Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss the sharp decline that has been observed in border encounters with people who are trying to come into the United States. Well, react to the banning of Twitter X in Brazil and consider if dolphins are really evil, as suggested if you look at some social media platforms.
Hello.
Welcome to the call it like I see it podcast. I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a worldly man, a man who knows how to make things work, you know, to his advantage. Toonday Ogun, Lana Tunde, you ready to show the people the secrets of having whatever you like?
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Yes, I am. But I was gonna say I can't do it in my own household. For some reason. It only works outside my house.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: All right. All right.
Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask you to hit subscribe like the show on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out. And recording this on September 3, 2024, and wanted to take a look at what's been happening at the border generally. Border encounters are down significantly from what we've seen over the past three, four, five years. And no one seems to really be talking about this. And, you know, there isn't much discussion on why this may be, you know, may have we found something, you know, kind of a formula or something like that, that kind of can get this issue a little bit better under control. So, Tunde, just, you know, on the first point, just to kind of get us started on that, like, what do you make of the sharp decline in encounters at the border that that's been observed?
[00:01:48] Speaker B: I think it's good news. I think it generally, not having a bunch of illegal immigrants pouring over the border, like we've been told, generally should be received well by the american people. And I think, you know, it's very interesting that you started that way because I think you're right.
It's amazing how much hysteria was made about it. And rightfully so in many instances, it was a huge spike in apprehensions at the border. You know, I think between 2021 to last year, 2023 coming into this year. And so naturally, most nations would be concerned about that in their populations. And so I just, you made me realize as you're, as you're winding up, you know, the entry to this, to the show today, like, yeah, so there was a lot of hand wringing about how bad it was, but now it's gotten better, and no one's talking about that in the media and as much in politics anymore. So I didn't notice that until you said it. But it's interesting.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: I generally think it's a good thing.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Well, yeah, we'll get to the political part of it, but just the sharp decline. The thing to me that's like, okay, well, my reaction to that is, okay, well, what's happening here, because a lot of times it's hard to kind of get the cause and effect as far as what's going on with that. Like, generally we understand that when things are really bad in certain parts of the world, you know, central South America, that these things increase because people are looking for a better life and so forth. And so geopolitically, is there something going on? Are we exerting soft power in places that are kind of quelling uprisings or making things more livable? Is that what's happening, that kind of long game stuff? Or are we doing things? And, I mean, it made me want to look into that and we'll be able to discuss some of this. One of the things that's very interesting to me as far as one of the things that the Biden administration, I guess Biden Harris administration has been doing is really dealing a lot with Mexico because, you know, I guess pretty obviously encounters at the southern border in Texas, Arizona, you know, New Mexico, all that kind of stuff are driven by people coming through Mexico. So a lot of work with the mexican authorities as far as setting up checkpoints in Mexico, as far as trying to pick people off before they actually get to the border and then send them back down south.
And also, so that's one thing that's more of a, a physical blockade and, but obviously not one simplistic, like build a wall, but, like, actually strategic.
And then the other piece would be the use of this app that, you know, they publicize down in Central South America. Like, hey, if you do want to come here, get this app, make an appointment at a port of entry, you know, like, and then show up at your appointment, like, just showing up. You're, you're going to be just sent back. So it seems like a very smart way. Like, people came up with a good and good way to deal with this. And, yeah, I mean, it's in stark contrast to the way we've seen this issue be one to stoke emotion and fear. You know, like, it's like, these are pretty boring solutions. If you kind of, you know, like, if you get it like it, nothing and nothing. What I just said is emotionally satisfying.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Like, ah, yeah.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: You know, like another, it's like, oh, yeah, some, you know, bookworm brainiac seemed to came up with these ideas and put them in place. And to see it working is like, okay, yeah, this is kind of, this is where you get into that idea. Like, well, maybe a lot of the stuff that the government does shouldn't be that exciting, should it? Maybe a lot of that stuff should be boring. And the fact that we're looking for entertainment and emotional satisfaction out of government stuff, maybe we're looking in the wrong place for that. Maybe we're, you know, kind of hustling backwards with that and kind of making our government not work as well. Cause we're trying to put, put emotional into it.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's a very well, very well put.
And I'll segue that into that then allows us to maybe ask what are the motivations of those who are in our leadership in general?
[00:05:47] Speaker A: Because you're right, leadership obviously behave differently when it comes to the issue. But, yeah, I mean, I think everyone's motivations, you know, well, but they're not the same.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: So some people are motivated by governing right and by solving a problem, which appears to be what certain people must have done in the last twelve to 18 months, you know, to get these numbers down, because I don't think people stop wanting to come to the United States. So clearly, some people have been working, like you said, behind the scenes. They're not on tv every day shaking their fists and all that, but they got stuff done because the stats I'm seeing is that July had the lowest number of crossings since September of 2020 during the Trump administration. So we're back down to numbers last seen during Trump's time in office. And that's actually when it was very slow because we were at the height of the pandemic in September of 2020, when a lot of things were shut down all over the world, including in South America. So, so the, but just in the.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: Point, we'll have something in the show notes talking about the point that it's significantly down actually from even January 2021. You know, like at the end of Trump administration, numbers are very much down from that. So, yeah, once, that's what I'm saying. Yeah.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So someone's been governing, been working behind the scene, like you say, and dealing with other countries. Because again, if we think about this rationally, one would assume a country like Mexico, that's a sovereign nation, doesn't want a bunch of illegal migrants going through their country from Guatemala, Venezuela, and coming in to come to America because that disrupts their country. So that's, that's one side of it. But then I think the other side, the way you kind of posed your point makes me realize, yeah, we've had some people in american government, I'm not even talking about the Biden administration. I'm talking about both parties at the government level. Some people been working to try and solve it. And then we have a whole other cast of characters that have been working to try and keep this as a strawman out visually to prop up to the american people and say, look at how bad it is. Look how bad the people are who are currently in the charge. This is why you got to elect us so we can go put a stop to this. And that's where we hear rhetoric like rounding up 11 million people if President Trump wins, for example, and using the military to do it. So this is a competition of ideologies. And you make a great point. Some people have an idea, though. Well, let me just finish the point that some people want are okay with the government doing quiet work and saying, let's give it time and let's see if they fix it or nothing. Respond to political pressure, which seems that the Biden administration did respond to political pressure in the last year. And others have a different ideology, and they want to use this topic of immigration to implement a different ideology in the United States, like using the military domestically, which could have all kind of cascading, which is currently illegal, basically, is.