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 take a Look at the COVID 19 vaccines, and particularly the technology that has driven what has been a really strikingly fast development and rollout for something like this.
And later on, we're going to discuss some observations on parenting styles and how certain parenting styles may actually predispose children to being vulnerable to things like emotional abuse as they grow up.
Joining me today is a man whose pointed observations and sharp delivery are like a bull vaccine. Tunde Ogunlana Tunde. And you ready to get people some inoculation today?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Every day, man.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: All right.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: I couldn't have said it better.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: There you go.
It sounds better coming from me, though.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Now we're recording this on April 5, 2021, and at this point, we're a little over a full year into the COVID 19 pandemic in the United States, particularly the parts that have involved, like, a lot of illness and death on a relatively large scale and that have operated to disrupt everyone's lives. You know, whether you're sick or not, it's disrupting your life.
We're also several months in to the rollout of several Covid vaccines that have been developed at a speed that is really unprecedented. Two of the vaccines, the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines, employ a new technology called mRNA, which can be short for messenger rna. This essentially contains instructions that uses your own body, the mechanics of your own body, the machinery, so to speak, in your own body to briefly produce some of the distinctive spike protein, like some of the distinctive elements of the COVID virus, so that your immune system can learn to recognize it and attack it.
Now, this is distinct from normal vaccines or typical vaccines we've seen, which would often directly introduce, like, an actual portion of a pathogen, you know, deactivated a lot of times, but will actually introduce that into your body so your immune system can learn to recognize and attack it. So it's quite a departure from that, but it's still operating to try to do the same thing, which would be to get your immune system to be able to recognize something and attack it.
So, Tunde, what stood out most to you about the speed that all this has happened, or even just the new tech that we are seeing take such a prominent role in this effort?
[00:02:44] Speaker B: I think it's awesome.
Yeah, no, it's interesting because like most things that we get from our.
I use the term ecosystem of media and news. And I'm not saying this in a negative way, I'm just saying more so that everything is so fast that you got to go below the surface a bit to understand how not so much how complex certain things are, but I guess the layers to your point about technology and all that.
And so I think it is awesome because really what this is really represents the culmination of a lot of compounding of different knowledge over the past few decades.
One of the things that caught me, which was interesting, is the study began in my birth year in 1978.
And so 42 years later, in December of 2020, is when the first MRNA vaccine is produced, which was this famous Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which we're talking about here.
Again, that led me to that thinking of that's 42 years of a journey of scientists, individuals doing research and then reading into it. The scientists that first started this research was actually in Hungary.
So not a country that most of us think off the top of our head as some bastion of scientific research.
And then you forward it all the way to last year, where the Chinese in 2020 had published the genetic sequence of the virus and within 48 hours Moderna had already written the recipe for their vaccine.
And so that's where I feel like it was a global scientific effort. I mean, and obviously China has a lot of questions still out there, let's just put it that in a nice way, about how this virus came to pass from their country. But, you know, just getting off that part of it, but just seeing that the Chinese had published the sequence of the virus, the genomic sequence or genetic sequence, whichever was the best way to say that.
Well, it just reminded me that we've had a lot of tension publicly in our world, right between various countries. And we're all this fighting that we're doing publicly and behind the scenes and jockeying for these global positions and dominance of different things. But there's a part of the world global community that is often not looked at, which is a scientific global community.
And we're very fortunate, all of us, that that community usually is not combative and they are very open usually to sharing things. So that was a good example that there's been a lot of work in genetics and genome sequencing since the mid-90s, I think it was 94, the first sequence genome.
Since then, that process has stepped up where now they can sequence something within a matter of a couple hours, where
[00:05:47] Speaker A: it used to be weeks.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: That's what I mean, the advancement of that technology over the last 25 years, you know, was a correlation to helping for Moderna because without the sequencing, Moderna couldn't have started that recipe. But then that amazed me that in 48 hours with the sequence they were able to have the vaccine recipe.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: And that's what, you know, that's what actually that's what stood out to me about this flexible. Because when you look at the art, excuse me, the MRNA as it was developed, as you pointed out, this has been a 40 year process for it, but they weren't focusing on viral vaccines per se. It was a lot of research with cancer. Now there was some research with HIV with it, but it wasn't successful. And then, but a lot of things with cancer. And so what stuck out to me about it was in looking at the MRNA stuff was how flexible it was and how they're basically the concept is simple, yet not easy. It's simple, but it's not something that's easy to do. But where you say, okay, our cells know how to take these types of instructions and build stuff with it. That's what, that's what they do all day. And so if you can tell them, hey, make this, then you can maybe do something that will be actually you can help the immune system with. You can train it to attack a tumor or you can train it to attack whatever just by telling it exactly what to build. And so yes, once they sequence the genome that they can say, oh, okay, that's the genome. Well, let's figure out something about this that we're going to make. We're going to come up with a recipe to have one of a human cell build and then try to get that to work as far as creating that familiar so that the cell can, or so that your immune system, your immune cells can then recognize that thing as a, as a bad thing and then take it out and so that it's flexible like that really seems to be just.
