The Young Turks - Good Global Warming

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on U.S. oil refiners to produce more gasoline and diesel, saying their profits have tripled during a time of war between Russia and Ukraine as Americans struggle with record high prices at the pump. For roughly two decades, Google has boasted that it doesn’t accept gun ads, a reflection of its values and culture. But a ProPublica analysis shows that before and after mass shootings in May at a New York grocery store and a Texas elementary school, millions of ads from some of the nation’s largest firearms makers flowed through Google’s ad systems. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) apparently believes in global warming ― but she’s not concerned, because in her opinion, it’s “actually healthy for us.” Students graduating from Seattle Pacific University (SPU) were seen giving the president of the school LGBT pride flags as part of a protest against the school’s ban on allowing full-time staff to be in same-sex relationships. Netflix has announced a reality TV competition show inspired by Squid Games, which seems to miss the entire point of the show. Hosts: John Idarola, Caroline Johnson *** The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET.  Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey ▶ https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt Watchlist with Jayar Jackson ▶ https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Welcome on it all to another episode of The Young Turks. I'm John Adela, host of The Damage Report. That's not the important part. The important part is Caroline Johnson's in the studio. Feels great. I feel like a celebrity. It's your first time, although you've been on the show multiple times. By the way, contributor to Rebel HQ, any other work you want to mention that you've done recently?

Well, we had some really big elections in L.A. that are still, votes are still being counted and they are changing by the day. A lot of great progressives are actually eking out wins and we didn't think so. But yeah, that in Rebel HQ. Yeah, that's awesome. And now you're here. It's been, it's been this really weird period of a couple of years. But it's good to start having people back in studio, safely, safely and all that. Everybody's vaccinated and all that, but anyway, good to have here. And excited to talk about these stories with you. Through the course of the time that we have, we're going to be talking about everything from gas prices to global warming.

Is it good? Is it bad? I know that you've heard from scientists that it's bad, but have you considered talking to one of the dumbest people on the face of the earth? We're going to have that for you. People making money off of gun advertisements and people freaking out because of a gay kiss, an animated gay kiss at that. So it's going to be fun. We've got a lot to talk about.

That said, you ready to jump into things? Okay, well then let's start in the sexiest part of our rundown gas prices. Gas prices have been high and they're still getting higher. Actually, they are about a cent shy of the never before seen national average level of $5. They hit $4.99 as of Thursday morning, apparently, and it is possible that depending in where you live, they might in fact be higher. We're in L.A., so $5 gas is some sort of fantasy that we can't even imagine. But as a national average, that is very high.

And when you combine that with other numbers that aren't moving in the right direction, like for instance that overall consumer prices, one of the measures of inflation is 8.6% higher than it was a year ago, which is the worst year increase in more than 40 years, that is bad news for the president, not necessarily because it's really 100% his fault or he can really 100% fix it, but that's just the way it works, the president gets blamed, the party that's in power gets blamed. For whatever reason, that said, he is trying to do something. What he is doing is sending a strongly worded letter, I guess, to seven of the large oil refiners that operate and help to supply our domestic market. We want to read some of what

Joe Biden had to say in this letter. He said, the crunch that families are facing deserves immediate action. Your companies need to work with my administration to bring forward concrete near-term solutions that address the crisis. And he goes, you could find, by the way, the full letter online if you'd like to read it, if you have that weird characteristic. But he does talk about wanting to address inventory price and refinery capacity issues, as well as transportation measures to help get the fuel to market more readily. He says he's, quote, prepared to use all reasonable and appropriate federal government tools and emergency authorities to increase refinery capacity and output in the near term.

And there had been talked, Caroline, about him using the defense production act. It seems like a veiled threat, I guess, at this point. I don't know exactly how that's going to shake out, but he wants to put some pressure on them while also reassuring people that he's doing something. What do you think about this as a tactic? Well, yeah, in addition to those two things, he also wants to be able to run and, you know, give lip service to environmentalists while saying that he is going to protect the environment and do what needs to be done to stop the increase of oil drilling, which we all know he has

not done. He's on track to permit more oil drilling refineries, I believe, than Trump did. So I think he's really backed himself into a corner right now, and that's not ultimately all his fault. But the problem is that he ran on this message of shutting down refineries and transitioning to different renewables and getting the United States to be energy independent. And yet his actions are different, but now we're in this moment where the right can take the things that he has actually said and say, well, you know, how can you be mad at these oil refineries when you've done nothing but on the campaign trail and in an office saying that you are mad at them and we're trying to get away from them. So he's sort of, the administration is really backed into this corner right now. And as you said, rightfully, at the end of the day, voters don't care about letters.

and strongly worded emails and things like that, they are looking at the prices at the pump and little more than that. And so honestly, the administration can say and do a lot of things, but as long as I just took a picture today on Mayway over here of $7 in West Hollywood, a gallon. So as long as people who aren't as informed voters are seeing those numbers, there's nothing that can save this catastrophe, even if it is. a PR catastrophe at this time.