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: Your point, like, so they want to change the way the law works and then you want to use this as a pretext to do so. I mean, but I think that, I mean, I don't think we have to be coy about it. Like we've seen, for example, we've seen people in the Democratic Party, you know, Biden, Harris, and then in the Congress that are looking, that responded to political pressure. This is kind of the point of political pressure. Like if people are uncomfortable or upset about something, you put pressure on the leadership and then the leadership would respond to that. That's, that's supposed to be responsive government, but they've been doing it. I think you can look at, what is it? Senator Langford, the Republican, the guy who was a big part of, remember, there was a bipartisan effort to deal with this that got shot down. And that would be where you look at the other cast of characters, where it's like these people maybe see this as an issue not of one to solve but to either use to keep people riled up or make this, you know, make people scared, make people whatever, or to expand power, you know, within, do things that they want to do anyway. And say, oh, well, and so, like, we see Trump, you, Trump blows up the, the bipartisan immigration deal, not even in the government. He's not even in the government, but he's able to exert pressure on members of his, part of the Republican Party to blow up a deal that another member of the party helped put together, you know, a very conservative member of the Republican Party. So it showed even a fissure there, you know, where you got some members of the Republican Party in that instance that are trying to govern, trying to do the work of government and respond to political pressure being put on by the population. And then you have other members of the Republican Party. They're like, no, no, no, we don't want you solving problems, you know, or at least we don't want you solving problems if we're not there to then take advantage of it, or we don't want you solving the problem this way. You know, that doesn't involve, hey, we need this so we can start using military on american, using the american military on american soil, which, again, is not legal right now. So, yeah, I mean, I don't think we need to be coy about it. You know, like, it really is, it's an expression. But I mean, I think that it, to me, it's just, I'm actually happy, you know, like, I'm happy for the, the Biden and Harris administration that they've been able to do a lot of this work. Even after the bipartisan bill, the bipartisan kind of trying to legislate it was blown up, they still were able to use diplomacy and those type of things and then technology, an app to still make things better. So, I mean, I'd like that. And they're like, hey, that's kind of what we want from government. And again, that's the thing that's crazy about it. That's what some people want from government, I guess, or a lot of people want from government or what we should want from government. But, yeah, it's not very emotionally satisfying. I always, when people try to make a lot of these issues very emotional, you know, to me, that's always the issue or the question, like, okay, well, what, what purpose are they doing to try to make this emotional? But I do want to get to, to the next point. I know you, you had some thoughts on this, as you know, that you wanted to get out. But from a political standpoint, I know that, or we both know that while we haven't heard much about this, you know, going now and things have been going well, we are about to start hearing about it, most likely because this tends to be one of the things that when election time comes, we start hearing about caravans and we start hearing about all types of southern border stuff. And we also know that it doesn't necessarily have to be true. It can be like, we've seen archival footage, footage from other countries be used to try to create this impression. So are you prepared for it? What do you think about kind of how this is gonna play out over the next two months from a political angle? You know, either because of the fact of the matter that border crossings are down or not withstanding the fact of the matter that border crossings are down, what do we, what do we got coming?
[00:12:07] Speaker B: I mean, look, I think we should be prepared for more fear mongering and the same stuff we've seen, I don't think that should be a surprise to anyone. And I. You're right. I mean, we're here record. Yeah. Recording this on a Tuesday and on this past Sunday's news shows, there was already a prominent senator from the Republican Party who said that there's caravans coming from all around the world. This time, it's not just South America. And I've heard countries like the Congo, I've heard cities like Mogadishu being used. And again, it's sad because, number one, I mean, I'd say this goes hand in hand. Number one, it tells you what these politicians think of their voters and their constituents, but they're just easy to manipulate.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: And unfortunately, weren't sounding names.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: And unfortunately, the base of the party, at least a certain percentage, do show them that they're right, and they keep kind of falling for these same things. Now, I think that, like many things in life, the schtick is getting old. So I don't think that the caravan fear this time around may have the same effect it had in prior election cycles. And here's why.
I got into an argument with a good friend of mine who's, you know, he's older than us, but a close friend of mine in January, during the time of this bill, when former President Trump inserted himself into the congressional debates and basically, you know, told the Republican Party to kill the bill because he wanted to keep it as an election issue. And I remember telling my friend that I think it's gonna backfire on republicans. And he, you know, we got a little animated with each other for the rare time. And he, you know, we were arguing about it. And the reason I said it was, I said, because, you know, in another world, Donald Trump could have told the Republican Congress. All right, do this because when things get better on the board and closer to the election, we can take credit. We can show that we led on this issue and we can show the american people that that's why they need us. Because we let on this issue, we forced the administration to kind of come to heel, and now you got to elect us because we're going to finish the job that way. And instead, it's played out the way I anticipated, which is it appears that this was all just gumming up the works on purpose. The bill was a good piece of legislation that, like you said at the beginning, everybody knows a very conservative Republican was the one that led it and got Democrats to a place where they otherwise wouldn't have gotten because they were under political pressure. And I told my friend, this was the funny thing. I said, there's a way, I got him to see at least my point. I said this would be like if we had some big issue with the healthcare system, bigger than we do already. And I said, and imagine if the Republicans finally came around to universal healthcare and single payer system. And we're like, all right, guys, you got us. We understand. We get the political pressure. And then the Democrats were like, oh, now you want to have universal healthcare? Oh, no, we're just going to, we're going to blow that up.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: We can't do it because so and so is in office or whatever.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And I was just saying, like, because we're in a democracy and there's transparency, people can see that and they can see that as a political stunt. And I think that that's, to me, what's fascinating watching this play out is in this short window that Kamala Harris has taken the nomination. And I guess her style in how she fights politically, it's almost like she's usurped this immigration thing from Trump and Republicans in many respects. And it's no longer the type of wedge issue that it was just six, seven months ago. I just find that fascinating. I can't explain it.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Well, no, it's a good analogy. It's a good analogy as far as like. Yeah. Cause the democratic voters, people who were really in favor of the single payer, you know, type of health care would be livid if the Democratic Party killed the idea to have one in a way that otherwise they would, or in a way that they would be, they would think was acceptable.
