, and that's left wing media. And that in that case, they win. It's sort of classic art of war. Get your get your opponent to be obsessed with you instead of making arguments galvanizing their own groups

uh setting out a policy i don't know what is the republican policy to the war in syria i have no idea what is the republican policy to uh israel i have no idea right these are you only have a certain amount of time with the national attention and if we spend all of our time whining and complaining and moaning about what the other side is saying on their organs, guess what? They win. That's how they win. I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time. No, we can't. And pointing out what they're doing is a necessary part of galvanizing people. That is 100% of what we do. 100%. Well, it's not 100% of what I'm doing here. And if you have members of Congress who are sending letters to AT&T and AT&T Universe and Comcast and the various cable organizations asking them to stop carrying certain channels because they believe that the messages those channels give are disinformation, that's something worth complaining about. I mean, that's complaining about the media, in a sense, in the part that the few organs that the right has want to be deplatformed by agents of the state,

which seems to me a new wrinkle. It hasn't happened. Quite a... When has it happened? No, it hasn't happened yet. But what I'm saying is when they feel emboldened to be able to come right out and say the quiet part out loud as they say we want these entities to stop carrying these channels every conversation we have on the right or at least 95 of them is about the media or

twitter or parlor or deplatforming or cancel culture or something like that it is not at all about how does america as a nation and as a culture advance itself into the future we are obsessed with tiny and irrelevant trivialities that's all i don't think so i don't think they're trivialities at all i think they're through the tweets no that's the tweets no the tweets and the culture behind them are a larger are i mean it are a larger argument against general of pardon say that was larger argument against Trump. Pardon? Say that again? That was their argument against Trump. The tweets are the tweets.

It's all about the tweets. Okay, well, I'm not talking about one guy tweeting. I'm talking about a movement online, which, you know, maybe 17 to 19 blue-haired weirdos on Twitter and Tumblr, but nevertheless, seem to drive the narrative and force major corporations to all of a sudden come out and do things that they otherwise would not have done. Right.

So if you have a cultural movement that is simultaneously trying to eliminate anybody who disregards with gender right activists, if you have a movement that is simultaneously trying to ban anybody who believes, you know, who does, who, I mean, complaining about cancel culture is not a meaningless little thing if it means that books are no longer available as much that speakers are thrown off their jobs because of a word that they didn't say two years ago when that when when you have these people who are not large numerically influencing the culture in large ways it's necessary to fight back and it's not it's not a waste of time at all because they're reshaping the culture oreo came out and said trans people exist okay i mean to which you say all right but why did oreo feel compelled to do that right why that's that's something doing that needs to be opposed because when have we ever had a cookie manufacturer take and take a stance on gender identity. And it's not like this small, tiny little issue that's out there. It's a big thing. I don't disagree.

Right. That doesn't mean that we have to talk about what the editorial decisions and positions are of the New York Times or what they're saying on MSNBC. That's what I'm arguing about. I'm arguing about our obsession with the left-wing left-wing discourse which seems to me to be utterly trivial arguing about whether it makes sense for an or for an abyss i guess is an abyssal or whatever it is to have a position on transgender seems like okay well that's that's a useful idea but everything we do blends so effortlessly into this condemnation of what left-wing nuts are saying on MSNBC, that we lose the sight of the argument, which is what I'm trying to say. There's an argument to be made that these are issues that need to be discussed in a free and fair way so that everybody's on, according to debating rules,

we're not always attacking each other. That's a good argument. But the obsession with how the media is going to, you know, they didn't say this about trump whatever it is we we waste time we're wasting our time we did not unlimited attention from uh from our listeners or our audience or from the right wing there isn't and they are they are now 100 obsessed with what they're saying on msnbc okay that that but that's not what i'm talking about i mean i have i haven't been obsessed about that i haven't been really talking about i started out by saying it's interesting reflected but rob i hate to play

peacemaker because it's so boring so i'll try to stick a barb in at the end of all this rob is making the point that we're still walking around stunned many of us i plead guilty to this like moles that have just emerged into the sunlight and are seeing reality for the first time, that the New York Times and the Washington Post don't do their jobs anymore, that they have become simple left-wing agitprop operations. And Rob is saying, that's old. It's done. Sounding astonished, railing against it, it does no good. And Rob is correct about that, in my humble opinion. Even in some small way, we ourselves on ricochet, I hope. That means, it seems to me that what we need to do now is figure out military, the military is a

special question, because military history in universities is dead. It just doesn't get taught anymore. You're not producing reporters who have a feel for the discipline. Important questions are not being asked. They should be asked about military operations above all, because Congress doesn't get consulted. It's half a dozen people were probably the key figures in deciding that we go in and drop bombs on human beings in Syria yesterday. All right. The separate point... And they have yet to explain what the strategy is. They have yet to explain themselves. That is exactly right. And that's serious. James is making a different point, but it's a very important point. Hank Rossett just dropped

us a little note here. What if freedom of expression actually is the biggest single topic about which we should be talking? And Hank, which I think is James's point, they make a point. Anna Eshoo, I forget who the other member of Congress was, but Anna Eshoo got my attention because I live in her congressional district, signed a letter to cable operators asking a number of questions. And one of the questions was, do you intend to continue carrying Fox News? If so, why? That is intimidation. It may be spurious at this point, but that is an effort at intimidation. It is outrageous. It's a small piece of the question

that James is raising. Freedom of speech is the issue, is one of the issues, at least right now. That's James' point. I don't disagree with that. That's a fair point, right, Rob? It's an absolutely fair point. When it comes to seeking fertility treatment, time can be of the essence. At Beacon Care Fertility, we are proud to offer prompt access to affordable fertility care. With over 60,000 babies born across our fertility clinic network, we have both the science and the expertise to deliver. We offer convenient payment plans and are partnered with VHI and LEIA.