It's like we've discovered some type of magic key. Now that doesn't mean this is going to work like that, that everything is going to be smooth sailing or anything like that. But just the fact, as you said, this being the culmination of a lot of little steps and a lot of times a lot of those little steps didn't really have a certain destination. Like it's like, oh, we're going step by step by step. But where are we going to end up? Are we going to end up with something that even works? That they were able to do that and then also that they were able to get something that worked that in clinical trials. And then actually the numbers that we're seeing now, you know, after people seeing real world, like after people getting vaccinated, then, you know, it's providing protection and it's like, wow, so this thing actually worked. And hindsight is really, it's a powerful force basically because after things happen, we always tend to look back at it like an inevitability. But this is really quite a leap and this really could open up a lot in the future, conceivably, or it could just be just this. We don't know. Or maybe. I know they're already looking now to see if they can do this with the flu. Because one of the big weaknesses of the flu vaccine is that if you're doing it the old fashioned way, the flu mutates and changes a couple times a season sometimes. And so you're always behind. And so. But if you can say 48 hours later, yeah, yeah, we got the recipe, boom, we got the new flu, the new variant that's spreading around. We got a vaccine for that now like two days after it appears, then that's amazing. That's the type of thing that could really change a lot. And so I'm one that looks at these things. Like I don't look for science to be the end all, be all, but I do expect and look to science to come up with solutions and to continually be continuing the march of innovation forward. And so to see something, actually see the rubber meet the road with something is pretty cool. You know, like that's pretty like to witness that like, oh, wow, we're alive. Like that actually happened. Like where they had all this know how, but they couldn't make anything work. Then something happened and they made something work with all this, know how. That otherwise was just people were just burning through a bunch of money with.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean that's, in the end, that is the, I guess, definition of scientific research. Right. You just keep going, let the evidence and the kind of facts take you where they lead. But there's, it's, it's, it's another good reminder. I also, I was when I was reading this, that you know, failure is part of achievement.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:03] Speaker B: And you know, these scientists spent 40 years, I wouldn't say failing at something.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: But meaning they kept doing experiments and working on things that, you know, once you know something doesn't work, you go to the next step and you start something else.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: But you can say though that they spent 40 years without coming up with any practical application for Anything, you know, like, they may. They learned a lot, but they would. They didn't like, hey, here, look at what we've done. You can do X now.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: But no, and that's the point. Like, and it's a different point, but not one that I'll, you know, just made in my head as you said that, which is they were failing. And you're right. But when the opportunity showed up that this could be applied on something, which was when coronavirus became a global pandemic, their failures and their work at something that may not have been, I won't say relevant, but there wasn't anything to put it to use yet for was now there. And so it's almost.
I guess I was about to say it's kind of like the nuclear bomb, but maybe not like that. I was going to say probably he had a lot of smart scientists trying to figure out nuclear fission.
But then you had a second world war and you had the need to end it. And that probably ramped up the government's look at like, all right, we need to throw money at this and make this work.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: There's no probably about it.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah, well, we already know. Yeah, you're right. It happened. So they did that. And then what happens is it was put to use because the opportunity was there. Now, these are two different things. This one was put to use to save a lot of lives. The nuclear bomb was put to use to, let's put it this way, save a lot of American GIs that might have got killed. But yeah, unfortunately that was a wartime thing that.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: Well, but conceivably though, to your point, nuclear, Nuclear fission does have things practical uses. It has uses beyond just making bombs now. And it may really, honestly, I mean, hopefully, I would say nuclear fission is just our step along the way to nuclear fusion. Like, if we can figure that out, then, you know, that'll solve a lot of problems with that. But ultimately that's a side point. I don't want to go to that.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: But it's a different. But it's a good tie in just for the idea that during times of intense stress and the need to find solutions, which most of the time in human history, that's war, that human beings usually do step up to the plate and we do find solutions. That's why actually, let me ask you then.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: I mean, because that's actually where I wanted to go with my next question for you was. So, I mean, obviously with the level of death we've seen both in the United States and then throughout the world, it's difficult to look at the COVID pandemic as something that could be in a positive light. It's difficult to look at it. But would you consider this, or is this possibly like a silver lining? I mean, we can't see into the Future, but if 10 years from now they can cure cancer with MRNA shots, like they're able to take the piece of the tumor and then run the genetic sequence and then do a MRNA shot for it, and then your body attacks that tumor. I mean, is that something that.
Is that what you're talking about there? Like that type of scenario where this created the focus and the urgency for us to come up with something, we came up with something, would actually maybe a pretty substantial step in our technological capability.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that basically is what I was saying, and that's what I was getting at with. Most of the time we see it with wartime that human beings that are in the war type of environment are, and I'm talking from government level on down, the stress is to solve, basically win the war. So it causes a lot of energy and focus. And what you have, honestly is usually every major war has some sort of new innovation and new, new technology. And then what you'll see maybe a decade later, that technology and that innovation then is now usually spread amongst the population just in consumer goods and things like that.
So like most of our technology in the United States that has been developed came from first use of military and defense applications, whether it be the Internet, Bluetooth drones, for example, you know, those are all things that were military use. And now we can go to any store, you can go to Walmart and buy a drone for $100. So I do think that because we don't have as many pandemics as wars and other things that might cause humans to focus their energy collectively and make a solution, we usually don't see it outside of the wartime in the defense sectors. But I agree this would be a good example of that. Where this effort, now that we see that the solution has worked and it created a vaccine that seems to have good enough efficacy and all that to make a difference.
I do believe five to ten years from now there will be a lot of consumer and other related uses that are created out of this. Now, I can't see what those are yet, but I wouldn't be surprised.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: You would be a billionaire.
[00:14:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I would be a billionaire.
No, but that's been estimated, honestly, in Wall street and a lot of those kind of circles of discussion where, you know, everyone's kind of looking for the next Tesla or the next Elon Musk. And a lot of the kind of smart minds, let's put it that way, believe that somewhere in the middle of this decade it will be in genomics and in kind of that kind of pharmaceutical, scientific healthcare space that we're gonna see a lot of just innovation, especially
[00:15:24] Speaker A: I think like the personalization of it.
To be able to like, because that's part of the thing with any of these, whether it be treatments or vaccines or whatever, is that we're all different.
