Timcast IRL - Timcast IRL #396 - Southwest LOSING Vax Mandate Battle, Cancels Unpaid Leave Plan w/Michael Shellenberger

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

Tim, Ian, Luke, and Lydia join bestselling author of 'Apocalypse Never' and new release 'San Fran-sicko: How Progressives Ruin Cities' Michael Shellenberger to discuss how Southwest airlines has backed away from their former stance on requiring all their employees to get vaccinated because of increasing cases of the euphemistic 'freedom flu', the absolute state of the modern media as demonstrated by the contentious exchange between Joe Rogan and Sanjay Gupta of CNN, and Michael shares his unique view of the big cities he watched be destroyed by progressive policies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The freedom flu is apparently working. As much as the establishment tried to deny its existence, and there was some technicality to the, technically the truth things to what they were saying. There was no, as my understanding, very large and organized sick outs or protests, but there were some small protests we did see. There were many individuals taking paid time off,

taking sick time, and we're seeing this in police departments as well. Now in Chicago, they're threatening police officers. If you try to take time off, you're being blocked. If you try to retire instead of getting the vaccine, they will go after your benefits. Southwest, however, has lost one major battle, the vaccine mandates are still there. They are now saying they have ended the plan to put people on unpaid leave if they are pending an exemption. Not exactly getting rid of their vaccine mandates. So a little correction in the headline we put up, but still they're slowly

backing down. With Chicago police, this is where it gets crazy. A judge has ordered the president of the police union to stop encouraging people to defy the mandates. The beast is shaken. It's getting scared. And we got to talk about that. We got to talk about what happens when you demonize, defund, remove the police, because we can take a look at the crime in San Francisco. And we've got someone here to actually talk about how progressives are destroying cities. We have author Michael Schellenberger. Do you want to introduce yourself? Oh, yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm the author of Apocalypse Never and also the new book, San Francisco, Why Progressives Ruin Cities. Right on.

So you're the perfect person to talk about San Francisco being ruined. Absolutely. I just was looking at the news just now, and apparently they're now offering rewards funded by private individuals to solve some of their crime cases. It's pretty absurd. $100,000 I'm hearing? Yeah. Wow. Maybe that won't do anything. individuals to solve some of their crime cases it's pretty absurd um hundred thousand dollars i'm hearing yeah wow wow maybe that won't do anything but it's a private individual trying to do something you know yeah i mean it's just uh we're dealing with the breakdown of civilization i mean it sounds hyperbolic but civilization requires that that laws are enforced it requires

that uh people you know, uh, that there'd be consequences for behaviors that are incompatible with city life. I talk about how the current DA was proposing to basically just reimburse people whose car windows had been smashed in. I mean, what could go wrong? Right.

I mean, the store is closing. You got, I mean, when you, when you get a poop department, you should really reflect on your leadership instead of being like, we a problem with human waste i have an idea let's create the poop department problem solved it's like maybe some something else is going on you know maybe

that's a symptom of the problem if people compare people will come and they see the tents and they see the people um including the public defecation is very famous and they will compare it to like shanty towns and poor countries. I've lived in Brazil, been in shanties. I know favelas. I've been in very shanty towns in poor parts of the world, India. It's different.

San Francisco is the richest country, one of the richest places in the world. But even in the favelas, I didn't see people taking dumps on the stairs or the sidewalks. Like people all live there and it was like – I saw pretty bad conditions. I saw those channels they have in the hill that go down because they don't have a sewer and it just – their waste goes in there.

But it's all going in the same place. The craziest thing I saw was someone's tortoise broke out of their apartment. And I was like, yeah, they were – I got to tell you, man, going to a Brazilian favela and seeing the conditions and being like, wow, it's bad. And then going to San Francisco, I'm like, wow, it's worse. So that's something. We'll talk about all that. We also got Luke. Yeah.

Before we begin, I wanted to tell our loving viewing audience to always trust the science no matter what because, you know, they're never wrong. You should never question it. The scientific method is sort of like a suggestion, and our carefully curated, selected, highly paid scientists who have conflict of interest and connections to big industries never lie to us. And, oh, I also have a cloth on myself, which you could exclusively. Hold on there, Luke. Let me look at that. DDT, no flies on me, thanks to DDT. Well, there are no flies on that baby. Technically correct. Cigarettes were recommended by doctors. Yes. DDT no flies on me thanks to DDT well there are no flies on that baby technically correct

cigarettes were recommended by doctors yes that nursery water you have there is still for sale today at Walmart hold on hold on

what's that one asbestos well my understanding is that asbestos is only bad if you're trying to remove it and as it ages

and cracks glyphosate I'm not super familiar with that one well there's a big lawsuit with Montana sugar glyphosate

sugar's bad don't eat sugar exactly so yeah this is just a random cloth that I have on Glyphosate. I'm not super familiar with that one. Well, there's a big lawsuit with Monsanto on glyphosate. Sugar's bad. Don't eat sugar. Exactly. So yeah, this is just a random cloth that I have on that you could also exclusively get on thebestpoliticalshirts.com and at the same time support me being here. So thanks for having me. Thanks for coming, Luke. Hey, me and Michael were just talking before the show.

We both lived on Cole in San Francisco over there by Hate Street. So I think I've got a little bit of similar, maybe perspective of what you're speaking. Like you were talking about the guy screaming outside. It might've been the same guy. Very likely. Very possible. Old famous screaming Joe.

Wildly. I thought it was overpriced when I was there in 2016, it was $3,000 for a one bedroom, which was the most I'd ever paid way beyond, way beyond anything else. And, uh, got offered to buy mushrooms and weed every day walking down the street.

Well, I mean. Unique city. And then there's Golden Gate Park and all the people sleeping in the park like two blocks away or three blocks away. There's a big difference between, well, I'll just put it up. I'll just, we'll get into it. Poop department, bad. There we go. Indeed.

Yeah. So San Francisco sounds like it started beautiful and then some super progressive policies got into place. So I'm really looking forward to talking about that this evening. And also, here's a company you can support. Go to TimCast.com, become a member. And right now, we have a live auction for members to bid to get two tickets to the event this Saturday. And we're going to be doing an auction every day.

And the auction will sort of end randomly. Don't rely on the timer that's on the site because we don't want people to try and just like sit there and like jam the button the last minute. So we could end it right now and whoever bid is going to win. Maybe we'll end it early. We don't know when we'll end it, but we're going to be auctioning off 10 tickets in total. So there'll be five different auctions. And then I think the last one will be Friday. The event will be Saturday. I know it's really short notice for a lot of people, but we're just sort of winging it. But as a member, you're going to support our journalists, help us do more work. It's greatly appreciated. And that being said, don't forget to smash the like button, subscribe to this channel. And let's jump into the first story. Southwest Airlines

from CNBC. Southwest drops plan to put unvaccinated staff on unpaid leave starting in December. Southwest scrapped a plan to put their unvaccinated workers with pending exemptions on unpaid leave after the December 8th deadline. Both American and Southwest require their new hire employees to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination before their first day. Large airlines are federal contractors and subject to a Biden administration order that requires their employees to be vaccinated or receive an exemption for medical or religious reasons. Now, I can respect the exemptions for medical and religious reasons. The problem is a lot of these companies are just outright denying them no matter what. But this is a different case here because there's reports of Southwest executives literally going around the company asking people to please get the

exemption paperwork. Please fill it out either for medical or religious purposes. They want. So there's been an effort that people are reporting that they want them to get these exemptions. But this is a huge announcement. This is big. I mean, they're pretty much announcing that they're not going to be going along with this.

Tim, you disagree with disagree, disagree here, but they're not going to fire employees or, in other words, put them on unpaid leave if they don't get vaccinated. They're not going to do that. That's a huge step to me that has been demonstrated through the freedom flu, through all the protests, through all the demonstrations, and through all the massive disruptions that we saw a couple of days ago. The people opposing the mandates are gaining ground. So this is a battle being won, but the war is still very much on. Of course, 100%. And here's what you got to understand. When they say new hires are still under the VAX mandate, they're basically going to appease those who currently work. They're saying, well, it doesn't affect me anymore,

so I'm good. And then new employees will have to be mandated. So what happens in 10, 20 years? The VAX mandate stands. We'll see how long the VAX mandates are going to be implemented. I definitely agree with you. A lot of people think they're going to be temporary as long as COVID is going to be around. But as me and you know and a lot of other people know, this is a long game. It's not going to be ending anytime soon. It benefits too many people. It benefits too many billionaires for it to stop.

But this is still a major victory because the workers united here came together and said, hey, we don't like this policy. We don't want it. Go ahead. I mean, there were some protests. But we basically just saw people disorganized being like, nah. Exactly. That was scarier to this company. Yeah.

Southwest is like, we're going to do this mandate. Oh, Biden's making us do it. And then a bunch of employees just called in sick. Well, they knew.'s making us do it. And then a bunch of employees just called in sick. Well, they knew they didn't organize. They knew forcing this would be worse for them than not forcing it. So this realization, that's the big story to me. And that's why I led with it. That's why I've been talking about it all day, because this is this is huge.

And there's going to be reverberations of this all over the place, because now people know that their voice actually matters when they come together and they speak up together as long as they don't back down exactly and they just because i i i genuinely think most people the smartest thing they could do was only new hires have to be vaccinated because then people who already hired is going to be like i'm good yeah later down the line that's going to have its effects doing it right now exactly so the vaccine mandates there this is an attempt to redirect but it's probably still going to happen. It's probably still going to happen. And I'll tell you, I really don't think that the vaccines are the are the are the goal of the mandate. As you know, people who listen probably have heard me say a million times, because if you look at the Chicago police, they're like, if you try and retire right now, instead of getting vaccinated, we will take your benefits. We'll go after your benefits. So very clearly, they're just trying to force people. It's about the mandate, not about the vaccine part of it.

Also, it's also important in that specific case that a judge actually put a restraining order on the Chicago Police Union chief that's barring him from talking about the vaccine publicly. So this is a major fight that's happening between the police union, the mayor of Chicago. And this is not just in Chicago. There was also police and firefighters today in Seattle that decided that they were going to feed the homeless because they were fired from their public service jobs. And they came out, they went on the steps of City Hall, took off their boots, left them there at City Hall. So there's been a lot of different demonstrations. There's been a lot of big protests in California.

A lot of people took their kids out of school today because the kids are mandated to be vaccinated. And they took them to a protest. And there was protests all over California saying, no, we're not going along with these mandates. Here's one of the things interesting about Southwest is that initially they denied there was any kind of sick out. Right. Right. Not happening. Then all of a sudden the CEO comes out and we don't we don't want to do a mandate.

Biden made us do it. And it's kind of like, why are you bringing up mandates? I thought the narrative was that there was no you know, that there was no protest or anything about this. So they're clearly trying to now blame, you know, Joe Biden. But I'm wondering, Michael, what you think about, you know, do you think Trump would have done something similar? Is this an issue of progressives enacting policies that are damaging to business and first responders? I mean, at this point, honestly, what freaks me out is that we've had such a morale hit for the police in the United States over the last year and a half, ever since the George Floyd protests. You know, we've lost, you know, a lot of these police forces are understaffed right now. One of the things that I became very, I was so surprised to find was that the evidence of the importance of police, because I come from the left,

and so I've always been somewhat skeptical of the police as part of the criminal justice establishment. But the evidence that police prevent homicides is just really strong. And the relationship between cops and potential killers, just interacting with them every day in the neighborhood, very strong evidence that that works. And so after 2015, after the Ferguson protests, there was a pretty sharp increase in homicides. One of the police chief in Ferguson said, we're calling this the Ferguson effect because we think that both the cops are pulling back from their policing and the criminals are more emboldened. A lot of people on the left dismissed that, but we saw it again after the George Floyd protest last year. So clearly,

anything that would basically dampen the morale of police right now I think would contribute to increasing crime. I mean it's just at the federal level, federal contractors, federal employees, right? So it's – I don't know. Is it just a direct correlation between this is affecting the morale of the officers or is this just failed policy? I mean we – I'm a little bit – I'm on the fence on this one i mean i'm vaccinated i think vaccines are important i also think that this issue is sort of that there's no real explanation of what the end game here is you know like how long are we wearing masks for what is going to be the deal with vaccine requirements forever hasn't felt like we've had a proper

conversation about it um i mean we do all the time. And, you know, the funny thing is 15 days to slow the spread has quickly turned into nearly two years of harsh restrictions, mandates, requirements. And there's one prediction right now that what's going to happen is there'll be a wave of fake vaccine cards. We've already seen some stories. And then all of a sudden you're hearing the media, people want digital passports, and they've already started making them. And then what really happens is a social credit system. So they'll, they, they track more than just your, your, your vaccine. Like the rate, one of the reasons I'm, I'm very much opposed to this is they're, they're, they're, they're,

they're trying to use something that most people find reasonable, like getting a vaccine. I've got a ton, you know, I've traveled all over. So I just had to get all these cards and, you know, when you go to Venezuela, you need one. And then they're going to use that as their in to get you to carry your passport. What are they doing in New York? You need your ID as well as your medical card. Well, for a lot of people, it's going to be easier just to download the app. What's the app going to do?

