Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it presented by Disruption. Now, I'm James Keys. And in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to discuss the ongoing US Withdrawal from Afghanistan and take a look at how and why the media may be manipulating the public's reaction to what's going on in the way it frames the discussion.
We'll also take a look at a recent report coming out of Spain claiming that Spanish engineers have devised a machine that can pull drinking water on a large scale out of thin air. And we'll consider this in light of the long history of engineering marvels by humans aimed at delivering drinking water.
Joining me today is a man who you might see on tv, but it's almost like he's podcasting for free.
Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to let us in on your thought process today?
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Yes, sir.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: All right, let's go.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: I'm just glad that since I'm forced to wear a mask, no one will notice me. Since when I'm, you know, when I'm on the street. Cause I'm such a famous TV personality.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: You're in disguise, man.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: All right. Now we're recording this on August 23, 2021.
And today we wanted to do what could be termed a follow up to our discussion from a few weeks ago on this ongoing U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
But it's not really a follow up, it's more of a continuation to discuss what's happened since then. Now, on July 13, we released a podcast discussing the merits of the decision to withdraw and to follow through really on that because people have been talking about withdrawing for 10 years or more.
And also we discussed the legacy of the conflict in light of us deciding to leave now.
But now we've seen the other suit drop. With the US Backed government and the Afghan security forces essentially disappearing and the Taliban reclaiming their leadership in the country, we figured it was worth taking a look at how the execution and the outcome of the withdrawal has played out.
And we'll also discuss how the coverage of this seems to have led to or contributed to an unexpectedly strong reaction from many corners of the American public.
So to get us going tune day, we discussed the actual move to follow through with the withdrawal a few weeks back. So from where we stand now, what are your thoughts on the actual execution of it and on these outcomes that we're seeing?
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Well, as a shameless plug, I'll ask the audience to listen to, as you said, our show from July 13, which is now over a month ago.
And I'd say start around the 24 minute mark and listen for about five or six minutes, because that'll give you all of the insight I think, that you and I both had and segueing to now that the withdrawal has already begun and taken place and clearly is not as smooth as I think obviously this administration would have wanted to. I would say this is playing out the way that we expected in our conversation. I think what, you know, what has surprised me has been the hysteria and the kind of just what I feel is just kind of driven by the media attention. And this is all media. I just felt like, you know, Americans have been asleep at the wheel, admittedly, about Afghanistan. Unless you're in the military or you have a family member serving there, most of us did not pay attention to it. We weren't worried about the plight of the women there. We weren't worried about the plight of the Afghans who were helping us over there.
And all of a sudden, it's kind of like the minute the media puts it out there and a week later, everyone is on fire. So that's kind of the feeling I've got from this, this current period, I guess, within we're taping the show, you know, a week after the withdrawal. And I'd say that that's kind of my feeling watching it.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: But no, I definitely wanted to talk about the actual execution of it, though, because I do think what we've seen, I think it's inescapable that it's, as you said, it's not going as smoothly as the Biden administration or any of us would really want.
It does seem to have lacked some foresight in terms of the evacuations that they're trying to accomplish right now. It almost seems to me like either they were asleep at the switch, meaning the decision makers here, or they almost wanted to slow play it in a way to force the hand of the Afghan leadership and security forces, to almost show them a vote of confidence, because that's the only thing I can really come up with as far as why all of the things that we're trying to do now, why were we not, why was it not a priority to do that before our final combat troops left or once everyone felt like we were gone and we saw these dominoes start to fall, why did we not do that stuff then? Because we could have done that. All of the things we're doing now, we could have done before we left. And so the question, I wonder whether that would have been seen as undermining Afghanistan and so the execution of it, we kind of put our faith. We put up. We bet on the wrong horse, and we were like, all right, you know, we spent all this money, all this time training and, you know, trying to prop up these people. You know, we're going to show them a little faith.
And it didn't happen, I mean, immediately, you know, but you would think if you spent all this time and money with somebody and dealing with them, you would see that if the bullets started flying, and I use that analogy, but just if things start getting tight, that they may not be the ones that are gonna be able to stand tall. So to me, that was. It seemed like that seemed to be the fundamental miscalculation in the execution of it, because it seemed like we essentially were doing now what we could have done before, but clearly we decided not to do before. And that's the piece I'm missing from an information standpoint is why did we decide? Was it literally just screw up, we sleep at the switch, or was it like, oh, well, if we pull everybody out and evacuate our embassy before we leave, then we're slapping them in the face?
