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 end of the US war in Afghanistan, which is formally ending this summer. And we'll also talk about the type of legacy that we think that conflict will have.
We'll also take a look at some recent studies which aim to prove that the appearance of gray hair may be reversible with little to no effort on your part.
Joining me today is a man who is down for presidents to represent him. Tunde Ogonlana Tunday, are you still spending money from 88?
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Only with dead presidents, sir. Remember, you said presidents. I only like the dead ones.
And hold on, not to be morbid, but for the audience, remember, dead presidents are on our currency. That's what my point is. I'm not, definitely not trying to go anywhere else with that.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: I like the ambiguity. But yes, a lot of people would have got the reference anyway.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Just gotta do my disclosure since not everyone listening to this knows me personally. They might think I'm actually sadistic if I, if I don't give the, give the disclaimer.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Now, we're recording this on July 12, 2021.
And we noted that this summer, America's longest war is coming to an end. The U.S. war in Afghanistan began nearly 20 years ago, shortly after the terrorist attack on 9 11.
And now President Biden is bringing the war to an end with the final withdrawals happening this summer.
So Tunde, just, you know, starting off just with that, what are your thoughts on the withdrawal, particularly in light of the fact that, you know, like the Taliban is still has an ongoing presence there. And so it's not that, you know, we're pulling out or withdrawing or whatever, but, you know, it's not like there's nothing going on anymore. It's just we've made a strategic decision to do something else.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's. I think we'll get into, I think a few of these things as we progress with our conversation in terms of, you know, maybe more of the what's going on right now with the Taliban and the way we are exiting. And I know we'll give some thoughts as to maybe what we see could be kind of the things to watch out for going forward. But I think just the thoughts on the withdrawal or initial thoughts, I think it's just one of these things where I'm kind of neutral on it in terms of it's not good or bad. I just think it's a historic milestone for the United States. It's our longest war.
It was 20 years. It's interesting, I remember talking to my wife about it, that there's kids fighting today in Afghanistan or that were up until last week that were born after the war began. You know, you think about an 18, 19 year old recruit, they're actually younger than the events of 9, 11. So I think, you know, for those moments, it's historic. And the other thing in this moment is learning. And this is part of what I know we'll get into is the choices that our country has made over the last 20 years. So we've got 2 trillion in spending and estimates of up to 240,000 total dead if you include the Afghan population. So I think that's when I look back too and say, okay, 20 years, 22 trillion and 240,000 lives.
I think that's where we can look back and say what I don't like to use the term, was it worth it? Because I don't know if that really hits the nail of what I'm trying to point out here, but it's more like, was that an endeavor that we feel put our country in a better place than we were 20 years ago in total?
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Well, no, it's the cost benefit.
You do the cost benefit analysis with any endeavor, but go ahead.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And then just to finish that thought off is like, and how do we feel about that as Americans, as opposed to having spent $2 trillion, maybe some other way over the last 20 years? And obviously, you know, there's no other way to kill 240,000 people. That's a, that's obviously just a tragedy in itself. So that's kind of the way I feel is like, okay, this is over and a lot has happened, but it's not a euphoric moment, it's not a down moment. It's just kind of another like, notch in the belt of American kind of life and history. And then let's see what happens next. That's kind of my attitude.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I definitely understand what you're saying from a, like the historical standpoint, like conceivably conflicts have to come to an end, at least from an active standpoint. The active part of the conflict, you got troops on the ground, boots on the ground, and you're running missions and so forth. That can't continue forever. Conceivably.
And so, but it does take a level of leadership to say, okay, well, that's it. You know, like a lot of people have talked about, okay, we got to end this war and we got to do, you know, we got to put our foot down and this and that, but it's actually happening now.
And so I take that as encouraging.
I think that, yeah, there will be time to look back and see from a cost benefit standpoint, would we do it again or if we did it again, how would we do it differently? Things that, the type of discussions that you need to have if you ever want to learn from your experiences, so there will be time for that. But even though the Taliban is still there, I think that once, I think as a country we've kind of moved on from dedicating our attention to this and if we're not going to do it right, then we need to stop doing it. And so from that standpoint, I do look at it as a positive because I don't think the attention and the will of the nation right now and for a while now has been on, hey, let's make sure that what we're doing over there, let's make sacrifices on this end so that we can do that the right way.