Certainly not easily, certainly not immediately. And yeah, what you said, I think you were sort of mocking the way that they're attacking him saying like, you were on the campaign trail, you were like getting in their face and everything, they'll do that and it will probably be somewhat effective in getting their base fired up, their base who would never accept Biden no matter what, let's bear that in mind. But at the same time, it doesn't actually make much sense at all. So he was mean to them on the campaign trail, so they were forced to price gouge. during an oil crisis, he caused that, he certainly did that.

And look, is he doing a little bit to fulfill his campaign promises of transitioning towards renewables? Sure, a little bit. Is that why we're in this crisis? No, no serious person actually thinks that. So it is an intellectually dishonest, a fundamentally intellectually dishonest attack that they're using, but that's politics, baby, I guess. So he needs to be ready for it. Now that's, we're sort of talking about right wing pundits. The response to the letter from the oil refiners, isn't that different necessarily? Let me give you a little bit of a quote of what they had to say. This is CEO Mike Summer, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, who says,

while we appreciate the opportunity to open increased dialogue with the White House, the administration's misguided policy agenda shifting away from domestic oil and natural gas, has compounded inflationary pressures and added headwinds to company's daily efforts to meet growing energy needs while reducing emissions. Shut up. Oh no, it's those headwinds. I must price couch because the wind is in my eyes or something. That doesn't make any sense.

You're using this as an opportunity to make more money. That is what it actually is. Now, if he were to be really serious about transitioning to renewable energy, then that probably will hurt them. And good, bring it on. And inevitably, we will get to that point. What the Dems need to do is understand in the near term, in the midterm, there's going to be natural fluctuations of oil prices based on the geopolitical situation,

a bunch of different things, pandemics and stuff like that. And until we move sufficiently in the direction of renewable energy, electric vehicles and things like that, people are going to feel it when that fluctuation hits a bad point. So let's get to the point where we get beyond that, where they can choose to price gouge, and it'll hurt the remaining few probably mostly conservatives at that point who would never ever transition over to electric vehicles.

So we have to actually get over that hump rather than just like sort of stay on the verge and be at the whim of the oil companies when they choose to price couch. Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely right. And I think a huge, a huge shame is that we've now had two major global earth-shattering events, the COVID pandemic and the war in Russia now, that are two incredible excuses for us to get away from fossil fuels and become energy independent while investing in renewables. And it almost feels like at this point, we've had, you know, not one, again, two different events that have really made the case for investing in things like more abundant public transit

and everything else that comes with things like the Green New Deal. And the fact that we can't get the mobilization in this moment really, really doesn't speak to a hopeful future in these endeavors. and it's, it's really sad. You know, I'm curious if this tune is going to change, I mean, we're close to the midterms already. So again, I think it's a really, it's a bad situation seemingly getting worse every day. Yeah.

Yeah, and I, there's a little bit maybe the Biden can do, you know, theoretically. He already released some of the oil from the strategic reserve and stuff like that. He can do this sort of stuff. It might help a little bit. There's only a few months until the midterms. It's difficult to imagine how he's going to significantly change. the situation by then and in the next couple of years. I mean, some things will change, maybe Russia will pull out of Ukraine or that situation

will have settled down. There's a few things that might influence it, but it is entirely possible that we will cruise into like the DeSantis administration or something without much having fundamentally changed. What will change when he's sworn in is that the Republicans will no longer care about the gas prices. I mean, maybe they'll still use it as an excuse to deregulate, but they certainly won't blame the administration.

If inflation continues, they won't care, and vice versa, the Democrats will suddenly use it as a convenient political tool. None of this is fundamentally about the actual substance of these price increases. It's just a convenient political tool, which is unfortunate because people are being squeezed. Now that said, there is a focus in the letter on the price gouging, and I don't want, we've already talked about, I want to make sure that we focus on it. The letter notes that gas prices were averaging 4.25 a gallon, when oil was last near the current price of $120 a barrel in March. That's 75 cent difference in average gas prices in a matter of just a few months reflects both a shortage of refinery capacity and profits that are currently

at their highest levels ever recorded. Again, they didn't knock out half the refineries in the U.S. or internationally. That's just not what happened. It is a factor, and I think they're being overly balanced in acknowledging it. It is price gouging. And Biden has acknowledged that. He said just on Friday, the Exxon Mobil made more money than God. this year. And there's different strategies and what to do about that. Bernie Sanders wants to institute a 95% tax on profits in excess of companies pre-pandemic averages. So they can be just as profitable as they were before the pandemic, which these are oil companies we're talking about, which means as profitable as any corporation has ever been in the history of our planet.

But over and above that, we have to do something to limit it. And price gouging would be one way to do that. Like, Biden last year had the FTC start an investigation into the high prices. I don't understand what would take like six months to figure out. It costs a little bit more to make, refine, and ship the gas. The price should be a little bit higher, but the price is way higher than is justified. This is not complicated to understand. They are obviously exploiting, exploiting the situation.

And the Republicans will talk constantly about high gas prices have to do this weird dance, Well, they acknowledge that the prices are high, but they don't care about the fact that the oil companies are price gouging. They certainly don't want to do anything to stop it. They're not signing on to the Bernie Sanders thing. So they like to pretend. They cosplay as caring about the amount that people are paying, but they're not going to do anything fundamentally that will change it, except make changes that potentially five years from now result in more oil being drilled. Yeah, I think the name of the game at this point is muddying the waters and making the situation as confusing as possible. for individuals, for families, for voters.