Yeah.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: I mean, look, I don't know. And I think that's what I'm saying.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: We don't. I don't.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: Well, but I mean, just in this conversation, that's kind of one of the things that's annoyed me about this last week is that all of us laymen, meaning us, just Americans that aren't in, you know, the deep throes of the military or an intelligence services or in the, you know, the top level.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: Those who don't need to know.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: Correct, Exactly. We really don't know what's going on. And that's not to. And I want to be very clear here, because I've tried to have some conversation with several friends over the last week. And again, this is what concerns me about the discourse in our country, is that the media sources that all of us watch pit us against each other. So what happens is that if I try and just say, hey, why are you freaking out about this? Because you never cared one shit about Afghanistan since I've known you. Basically, all of a sudden, they act like I'm defending Biden, and I'm like, yo, yo, peel your mind away from this tribalism and this, you know, like you said, the Marvel Cinematic Universe of heroes and villains.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Heroes.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: And he's not my hero. I don't care about. I mean, I care about Joe Biden as a human being, and I want him to be successful because Just like I wanted Trump, Obama, Bush, all of the presidents. Because I'm an American citizen. I live here, so I want my president to be successful, no matter who they are. But the point is, is that, like, that's why I started this. Just your first answer for you was, you know, go listen to our pod from a month ago. Because the way I thought about it when I re. Listened to it last week was, you and I are guys sitting here in South Florida. You're an attorney. I run, you know, wealth management firm. It's not. We're not, like, you know, like you said, we're not in the know, but we pay attention to stuff over time.
So the behavior of the Taliban, for example, isn't a surprise to me. You know, the fact that trying to get a bunch of people out quickly, out of a third world country, that's a disaster anyway, is not a surprise to me. Now, what do. We don't know?
We don't know what the real deal is with the Taliban. What have the Taliban told the Biden administration? Whoever's not out on that day, we're shooting them. And now the Biden administration has to make a decision. Do you want to have a bunch of Americans getting shot in the street of Kabul, which will force us to retaliate?
Then you have a.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: And. Which would be violating the agreement that Trump signed, you know, last year.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Because this is what I want to say to Americans.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: We agreed. Well, hold on. But we agreed to withdraw this year. Like, that was part of the deal that was put forth. And so what I understand is that we're following through on that. But go ahead.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: No, but my point is, is that. Just saying that this could be a lot worse. It's terrible. Now, I'm not taking that away from anybody that wants to tell me that.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: This is terrible. It's a moral disaster. We got allies and people that helped us that are gonna be left behind. I get it. But my point is, is that we don't know what the real story is behind it. You got a city of 6 million people in Kabul, the only airfield where we can really get in and out. And what if the Taliban said no? If you go past that date, we're shooting everybody. And imagine if America's gotta shoot back. And now we have, A month later, 100,000 civilian casualties.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: This scenario, for all we know, there could have been five scenarios that were laid out. Yeah. And this one was chosen because while it's bad, it's not as bad as it could.
You know, and so that part of it is definitely not something that we're getting from a context standpoint in the coverage of this. You know, so maybe people expected everything to go smoothly. Maybe, as you said, people haven't been paying attention for this whole time, so that now it's flashed in their face. It's like all, it's the most important thing in the world to them all of a sudden. I mean, I guess we can get to the media part now because you.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Ain'T gonna get anything else. Like, yeah, you ain't gonna get anything else from me. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm fired up about the American people. I'm disappointed in my fellow countrymen for this.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Well, but I think we have to start it the way it was covered, though, and here's why. Because when you look at the way it's covered, you're pointing at the people. But, and you actually said this to me earlier in the week, the way this thing is being framed, it's leading people to a certain place in terms of the outrage. And I point out to you, I talk about this often.
We have to stop looking at the main. And I'm talking about the mainstream media. I'm talking, you can put different partisan bents on it, which I don't think is healthy. I don't think that's smart. Like, there is, you know, you have a Fox News that intentionally tries to have a partisan bent. But I think it's a, it's disingenuous intellectually to just try to apply that to everything and say, oh, okay, well, you know, we have to be both sides to everything. But needless to say, this is a whole media thing. All media is guilty of what I'm talking about here. And that is they're not in the information business, they're in the entertainment business. And what they're peddling from an entertainment standpoint is basically convenient facts. Sometimes made up stuff, but convenient facts. And so what they're doing, they're trying to compete with Netflix, they're trying to compete with entertainment properties. And so what they do, we've seen this more explicitly with the social media companies, but what they do is try to create narratives, try to create compelling narratives, try to present things in a way that are going to tug on our emotions. We. Why? So that we'll keep watching. If they put things in proper context and perspective. And it's like, oh, okay, well, this is important, but it's not that big of a deal. What do you do? You turn it off. You turn on a movie, you know, so they're purposefully trying to gin us up all the time because that's how they keep eyeballs. And so I think that's where you have to start your analysis if you're going to go off on the. On the American public, because their source of information, our source of information, unless you really try hard not to have that be your source of information, is trying to lure them in to this heroes and villains, to this narrative, to this thing that will make you turn off the movie and watch the news all day.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Yeah, no, you're right. And we've had just conversations where I've compared the current media and I would say Internet, in terms of social media, the way the algorithms know how to disturb us and send us stuff that's going to get us emotionally disturbed. So we click on stuff that. It reminds me of the food industry a lot.
And we've learned a lot about food and as far as our society over the last couple decades and, you know, to learn that the way that sugars and salts are used to manipulate us, to stay hooked to certain foods, processed foods, and the way that they put flavors in there and all that, even though these things are unhealthy for us, you know, we kept eating them and eating them. And that's what I mean. I'd say the last 20 years or so, our society's matured enough where most people understand some of these pros and cons with how they approach their food. But think about, like, when we were kids, you and I, in the 1980s, let's say our parents weren't armed with all this information we were eating.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: The information wasn't public by and large. Like, people didn't know a Spartan A was caught was causing all these crazy things. And it took 10 years to get through the FDA. And even when it did, it was kind of a political favorite. Like, people didn't know all that stuff. And so, you know, like, we've seen all types of stuff with the food industry where more information came out and they were behaving in a way to manipulate the public to maximize their profits. And so, yeah, that is exactly what I'm saying.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: And that's what I'm saying. So now the media, but the media in a different way is doing it with our minds.