And so, but it really, it's a bet. And this goes to, you know, like, the point you made earlier about how this expresses how you know, leadership in a party, what they think of their, their constituents, you know, because essentially the bet there is like, hey, kill this. Because we want to keep this as something, you know, that we can talk about. We don't want to solve this problem, is what that's saying. Hey, we don't want to solve this problem right now. We want to keep this as an issue that we can use to draw drive wedges or to make people afraid. What that's saying as far as what this Donald Trump and whoever else, the leadership in the Republican Party that was behind wanting to kill this relative to the people in the Republican Party that wanted to put together with the Democrats the bipartisan bill, the bet is that these republican voters respond to fear. They don't respond to progress. They don't respond to solving problems. Like, so whether you solving problem, whether you solve problems is not going to be something that determines whether or not they vote for you. Whether they're afraid is what's going to determine whether they vote for you. So it's like, if you follow that logic out, it creates a pretty crazy incentive from a governing standpoint. If it's true, I'm not saying it's true that your whole point of governing is not actually to make people's lives better, not to address issues that come up, but to just make sure that whatever comes up, the other side gets blamed for. And that's it. Like, and so it really go like, it's like, well, hold up. You know, like, if that's your governing philosophy, because that's what you think of what your voters are gonna respond to. Now, to your point, it might be proven wrong in this instance. If Kamala Harris is able to say, hey, we got a handle on this and we're doing it and we did it alone. And then if we do get Republicans that'll work with us on this, we'll solve the problem for good. Like, just like we've been able to, to make a lot of progress. Now, maybe that plays out and this, and it'll be shown that actually there are plenty of republican voters that actually do want governance and they want their leaders to solve problems and not just be good at blaming the other side of what happens. But that to me, is, that's concerning from the whole system standpoint, because it does, you do end up with a party without a platform. If the only objective is to wield power for whatever, you know, give tax breaks or whatever, it would be, you know, command the military on american soil. Like, those are the things you really want to do. And from the rest of it is just about blaming the other side. Like if that's your incentives, people respond to incentives. So if those are the incentives that the party has determined that they're going to, that they think their voters will respond to, I don't know how that can be a governing party, like, because again, it's just, that's a scapegoating party, you know, and a party about, you know, exceeding the bounds of the law, finding ways to extend the bounds of law or to give away money and run huge deficits. So, you know, it's something I hope, well, just let me, let me say this. I hope from just a american standpoint that it's proven that the fee or the progress incentive, the governance incentive still holds weight in the Republican Party. I hope that these, that the people who decided to kill the immigration bill are not rewarded because if that incentive is proven to be true, then we got trouble.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: Well, it's a very good point you made. I mean, that's why it's important to the democracy is allowed to work, meaning voter suppression is not rampant, the gerrymandering, all that kind of stuff. Cause you're right. I mean, these are incentives. And right now we've got a political class that's in fear. Think about this. James Langford, who wrote, who led the legislation on the immigration bill, which was a very conservative piece of legislation, said on the floor of the Senate that he was threatened by a talk show host on one of the major cable news channels. And, you know, Fox News, and there's speculation on which talk show host it was. I won't get into that gossip.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: The real leaders of the party.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: That's my point is that the sad part is this person, he said that, this person said that if he pushes this bill during an election year, that, that they will destroy him.
And think about that.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: A senator of the United States who's elected by people in his state to go to Washington to solve problems was.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: Threatened by a very, presumably to solve problems. Apparently. That's the presumption, that's all we do.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Presume that they go there to see problems. You're right. He was threatened by an entertainer, basically a very famous talk show host, that if he does try and solve this problem for the american people, by the way, this talk show host on Fox News is the one telling their viewers every night the dangers of fentanyl coming over the border, the dangers of human trafficking, the dangers of Ms 13 and.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: All these gangs doing everything to emphasize and to exaggerate how big of a problem. It is, yeah.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: Correct. And this is why to me it's sad for the american people who follow that side of politics and discourse. And I'm not saying Republicans, because not all Republicans are magnificent, clearly, because Langford.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Was not in that game. You know, like it's definitely is now. It may be a part of the Republican Party that is currently controlling the party, but it's definitely not the whole party, you know?
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Exactly. Well, and that's the point is hopefully, hopefully the other part of the party can wrestle back control. But I think it's going to be very difficult when the incentives for the political leaders, incentives that they have based on people like this person from Fox News, meaning they're performing to an audience of cable news anchors who then perform for an audience of the constituents. And that's the filter for the MAGA base is their filter is people in entertainment. And that's why we have an issue here, because you got a serious guy like James Langford, he's a serious senator who's a respectable guy who's a conservative dude who came in and is the problem because he compromised. This is why the former speaker, Kevin McCarthy, lost his job and why the current speaker, Mike Johnson, almost lost his job. But luckily the party didn't want to be embarrassed with having two speakers run out within less than twelve months. So that's why I don't know how to solve that one. Because it's like the messaging that the messengers to the base of the party are messengers who are not giving their base the truth because in one way they scare them. Like I said, with all this MS 13 and fentanyl and all that. But then when you got something to try and solve it, they say, no, no, it's because it's so partisan you can't trust the other side. So if you compromise now with the Democratic Party, we're gonna, we're gonna boot you out. And now the Biden administration obviously did enough to get the numbers down. So here, we're here at an election. And to me, the, the Republicans look like they abdicated this responsibility and somehow worked out anyway.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: It's very interesting. But the thing is, is that, and when you bring in the talk show host element of it, like from a.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: Rating, I didn't mean to do it, but I had to.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: Well, no, but from a rating standpoint, his incentive would be, or his or her incentive would be to keep the, to not solve the problem. Because if the problem, if we do take concrete steps to solve the problem, less people will be watching being afraid about that stuff like it actually is. This talk show host is incentivized to keep as many issues that resonate emotionally and with fear open as possible because that'll keep more people glued to the tv, you know, so sorry.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: I mean, interests are always you.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, you always got to look at incentives when you're talking about people because ultimately people oftentimes aren't that complicated. You look at the incentives that are in place and then you can oftentimes predict the behavior that's going to happen. So, yeah, as long as the incentives are out there, you know, misaligned like that, then, you know, again, the, it's going to have to be the voters that steady that ship. And like I said, we hope that the incentives as they, the cynical way that it's been aligned right now, the bet against solving the problem of immigration or trying, or trying to, at least we hope that that bet loses just from a standpoint of a functioning government. You know, so, so, so people, government officials can be incentivized to have a functioning government, which again, is almost like you would hope to presume that. But, you know, I don't want to, or I do want to keep, keep us moving, though.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Well, one last thing. I just want to get back to just finishing the thought on the caravans because I think, I just want to say this for the audience. I actually did some research. I've been hearing more and more about illegal immigrants voting in american elections. So I went to the Internet, in the Google machine and I just said what I just typed in, can illegal immigrants vote in the US? And I found, I learned some stuff. So in 1996, the US Congress passed a law prohibiting non citizens from voting in federal elections, including elections for US House and US Senate. There is an environment where non us citizens can vote in certain states. There's a handful of states. These are people that hold green cards. So they're not illegal immigrants, they're just non citizens. And they can only vote in local elections. So that's like school board, councilman, mayor, dog catcher, that kind of stuff. But there is a law that the Congress passed in 1996 that nobody who's not a us citizen, so no one who doesn't hold a us citizenship cannot vote for president, senator or Congress, which seems to be what most Americans care about. And so my concern is even though that's a fact, it's still going to be twisted and distorted and millions of Americans won't believe that fact, just like they don't believe that no one's trying to push sharia law, just like they believed in birtherism, just like they believe in the big lie. So again, just like people believe that.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: The earth is flat.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, that one's not as dangerous to our society yet because not as many, not so many people believe it, but the others are threatening our democracy, these other lies. And I think it goes back to, like we said, the messengers who have been so dishonest with certain swaths of the american public. And, you know, I don't know what.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: We do went there because I got a lot more on that issue because, as you know, I think that's a segue.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: Next discussion.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I was gonna say that's a discussion for another maybe in a week or two, but, you know. Cause I personally believe that that's missing the point. Like, the reason you're hearing the talk of illegal immigrants voting is in preparation to try to, if or when the Republicans lose their Trump loses the race for presidency, it would be to. That's, that's a pretext to say illegal immigrants are voting in advance. They're trying to say that now as a pure pretext to say that we can't trust the voting results. That's it. It's, it's only a pretext to try to overturn the election. Like, and they're laying the groundwork now. It's, you know, this because they're not trying to prove it. They're not trying to prove. And when they tried to prove it, you know, obviously in 2020, they couldn't prove it. They're not trying to prove it. They're just trying to put that seed in so that they can say when the election doesn't go their way, that this is why it didn't go that their way. And so what we're seeing now is only a set of, and I mean, I'm an attorney, so I kind of look at these things from a, you know, from a chess move standpoint. And so it's only, it's a pretext to try to, you know, disavow the election results in advance. And this is be, this will be if Kamala Harris wins the electoral college. You heard it here. What's going to happen is that they're going to say that they, all of these, they're going to try to flip all these states to say that always the difference was, because of illegal immigrants, they won't try to prove it. Or if they try to prove it, they'll lose, but they won't try to prove it to the same degree as they'll just try to make everybody believe it and then create enough pressure to have the Supreme Court overtone it or something like that.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: So, you know, who needs to be careful?