Beacon Care Fertility, where science meets life. I am triggered by the constant terms we hear that are now, to me, meaningless about the narrative and the liberal narrative narrative the median narrative it's all meta and pointless i'm not i don't think the first amendment's pointless and i don't think that their attacks on the first amendment are pointless i think that's those are genuine issues that we can genuinely disagree with and i think we'll genuinely win but the succession with like the narrative business is just it's it's like spitting into the wind I'm not obsessed

with any narrative I mean I'm triggered by that word I'll be honest that word is very triggering to me I'm not obsessed by it I am actually triggered by the word obsessed which is always used by fashionistas on BuzzFeed who are you know somebody wore this new dress to the

carpet and we are obsessed with that yeah what are your obsessions yeah all right and so instead of the narrative let's say this let's just uh peter's right because when i mean peter you know it's not go that far old you know good for him but let's not talk about the world mrs trump because you used that man to beat me go ahead let. Let's frame it in a different way. Let's say that instead of a narrative, that there's an ongoing attempt to diminish the parameters of free expression. Does that sound? That's very much that we can live with. Accurate, elegant.

Yes. Profound. Yes. Beautiful way of putting it. So, Ed, in the wonderful feeling you have, you're living through 1984, you have words that are being deplatformed. You have words that can no longer be used.

I'm not talking about that word, which we can't even say the word that is not the word because it's so bad. It's terms that are being redefined. You can't. I mean, we are increasingly walking down a narrow corridor. And Rob may say that it's ridiculous to complain about the media, but you know how they get animals into the slaughterhouse without stressing them out too much? The Judas Cows. Well, that's one thing.

But if there's too much stress when they're going to get the big hammer on the head or the nail gun, it does something with the beef. It's not as good. So they designed a ramp with curves. And apparently the cows – Is this a butcher box segue? God, I hope not. I mean, actually, I kind of hope so. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry. No, it wasn't. If you put a cow on a ramp with curves, they don't necessarily sense the destination.

They see right at... And I feel oftentimes now that we have, and I hate to say all media as if it's a monolithic thing, compliant with as if they're all doing the same thing on their orders. But I feel as if we have this, we've drifted into this cultural posture where it's all ramps and curves and it's comfortable. It's nice. I mean, it's not jarring and the rest of it, but at the end of it, we end up at a place completely different than where we started out.

And while it may not be the slaughterhouse of our culture, it's certainly the death of ideas of what you can and cannot discuss. I mean, we've seen this on the internet this year. I mean, we've seen how certain terms, certain subjects, certain topics are just all of a sudden redefined to be things that just say, you know, what you were, if you've said this a year and a half ago, if you said it eight years ago, you were an Obama supporter. I think there are. Yeah, I agree with you. But I would just say this is that that to me, just to make the distinction once again, that I don't mind that that those arguments seem to be worth having. But when it's this kind of crazy quilt argument where it's half of it is like what the Libtard said and half of it, what the New York Times won't report and all that stuff is like, I just am done with that.

That argument is like that discussion. It just it's boring to me and pointless. I don't think it's boring and pointless to make a stand for the First Amendment. I don't think it's boring and pointless to say things like there are no words that are or there are no ideas that don't deserve to be debated fairly. But I also think, secondly, now this is a slight detourour is that i having i just spent a lot of time with some people some of whom were like very very prominent ceos of large organizations and uh i have no idea what their politics are we talk about politics well one thing they all agreed on was that they think they spend 10x 15, 20x more time in their organizations thinking about human resources issues than anyone in American corporate history has ever done. whatever it is, 2010 or 2008, together didn't spend one-tenth of the time

thinking about human resources issues than one modern CEO spends in a week. It is 30 or 40. That is a cultural problem that's very weird that we stepped into. The idea that your workplace has to be feel safe. You have to create this or that. Nobody's working.

All they're doing is writing emails to each other complaining about the working conditions that, by the way, they aren't actually working in because they don't do anything except complain about working conditions. You know who doesn't spend a moment worrying about HR? The Chinese. It's no drag on their productivity right and we are in a competition with the

chinese could i ask a question by the way maybe in in doing so set up next week i hope we'll be able to get him for next week in britain we'll see where it goes we'll see what comes of it but in britain a young actor called lawrence fox a year ago he said something on a talk show that was politically incorrect and he found himself cancelled or there was an attempt to cancel him from the profession a few months later he decided he'd had enough enough people that had commiserated with him he founded a political party called reclaim entirely dedicated to re-establishing freedom of speech in Britain. And if things work out, he'll be our guest next week right here on the Ricochet podcast.

And I am thinking to myself, James makes not only a good point, but it's a point that we've been living with now for at a minimum in this country for several months. And you could argue, of course, Trump. So let's just say since the end of the election, it's been obvious to us that we have that there's no champion of free speech. How come? Or maybe this week at CPAC, some politician is going to step forward and claim that as the issue. But it strikes me that there's a lot of Republican floundering that I find surprising. Doesn't the First Amendment strike you almost as a gimme issue for Republicans? It's a great issue, right? You would think so. I mean, the very term cancel culture that we all know what it means, it would have been an absolute mystery to people 50, 60 years ago.

They would have thought, well, I'm a philatelist. Does that mean you're talking about the cancellation of stamps? Is that what you mean? No, I'm not. But speaking of which, the thing about this last year that we all learned is how much I wasn't a butcher box, so I had to do. The thing that we learned in 2020, when you look about it, is the internet was able to do things that we had only thought and dreamed it might.