The app's going to track you in many, many different ways. It's going to give the government access to data that only Facebook has, for instance, and shouldn't. So that's – Well, for me, this is a big loyalty test, because a lot of officers who are skeptical of the federal government, who want bodily autonomy, who think that they should have the right to decide what is right for them. There's a lot of people who are vaccinated, who are against the vaccine mandates that are still not even talked about widely and publicly, but there's a big sector of these individuals out there. So, you know, we had a guest on a couple of days ago that said it's very easy to fake a lot of this compliance, a lot of these passports.

And the people who are standing up, the people who are vocal are deciding to do it on principles, are deciding to do it on morale. And that's why seeing a lot of these officers being purged, a lot of these officers being fired only will help, I believe, the federal government in the long run because they'll have more compliant officers that will always do what they want them to do no matter what the consequences are. And you always start with something little and you keep escalating it. That's why we started with just two weeks to stay home and then masks and then vaccines and then second vaccines and the passport systems and now booster shots and then it's only going to get worse from here unless the american people stand up and say enough is enough we're not going along with this and that's why i think this southwest story is so big it deserves a lot more uh mentioned and

someone in the comment section wrote that southwest decided to do this because of the weather conditions which i thought was absolutely hilarious because that was their initial line. Jen Psaki said that nothing existed, that this wasn't a protest, nothing was happening here. Well, obviously it was because why did Southwest change their major decision here? So these are going to have far-reaching implications, not just with the police, not just in the corporate world, but this is, I think, deliberately done as a loyalty test to see who's going to obey government the most. And so your vision is basically we should just, you know, basically have no vaccine requirements, no vaccine mandates, no mask requirements, and just make it like the flu shot. In other words, if you want to get the flu shot, you get the flu shot. Same thing with

coronavirus. Yeah, I certainly think so. We had a really interesting conversation. Ian asked about the morality of mandates, like what if you had Ebola? It was a good question. And I'm like, it is tough. I think with like an airborne Ebola with like a massively high infectivity and you'd like it would self-regulate in a lot of ways. But ultimately, regardless of whether or not it does, I think even if that is the case, we shouldn't have mandates. It should self-regulate. People should say, I'm concerned about this.

I will protect myself. But now all of a sudden we're getting just the argument changes every single time it comes out, right? First, Fauci has gone back and forth on masks I think two or three times. He went back and forth on double masking a couple times. Then the CDC said, wear double masks. And I think a lot of people at this point are just like, when you get a Fauci coming out who can't give you a straight answer, but he keeps being touted and championed, eventually people just say, enough. One of the biggest issues with the mandates is it's forcing people to disclose medical conditions. It's forcing people to disclose private personal details.

And if you're concerned about it, you need to assume the risks of your life to go out and live and work from the, from the beginning. One of the problems we've seen with, uh, with COVID is that we've decided to do a one size fits all approach to literally everything. Hey, the, the people above 40 are the highest risk factor. So let's lock down everything, including schools. And now we're in a major economic crisis, which is only being exacerbated by ridiculous Joe Biden policies

and ignorance and Pete Buttigieg being on vacation. So they're really good at making things worse. Maybe we should have had a surgical approach where we said, okay, if you're in a vulnerable population, we'll do special accommodations. We'll do what we can to have skeleton crews keeping the economy running so we don't just shut everything down. But we went one size fits all. Now we're doing the same thing. And you'll have people who have very deep religious or moral convictions as to why they're not interested in this, notably the use of fetal cells in the experimentation process for the Pfizer vaccine. And Johnson & Johnson uses fetal cells for the growth of the virus to produce it. I can certainly understand why a lot of people are like,

you cannot force me to take something like that. And then you have medical conditions in which already in New York, there's no exceptions for medical conditions. And many of these businesses are saying, oh, your doctor said no. We reject that logic. And so I'm seeing stories of, we had this woman, I believe it was from ESPN, who said that she's trying to have a baby with her husband.

And for that, she's been recommended not to get the, I believe that's what it is. Well, she says she's not going to be in the vaccine. And I said, we don't care whether you want to have a kid or not. There have been a few stories of women who have said their doctors advised them not to get the vaccine while they're currently or about to try and have a kid, even though I think the FDA said it's safe for when we're pregnant. Their doctors still gave them personal advice based on maybe their blood pressure. And now because of the FDA, because of the establishment, these women are being told,

choose to have a kid or quit your job. Like this whole thing is completely broken. That's why I'm like, it's bad across the board. And where do you stand? What about things like measles vaccines that are mandated for kids before coronavirus, obviously, is going on or polio? What about those vaccines? Yeah, so those are particularly different, but there's an interesting overlap. I would oppose in some respects vaccine mandates in that area. However, we're talking about vaccines that have been tested for decades for, you know, some of the production of some of these is 20, 30 years.

And they were these mandates were all implemented through long legislative processes as opposed to the mayor said, do it or else. The president says, do it or else. And now people who are trying to get, you know, legitimate exemptions are being told no. And now the interesting thing is that this is all starting. This is why, again, man, talk about bad policy from Democrats. By mandating the COVID vaccine, which is just entering now the long-term trials, according to the FDA insert for the community vaccine, you have people now looking into MMR vaccines and the other standard vaccines, and they're discovering that not only

do we use fetal cells in the production of the viruses from aborted babies, we're learning that they use that for like ibuprofen and stuff. So now you're getting people actually starting to challenge past vaccine mandates, which most of us didn't have a problem with because we were like longstanding research, legislative process, legislative approach. Okay. Some of us don't like that it's happening, but we agree. We went through that process. Now you have Bill de Blasio being like, do it or else with no exemptions. And so you get people who have underlying medical conditions being denied access to restaurants. You have people who are just concerned about trusting the government, namely a lot of people in the black community. Billy Prempeh made a

great video talking about why the black community is untrusting of this. They're being told they can't go into these businesses. And now because of the politics of it, you actually have Republicans saying, maybe we should look into all of the mandates. And I'm like, oh, geez. Yeah. I mean, they've been lying through their teeth about so many of these issues. They've been flip-flopping. They've been inconsistent.

They've been censoring scientists. They've been censoring studies. They've been censoring actual real debate that we never had about this. Fauci only does softball interviews where they, a family-friendly show, pleasure him with words in many different possible ways that I never thought was even possible. So when we're not even having a real conversation, when we're told 100% safe and effective, and then we're finding out, oh, 3% after a few months, and a lot of the data that's still coming that we don't know. It brings up a lot more questions than answers. But to kind of put the question back onto you, that you asked Tim, how would you approach everything?

Well, yeah. I mean, here's the thing, guys. I'm not a great person to ask about this because as soon as COVID hit, I decided to work on this book. And that was like, I'm flat out on this book. It was drugs, crime, homelessness for the last several hundred years. All I would say is I think it was interesting because of course we have two mental models of vaccines. One is, you know, as a parent, I've got two kids, both have been through school already, but you know, you have to get vaccines to go to public schools. But then you have a flu vaccine. Every year we get the shot for the flu vaccine. That's not mandated. So we have two different models. So it's kind of like, is coronavirus like polio and measles, or is it

like a flu? Obviously, it's probably somewhere in between. Yeah, that's interesting. Long COVID is interesting because you've got these lingering health effects and that's why they're saying, okay, you know, maybe people should get this. I don't think, you know, I'll put it this way. While COVID is very obviously serious and dangerous, somewhere in between, I think is a good way to put it. I look at the data and I'm just like, I don't see this as being on that level of mandating vaccines for this. But more importantly, you know, you can choose not to put your kid in these schools. You can go to private schools.

You can go other places. You can homeschool. To say you can't go to a restaurant or hold a job is where we're starting to get very serious. Because right now, this is really where the big dividing line is. You could go and get a job anywhere and they're not going to demand your medical papers. You know, they'll ask for your government papers, which already is pretty interesting, I think.

There should be an argument about that. But now we're getting to the point where it's if you want to get a job, you have to undergo a state mandated medical procedure. And that's where I'm like, yeah, I'm not a big fan of that. It's one thing to be like, this is a school. You don't have to put your kid in this school. You can find other ways to educate your kid. Now they're saying, well, go for, you know, if you've got Joe Biden doing federal mandates,

if you've got New York City doing citywide mandates, that's passing just, you know, business mandates. Now, as for private businesses, there's an interesting argument here. And I think non-discrimination is where it becomes, there's a question about whether or not a business like Southwest could do this. So does a business have a right to discriminate on the basis of medical or religious practices? And the answer is no, overwhelmingly no. I know that conservatives used to be on the other side of this to a great degree, like the famous story of the baker. The argument was the baker was told he had to write a message he didn't want to write. He ended up winning on

free speech grounds, I guess, but they still harass him. The left does. So I've always been on the side of if you're using public spaces funded by the public, you have a right to serve the public and provide public accommodation to everyone. You can't make up arbitrary reasons to discriminate. If someone comes in screaming or threatening people, yeah, by all means, kick them out. If someone's got a disability, I don't think you should be able to say no. However, what are we seeing with a lot of these companies? They don't care about what your doctor said. What are we seeing in New York? In New York, I called a couple dozen restaurants who outright told me they did not care if you had a disability barring vaccination, like maybe you

have Guillain-Barre syndrome, like the drummer from The Offspring. He got kicked out of the band because he could not get the vaccine due to Guillain-Barre syndrome. So this is where people have just straight up been like, we have now violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. We don't care and no one will enforce it. I just not a fan. Yeah. I mean, it seems like you have these two extremes between Australia and Sweden, you know, that have been sort of out there as these two visible mental models. And I mean, what I can what I totally agree with is is the idea that Americans are we're really bad at this is one of the points I make in San Francisco. We're just bad at the gray areas and a more surgical approach to these things. We just tend to be it tends to be an on or off switch for us yeah i i definitely agree with that assessment because from the very

beginning there was so much fear-mongering there was so much drama there was so much emotional manipulation that literally people shut down and democratic politicians and also other politicians said close down those small mom-and-pop businesses police officers ran around shut down those businesses meanwhile the big multinational corporations were allowed to be open the whole time and i think to add to your point that's why there was also a sentiment against the police officers uh that was very negative on the right because of that and they didn't get a lot of support when black lives matter kicked up during that summer because everyone's like these are the same guys that kicked down my door and shut down my business while allowing walmart and costco to do whatever they wanted to. So where does this end? It doesn't. There's too many billionaires benefiting

from it. It's going to proceed to lead to a situation that we're seeing in Australia, that we're seeing in Italy. There's a viral video that I played in my YouTube video today of an old grandma outside of a hospital and a security guard is kicking her out. And he's like i want i want you know he wants the vax mandate she didn't have the right paperwork she needed treatment at the hospital she couldn't get it she was told to go away and this poor elderly grandmother walked away yeah because she didn't have the paperwork but she was vaccinated like i have no idea uh about that but these are the vaccine mandates you don't have your paperwork you can't

get food you can't you can't get food you can't you can't get services that are basic human rights services that shouldn't be denied to anyone and this is going to lead to an australian italian like situation they're just ramping up they're just ahead of the curve more than we are on this phase and that that's where it's headed unless people wake up here in the united states they're not actually human rights though oh sorry oh sorry they're not actually human rights like the right to buy someone's food and stuff like that. Those are civil – some of them are civil rights that are being violated, but I don't think any basic human rights are at this point. You don't think humans have a right to, like, trade with each other?

Is that one of the constitutional basic human rights? A state coming in and saying you can't be a part of society, is that not a violation of human rights? Saying you can't get water or you can't get food? Well, let's put it this way. Ian, are you saying that, like, if a black dude went to a restaurant and they said you are not allowed to buy from this restaurant, that's not a violation of human rights? If a private company wants to not serve someone, yeah, they can not serve someone.

So you're on the side of, like, was that William F. Buckley back in the anti-civil rights movement in the 50s? You would oppose Martin Luther King. But it's not a company. It's a government. It's a centralized big force that everyone is forced to pay that is discriminating against people for their own personal medical decisions. It's not a private company. Don't conflate it that way.

It's a big centralized government intervening in people's personal lives saying you can't get water. You can't get food. But yes, there's also a big government intervening in private businesses saying you can't deny services to someone on these bases. That's a whole different argument than what Ian's making now. So I'm on the side of civil rights, the civil rights protests where they said you should not be allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, religion. And then we have the ADA, which is medical reasons. But you're more on the side of the opposition, like the Klan and the Democratic Party. No, I'm just saying that you said that they were

not being able to go to a restaurant is a basic human right. I think it's not. I'm saying you have access to be able to get food and water. So the example that Luke was giving was this lady who's trying to go to the hospital. Now, if you recall, we just had that story from D.C. where the warden was held in contempt for not following through with the human rights of a prisoner who broke his wrist.