[00:27:47] Speaker A: What's that?
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Who needs to be careful? JD Vance.
JD Vance. The last time this all happened, you know, the vice, Trump tried to get his vice president hung. So, yeah, I'm just, you know, for sure.
Watch out.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. So those vice presidents, let's wrap up topic one for the day. We appreciate everybody for joining us. Join us on, we'll have two more topics coming up today. So please check those out as well.
All right, our second topic today, last week we saw that Brazil banned Twitter X. And the immediate reason was that X didn't comply with a requirement to name a new legal representative for the company in Brazil. But this was kind of like, that was kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back because there had been a lot of back and forth and hand reading in Brazil between Brazil and X over their refusal to ex's refusal to comply with local laws regarding content moderation. You know, and specifically the government in Brazil had pointed to and had expected action on anti democratic far right stuff that they targeted because there was a uprising in the Capitol in January 2023 following an election where right wing people lost. And so ultimately, this seems to line up with debates that we've had in the United States and that'll take place in other parts of the world as far as how much responsibility social media companies and social media platforms should have for the content that's being put on their, on their platform and then also how much say the government should have over it. So, you know, in light of this, you know, like this recent banning of Twitter in Brazil and other, you know, there's been some other things happening, you know, recently and also the past few months. Just, tunde, what are your thoughts on kind of the, you know, the responsibility of social media companies and, you know, what role the government should have from a freedom of speech standpoint, but then also just from a corporate type of, you know, like corporation. Again, this is a controversial take, but the idea that corporations aren't people. And, you know, what you do on the Internet is, you know, something that is, it can be regulated to some degree. So, you know, just thoughts?
[00:29:53] Speaker B: Well, I'm offended because apparently as of 2012, corporations are people. Why are you discriminating?
[00:29:58] Speaker A: You know, it's not good your business. Disagree, maybe not yourself as a human being, but your business is kept coming.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: A bigot by saying they're not people. Come on. What are you? You're a eugenicist. Come on.
No, but I think this is interesting, and it's fascinating because it's something I think the world's gonna have to deal with going forward, and I don't have a solution, but I think it's.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: And it's gonna get crazy with AI and stuff, too. Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:27] Speaker B: And that's what I mean. It's the way from a financial. And it's kind of like crypto that doesn't have borders anymore. Like the old ways of finance where, you know, a treasury department, you know, issues money, and you got different laws about how it can be moved around the world and other countries, and there's exchange rates and all that. Well, now, with crypto, it's one global currency that is unregulated. And I feel like social media is something similar as relates to maybe discourse and information in that way, and not. Not finance, but.
And it's very interesting because you're right. Like, Brazil's not America, so they don't have the same freedom of speech laws as we do here. Their government may be allowed to do things and crack down on corporations that say things unlike here. So do they have a right to act in a way that they would with any other business in their country? I'm assuming. So does that sit well with people in the United States? No, because it's a different culture and we have a different set of laws.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: See, I don't know, man. Like, let me just throw this word at you real quick, because to me, anyone who is taking up for, you know, Twitter x from a United States standpoint and saying that, you know, a multinational company should be able to do what it wants to in Brazil. That sounds a lot like what the word globalist would mean, would normally mean from a dictionary standpoint. Now, people use that word for a lot of different reasons, but to me, to try to exert, that's what it.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: Means when you don't want it to mean jew, but go ahead.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: That's, like, what it would mean based on the terminology. And it's like, hold up. So why in the world would Elon Musk get any special privilege in Brazil to disobey the law or disobey requirements from a court like, it?
[00:32:09] Speaker B: Are you saying there's projection, people like him might project out others as being globalist?
[00:32:15] Speaker A: It surprises me, you know, like, if you want to do business in a place, like, to a certain degree, again, you said, like, I would look at this or I look at this from the context of freedom of speech. But freedom of speech, to me, is always one of those things of what do you, like, what do you say you're about? You know, we in the United States say we're about, you know, freedom of speech, so to speak, up until a certain point. And so I'll look at things that happen here under that frame. If another country doesn't necessarily claim that that's what it's all about, then I'm looking at it. Is it objective? Is it fair? But I'm not looking at it in the same frame, because I'm not a globalist. I don't think that everybody has to do what, you know, this rich person says or anything, or even what, you know, this. This smart person says, or this other person says, you know, so to speak.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean, that's a great point. I never thought the projection of, because I know globalist is the kind of shadow anti semitic term for people who want to say that jews run the world and all this stuff, but the projection by those who say it, and you know what I mean, that they actually are.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: Elon Musk wants to run the world. You know, like, he's behaving exactly like people who. That's why it's words I would normally object to.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: It's funny. I don't mean to laugh, because this stuff is actually serious and sad, but it's like, because I was reading an article this morning, I think, I forwarded to you about this guy. He's an heir of the Mellon family, the big bankers of the past, and he's the number one donor to the Trump campaign, along with people like Elon Musk and Ken Griffin, the hedge fund manager, this guy's given 150 million just to Trump campaign alone, seconded by Ken Griffin at 75 million. And I know Elon Musk has given 50 million. They were like, George Soros isn't even in the top ten anymore with giving for these donations, and the top five or six are all given the right wing stuff. And I was just thinking, like, yeah, this level of projection, and if you look at it, not to be in the conspiracy mindset, but, hey, we're gonna be on the Internet with this, so why not have at it, right?