Maybe we never approached it in a way of making sacrifices, which is a discussion in itself, but if you're not going to have this war is serious. If you're not going to have this as the front of your mind, one of the most important things that you're working on, the things that politicians need to be talking about, the things that, you know, supporting the military that we need to have, top of the page agenda stuff, if we're not going to do that, then we shouldn't be there. And so from that, like I said, from that standpoint, I think it's a positive that at least an acknowledgement of, okay, we had a lot of will 20 years ago to be in there and doing this stuff that dissipated for various reasons over time. And so, well, if we're not going to be in there and really ramping it up, the way that the troops on the ground and the leadership think needs to happen in order to actually have the kind of effect that we may want to have the effect then, you know, and I don't even look at it as a failure or cut your losses in that type of sense. I'm just saying it's a, a refocusing of your efforts more so. And so, yeah, I think that's, it's good. You got to be able to think on your feet in the world. And so I think this represents thinking on your feet and saying, okay, look, we're not there Mentally, spiritually, from a country's will standpoint. So it's a necessity, almost.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I agree. And you know, you make a good point about, you know, our country's commitment to this endeavor.
You know, in this week, I know I've been doing a lot of reading, obviously preparing for today, and I actually watched a couple of documentaries. And it's good. I mean, 20 years, a long time. You know, just look at, looking at some of the footage from 2001, post 9 11. Look at some of President Bush's speeches at the time and some of the kind of the rhetoric that we were being told as to why we were doing this. And I think the beginning was, you know, we obviously had a serious buy in because my first memory goes to, you know, President Bush on the rubble of the towers in New York after the 911 attacks, when he was standing with a firefighter and with the bullhorn saying, the people that knock these buildings down are going to hear us. And I think that's. America had a buy in at that moment. Right. We knew what we were going to Afghanistan for. It was a nation state that had deteriorated post the Soviet conflict of the 1980s.
And so you think by 2001, you've got over a decade of that country basically not being a country and the vacuum of whatever power was there prior to the Afghan and Soviet conflict that lasted since the late 70s.
Those who filled the vacuum were the Taliban, basically an authoritarian, theocratic group that just came in and made some kind of order. Might not have been order that we agree with, but they're the ones that had the biggest guns and all that, that won those battles of the 90s. And then they got supported by a gentleman named Osama bin Laden who, you know, I'm sure for his own self interest, made sure to feed them, clothe them, and make sure that they were armed with the wealth that he had from a Saudi family in exchange for him having a base of operations to be unfettered with to do his Al Qaeda activities. So I think, you know, just hearing myself say it, yeah, we were very clear what we were doing in 2001. We were going to disrupt the ability for people like bin Laden and terrorist groups like Al Qaeda to actually use a country as their base of operations.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: And I think, and it's interesting because one of the documentaries they showed a speech from George W. Bush in 2001, but October of 01, where that was the laser beam focus. We're gonna root out terrorism. We're gonna go there kind of do this and come home. And then it was interesting by April of 2002, so not long, five months, six months later, it became his rhetoric had shifted to nation building.
And so I think that's what was that slippery slope of kind of getting us stuck there, that we got to somehow make these people's lives better more than just getting rid of the Taliban and all that. And so I think not to say that's not a noble idea. I just think that without a proper game plan on how to do that, like we saw with the Marshall Plan in Europe Post World War II, we actually had a game plan of how you're going to rebuild and do certain things.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: And a commitment to do it.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Yeah, and a commitment, like a commitment.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Not to short yourself on the resources or in your efforts. Basically, like the Marshall Plan, we threw a lot of money, a lot of organization, a lot of human resources at that.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: And one could argue too that the Marshall Plan never ended. Right. We still have 50,000 troops in Germany and a base there and all that. So I think that.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Well, I'll tell you this though, just to jump in real quick, because I do want to broaden our focus out here shortly. But I think that what you just pointed out is very instructive. But it also is kind of a natural progression in the sense that when you're angry, a month after you see you have this traumatic event, you see all these people die and you have a pretty good idea of who's doing it, who's, how they're doing it and where they are, your rhetoric is going to be more about pointing fingers and saying, I'm going to kick that dude's butt. But six months later, all of the other stuff starts to come in like, yeah, if we go kick those people's butt and then we leave, then either them or their spiritual successors might just take right back over and everything. We won't have disrupted much of anything. And so it became more of the idea like, well, we need to change the circumstances that you described in your first articulation where you explained how following the Soviet conflict, the chaos that reigned after that, and then the form of order that was brought by the Taliban, if we leave the country broken, then that type of stuff can happen again. And then we're right back where we started. And so a level of almost cool headed responsibility seeped in. But I would say where the, where the problem is and we can get into this right now. But the problem was that our will collectively move to other places. We just weren't focused on hey, let's make sure we. If we're going to try to make this into a place where, where things can work other than under someone's thumb, under. Other than by the decree of the person with the biggest gun, as you pointed out, if things can. You need a certain level of stability. You know, like law, all that stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. And so you need to build up a nation in order for that stuff to take hold. So looking at the duration of the conflict and while we were there, excuse me, why we were there, tell me what, you know, what do you think of the legacy of the conflict, both what it is and also, you know, honestly, whether you're satisfied with that, whether you think looking at the big picture, what we did is something that we can hold our head high about, or whether it was something that's more instructive for the next generation is saying, okay, well, here are the things that we did. We did some things right. We did some things that. That kind of undermined our ability to continue on with the same momentum. So, you know, what's your thoughts? You know, legacy and overall, the, the. What happened?