And you can have something that works 99 times out of 100, but you don't want to be that one that it doesn't work for. I mean, so that's. So if they're able to personalize things better, that's something that would be a big difference.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: And I got something about the silver lining. But first I wanted to read something just for us and the audience about mRNA. I mean, because that's what I meant earlier when I said you hear all this stuff.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: Let me actually, before you go down that road to save that point, because I wanted to respond to your point about the how war oftentimes generates these innovations. I would say that that's true on some sense. And I would say even pandemics, I mean, you look back to different pandemics in world history and you may lead to improved sanitation, things that we take for granted, but like things that were a big deal at the time, like, oh, well, they realize that if you let feces sit around, people will get sick. So they realize they had to come up with something. When you have city dinner, you got to come up with sanitation. And so like it will be advancements. I mean, but I would, what I would say to that is that in my field, you know, just looking at, with patents and inventions and stuff, like we always talk about necessity is the mother of invention. And so anytime there is a need, that is when the human mind gets to work to try to find some solution for that need. And a lot of times that will be. And that could be in war, that could be in dire circumstances. But you know what, and you'll appreciate this, that's the main justification for a market system and competition is that the need could also be. You almost manufacture needs, you know, in a sense, you almost manufacture like, oh, I need to out compete this other person. And so now I'm going to come up with a drive through at a fast food, at a food restaurant because I want to be able to get people in and out sooner. I want to make it more convenient or something. So you get these innovations, these micro innovations, so to speak, all the time that people come up with support with Walmart, whether it be like supply chain stuff or scale, like all these innovations all the time that we're building on. And it happens in the business side all the time. And that's the point of the market. That's why we are supposed to be hostile to monopolies, because monopolies that need to. That constant need to improve is that the pressure is removed because nobody can mess with you. So the whole point of the market system is to create those type of setups. But that being said, obviously more dire situations I would think would create even more impetus and so therefore would create a greater degree of innovation a lot of times. But I just wanted to point out that you don't necessarily need a war or a pandemic or something crazy for innovation to happen, but the environment can be almost manufactured if you run your economic or social systems correctly.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: No, and that's why this is just a fascinating topic because everything we're talking about is that, like we've been saying, it's this buildup of information over time.
Because it's not like we just showed up here in 2020. All of this was just there. Like, this is the compounding effect of human knowledge over time. But it's the. It's the urgency of the pandemic which kind of got it all moving together.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Brought it all together.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, and that's what I mean by war is usually, unfortunately, wars happen more often than other things that drive large societies and even the world, let's say, to really find solutions. I mean, as you were talking, the other thing, and I don't get off my history horse here, is thinking about the jet engine. You know, it's amazing. The Nazis invented that in the Second World War out of their desperation to try and find one last good weapon that could beat the British and the Americans. And they came up with a Messerschmitt. And I've seen interviews with American pilots saying, man, that thing was so fast. Like, and we're lucky, all of us that are not Nazi Germans from back in the day that they were so late in inventing and developing this, they only had like, I think like 10 planes that were functional.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: And we had these hundreds of planes from the British and the Americans. So. Yeah, but getting back to where I
[00:19:24] Speaker A: was going, that's an excellent parallel, though.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: Yeah, but. But getting back to just where I was going. And we'll keep it moving is.
I wanted to read a bit because this is what I was saying about earlier about the scratching beneath the surface, which isn't normally done on the tv. And that's what I was saying. I'm not bashing the media, but it's more of. I know they gotta get a story out fast. So it's like, what is mRNA? Right? So MRNA stands for messenger ribonucleic acid.
Just like DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid.
And what it does is it tells our cells which proteins to make. And I'm reading here, with human edited mRNA, we could theoretically commandeer our cellular machinery to make just about any protein under the sun. So that's why I wanted to read that, because a lot of people don't know what MRNA is. And to your point. Right, and that's what we're talking about is now that this rush is going to be over and this was created and now this is effective for the next few years, five, ten years now the scientists as well as commercial enterprises are going to be figuring out which proteins can be manipulated. So this could be proteins that could do things like hopefully cure cancer, or it could be proteins that, to your point, might do things that are maybe more cosmetic.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: I bet you the next thing is going to be they'll have a protein, something that will cure erectile dysfunction. Because that's true.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: I'm sure that's where they'll go worry about when we're older, popping pills. We just get a shot. That'd be awesome. And then it's just done. You don't even have to do it again, you know. But no, but I shouldn't be joking because I'm the guy that's always joking about being tired and, you know, we'll see where I'm at when I'm 75. I'll come, we'll do another show just for posterity.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: Well, and I say that, I say it in jest, but it is. It's always very clear, though, when they have these innovations, like the motivation of a lot of the folks that are doing these, they know, hey, we. Where can we make a lot of money?
[00:21:22] Speaker B: No, no, no, but that's my joke
[00:21:24] Speaker A: was gonna be that men don't buy that.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: I wasn't thinking that. That directly, but. But one of them was gonna be something similar, right? Like more of a vanity or cosmetic thing. Like if they could create a boat, a protein that could, like, let's say, do against wrinkles.