And as you said, the Biden administration waiting so long to, I think you said, the findings of the FTC investigation. Yeah, the FTC investigation. All that does is add to the confusion of what's going on. And once again, people are looking at the gas prices. It's, you know, the one thing in our society that you can see clearly every single day on economic marker. And so all of, like, we have to be prepared for Republicans muddying the wall.

on this and making it more confusing than it actually is because in the meantime prices are rising and that's all that voters are gonna see yeah yeah and look that affects a lot of things I mean the easy thing to focus on obviously is gasoline and automobiles it's a very significant chunk of that it's not the only thing that's affected by these sorts of problems but yeah we do need to do something seriously it is amazing that we we continually go through these cycles of gas prices skyrocketing it happened under Bush it obviously happened in the 70s it keeps happening and

Nobody on the right and not nearly enough people on the Democratic Party want to stop us from entering into the next couple cycles of this. Just get in the electric cars. And by the way, I understand that right now for a lot of people, it's just not possible. It's not financially feasible. They're not making ones that are cheap enough. The government can do, like, if Republicans can wrap their minds around the idea that the government can do something that makes it cheaper to pump gas, how do they not understand that it could be possible for the government to do something that makes these cars cheaper to produce? But unfortunately, Even the efforts that we might make to get people to understand that electric vehicles are

not just better in terms of the fact that you don't have to pay for gas, they're fundamentally better in so many different ways. There are influential people in the right right now. I saw today, Elon Musk was tweeting about the federal subsidies. And in his, he tweeted, and he said, all these other companies get the $7,500 federal subsidy, but Tesla doesn't. Tesla already burned through all of theirs because they've sold more electric cars. They did. He was perfectly happy for the subsidy to exist when it was getting people to buy Teslas.

But now he's pushing people to potentially be against that subsidy to make it more expensive to buy other domestically produced electric vehicles. Like we just we need to get past this debate. We need to make it so that people are less vulnerable the next time we enter into a situation like this. I do want to also put a button on this. We've been implying that this is bad for Joe Biden. The numbers also bear that out. There's a new Reuters Ipsos poll, Biden's at 39%, which matches where he was at last week in a morning consult poll. That was the lowest he'd ever been in morning consult.

Even Democrats have him at 74% down from 85% in August, which is still high approval, but they're his party. That's not good. No, it's not good. Yeah, I think in addition, other things we could be doing is in places like L.A., they could be, or in lots of cities, expanding. bus service making, you know, free transit. They've been doing things like that in Kansas City. There are cities where this works, where free public transit is not only, you know, a full-time policy, but it works.

I mean, the amount of times that I would love to be able to take the bus somewhere, but because of traffic and because of diminished routes and things like that, it's just not a possibility. So in addition to electric cars and things like that, I just, it really bums me out that in this moment where we need public transit and infrastructure, there's no messaging on that anywhere. And it's, you know, it could have, it could just be such a winning message for people who are excited about the prospect of expanding that infrastructure. And they're just not capitalizing on it at all. And it's a shame. Yeah, there was a little bit of talk back during

the negotiations around buildback better. And I'm sure that some of that funding is going into that. But yeah, it's not, partially because it takes a long time to get that stuff up and running, but it does still have to be a constant focus. And look for very short distance travel, especially in urban areas. I know Anna Kasparian is a big proponent of electric scooters like Bird and Lyme. I'm kidding, she hates that stuff. But anyway, it is an option. I've used it.

Okay, with that said, we're to take our first break of the hour. When we come back, we're going to talk about the, we have the input side, the gas that we're burning. We're going to talk about the output side, which is climate change. We'll have that for you after this. I got so invested in that question, we're like, man, four minutes can pass by so quickly. But anyway, we're back. And if you're just joining us, Caroline Johnson is here, contributor to rubble HQ. Very glad to have you here.

And unfortunately, I'm going to be a bad host. and I'm going to force you to endure something that no one should have to. The unfiltered video and audio of Marjorie Green, take a look. We've already warmed one degree Celsius, and do you know what's happened since then? Here, let me tell you, we have had more food grown since then, which feeds people. We are able to, producing fossil fuels keeps people's houses warm in the winter. That saves people's lives. People die in the cold. This earth warming and carbon is actually healthy for us.

It helps us to feed people. It helps keep people alive. The earth is more green than it was years and years ago, and that's because of the earth warming. That's because of carbon. That is Marjorie Green inflicting her second grade understanding of science and climate on the entire country. Regrettably, she is an elected official. She's not on committees or anything, but in theory, she could be in a position where her vote in the future could determine the path of America's response to climate change and global warming, which she seems to think is cool.

She is setting herself off against the vast, vast, vast majority of all of the nation's scientists, the world scientists, I will leave it to you to determine who is more likely to be right in this case. The points that she chose to make there is that we're making more food because it's warmer, and she helpfully reminds us that food feeds people, that's good. I wasn't sure what the stakes were with the food thing, but that also people die of cold. And so it's good that it's getting hotter. Look, this is madness. If you know anything about the climate, about the debate over climate change, none of this makes any sense. But just in case, we're going to give you some of the basic facts in just a second.