Health care is not a human right. If you're in prison and you're being detained by someone, they have they have an obligation, a responsibility to make sure you are not going through undue suffering. But shouldn't you be able to, like, seek medical care, like at least have an opportunity to go in and talk to somebody about that? That's a human right is the freedom. Well,'re prison you don't have human rights i don't think they take away from you when you're in prison for the most so you're saying that they should be allowed to buy the service of medical care but not buy a cheeseburger no you don't have a right to medical care that's a it's not a human okay i just thought you were saying you should have a right to seek that out. I don't know.

It's an interesting, like Ian, you're an interesting guy. Your human rights are not your right to other people's services is my point. So this is actually like, I think Ron Paul's position was very much the Civil Rights Act should have never have been passed. Private businesses have a right to discriminate. I very much disagree with that. I think that

they're occupying space in the commons that we pay for. Yeah, civil rights are like, I paid my taxes so the fire department has to come and put my fire out. That's a civil right. But you don't have a basic human right to that fire. Now you're confiding it. You don't have a basic human right. You're confusing the subject a lot. Do you understand your human rights are not a right to other people's

services? Of course, but that's not what I'm arguing. You said that going to a restaurant is a human right. I'm arguing that your government mandating a domestic permission slip passport system where you have to get their acceptance in order to go to the supermarket or in order to get food and water is a violation of that. That's the government of doing that. It depends on how dangerous the disease is. I don't think so.

No. Of course it does. No, I don't think so. I don't think so no of course it does no i don't i don't think so i think i literally just mentioned all of that like people need to self-regulate if there's a very serious risk they need to decide what risk they're willing to accept or not except if you know what george washington inoculates his troops against syphilis troops people who are who are enlisted or conscripted polio is crippling kids and and so they vaccinate the population. What was polio like 20 to 80%? Smallpox is killing a giant percentage of the population,

so they mandate – at some point, if the angry horde won't get healthy, then what do you do? Yeah, stomp it with the boot. Now do that with fat people. Now do that with people with STDs. Do that with STDs. People who have STDs. Dude, you're such an authoritarian.

Well, we've had this conversation before. I think there is a time and a place to exert authority. My personal feeling is that when you look at the, according to Sanjay Gupta, 99.5% recovery rate for COVID. And of that 0.5% that people aren't recovering, usually a lot of those people are obese, that it doesn't look like a polio level problem. So at that then now we're talking like ethics. And is it ethical to mandate a vaccine? I don't think so. It's like you're arguing for freedom in one argument and then fascism in another sentence.

It's very confusing because it's like it does, though. I say they say, you know, oh, you can't have free speech if there's hate speech because hate speech stops people from speaking. Therefore, banning hate speech is actually free speech. You see how they do these semantic manipulations? Like that's what Ian does. Someone wrote in the comment section, authoritarian Ian. Authoritarian Ian. Well, just defend – I'll defend Ian because I think I'm probably closer to your view on this,

which is, I mean, obviously we have restrictions on all sorts of freedoms, including freedom of speech. You're not allowed to yell fire in a crowded theater. That's not true. No. That isn't true? You're actually allowed to yell fire in a crowded theater. Yeah, that was Brandenburg v. Ohio, I think, where they set that. I think so.

Got overturned in the 60s. You're not allowed to threaten people. You're not allowed to threaten people with killing them. That's illegal. You can report to the police and they'll be investigated. You're not allowed to go up to people and be like, I'm going to kill you tonight and them. That's illegal. You can report to the police and they'll be investigated. And it's not, you're not allowed to go up to people and be like,

I'm going to kill you tonight and kill all your family members. That's not legal. Direct threats though, aren't an expression of opinion. You know, you are allowed to say, I hope you die or I think someone should do X to you.

You're not allowed to incite or direct violence. You're not allowed to say, if you keep tweeting that, I'm going to come over to your house and kill you and your family. You're not allowed to do that. direct violence. You're not allowed to say, if you keep tweeting that, I'm going to come over to your house and kill you and your family. You're not allowed to do that. Right. So there is a restriction on speech. And I think I agree with you about the severity of this.

I think that this issue does turn on the severity. I think if it were more severe, you'd be in a minority of people that were like, hey, we should all self-regulate. I just think most people would be calling for – I mean, I berkeley where people would give me like the skunk guy for not wearing a mask while walking in the nature trails i mean it was like the demands for i mean one of the most interesting parts of this phenomenon is that like the the governance response is being demanded by those local cultures right so it's like right the the swedes are do you ever see the movie mids, the horror movie? I always think about that because you're like, those guys are hardcore.

That's coming from within Swedish culture. I mean there's obviously some mediating influences like the kind of government they have. But Australia, similarly, they're very moralizing in Australia I find. It's very much like this is a dangerous disease and therefore we're going to like clamp down on anybody. And Sweden, when you, when they interviewed the guy that oversaw the COVID response, he was very much like, look, you know, it's very complex and there's shades of gray. And so I do think that I think if this were a much, I think if COVID were a much more deadly disease, a much more contagious disease, and if it killed a lot more young people, then we would have seen a more severe response. And regardless of the kind of academic arguments about it, you know, we would have been dealing with a much more severe government. I think I think people would have been much more accepting of mandates, even in opposition,

if the rates were really, really high, like way higher. Like initially, we thought like the New York Times was like six million in the United States might die. And so people were like 15 days. All right, we get it. Yeah. And then after a while, we were kind of like, well, Cuomo killed 15,000 people. And then you got Wolf and you got Whitmer and you got Newsom. They kept putting sick people in nursing homes. So their policies were literally killing people. And maybe we need to stop doing the things we're doing. I think there's an argument to be made here that with the more government intervention

there was, the more problems that came of it, whether it's lockdowns making billionaires richer than ever, making people poorer, whether it's the lockdowns, the mandates, the implications, they have severe ramifications, and I would say those were far off worse, and I think there's arguments to be made here, than the actual sickness itself. And I think we still haven't quantified the data,

we still haven't found everything out, but I think 10 years from now or 20 years from now, when we find out the truth of what's happening now, I think a lot of us are going to be shocked and disgusted. Maybe. History is written by the victors, Luke. It is, but I think... The mainstream media will write what they write.

The truth somehow still has a way of coming out. And even though it's suppressed a lot of the times, it still finds a way of seeping up somehow. I mean, I've just done... I did Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson. now i'm doing the tim cast and you know it's funny because um the response so joe rogan has 11 million followers it's the biggest media uh presence i've had since in eight years and eight years ago i did the colbert rapport um wow and when i went on colbert report i was like how many people watch this and they're like a million plus maybe another couple million on youtube and streaming three million viewers of

that and that was huge like that was the one like my my high school buddies were like hey man you really made you know like that whereas now it's joe rogan and he has a completely counter establishment view of covid you know he's pro ufos he's pro-UFOs. He's pro-psychedelics. I mean, so in some ways you go, you guys are pretty darn mainstream for being supposedly marginal voices, right? In a podcast as an author, I can tell you, this is so much fun for me. I mean, I get to go on podcasts and you can actually make a mistake and correct it. There's nobody playing gotcha with you. People are actually interested in what you have to say. Two or three hours for authors.

If you spend a year or two slaving away on a book and then you get to go on a podcast, I mean, it's what we prefer. And so I find myself watching 80% of my time watching TV is watching YouTube and watching podcasts like this. So I think you guys might be the victors that write the history.

Maybe it won't be somebody else. Have you guys heard about Aussie media? Yeah yeah i've heard of it no i've never heard of it no ozy why yeah yeah but i mean like the breaking news no one has any ideas yeah well you see what's going on with new york these people are in a cult and they're egocentric and so i love i follow a lot of these journalists and they're tweeting about the great scandal that is the vaporware of Aussie media. And I'm just watching this like, wow, talk about thinking people care about garbage that no one cares about.

This is what happens. Someone in New York who works in media will write a story and they'll be like, guys, did you hear about this? And they'll all get excited because they all play inside baseball. And regular viewers like regular readers are like on the new york times like the hell are they talking about the politics of a media company i know nothing about why is this news they do that all the time they don't so i think my favorite example is sanjay gupta being like i've never had a conversation in more than three hours. It's like – These people don't talk.

They sit in rooms. They read books and then they watch TV and then they might say a few words in passing. So weird. I think you're really on to something. I mean I – first of all, I thought that the Joe Rogan confrontation of Sanjay Gupta was – I mean you don't want to overstate it. It was a turning point for me It was a moment where clearly Rogan was right And everybody was like, Rogan's right

And CNN's backpedaling, but it felt like a moment for me Because we have this question of who do you trust And I kind of go I think a lot of us are like We trust individuals now I trust, and on different things I trust Barry Weiss On cancel culture

I trust Abigail Schiss on cancel culture. I trust Abigail Schreier on trans kids. I don't trust Barry Weiss on cancel culture. Yeah, interesting. Because she called Tulsi Gabbard a toady for Assad and didn't know what she was talking about. Now, with all due respect, I think Barry is cool and everything. Yeah. But it's like I mentioned with the New York phenomenon where it's like they're still very insular and very much self-promoting.

And so even after Barry leaves the New York Times or whatever, CNN still has her on. Brian Stelter had her on, and they had a good conversation. There's a viral clip on it. But Brian Stelter would never have any real opposition, a strong opponent to anything he's done who could call him out. It's not going to happen. That was still a great clip that is going viral right now. And I think she surmised a lot of the crazy things in our society very well and very eloquently. So, I mean, just to have that, my reaction to it, wait, wait, wait, I thought common sense was banned on mainstream media because the mainstream media has their doctrine, has

their agenda, has their doctrine has their agenda has their narrative they're in an extremely small echo chamber where they keep repeating the same insane claims like for an example uh colin powell passed away uh he was double vaxxed he died allegedly of covid he was also very old he also i believe had cancer so so again you know we don't know what happened i don't know i'm here to say i don't know if it was the vax i don't know if it was, we don't know what happened. I don't know. I'm here to say, I don't know if it was the vax. I don't know if it was COVID. I don't know if it was cancer. I don't know if it was old age, but the mainstream media, look at the narrative that they're running. CNN had the former surgeon general on that was saying it was the unvaxed that definitely did it. Jeff Tiedrich on Twitter said, it's definitely the unvaxxed that did this. The New York governor just came out with a statement

saying that history can't be hijacked by the quote anti-vaxxers and it's definitely anti-vaxxers that got him sick. How do they know? Are they medical scientists? Do they know the exact person that came into contact with them? Do they have any evidence? Do they have any proof? Do they have any data?

No, they don't. They're running with the same insane talking point that's regurgitated from one prominent establishment figure from another tool from another sellout from another just basic human being that is given a script and regurgitating it back to you because they pay a lot of money doesn't the fact that cena had barry weiss on suggests that actually they know that there's I mean, it looks to me like there's a full blown backlash underway against cancel culture. And that's just beginning. And CNN having Barry Weiss on as a way of saying, hey, we know we took a hit over the Sanjay Gupta thing and the ivermectin thing with Joe Rogan, we're gonna have Barry Weiss on.

I noticed the New York Times just recently gave a column to my friend John McWhorter, you know, who's a famous kind of liberal critic of woke politics. His new book is Woke Racism. You know, I kind of look at that and I go, that's the establishment responding to this long form podcasting, alternative journalism. I mean, you got your start in alternative journalism. I mean, I was in the 90s. Alternative journalism was hot, but it's almost like it's become where the intellectual center of American life is now, where you don't kind of go, I watched a really thoughtful segment. No one says I watched a really thoughtful segment on CNN. They say I listened to a really thoughtful podcast with Tim Kast or Jordan Peterson or joe rogan i disagree with you

because after the rogan sanjay gupta thing cnn doubled down and tripled down on those same exact defunct talking points sanjay gupta came on effectively rolled back what he had said on rogan when he was like they shouldn't have said that he he went out with don lemon don lemon said it is horse medicine he goes you're right and he's like you're right yeah it's funny because, of course, though, then like then that's talked about. And so I don't I don't know that CNN doing that helped its own credibility any. I think it probably undermined it. Do they have any credibility is the question. And I think that Barry Weiss thing was a hiccup.

It was a glitch in the matrix. And they're going to go back to their regularly scheduled programming, doubling down, tripling down on whatever the lie that they need to sell the American people on is. I mean, you might be right. I mean, we have this debate because we, I would always have this debate with my colleagues over, because, you know, we would point out, look, people are becoming more pro-nuclear. I'm a big advocate of nuclear power, including for climate change, but not just for climate change.

And I've been up against the vast majority of environmentalists and boomers on this issue. And we have seen a huge change in attitudes on nuclear over the last five years, ten years. That's why I went on Colbert for eight years ago. I've seen just a massive change. And at the same time, people will respond to me and they'll go, well, but the Sierra Club is still anti-nuclear. And it's like, well, yeah, but those are like the last guys that are going to change their mind. Greenpeace will never change their mind. Yeah, Greenpeace is not going to change their mind.