And so in there, you know, just like the food industry hired a bunch of, you know, scientists, psychologists and professionals that knew how to deal with getting people hooked on something. The same thing has happened to us as it relates to our media and our social media. And kind of a lot of the Internet ecosystem, where we're fighting a battle against an army of psychologists, scientists, and people that understand what makes us tick. And normally what makes us tick, us as scientists. Yep. Are things that upset us. And so, for example, that's why.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Or things that tell us that we're right about everything. That's where I got the whole participation trophy with news thing, where people only seek out news sources that tell them what they want to hear, regardless if it's true, you know, and so we've seen that. Where people don't want. Don't give me the facts, just tell me what I want to hear that makes me feel good. And, you know, I call that the participation trophy, you know, that people want for news.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Well, it goes back to Roger Ailes, the former chairman of Fox News, who understood this extremely well and applied it very well. And he made a great statement, which is very true. He said that people don't want to be informed. They want to believe they're informed. And that's a very tough statement to digest because it sounds like it might not make sense, but when you really think about it, it's true. Like you just said, most people don't want to be told things that make them uncomfortable. And we've done discussions on this. Right. Like the whole recent, you know, again, in the last six months, all of a sudden, these new things come up that are all of a sudden going to destroy America all over the news. Like critical race theory, Right?
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: First of all, we did a show on it, so I won't go too much into it, but it's. Again, I'm not here to advocate at all for critical race theory, but what that really is about is people don't want to hear a different narrative than what they've been told about the history of this country.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: But consistent with what we're talking about here, though, I think the point should be made that that was a manufactured crisis. It's something that existed for decades, and then all of a sudden, the media was able to give it incredible salience in people's minds and make them like states passed a bunch of states passed laws about this, like, out of nowhere. This was nowhere in the public consciousness a year ago, even though it was decades old then. And so it shows the power. And Ailes is a good person to cite because he kind of. You can almost look at him as the godfather of this. In a sense, everybody is using similar tactics, you know, in terms of how to gather attention, how to keep attention of their. Their Audience. People may use it for different means, people may have different levels of honesty and truthfulness. But the goal of all these media companies ailes insight was to realize that if we want to make money in this real money in this enterprise, we can't be all about the facts. News bureaus back, you go back to fairness doctrine times, 80s and before 1980s and before news bureaus lost money, they were, they were things that lost money every year. And then the entertainment divisions of NBC or CBS or ABC had to make up the money and they were the profit centers and the news people were, they lost money because news isn't a profitable venture because you got, sometimes it's hard stuff, it's hard truths. It's not what you want to hear. You have to sit down and give people context, which takes time, give people perspective, which takes time. And that basically our current media is unable or unwilling to do that. Unwilling or unable because it will ruin their bottom line.
Yep.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: And the other thing that. Because what you're talking about is very interesting because then what it does is it leads to this shared narrative that I've been hearing all this last week. Like one example of a shared narrative. I know there's a lot how embarrassing this is to America. You know, that's what I've been hearing from a lot of people. Oh, this is so embarrassing. There's so right now, obviously there's a lot I could say, yeah, it's embarrassing that this is sloppy, I get it. But I started thinking and going back and saying like this has happened multiple times over the last 40 years and I've never seen people react like this. And that's what tells me there's something different with this media ecosystem. Right. So. And I want to cite some of these and I know you'll have them up in the show notes.
A lot of people don't know this. When the Shah of Iran was deposed in 1979 and won the Ayatollah Khomeini and kind of, you know, the whole aggressive Muslim theocracy took over the US backed Shah. Correct.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: And then, you know, they were allies, almost an analogous type of scenario here, but go ahead.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Yep. And so, and so they had purchased 79 F14 Tomcats, which at the time were the top of the line fighter jet, you know, equivalent, let's say to the F35 today. And obviously that wasn't the only weapon system they bought. They had guns, tanks, munitions, all that kind of stuff.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: But that was the headline.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that was the headline.
Now obviously I know that Jimmy Carter suffered for certain things that happened and then, but it was a lot different than now. I mean, we had 52American hostages at the US embassy, all that. So let's hope that doesn't take place here. But my point is, is that, you know, I don't remember as a little kid everyone freaking out about, you know, Iran having our weapons. Then in 93, sorry, 1983, we had the bombing of the Marine barracks and in Lebanon, and Reagan smartly just said, you know what, we're out of here. No one said he cut and run and all this stuff. 92.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: But I think the important point is to make here is not necessarily what was said then and what wasn't said then. It's that this is not what we're seeing now is not something that's like, oh my God, how could this ever happen? This happens pretty regularly when we get out of something.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: That's why I want to keep going. Because it is like you're saying predo 93, Blackhawk down. Remember they made a movie about that one.