If I was thinking about the messaging of people like Elon Musk and his support for authoritarian governments in other countries and his lack of support for democratic endeavors around the world, and domestically, I would say that Brazil is responding to an attack on its nation from a psychological standpoint. Because you're right. Not only did they have their own January 6 style coup. But a lot of that did happen and was egged on by people like Steve Bannon at the time through organs like Twitter or now x. And it reminds me also what it.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: Did failed, you know, but just to kind of. But, yeah.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: And do the fact we have an X page. I look at X periodically, maybe a couple times a week, and I've seen now it's sad to me. Donald, I mean. Sorry, Elon Musk, specifically, not Donald Trump.
Elon Musk is egging on the race riots in the UK, and he's, he's kind of. He's egging on the cinema of what happened to the UK. And I seen him repost stuff about white British who've gotten jail sentences as opposed to immigrants. I don't know if they're true or not. But my point is, is that it looks to me that he is one of these people, like Vladimir Putin, that's trying to disrupt democracies around the world so that he can be like the Russians, be an oligarch globally, and, like you said, run the world.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: I mean, in whatever country he wants to be and be above the law.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, he's becoming like the dude, was his name Michael Myers, the movie Doctor evil Powers.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: Doctor Evo.
Instead of 100 million, it's 100 billion because of inflation.
[00:35:51] Speaker A: But, yeah, or, you know.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's, it's. It's fun to see it. Let's. Let's. Let's. Let's speculate on more conspiracies.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that. I mean, and that this is kind of, you kind of got to, when people show you who they are, just believe it, you know? Like, you got to remember, this guy came from kind of an apartheid kind of, you know, system, so to speak. Like, you know, the, as a youth, you know, kind of growing up. And so a lot of times, we project onto people the ideals that we think, the sensibilities that we, that we have or that we want them to have and so forth. But, I mean, musk at this point is pretty well established that he is a person who works for anti democratic forces. You know, like, he's not trying to. He says he's a free speech absolutist, but he does censor speech on his platform, and he does try to slant speech in a way that favors his preferred causes, which oftentimes coincide with violence and things like that, and oppression, violence and stuff like that. This is just who he is, you know? So. And that, hey, he can be a person like that. Now when you start talking about commercial interests, though, you know, he could be that, you know, but he doesn't have to. He doesn't because he wants to be that because he wants to turn the Twitter platform into something that works on that and works on behalf of that. Everybody, you don't have to necessarily accept that. From the commercial standpoint, countries can, can say, okay, here are the conditions of doing business here, particularly when, and from a like kind of a consistency, a standpoint, what you believe in. You know, when you start dabbling into violence and coups and stuff like that, it's not a surprise that governments will start saying, whoa, we all know how much we want what you do with your, your brand here, you know, if what you do is coups and violence, you know, so to speak. So I think that's on one hand. I think on the other hand also, though, with social media, I'm generally less concerned or less comfortable with the idea of the specifics of who can post what. Now, I agree that there should be some limits on that. And even, you know, like you said something, the recent me, you know, recently from this summer where the US Supreme Court was like, hey, no, no, it's okay if the Biden administration exerted some pressure on social media previously as far as missing from controlling misinformation. So I very like those, I'm very skeptical of. You know, I'm not saying fundamentally opposed to it, but I think that we have to be very careful as far as how much we let governments say individually what people can post on the Internet. Where are the social media companies? Where, I don't think enough attention is paid. I think enough attention is paid to that part. What people can say, what people a person can actually say. But the piece that I think is the most important piece social media is mind control, imperceptible changes in behavior, all that stuff, not because of what one person posts, but because of the way it's algorithmic kind of distribution of things. And I think that's where our eyes should be more than anything. It's not that some dude in some basement somewhere posted down to this government or that government, or, hey, we should take it to these people. It's not because one person does that. It's because of the algorithms. In order to purportedly, in order to drive engagement in some scenarios, it may be, you know, with somebody like Musk, it may be to actually drive a political agenda that he wants to drive. The algorithms then can show that to people in ways and repetitively show that to people in ways that we know it's been studied, can change, can radicalize people, can change people. So it's not just that somebody posted it here, somebody posted it there. It's that the algorithms are going to amplify that stuff. And that's where you get out of free speech. That's not necessarily what you can amplify or nothing unnaturally goes beyond freedom of speech. That that's agendas, that that is, that's curation. In the same way that, you know, like, news media curates what they tell you. There's so much going on, they can't tell you everything, so they're gonna tell you certain things. And they can be a bias and a kind of, you know, an agenda behind what they tell you what's going on and what they don't. So I think that's the piece we got to look at a little more carefully, which isn't necessarily happening here, but that's a, you know, when you're talking about the algorithmic amplification, that's where you, you go beyond freedom of speech and you start going beyond the agendas. And then we have, we really do have a conversation there.
[00:40:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny, man, because you got me thinking about a few things because it's very interesting, like you're saying about the way that governments. And it's, and I appreciate you bringing up that Supreme Court decision. It was just from a few months ago. I think it was June of this year.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: Because there's been so much pressure on, especially that period during COVID where there was a lot of misinformation online about the virus, about how to deal with it, all that. And the government was trying to urge and persuade the social media companies to try and remove as much disinformation that they could. That they could as, as much as they could. And so.
But the government never threatened these companies, never told them that they were at risk of being fined or that their leaders would be imprisoned or anything like that.
They just asked them.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: It was more of a compassionate plea type of thing.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: And so my point is, and again, this is the problem with partisanship, because if you don't like the Biden administration, you're not going to believe anything I just said. You're just going to say they were trying to suppress speech and conservative speech. And so my bigger question would be, why are people that provide misinformation considered conservative? That's offensive. Conservative people. Seriously, like, like, why is it all crackpots that pull themselves out there to be conservatives.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: But they're not conservatives, though. I think it's right wing, because conservatives, again, like, usually a person, they always.
[00:41:47] Speaker B: Usurp and hijack this conservative moniker, which is idea conservative.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, and so, because if you're conservative, you're probably gonna listen to traditional scientists and medical doctors about care.
[00:41:58] Speaker A: Again, status quo, conserving the status quo.
[00:42:00] Speaker B: You're not gonna be radical ideas about. Yeah, not radical ideas about horse tranquilizers to solve a virus in humans. And so the, but I don't even wanna make it a joke. It's just like, it's sad that because my start, when I'm reading it, I'm like, okay, so what's the point of a government, right? We have a pandemic, a novel virus, something new. You would think that one role that a government should play would be to try and keep the kind of population even keel when it's in a, in a state of panic and shock, which is what pandemics normally cause. And so I'll give you another example. I thought about it today. When I first moved to Florida around 1998, there was a hurricane, I think it was called Hurricane George, and there was a local Home Depot. And apparently they got in trouble because as with most natural disasters, there's shortages of supplies. And they started charging back then, like, $20 for a case of water, bottles of water. And I remember that being on the local news that they got busted because they were price gouging during a time of an emergency. And that was really frowned upon by everybody in the local community. And they got fined by the government. And that's kind of the point. Like, we're in a state of panic, just like a hurricane. And there's a medical and scientific hurricane called the pandemic. And the government is saying, well, the population's already in flux. We don't need more disruption. And again, they weren't legally or punitively going after anyone. They were just asking. And this is what happens. All this stuff just blows up and it gets all, you know, like, like us versus them.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: The matter doesn't matter anymore at that point. Yeah.