But you wouldn't measure our success by being like, you wouldn't be like, well, there's still a pope, even while acknowledging that Catholicism has significantly declined as a religion in the Western world over the last 500 years. But there is the issue that CNN could say something and then YouTube will panic and then implement policy based on CNN's lies. That's very scary. I don't know if you guys have a view of it. I was censored by Facebook last year and it was very upsetting. It wasn't that – because when you read about censorship in the past and also some of my favorite Brazilian musicians were censored, you'd always be like, that's so – those guys were badass. Can I say that? Yeah. Those guys were real heroes but when you're censored it just feels terrible like you're just angry

and upset my friend john stossel just sued um facebook over this and you just feel angry and like you know that was defamation though yes he's suing over defamation because they keep being fake news and it's an interesting thing though Because when they say They censored me And when they censored me And they say Michael Schellenberger Said false things

It did feel defamatory to me I was like I said true things And now you're saying I'm saying false things You got sued Yeah I mean it's

What's disappointing is that you I knew people at Facebook I know people at Facebook And of course they were just Of zero help whatsoever You know And so you just feel really. And of course, they were just of zero help whatsoever. And so you just feel really alone. And of course, you're sort of ostracized.

And there's no recourse. There's no way to even apologize. There's no way to even be... There's no way to even have retribution in any way, shape, or form, or even forgiveness. You can appeal to the same judge that sentenced you.

Then that's not an appeals process. Exactly. So this is another layer. Then that's not an appeals process. Exactly. So this is another layer to it that's cruel and evil in so many ways because the rules are very kind of generic. They implement them on some people and not on others. And then when they do hit you, they destroy your livelihood. They destroy your reputation. They create consequences that could have almost everything taken away from you, not just your Twitter page or TikTok page. I mean, there are some people that can't have an Uber, can't have an Airbnb, can't have a bank account because of their political ideas in this country. And so what do you do about that? You build decentralized internet technology where you can also appeal to a jury like the

mind system if you go for it. Bitcoin is an answer to the financial situation. What about social media? like the mine system if you go for it? Bitcoin is an answer to the financial situation. What about social media? There's alternatives to social media, but again, the big tech monopolies, with the help of government, control the major highways. They were able to build their infrastructure with tax dollars. These are not private entities.

They have connections to intelligence agencies. They have connections to governments. They work hand-in-hand. They worked in tandem. And there's an argument of direct government intervention, but I don't believe that the same government that created this problem will be solving it anytime soon. I think it was what the Democrats in California

were sending names to Twitter to ban. Oh, sure. So I'm interested in Glenn Greenwald. A lot of people are interested in Glenn Greenwald. It became more interesting to me in recent years. He's signed up for this new platform, Rumble. Rumble.

I watch YouTube. I'm 50, so I'm a lot older than you guys, and maybe I'm just too square. But I sit down and watch YouTube, and I see you, and I see Jordan Peterson, and I see Joe Rogan. I don't see Glenn Greenwald, and so what do I got to do? I got to go into my smart TV and reprogram it to get Rumble. I mean, it was a little bit like what was the alternative to Twitter that was there for like five minutes? Parler. Last year

Parler. And then they colluded to destroy it. Yeah I mean so you kind of go there's a problem because you know we were all sold on these platforms for their ease of use and the idea that you would get to see I mean that's what's so exciting about Twitter still is you still get to argue with liberals and conservatives so now what are we going to do?

We're going to have a platform for liberals and a platform for conservatives. And it's already what it is. It's already what it is. Build up Twitter. Twitter is the the the people on Twitter who are prominent are like center right. People who are like staunch conservative have have been purged or banned. People who are like the far right was nuked a long time ago except for like some specific individuals the far left however can call for violence no problem

then you have the mainstream establishment left can literally advocate for violence tell people to be violent advocate for people being thrown into wood chippers like the covington kids no problem and then you could tweet as a joke, learn to code, and get banned. So we see it's basically Twitter is center right to far left. And what that does is it shapes the view of these journalists who think they're centrists because they're in the middle of that. When in reality, they're leftists. So what do you do about that? We're building up the Fediverse right now. Are you familiar with it?

No. It's a federated network of networks basically. So like things like Mastodon. But basically it's a – the way we're doing it is – Yeah. It's a federated network of networks, basically. So things like Mastodon. But basically, the way we're doing it is... It's a protocol? Yeah. It's a social media protocol. So you can create your own social media platform where your content exists.

And I'll use Gab as an example. You know Gab? Heard of it. Gab is like one of the first alternatives to Twitter because of the censorship. They exist on the Fediverse in that you can use any Fediverse app and follow Luke on Gab. So Luke's username might be like lukeatgab.com. I don't know if Luke is on Gab or whatever, but then I could go on, you know, super web and then say, I'm going to follow lukeatgab.com and see his posts from a different website appearing on my feed on this website.

So what happens is there's no central authority to ban Luke. Okay. But you have, so you have like almost a million Twitter followers. Yeah. I have, I have, um, one 10th of yours. And so why would you want to go to a platform where you and I would have the same number of Twitter followers? I mean, we're the same number of followers. Wouldn't you want to maintain your status superiority on a new platform?

I don't care about the followers. I think a lot of people do. I certainly like them. In terms of the social credit system, it already exists, the number of followers you have on Twitter. Well, no, no, no. It doesn't depend because the algorithm decides who sees what now. I tweeted a picture of a hairless rabbit once.

You did? It was weird. Very weird. You know, I'll put it this way. The people, there's two different kinds of people who become prominent you know i was talking to a friend who does like day trading stuff and i'm like there are people who just want to be rich who will eventually become rich because they want to be rich but i think most people become rich do it because there's something you're passionate about that they pursue which leads them to being well off i agree there are people who have twitter followers

because they're genuinely interesting, smart people or they're observant so they can see things for other people and they're good followers for that reason. And then there are people who try to manipulate and game the system to try and gain followers and are worried, is my tweet getting enough retweets or whatever?

I don't care about any of that. I tweet random jokes, nonsense, garbled whatever because Twitter is just hilarious. And so – But for a lot of people, their Twitter followers is really important social capital for their work. I feel sorry for those people. It's their identity for many of them. So setting aside your views of those people, that's a material reality in the sense that it's an economic reality for people. So I guess I'm raising it not

to sort of say, is that good or bad, but just to say I think that's an obstacle to wanting to migrate over to a different social platform. So we're on, these videos are on Odyssey, they're on Rumble, they're on...

BitChute, right? Yeah, BitChute. Yeah, yeah. And the thing about Fediverse, once you start building it out, you blast out one post to the Fediverse and it goes to your Minds account and your library account and anybody else that wants to federate. So it could blast out to your Twitter and you can kind of centralize your own funnel. Self-centralized as the, uh, this project expands, you'll have more access to bigger networks because you'll be hitting 50 instead of one. So we use YouTube, but I cut down the amount of content I was producing on YouTube substantially to try and focus on building our own website so that we could have a user base there.

When, uh, we started doing the show, we were getting like 1,000 viewers or 2,000 viewers. And if I was the kind of person who was like, we're not getting enough clicks, then we probably wouldn't be where we are. I wanted to do the show because I had fun doing the show. I wanted to do it. I make YouTube videos because I have fun making videos. I make podcasts because I have fun doing it. If I wanted to make money, there's a bunch of other stuff I could have done. I have friends who work for political campaigns.

I'd make way more money. I used to work in nonprofit fundraising. And all of a sudden, I had these people wanting to consult because I was making so much money for a lot of these companies. And I hated doing it. It was awful. Just selling stuff and tricking them. And so I just stopped doing it. And then a period of things happened. Occupy happens. I start working in this and I enjoy doing it. So I keep doing it. When I was traveling around filming breaking news events, I don't know, sometimes you wouldn't get many views or make much money, but it was like, I wanted to be there doing something. So it's true. There are a lot of people who are driven by a desire for ego. And that's why you get the New York city establishment

media, because these are people who are like, I'm a worthless human being, but if I get hired by the New York Times, then people will think I'm cool. There you go. Yeah, I mean, I just, I think there's that, but there's just also a lot of people like, you know, for like a lot of people, like Twitter is too complex

and Facebook is like about where a lot, I mean, it's the Facebook is where a lot of people have arrived and it's hard to see them adding apps, using apps. It's true, although – Yeah, the young people are on TikTok. Yeah, although I even see young people just reducing their social media platforms to Instagram. Yep, Instagram. And so the idea that we're going to go and make that work more complex for people and that we're going to get mass uptake of it, I'm skeptical of.

You need to simplify it. It needs to be as easy to use or easier than whatever's out there right now. No, I disagree. We're not making it modular, so it could be simpler or complex. Without calling out any individual company, I can just tell you the strategy used

by social media companies to become big is so obvious and ridiculously easy. It's simple. What they've done, again, not naming any individual company, but more than one, is they'll create an app. They'll advertise it to high school kids. They will then give those high school kids fake followers quickly, and they will give them fake likes, and they will give them fake comments. And then all of a sudden, you have a new app called SuperWeb. And some kid shows up to his school and they're like, where do I follow you?

Oh, dude, I'm on SuperWeb. And they're like, what's that? You're not on SuperWeb? I already got 10,000 followers. And they go, dude, John's got 10,000 followers and they all want to download it because they all want followers too. A bunch of companies have done this.

Some people have admitted to doing things like this. I think it was Alexis Ohanian who said that in the early days of Reddit, it was him and Steve Huffman pretending to be different people to make it seem like the site had users. Otherwise, no one would want to be there. Bigger companies discovered this and started convincing young people they had followers. And then all of a sudden, what happens? Like you mentioned, having that follower count matters to people. So if someone's on Twitter with 3,000 followers, and then they download this new SuperWeb app,

and within two weeks, they have 10,000, they abandon Twitter, switch to SuperWeb, because that's where their core audience is, so they think. All of a sudden now, they're not producing content on other platforms. They talk to people, where can I find you? Oh, I'm on super web. I'm getting way more views, way more traffic. That then drives a mass exodus because people think, you know, FOMO, I'm going to go to the other platform. Couple, uh, uh, new apps have used this strategy very, very effectively.

And I actually had this conversation with, um, with some political groups about wanting to do an app like this. This is like seven years ago. And it's painfully obvious how it works. So if you really want to play those games and do that, cheaters win. But it seems like it's not – I mean if there's a bunch of new challengers, they haven't really competed. They haven't really risen to the level of an Instagram or a Twitter or a Facebook. TikTok has. TikTok took over. TikTok did. You're right. I mean, I even find myself just being like, I should post that in LinkedIn, but it's like, why bother? You know what I mean? You get some

more views, but who cares? There's diminishing returns so often on these platforms. It's one of the reasons why we thought we need to build our own website up. We can't just keep being a background actor for someone else's website. We need our own it's an indication that there's a monopoly and that's a big problem we've been talking tossing around ways to break it up i don't think it's an oligopoly it sure is it's not just one company it's a it's a cabal i don't think that's splitting facebook into five different companies at this point whatsapp instagram facebook prime facebook messenger and whatever else they got i

don't think that that's going to work because Zuck's still going to have all the code and he's still going to control it all. But I've tossed around the idea of freeing software code for any social media network that gets over like a billion users a day or 100 million users a day or something. I treat it as part of the commons. I disagree with you, Ian, because we had MySpace. It came and went all because people said I had enough of this. MySpace actually in 2007 i think

i was using it heavily with youtube and blogging but then their site started to grind to a halt for like 30 days you couldn't use the site either because mismanagement on their end it was before aws before you could like had elastic uh server space so i think they just couldn't handle the load and then facebook was there everyone went to facebook look at look at parlor's parlor started taking off and then the cabal came and shut the government shut him down alex jones was wildly popular and the cabal came and went after him and nuked him from as a cascade they all banned him on the same exact time so what's the solution to that oh man i well potential regulation look at alex jones you know there's many some people love him some people hate him but if you look at the amount of views he has, he built his own platform.

He's doing pretty well. Oh, yeah, and the dude's still on the radio. And he's still kicking butt. So there's a lot of different alternatives. And we have to remember that these social media platforms are only as popular as we make them. So they're only prominent if we make them prominent. And at the end of the day, we have to understand that they're fake. They're creating a perception of reality that's not true. It's a bunch of people controlling people's minds

by curating the algorithm, curating the timeline, curating what they see, and manipulating them for their own personal benefit. As soon as people snap out of this psychosis, they'll understand that, well, there's other alternatives out there. The internet was once great and free and amazing and incredible, and you could find exactly what you subscribe to. You can't do that anymore. So building up your own website, what Tim did with Timcast, I got my own website with Luke Uncensored, is essentially really incredibly important. Alex Jones has, I think, band.video. And there's other people who are deplatformed that have their own platforms, their own website, website their own video services and they're kicking butt and they have something that social media doesn't have and

that's authenticity and people who actually do want to listen to so one of the issues you know that started this conversation was that cnn might not be as prominent anymore youtube still puts them on the front page if you open a brand new computer, pull up YouTube, you'll be like, what reality is this? Because it's crazy. But CNN, CBS, ABC, all of these establishment media organizations that are wrong a substantial amount of time are given preferential access. And they're all thumbs down. People despise this content, but it's there in front of your face. So it's quite amazing when you have on top of that, you also have a lot of progressive

YouTubers who also get things very, very wrong on basic facts for tribal partisan reasons. I don't got a problem if your opinion is Trump sucks. I got a problem if you're like Donald Trump did X and he didn't. Or, you know, for example, David Pakman, shout out. He said Donald Trump encouraged his Republicans not to vote, which is just flat out not true. So, but I get it. Look, we probably make mistakes as well. I can't blame him for, you know, having an error, but he doesn't, he's, there's a lot of people that just recite what they see on mainstream media. Hey, I got another shout out for David Pak packman when um i think it was it was a chuck todd maybe meet the press asked ted cruz if he thought ukraine uh meddled

in the election in uh 2016 and uh ted cruz was like politico reported it and so did the new york times and then they start laughing on msnbc just laughing and then david packman runs that clip and just agrees that without any level of fact checking at all. For us, I actually I think we have like eight or nine reporters who do the actual legwork and make the phone calls. I make phone calls all the time to try and fact check things. One of the best stories I think was Mayo Gate where Democrats ran a story claiming that mayonnaise that a restaurant was lying about the cost of mayonnaise to make Biden look bad when reality, they were telling the truth. Mayonnaise was up like hundreds of dollars per week for this restaurant. So when you have a mainstream media that doesn't fact check in lies, then you have a progressive and establishment YouTube presence from independent alternative creators who also just regurgitate those lies. It's a very serious uphill battle.