So instead of going to Botox.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Or regrow hair, regrow your hair. Like so I could see if they can figure that out. And that's what I think, that's what I meant. Like now that this like my illusion to the jet engine. So the Nazis invented the jet engine and it was, it's amazing. By 1950, every major country had jets.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: And then by, you know, then the rocket technology got better and we were in, you know, we got to the moon by 1969. And so what I'm saying is this is going to have that same compounding effect where now the need for a solution and the focused energy by the world created this MRNA kind of recipe. And now I think five to ten years from now we're gonna see that recipe being applied on all these other type of areas. And you're right, a lot of it will be the commercial and the stuff that we probably all think is more vain, but also some of it will still be steered towards things that actually really do save lives.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: And that's actually the importance of having like government involvement in these things. And philanthropic. But government more than philanthropic, because philanthropic comes and goes. Because the market will get a hold of it. To your point, I just want to go a little deeper on your point because we played around, joked about it a little bit. But to your point, the market will get it and they will continue to develop it, but they'll develop it in directions that are more geared towards immediate payout and immediate payoff. And those things are going to be more geared towards cosmetic or the things that you see a lot of times that are advertised nonstop right after the beer commercials or whatever. And so that, because that's where the money is going to, the immediate money is going to be, is, hey, you know, you, hey, we'll give you a shot and boom, this will happen, your hair will grow back or whatever it is. And, or you know, like I said, the blue pills is something that's ubiquitous on television, you know, which is kind of crazy in itself. But either way, like, so it's going to get turned into that for sure. And so, but you need continual government and philanthropic investment to have the more long view because the market doesn't really support on its own the long view and say, hey, we may be able to solve a problem 10 years down the road or 20 years down the road with this, so let's continue to go down this direction, not just the immediate payoff direction. And that's actually what we see here when you talk about that 40 year span. It wasn't private companies solo, just footing the bill for all this stuff, it were a lot of different interests, government included, some philanthropic stuff, also some venture capital though. So it's all of them getting together and putting money into this to keep the process, to keep it moving along. And then we got a big payout, so to speak, or we got the proof of concept, so to speak, 40 years after it began. And so when we talk about all government is all bad and government is this, we have to keep this stuff in mind that it's not. The government does things a lot of time, particularly in a market system that the market system wouldn't necessarily reward quickly enough to justify continuing to do it completely. And so I think this is also a triumph, one of several, if you look back at history and look a little bit below the surface, but a triumph of continual investment on a government level into science and into technology. That's something we need as well. I mean, you always point out the Tesla example as well, just how that was something that was in many ways enabled by what was done in 2008 and so forth as far as freeing up funds for either lending or freeing up funds, basically freeing up capital to continue investing those things. So I wanted to make that point just as we talk about this, even
[00:25:13] Speaker B: the space race, we've talked about it at length in other shows. This idea that from 1961 when Kennedy announced it to eight years later. I think most of us have seen at some point in our life the old footage of the rockets blowing up on the launch pad and yeah, all that kind of, you know, and yeah, you had contractors out there like Lockheed Martin and Bell Laboratories and all that that developed these things. But you're right, the funding came from the U.S. treasury because they were out
[00:25:40] Speaker A: there because they were getting paid no matter what.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and the thing is, is that if I'm a shareholder of Lockheed Martin, I'd be upset and actually which I am right now, but I'd be upset too, as I say that I'm like that, but I'd be upset if my shareholder of dollars that I invest in their stock, if they were by themselves blowing up rockets on a launch pad, meaning that's not what I would want my capital spent on.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Well, that's what I mean though, that's a hole in the market system. The market system has its virtues, but that's a hole in the market. The long term development is a hole in the market system a lot of times. And it's needed for government to fill that hole whole so that overall you can continue to have Progress in the science and, you know, and then arts and so forth.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: And one thing I wanted to go back to and just finish the thought on the silver lining. You know, one of the things as I was reading this article was the silver lining to me is interesting because it's not necessarily silver, like, meaning it might not be good.
What I started wondering, you're going to laugh specifically about this one.
I'm reading this article, I'm starting to think about Thanos because I started thinking, like, hold on, what are we going to do with all these people when no one's dying? Because everyone's got like, there's no more cancer and there's no more hiv? Because they were talking about curing HIV and curing cancer and curing this and cure. And it's interesting because, you know, I've shared on air that our youngest Child has type 1 diabetes, which they don't know what causes it. It's not a hereditary thing because neither my wife or I have it in our DNA. They do the tests. So they believe that it's potentially caused by either a viral pathogen that somehow invaded him or it's an autoimmune response to something else that his body doesn't like. So the idea is that they are working now on all these type of. This language, right? These proteins and cells and what happens in the pancreas, why did it stop working and all this.
And so it's like I feel torn, right? Because a part of me is like, I've got a child with this kind of. That could be saved, you know, not safe. He can live a life, but he may have a better life and an easier life if this type of technology continues in this research. And one day maybe my kid could get a shot in his arm, his pancreas starts working again, and I don't have to stick him with needles and prick his finger and give him insulin and all this kind of stuff, which is cumbersome.
So I want that. But then the other side of me is like, we don't seem to do well on this planet with 8 billion people in terms of our conflicts as well as how we treat the planet. And so I'm just wondering, like, what are we going to do if we have 25 billion people? How's this going to look? And so it's an interesting.
I'm not here to say we shouldn't or should or whatever. I'm just saying it brings up then different questions that will need their own solutions if this stuff starts taking off and we really start Curing everything.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: Well, I mean, I think you're getting ahead of it, though. Like, I would say that there are going to be additional roadblocks. They're going to be like, it's not going to be just. That's not how things work. It's going to be two steps forward, maybe and one step back or something like that. But also, I mean, if you look at the technology of 1900 or of 1800, the world couldn't have supported 8 billion people then. And so ultimately, what seems to happen as humans progress is that we continually make more problems for ourself and we continually find more solutions. And in the meantime, the Earth sometimes comes up with problems or things like that. And so I think that process, that march is going to continue no matter what. Now the Earth may decide at some point that it's too many of us and start making us make some real changes, or we may just continue on. You know, like in this march that we've had. I mean, it's been the same march, though.
If you look at it at a high enough level, maybe not 30,000, but maybe 100,000ft, it's a pretty straightforward march. And so that part is not going to end. Like, I don't. I don't think there's. We're not going to have some breakthrough, and then it's like a fairy tale ending. You know, it's going to be that, it's going to be this, and then it's going to be something else, it's going to be that something else, and it's going to be this. And so that'll be the. That'll be the process. I mean, I think if we can get incrementally, get some current solutions solved, that'll be great. Because you know what, there are probably some new problems that we haven't thought of that were going to be around the corner coming anyway. So let's try to resolve. It's not like once they figured out the sanitation stuff that all the other stuff went away, it was like more stuff popped up. So we got to be ready for that other stuff to pop, those other problems to pop up, and let's try to handle the ones that we have now and, you know, get ready for the next one. So. But you raise an interesting point as far as the Thanos thing, you know, just as far as, like, how our society and how each of us and then our society reacts to these things or deals with these things, because one of the things that popped out to me about this and we've seen this to some degree. I don't think that we've seen it to a nuanced degree, but just that vaccines have already been something that people are very polarized about and some people are very skeptical about. And that's continued with the COVID vaccines. And that's like in the midst of the COVID pandemic, we've seen the people looking at the vaccines like, no way.