[00:43:38] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah. Because that's what I mean. It's an us versus them thing. And it's like, well, shouldn't we want businesses to try at least to have facts out there when there's a lot of disinformation? And I guess for people that it helps to have disinformation out there. They don't want that.
But we should also ask, why don't they want facts.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: But I'll say this. I mean, I'm sensitive to the idea of that, the idea that there's only one set of, of kind of facts that are allowed out there, so to speak. I like people questioning the official story and so forth. I think it's helpful to continue to challenge the authorities. And so in your situation, what you're talking about, I think that you raised the key point. It's more about how they did it. If they would have been out there jailing people, you know, the same Biden administration, putting people in jail, stuff like that, I would be totally against it. But if they're trying to be persuasive, you like, hey, we're trying to get people educated about this, help us out here. And the social media companies can either do it or not. I'm looking at that a little bit like the how is, because I understand, like you said, this dual thing, it's the government's job to, to try to educate people in this situation. And so if that's the case, yeah, I, the how, as long, as long as it's, they're doing it by the least restrictive means possible, then I understand it is something that you have to do, even if it's not something you want to be going around doing all the time, you know? And so, like, they like, to your point from earlier in our, in our prior show, if you're talking about flat earth, I wouldn't want. Because the harms, potential harms associated with misinformation there aren't necessarily as acute then. Yeah, it's like, okay, well, you know, the government shouldn't be out here telling Facebook that, you know, to take down flat earth posts, because again, the, the level of urgency isn't there. So it's a balance. This is why, honestly, when you're selecting leadership, you focusing on issues themselves can be very deceptive, can be very, you know, shortsighted, because what you really want to do is put people in with the kind of mentality, with the kind of sensibilities, you know, like the, who can exercise restraint when they get a lot of power, who's gonna go crazy when they get a lot of power and start wielding the power like crazy, and who's gonna be able to exercise restraint. You're putting a person in office and you're trying to trust that person. And so you gotta look at the person a lot. And I think a lot of times we miss that, which it's to the benefit of people who are bad people. You know, bad people can get into office if they get you to focus only on, focus only on this, focus only on, don't focus on the fact that I'm a liar, cheater, and steal, you know, like that. And so, but be very careful because we do give people in government the ability to exercise discretion with these types of things. It's not all hard and fast rules like there are constraints that we put up that we want them to abide by the, but the actual character of the person matters a lot as well. So, and that's what you see here just with the, just kind of looking at the X and Brazil thing in particular and how that plays in here. I also think the telegram CEO, you know, like plays in this as well. We saw France arrest the telegram CEO and talking about stuff that is allowed on the platform, whether it be child pornography, pedophilia type stuff, or, you know, whatever, violence type stuff. And again, I think that we just got to look at this, and I'm gonna kick it to you now, but I just, all of this stuff, the gut, as you said, this isn't going away. Governments are going to have to figure out in terms of what they are about each individual country, what they are about, you know, like what, how they're going to deal with this stuff, because this stuff isn't going away. And it's only going to be get, it's only going to get more and more because the algorithmic amplification. And then when you start kicking AI in deceiving people is going to be getting easier and easier and easier. And so, you know, and also, you know, enabling, I guess. You know, like, in some context, people are all for trying to shut down the pedophilia and other contexts, they're saying freedom of speech. I don't know. Like, to me, that's bad all the time, you know, but nonetheless, just any final thoughts on this before we keep it moving?
[00:47:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's very interesting because specifically, the telegram guy brings up, again, these kind of questions. Here's a guy that's originally russian, who left Russia to live in St. Kitts in the Caribbean and start a telegram from there. And then somehow also is, I believe, a french citizen as well. Somehow he got the French Connection.
[00:47:54] Speaker A: I think he has several passports.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like, it's like he's a great example of just the global nature of the Internet and these guys, because he's a billionaire. So they're kind of the guys at the top of that Internet game that can really, they're global. They don't have borders themselves. And in a sense, neither. There are companies like we talked earlier about Internet being global. So there's some, I'm going to read a little bit here from an article. There's something called the European Union's Digital Services act. And I think this is an example of how governments may try and handle this stuff, because, again, the European Union being kind of an amalgamation like a voltron of several european countries that try and make laws that would kind of encompass companies doing businesses and all in the entire union. So the Digital Services act could have immunized telegram from some of these issues, because I guess what it does is you have to violate the European Union standards to be held under contempt of that act, not just one individual country's laws, for example. And it's interesting, Telegram refused to be a part of that because they were being contrarian and wanted to say, oh, screw you, big bad, you know, governments, whatever. And so now it says, because it forfeited those protections, it exposed itself to prosecution from french law. So I find that very interesting. This chess game of these, a lot of these tech bros, as we've seen, like Elon Musk and this guy Durov, seems to be similar. They're very rebellious, and they want to be contrarian to society themselves.
[00:49:28] Speaker A: It's not just contrarian, though. It's a word we brought up before, that globalist word. They don't want to volunteer voluntarily, generally speaking, voluntarily, because that's, you have to voluntarily say, hey, we'll comply with this, this European Union, in order to get the protections of it. And so they don't want to volunteer. They don't want to give up any ground with that. They want to be above the law in as many places as possible. And so, yeah, here's where it gets.
[00:49:49] Speaker B: Interesting, because reading that article, what the french government got them on was some of their very specific encryption laws, which, you know, different than the laws here in the United States, but then also being able to prove that there were things going on on telegram, like drug dealing, pedophilia. They were talking about the amount of child pornography on there being shared by people, human trafficking, you know, the pimps and hookers and all that stuff going on in France, using telegram to communicate. So, again, what's the role of a government if I'm the french government and there's this platform that's allowing all this nefarious stuff to go on in my country, and now I see that these guys don't have the protection from the European Union because they chose not to I mean, if I'm a government, I guess I want to go stop these guys from operating my country.
[00:50:36] Speaker A: If they're bringing that stuff, they're not reining it in, you know, as you require, you know, like, so, yeah, so.
[00:50:42] Speaker B: So to me, that's why this is all interesting. Like, because sovereign nations are allowed to do things to defend their own populations. And if you've got a foreign company with a foreign leader, you know, like, like Elon Musk doesn't have to.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: Foreign, by the way. It could be any company, any company with any leader, you know, but foreign.