And then taking into consideration that YouTube will prop up, the Young Turks, for instance, are on YouTube TV. And one of my favorite segments they've done was when we had a conversation on this show about Republicans being more attractive than Democrats. And it was, or I should say liberals versus conservatives. There were like five studies we went over that said, why are conservatives typically considered more attractive than liberals are? And I said, because of attractive privilege. People who grow up, who are beautiful, are treated better, and then say to themselves, if I could do it, why can't you? Well, you were treated better. You had an easier life. The Young Turks ran a segment saying that I

was wrong, I was ugly, posting pictures of me and insulting my appearance, and then ultimately conceded, well, actually, I was right and the studies are true. That goes up on YouTube TV. That's what's propped up. So we may have a big show. Joe may have a big show. It's still every day struggling against hundreds of millions of views that CNN has given, just given.

So if you go to like CNN's YouTube analytics, you can see they get 100 to 200 million views per month. Oh, I totally agree. 50. I mean, my whole book, Apocalypse Never and also San Francisco are basically debunkings of what's been in The New York Times and on CNN around climate change, plastic waste, extinctions, drug addiction, homelessness, housing, the whole thing. The question is, what do you do about it? You know, I mean, I thought it was I mean, I was very disturbed that Twitter can remove a sitting president of the United States from its platform and ban a breaking news story about Hunter Biden. And then you get Andy Stone from Facebook coming out and saying, we have deranked this story. So

it's harder to share. Right. It was all true. Right. So what do you do about that? I mean, I come out of the energy. I have a lot of background on energy. We had a regulated utility model in the electricity sector that we then experimented with Most of us in the space go, the regulated monopoly utility model worked better. This is totally different, obviously. This is not utilities or trains or electric utilities. This is information. Yeah, you need to free the software code. I don't know if need is the right word, but if you could force federate these companies

so that you could interoperate with them. Force federate is a good idea. And then you would destroy their share value. Not really, because they make ad revenue. No, their basic money is off of ads, which they'll still make. I mean, Facebook killed, under Obama, they killed this very modest legislation to regulate content, to have some government oversight of content aimed at kids.

And Facebook quashed it. They have lobbyists for each party and each branch of government. They squashed that. Those guys are just keeping a lid on anything. I don't know what the solution is, but I thought it was interesting after Trump was taken off of Twitter, after Twitter took Trump off, that there were a number of world and you want to be able to be able to have a voice in there, I don't think it's, I don't think it's good enough to be like, Hey, I'm not on Facebook, but go to johnsmith.com and check out my platform. That's just not going to cut it in today. Actually, I think, I think Ian may have just solved everything forced federation. So what does that mean? It means that you can make your own server, your own website, and then someone on Facebook can follow you on your site. Now, Facebook can still ban you from their platform, but your platform never gets shut down. So you may lose access to Facebook's user base, but you will keep your platform and your followers

can still choose to follow you because it's your website. What concerns me is if the banks start to like the swift payment system wants to cancel you. That's very concerning. We still have crypto, but it's not quite implemented yet. And if the ISP wants to cut off your access to the internet, that's really concerning to me too. I know we have like Starlink coming out, Elon's thing, but that's – Elon owns that as far as I know. So we maybe utilize that as well. Imagine if Twitter was – by regulation, these companies were opened up to the federated network. Someone on Gab could then follow at Timcast or Tim at Twitter.com, Timcast at Twitter.com,

and then get my feed on that website. And I could be like, well, I still have the bulk of my followers on Twitter, so I'll post here. But now anyone from any other site can choose to just see my tweets. Would that be like net neutrality? Is that the same thing as platform neutrality? No, net neutrality is about restricting access based on how much you pay, essentially. Like you can – the idea behind net neutrality was that you can't pay for faster access to certain websites. So that whole thing was one of the most ridiculous political battles that made no sense. And I'm pretty sure you ask most people.

They're not going to be able to tell you what it means or what side wanted what to be released. Under that model, let's say I want to follow a John Smith candidate for mayor of my hometown. You could follow him, you're saying, through Twitter, but you couldn't see him have an argument with other candidates on Twitter. Well, you'd have to mandate it then. I mean the government would have to require that. No, no. What do you mean? Well, in other words, if Twitter wants to say John Smith can't be on Twitter, even though he's a candidate for mayor of Denver, because we don't like what he said, John Smith has no recourse right now. The problem is that Twitter

dominates the political space, the political conversation, and Facebook and YouTube very much this cabal in Silicon Valley does. And so they can pick winners and losers. Facebook actually did experiments on people where they showed them certain content to see if they would be happy or sad. Sure enough, showing sad content made people sad. Well, I think it was Steve Huffman of Reddit who said we could swing an election if we really wanted to. Oh, sure. They know they can and they probably do. But what if you just kept the candidate off of all the platforms as far as i can tell that's not violating any laws like that

like twitter google and facebook can keep john smith mayoral candidate of denver off of all their platforms this is the this is the funny thing i mean that's like that's terrifying the funny thing the right is just so bad at this it's amazing like when they're there are some individuals running for office, but they're banned from Twitter. And so then Twitter says, like, you're not allowed to have a presence. It's like, create a super PAC or, you know, not even a super PAC, create a PAC, a political action committee. And you'll call it like, you know, John Smith for Congress PAC. And it's not run by the candidate.

And then you can absolutely advocate for him. If we were to say the candidate can't be on the platform all that would happen is democratic groups would set up packs and they would still get favorable treatment so twitter would be like we're not going to ban the pack for you know joe biden but that donald trump one that's offensive so you're gone there's no real way to ban politics i mean what if john smith is running for president on a platform to regulate the internet companies they'll destroy him and then they were just like they were like well he's not gonna be on the platform i mean what does that do to american democracy oh that's exactly where it's definitely not democratic they're fat they're corporate fascists i mean

the the right now i struggle with this every all these websites twitter facebook and youtube have like a clause in their terms to say we can ban anyone at any time for no reason right so i i don't want to legislate their terms of service i find that fascist if we use the government to decide what their terms that's why i think we need the software code freed so that other people could spin up an identical copy of twitter with access to all the twitter info on their version of it and then they could make their own terms of service and then you start to have a market of terms as opposed to a market of who has the best code. That's just too communist for me, though, seizing the work and the intellectual property of a company. Antitrust is kind of communist.

Well, regulation isn't communism, right? Not everything is communism. Seizing the means of production from a company to distribute among the masses is pretty communist. I'm not going to take their servers, but the code isn't really the means of production. I mean, the electric utility model is that electric utilities were allowed to make a certain amount of profits a year, and that was it. And they had to get permission to raise electrical rates. The dynamic that was created is that the electric utilities would constantly try to justify

expensive activities so that they could make more money for themselves. But they're called natural monopolies, railroads, electrical utilities, the power grid. There are some things where you kind of go, we can't figure out how breaking that up is in anybody's interest. And so we're going to keep it together, but regulate it. Now, I'm not sure what that looks like. Force Federation. The code is the means of production, but I don't want to steal it. I want to copy the means of production. No, I'm not sure what that looks like. Forced federation. The code is the means of production, but I don't want to steal it.

I want to copy the means of production. No, it's very different. I think... Very different. I don't want to take it away from them. I want to copy it. If you were on Twitter and someone on Gab could follow your Twitter account

and you could follow them on Gab and then Twitter decides to ban you, well, you chose to be on Twitter, but these other platforms still exist. Ultimately, the idea I see for how we solve this is with what we're building with the Fediverse project, you can set up your own website, have your own social media feed and subscription service, and people can follow you through any Fediverse network that supports it. No one can ban you because it's your website.

So then your followers will just be following you. I mean, if you look at how email works, like newsletters, I have a huge list of email accounts and then I can email them. No one can ban you from that ever. Because if they delete your email account, you can make a new email account by like,

hey guys, here's another email. I created a new account. So no matter what network I'm on, I can subscribe to Tim at TimCast from my Twitter, from my YouTube, from Facebook, from MindsGap. And then if Twitter wants to ban TimCast, then I can still – you still have all your stuff. Yep. That's excellent.

And you can go on any other platform and see it or go right to my website to see it. No one will be able to ban you. Except that the ISPs can blockade your website. That's weird. Yep, yep, yep. It's not perfect. There's many links in that chain that can be broken. Well, there you go. Under-theorized is my view. I think you're right when you said that conservatives haven't done a very good job of thinking about it. I

interviewed one guy who did a piece for Harvard Business Review on this, proposing a sort of regulated utility model, but it's complicated. It's much more simple to do this with an electric utility or a railroad than it is with information. Well, also the lobbies that they have are also very big, very powerful. They have a lot of influence. They buy it. They work hand in hand. I think the government created this problem.

And I think the problems that are created by big tech social media directly help the government in many different ways. Well, think about it. Like the funny thing is when they were seeking to regulate the, like, you know, when they were like regulating the railroad industry or the electric utility industry, the railroad and electric utility industry didn't also control the newspapers. Exactly. That's what we're talking about here.

And so you, how do you even have a debate about this? Zuckerberg's the real president. Maybe you could mesh network all the server space. So like everyone would have a server in their house. And so all my website would be on my server and on your server and on your server. So if one of us goes down because Verizon wants to cut us off,

or so there's no real web host or either because the web host can knock your website off. This is like a revenge of the nerds meets 1984 come together. And this is the reality that we're living in where unelected shadowy secretive nerds are literally calling the shots creating culture dominating and controlling people's minds in so many different

ways in so many different aspects and there's no way to even have any accountability here here's a story that i that i love and maybe you guys heard me talk about it before uh michael did you know that um let me ask you a question. Do you have a Facebook profile? I do. Do you know – is someone in your family – have they not signed up for Facebook? Not a single one. Everybody has Facebook.

They all have a Facebook. Do you know anyone who hasn't signed up for Facebook? I do not. Really? Everyone you know? Well, I mean I haven't asked them all. What if I told you that regardless of whether or not you sign up, you do have a Facebook profile? That would both blow my mind and not be surprising at the same time.

Here's how it works. So you have Facebook Messenger? Yes. And when you sign in, it says sync your contacts with your phone? Uh-huh. There you go. Did you do that? Yeah. So here's what happens.

They're called shadow profiles. So you have stored in your phone a number that probably says mom. I don't know. Maybe the kind of guy who calls her mother. I don't know, but they can see that word and the phone number. Cause I don't think you're going to put your mom as, as like Janet. I don't know your mom's name. I actually do that. Oh, you do. You put your mom's full name. I put my mom's actual name. Yeah. So, uh, it's either way it still works, but here's what happens. You'll sync your account, your contacts. Let's say your mom never signed up. They now see, Facebook sees a list of phone numbers, and they see 555-1234 and Janice.

They then see, you have any siblings? Yes. All right. So sibling A signs up, but they do say mom. Now they know Janice is actually the mother of John. Right. John is the brother of Michael. Now your mom has a profile that lists your kids, lists your phone number.

They can collect little bits of information from every Facebook profile to build what's called a shadow profile. Now they know who your mom is, where she lives, how old she is. They know what she's talking about. And yes, the best part is they know when you poop. Facebook system has so much information on you. They can actually predict when you will go to the bathroom. They can actually, I don't know if you've ever seen the ads, but I remember I was on messenger and an ad popped up in messenger about like food network or something. As I was talking to somebody about something like

about to, about to, like, I didn't actually say anything and we were talking about it. There's people have all these stories all day and night where it's like, I remember I went to Walmart and they had a big thing of TVs in the middle of the aisle. They were on sale. When I got home and went on my computer, there was an ad for the exact photo of the stack of TVs at the Walmart. And I went, what the, like, are they spying on me? Are they listening? Everybody thinks they're listening. That's not it. They have all of these data points, which allow them to predict your behaviors. They knew where I lived. They knew the stuff I'd been talking about. They easily said, this guy needs a TV or this, this is the kind of guy like I, we didn't actually buy, I actually know we did buy a TV. That's – yeah. And so they advertised this stack of TVs from the exact Walmart to us.