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Never, ever go to the post office again. We thank stamps.com for sponsoring this, the Ricochet and stamps.com. Never, ever go to the post office again. We thank stamps.com for sponsoring this. The Ricochet postcard, the Ricochet post office. Is that what I said? The Ricochet postcard. I was thinking of post offices because the postal service has announced that it's coming out with a new fleet of trucks. Have you seen the pictures of these things? No, they're being wildly, wildly reviled on the internet. it seems, because they're ugly. They actually look like little Pixar vehicles. They got a big window and a little duck bill in the rest of it. And I did some research and it turns out that one of the reasons that these trucks need to become long is that the old post office trucks are blowing up. In the last couple

of years, 400 post trucks have caught on fire. And I'm thinking again, there are some people who look at that and think, oh my gosh, well, that's a lot of useless advertising mailers that were consumed by the blaze. And then there are those people who instantaneously seize on that and say, how many ballots were in those trucks? So I don't have that mindset yet, but the people who are still angry about what happened in the, there's a picture, people are still angry about the last election, were angry perhaps about the Supreme Court and found Justice Thomas's remarks to be important. Were either of you following this or, Rob, are you just not spending your time in Africa keeping up on Trump election claims?

I was not spending my time in Africa keeping keeping up with election claims i have i must tell you i thought justice thomas was more or less unanswerable he wrote a brief dissent so what happened rob was that as you know the supreme court declined to hear the challenge to the pennsylvania change in election law before the election and now they have declined to hear the challenge after the election and justice thomas says it looks as though the challenge after the election. And Justice Thomas says, it looks as though the change in the alleged change in votes is not enough to change the outcome. We have an opportunity, needless to say, I'm paraphrasing, we have an opportunity to establish a rule here for the way election laws get made. And we have an opportunity to do so at a moment when the country isn't in a feverish election. it baffles me that we are choosing to

remain silent. And I am as baffled as the justice. It was what was three paragraphs in which he said, what are we for? And I concur with his dissent. I think it's fair to say it's a good policy in general to start by concurring with Justice Thomas. So that's true. I kind of concurred with him before I heard about it. Now I can capital C concur. He's and he's right that this is the this is this is what they should be doing. I mean, how do we spend how much time do we spend during the election and afterwards? The post-election fiasco talking about what the Supreme court might do. If right. What does that mean?

If, and then there's this, but this is a constitutional timetable we have to meet. Now we have this, the luxury of four years to settle this so that we, you know, October, November of 2020,

whatever it is, 2020, what are 20? What is it? Whatever the next one is. Right. I keep forgetting 2024. We'll,

we'll know. We'll know. We may have, or we may have mail-in ballots. We have mail-in ballots and hurrah, federalism, all kinds of local laws to take, that say what you can judge and what you can't and when it can come in and

the rest of it. Meanwhile, France, France has eliminated mail in voting. And, and I think they demand that you have to show up and show an ID, which is where I'm watching these things. And I'm thinking France is getting more of a spine when it comes to pushing back on American re-imported ideas like critical race theories we talked last week in the podcast and toughening

up their election laws and the rest of it. We're going to have to stop with the whole substitution of freedom for the word french as we did you know 20 years ago my god was that 20 years ago wow oh my gosh you just did it jumping judas on a crutch 20 years ago anyway is, is that so now we have the stark example where America is the wallowing pit of leftist indulgence. And France has got the spine and they're turning right, which shows you how these things change. Let's put it in a domestic context, California versus Texas. We were always told that California is the failed state, especially when it comes to energy. And now we have this example of Texas, which everybody is saying, oh, look who was all high

and mighty and wanted us to see and come here. Texas business can't handle a little storm. You guys think that this somehow validates the Californian approach? I don't. But does it ding the Texas image? Yeah, it dings Texas a little bit. So the cases are not even remotely similar. What you have in California is a liberal establishment that has been in almost total power for going on over a quarter of a century now. The brownouts have become routine. The forest fires happen every single summer. All of this is predictable, and they have brought it upon themselves, which I wouldn't mind, but they've also brought it upon us. That's California. Texas, you have a, I'm not a meteorologist, but people are using the phrase once in a half century or

once in a century storm. It does ding the Texans because Republicans have run the place for a quarter of a century, and they did permit wind power to creep up as a proportion of the total source of Texas power. The Wall Street Journal said that just prior to the big freeze, the polar vortex, wind power accounted for some 40% of the Texas grid, the Texas power supply. The wind turbines for, and Republicans did that. They were taking advantage of federal subsidies. They were doing, they were making rational decisions, but the state that invented fracking, the state that is, has led the way in making the United States one of the great producers, exporters, particularly now of natural gas, chose to embrace windmills. The windmills froze. The power grid went down. They'll fix it. That's the difference between Texas and California.

Californians have no feeling that anything will get better. Texans are angry. When it comes to seeking fertility treatment, time can be of the essence. At Beacon Care Fertility, we are proud to offer prompt access to affordable fertility care. With over 60,000 babies born across our fertility clinic network, we have both the science and the expertise to deliver. We offer convenient payment plans and are partnered with VHI and Leah. Beacon Care Fertility, where science meets life. They'll scream and shout at their legislators and the legislators will respond. The great irony here is that the one aspect of Texas that is, what turns out is kookier and more vulnerable and weaker than

California was its power grid that they, they, you know, they, they, all these Californians moved to Texas. And some of them, the first thing they want to do is turn Cal turn Texas into California.

Like why, you know, right. But the irony is of course, Texas has, they, you said they, they invented fracking.