[00:13:20] Speaker B: You know, what are your thoughts, man, that's. Let me, yeah. Channel my thoughts into something everyone can understand because they're all over the place, actually, because, and I say that because there's, you know, there's a lot of thoughts, right, like, you know, I'm the type of person that on the surface, you know, I don't think war is a good thing, you know, people getting hurt and all that. But I understand, like you said, right, our country got attacked and we had to go do something about it and make sure this didn't happen again. From the standpoint of specifically, like I had said earlier, right, a terrorist group was using a nation as its base of operations, and that was not tolerable.
And then we go into the next phase of kind of the conversation and ideas. So I think that, again, I find myself feeling weird when I really think about it because I have mixed emotions about all of it.
I'm not opposed to this whole nation building and staying somewhere forever. I'm actually happy that we stayed in Japan all this time, have a base in Okinawa, now we have the base in Germany. I think the fact we won the Cold War against the Soviets over the whole second half of the 20th century, you're talking about a cold kind of conflict that took decades.
I think one of the reasons we were able to win that war was our presence in Europe, the fact we had boots on the Ground, figuratively and literally. I don't mean we were at war in Europe for 50 years, but having a huge base in Germany, protected and shielded Western Europe. Our allies, like the West Germans at the time, but of course France, Spain, Italy, Great Britain, imagine the US not having a presence there.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: So I think that, I mean, not just in the actual sense like it did, it provided a level of deterrence and protection, but it also provided a level of comfort to the people in those countries to try to build a life a certain way as not worrying about that. Oh, this is all coming crashing down.
There's boots crossing the border.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: You know what? I want to jump on that so I don't forget. And I'm sorry, it just hit my head. Yeah, please do. Because a lot of Americans don't understand the large geopolitical relationship between our military activities and our economy.
And I think you're 100% right. You know, one of the.
In reading up about the Marshall Plan in preparation for today, one of the key things that the State Department voiced was that the goal, one of the main goals for rebuilding Europe so quickly was because the United States needed a customer, is that the Europeans were one of the few people in the world in the middle of the 20th century that had the ability to buy American goods. Remember South America, Africa, Those areas of the world weren't yet the way they are today with consumerism and all that. So it's like these ideas, having our base in Germany for so long, to your point, it allowed the European neighbors, our allies there, to be able to focus on rebuilding themselves as nations and growing their populations and not worrying about fighting the Russians. And what did that allow them to do? That allowed them to become consumers of our US Based businesses which then helped us prop our economy up over the second half of the 20th century.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Not just consumers of our. Yes, consumers of our business, but not just that, it also kind of indoctrinated them into our way of life. Correct. It was the Marshall Plan. Just for clarity and just so everybody, we're operating all on the same type of wavelength. But the Marshall Plan was enacted after World War II. Europe is devastated and the US presents and comes up with and passes through Congress and everything, this Marshall Plan to help rebuild Western Europe, primarily a part of Europe that we were exerting influence over.
And so it's a huge investment of money, of human capital, know how and so forth. Diplomatic. To bring those, to not just rebuild them, but rebuild them in a way where we feel that freedom, democracy and capitalism can flourish in those areas. And it's a backstop against if, if you leave them in ruins, then the concern is, is that communism or authoritarianism will. Communism from an economic standpoint or authoritarianism from a political government standpoint will take over. Because in times of uncertainty, in times of where things people are very worried about their future and worried about how they're going to get their next meal, it becomes easy relatively to, for authoritarians to step in and say, I'll bring you order. Or for communism and communist economic presentations to take hold and say, look, all the rich people have all the money. We'll take all their stuff and we'll make it so everybody shares everything equally. And so part of our ideology as a nation was to say, hey, we can't leave this stuff in ruins. We need to rebuild it with, you know, again, with throwing a lot at it, a lot of commitment at it.