And some of it is knee jerk reactionary and some of it's saying, oh, I don't like this part or I don't like that part.
So what do you see?
What do you see going on there?
Do you think there is a, from a medical and technological standpoint with the vaccines, is there a way forward that's less polarized or it's more people are kind of on the same page or is that ship left the station and you know, like people are getting what they get from Facebook and, and that's, that's all they need to know.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: It's interesting. I'm actually the way you pose that question, I'm glad we're doing, we're having this conversation like now, like let's say early April of 2021 and not let's say six months ago.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Because I think we needed to let it play out a bit. And I think what I'm seeing is.
Which is probably predictable looking back. I'm not saying I predicted this at the time, but you know, there is a, it's like a mental herd immunity from the bs, let me put it that way. If that's an eloquent way for me to say it, talking about a pandemic. I think like most things right, people are comfortable when they see their friends and neighbors do something. And that's why I think it's, you know, for those who didn't trust the science and the medical experts and all that. I think unfortunately, number one, you're always going to have a percentage of people that misrepresent trust everything that comes out of anybody's mouth. So there's always that. And then I think leadership's important. Unfortunately, we saw our country and many others, large countries where the leadership of the country during the, especially the early parts of the pandemic was more in a denial about it. So I think what happened was. Or denial of the severity of it. So I think what happened was that people then put their political kind of stake, their emotional and political side of their ego and their minds to, you know, well, I better listen to, I believe in this person or this party so I'm just going to listen to what they're telling me, and then everyone else is basically not telling the truth.
[00:32:52] Speaker A: And I think it's actually a matter of identity.
You can have a partisan identity, you can have a race identity. And we've seen both of those partisan identity and race identity almost predispose people to being less willing to accept the virus or to think it's legitimate or whatever, or more willing to question it.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: And even your.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: Let me say to that, though, because I think that. Oh, go ahead, go ahead.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: Yeah. I just want to say because, you know, a lot of times we look at this through the lens of politics. And that's why I want to be very clear. You know, obviously when I say the leadership in the United States, Donald Trump was president when this virus happened. So, you know, someone could be hearing this and saying, okay, well, he's only talking about Republicans or people from the right or Trump supporters, obviously putting them into this basket, too.
But I would say it's bigger than that. Cause you and I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, I had a lot of black people telling me all the misinformation stuff, oh, I don't need to wear a mask. Cause black people don't get this.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: Well, that continued with the vaccine as well. And that's what I meant.
There is a historical precedent for the science community messing around with black people, as far as you get to.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: But that's right. My friend on Reddit who told me that this doesn't affect black people because he.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: But looking at the vaccine, though, the mistrust in the medical establishment is something that. That's why I said both partisan and racial identity has. We've seen those factors play a role because it's that. And say it's the identity. Because yes, it's not someone who was in the Tuskegee experiments and was subjected to that stuff, but it's someone who said that happened to black people. So me as a black person, I'm going to be distrustful of the establishment in that sense. Or if it's partisan identity, you can see the same kind of thing. The people who are giving me signals, the media is not a monolith, but the people who are giving me signals are telling me that I should be distrustful of this, even if them themselves have gotten the back.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: No, I agree.
[00:34:44] Speaker A: But I occupy an interesting space here because myself personally, I have a moderate level of, let's say, trust in the medical establishment, in the scientific community. And I say moderate because I have very little Trust in the corporate establishment. And my concern always with things like this is that from a corporate standpoint, what will make money or what would threaten money, Those interests will dominate over truth and over true scientific efficacy. I always worry when you're talking about medical and you're talking about science, whether or not the doctors are actually in charge or whether it's a CFO or a CEO saying, they're saying, hey, look, this is what we need.
You see this all the time, you know, with large companies or with small companies, where the tech person or the science person will say, hey, this is what we have. And they say, well, we got to make money. So just don't say any of that stuff. Don't, we're going to shut this person up or we're going to put this person on an NDA. So I actually appreciate that people should ask questions here because we don't. When Pfizer says something, we don't know if that's a scientist saying it, somebody who's actually looked at the data, or if that's a chief financial officer saying it, someone who's looked at the numbers and saying, hey, we need to make money, yada yada, yada. So I'm always skeptical of that stuff. That being said, the problem I see actually is that it seems like vaccine skepticism has become reflexive. And it's just based on that I've taken a position that I am skeptical of vaccines. And so therefore any vaccine that comes along, no matter what the circumstances, no matter what's going on, I'm just going to be inherently skeptical of it or inherently rejecting of it. And I think that being absolute about things like that, skepticism itself can't become a reflexive operation. It's good to be skeptical. It's good to require people to prove things and to show you what they mean and so forth and not just take people's word on it. Particularly here we go in a market system where there are incentives with being first to market and asking, you know, like getting it out there and if they have problems, oh well, you know, at least we got that money. Like there are incentives that would warp someone's priority. So it's good to be skeptical, but it can't be reflexive. You have to really, if you want to be a skeptic, if you don't want to be a quote unquote sheep, you have to look at each circumstance. You have to look at. You can't just reflexively be, I don't believe in anything because I'm not a sheep. And it's like, well, actually now you still are a sheep because you're absolute. The other way, you're just.
I'm the one that says that atheists are just as religious as the most devout Christian because they both believe. Absolutely.
And to believe in stuff like that. Absolutely. It's a matter of faith. Cause you don't know.