They, they, they in, in the face of a collapsing oil worldwide oil price, they invented natural gas, essentially. And they discovered it and not discovered it, but they they they they turned to it very quickly. It's a very different way. You don't it's the old old oil guys in Houston and Dallas have no idea how to get natural gas. That's a completely different thing thing but they figured it out but the one thing they did where they thought in this great in the great moment of freedom and richness

well why not just turn to windmills right and that's what you always do when you feel like well it's never that's it is literally the the embodiment of that old saying like well nobody wants to fix the roof when it's sunny it's like why would i fix the roof it's not raining like well it's not snowing no one's cold let's put up windmills and the minute it gets snowing and again and you have weather event you lose your power i think you're right that they'll fix it i think they i mean it was such it has been a disaster oh it's been a terrible so it's not that it's not even a great California wildfire is having to reach that level of human fatality. Yes, that's right.

But it is an interesting thing. It does remind you that if you don't pay attention to the details, environmentalists want you to freeze to death. Like, I mean, Sonny Bunch has a very funny line. He keeps saying over and over again. He said that the reason environmentalists are the best movie villains is because they actually want to make your life worse right he's right he's right they want you to eat lab printed meat and bugs and the rest of it and drive none at all right here's a perfect example and first of all i mean bill

gates let's say this bill gates who is you, who's some people are trying to shape into the contemporary Soros sitting there in his smirch like lair or specter lair, of course, stroking his cat and cooking up ways to subjugate humanity. Bill Gates has said we got to build nuclear and lots of it. And I would love if the end result of the Texas thing is to have that conversation. But there's such an emotional reaction on the part of the environmental left to nuclear that it seems it's hard that we're going to get. And I'm not sure Biden is the guy to make that point. Be great if he did. And again, to go back to Rob's point, let's recast the GOP that is the party of the First Amendment nuclear power. Oh, sign me up. You can say what you want. You can say we are the party that says you can say what you want. You can say, we are the party that says you can say what you want. You can drive your car with cheap gas.

You can light your house for pennies a day. And we will never, ever, ever mess with the amount of water that comes out of your showerhead. Those four things, I think you can win an election. Oh, yeah. Oh, I think you're right. I would say that there's, what's interesting thing about this is that there has, and I think I'm going to make a larger point since we don't have a guest, so I'm going to make a big umbrella point. Maybe I'm full of it.

I'll let you know. There is this obsession with thinking from the people, sort of the policymakers – I don't say the elites, because sometimes it's not – the policymakers that all Americans – that because many Americans are overweight and comfortable, and they don't really like to move around a lot, that they are also risk averse, that Americans don't like risk. So you got to wear two masks, and you got to close the schools, and you got to do a lot of other stuff that most Americans think, why am I doing all that? I get it. I get it.

I get it. It's deadly. I'll figure it out. Yeah, we can't have nuclear power because it's uh it's risky well okay i get it i get it's risky but we can we know what happened in three mile island 900 years ago we can figure it out everything's gotten better then we're not even going to be talking on the same phone we're not even going to be the computers back then were the size of my house it's like no we can figure it out most americans think we can figure it out the policy no you can't you you will not accept that level of risk the uh everywhere you look bureaucrats

are trying to and i think it's because they don't want to be blamed in the future are trying to reduce the amount of risk in france one of the great products of french culture is unpasteurized reblochon cheese to reblochon cheese from unpasteurized reblochon cheese. Reblochon cheese from unpasteurized milk. And the first thing the EU did when it came and said, you can't sell that. And then the French fought. And then you can buy it within 90,

100 meters of where it's aged. But you can't buy it. You can't bring it in the United States. Like people smuggle, some crazy people I could mention, have smuggled cheese into the united states because it's actually better but this obsession with kind of it's not the people it's not driven by the long i believe you when you say you have nothing to declare but man it's just a shower soon sir exactly right something has died inside your pockets uh inside your carry-on. Yeah, my carry-on smell of unpasteurized cheese and Cuban cigars.

Vanna cigars, right. But there's no drive. I don't see a movement in America, or I don't see a movement worldwide from people to have a less risky life. No, from the American people, no. But from the young, very online organization people, yes, because as I said before, safetyism.

It goes back to the HR thing. Everybody's spending their time making sure that the work environment is safe, which is amusing. I mean, where I work, the news organization has sent out letters saying that we know that covering the pandemic and the struggles

and the riots and the rest of it has been very stressful. Here are some mental health organizations that you can turn to here's some free counseling the paper will provide which is very nice of them but i'm thinking back to world war ii where somebody would have said ernie piledown and said how you doing man i mean really how you doing i mean no i just tell them to the marines actually so yes but safetyism amongst these people means that that everything that there can be no sharp corners in the world, anywhere, in any environment in which people operate. The existence of nuclear power anywhere in the country, to them, is like Barry Weiss standing in a field somewhere just about to say something. Harm could be caused.

And harm is the thing that we must prevent at all. Yes, Peter? A couple of points on nuclear power. Next week, I'm recording an episode of Uncommon Knowledge with Bjorn Lomborg, whose great book is The Skeptical Environmentalist, a friend of the podcast. Actually, we should have him on soon to talk about nuclear power. So I was reviewing all of this. We have, I may get some of this wrong, but I won't get it far wrong.

In this country, there's still something like 80 nuclear reactors operating. The newest is 20 years old. There are no new reactors planned. And in fact, there are plans to take reactor, reactor after reactor offline in coming years. In China and India and elsewhere in the world, there are 100 where the planning is far advanced or construction has already begun with another 300 planned. Item one. Item two, I read up on Bill Gates and his thing on nuclear. It turns out that there's quite a lot of investment money, venture capital going into nuclear designs. Of course, nobody can build

one of these things yet. There's no prototyping going on yet, but just three that come to mind. Bill Gates is back to design that uses not water, but sodium to cool the nuclear reactor. Water, because it boils, has a relatively low boiling point, has to be kept pressurized. Sodium does not. It turns out that that transforms the design of a nuclear reactor, making it much simpler and much safer. Item one. Item two, there's something called a light water reactor, which is apparently, it just uses gravity. If something goes wrong, the rods, you don't have to have people with control boards it will automatically shut down again the safety factor

and they have also designed there's a credible design for a nuclear reactor that could be carried from place to place in emergencies on the back of an 18 wheeler a couple of those would have come in handy in texas a week and a half ago. So there's all of Katrina or wherever, right? Absolutely right. There's all of this technological ferment. The press is not covering it. And the environmentalists want quiet. No, no, don't talk.