And so that the things that we believe in can still flourish and can be demonstrated to actually work.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and that's where I think that like, actually that's like the best example of an empire, I think, if we can think about it. I mean, that's what I thought about too. Like, I'm not one of these people that's opposed to nation building and all that, because I'm actually rational in understanding that we have an empire. The United States is an empire, just like Great Britain was, just like the Chinese Empire back thousands of years ago, just like the Roman Empire. Right. And what did the Romans have? They occupied land as west as the British Isles, you know, as far as you can go to the Atlantic Ocean, all the way east towards the Orient. Right. I mean, they went through the Middle east and all that. So, you know, we know that they had outposts and they had, you know, things that they control to make sure other parts of their empire were going smoothly. Same with the Britons. Right. I mean, we are here in South Florida and we've learned that, you know, kind of the beautiful diversity in the Caribbean, you know, you've got people, you know, Indian descent from India, all that. The reason is because they were all part of the British Commonwealth. And the British Empire had outposts in the Caribbean, in India, in Asia, because they had a lot going on in the world.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: And so let me, let me support your point with another quick piece of context. The American Empire, though, and this is somewhat. When we did episodes on the Confessions of an Economic Hitman, it went into some of this. The distinguishing point is that our empire is more economic based than we come in and say, now it does involve trying to influence the leadership in certain areas. We don't necessarily go in and say you're going to be governed by our president, but we definitely do try to make sure there's influence in terms of leadership, that they are friendly to our businesses. But it's more of an economic type of empire that is it has spread out, that's over the 20th century has become, you know, that was the century of the expansion of the American Empire. So. But you don't have to look at it in the same way as the colonial system that the British Empire was when, during the time when people would say the sun never set on the British Empire. Or if you go back to the Romans where it was actually a military type of control over all these areas where, you know, you take over and then you put your military puts in a general that is, can control this area or that area and so forth. So they're different. But you know, in a sense you can still describe it using the same terminology because it functions much of the same way.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, one of the greatest rulers in terms of just his ability to conquer land masses as well as actually keep his, the subjects relatively content with his rule was actually Genghis Khan's grandson, Kublai Khan.
And one of the ways that he had so much success was because he didn't do what you said the Romans did, like install his own guy.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: What he did is he just let them govern themselves. They just had to kind of pledge allegiance to him at the bigger picture. So that way, by the way, I.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: Tip my hat to you, sir Kubla Khan. That's a deep cut man.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: That's a good one.
So maybe we'll do a show on him one day. But no. So that's my point about Afghanistan. When I think about it, I'm thinking, you know, I wasn't opposed to seeing us stay there forever more. So because if, you know, and this is a fun game for the audience because a lot of people don't look at maps, look at the map and see where Afghanistan is located. It's in a very interesting region of the world. Its neighbors include countries like Iran and China, for example.
And then, you know, so you figure if we were to occupy that country for decades, but not in the way we did for the last 20 years, but in the way like you said, that maybe we try like a Marshall Plan, which again, they're much different culture, maybe it's not going to be exactly the same and we just go in there, throw a bunch of money and they're going to have McDonald's on every corner.
But, you know, one could find a way to occupy that country and create a sustainable economic situation where, you know, we might have a base, but then we also begin to have commerce with the country and import export.
But I say that, to say that might not be the right country either, because you've pointed out that unfortunately for the Afghan people, as much as there's been a lot of people coming through that part of the world, no one's really ever settled and stayed there because there aren't a lot of resources, natural resources, and there are a lot of mountainous areas. It's not easy to, to kind of.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: Have a society in a centralized society, like.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Yeah, like that type.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It really does lend itself to these more fragmented societies. Just, you know, just. It's, it's. So, yeah, I mean, that's, that's something that many of empires have come across in dealing with Afghanistan.
And so, yeah, I, I don't know. I mean, from my standpoint, the legacy, when I look at the legacy of the conflict, I, I think it has to be looked at in the context of 9, 11. And so when you look at it in that context, ultimately you would say that it was a successful endeavor. Like you. There's no way around that, because there was an attack, there was a response.
I would say, if anything, what you want to learn from that and where you would want to do better the next time is more of a clarity of vision in terms of once you get to the stage of, okay, we've displaced the powers that, that allowed the circumstances that made us get hit, we've displaced that power apparatus, then what? I think that once we got to that point, whether it be due to what was happening in our own country or our endeavor in Iraq or whatever else that point there became to be, once the Taliban was displaced, it seemed like we lost focus, so to speak. And that's not my opinion. Like, there's a lot of literature on that. And so I think that there is something to learn from it. But ultimately we went in there to displace that power. That power is presently displaced. And they still, they still exist. But if you compare their forces to the forces of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, they're still, they, you would still consider them a quote, unquote underdog. That doesn't mean that they're going to lose, so to speak. I mean, it's. Many underdogs in the world have toppled, you know, the, the entrenched power. So. But Ultimately, we're not leaving it in a place where the Taliban has taken over completely and they're running like it's back to where it was.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: My concern is that it'll. It'll get back there and probably relatively quickly.