First, though, what did you make of that? She's a full grown adult and an elected representative. Yeah, I mean, you said that she had a second grade understanding of this problem, and I take offense to that because I think second graders know so much more than whatever that statement was. This is unbelievable. I actually, I had read her comments, but I hadn't actually seen the video, and this is, I mean, she just goes lower and lower and lower and lower and lower. And again, this is coming from someone, just her tenuous grasp of the facts in every single

situation. You know, she's talking about sickness, but also like doesn't believe that COVID was a big problem. So it's crazy. And also the guy sitting next to her is he just her. I want his internal monologue so bad. Yeah. If he has one, I mean.

It's possible. Yeah, I don't know. It might just be like a really tired rat running on a train. treadmill. Yeah, no, it's not good. No, it's not good. Although I will say it might not be clear if you're watching this, but what you just saw from Marjorie Green is in fact progress. It might not be clear, but what she said was the fact that the globe is warming is a good thing. And that acknowledges that the globe is warming. That is actually progress. I mean, this is how it happens. They deny that it's happening. Then,

Perhaps they argue that maybe it's happening, but if it is happening, it's not our fault. And then eventually they move to, okay, it's happening, it's our fault, but we can't or shouldn't do anything about it. And I think, I hope that that's the final phase. Unfortunately, it's likely that we will remain in that phase until we hit Mad Maxian times. But that's actual progress. That said, let's give you a little bit of the actual science. So we say this for people who might be new to this issue, including including Marjorie Green.

I hope that you're watching, Congresswoman. The rise in temperature is driving an increase in extreme weather events, shifting temperature extremes, intensifying heavy rainfall, droughts, and other damaging climate extremes that are negatively impacting crop production and threatening global food security. Things like using energy to heat or cool your home or for agricultural processes themselves generate carbon emissions that contribute to global warming, not the other way around. It's not like, it's not like the carbon goes into your house, warms you up, and then poof, It's gone and we're back.

That's not how that actually works. And Huff Post had a little bit of fun with this saying that as any school age biology student could tell you, plants do use carbon dioxide. She got that right. This underscores the urgency to protected, restore ecosystems like forests and grasslands to help remove carbon emissions from the atmosphere. Unfortunately, it appears that her attachment to increase greenery is a purely passive thing. She's not interested in generating more of it. She's just noticing that stuff is greener. Here's the issue though.

She said, it's good that it's warming because then less people will die of the cold, which should not require any fact-checking. But just to be clear, I looked at what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has to say about weather-related deaths, and you can see this chart. So in 2017, it's the most recent date I was able to find. And you can see right in the middle, you see the tall lines? That's the heat deaths. You see the winter and cold deaths?

Those are the much lower ones right to the right of that middle one. More people die from heat than cold. Yes, people do die from cold. I'm from Connecticut. It happens there all the time. You might live in Texas, which because of its purposefully bonked electrical grid, people unfortunately die during the winter. That is true.

More people die during the extreme heating events, which are becoming more common and more extreme. We brought up that graphic briefly. There's a study done recently, Columbia University's Earth Institute, believes that global warming will kill 83 million people in the next 80 years. That's a lot. It's more than those who will be saved by the fact that it won't be as cold in winter. Right now, by the way, 96 million people are under warnings of heat waves right now.

People will die. And they might get a little bit of cooling from that pond, which looks like it has a picture of Elizabeth Warren looking out of it. I'm not sure exactly who that is. But, oh, by the way, just one little fun thing. I apologize, Caroline, that estimate, the 83 million people that will be dead in the next 80 years, you might think, well, okay, come on. But that's like the most radical possible inclusion. You're overestimating it, you're including literally everything.

No, they very much were not. Those calculations don't include the number of people who might die from rising seas, super storms, crop failures, or changing disease patterns affected by atmospheric warming. They are literally only including people who are killed by the literal direct heating, not people who will lose access to water resources, not people who will die as a result of intra or interstate conflict, civil wars, resource wars. This is just people being killed by the heat and it's in the tens of millions. Yeah, I think I want to also hone in on something she said about the like the world is getting

greener and honestly for her in her worldview it might very well be because she's also getting richer. As she is making, you know, her profile is constantly expanding. She just won reelection by a pretty wide margin, or in her primary in Georgia. And, you know, environmental justice is economic justice. It's, you know, been proven time and time again that the wealthy have more access to green spaces, shade, things that quite literally make it cooler and make it easier to survive in hot temperatures. So she's honestly telling on her, by saying that her worldview is getting greener and it's getting more environmental because for her it literally is that's what happens when you get

richer you get more access to protections from these environmental disasters and this whole thing really is just like a an absolute like breakdown of what the Republicans how they operate they create problems and if they don't create the problems they exacerbate them and then they offer these solutions to the problems that could have been mitigated in the first place. And they call that governing. And honestly, it's electable in some ways and it's really frustrating. And I, it's, it's frustrating.