And then we have in recent times, just two years ago, we pulled out of Syria via tweet and it was so fast that, I mean, you can find there's articles from December of 2019 on this.
The Russian soldiers were in there within days after our troops left, taking selfies and posted them on Facebook and Instagram, laughing at us in our bases, in our bases.
And we left so fast that the NEV16 had to be called to go bomb one of the bases that still had some top secret stuff in it to make sure no one else got it. So again, all that stuff is embarrassing to me, but I, again, I don't see why there's just such a huge attention, like everybody's piling on how bad this is. That's what I'm wondering. Like, how are we ever going to do anything as a country?
[00:19:23] Speaker A: But particularly to your point, though, particularly after nobody had, like, people hadn't been talking about Afghanistan for a decade.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
When they did talk, it was they want to get out.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: They want to get out.
Yeah. It's been something that people have that's been out of the consciousness for so long. And then we get out, which is what, like you said, the majority of people wanted. And then it becomes the hot button issue. And it's like, well, okay, that's, to me, that's how, you know, this is something where it's the tactics of the media that's able to give this such a level of salience in people immediately. Right. Away like the critical race theory that you brought up was an interesting analogy there and that nobody cared about it. It'd been around since the 70s. Nobody cared about it. Then the media just flashes it. You know, certain, in that case it was, it was, you know, more so the right wing media. But in general, it's again, it's the same tactics regardless of the subjects that you're talking about. They flash it on the screen for a few months and then it becomes the most important thing in the world. Everybody, let me, let me, well, let me, let me say this because we had both mentioned that it was important. Like our, what we're saying here overall is not that the media needs to be quote, unquote controlled or that they're like. The free press is something that we value and is very important in any democratic society. You can't have a democratic society without a free press that is not controlled by power. Power wants to control the media so that they can control the messages people get out so the power can manipulate these messages. Right now what's manipulating the messages are the desire for money by the actual, the media company executives. They want more money, they want more viewers. So that's what's manipulating the messages. It's no better to have some authority who's manipulating those messages either, you know, but there has to be something that has the media, and particularly the news media in this sense be out there about trying to give news, about trying to give context and perspective. Because we are seeing firsthand social media gets a lot of this rap as well. But what we're saying is that it's the news media too, and we're seeing now the effects it can have on society when they are all about the dollar. And that's it. And the way. Because getting the dollar is not about telling people truth. It's not about telling people, giving people perspective and context as far as what's going on. It's about heroes and villains. It's about narratives that make people feel good about themselves. And that's it. That's, that's how you make money. You know, as, as a. If that's what your news media is going to be governed by, you're going to have an uninformed citizenry and ultimately you'll have a democratic system that won't.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Work well since, and you're right, since the way to make money is advertising. And the way that you show companies that you're pitching to spend money on ads on your network is by showing how many people watch your show, right? Your Ratings or your website, you know, how many people come here, then naturally you're correct. The need to create entertainment out of things that generally aren't that exciting, like the news, you know, because that's why C Span, you know, and PBS don't have, you know, millions of viewers every night, because they're pretty damn boring. And it's kind of like that's the way news should be. But you're right somewhere, 25 years ago or so that the experiment was made and it was shown to have worked, which was basically MSNBC and Fox Both founded in 1996 to create more of a infotainment version of the news to cater to the way certain audiences wanted to hear things. And that, like you said, is absolutely exploded in the last 25 years.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: It makes money because it makes money. Yeah, it does do what it's intended to do.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: And this is why I agree with things like, you know, section 230 for the Internet needs to be looked at again. Because I'm pretty sure if a lot of these companies were held to account, which I want to get into in a second, they may be more conscious about what they allow on their platforms or not, or at least what is allowed to appear that it's legitimate versus maybe having into some sort of disclaimer. But I wanted to.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: To your point, it gives. You need to add something else to the calculus, basically. You know, like right now the calculus is we can make money. There's no risk there. You know, it's all reward, basically. And if you change that calculus, then obviously you can alter the case, unfortunately.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: That this isn't hurting them. But the risk has been that our country continues to deteriorate in terms of our internal dialogue and discourse and our ability to do things, our ability to govern ourselves. Yeah. But one thing I wanted to say before we move to the next kind of section of our discussion, just really going back on this embarrassment thing because I talked to so many friends over the last week, and that's why I said, it's this theme I've been hearing. And I started thinking like, yeah, this isn't good. Of course, like I said, it's embarrassing that it's sloppy. But I started thinking, like, I didn't see this level of emotion and passion for something like the January 6th insurrection. I thought to myself, that was freaking embarrassing. And I said to a couple friends, like, what if we as Americans saw across the pond here, you know, the Buckingham palace in London getting stormed by British people just because they just, you know, decided they didn't like what was going on? We'd all be like, what the hell is going on over there?
[00:24:29] Speaker A: And worse, because they were lied to and told that some election was. They were still going.