And yet they still won't tell me when my favorite bands are coming to town. I know. I mean after like a decade of that, we still don't know when my favorite bands are coming to town. Well, is the band paying them money? Probably not. Exactly. Unfortunately, my taste is going to go. So they will tell you – they'll give you recommended restaurants.

So it's really amazing when they have location data and map data and they can see where you work, the proximity to what restaurants that exist. They can tell if you're fit. They can tell how many steps you take. And then they say, this is a guy who likes to walk. The computer just calculates it. So he's going to – he could choose any one of these restaurants. Now, let's say you are sedentary, lazy, never move. They would probably just be like, we predict he's going to go next door for a burger. And because it's the easiest path, there's a million and one different reasons. You know, they know everything about you. They know your address. They know your location.

They know where the closest murder burger is right next to you. They know what you buy. I mean, everything's interconnected and they sell your data like entrepreneurial drug dealers. And they sell it to the creepiest, sleaziest, nastiest, disgusting entities out there that are willing to do anything for a buck. And they do. Here's the best part is I don't know which company it was, but the companies that take your DNA and then they'll send it back like a medical report or history. And then they were like, we'll never sell your data. But then the company got bought. Right.

People should get paid for their data, perhaps. Something that a good, really smart friend of mine from Naval Intelligence keeps telling me is that we should at least get a large percentage of our data when Facebook sells it. They're making a lot of money off that stuff. Let's at least get one conversation going about what's going on in San Francisco, because we have this story from SFGate. Car break-ins in San Francisco are rampant.

Will a $100,000 reward help? You know what I love about this? Let me read. They say on Tuesday morning, Mayor London Breed announced a new privately funded reward of up to $100,000 leading to the arrest and conviction of individuals involved in organized crime rings, which the mayor's office says fuels automobile burglaries. The reward is funded by private donors in the hospitality and tourism industry. Wow. Per a press release, the mayor's office did not immediately return a request for more information about these private donors. So San Francisco has become this nightmare dystopia of failed policy, oligarchs funding reward bounties. I have to I have to imagine the hundred thousand dollars could just go to like, I don't know, hiring police.

Yeah, I mean, this is this is a disturbing trend. It's also a rise of private security in San Francisco has been very prominent. We're in a huge crisis of morale with the police that's been there ever since last summer. And it's resulting in greater homicides and greater crime overall. And, you know, one of the interesting questions I had when I was working on San Francisco was because so much of what is justified in San Francisco in terms of open air drug use, public defecation, public camping, these things are defended as ways of not blaming the victim, helping the victim. So one question is, why would then do progressives support policies that end up creating so many more victims? And the answer, it turns out, is that progressives are really

focused on saving the victims of the system. So this is why 30 times more African Americans are killed by civilians than by police officers. So why the disproportionate attention on police killings? Because those are killings by people that are perceived as the system. So the word progressive really was a way to both change, move away from the word liberal, which was demonized in the late 1980s. It was also, though, a way to kind of unite both the radical left and more moderate liberals. But one of the things that it inherited is this idea that really the only, you know, that the system itself is evil and corrupt, and that we should only care and make a big deal out of the victims of that system. And so

you just see all these efforts to basically do anything other than do what needs to be done, which is restore confidence in the institutions of civilization, in the institutions of the so-called system. You, I guess, I don't know if, well, I'll just ask. You used to be, I guess, a lefty, leftist, or liberal. How would you describe yourself? Yeah, I would have described myself as radical left, certainly in the 90s. I worked on... And now you're far right, of course. I'm here, aren't I? Yeah, I worked on environmental causes, climate change. I worked on criminal justice issues in the 1990s. There's some people in the comment section saying that

you are connected to Soros, George Soros. Is that true? Yeah, I worked for George Soros' funded organizations, but also his foundation itself, the Open Society Institute. How was that? Was it impactful for your kind of political ideology? Can you speak to that a little bit? Because I'm getting a lot of comments about that in the comment section. Yeah. So, well, so, you know, we have

to remember, you know, you're coming out in the 19 late eighties and 1990s, we're coming out of a big war on drugs and a widely held view that we had overreacted to things like crack and that what we should have been doing is drug treatment is mandating rehab rather than sending guys off to the prisons for decades. And that's still mostly a view I hold. There was also other things going on. There was liberalization of opioid pharmaceuticals because it was viewed as we were undertreating pain. And then we were also promoting the decriminalization of marijuana, which we viewed as a relatively benign drug, particularly in comparison to alcohol and cigarettes. And then also we were advocating for

providing clean needles to addicts because it would wait to stop HIV AIDS transmissions. When I got out of that work around the year 2000, my understanding was that we were seeking to make drug rehabilitation, including work, including compliant, you know, taking your psychiatric meds, doing what you need to do to live a healthy life my understanding was that we were going to continue to mandate those things as an alternative to prison what ended up happening not in a single law but in a set of laws and ballot initiatives is that we basically just said no you can we've decriminalized stealing 950 dollars worth of items from walg. We've decriminalized three grams of

hard drugs. That was in the same ballot initiative. I voted for it. 62% of Californians voted for it, Prop 47 in the year 2014. But you put those two things together, decriminalizing three grams of fentanyl and meth and stealing $950 worth of items, and you get, yes, organized crime, but crimes that are being committed to feed people's addictions. You know, one of the things that really bugged me, and I mentioned this the other day, but I talk about it a lot. I hear it all the time from the progressives.

There are more empty houses than homeless people. Having actually worked with homeless shelters, more than one, you learn a lot about why people are homeless. And it's not this fantasy idea of people being like, pardon me, sir, I'm desperate for a place to live. It's actually people who are like, get away from me. I want to be homeless and they're drinking and you try and you try and be nice, respectful. You try to help people, but a lot of them, you know, outside of mental illness, there are people who are literally like, don't come near me or else. Yeah, you got it i mean basically what happens is

in the 1980s you see multiple things going on but basically you have a crack epidemic which is really crack and alcohol those are the two drugs that would get paired a lot resulting in homelessness meaning that people would be um they would quit their jobs and dedicate their day hours to their addictions. They would then disaffiliate. This is the academic word, disaffiliation. They would basically become alienated from friends and family who they had stolen from or borrowed money from. And finally, friends and family were like, you got to leave.

They're kicking you out. So you basically – that is how people became homeless. There was also then deinstitutionalization of our psychiatric hospitals. A lot of those folks were dumped on the streets. So that was what was going on in the 80s. The radical left, really working with liberals, basically said these people, the problem with these folks is that they don't have housing. And there was always a move for socialized housing and basically free public housing. So they literally invented this propaganda word. There's no other way to say it.

Homelessness itself is a propaganda word designed to trick your brain into putting people with totally different problems in the same category, including people with schizophrenia, people with a heroin problem, and the proverbial mother escaping an abusive husband. The mother escaping the abusive husband who doesn't have a drug or alcohol problem and is not mentally ill, we do a great job of helping that woman. That's not a problem, okay? The person with schizophrenia and the person with an addiction, those folks on the street,

that's a huge problem, both for them, it's immoral the way we treat them, but also it's, it degrades the fabric of a city. Do you think, do you think living in San Francisco led to kind of a political transition for you? And are there any kind of policies you advocated for under the kind of Soros, uh, that were influenced that you kind of regret now? Great question. So, I mean, one thing is there's certainly there's certainly I have become more conservative around drugs and alcohol. I still support the decriminalization of marijuana, but I would like to see it more heavily regulated. I still support alcohol being legal, but I think I actually come to see things like not being able to buy at the grocery store, not being able to buy on Sunday. Things that restrict consumption I think is good. Psychedelics, I worry that we're just diving headlong into basically decriminalizing psychedelics without any thought about what the implications of that are.

When in the 90s, I still remember very vividly being in progressive nonprofits. It was Global Exchange in San Francisco, Brain Forced Action Network. We all hung out together. And the homeless advocates struck me as, it just struck me as bizarre because I always knew just because I was pretty street savvy, even in my 20s, because I had done a fair amount of just traveling and I talked to people. I just knew that these folks were addicts and that they were had mental illness. And so this sort of the kind of emotional defense of the right of these people to sleep on the sidewalks, I always sort of viewed as bizarre. Like it never made any sense to me.

Still to this day, you'll see progressives, high profile YouTubers posting things like that's proof of the dysfunctional nature of capitalism. And I'm like someone saying they don't want to be in a building is not anything to do with capitalism at all. Well, it's sad too. I mean these are often – they're defending the right of psychotic – of people in psychotic states, whether from underlying schizophrenia or from heavy meth use. It always manifests the same way. Defending – we don't let grandma with dementia and Alzheimer's live on the street. So why do we do that with people in a psychotic state? Well, let's take their argument where they say there are more empty houses than homeless people. Do we just take a 30-year-old schizophrenic man, put him in a house and say, have a nice day?

What do you think would happen to that person in that house if we just put – they have no food? They have – how are they going to afford utilities? How are they going to maintain the building what's going to happen to it well we know i mean we've actually been doing an ongoing experiments on this question and then we had a big one during covid because we had to because they reduced the shelter population and made people in hotels the hotel first of all a lot of people died because there wasn't another user with them to revive them with narcan after they overdosed. It's multifactorial, obviously.

So we're also dealing in a fentanyl epidemic, which is incredibly deadly. So first, that happened. I mean, the propaganda has been, and this is the propaganda coming from the big foundations, Rockefeller, but it also comes from Malcolm Gladwell at The New Yorker, and it also came from George W gladwell at the new yorker and it also came from george w bush and in the in the early 2000s which was just give people housing that's the cure the evidence was never there for any of it um in fact it doesn't over harvard just published a major study on this over a 12-year period those folks do not retain their housing any better than anybody else does but it doesn't do anything to address the underlying causes of homelessness, which are mostly addiction, untreated mental illness.

There's a lot of political commentators that directly point the finger at individuals like George Soros when they got involved in local politics, appointing DAs and implementing a lot of these policies. What's your kind of train of thought with his involvement with the things that he called for, that he paid for, that he kind of caused in major cities? Yeah, I mean, so George Soros, his orientation is around, I would call him a left libertarian. And that is left libertarian would encompass kind of the anarchists that the anarchists that took over seattle for example which is something i discuss in the book but it also includes people like soros i i quote the person who worked for source for a long time somebody that i i knew pretty well i've known for almost 25 years and he said you know he goes george's view is that people should

if people want something they should have access to it. You know, and so it's a kind of, that's a kind of libertarian mentality. You want heroin or fentanyl? Well, you should be able to buy it. Like, why should we restrict your freedom? So that's part of it. But then there's the more liberal or the more left part is also this idea, well, those people are probably victims too. So there's two separate conceptual universes

that are being married in this. So it kind of goes, you want access to fentanyl and you're a victim. And therefore we should give you whatever you want, not just the needles, but a place to sleep. And we should give you medical care, but we shouldn't do anything to persuade you not to use fentanyl or meth, much less like laws against you because that would be immoral because you're a victim. That's the basic picture. A lot of the DAs in a lot of very important places are directly backed by him. He gives a lot of money. And this buys him a lot of influence, like in Loudoun County, a county not far away from

us where a big story broke that some people are literally yeah some people are being censored a few days ago the prosecutor tried to give the father who was the victim in this in this case in a prison sentence for showing up at a school board meeting and raising concerns about this and and this prosecutor had 860 000 given to him by your soros pack his His name is Bhuta Benjari. And he's literally implementing policy on the local level in such a way where it's extremely political, extremely divisive. A lot of times, very hardened criminals get off. And a lot of people for political crimes go to jail for very hard sentences. So that's why I was kind of hinting at, and I kind of wanted to talk to you about it because you seem to have kind of experience in it. but a lot of people are pointing to this as some of the main reasons why there's such urban decay happening all over the united states and that's

why i kind of want to get feedback soros has a lot to answer for he's supporting these he's supporting you know progressive da's who have just clearly gone too far into victimology. I think he's just deeply out of touch. He's very old at this point. I don't think he has, you know, a lot of these guys are like they don't, you know, I say that this is the attitude, the problem and part of the problem in California is, you know, I'll describe, I would describe what I'm working on to people that I knew and they go, yeah, well, that's why I don't go downtown. And you're kind of like, yeah, but aren't we like, what about like the whole thing about how we're kind of a single community in a single country or a single city or have some whatever happened to like brotherly love or, you know, you are your brother's keeper. against the current governor, I tweeted out something that was like, this is a problem because we've got this human rights crisis on the streets. And somebody responded by putting a picture of them in their just kind of douchey little bicycle shorts on a bicycle, like taking

a selfie of them with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background being like, but look at how beautiful it is. And I was like, well, yeah, my house house is nice too but like 712 people died unnecessarily last year on the streets of san francisco out of your supposed compassion so pull your head out of your ass and let's do something about this as opposed to just being like i don't go downtown when i went to sweden several years ago you know donald trump goes on tv says last night in sweden and created this huge thing so i was like i'll go. We went to a place called Rinkaby. Initially, everything was like fine. We went to Rosengard and they were like, it's dangerous, but it was fine. In Rinkaby, in the middle of the day at lunchtime, it was crowded. We actually started getting threats. People were yelling at us and the police told us we should

probably leave. The cop said to me, look, if these people start throwing stones, like we can't protect you. And then I was like, okay, so we'll go because we were we had cameras and so they were yelling stuff ass like express in they thought we were a news outlet from sweden because we had a small camera one of the cameras we use here actually the same kind and so one of these other journalists said oh he's exaggerating it's not dangerous i'll prove it i'll go there and so this woman shows up there, does not go into the center shopping area of Rinkeby where we were, stands outside the arches in the middle of the night wearing a full coat that covered her hands. You couldn't see the color of her skin. You couldn't see anything about her with her back to the entrance and said, see, look, I'm here in the

middle of the night. And it's just, that's how the media manipulates and plays these dirty games to say there's no problem here, nothing to see here. The reality was, yes, a small blonde woman at two in the morning when no one's around wearing a coat covering every inch of her body and not actually going in will make a lot of people think there's no problem because people assume the middle of the night's when it's dangerous. No, the middle of the day is when it was dangerous, when there were 100-plus people there. And they didn't like the press, and they took issue with people based on their skin color.