So it's like you go absolute to one side. Okay, yeah, yeah, you're a sheep. You go absolute to the other side. Yup, you're a sheep too. And so that's what's really stood out to me about this is just that the analysis of the people, the skeptics are supposed to be the more flexible, the more willing to ask question minds. But they've seemed to. With this one, they've seemed to. It seems to just be reflexive. Like, oh, okay, well, I've already decided that me, myself, my identity or my. It could be exacerbated, but the point being that it can't be reflexive. And that's what I see with the COVID vaccines. Like, we don't know enough information. I think everybody should be like, okay, this looks great, but we don't know. It hasn't been out long enough for us to really know all the things that can happen. So you can say, you know what, I'll take a shot at it because Covid is a disruption. Or you can say, you know what? I'm not going to take a shot at it. But nobody knows 100%. Oh, this is 100% great. Or this is 100% bad is really my point.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's where, unfortunately, with the science, let's say last year during the kind of height of the start and the pandemic is, you know, I was very understanding science. I was very, like, fine and prepared. That information would change along the way.
And I think that's the rap that sometimes science and scientists get that is unfair, is that they're not perfect and this and that. And true scientists that aren't narcissistic about their role or don't have visions of grandiosity are the first to tell you it's still called, for example, the theory of evolution for a reason. Because it's a theory.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Unless you have a time machine, you can't prove it.
[00:39:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that's the difference to your point between it. Because there are people in the scientific community that are just as absolute and hardcore in their, you know, fixed in their view as there are people that are hardcore on the religious side. So it's not a knock against science or religion. I think it's more that the type of mindset of, you know, people aren't, you know, let's put it this way. Back to the topic at hand. I think part of the issue with the conspiracy stuff around the vaccine is that certain people just are more rigid in their mindset. And if not, everything is perfect. Like if Anthony Fauci said something in February or March of 2020, and by December of 2020 it had been a little bit different, they're gonna point to that as confirmation bias. See, he was wrong and they're all
[00:39:55] Speaker A: wrong about this, so therefore he's wrong about it.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: Exactly. So I think there's a lot of that.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: You know, what I see with that though, is that uncertainty is a part of life, but a lot of people are uncomfortable with uncertainty and you're not okay with uncertainty. And the thing is, is that what we see in our media environment right now is that certainty sells. People that get up and talk about stuff with certainty are very popular, even though there's no way they can be that certain about that kind of stuff. You talked about this in previous shows. How could this host of whatever show be an expert on all of this stuff when he's up there talking about it? Part of his job is to talk about it and he knows all about it, even though he probably read something, a blurb on it five minutes before they went on air and it's getting on there talking. So certainty sells and so people project certainty with things. But, and this actually is similar to the breakdown I see in our politics a lot of times, is that on the ends of either spectrum, not necessarily towards the center.
I think most people live in the center. But right now our media environment is trying to push us towards the ends because that keeps our attention. But towards the ends of the spectrum, people are not recognizing that they may not have a monopoly on all ideas. You know, and so everybody's trafficking in certainty and not, not enough people are saying, okay, well here's what I think. And being willing to engage in a good conversation. Now this takes two. You can't do this by yourself. You can't do this on one sided. But being able to engage in a legit conversation with, okay, well, I think this. You think that let's try to, let's figure out, let's see what works or let's see how we can bridge this together.
And bridging together doesn't necessarily mean meeting in the middle. You know, sometimes some person could be More right. Than another. Another person. If you actually challenge both sides. But, you know, that's just not the world we live in. And we see that with this in the medical community. Right now, we're in the medical. I shouldn't say the medical community, but in this medical versus quasi medical and everything is that everybody's trafficking certainty. And. Yeah, this thing has been around for like, 16 months. Nobody could be that certain about anything related to COVID 19.
[00:41:54] Speaker B: Yeah. No. And it's interesting the way you sum it all up, because that really. I mean, we could kind of wrap this portion up here because I feel like it sums up, like, everything we've been saying in terms of. And it's interesting you make the tie into politics.
[00:42:11] Speaker A: Hey, man, I must have knocked you off your feet right there.
[00:42:13] Speaker B: That's right.
The politics totally screwed me up, because it's true that. Cause what I was thinking was a show we did like two weeks ago about hint to the audience, go back to our library, but now about politics and religion.
Because when we talked about in the kind of like that people are treating politics like religion gets treated a lot with the certainty and this diabolical nature of the way people talk about things, you know, And I think going back to maybe how we started this part of our conversation, what you asking me about, do I think it's gonna, you know, how this will play out a bit. And I said, I'm glad, you know, that we're doing this now. The reason I said that is because we also have. I think I heard this morning, I think the number is 60 million Americans have been vaccinated already.
And that's why I'm saying I'm glad we're talking. You asked me this question now, and five, six months ago is because I've seen it in my own circle of people.
A lot of people who I know were resistant to all of this stuff, and even those who were taking the cues of leadership last year and kind of saying like, oh, this is not that serious, all that.
Most of them have got vaccines, and most of them have a much more just relaxed view about it all now. And I think that's what I was gonna say is you can't combat this stuff from the news or from politicians just talking and all that. This kind of stuff gets combated in the ether on the ground level by people, their friends, their neighbors, their family that they can see. And once you start seeing enough people getting vaccinated, they didn't die, they didn't get super sick for a long time. Then that's what I mean. That's the only way to beat some of the misinformation. Because then that's what I think happens, is the more people are getting vaccinated successfully, the more the skeptics like, the less apprehensive they are, and some of them will get off the sidelines and get vaccinated. And eventually you're gonna have the majority of the population vaccinated. And so I think this might have the chance to calm a lot of stuff down because I think you're right.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: Maybe. I mean, you're the ever optimist, though.
In fact, I love the optimist.
[00:44:19] Speaker B: When I said there's no hope for humanity.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: No, I've learned that that's just your defense mechanism for yourself.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: No, but I really believe that, actually.
[00:44:31] Speaker A: But you don't want to believe it. That's what it is. You don't want to believe it.
[00:44:33] Speaker B: I don't want to, but I do. That's the thing. You're right.