It's frustrating. It is, yeah. Yeah, their job is to delay as long as possible so that oil companies can generate as much profit as possible for as long as possible. That's all it really is. Like, and again, for anyone who might be relatively new to politics or whatever, whatever, like value systems and why certain positions on certain issues tend to be affiliated with progressives versus concertists, it might be complicated, and it is interesting

the way that those value systems are constructed back when I was in academia. That was actually the thing that I was doing my dissertation on. But to be clear, as far as I can tell, there is no reason why it should be the conservative position that we should either refuse to acknowledge or should sort of. surrender in the face of climate destruction. There's no reason for that. Conservation was at one point a conservative thing. Now I understand why the politicians do it.

It is, as we said, to protect those companies, to protect them from regulation to maintain their high profits. That's great for them. But if you're a regular conservative, how much money are you making off of Exxon? You know, like, do you have stock? Maybe get it, because they're probably going to do pretty well. But other than that, there is no reason why you cannot take this serious. and still be a conservative to your very core.

Now with that said, why don't we move to something very different? I don't think we have video. Okay, let's jump into this. made certain pledges over the years. And one of them for a very long time has been that they will not do gun advertisements. They will not make money off of advertising for guns. But ProPublicla has looked into this and has figured out that in some areas they have maintained that, but they are very much making money thanks to these advertisements. And we want to run through a little bit of what they found. The full report is available at ProPublica. You can see that.

So back in 2004, the co-founder of Google Sergei Bryn said that the policy of not doing these advertisements was a matter of ethics and a reflection of the companies don't be evil corporate value. That was a thing that they said at one point. A pro-public analysis, though, found that the 15 of the largest firearm sellers in the U.S., this includes, by the way, Daniel Defense, the company that made the specific AR-15 made by the Evaldi Gunman, used Google's systems to place ads that generated over 120 million impressions from just March 9th to June 6th. So this is not a very small bit. They generated so much attention off of this, and that generated money for Google. All of those impressions led to ad revenue, directly contradicting their pledge.

So you might be wondering, well, they're not owning up to the fact that they violated. So how exactly does that work? Well, it gets slightly tricky, but let's see if we can follow along in this. Google has two sets of rules for weapons ads. One is for Google ads, the ads that run on the company's own ad network and on properties it owns like YouTube or Google.com search results. The other system is for ads sold by partners, such as ad exchanges. that place ads using Google systems.

Ad exchanges enable digital ads to be bought and sold via an automated bidding process. Now, for the second category, for those partners, Google operates as an exchange of exchanges in which it facilitates the buying and selling of ads on other exchanges. That's how it actually makes its money. Those particular exchanges are guided by a set of more permissive rules. And so that's all tricky legalese or whatever, like it's the terms of service, I guess. At the end of the day, though, they're making money by helping gun manufacturers advertise. Like, they can cloud it in as much complicated nuance and talk as they want, but they're making

money for gun manufacturers to get more eyeballs and sell more guns. It's really as simple as that. Yeah, I mean, I think the ProPublica report says it all in that part where it says Google has two sets of rules for weapon sales. Yeah, no, if you really care about something and you care about the ethics behind your advertising model, you don't inherently have two sets of rules. You have one set of rules for everything. And yeah, it's interesting the breakdown of how the report goes on to explain how this works. I mean, it sounds like a mid-level marketing scheme or something. Like, it literally

sounds like those pyramid scheme. That's like how the top earners, you know, or get off scotch-free from whatever, whatever bad, nefarious things are happening to the people below them. Yeah, and I'm curious if you are bringing up, like, what really creeped me out about this report was the retargeting part about how, so I'm sure we're all familiar. I think it's called retargeting. Yeah, when you search something on Google and then ads for that thing, just keep popping up and popping up. Everywhere you go, yeah. Yeah, and so that apparently is a big problem with this where people will either look up a gun and on a website, and then they'll, you know, just be in their usual internet. activity and constantly see retargeting ads of firearms.

And that to me is like the one of the most abhorrent things that I can possibly imagine. Because as, you know, so many of us know, because we live in a gun obsessed country, is that suicide rates from guns are incredibly high. There's so many gun deaths that, you know, let alone the mass shootings. But one of the things that I, that, you know, you can see this policy. policy being murderous is that if you are in a weak moment or something and you look up how to get a firearm and then you take a step back, you take a breath, you talk to friends and families, whatever, and then you are haunted by the continuous imagery of guns on

your internet. That's a great point. That is so insane to me and Google totally bears responsibility for that. I don't care if they, you know, if it's some loophole or whatever, but. That that really is such a sad part to me, like how many people have been in their worst moments through searching for something and then that thing keeps haunting them. It's despicable. That's a great point.

Honestly, I had never thought about that specifically. I mean, we've all been followed by ads. Like I would have, I looked up a board game and then I just got ads about it for like three months. I already bought the game. You should really stop sending, I already bought it, you know that I bought it, I bought it online. annoying or they've apparently online, they've sketched a psychological profile of me where they offer up Instagram ads for really douchey shirts and jackets, I don't buy them, but they seem to think you're on the precipice of buying this douchey shirt, but think about it

when it's a gun. And I'm sure you could come up with other examples of things that you really do not want following someone literally everywhere they go. And that gets outside of just the bounds of this on guns, but it's a great point. And look, we can we can show you like places that that gun ads were being served up, that it's just ridiculous. So the gunmaker Savage Arms, definitely manufacturer of guns for responsible gun owners, savage arms. Anyway, their ads popped up on the site, baby games amid games for children.