Nothing to see there. Don't look at it. It's unbelievable. All to the point of what we've been saying. But I guess what I'm trying to say is the technologically alive, the intellectually alive corner of the American economy has the blueprints drawn up. They're ready to go. It's magnificent.

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adventures here in our post of the week and the rest of that stuff is when we were talking about the environmentalists being the bad guys and the rest of it. True, because every solution that they have makes your life worse, and not just your life, but the life of those around you, the community, the city, etc.

Here in Minneapolis, we've got two large corporations that have said, yeah, we're not going to go back until the fall. Big, Target, Wells Fargo are not going to go back to downtown until the fall. So the retail wipeout will probably be about 100%. I walked through the old, previously thriving Skyway ecosystem every couple of days downtown, and there's nothing there. There's a few restaurants, but everything is just wiped out. And I was reading a piece saying that this is good

because it was hard on the environment for everybody to drive downtown and park. It was bad for the environment and it's good that everybody's staying home. And while it's a pity that all those jobs were lost, well, maybe those service industry people can get jobs at restaurants in their neighborhood. There aren't any. They all closed because of the pandemic lockdown. Maybe they can start some. Where? How? Exactly. Well, they kind of waved that away. And in coming up with a new

vision of our urban core, which you will remember just two, three years ago, we were supposed to be proud of the fact that the American core city was back. People were moving in there. It wasn't the 70s Scorsese time, you know, taxi driver hellhole that they used to be. Our cities were back. And now, because they like being at home, because they're all introverts, cat people, the idea is, is that maybe we can take that unused office space and turn it into homeless shelters. So their vision of downtown is now not a place where people dress up and go to work and collaborate and act in a normal human society way. It's everybody stays home and isolated little germ-free pods while the towers of downtown glow

at night, you know, with the kerosene lamps of the people who they've installed on floors 35 through 52. It's stunning. It really is. But this is apparently the new urbanist ideal that we're supposed to applaud. All right. I'm done. No, I'm not. I'm just getting started. Rob, you're back from Africa. You've got two or three. We know you on the glop that you did everything related to Wanda. I love, I can't wait to listen to what you have to say about wandavision you being the sitcom expert that you are yeah i'll hear so i can give you i can i can boil it down a tl tldr tldl here's my contribution contribution to wandavision i'm sure it's wonderful i just just i'm not not good so only so much time in the day you know but are you saying that you haven't

watched it i have not watched it i feel i also i i and i won't watch it because everyone's telling me oh you have to in that phrase that we use now you have to you're not watching you're not spending your time sitting on a sofa watching a screen and getting into the tv shows no i'm not i'm really not i feel like i work and then maybe i take a walk and i don the tv shows no i'm not i'm really not i feel like i work and then maybe i take a walk and i don't know when people have any of this time you work i think the very people who talk about who talk about all the shows they watch will also segue what come magically into like i'm very stressed i have no time i'm just really stressed right now like well why don't you just you know don't watch instead of watching that tv show just stare out

the window for 20 minutes it It's just really relaxing. I'm slightly stunned only because I would think that a show that deliberately attempts to recreate the various epochs of the sitcom, which, as I understand, is something that you have a slight passing interest in, would be interesting to you to see how they did it. To me, the recreation of not only the decades, but the way shows were shot, the way the interiors looked, is fascinating. And just for that, I'm not one of those guys who says, I can't believe they brought back that character from 1968.

I didn't see it coming. I'm not that much of a Marvel Universe nerd. But I wanted to bring it up just for that, just for the sitcom-y aspect. I mean, I thought that you would be appalled that a show set in the 1950s would use the Dick Van Dyke set as its inspiration when that was only a classic 1961.

Clearly, 60s. It'll have to be after your show. No, I agree, but it's like this. You know what the problem with that stuff is? It just feels like homework. These shows, all of them, just feel like homework. I don't need any more homework in my life. And no one ever tells

me, but certain kind of shows, you have to watch this. It's just so much fun. Or you can turn off your brain and just... No, no. No, it's like it's homework. They're multi-layered characters, and there's scenes where you have to go back and re-watch, and it's like, no, I don't want to do that they you know tolstoy didn't do

that in the war and peace he just told you the story tolstoy let's do that and melville too would do 40 page digressions on something just because they they absolutely could okay yeah something isn't fun in and of itself the idea that you have to watch it in order to be up to date on every aspect of popular culture yes that's homework that's ridiculous and while i do i just figured out what you're talking about when you mentioned that thing set in the in the kids have me watch 20 minutes of that i hated it i hated it you're gonna want that 20 minutes on your deathbed peter you're gonna want that 20 minutes to like write some mean letters to people and i can tell you exactly why I hated it, because it was condescending to the 1950s. It was condescending to the Dick Van Dyke show, which in the medium that Rob just described, a medium that has its own ideas of excellence that is not demanding in the way Tolstoy, in the medium as it was at that time, the Dick Van Dyke show was a remarkable achievement.

Innocent entertainment for millions of people with a fresh script and a twist or two, week after week after week, with old troopers like Carl Reiner and Maury Amsterdam and Rose Marie and Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, who are, I have no idea who these, who these 20-somethings are in Hollywood who think they can put this thing up in black and white and condescend to Carl Reiner. Well, yes and no.