[00:51:02] Speaker B: Like bringing the Brazil example with Elon Musk. If I'm Brazil and I got this guy in America, like you said, he's South African, he lives in America's got american company, and his company's disrupting my national discourse and my political, my politics in my country, causing a January 6 style coup, then, you know, do they have a right to deal with that? Or, like you said, are we going to let these guys really be globalists and that they're going to tell the rest of the world, unelected billionaires, going to tell everybody, 8 billion humans, how we should run ourselves? Yeah, this is a good question for all of us.
[00:51:35] Speaker A: And so, no, I mean, and I think, like I said, and my point here is not to say that what, what Brazil's doing is 100% right or what France is doing 100% right, but this is kind of the back and forth that we're going to see that has to happen for this issue kind of to be sorted out. You know, like, this is what you saw in the gilded age in the United States. You know, like, the ultra wealthy were above the law in many respects. And so that issue had to be sorted out, and it was reined in some. I mean, it still, you know, it never got to complete, you know, equal protection under the law, so to speak. But it was reined in some internationally. Now that, you know, a lot of, a lot of things that happen aren't constrained. Certain borders. This is going to happen, and it's going to. It's going to be messy. But, you know, the alternative to messy is, like, authoritarian, you know, and like, so, I mean, the messiness of it, actually, these are all data points we can learn from. And that's kind of my overall point here, is that let's see what happens here with this brazil thing. Let's see what's happening, you know, in France. You know, let's see, you know, the US Supreme Court already kind of put their thumb on the scale with what Biden administration did, trying to, again, not compulsory, but trying to come to get the social media companies on board as far as misinformation in one context. So this is going to be a back and forth that we're going to see and we're going to have to just basically ride this out. And hopefully, like you said, the countries don't advocate their responsibility to protect their citizens in the context of what they're about, though, not outside of the context. Like, you don't throw away freedom of speech because the Internet exists, you know, but so how can you have freedom of speech in the context of, okay, you know, you can't incite violence or you can't, you know, like do pedophilia.
[00:53:17] Speaker B: You're right.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: How do we, how do we do both?
[00:53:19] Speaker B: No, but you're right.
Yeah, and you're right because we've done shows on freedom of speech and where the Supreme Court has said, like, the whole thing of not yelling fire in a movie theater type of thing. Right. Because you could cause harm. So there are limits of free speech in certain, you know, hate speech, for example, that could incite violence, things like that. So.
[00:53:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's in the United States, you know, so that that's looking at our context.
[00:53:41] Speaker B: Well, you know, it's interesting is these, it's the people who are always scared of the orwellian hand that tend to follow people that like, you know, like elon musk types that end up, what we'll probably see is the un try and get stronger with some of these laws. So you are going to have maybe a more new world order way of trying to deal with this, which could be interesting, but without going say that.
[00:54:04] Speaker A: Of course, she thought you were going to go Anakin Skywalker on us with that one.
What you fear, you end up bringing too ringing up.
[00:54:16] Speaker B: Maybe there's some philosophy there. But just to finish up, it really is interesting, this conversation about the freedom of speech and how we deal with these pressures from the technology, from the society, and from those who have the resources to continue to kind of push this stuff while the rest of us try and figure it out. And I think the next phase, which is for a future show that we can plan here, I guess we can plant that seed, would be things like the deepfakes, which for the first time we've started to see used a little bit in this current 2024 american election. So I think that's going to be a whole nother set of how do you deal with that kind of stuff? Because that will start proliferating and affecting other nations elections as well. A lot more.
[00:55:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:05] Speaker B: And, you know, and maybe certain governments, like in third world countries, won't have the ability to push back on it. So, you know, and that's the purpose.
[00:55:12] Speaker A: Of, like, a European Union, by the way, is that that gives a bunch of small countries much more. It's. It's kind of the concept of the United States is that individual states may not be that powerful, but when you put together, then, you know, and so therefore, you know, same thing with European Union, you know, like, what Latvia may be able to do is not the influence they may be able to exert on large multinational companies is not the same as what the European Union can do, so to speak. So. But, no, I think we can wrap this part up from there. Check out the next section, and we'll see you then.
All right, our final topic today we wanted to take a look at, it seems like social media, you know, maybe TikTok or, you know, just in various places, social media. There has been a lot of hand wringing over the conduct of dolphins, and people kind of maybe who came into it with the idea that dolphins were friendly and playful like flipper. We're shocked and appalled to find out that dolphins are wild animals and that do things that maybe we might find sometimes to be objectionable.
And then pointing it out, our dolphins are evil. All this kind of thing so tunde this trend that we see, this kind of dolphins are evil. Meme, what do you make of this thing, man?
[00:56:25] Speaker B: It made me realize I'm old enough to now watch a new young generation of people behave in a way that makes me laugh, I'm sure, like I did when I was young, the older generations that laughed at me because, yeah, I mean, you're right. They're not. Um, you know, I was amazed the first time I saw Woodpecker, like, literally outside of my house. I was surprised that it didn't look like the Woody WooDpeCker I grew up thinking that they all look like. And then I remember thinking, oh, yeah, because it's a real bird, and that was a cartoon that was designed to be friendly to kids, right? So I think it's like that. Like you're saying, like, people are being exposed to the fact that dolphins are predatory mammals that are highly intelligent and who have social constructs in terms of their pods and how they organize themselves, and they have hierarchies and all that, just like baboons and chimpanzees and guess who else? Humans.
So you're gonna see a lot of the unfortunate behaviors and a highly intelligent, complex species of mammal, you know, I guess in the water as you do on land.
[00:57:34] Speaker A: No, I mean, I think you said it twice. The highly intelligent piece, like, to me, the highly intelligent piece explains all of this. Like, when you have, they're not all the same, you know, you have variable personalities, but the highly intelligent, like, when you have a highly intelligent species, some, you're going to have some that are, you know, sociable and, you know, able to operate well in a group, you're gonna have some that are jerks, you know, like, so of course, you know, you're gonna see this kind of stuff. And then oftentimes I look at this and you see the projection, you know, it's like, okay, well, dolphins are gonna behave in a way that I find me, myself find, you know, like, acceptable or ways that I would want to behave. And it's like, well, their social structures and the way they interact near their male female interactions and so forth are different than ours, you know, and how they operate in that kind of setting. And so to try, to, try to put our standards on it is something that will, you know, like you're going to set yourself up for disappointment. So I think in many respects, I always talk about how, you know, like, your experience in life, how you, how you, you know, kind of how you receive your life and your, your, and many times your happiness. If you're not careful, it's going to be defined more by your expectations than it is by what actually happens to you. And so in this situation, what we're dealing with really, is that people had x have expectations of dolphins of one thing, and then, you know, it seeing that there's something else, it creates this, this, this problem in themselves. You know, it's like, oh, that's, you're upset about that. Not, but the upset is driven by what your expectations were because you expected different more whatever from the dolphins because they're intelligent, because they're, they have, they've been perceived, you know, portrayed in media because, you know, they're friendly and they make nice sounds and so forth, quote unquote friendly. That, yeah, so, so we see that, that disconnect between expectations and reality here. And, you know, like you said, it's kind of amusing. Not in a mean spirited way, but it's just like, yeah, like, but to me. But that's why I use the word wild and animal, because, yeah, they're a wild animal. Like, I actually would think you will have more dolphins that are jerks because of their intelligence than dogs. You know, dogs are kind of simple. You know, it's like. Yeah, I like dogs, but it's like, dogs are kind of simple because they don't. They're not super intelligent, but like. And I've even seen some.