[00:24:35] Speaker B: That's where I'm going to go with the election. Well, that's where I'm going is that, you know, it's embarrassing to me that we believe, and I believe that we are the beacon of freedom and democracy, the shining city on the hill that Ronald Reagan famously told us. And I want to believe all that. So it's embarrassing that we have elected officials in states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan that are still doing recounts after five recounts already and telling us that there's bamboo and boxes. So they came from China and all this crap. And it's like, you know what? That to me is more embarrassing on the world stage. That we as an American nation, that's the superpower of the world, we have people that we're doing this stuff that.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: Are unwilling to accept democracy.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: Unwilling to accept democracy and that won't allow for. I mean, I thought about the insurrection. I'm so glad the Senate came in and finished their business. And I'm proud of the Republican senators that changed their votes after that incident. But because that was close to the first non peaceful transfer of power in our history. I mean, remember we had the show about the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. That's a tragedy. But they didn't mess with his vice president becoming president. I mean, no one like messed around with that ceremony. And so my point is, is that we've never had anything like this in the history of this country. And as we all know, the last time a mob stormed the Capitol was a foreign nation that we were at war with, which was in 1814.
So I would say that's embarrassing. You know, all this kind of.
You know, I was thinking about the last week I started looking up some stats while everyone's focusing on Afghanistan. We had 5,000 COVID deaths, 500 deaths from gun violence. And remember on Thursday of last week we had a guy threatening to blow up the Library of Congress in a truck and livestreamed it on Facebook. Yeah, that's embarrassing to me. And guess what? He was citing the big lie.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: So everyone in the world on the election. Yeah. The 4 billion people on Facebook saw him do that. That's pretty embarrassing.
So that's all I want to say is that this is where to me, the media has disrupted all of us because they got us focusing on stuff like a bad tactical withdrawal. But that's still part of Our overall strategic game plan that everyone wanted for this country versus important things like this and like other things that we talk about, so.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Well, yeah, yeah. I think that what they're doing, they figured out that they could get people fired up about this, and so therefore, they're gonna keep doubling down on it because, again, that's their business model. And, you know, it really leads us into a tough pickle because it's difficult to figure out. Okay, well, how do you. You have to be careful if you're talking about regulating the media and so forth. But like I said, they're studying, they're doing the research as far as how to get into our heads. And, you know, like I said, the social media company people are really aware of this already, but I don't know that people are as aware that the news media is doing the same thing. And I mean, that, to me, was what I really wanted to get to in this conversation.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: So, I mean, do you think. Well, tell me this. Do you think that there is ways forward that we can kind of try to pull this, the news media, at least the news media out of this kind of spiral of death?
[00:27:43] Speaker B: I'm not sure. I mean, you've alluded to a few things over time in some of our discussions. Like, for example, the Fairness Doctrine, which folks can look up, was ended in 1987. It was a law that would kind of force media companies to allow the same amount of airtime for both political views, you know, conservative and liberal. So. And then, you know, there's nuances to it and all. But again, things like that that were pulled away, maybe, you know, they should be reconsidered because maybe.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: Or the thought at least like that. You know, I've said, like, it's not always that we can reconstitute things that we had that we saw that worked well. You know, like whether it's the New Deal, whether it's the Fairness Doctrine, as soon as the Fairness Doctrine goes away, you get Rush Limbo. Like, you know, it's right, It's. It's sequential. But it's not that you necessarily can. Can pull. You can't necessarily put the toothpaste back in the tube, but at least understand the cause and effect there where we, when we put some kind of restraint on how far you could go in terms of what you're telling people. There's one thing I wanted to add because I wanted to get you to say this or to comment on it, because this was a great point you made bringing up.
We saw last. This was Last year when Tucker Carlson got sued for some of the things he was saying on his show as far as being whether it was truthful and so forth. And how you pointed out that his lawyers argued successfully, by the way, that no reasonable person would believe the things he's saying on his show are true. And so it's basically it's abdication completely saying, no, we're not here to give people truth, we're here to give people entertainment. And so, and this is in court documents, you know, like this is something that was a successful legal argument that no reasonable person would believe that he's saying stuff that's true in that way. And so I thought like you jumping on that I thought was, you know, when you, you pointed it out to me, I remember when we talked about it like off the air last year, but I didn't actually, I didn't think about that when we were doing this this week. But it's a good point. Just like they're not even trying, so to speak, to give us be truth tellers. And when I say they being just the mainstream media, they understand that that is subordinate to entertainment.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and it's interesting because I mean, what a fascinating legal defense. And the fact that it worked tells us a lot. And I think so. One of the things I could see is a show like Tucker Carlson's for example, and there's others I don't want to just pick on him, but.