I hate it. I understand that. And there's no reason for you to get all of the backstory and the reasons to not, to unhate it because that isn't going to happen, but that isn't what they were doing. While they may have used the set and the look of the bit and the, and the style of the lighting and the rest of it, it was a lot more about generalized fifties sitcom tropes. And I shouldn't use the word tropes ever again. I'm putting them in this, but that's not what the show is about. The show is not about us looking down and feeling superior to 50, 60, 70s, 80s, 90s culture. That's not

what it is at all. And I'll just say this. While I agree with Rob that some of these things that feel like homework, you have to watch it. It's very important. I get that. And I understand why people don't want to do that. And I kind of like the idea that there is this vast overarching story that is taking place. If you don't care, you don't care. I get it. But the Marvel comic universe has sort of become our Wagner ring cycle, except that it keeps going. And there's all, it just keeps growing.

That's more homework. You're not defending it too well here. Wagner? It is a large cultural edifice that speaks of its time that in the future can be used for the sociological anthropological research. All you want to help understand this particular era. But that said,

I grew up where everything was completely discreet. Every episode, if Mannix got shot in the head, one episode, the next episode, there's not even a scar. Okay. So nothing,

if you had a Hawaii five, Oh, with a two partner and a recurring character like Wolf Faddis, you couldn't believe they were doing this. Now, the other end of that, that's ridiculous. The great thing about Hawaii Five-0 was that you had to suspend so much disbelief that the head of the Red Chinese secret police spy network could only be taken down by the head of the Hawaii State Police. Like, there's no CIA.

There's no NSA. There's no FBI. There's nothing. There's just the head of the Hawaii State Police is going to take down the red Chinese. That's because it was personal. It was personal for Wolf Fatt. It was personal for Steve McGarrett. And he did.

And when Wolf Fatt saw his plans coming together and say how how oh man you got a thrill but anyway so it was rare that anything carried over and now of course we've gone a little bit too far where everything carries over but i you know i understand i get it i get it i get it so rob had mentioned something before though about computers being the size of his house right when you were growing up okay yes. Which brings us, actually, to this. Oh, man. Which brings us to... Oh, God. Oh.

Just, you know what? Just go. Which brings us to... You can't do it. Like you miss it. You miss computers. Used to. I'll fix it. Don't fix it.

Don't fix it. Imposed. No, no, no. This happened in real life. Here's the deal. A lot of exposed to the week.

There were so many, it was just a great week. I was almost close to doing the one about how beauty is no longer recognized. I mean, the Biden administration dumped the classical architecture guidelines back to brutalism and ugliness and the rest of it. And there's a good conversation about that. Lots of great conversations, culturally, artistically, and the rest.

But one that struck my eye was by David Foster, The Computer Age Turns 75. You want to talk about big computers? Here's what he wrote. In February 1946, the first general-purpose computer, the ENIAC. It's got to be the ENIAC, isn't it? No, the ENIAC was introduced to the public. Nothing like, yeah, it is. ENIAC, I'm sorry. Let me start this again because there's a letter missing. Coming down in three, two, one.

Quote, in February 1946, the first general-purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC, was introduced to the public. Nothing like ENIAC had been seen before, and the unveiling of the computer, a room-filling machine with lots of flashing lights and switches, made quite an impact. There's been much interest in recent years in the women of ENIAC. Adele Goldstein and Claire von Neumann are rarely mentioned among those accounts, probably because they were not members of the original programming team, but the programmers had a hard job, and ENIAC was a complicated machine to learn. But some accounts have overemphasized the point, suggesting no one ever thought about

how it could be programmed prior to being constructed, which is incorrect. More than you ever wanted to know about this amazing computer, ENIAC, of course, which would later lead to, well, the IAC suffix, which would show up in BradyAC and all the rest of them. It's a great story. And the pictures are perfect because there's somebody holding up this thing that is required to store one digit.

And now, of course, we have more computational power on my watch than we had in the vessels that went to the moon. And we've become accustomed to these things just doubling and tripling, getting smarter over time until computing becomes like Philip K. Dick's Valis, just ubiquitous and everywhere. But man, it's great to see where it started. And it's a long, detailed, great post. And it's what Ricochet does well. Thank you very

much. I love that post, but I also love the whole conversation around it too. It really is like, it's like you're at a party and there's somebody who's really smart telling you a story that you kind of have heard a little bit before and they're just filling in all the good stuff and giving you the color and the details and the things you want. And that's great. I mean, I was overseas burning up bandwidth, which is another interesting thing, which is that you could get this anywhere you could be in kenya and if you are a little bit patient you can participate in ricochet you just have to be patient sometimes you know where you are rob i have to it's pretty cool and that and i and that call that that post was so like one of those things like like like oh yeah of course that's that that yeah it's it's it's weird i was flying home yesterday and i'm in a seat and one of my uh the the people i have friends who i went on the safari with is

on another seat uh in the same plane and we both signed up for wi-fi we're over the atlantic and they're all everybody else who's been on the thing, a couple of people on a different flight, and we're all texting each other and sending each other pictures. And my texts and pictures are going from my seat to space to earth to space to my friend one row away from me in the same airplane. There's a direct line from any act to that and i'm very grateful for david foster's post because it really shows you okay well all the trees are looking for new television shows to watch we know that um so i have to ask speaking of any acts adventures and uh what it bestowed on the world is there an idea is there a kenyan netflix yes yes there is. A special Kenyan Netflix? Okay. Well, then those of you in America who'd want to get it

would probably be locked out because it would read you as coming from America. So what you would have to do is find out some way, some way to tell the server that you're actually coming from somewhere else. Rob says there's no way we know that there is. Well, of course there is and it's called ExpressVPN. But you know,