That's cool. On an article about how to handle teen drama, wonderful, ads for Glock Pistols loaded on a recipe sites list of the 50 best vegetarian recipes in case you have to shoot a rudabega I guess as well as on the quiz site playbuzz on Merriam Webster the Denver Post you can see a shot actually right here of I think that's like fun little games and stuff like that that's babygames.com and tactical vests and what looks like I don't know those like self-defense weapons you're supposed to poke in someone's eye so that's that's a cool message to put to the kids so

So very fun. And by the way, full disclosure, we obviously, we, we have a business relationship with Google in that you might be watching this on YouTube right now. We make some money off of ads and everything. But it is still, we have an ethical responsibility to criticize them when they're advertising, you know, obligations are not living up to them, which clearly in this case, they're not. They may, even if they hadn't made the pledge, this is wrong. You shouldn't do this, but especially when you decades ago pledged that to do this would be evil, then we're going to have to hold you to it. Yeah, it's just, it's nothing new in these corporate ethics statements. We all, I feel like at this point, we all sort of know that they're

entirely hollow if it actually affects their bottom line. So that's what we have to wait and see. You know, if this generates press or publicity about the fact that Google is doing this, hopefully that's enough for them to stop this. But if it is, increasing their revenue if it's good for their bottom line, I don't see any version of them walking back on this. Maybe not. I mean, the hope would be that of all of the huge amount of money that they make off of advertising, this might be a small enough part that they would be willing to change the rules for that second bucket. But even that, it's like cool, cool ethics statement there. Yeah, yeah, that's not really ethics so much, but I guess we'll see.

In any event, we are going to take our second break. When we come back, lots more fun stuff to get to. Welcome back to what remains of the first hour of The Young Turks with me, John and Caroline. Caroline, great to have you here. By the way, I believe Adrian is going to be leading the second hour, very exciting stuff, So don't go anywhere once we finish this first hour. They've got some awesome stories to get to, including, by the way, Elon Musk just totally shedding that like, I'm an independent thinker. I'm not dogmatic or whatever.

No, he's just supporting Republicans. He's like, he's taken, there's no transparent. There's no shade anymore. You can see it. It's there for you. That said, we've got a lot to talk about. So why don't we jump into this? Whenever you do something about representation or diversity or whenever you.

It's always push back. I mean, what would you, I mean, how would you counter that, I suppose? Well, I mean, the real truth is those people are idiots. That is Chris Evans, the star of the upcoming film Lightyear, responding to criticism of the apparently unacceptable fact that in that animated Disney movie movie, there is a same-sex kiss. Just a kiss between cartoons of characters that love each other kissing. And the right wing has freaked out about it here in the U.S. and internationally, In fact, well, by the way, the kiss takes place between Hawthorne, a female lead, voiced by Uzo Aduba, and another female character. That's what they're freaking out about.

But it has led to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Malaysia banning the film. It cannot go out. It is not safe. It is not age appropriate because two people in love that happen to share a gender kiss. And that's internationally here. Who do you think is going to freak out about it? Yeah, Ben Shapiro is going to freak out about it. And so he tweeted this, Disney works to push a not at all secret gay agenda and seeks

to add queerness to its programming, according to executive producer, Latoya Ravanaugh. People should keep that in mind before deciding whether to take their kids to see Lightyear, which hits theaters this week. And I love that, I guess it's because he attached the article or whatever that that photo is there. Because you see the thing that he is actually free. That's the thing that he's freaking out about to kiss. They're gonna do it. That's it.

They're just gonna kiss. No more X-rated than that. And I love the response, by the way, of Cody Johnston who responded, this is an image of two adults smiling at each other. That's what, that's hilarious, that is what they are freaked out about. And I want to give you, before we give our commentary, just a little bit more of Chris Evans, who is not here for any of that nonsense. Here is his response to those people.

I mean, I think throughout history, you can see every time there's been, social advancement as we wake up. I mean, the American story, the human story is one of constant social awakening and growth. And that's what makes us good. And, you know, when that happens, there's always going to be people who are afraid and unaware and trying to hold on to what was before, but those people die off like dinosaurs. And so, you know, I think the goal is to pay them no mind, march forward and embrace the growth that makes us human. You know, I gotta say there is this like all out culture war over identity about,

you know, racial diversity in movies, obviously, you know, LGBTQ plus representation. And I like that that the stars are not standing for it, that you had, you know, you know, Disney and Ewan McGregor defending one of the co-stars of Obi-Wan Kenobi against racist attacks. Now you have Chris Evans who he's going to get attacked for the comments that he just made, but he is standing up for this sort of diversity, and you'd like to see that. Yeah, and I mean, it's so clear at this point, he's just over it. Like you said, like he, at this point, they're so used to this backlash, which is funny because what does this backlash from Ben Shapiro do actually is it gets a ton of press.