One of the things that always stands out to me is, I know. And this is where I think we get in trouble, too, as Americans post, especially the Gulf War after that, that, you know, our wars to us begin to look like video games where you can have, you know, the camera on the. On the missile, and you see the missile going through the window, and you think that that type of power is just going to win you a total conflict.
And I was reminded in looking at all this, at the line that Pacino gave in the Godfather Part 2 when he was in Cuba, and when he watched the guerrilla guy blow himself up with a police officer, he grabbed. He had a grenade and he. And he blew himself up. And he grabbed the cop and killed the cop, too. And he's with Hyman Roth, and Hyman Roth's trying to get him to invest in the casino. And Tony's. I mean, not Tony Montana.
Michael Corleone is there, and he's like, no. And he's like. And Hyman Roth says, why not? And he tells him what he just saw, that this guerrilla guy basically blew himself up and grabbed the cop and killed the cop. And he goes, so what we got the Hyman Roth says, so what? We got the government unlocked, basically. They'll get these guerrillas for us.
And Michael Corleone's character, you know, Al Pacino's character, Michael Corleone says, yeah, but that's my concern. The cops get paid and the guerrillas don't. Yeah, and that's my concern here, is that, yeah, these Afghan troops, these Afghan cops, we've already heard stories about them turning their weapons over when the Taliban shows up to their little outpost. And that's what I started realizing when I'm watching the documentary footage. And I'm looking at these young men that look like they're 30, 35 years old, and I'm like, man, these guys, they know what they're dealing with. They know these guys are crazy. And they know that these guys know who their family is and all that. And when a Taliban guy goes up to one of them and he's in some outpost way outside of the city, and the guy looks at him and says, what you going to do? That young guy is going to turn his gun over to the Taliban because he's going to be thinking, man, I'm out here by myself, you know, and, and that's my concern is that we continue to think that our technology and our kind of military might just constantly will just do it. Like, okay, well, if we have a satellite, a couple drones, maybe a U2 spy plane and a B2 bomber in stealth just flying, hovering over Kabul, somehow we're just gonna immediately be able to target the next guy that's gonna do a truck bomb.
And so what I wanted to get at and finalizing my thought here is in the end, after 20 years, we spent over $2 trillion.
This is something I got from the Military Times, so I figured that's a credible source.
And they broke it down. 933 billion in straight up overseas contingency funding. So kind of the war part of it. And then the rest is the 443 billion just on building basis. That was the Defense department base budget.
296 billion on veteran care since the start of the war. Think about that. We don't think about when we go to these conflicts.
That's just Afghanistan. 296 billion. We didn't include the Iraqi veterans because there's more of them than Afghanistan. So I'm going to assume over half a trillion dollars just in care for veterans from these wars and then 59 billion in state overseas contingency funds. And then to get this one goes back to your hammering of deficits and spending 530 billion to cover the interest on the money borrowed to fund the 20 years of deployments. So my point is, is that spending 2 trillion is spending 2 trillion.
I'm not opposed to spending or not spending. The point is, is that we spent a lot of money and what are we kind of getting for it? We're leaving. We got, you know, like I said, 240,000 human beings that aren't here anymore.
The majority obviously are Afghani. But we do have Americans that were killed. And then we have a country that's not really in a much better place than it was when we there. And a country just like Iraq has done that's kind of kicking us out in a sense. Like, I was surprised to hear the Iraqi president talk about America a certain way. And then I saw, remember the first Afghan president after we got in, Hamid Karzai?
[00:29:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: I saw him interviewed when I was watching and preparing for the day, and he's over there lighting America up r rhetorically. And I just kind of thought, you know, we did all this and then not only are we leaving, but these countries acting like they don't want to deal with us anymore.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: So what do we really do here?
[00:29:30] Speaker B: Like, and what was all this about? Besides, like I said, I'm thinking 443 billion to build bases. And that's when I started thinking about, like, FDR and World War II with profiteering act and stuff. Like, all that we see here is cost overruns and contractors getting paid.