[00:30:08] Speaker A: Well, he made the argument though, so that's why.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: No, but let's say for, you know, it could be Don Lemon on cnn. He does a lot of opinion and kind of just always is talking and not always, you know, sticking to script type of thing. The point is, is that there could be a crawl at the bottom that says exactly what Tucker Carlson's lawyer's defense was. This is entertainment. You may not get facts in this dialogue here, blah, blah, blah. I mean if that was just constantly streaming at the bottom, maybe at least that would help people understand that they're being entertained and not. And this isn't really serious stuff. But I don't know, man. And then the other thing I thought, cuz I like that you brought that up because it reminds me then of some of the lawsuits we saw coming out after the election, you know, with the big lie. So the Dominion voting system lawsuits, the smartmatic lawsuits. And again, these are serious things because these people who have made these outrageous claims that are all been proven false are hurting the bottom line of companies. And it's kind of sad. I don't know who these people are that own Dominion or smartmatic. But I'm sure there are guys like us that work hard and it's a competitive industry, I'm sure. And you got to lobby the government and get safe enough to be considered the right machine to buy for the state's voting system. And now all of a sudden, you've got all this with no proof at all, these people just going on TV and saying all this. And so I do think one of the things that could help us maybe right this ship a bit is the courts. You know, they've shown to be very resilient over this last decade of a lot of issues. And I think that, you know, maybe just more lawsuits like this forcing people to just show that they either have facts or they don't. The problem, though, and you've cited this a lot, is, you know, the court system takes a long time.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: Yeah, court. I was gonna say the courts move slow. And some of that's intentional because you want the court to be a deliberative body, you know, and so. But yeah, it. The court in the court system being flashy, more or less, you know, like the being flashy being, you know, like having the slick presentation doesn't necessarily create a fact out of thin air. So it's either you got the goods or you don't. And then like with the big lie situation, every time they get to court, they lost because they didn't have the goods, but that didn't stop them from still saying it on television because there was an audience for that. And so I don't know whether or not if there exists a way to take something like this out in one swoop when the appetite of the public is clearly there for it. It's difficult to legislate like what people. This is a market system. People were trying to like people. I don't agree with this, but people have been trying to make weed illegal for 100 years, and it didn't stop people from smoking, you know, and so, like, where there's a demand for things, oftentimes when you try to prohibit it. We saw this with alcohol. When you try to prohibit it, all you do is create a black market. You don't really get rid of it now. You may decrease its prominence. You may not, you know, and so it seems like a difficult place to be almost, in a sense, like you said earlier, you turn it back to the American people and say, well, you know, you have to want more. If you still want a democracy, then, you know, democracy takes a little More work. You know, it's not a autopilot type of government.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: No. And I think, because you raise a good point, and it's true. Like, one thing I want to point out, you know, for the audience, obviously, freedom of speech in the First Amendment is about the government not limiting your speech. So I want to, you know, as a. As a counter to people say, you know, the former president, he was, you know, not allowed anymore on the social media platforms and other people that have been banned. No, I know, and that's my point. That's why I'm just saying it, that, you know, that's not an example of a violation of freedom of speech, because that's a private enterprise that has a right and has rules. Now, we can all acknowledge that they don't apply those rules fairly. Right. I mean, I think the President of the United states, the former 45th president, maybe should have been kicked off in his first year based on his rhetoric, but I understood they weren't gonna do that while he was still in office. So my point is just that freedom of speech really comes when it comes to government.
And, you know, but it comes up.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: Here, though, remember, because what we're talking about is, is there anything, for example, that the government can do to at least require news companies if they're gonna hold themselves out as news companies, to give us truth and fact and not just simply try to manipulate us into whatever, thinking, whatever, so they can make the most money off of us?
[00:34:31] Speaker B: I've got a thought. And it's just a much heavier lift for all of us, which is, I think it really is about changing the nature of how we educate, you know, the future of this country, because all of us here already been educated to a certain extent. My point is, is that the reason why this moment doesn't freak me out about Afghanistan like we started on is because I'm already educated about the other times in American history when these have happened. And. And it. This doesn't seem like something so diabolical and, And. And hyperbolic to me. It's just like, okay, this is another sloppy exit from a war zone.
This is not something that, like I.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Said last week, this was more of the norm than anything in terms of when we're trying to get out of a country like this.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: Yeah, like I said last week, we had a guy trying to bomb the Library of Congress. I mean, and we joked about it too, you and I, that if the guy's name was Muhammad and he looked like an Arab, the whole reaction of this country would have been Different.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that gets into a lot of things that are baked in, into our country, you know, that, that are all the way to the core. I will say this. The, the, the piece that I think could make a difference, and this goes kind of to the crawl that you mentioned, but even more expansive than that. In my business, you know, dealing with intellectual property, you can't hold yourself out as something that you're not.
And so people can get sued, you know, for, for holding yourself out for something like you cannot do it. There's a law, it's called false designation of origin. And it can be applied in a lot of different ways. It falls under unfair competition, basically. Real news organizations, I think, should have a claim, a cause of action, a lawsuit. They should be able to sue quasi news organizations who call themselves news organizations because they're taking viewers away by holding themselves out as giving news when actually they're saying their viewers shouldn't take them seriously. And so I think that, like, it comes to. I'm a lawyer, so obviously, you know, like, I'm a hammer. I see a nail. Like, I think that litigation is a way that this could resolve itself, but I think that that is misleading. When you hold yourself out as news, but you're in the entertainment business, then I think that real news organizations should be able to come after you for that. So I think that's the kind of thing that could help. But obviously that is so piecemeal that that's something that may or may not be able to make a difference on a large scale. It could, though, because once you get a tipping point of something, once people start seeing that thing happen, it may change behavior again. It may change the calculus.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: I think the problem, though is in today's world is at least here in the United States, the primary news channels also have their opinions. It's all the same company versus if you were to say like a PBS or a C Span, because they'd be trying to sue Fox, cnn, msnbc, and a few of them altogether, because they've all got legitimate news desks. And then they've got the opinion, too.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Yeah, but they merge them together. And the argument would be that a reasonable person wouldn't know what the news was. Yes, there you was. Which they've already admitted, at least in one setting.