And it is quite literally free advertising for this movie. So, you know, he's giving them such a gift. And I just think it's funny to see at this point, like these actors being just over having to talk about these issues because, you know, we've moved on. One thing I do love in Ben Shapiro's statement is he called it a not so secret gay agenda, which I think is a beautiful pride sentiment that we should be putting on T-shirts and all that kind of stuff. So thank you for giving this cute little film, a lot of press using that specific photo. I mean, I love the photo.

Yeah, it's really beautiful. And the film's going to do amazing. Probably, I don't know. We'll see. I wasn't necessarily planning to see it. Not that in the Buzz Lightyear, but now maybe, I don't know. By the way, to Shop T.O.T., can we get a not at all secret gay agenda shirt? I would just kind of love to see that, actually.

But anyway, yes, it will generate attention for the movie. It also, let's acknowledge it, he freaks out and whines and cries about this stuff because it will also help him out. He has apparently identified that there are a lot of really, really broken, emotionally fragile, weak, ignorant men out there that want someone who will speak very quickly in a high-pitched voice to them about how they're being left behind and ignored and everything. And so he's going to present that to them. He's going to cry for hours a day about this one kiss or whatever, and some people will walk. him do that and he will make money off of that. So let's just acknowledge that. I just, I don't get it. From a movement that constantly talks about alpha males and everything, the fact that there is a kiss in a movie they're not going to see tears. I can't take the country

and take the country. Why? Why? Just live your life. Like if they're, I don't care, I'm gonna be completely honest, I don't care about masculinity. I don't, I don't care about any of that. I think it's stupid to focus on it. But if you are going to focus on it, you definitely don't have it. Like whatever, when you have this mythic idea of what your dad used to be, like your granddad, and he'd catch a salmon, and then he'd chop down a tree or whatever. I don't think he cried about what was in the movies, probably. I don't think he whined online about the fact that two cartoons kissed.

They're not real, by the way. I just, I don't understand it. But it has become so core to their political ideology. Yeah. And I want to just quickly touch base with another thing. I noticed in the same area, there was a tweet put out by Star Wars, which we talked about earlier. This is a different issue, though. They put out this tweet saying, Celebrate Pride Month with Jan Bazaldua's incredible cover for Star Wars bounty hunters number 24 out today. And you can see it there. Oh, God, no, those are two women. Presumably, they might be in a relationship, I guess. I don't even know, but I know that just that image was enough to get people to freak out.

With Finley Matthews responding, don't make Star Wars political. And I love that Star Wars responded, saying one, queer characters existing isn't political. And two, Star Wars is literally in our name. Star Wars is about a rebellion against an authoritarian state. It is so, most of the, like, they're called stormtroopers. There's stormtroopers. Like, it's not subtle necessarily. It is political.

That's what it is. This isn't political. People being queer is not political any more than people being straight is political. It's weird that you think that it is. They're animations too. It's a cartoon. We have to bear in mind that there are people who can watch literally hours and hours and hours of something and absorb nothing of it. There are people who will watch them on one of the new Star Trek series and be like,

I don't like that Star Trek got woke. Have you ever watched any Star Trek? Next generation, every single episode is a different social issue with a light veneer of sci-fi over it. That's what it is, and it's fine. You don't have to watch it, but that's what it's always been. Wasn't it created in response to, I'm forgetting what it was, if someone in the comments, Star Trek was created in response to some national tragedy or something, someone helped me out. I don't know.

I saw this just like yesterday, and I was like, I think it was originally, it was designed to be wagon trade to the stars, But the politics of the origins, I don't know, but I do know that Gene Roddenberry, he had political views and those were instilled into Star Trek and Star Wars and all of this. This isn't an example of it though. Anyway, let's move to something very different, starting with this. I'm going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. I'm not going to be. So that is a bit of a trailer for Squid Game, the Challenge, which was announced this week by Netflix. If it's not clear from that, the show Squid Game, which was a massive hit, like maybe their biggest hit ever, features a reality competition where incredibly indebted people in South Korea compete to the death for money.

And they've turned that now into a challenge where people will get to compete, hopefully not to the death, for money. money. A lot of people pointed out that they seem to have not gotten the message of their own piece of media saying that the narrative that is explicitly against voyeuristic cash grab competition shows, they're now creating one out of this. And they might actually have a lot of really down in their luck people who have been, you know, they've had a bad experience during the pandemic. Economically, it's tough times who will go into this. At the very least, they probably but won't kill people. I don't know. Are you a fan of Squid Game? Did you see it? No, I mean, I couldn't get through the first out. Like, it was too much for me. And so I think

unfortunately, it feels like everyone sort of knew this was going to happen, but it's too, like, it's too weird to actually believe that it is really coming true. Because again, yeah, like, I think most viewers understand that the, the creative team behind this, that the cast, like, There was no, like, hidden meaning in this, that this is about the failures of a system that doesn't protect its citizens and what happens when you are desperate for money. And I, that's, it's too weird that this is happening, like, because I, once again, I, this happens with a lot of very successful shows these days, with most of them, they have spin-offs or whatever, but to make this a reality series is even in the wake of that activist show

that they ended up like pulling because I mean I'm pretty sure this is I think that was a different network but different network but like it's create I mean this is going if Netflix is doing this then they're doing it and it's it's so dystopian so sad I also like why is it 4.56 million dollars I don't know why I'm they decided they wanted 456 people that's how many are going to be in so I think it's supposed to be divisible just make it Like if someone's gonna literally put their life on the line. Yeah, and to be clear, it's not the same exact amount of money as was in this show. So I don't know exactly how they landed on that.