So they'll sweep it under the rug using assumptions, tropes, and manipulation. Oh, yeah. I mean, we've seen that. There's basically been an effort to deny that crime has been increasing in California over the last 10 or 20 years. We've seen a huge decline in arrests per reports for shoplifting. And so one of the things they'll say is we'll say, well, we were seeing fewer arrests. Well, that doesn't mean there's less crime. I got one more question for you on the subject real quick. Have murders in San Francisco gone up or down?

They've gone up over the last two years, certainly, since the George Floyd protests. Do you want to know why that's so substantial? Murder rates around the world have been going down for one reason. And do you know what it is? If you had to guess, why would murder rates be going down for the past, I believe it's about the past 13 or so years? Until now. Well, I mean, in the book, I describe a variety of factors, but I mean, the two big ones I looked at were better policing and rising legitimacy. The answer is actually

cell phones. The crimes are still being committed, but people have the ability to call EMS within seconds as opposed to before the era of the ubiquitous smartphone. People would say it would see an emergency and then run to find a phone, which dramatically increased response time. So I actually learned this when I was in Sweden. What they were saying was the progressives were trying to say, oh, no, look, even though crime is going up, it's not that much, except when you look at homicide rates in other countries, they were all in a downward trend. And what we ended up discovering was since cell phones became something everyone had, when a lethal crime was committed, or a crime that could be potentially lethal,

people immediately called the police. The ambulance got there within minutes. This decreases the amount of murders, but increases the amount of attempted murders or aggravated crimes. So the United States, we've seen murders going down in a lot of ways. For places where murders are going up, that's in spite of the fact that people now have the opportunity to call emergency services, which is exacerbated by the fact when you defund the police and now calling gets you nothing. So now we start seeing it go back up. Yeah, I mean certainly. I think it's a complicated area. I tend to side with two basic strands of research, one showing that declining belief in the legitimacy of the government and the system corresponds with increasing homicides. This is all based on this work from a book called American Homicide by Randolph Roth. But then I also, you know, the growing consensus among a lot of criminologists

is that the rise in homicides after Ferguson in 2015, and then after the George Floyd killing and the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, was due to basically what we call the Ferguson effect, which is the emboldenment of criminals out of declining legitimacy, but also the pulling back of police from the kind of street, you know, walking the streets, interacting with the folks, including the folks that are more likely to commit homicide. What's declining legitimacy?

Can you define that? We could talk about this in the after segment. So if you haven't already, smash that like button, and we definitely went a little late, and we have a hard stop, so we're going to try and read as many Super Chess as we can. All right. Matthew Hammond says, has he seen the nuclear battery technology that never needs to be charged in the last 20,000 years? Yeah, that doesn't exist.

It does. I mean, there was a news report about it, but I think it's grossly, greatly exaggerated. There's a lot of reports for designs, and even design is a bit of a strong word for it. These are more like ideas. These are spitballing. I mean, the history of nuclear is a history of a lot of enthusiasts, a lot of technical enthusiasts, and very few successful real-world innovations. Mostly we've succeeded with nuclear. It's similar to jet planes.

I think one day we will have hydrogen-fueled jet planes that will get us from L.A. to Australia in an hour. That day is a long ways off, and until then we should stick with the kerosene-powered jet planes that we have. Or rocket planes. That's basically my view of nuclear. That's what basically they would be. Yeah.

That's what they would be. So, but I mean, nuclear is just extremely, it's obviously a super complex technology. It's also heavily regulated, uh, both for national security and for radiological reasons.

All right. John R says, nice shelf. Why? It was John R the other day who said, you should put up a shelf. So we have, uh michael's books uh san francisco and apocalypse never yes and it was actually like five minutes before the

show they're like can andy put up the shelf real quick and then he drilled the shelf in because we're trying to like put the books up and we were like john had a good idea yeah and so we rolled we we went with it all right let's see we got. Let's try and find some good questions. All right. Let's see. We got some Let's Go Brandons. All right. Let's Go Brandon.

Okay. King Tesseract says, this one's to Michael. I hear you advocating for nuclear all the time. Why haven't you told people about thorium and LFTR reactors? They seem pretty awesome, especially since the U.S. sits on a lot of thorium. Yeah, I mean, this is the same kind of question around the nuclear battery or about fusion. So we originally had experimented with a number of different designs. What is often called thorium is basically a new fuel-coolant combination. You don't need thorium for it. Thorium is an alternative to uranium, but it doesn't offer many of the benefits that people have said it would. You can still

make weapons grade materials out of these technologies. You know, we had the idea was that if it's already melted, if the fuel coolant combination is already melted, then you won't have a meltdown. And so we would add some safety benefits. But the problem is, is that that particular fuel coolant combination, the coolants are usually made out of chemicals, either fluoride or beryllium or lithium or some combination of them. The problem is, is that they create different problems for the metals and also for the process of creating them. In the first place, you have to have a chemical combination and separation system. So it's just proven to be really expensive and difficult.

And so that's why they don't exist. I've been focused on trying to keep the nuclear reactors that we have that are running, continue to be running and not shut down early. Most of them can run for 80 or 100 years or more. Are these the ones that use corium in the reactor, in the core of the thing? They use uranium. And then if it melts down, it's considered – is that corium? Is that what – these rods, these – Well, I mean if it melts down, it turns into a big mess.

I thought about – could you pour a superconductor into the mess and allow it to cool over time like gold? I am not – I do not have an answer to that question, but I can say that every time we've had the mess, whether the big ones like in Chernobyl or Fukushima, it's just been a huge headache to deal with. I mean that's why we're – if there were some simple technical fix to it, then we would have it. The trouble is getting in there once it's melted. That's – all the drones shut down, so they've had a hard time getting in. But I wonder if you could get a superconductor in the core and allow it to cool down.

Yeah, there's a lot of research on it. I mean, and that's obviously the desire for some radically different technology. My view is that these accidents are not unusual for a new technology, that new technologies, we should expect some amount of accidents. The ones that we had were not the big public health disasters that people think that they were. Best estimates are somewhere around 200 people total will have died from Chernobyl after an 80-year period. That's nothing compared to the 6 million lives we think are shortened every year from air pollution. That much of the fear and panic around nuclear stems from anxiety around the bomb, which remains the only real technological way to create an apocalyptic scenario or the destruction of civilization that we have other than asteroids or super volcanoes. So my view is that and then it was also politicized and the opposition to nuclear came from a lot of different areas.

But my view is that I tend to be technologically more conservative because every time they have tried to significantly change the ways in which nuclear reactors operate, the costs have gone up significantly because it's just the workers. The work of building a nuclear plant is mostly pouring cement and rebar and welding pipes. But that work is all the demands are that that work be done at a level that's much higher than for natural gas or coal plants. And so my concern is just that when we start radically changing the technology, you start getting big cost overruns and we want to keep the nuclear cheap. I once read a story about a scuba diver, I think it was, who got sucked into an intake pipe at a nuclear power plant

and was fine because the water blocks radiation. So it was just like warm water. That's interesting. Maybe it's not true, though. I was like, it was one of those books you read when you were in the bathroom or something like that. All right, let's read a little bit more. A.O. Shooter says, please shout out stop button barcade.

Bar plus arcade equals awesome. Hey, very, very cool. All right. Many people are saying Ian, the hippie authoritarian, and they're saying things like that. Hippie authoritarian. All right, let's see. Zach Darce says, website member here. Zach Dars says, Website member here.

Thank God Luke is back. Ian clearly doesn't understand rights at all and always conflates the issue into nonsense. Your human rights to not be aggressed upon is inherent and immutable. Authoritaire Ian. No, Luke said that it was his human right to go shopping. No, that's not what I said.

Don't you dare defunct my messaging. I said government intervening in your life is not good. I'll probably make a misinterpreted what you said. I'll go listen to it later. Coldwater says, I also live in the SF Bay area and my daughter and I were yelled at on a nature trail. We were both masked, but we were going the wrong way to reduce

transmission. My response, call the police. Well, if you're in Australia, you get arrested for being on a nature walk and not having a mask. There's been tons of videos, tons of incidences of people getting brutalized by thugs with badges for simply walking in nature by themselves with their family emerged without a mask. In the UK, they sent helicopters hunting people down in the middle of nature by themselves to go after them and arrest them. Oh, weird. Bones says, I just sent this $20 super chat

and YouTube removed my comment. I didn't even violate TOS. I just happened to mention the Book of Revelation. Huh. Interesting. It's a conspiracy. Kev says, Ian, you're wrong.

Australia did violate basic human rights. The Daily Wire did a piece. Four newborn babies die after Australian COVID-19 restrictions prevent travel. Look it up. Jeez. Interesting. That sucks. basic human rights the daily wire did a piece four newborn babies die after australian covet 19 restrictions prevent travel look it up interesting that sucks all right let's see what we got ish that offends people podcast says idaho mom here we took my six-year-old to hockey tonight after two years of being robbed of it kid was told he couldn't skate without mask mandated to be on ice for children who rarely die from the vid.

They're muzzling kids like animals. This is insanity and abuse. Won't go back. Yeah. In Colorado Springs, a teacher masked sixth graders with tape over their face because she said that the kids weren't wearing the masks properly. Wow.

So there's a lot of insanity out there. We do have a bit of an update as well. Steam Bub says you can threaten someone in the US. It's only illegal if you intend to follow through, which is an interesting line. But you can also you can also threaten people in response to things or as statements of logical follow through in that if you do X, I will do X to you. Yeah, I'm not sure that how would determine an intent in that way. I think we're looking at speech. Well, the interesting thing is it's also typically discretion of the cop,

and most threats will never be prosecuted or – Yeah. Unless it's against like a public official. Then you're in the territory of like, yo, we don't want to do that. Yeah, and you're not allowed to stalk people. I mean it's definitely – it gets into gray areas. Well, hold on. It's depending on the legal line of what stalking is.

So when you're like outside their house on their property, looking through the window, calling them repeatedly. But if you were watching someone leave and you followed them, they could file like a civil action and say, you know,

stop following me or something, but you're never gonna get arrested for that. So can't is more so a frowned upon. Yeah, you're right. In the sense you have to be violating other laws. You can get a protective order, you know? All right. Bad B says we are living in a Herbert Marcuse world right now.

If you check him on every, check him out. Everything going on right now will make sense. Yep. Well, there you go. True. Bruno Bernoski says I'm driving to the event from Chicago. If anyone wants a ride, I'll give them my plus one ticket. My info is on my GitHub resume.

And that is Bruno Brunoski. Wow. Driving from Chicago. That's fun. It's going to be in Harper's Ferry. We're doing this event on Saturday with Ryan and Danny. Yeah. It's going to be a whole lot of fun.

Joe says, Corporate fascism. Like Zillow buying up homes and reselling them for 100K more one week later. Not flipping them, just reselling to price us out. Yikes. Wow.

That's crazy. Gideon says, Hey team, I live in New Zealand. The government is bringing out the digital passports, digital IDs. Unvaccinated will be restricted to essential services only. Keep up the good work.

Yep. Here we go. It's like Black Mirror. You're going to have your social credit score. Have you seen the Chinese social credit score stuff? Yeah. Yeah, it's insane. The World Economic Forum literally released videos talking about how great it is to have a domestic passport system

that's going to be checked everywhere with your health and it's going to control you with every aspect of your existence uh the video is creepy as hell mike bloomberg unity says tax the poor they're too stupid to buy their own stuff so we got to do it for them well that's the life everyone's hoping to live your pursuit of happiness based on what michael bloomberg has decided is is best for you all right let's see carson liebarger says i can vouch for Tim here on the Facebook profile thing. I've had a shadow account for over five years and I've never made an account. Learned about it. Learned about the account from friends.