VPNs allow you not just to change your location, but they do more. They help you with your privacy. No doubt, you know, the big tech is not exactly all that happy, it seems, about free speech with which they don't agree. We all saw what happened to Parler. We see what happens with a book that runs afoul of what some Amazon editor thinks, and boom, it's gone and all the rest of it. You know, why exactly are we choosing to give these big tech companies all of our personal data? Lines appear to have been drawn, don't they? Big tech has made it clear which side they're on. Now is the time for you to take a stance. Protect your personal data from big tech with a VPN. And we all here at Ricochet Trust for your

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Three extra months free. That's right. But only if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash Ricochet to get three extra months free. Three extra months free. That's right. But only if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash Ricochet now. And we thank ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. All right, we got to get to it. Rob, tell us some stuff about Africa. Do you like it? Thumbs up, Africa.

Thumbs up, thumbs down. Africa, thumbs up. It's very, you know, I didn't go to Africa, but to Kenya. That's the difference. Kenya's a country, and Africa's a large one. And a lot of it is national park, or what we call preserved land. Before you get to the animals, I have been to Africa since I went with then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. That's how long ago that was. But I've heard that of sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya is one of the most hopeful countries.

Yeah, I think it is. It has a real economy. There's some banking. And they invented, they were at the forefront of the digital currency movement, which apparently is a big M-Pesa. Remarkably plugged-in currency. I mean, financial system, yeah. Kenya's interesting because the father of modern Kenya is Jomo Kenyatta. Kenyatta, yes. And he's the guy who sort of, he threaded the needle in a way that I think kind of writes the textbook on colonial and anti-colonial forces and post-colonialism and you know the problem

my priors are this the problem in modern africa almost everywhere from cape town to cairo isn't colonialism it's anti-colonialism that everything is seen through the lens of well we can't do that and in kenya because kenyatta was kind of a uh very shrewd um a little bit uh slippery kind of a con man um but he managed to sort of keep he managed to do what actually i don't think anyone else has really done on that continent which is to go from a british protectorate governor general to an actual working democracy with some hiccups recent hiccups especially but a country that kind of works and they are surrounded by ethiopia and um zimbabwe my god there's uh there's somalia they're surrounded by failed states disasters and psychopaths.

And somehow they don't have it. Does this parallel make any sense? Was Jomo Kenyatta the African Charles de Gaulle? He invented a kind of, he sort of invented a country by saying things that were only half true, the grandeur, the notion of nationhood. And yet it sort of worked. It sort of worked. And he did it by you go for that i think so i think i i i think what i would say maybe it's because i'm rereading um the the savator of peace which is about the algerian civil war um degaul should have found his kenyatta for algeria and they and it wasn't his it actually wasn't de gaulle's fault it was

years and years and years of crackpot crazy inconclusive indefinite french policy that led led the algerian war which lasted about 10 years and was incredibly incredibly bloody kenyatta kind of he escaped that he he he pissed off the english he pissed off the african nationalists at every turn twist and turn in the road he pissed people off and then he made up with them so he was constantly he you know he's closer to i think to lbj right kind of like a crook right can he basically a kind of a crook but very effective and accomplished the mission uh you know not completely it was a you know there's a lot of there's still a lot of stuff left done in kenya there's like um more poor people in kenya than you imagine but part of

that is that it's attractive and it brings in people because it's not run by a psychopath and it's not run by it's not a club talk and what does the poverty what does the poverty look like are you looking at people who are misshapen bodies no horrible hunger no no well i mean look there's a um there is a a slum in nairobi that's very famous uh uh and it gets it's larger now than it's ever been um and that is that's an urban slum that's a favela you how you see in uh in brazil um that's a delhi slum you see in Brazil. That's a Delhi slum you see in Delhi or Mumbai. It looks like that. It's probably a little better than that, but it looks like that. But out there, when you're way out in the middle of nowhere, which is mostly what Kenya is, these are pasture people.

They say they're nomads, but they don't really move anymore. But they live a nomadic kind of culture. And they raise goats, and they raise cattle, and they raise camels, and they have a very sort of fundamentally buttoned-down life, and they, as far as they're, they are rich, and having been, not that recently, but having been to the poorest country in the world, Burkina Faso, that's a kind of a poverty that is very different from kenya but kenya they're they're pastoral and they're farmer they're they're they're farmers of the kind that we would imagine of 1810 um but they're but there's wealth there i mean when when those young people in the middle of this you know this young samburu in the middle of that you know the

i forget the name of the place but they're the samburu tribe when they get some money they buy a cell phone and the cell phone works i had coverage you look down sometimes it's 3g but sometimes it's lte i had coverage did you go from compound to compound or did you perform your desired boulevardier role and stroll around the city streets i just stroll around uh i was a guest uh uh the guest of a friend of mine who he and his wife um did this a couple years ago and they loved it so much they wanted to bring more people back so i was i it was splendidly two weeks of doing making no decisions literally no decisions just somebody says you what time you want coffee

tomorrow that was about it uh and it was pretty spectacular pretty spectacular i can i can i can i can remain i recommend it to everyone um but it's kind of pointless because you um i couldn't afford it it's like that one so it's not in the way i travel formally but um but boy it's to be in a car 50 yards from a leopard and her cub or a lioness and five cubs stretched out in the sun to watch that to watch two male lions greet each other kind of nod to watch the animal behavior was so first of all it's so fascinating and it's like you're inside a national geographic documentary but the second of it you realize i totally get who all these animals are they're all people in my life i have hyenas in my life i have uh i have i have jackals i had the jackals i thought i thought the jackals are awesome i

thought i thought we're going to a microdosing story here. Or perhaps there was just some nice little peyote. Did they actually morph into the people that you have in your life? No. But you can see, you see, you think, oh, I'm witnessing, I'm going to the animal kingdom. We are in the animal kingdom. We do the same stuff. Why is this bird doing this thing in the middle of the field?