[00:44:36] Speaker A: Well, now, switching gears, though, just as fathers, you and I, we just, in our normal interaction, we trade notes, talk about things that come up from time to time about parenting styles. So we saw this interesting piece in the past week or so about how certain parenting styles can make children more susceptible to emotional abuse or just bad outcomes. And we thought it was worth the discussion on air. And so, Tunde, what was your takeaway from this piece, which in everything we referenced, as always, we'll put in the show notes, which you can find in the.
Whatever platform you listen to this on, it'll be accessible through there. But yeah, what was your thought on this? That certain parenting styles can kind of make kids more prone to being the receiver of emotions, abuse, you know, or so forth.
[00:45:24] Speaker B: After reading it, that felt very guilty. And I bought more life insurance to make sure that when I dropped dead, these kids, you know, they know that I wasn't that bad a guy and that it's my little. Thank you. I'll leave it in my way.
[00:45:34] Speaker A: Making it up.
[00:45:34] Speaker B: Sorry for screwing you guys up when you were little. Now you all got all these issues when you're grown now.
[00:45:39] Speaker A: Well, no, but you're the guy that says all the time that, you know a lot of issues that people have as adults.
[00:45:45] Speaker B: No, I agree. That's why it was a great article. And I would say this, it confirmed a lot of things that I kind of halfway knew, like you said, through reading. And again, I want to be very clear for the audience. I'm not some guy with a PhD in psychology. But I would say I'm an armchair quarterback guy, like a layman that's read a lot about psychology and finds the human mind, what makes us tick and all that kind of stuff very interesting. So, as you rightfully mentioned, I've learned through my journey of this that a lot of things are imprinted when we're very young. And I would say elementary school age and earlier.
So. And I think the consensus through the scientific community and psychological research community is that about 80% of our hardwire or of our psychology is hardwired by somewhere around like 7 or 8 years old. Like a very young age. And so one of the things that is interesting about that is that your brain is being hardwired at a time when you're too young to realize what's going on and you're too vulnerable. Because, you know, it's not like five year olds can sit there and start telling their parents, hey, look, you know, this abusive household, I'm not comfortable in here. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna go rent an apartment, you know, two miles away and you guys figure it out and then tell me and I'll come back. So the problem is, is that children are so exposed to so many things that I think a lot of parents, unintentionally, that's where I think, you know, we gotta be fair on everyone.
Cause we're parents, right? And we're human beings. And everyone. Parents go through different stresses at different points in their life.
[00:47:25] Speaker A: And sometimes Tunde, sometimes parents are human beings too.
[00:47:29] Speaker B: Only sometimes, though I don't think my mom was until I was like 22.
Then I realized, damn, this lady's smart. What I.
But so that's what I'm saying is that it was very interesting because it kind of formalized a lot of things that I had picked up through random reading, but also things that I think I just intuitively felt and knew from my own life growing up as a kid. And things that I can reflect on that have influenced me now that as an adult, even to how I deal with money and what I eat and how I deal with food. That always influenced from how I was raised as a little kid and then being a parent, you know, parenting kids and watching them grow and the results of that hard work. So yeah, it was fascinating.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: Well, I'll tell you this now. They looked at distinctive patterns of parenting. You know, authoritarian, authoritative, permissive and indulgent, or permissive and neglectful.
And what they did is try to categorize based on your interaction with the child and how those things played out. And to me, actually, this. It was interesting because now I would consider.
I look at my childhood as, you know, very warmly in terms of, like, my parents were firm, but they were always fair. They were loving and so forth. Like, I couldn't ask for anything more. And so I've looked at those qualities in terms of how I raised my kids and, you know, and thought it to be something that could be very effective. A lot of the things. A lot of the ways my parents made me felt have been. Have given me tools to survive and thrive in the world in various circumstances. And so I very much appreciated that. And so I've looked at things like this a lot of times and then I look at it and like, well, what if I didn't have parents like that? Or what if my parents would behave differently? And I've thought about that before reading stuff like this. And so it seems like you either know, like, with absent articles like this, you either know this stuff from experience.
Like, having an abusive parent is bad because they abused you and, you know, that sucks.
Or having a very supportive parent that makes you feel loved but also doesn't let you just do whatever you want, makes you feel secure and safe, but also makes you feel, you know, gives you certain good feelings and then you want to emulate that with your kid. Like, it's kind of like absent studies like this, we're prisoners to our own experience.
And it's very difficult to be able to put our minds in what other experiences would actually do or could do or whether they're better or worse or things like that. And so this made me appreciate my parents more and kind of reaffirmed what I'm trying to do as far as raising my kids. Because I'm like, okay, being firm but fair has a lot of value, you know, like, and like the one that really, really, really correlated that, they said, like, as far as being abusive, was it dealt with parental or no, excuse me, behavior control. And particularly in terms of manipulative behavior control with parents and how negative that was. And that's something that.
That's something I never really experienced from a parent standpoint. Now, I've seen that in action from. In other scenarios. But, like, I can see how if you're constantly trying to manipulate your kids, not trying to get them on board, like not trying to get them to want to do something, but kind of actually playing them in ways, how that could correlate in ways to make that they would just think that that's how you're supposed to get along with other people. And so seeing this kind of stuff laid out, like I said, is one each of us will bring our own perspective to it as far as what.
And then you actually can see, okay, this is how if people who are studying this stuff and trying to categorize it over large sections or, excuse me, large segments or samples of humans, they're putting it. And you can kind of see what bucket you fall in or other people and stuff like that. And honestly, it could if you choose to allow you to kind of redirect some of your energy in ways that. Okay, well, this may have been what I saw before, but I now I don't necessarily think that that's something that leads to a positive outcome. So let me try to adjust. So I think it's invaluable. I think it's the kind of thing though that like, we don't go to school to learn how to be parents. You know, we don't get sample size. This like, oh, we learned how to do math, but we don't know how to raise kids. We don't know how to give emotional support and stuff like that. So, I mean, I think it's invaluable to see and very insightful again, because normally you can't see how normally, meaning you don't get a detailed expression of how other parenting styles are other than the one you grew up in and then the one that you actually do for yourself.