[00:37:29] Speaker B: So I knew an aggressive lawyer then maybe I would call him and ask him to throw that suit into a lawsuit out there. But.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: I think we should move on from here.
We also wanted to discuss this water out of thin air revelation coming out of Spain, where They've designed this machine and they go to arid areas, basically. So not airy. Not. They're not going to areas where it's super humid and you know it. You know, it's something you can clearly see. Oh, well, that's how they're getting the water. But basically it's almost like this similar technology to what with air conditioning, you know, where you. You are able to extract water, air conditioners, drip, you know, water. But ultimately what this company is doing is they set up shop in arid areas and they're able to generate water, drinking water, just with their machine and pulling in air. And so that could be a game changer, conceivably, for people living in areas where it's irregular drinking water, unclean drinking water and so forth. So what was your thought on this? And I want to get your brief thought on this. But then, you know, like, we also had kicked around in talking about this, just the long, extravagant history of human beings figuring out new ways to get drinking water, which is very interesting in itself. So what's your thought on this new one? And then just. You can go from there how you want. This is cool.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: It was pretty fascinating because it seems like a pretty simple idea. I mean, the guy basically took the concept of like air conditioning because all of us know that when air conditioners are running for a while, they get kind of wet and they start dripping, they drip.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: The condensation.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So what he did is he applied that same, I guess, the processes that make that happen, but not to create an air conditioner, but just to create the ability for that. For a condensation to happen from the air.
[00:39:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:20] Speaker B: And so what amazed me is that he's been. He's had this going on since the 90s. I thought that was pretty interesting. You know, he's got 20 plus years of this kind of technology out there.
And it amazes me because as we've done, you know, plenty of shows on the climate and the warming of the Earth. And, you know, it's interesting because certain areas are getting drier, like in the Middle east and all that. You got lakes and rivers that are drying up, and then other areas are getting wetter because of the polar ice caps melting. So one of the things that this could be very useful for, like you said, is in arid areas, but I think also potentially just for all of us at some point. I was pretty impressed that he's. They said a small machine can make around 50 to 75 liters of water a day, where the bigger versions can make 5,000, I thought. I mean, I don't know. I think the average human being needs to drink about a gallon of fluid, you know, water or clean fluid a day. And a gallon is 2.2 liters. So you could see that even 50 to 75 could at least be enough to get, you know, small group of people water.
And then a 5000 liters a day could maybe get a small town or something, you know, at least enough water.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: You're planning on moving off the grid, man, take getting one of these and moving off the grid.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: Hey, you never know, man. You know, I started with the lack of Facebook, like I said, but, you know, maybe it ends with me living under a tree somewhere and with this machine. So.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: Well, but even like on a boat, you know, like, this would be something that you could, you know, like have and get drinking water. I mean, I think it's, you know, in connecting it, you know, you.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: By the way, though, when my wife finds me on a boat after six months at sea and she yelling at me, it's gonna be your fault because you just put. You just planted that seed. I'm asking. You just planted that seed.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: That's all. I'm just asking the question. Isn't that what the media says? I'm just asking the question.
So, I mean, I think it. Yes, I looked at it the same way as you in terms of the flexibility it creates as far as creating water out of thin air. There's thin air everywhere. And so in one of the. One of the unique pieces about this is how it can work on in really hot areas. Like, it can be over 100 degrees in very low humidity and still work, you know, whereas, you know, like, you take that technology, you optimize it for this purpose, and you repurpose it. And so it's really cool. And you had sent me, you know, just something looking at, like, this long history, looking back, you know, Roman times, in terms of the aqueducts delivering water, constant running water, you know, because you have these aqueducts that are built, you know, that slightly, you know, go downhill over long periods of time going into. Just all over the world. This has been a problem that people have been trying to solve forever. And so were there any of those that. That you would want to mention in terms of just kind of how cool it is? You know, like, in the sense that our human ingenuity is always figuring out new ways to get water or to make water clean. Clean enough to drink or, you know, whatever it would be.
[00:42:14] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, one thing, even just hearing you say that. I mean, I don't think any of us, me included, regularly appreciate just how easy these type of things make our lives as human beings. I mean, you know, we've. One of the things that was in the article about this gentleman that got him to even want to build this is I think he was visiting some country, third World country, and saw that kids were walking like three to five miles a day just to go to one well to get water. So think about all the time that humanity, humanity used to spend foraging for just, you know, fresh water and food every day. So we don't appreciate, you know, I think just the fact our refrigerator has food in it.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: In our country, most people a lot. And that the water runs as soon as we turn the tap on.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: Otherwise we'd be walking to get water right now, man.
[00:42:59] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. We'd be talking, but no one else would hear us.
[00:43:03] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:43:04] Speaker B: But that, to me, is why it's just fascinating because if you look and I'll throw some stats out here, I started doing some research just because I found it interesting about water. You know, 3% of the Earth's water is fresh, but 2 1/2% of that is unavailable and it's, you know, locked up in glaciers, polar ice caps, atmosphere and soil, or it's already highly polluted. So really, 1/2 of 1% of the Earth's fresh water is actually potable or drinkable for us. So the thing is, is I always was concerned that fresh water could be like the next oil, you know, whereas we have more humans on the Earth, you know, once maybe we get to 10 or 12 billion people, maybe water is that scarce, that we actually start having wars and skirmishes globally for water.