Because it's showing off static something display i forget what it is static something display like oh it's the same thing as like when you will go to a restaurant sometimes or see something there's a young guy or like a little you know looks like a rich guy with a gigantic watch you know one of those watches the size of a cinnabon they're all wearing now like that. It's that it's that, Oh, I get it. I totally get it. I completely understand. Our rational overlay and our illusion of individuality and free will just nonsense then. And basically we are just the jackals and the bird with the plumage and the rest of it. Well, I mean, I think we can keep trying. I mean, but the more we try the better off. I just feel like human behavior is not that foreign from what are the

behavior that i witnessed from the baboons say uh and sometimes it's adorable and you can look at it you can look at this this this animal that would just as soon snap your face off and think my god that's the cutest thing to see that lioness and her cubs and then they roll over and you see that their muzzles are red because they said they killed a they killed a zebra um all that stuff is like it's impossible not to see yourself in that animal behavior or maybe me i i i saw myself there in ways good and some peter perhaps have i haven't seen it do their best to elevate themselves above it because otherwise you know we're just uh we're just in the i i mean i i love the animal kingdom too but i appreciate the fact that humanity has something else going for it a lot more going for it and i would rather find this i would

the similarities seem obvious it's the differences that set us apart and make us a fascinating species well i mean we have greater potential no i think we've we have a greater potential but i think i know people who i who aren't who now that i can compare them to the hyena i can say oh i know i know what that guy's i know why i got that email from that guy he's the hyena he thinks that something is happening he's going to stay on the outskirts of this and then he's going to come in i get it i'm not i'm not arguing that we are all savages i'm just saying that we and we we have potential to be better and more generous um um but it's interesting i mean if you have to pick an animal to be like you want to be like the elephant they're nice to each other yes i would think so too you're supposed to say the bonobos because they're matriarchal and pansexual.

Speaking of matriarchy and pansexuality, Peter, you're about to leave the wilds of Wyoming. We're going to wrap this up here and go back to California. Have you learned anything from your stay in a different place? Sort of, yeah. I mean, it's a constant surprise to me. I know it's true. I understand it. I know that if you get in a car from coastal California, which feels totally populated, and drive 50 miles inland, you get to farm country, and 50 miles beyond that, you're in the mountains. I get that. But to spend a couple of weeks here in Wyoming, you just are reminded of the emptiness and grandeur of so much of this country. It's just such a big

place. I can't even begin to compete with the elephants and lion cubs and so forth. But I did see a moose. Funnily enough, I can now die. I had two items left on my bucket list. Perhaps I need a new bucket list. Fast. I had only two items left on my bucket list. I've always wanted to see a moose in the wild.

For some reason, that had eluded me. And I've always wanted to see a bald eagle in the wild. First two days in Wyoming, boom, there's a moose. Day after that, boom, two bald eagles flying over the elk herd, looking for also a pack of wolves, which we did not see. But the guide told us that there's a pack of wolves now that's wandered down to the National Elk Refuge here in Jackson, Wyoming, from the original pack that was reintroduced in Yellowstone in 1996. And it turns out, this is the kind of thing guides say,

you need 1.8 elk per wolf per month. So this pack of five wolves is taking down about nine elk. And it turns out when the wolves are finished the eagles move in yeah it's just i i can't i'm not i did not have the experience that rob had of looking at an elk and saying why there's my aunt there's my aunt ethel or oh there's that bastard who fired me but the but it was fast it was just the old rob would have the old rob would have said when the wolves are done eagles move in, would use that as a metaphor somehow for the end of the production run of the sitcom and the going of syndication where the residuals start to pour in. Yes, I can't. My mind is less fertile.

No, that's a good way of looking at it. And that's when the jackals come in because the jackals are going to eat a little bit. And I think we call vultures come in. And there's three kinds of vultures. And there's one the jackals come in because the jackals are going to eat a little bit. And I think we call it vultures come in. And there's three kinds of vultures. And there's one that sort of waits. And there's an inside eater and an outside eater. And I think I know some inside eaters. The problem is finding an animal world metaphor for international foreign distribution rights.

And we're going to have to bring that up. We'll bring that up next week because believe it or not, even though we could go another hour and a half, we probably shouldn't because we have no excuse this time. Usually we go along,

it's like, oh, we have all these great guests, but now it's just obviously we just love the sound of ourselves talking. When Peter talks about empty grandeur, I felt seen by that.

So I'm going to shut up, but I am going to tell you this. Podcast was brought to you by Stamps.com, by ExpressVPN, and by, well, Quip, of course. They've got that new gum. You're going to shut up, but I am going to tell you this podcast was brought to you by stamps.com by express VPN and by well quip. Of course, they've got that new gum.

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Apple podcast and give us a five-star review, we would love it so much so that we would just come personally to your house and shake your hand and plant a wet one on your cheek. Maybe not, but anyway, Rob, welcome back to America. Peter say goodbye to Wyoming and next week,

you'll be in. Goodbye to America. That's right. Say goodbye to America. And hello to California. Thanks for listening folks. And we'll see you'll be in California. Say goodbye to America. That's right. Say goodbye to America and hello to California. Thanks for listening, folks. And we'll see you all in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week, fellas. In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.

In the jungle, the mighty my darling The lion sleeps tonight Hush my baby, don't fear my darling The lion sleeps tonight I love you. Clients leave to mine Hush my baby Don't feel my darling Clients leave to mine Amor, amor, amor, mi mujer