But yeah, look, I'll say I don't have as much of a problem as some people with this because they're not actually killing people. That would be that would be over the line for me. Murder for money. Like if they were, if they were creating this on the high seas and they were actually killing people, that would be a bigger issue. A bigger issue, yeah. That would be a slightly bigger issue. The fact that they don't seem to have understood it, that, look, aside from the window dressing, since they're not gonna die, this is seemingly only as exploitative as virtually any competition,

I guess, as long as nobody's getting injured or anything. It is needlessly obtuse to the, to the, I think not only very easy to understand message of a squid game, but a good message. I think that there is actually a lot, a lot. I know it's difficult to get through, there is violence and everything. I absolutely love Squid Game. I think it's one of the best shows like the last decade. And so it is weird that they wouldn't understand it.

I do want to give Netflix credit, though. We're going to read you just a couple of quick tweet reactions, and one was something was re-re-upped that I remember from years ago. So Gene says, I don't think I've ever seen the moral stance of a show so completely misunderstood by the general public like Squid Game has been, or at least by Netflix. Somebody raised Alec Blectman's tweet from quite a while ago, sci-fi author, in my book, I invented the torment nexus as a cautionary tale, tech company. At long last, we've created the torment nexus from classic sci-fi novel, don't create the dormant nexus.

A bigger potential issue is flaunting the biggest cash prize ever when you just laid off a bunch of people. That's an issue. They laid off 150 people after the poor earnings report back in April of this year. And apparently one of them, Rina Sulton, says, oh, they laid a soft source salaries could be the game show cash prize. Got it, got it, got it. And so, yeah, I'd be a little bit frustrated, potentially, especially after that mega hit. That said, Netflix is in a little bit difficult times. And so I will say this.

I assume this is going to be mega popular. Yeah. I bet it will help them get money. So it's clever in that way, I guess. Yeah, I think you're right. I think that, I think Netflix, unlike what the fallout with the activist, I, I don't think Netflix is is totally missing the point of Squid Game and like sort of to your point, maybe this is an opportunity for them to use a show and like in like imbue it with these

cautionary tales and things like that. Like I hadn't really thought about that before, but maybe they are, I just, I find it so hard to believe that they're not aware about the like tone deaf nature of some of this. So I think there's a chance that they might include some sort of analysis within it. And, you know, that's my hope for it because it just seems so, yeah, too on the nose for like the culture we're in right now. So I don't know. We'll see, look, Nicolette sent in a super chat to say, Mr. Beast just did a squid game like a month or two ago. I think, I think it was longer than that.

But with YouTube money, yeah, that's true, but I think that was also criticized as well. There was a, they brought in a bunch of YouTubers to do a version of Squid game or whatever. I wanna, we only have like a minute. I wanna throw just a couple more potential criticisms out. I know most people are focused on the tone deafness and everything. I totally get that why you would do that. My pre-criticism is, is it gonna suck though? Like, because people won't be dying.

And I don't want them to, I wanna be clear about that. He's on the record, John does not want people to die on the show. Like if you're playing, this is a small spoiler, if you're playing tug of war and the team that loses, dies, that's exciting. If they don't die, you're just playing tuck of war at that point, aren't you? And sure, there are going to be some people in the background, guards wearing the iconic masks, but I don't know, how good, how much better is that than any competition show? Like honestly, Netflix already has the floor is lava. Are you familiar with that? Yeah. That could have been one of the things in this and nobody dies in

that, it's not real lava. So I wonder if it will be as compelling in practice to to watch people play marbles where nobody dies. I think this is all leading to me to believe that there is something else to this project that they're not releasing right now. Like I think they want all of the press. They want everyone to be sort of like, this is crazy, you're missing the whole point. And then I think soon it will be revealed that there have to, because you're right, like there has to be higher stakes, not murder.

At least like break a leg or something, I'm kidding, don't do that. Like severe scalding or something, no, don't do that. I mean, that might be, you know, in a couple weeks, we might have the next iteration of what they're going to do. But you're right, like, I think there's something else here that they're, they're trying to drum up this, this sort of paranoia and then something else will be revealed, I think. That is, that is definitely possible. Well, that is unfortunately all the time we have for our first hour. Where can people watch more of your work? Yeah, you can find me on Rebel HQ, and you can follow me on all platforms at Caro Johnson 917.

Thanks so much for having you. Awesome. It was a pleasure to have you. First time in studio. Very awesome to have you here. And for everyone watching home, thank you for watching the first hour. We've got a whole other hour. Adrienne Lawrence will be on in just a little bit.

I believe Wazzi Lombri is going to be joining her as well. So don't go anywhere. They'll be back in just a few. subscribing to apple podcasts at apple.co slash t yt. I'm your host jank huger and I'll see you soon.