So to me, a machine like this, if it can be worked on and perfected over the next couple decades, that might save humanity a lot of pain because maybe, like you said, we can just stick these things in the air randomly in various parts of the world, and they can just create water. Then the other thing.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: Well, let me. There's one thing that, to me, as far as all of these innovations, when you look back, like you said, makes it much more convenient to. And makes it something we don't even think about. You know, like, we ourselves feel like we're. We've accomplished all this when actually, you know, we're just standing on the shoulders of the people that have. But, like, in terms of the way science and basic scientific processes have been used throughout time, like I said, gravity has been the great deliverer of water up until this point really, you know, whether it's aqueducts, whether it's water towers, you know, like where you have an area and you put. You have. You pump water up into a tower and then that gives you plumbing.
And from just the gravity standpoint, because the water's up high and it pushes it down through all the pipes. And what this represents almost to me is kind of a different approach from a science standpoint of how. Of acquiring the water or delivering the water to a particular place. Because now you're using still a scientific process, condensation, but, you know, it's on demand. It's wherever you are, as opposed to finding it, then using gravity to get it to where you are. So it's kind of just a different approach and something. I look at all these things as things that can be built on. And, you know, so from my standpoint, it's really exciting just to see, like I said, just a different kind of approach to generating drinking water.
[00:45:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And one of the things, you know, I actually learned a lot just kind of preparing for this show, and that's what I want to share with the audience about, because it's just reminded me there's other offshoots that I see here. Like, so for us in the US I thought this was pretty interesting just to share.8% of the water freshwater usage in the United States is domestic use. So that's like us in our home shower, you know, drinking water, all that 33% is agriculture, which makes sense because we see all seen the farms that get water and all that, but 59% of the fresh water use is industry.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: And then I saw another stat here. More than half the people in the US get water from groundwater. They get their water from the groundwater. So I thought about, like, there's issues here with us in Florida with Lake Okeechobee, which is where we get most of our fresh water from because of climate change and the limestone being a very soft sediment, you know, there's already beginning to be traces of salt water creeping into that freshwater lake. So that could be a problem in the future. And then I thought of, like, when there's been arguments against certain fracking around the country and on the Midwest.
Some of those arguments I heard is because they were close to underwater aquifers.
[00:46:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:43] Speaker B: And the concern was that, you know, these explosions could, you know, basically damage and pollute the underwater aquifer. And I don't think when I was reading this, I was like, yeah. Because then I hear the Wall street crowd get on and say, oh, you're anti business and all that. But I don't think, you know, to read that.
[00:46:56] Speaker A: Everything is poker, man. Everything is.
[00:46:59] Speaker B: Exactly. Well, that's right. But I didn't realize that more than half of us get our drinking water from the groundwater. So that's a national security issue. If we really kind of messed up, either through pollution or through not dealing with the climate change stuff, our groundwater, you know, we'd have issues in this country.
[00:47:16] Speaker A: I mean, and if you go back in time, the bigger issues were excrement, you know, like it was the water getting contaminated from animals.
That's still an issue now, but I mean, that's less of an issue because we can treat water for pathogens with chlorine and so forth. Now, the issue, like I've seen the issue, they talk about it in Georgia with the, the, the, the carpet making and the denim making and the, the, the chemicals that are put into the drinking water there, which are forever chemicals, which. We did a show on that, you know, a while back, and so now there's no, you can't just put chlorine in there and get rid of that. You know, like, that's something that we're going to have to wrestle with for a long time. So, yes, protecting the water or at least figuring out the sources of water and making sure that whatever sources of water we have, we can still use indefinitely is going to be an important part of this. I mean, but of course, unless you can just pull it out of thin air. Yeah, well, but I think the example of what we're seeing, you know, like just with this inventor who's come up with a machine that can help us along as far as pulling water from a different source than what we've had. That's kind of what I, the way I look at it, we need to hang in there long enough for our ingenuity to figure out some solutions to these things. If we cause these problems to happen too quickly, our innovation won't keep up and then we'll just be stuck. So humans have faced a lot of problems over time and they've solved a lot of problems, but we got to stay in the game in order to come up with these solutions.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: Or we can keep yelling at each other on social media and, and that feels better, being hysterical about events that happen generally once every 10 years on the news. So that feels better. I guess we can make our choice. Yeah, well, it does feel better than talking about the earth dying. You're right. Yeah.
[00:48:56] Speaker A: So. But, no, but we appreciate everybody for joining us hopefully we're able to end this on a slightly brighter note. Toonday came with the fire and brimstone today, so, you know, we would have to. I'll cool them down over here, get them ready for something more pleasant next week. But, yeah, we appreciate everybody for joining us.
[00:49:12] Speaker B: I like the fire.
[00:49:14] Speaker A: All right, well, and until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:49:18] Speaker B: Tune Dagon Lana.
[00:49:19] Speaker A: All right, subscribe rate review. Tell us what you think, and we'll talk to you next time.