But I don't see much else that happened. I mean, if I bought, you know, defense contractor stocks over the last 20 years, maybe I'd be happy. But other than that, I don't see much else to be who else came out on top. I'm in the wrong business, I guess.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: Yeah, man, you need to be in the bricks and the guns business.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: The bricks and bombs, guns and butter. No guns and butter. I either got to sell food or ammunition.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: No, no, it's the bombs and the bricks, man, because you blow it up and then you rebuild it.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it's economic hitman stuff. So it's fascinating.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Well, no, I mean, I see what you're saying on that. I mean, I think that from my standpoint, when you look at it overall, the military part, oftentimes with these conflicts, we look at it as the primary part. But I think the real takeaway here is that the military part is a very necessary and important part. But it's really just the beginning, the kinetic parts of these things. And so therefore, looking forward, as we, obviously, America takes very seriously having the biggest and the most expensive military in the world. And so. But we have to understand the limits of that, so to speak. It reminds me almost of how we view policing as well, where we ask so much of our troops, of the actual troops and of the military, certain things which they're really, they're really built for, and other things that they may not be like their main thing that they would be best deployed to do. And the same thing a lot of times with. With police, where we have police dealing with mental health crisis, you know, issues with people and so forth. And a lot of times it's we. We use them kind of as a catch all, you know, hey, we got a problem, let's throw the police at it if it's domestic, or let's throw the military at it if it's somewhere, you know, foreign. And ultimately, though it seems like these, they can provide an immediate, most of the time, an immediate solution. But to solve the root of the problem or just the root of these problems, a lot of times we can't leave the other things out. The other parts of it and so ultimately, big picture, looking at the, what we've seen in Afghanistan, there's a lot to learn. I mean obviously the legacy of it, the how we, how it's unfolded and everything, we can see that as learning lessons. We can see that as this is how our nation 20 years ago viewed things. This is how our nation is viewing things now.
One thing that's not going to change though, is that if we're still going to be the biggest and the baddest on the block that these types of things are going to come up and if we're not careful, then we will ultimately weaken ourselves by not addressing them in ways, if we don't learn from, way learn from things that we've done in the past, we, we, we may not be able to address these things in a way that makes us better as a country and then also can, can make where we go in able to stand on its own in the future.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: So I, I, I also that we had one other topic I wanted to, to discuss with you today, and we haven't talked about this one at all yet. So it's going to be interesting to see where our discussion goes because I have no idea what your thoughts are on this, but found, found, found some, some recent research that suggests, well, I would say outright declares that hair becoming gray, which is something oftentimes we associate that with aging. You know, you get older, your hair goes gray or begins graying and so forth.
And now it has been kind of known that that happens with stress as well. Like the example everyone gives is you look at a president when they come into office, at least not, not our, you know, our presidents, the last couple presidents in their 70s.
[00:33:44] Speaker B: I'm gonna say this president, he's already as great as you can get.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, like so. But you look at like, like the presidents that were of a reasonable age, like the, the Obamas, the Clintons, you know, things like that. When they go in, you look at their hair versus when they come out and you look at their hair and it's, you know, it's like night and day and so, or I guess like, like day and night.
But one thing that this new emerging research is saying is that you can reverse this process.
Obviously you can't actually get younger. But what you can do is by, by de. Stressing, by reducing stress, the gray hair can be lessened. Like meaning hair that was gray can turn back to the regular color.
So this seems, I mean, this is one of those where it's just like it kind of not what Anyone looks at as far as the natural progression of how things go in our experience. So what was your reaction to seeing that, Tony? Do you buy it? And if you do buy it, then. And I mean buy it with, you know, whatever skepticism, but if you do buy it, is this something like that? Is there some meaning here that we can really gather from it?
[00:34:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I buy it in the sense that I'm not that paranoid to think that everyone's lying to me. That, yeah.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: I buy it.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: I mean, what I found interesting in the article is another example of kind of science and technology coming together to allow us to really learn about ourselves as humans. So one of the things they were able to do is they identified 323 proteins associated with hair and color and changing of the color and all that, and, you know, proteins within our DNA. I guess it's just interesting that, you know, I guess this continued march and I know we did the, the. The show a few months ago on the MRNA technology, and this kind of reminded me of that, just thinking about it, like, wow, the amount that we've learned as a human society, let's just say, over the last 20, 30 years about how humans work in our bodies is fascinating to me. So that this was just another good reminder of that. So that's. Why do I buy it? The answer is yes, because I believe the research.
And it's something. I never really thought of it about the ability to reverse graying, but I did think of when I would see people that are younger. By younger, I mean under 40, or let's say even under 30. And not many times in my life, but I have seen people in their 20s that really have more gray hair than you would anticipate for someone that age. And just kind of out of my own curiosity, in my head sometimes I would wonder, wow, is that person having a life experience that really, really got them to a point of internal stress or emotion, that they really, you know, their body just reacted this way where the hair went white. So I think this, this kind of proves that, because another interesting thing that I got out of the article is this is not the same as the natural progression of. Of hair aging, because what they weren't able to do is reverse it under or reverse it for people who are over 40.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:54] Speaker B: So that's what they were saying is it seems like hair naturally grows gray. That has nothing to do with stress at some point in life, like as we get older.