Well, the shadow profiles aren't public. And there was a glitch that happened one day where apparently Facebook made them publicly visible to people. And everyone was like, what is this? What is this weird account with my information on it? And that's basically how people discovered shadow profiles are a real thing shady all right ann phillips says more follow-up on being paid for our personal data like royalties costly and administratively cumbersome make facebook disclose each time they sell share trade our data the issue is your data is worthless.

However, the data of a million people in one area is worth full. So I've, I've heard people say, we got to get paid for our data. Facebook should be paying us for our data. And I'm like, oh yeah, the 0.0001 cent that you would get from the information they have on you combine it all. And when you have a pool of a million people, well, they can sell that for not even that much, but it's incentive to go with Facebook for advertising. So they do make money off it. But I guess the bigger issue is people assume that Facebook takes your data and then sells it to big companies for experiments or stuff like that. And they've done things like that. That's partly what the Cambridge Analytica thing was all about. But Reginald Enterprises says

Facebook does give you money for your data they do so by offering a free service that costs them money well interesting I get it that's different though when something's free you're the product that's what they say alright let's see what we got here

got a bunch of new super chats coming in Jeffrey McCorbin says his name was David Dorn someone sent us a picture was David Dorn. Someone sent us a picture of David Dorn. We have it hanging in the green room. That's right. Jonathan Galtarini says, I gave a speech on net neutrality for law school.

Who has the power to control access, the government or your service provider? Can AT&T slow the speed of sites they do not like themselves? Can the government force them to do the same? One must have the power. Well, why should one must have the power? Shouldn't people have equal access to the internet? I would think so. I guess the issue is the argument against net neutrality was, if I got the money, I should be able to buy better access, right? I should be able to get faster access to AT&T. AT&T should be able to pay the provider and say, make it easier to get to our website.

But if you do that, it's scary because then all of a sudden, well, if you're conservative, you're not going to be able to go to Infowars. It'll be really difficult to load, you know, sites like that and the things you want to read. All right, let's see. Steve Otten says, you should look into getting Ben Davidson on as a guest from Suspicious Observers. The science he presents as rock solid and he needs to be heard.

Interesting. We'll look it up. Toby Walker says, Ian is right. We should crowdsource to buy out these platforms and open the code. The societal impact of social media is more than tech moguls can manage. Open algorithms are the only way we can ever guarantee a fair system or no algorithms. Just get rid of them outright. You follow the people you want to follow.

And if you follow a million people, your feed will just be an endless stream of contents just cycling through. And if that's what you want, that's what you get. I think that guy's, uh, you're, you're suggesting to crowdsources. I think crowdsourcing is underutilized right now because if we can pull a hundred thousand people together and throw 10 bucks at something, that's a million. We could buy a huge piece of land and then turn it into a public park or something. We could do the same thing with, ultimately, companies. Alright, Austin Waiters Walters says,

The issue isn't where they post, it's how you follow. Make an RSS feed in the browser, pull a person's post from the various sites, then make a news feed. Who you follow is stored in a browser extension. Interesting. Interesting. We could, uh, you know, yeah. All right. Let's see. DH says forced federation is the true solution to big tech

and antitrust is the way it needs to be enforced. I it's, I definitely think force federation is a good idea for those that weren't like, weren't don't understand, or, you know, just to re re re, um, contextualize. this would mean that Twitter has to allow you to follow Gab accounts. So you could be on Twitter and you could follow someone on Gab. So Twitter's like, oh, but we'll ban the Gab network. It's like, okay, well then as long as you're hosting your own platform, people on Twitter can follow you. Twitter can ban your website from their website, but your account would still exist. You'd still keep your subscribers and all that good stuff.

And maybe you can't ban a network. Maybe that's something that could be worked on. Right now you can ban a user, but banning a network, that's a... I think banning a network is totally fine. If TimCast.com says we don't want these posts appearing on our site, then we just say this one doesn't cover them. But then facebook could ban every network that's not facebook twitter and then people are going to be like i can't follow people want to follow it would just not be federated it would be like a bypassing the

federation if they ban everything other than their own network so i see what you're saying it would have to be for like specific things you know i guess it's tough this is a good conversation yeah they'd still try and find a way to ban external networks so yeah maybe you can't but then yeah that's interesting because then facebook's like we don't want this stuff appearing on our site it's like don't worry it's not it's appearing on their site there and then facebook would have to like file a complaint maybe i don't know man it's it's tough i do think censorship is important um. People – we usually have like a black and white approach, but, you know, Ian Uff talks about censoring criminal content, very disgusting images.

Yeah, we want censors to be like, we're not going to show that. That involves children. No dice. That can't be there. And so the problem is when the censorship is political and used to weaponize the system for one group's political gain or something like that that's the that's the challenge yeah it's really a parent's job to censor what their kids see but man in this world that's a whole other conversation ball game justin meyer says i've been told that unvaccinated delta employees have a 200 surcharge for health care have you guys heard about this yeah yeah that's delta right uh it's weird because i don't know i we have to fact check that but delta was i think the only airline that wasn't implementing

mandates uh from what i heard one of them was doing 200 fees yeah i'm pretty sure delta does have some mandates just not not in the traditional sense yeah so a lot of people are still criticizing them all right steven taylor says much love and update from utah elk hunt successful filled both my spike and cow tag winter's meat secured oh very nice nice all right alex maggiore from someone who was once homeless trust me if you don't want to be homeless you don't have to be there are too many government programs that will put you back on your feet and a lot of these homeless shelters often empty yeah this is a lot of what else a lot of these the left left us don't understand when they're like why aren't we putting homeless people in homes why are homeless shelters

empty and there are many of them that or at the very least why are they not at capacity there are many shelters that i've personally experienced that were like straight empty and they would go out and they would be like sir please like we have a space for you. And they'd be like, get away from me. I'm not going to whatever it is you're doing. They might come in, take a shower and leave sometimes. They'll show up, knock on the door, be like, yeah, I'm going to come and take a shower.

And then they would leave. They don't want to be there. It depends. I mean, one of the reasons that people don't like standing shelters is because you can't use drugs in the shelter. That's right. And they sometimes will make you do certain things, get clean, change your clothes.

Yeah. But the point, you know, like New York had, at least before the pandemic, they'd been sheltering, you know, 99% of the homeless. But, yeah, you have to decide that you're not going to allow public camping. And then you have to build. striking was that it had been homeless advocates themselves who had opposed building sufficient shelter space in California out of the belief that everybody deserved housing and that the shelters just weren't good enough for people. And people need to understand there's a lot of homeless people who go to California specifically because it's really nice weather and you can sleep outside and there's not going to be a solution. And you can have three grams of hard drugs and

still $950 worth of goods. It's really a recipe for disaster. I remember when I was living in Seattle, there were a bunch of homeless kids, like late teens, that hung out near UW, University of Washington. And they would ride the freight rails to make it there. They wanted to be homeless. There was no changing their minds. This was their life, their passion, their fun, their community. And that's it.

There's something. I mean, there's a part of it. There's a wildness to it. There's a part of it that's very romantic. And I don't object to it. But I don't think you have a right to sleep wherever you want. That's the difference. And I have the same way about drugs, which is that if you want to kill yourself in the privacy of your own apartment, I don't think that

we should dedicate public resources to chasing you down, but you don't get to overdose and use hard drugs in public because that's a violation of public space. My friend was working with homeless and I believe she told me that at some point the San Francisco city was going through with fire hoses at 4am and just hosing all the homeless people off the side of the road. Did you ever hear anything about that? No, I never. They use the language that's used. It's not great language. I don't use it myself, is the idea of sweeps.

But I think the way you have to think about it is that these are open drug scenes, meaning that these are places where there's an open-air drug market and users who are living there. We only know one way to close open air drug scenes. It's the same way the Europeans have done it, which is that you use a combination of police and social services. You require people to be in shelter. So it's shelter first, treatment first, housing is earned. But no, that would be grossly cruel. And I never came across that. And that sounds like the kind of rhetoric that honestly honestly, the radical left might use. I almost feel like I saw video of it.

I've got to confirm this because it's a hard— I would be shocked if they were spraying cold water on people. Yeah. That sounds crazy. I'm not saying—I mean, maybe it happened, but if it did, that is absolutely not okay, and that could not have been sustained. But they'll sweep, like, just the cops will go in and grab people and be like, you've got to go. We're taking you on a bus. Like, what do they do?

Like, usually you give several days of warning that you have to stop being there. Social services are offered. Most people take the offer or they leave and go somewhere else. And then there's a few hardcore people that won't leave. And sure, then they get arrested. I mean you don't have a right to sleep wherever you want. We have designated camping areas. And if you don't want to sleep there,

then my view is that we should have sufficient shelter space for you. But it's not a thing where you just get to sleep in the playground and use heroin wherever you want and defecate wherever you want. That's not compatible with civilization. Agreed. All right. Danny Douglas says, trying to get my ticket. I'm in the area temporarily before getting shipped out to Guam.

This is my only chance to come and meet you guys before 2024. So, man, it's tough because, you know, we chose a smaller venue with a couple hundred capacity and the tickets sold out instantly. We're doing an auction now and the goal is to do it, you know, probably we have one going right now. So if you're a member at TimCast.com, you can go in and their people are bidding. Last I checked, I think it's like $175 was the bid. And we did this because we're just trying to do like, some people happen to see, you know, they're able to be on the website. They see the post, they're able to get the ticket because tickets were free for members at 25 or more. Some people are too busy and didn't have the

opportunity to, so they have the opportunity to just buy like a, use, use, uh, auction, you know, purchase a ticket, but we're going to do an auction. We have an auction today, tomorrow, and we're, I think we're going to do it Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. We'll probably do two separate auctions on Friday because we're gonna have a total of 10 tickets that you can just bid for. And we're going to be ending the auctions randomly. We're going to let them stay up for a little while. Um, but we're going to end them randomly because we don't want people to be avoiding bidding. We want, we want you to just be like, here's my bid. I want to come. And then we'll ultimately just be like, we're going to cut it off at like 10 PM or something.

So we're trying to find a way to do it as fair as possible. It's very difficult. Typically when you do auctions, people say, Oh, wait to the last five seconds and then bid whatever the next bid is. And so then everyone's got to sit there and wait. And it's really annoying. So, oh, man, we're trying to figure it out to make it the best possible we can and the fairest we can. But it's certainly not that easy. All right, let's just do we'll do one more funny one. Garhant says, Tim, this is my third time being broadcasted for this point. Could you please get one of Ian's personalities to take the political compass test? His spirit guide was born in gory Georgia.

I did take the political compass test. Guess what I was? Fascist. Fascist? You liar. Your guess was a lie. Commie fascist. Commie fascist.

You tanked it. You inverted the whole chart. Do you want me to tell you? It was libertarian left. Left libertarian on this one. Bottom, the center of the, just like George Soros. I doubt you would be comfortable with the things that get passed as left libertarian in the Bay Area. Oh, I'm sure.

Oh, they're not. They're authoritarians. That's the craziest thing to me. I always describe it like left libertarian would be hippies on a farm sharing their watermelon together. You know, no one's exchange. There's no hard currency. They have a community and understanding and agreement. But this stuff – left libertarianism only really works when you have a homogenous culture and ideology.

I used to – I talked with Bob Murphy about this today. I used to want to help people. Now I want to give them tools so that they can help themselves. I want to give them the opportunity to help themselves. And if they don't, that's it. I can't force them help upon them. Ian's turn to the dark side is, you know. I'm a gray Jedi.

We are both the dark and the light. That's what all the bad guys say. No, the bad guys all think they're the good guys. All right, man. Michael, it's been a blast. Thanks for having me, guys. For everybody else, smash that like button. Subscribe to the channel.

You can follow us at TimCastIRL. You can follow me at TimCast. We'll have a bonus segment for members coming up at around 11 or so p.m. But do you want to shout out your books one more time? Yeah, sure. Go buy my new book, San Francisco, Why Progressives Ruin Cities. And while you're at it, buy Apocalypse Never, Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. I want to thank the chat members for the Luke Newcomb comments.

I appreciate those very much. A lot of times I'm laughing here and people are like, why are you laughing? I got the chat open. I love you guys. You guys are awesome. I released two videos today,

one on youtube.com forward slash we are changed and another very spicy one on lukeuncensored.com. If you're interested in those, check those out. I'm Ian Crossland. Thanks again, Michael, for coming. This was fantastic. And I want to shout out Jacob Geometrics on Instagram and Etsy for sending me this. Thank you so much for sending this to me, man.

I love it. That Ian gave to me and then took back. Yeah, Luke was like, can I have this? He's like, yes. Yeah. Yes. No. And then I'm like, oh, this is going to be so cool on my wall.

I wanted him to have it. I'm posting everything up on my wall that you guys sent me that was in the vlog today and then like 10 minutes later Ian comes back and I need that back I do want you to have it though Luke it's fine it's a great design

I'm glad the world sees it and yes thank you guys for tuning in it was really enlightening to hear more about California and homelessness I'm really glad Michael's able to join us tonight. You guys may follow me on Twitter at Sarah Patch Lids. Make sure you go to TimCast.com for that member segment, and we will see you all there. Thanks for hanging out. Bye, guys. you you you you