[00:52:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's interesting because the article alluded to, like, parents that might have a mild mental health issue and like you said about playing the kids and doing this emotional stuff. And, you know, this article is a reminder. I actually talked to my wife about it after I read it because I said, you know, it's a sad reminder about how vulnerable everyone is because really, when you're so young, you don't have the ability to understand what's happening. And like you said, it's a good way you put it that we're kind of prisoners in our own reality and this the way we're brought up. So it's interesting that that's normal. Yeah. And I'll read real quick here from the what got me thinking about even the comments I was talking to my wife about authoritarian parent. Authoritarian parenting is characterized by high demand and lower responsiveness. Harshness is common, leading the child to become accustomed to negative emotions in close relationships. And it goes on. But I can think back to when I was a kid and I remember certain my friends, their parents had that very strict authoritarian style and then I see the way they played out as adults. And then I can look at my kids elementary school and I can see the parents who treat their kids a certain way and how the kids then kind of lash out during the school day because they got this pent up anger or emotion or they've got a low self esteem and so they just
[00:53:27] Speaker A: learn that that's how you're supposed to interact with people.
[00:53:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And so like I'm looking here, a child to become negative, to become accustomed to negative emotions and close relationships. That's what I started telling my wife like.
So that's the kid that grows up when they're our age and they can't get it together. They've either been divorced two, three times or they're still in a marriage but they're miserable and their spouse is miserable because they become accustomed to having negative emotions.
[00:53:53] Speaker A: I mean to the degree, yeah, that's the logic. But like and we should point out, I mean even in this, you know they're talking these things have percentage effect like the correlation isn't 100% that it's more so that that kind of would predispose someone if you know, because people also and people are always evolving. So you may not have gotten it then it may predispose you a certain way but you can evolve and grow and be in something else because. And actually to that point what you just said though the thing that actually the difference between authoritative and authoritarian was very instructive to me because the lack of any kind of personal warmth and connection was seen as a really key distinguishing point and leaving kids feeling isolated in a way where that's where you get that the close relationships are cold as opposed you can be strict but still be warm if you make the effort, you know, and that's something that.
[00:54:45] Speaker B: Well that was you said because it was the permissive indulgent and then permissive like neglectful traits. And they said kind of like the permissive and neglectful is the worst combination to be as a parent because not only you just letting the kids do whatever they want so they don't learn boundaries, they don't learn self control and all that. But then you're also just neglecting them. So they're not getting the emotional side either versus even if a parent. Cause that's what they were saying, they were distinct, gushing. A permissive parent might be permissive with like physical things and certain things letting the kid kind of have their own boundaries, but then they can be supportive and disciplined on the emotional side. And that at least still is some sort of guardrail that a child has grown up with of how to maybe treat others and be a certain way.
[00:55:30] Speaker A: But they, and that can have pros as well because then the kids learn they can, I mean again, all tendencies, all not 100% correlation, but they, in some instances, when parents put too much control on, even if it's with warmth, the kid doesn't learn how to set their own boundaries. So it's all, it's an art, it's not a science.
[00:55:48] Speaker B: I found that interesting to your point that it's not a perfect research in that way because cultures are different and you have these nuances. And then wrapping up here, I thought about myself. You know, I have a spread.
I've got kids in the mid-20s and my youngest is 9.
And I think I've said this on other shows too. I'm a different person in the different stages of my parenting. So when I'm in my 20s and I was a young parent, I was a kid too, when I think about it, right, I was still learning and growing and hadn't read all my psychology books yet.
And now with this nine year old now, and I'm in my tipping in my mid-40s, I'm a much different person. I'm much calmer and slower and I'm much talk things through and do things that I just didn't do when I was younger.
And so it's funny, I joke sometimes with the older kids, like, you know, it's a, you got a different version of me and I'm glad you still like me, but don't be jealous of the little guy because he's never gonna play pick up ball with me like you did. So there's pros and cons to, you know, all this stuff. But on a serious note, I mean that's something to give parents a bit of a break as well. That we go through a lot as parents and as human beings in the world. And so sometimes things, things are happening in your life that are stressful that just are when you have young kids. And sometimes you can't hide the stress or the stress bleeds into your personal and home life. And when you're older, it's easier to look back and say, okay, you should calm down or maybe I shouldn't have done this. But when you're in your late 20s, early 30s and you're kind of growing yourself, it's harder to see all that.
[00:57:23] Speaker A: Well, I think, I mean, I do want to wrap. But one thing I would say on that, and this is to your point, is just that I think the key with reading things like this and just as you go through, you know, like, raising children is one example. Like, if it was, if it required perfection, human race would be gone. You know, like, it doesn't to raise children. It doesn't require perfection. I think that if we can all just be, to the extent we want to be a little more intentional as far as, you know, just understanding that whatever we do has effects. And these effects aren't always something that we can. We can fully grasp, you know, but there are certain directions. Things may nudge things one way or another, and we can be intentional. Then we can just try to.
You don't have control, so to speak, on how your kids turn out. But nobody or I would say most people would want to push their kids in a way towards either success or fulfillment or things like that or some combination of all that. And so from our standpoint as parents, you know, I think that's just trying to be a little more intentional and stuff like this can allow that, allow for that. Just saying, oh, and people, we don't get sample size when we're raising our kids. Like, we get a shot, you know, to raise a kid or, you know, a shot to raise a group of kids or whatever, and that's that. And so other information can be helpful in the same way. You know, if you're playing sports and you watch, okay, you watch this game, you see what this person did, see what that person did, you might learn a new move or you might learn this and that. So learning these types of things or just seeing these types of things, whether you agree with it, whether you disagree with it, it does allow you to be more intentional in terms of what you're doing and how you're doing it. So we appreciate everybody for joining us, you know, on this episode of Call It Like I See it. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:59:03] Speaker B: I'm Tunde.
[00:59:04] Speaker A: All right, subscribe, rate, review, and we'll talk.
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