And that can't be reversed. I guess in the same way, at least they were Trying to reverse it. But for some reason, stress on the body and the mind can turn the cells that create, I guess, your hair pigmentation color in white. That stops them from producing the color.
And I guess that can be reversed. And that's just an interesting caveat because I started thinking, man, I'm gray enough as it is. Maybe they could, you know, when I'm 80, I'll still be dark hair. And then I was reading like, damn it. Okay, I guess not.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, no matter how much.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: I meditate, I can't put my repair reverse my hair color reversed. And now that I'm over 40.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: Well, yeah, that's the connection, basically, is that the stress can accelerate that or kind of trigger it.
And then if you can de stress, then you can untrigger it. And that, to me is kind of the big thing that stands out, is that a lot of times we consider once things happen in our body, they've happened. There's a permanency. And in this instance, at least, like you said, for the younger people that are experiencing gray, you can untrigger it and make it so that it goes back to the way it was. And so that said, now I buy the research, But a lot of times these things, I think you take them out of normal context. And so someone who is experiencing stress to that extent, or it could be the experience of stress, but it also could be related to how you're dealing, how you're managing the stress as well. Like, some people may be better able to manage or have better techniques to manage stress. So, you know, I'm not getting into the specifics of how you de stress, but some of that seems to divorce it from the culture we live in. We live in a high stress culture. And so this is something that we're observing while it's looking at from a study standpoint, it's looking at it from an individual standpoint, saying individuals can make this change and then change this outcome.
Kind of what jumped out to me was that, well, actually, though, the bigger problem isn't the individual, so to speak, it's that our culture creates this tendency where everybody's just going, you know, just, you know, to the bone with everything. You know, we're taking everything to the mat. All of our discussions, all of our, you know, all of our careers, all of everything we do, everything is 100%, all the time, go, go, go, go, go. You know, so that seems like more of a societal issue. So I'd be really interested in seeing culturally, is this something and I mean, I could guess, but I'd be interested in seeing culturally are these types of phenomenon observed in certain cultures now that we know this, much more so than other cultures. And then if it is, then maybe the approach we're looking at, maybe the graying we're looking at, can be looked at more of a macro and less of a micro individual. A lot of these things. I always wonder if ultimately we're putting it on the individual when actually we're just setting ourselves up in a way where many individuals will have the same problem. You know, I look at obesity or I look at all these things and it's like, well, you could look at that as a personal failing of that person if you want. But if it's. It's not just one person, though. Like, it's a lot of people. So once it becomes enough people that are having the same issue, then it's like, well, shouldn't we be looking at this societally as well? Like to see if something as a society we're doing is creating this prevalence, creating this tendency. And so I kind of looked at the gray is the same kind of way.
The fact that you can reverse it, the fact that that is something that potentially for younger people can be reversed, may lead to greater emphasis from a societal standpoint, from a cultural standpoint, on de stress, you know, like that. That could be helpful from that standpoint. And people now say, okay, well, I can look better if I learn how to de stress. And you know, humans, if you tell them they can look better by doing some things, a lot of them will do it. So we can get a less stressed society by publicizing that you can get rid of gray hair by being less stressed.
[00:41:06] Speaker B: But what could be the next positive development from this type of research? And I don't mean just this hair study, but things like this is because it got me thinking about. So I'll tell you how I got to this point in the last 10 seconds while you're talking. First, I started thinking about the regenerative qualities of the human body. Yeah, like understanding. I know people that have had liver issues or kidney issues and, you know, with the right just attention and care, and you stop, you know, you know, putting the negative stuff in your body and only put the positive.
Within a few years, they're almost back to normal. I've, you know, we've heard the stories of type 2 diabetics, you know, getting rid of the diabetes just from the changing their diets over, you know, a year or two and being disciplined on that. So it got me thinking that first of all, we've done these kind of discussions in the past about the one we did about the brain being thought of like a computer. And it's like another reminder of how complex and fascinating life and our human bodies are. Is this is nothing like a computer. The ability to totally regenerate after a stressful on your own. The body's ability to do that. So let's. Let's use this as another example that we are nowhere like a machine.
So number one, number two is. Then it got me thinking about.
Well, just like that example about a type 2 diabetic who is able to heal their body over time through changing their diet or someone who had liver issues. You know, let's say a.
A deep alcoholic or a severe alcoholic that's able to. That has liver disease, that after a few years of not drinking and only drinking water is healthy. Let's say the liver's healthy. It got me thinking about, maybe we can start looking at the mind this way as well. Because it's interesting that this gray hair thing is.