[00:59:40] Speaker B: Except for. Except for little dogs. All little dogs.
[00:59:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I was gonna say I've seen some dogs that are jerks.
[00:59:45] Speaker B: Little dogs.
[00:59:45] Speaker A: Dogs with napoleonic complexes. You know, those little dogs. Yeah. So.
[00:59:48] Speaker B: But big dogs are really nice.
No, sorry, that just.
[00:59:56] Speaker A: No, no, go ahead.
[00:59:57] Speaker B: Chocolate labs are. You know, my affection for the Labrador retriever won't let me beat up big dogs. But, um. No, I mean, I see.
[01:00:06] Speaker A: I see it as well. Like, the little dog. Dog is owning. I've owned little dogs and I've owned big dogs, and owning. It's different. It's different. Owning a little. Yeah, it is.
[01:00:14] Speaker B: But like you said, little people are as big people. But, you know. No comment. Let's stick with dolphins here. But, no, it's interesting because the reality is that you're right. That's what I mean by make the joke at the beginning about just a new generation realizing that moral constructs are limited, at least as we know so far, to human beings.
And one of the examples, our moral.
[01:00:38] Speaker A: But you've seen, we've talked maybe how they have their orders and then they do political alliances and different types of leadership and so forth, and what's right versus what's wrong and stuff like that, or egalitarian approaches versus more domineering, hierarchical approaches. It's just our particular ones, you know, like how what our expectations are. These are limited by our culture, too. It's not even like all humans have the same thing. What male and female interactions are is something that is going to be cultural more than human, you know, so to speak.
[01:01:12] Speaker B: Well, it's the same observed in the dolphin pods, which they say average around 40 to 60 dolphins, but can be as small as two and as large. A superpod can be as large as a thousand. And what they found was that just like us humans, and like you said, like other advanced mammals, like the primates, dolphins have different personalities. And of course, it's like humans, the more outgoing dolphins, end up assimilating quicker into new groups when they meet them and all this kind of stuff. And. And they've observed migratory patterns and kind of immigration of dolphins into different parts of the seas can cause conflicts with dolphins that have already been there. Like, wow, what a surprise. Right? And so it's the same kind of stuff that. Yeah, if you're. If you're. I mean, I'm sure that all animals experience the same thing, even insects. If one group moves into where another group is, they just, you know, there's going to be a conflict. But, of course, with the higher intelligence comes the ability to do things like manipulate, like have certain psychological aspects of the battle that can cause, you know, maybe the more docile and the less strong in the group, if they actually team up, they can beat and dominate, the more aggressive ones, so on and so forth. So it's very interesting, and an example from a study that was done here in our state in Sarasota Bay, Florida. This was an example of just our moral construct. When we look at dolphins and how it's just different. They've observed four dolphins in this pod. That neck, that. That displayed necroco. Necrocoitus. Sorry. That's a big word for me because that's the first time I ever seen it, which is a sexual interaction with a dead member of the same species. So you didn't have sex with a dead other fish or something? It was a dead dolphin. And in the study, it says they accounted for things like pheromones in the water, all that. They can't find any reason why the live dolphin had sex with a dead dolphin. But they're chalking it up to, hey, that was just that dolphins personality, that dolphin sexual deviant. Exactly. And saying, like, to us, that's weird, you know, the idea of having sex with a dead human.
[01:03:29] Speaker A: But dolphins, that would have been weird. You know, like, that that dolphin itself was a sexual other dolphin.
[01:03:35] Speaker B: You don't know that.
[01:03:36] Speaker A: Watch out for that dude, man. That dude. Don't let that dude, you know, around your family, man.
[01:03:40] Speaker B: That's a good point. Maybe that was like an outcast from the pod, and there's a reason.
[01:03:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, man. Like. Like us humans, it's like, oh, man, I saw what he did the other day, man. Let's keep everybody away from him, man.
[01:03:55] Speaker B: The old idea of banishing someone from the town.
Yeah, we saw the cemetery.
[01:04:04] Speaker A: No, but I mean, that's. But what I'm saying, ultimately, that is if your expectation is not one, that dolphins are all playful, fun, like, all the same thing. If you don't, if you don't, if you go beyond a simplistic expectation of what a dolphin is, if you give a little more room for different personalities, like different dysfunctions or different kind of. Hey, this. This guy. This dude over here is a little too aggressive, a little too, you know, kind of kind of, you know, pushy. This other person is, you know, like you said, like, very outgoing, and, you know, this other person is very reclusive or, you know, this other dolphin and so forth. And you understand they all live, you know, like, primarily they live in pods and so forth. So they got these different social dynamics. Then we can use the complexity of our own societies to try to understand that, hey, there's going to be outliers. There's going to be complexities in their societies and outliers in their society. And it's specifically because they're, they're highly intelligent animals. Like that, to me, is the defining piece of this is just that it's because of the intelligence that we see all these different types of this wide range of things. And, you know, so therefore, you know, kind of accepting that and not having, you can adjust your expectation. And then you don't come away saying, dolphins are evil, but you come away saying, dolphins are complex, dolphins are intelligent. You know that, all that kind of stuff.
[01:05:20] Speaker B: So hold on. So dolphins aren't a monolith.
They're not all the same?
I can't.
[01:05:30] Speaker A: Oh, man. I guess, yeah, we do do that to people, huh? I mean, so it's no surprise we do this to dolphins because we do this to people.
[01:05:37] Speaker B: We expect all, they're unique, and they have feelings and they're, they're individuals. That's amazing.
[01:05:44] Speaker A: Touche, man.
That's the best part. I think we can wrap from there.
[01:05:48] Speaker B: Okay, let's go.
[01:05:49] Speaker A: So, no surprise that people look at dolphins as a monolith or would want to, because people look at people.
[01:05:56] Speaker B: Cause, of course. Cause people are human. People are human beings, too.
[01:06:00] Speaker A: That's why sometimes, sometimes people are human beings.
[01:06:03] Speaker B: Only sometimes. Sometimes they're dolphins, apparently. Yeah.
[01:06:07] Speaker A: So. But no, I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everyone for joining us on this episode of Call. Like, I see it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[01:06:18] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Olana.
[01:06:19] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