Because sometimes it's hard to equate the extent of mental health, stress and maybe negative things on our mental health because it's intangible. You can't see it. Right.
[00:43:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: And this is the first time that I know of really, that that is really that the body totally reversed something in a physical way.
But stress was the catalyst.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: You see, it becomes. And I think they talk about. Yeah, they did talk about that in the article. Just that it becomes like a signifier of excess stress. And then if you get rid of it, then that kind of signifies that you've been able to get that under control.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: But that's what I'm saying. So like, like you said, alluded to a few minutes ago, like this could create a whole new level of understanding for us as people. Because I think one thing that we've observed, you and I both over the years, is that human beings usually need some sort of kind of physical marker, like know that something is either real or not, or that we're making progress or whatever. If it's too esoteric all the time. Goes back to the first part of the conversation. Why the military kinetic strikes usually are used because you can see them.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:55] Speaker B: You can't see the State Department and the NSA listening to people. That's all boring stuff. Watching a bomb hit a building. Okay, I know that happened. We're going to get them. I'm okay. I'm happy. So I think that this whole thing here, if we can find, if scientific community can find other areas where maybe reversing negative mental health concerns, anxiety, stress, all that can have a physical manifestation over a short period of time. You know, not years, but enough where people can see it and feel motivated to keep going. Maybe it does re help us readdress how we look at kind of mental health, but also maybe how we just deal with ourselves as people.
Because just like I would say this going back to the obesity part, it's amazing to me, you know, there's always positives and negatives. As you know, we talked about the 20 years of the Afghan war as more of a potential negative. I've obviously the costs and the lives and all that. But I would say a positive thing over the last 20 years is, you know, 20 years ago in the year 2001, we didn't see salads on McDonald's menus. Right. We didn't see the attention to eating properly and trying to, you know, I would say Chipotle is a fast food chain, but it's healthy. Right. It's rice and beans and fresh meat and organically raised meat. So, you know, if we've done that with kind of the physical health and more people taking that more serious, then hopefully maybe in the next 20 years we have ways to measure and look at our mental health.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:27] Speaker B: And kind of approaching that because there.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: Has been an awakening over the past, you know, decade, dec. Half a decade, I would say.
[00:45:33] Speaker B: Yeah, five to 10 years. Yeah, an awakening. Now it's kind of like that awakening with the nutrition health now it's the implementation. How are we going to do it as a society? Because, you know, the nutrition health wasn't overnight either. I mean, think about it. It took first getting people to realize smoking was bad and we talked about that recently in the show. And then the culture accepting you wouldn't smoke in your office or restaurants or bars or whatever. And then it slowly started, the packaging on foods, telling you what you're eating and all that, and then us understanding and then the society being prepared for that. So I think or having an infrastructure to help us be prepared to address it. So I think let's just hope for the best that this, that that kind of follows the same way from an.
[00:46:14] Speaker A: Emotional and mental health and continue to raise awareness and, you know, like, and recognize it as something that, you know, stress, mental health, things that should be taken seriously, things that you should can look at yourself. I mean, if, if you know, you're 30 years old and you're starting to get gray, then you should that, that gives you the physical manifestation that, hey, maybe I should look at how I'm dealing with stress? You know, should I be dealing with stress in a different way?
And as society becomes more aware and more tolerant of that, you know, then yes, we can move in a positive direction and maybe look back in 20 years and we're in a better place. And you know, like that's, that's the incremental piece, man. That's how it happens a lot of times.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: Well, I'm just laughing because you said a 30 year old with gray hair. I started thinking we'll leave it up to people too, to start new styles. So all we need is young people to start having it in fashion to have dye their hair gray.
[00:47:04] Speaker A: Then no one will know.
That's just your wishful thinking as a 40 year old.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Damn right.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: So. Well now we appreciate everybody for joining us on this one on our 100th episode of Call It Like I See it. And you know, we'll, we'll check in with you guys 100, after 100, the next hundred.
So. But no, we definitely appreciate it. Hold on.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: How about we check back in the 101st episode?
[00:47:29] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, we'll be back with you on, on one.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: Don't, don't let them think someone will be taking over for the next 99. You know, I can't, I can't be quiet for that long.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: No, no, no, now, now that we turned on the faucet, man, it never turns back on.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: Of course.
[00:47:42] Speaker A: So. Well, we appreciate everybody for joining us and, and until next time, I'm James.
[00:47:46] Speaker B: Keys, Tune Dog Online up.
[00:47:48] Speaker A: All right, subscribe, rate, review and we'll talk to you next time.
