Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we consider whether in the current moment, we're witnessing a shift in American values on things like free markets and whether the chaos and conflict in our society may be the cause.
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keats, and joining me today is a man who knows how to make a podcast episode. Jump Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. You ready to work your magic today and leave the people totally crossed out?
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Let's do it.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: All right.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: I have a, officially, I think a 3 inch vertical jump now at my middle age, so we'll see how it goes.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: For the purposes of this, all you gotta do is reverse your shirt, wear your shirt backwards, you'll be good to go. Okay.
Oh, before we get started, I got.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: That one, that reference. I'm old.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Ah, you got it, you got it.
Cool, cool.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Now I might have to cross something with a Chris, right?
So I gave it away too much.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Nah, now we're good. Before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe and like the show on YouTube or your podcast app, doing so really helps the show out. We're recording on May 6, 2025. And Tunde, we recently saw a piece from Philip Elliot over at Time magazine, and it took a look at some of the things that Charles Koch has been saying about his concerns over the directions of the country. Now, Koch and his late brother, but Koch, you know, still, they've wielded big time influence over the Republican Party for a really long time. So with Republicans controlling all the levers of power in the federal government, it caught our eye that Coke seemed pretty displeased about some of the things that, you know, that's going on, particularly with, like the government intrusion into the markets and people's lives and so forth. And all of which, you know, those things are definitely not, you know, what's happening now is definitely not conservative, you know, conservative behavior. One of the things Koch was quoted as saying was, you know, quote, with so much change, chaos and conflict, too many people in organizations are abandoning principles and turning to power to solve problems. But we know from history this just makes them worse. So. So you and I have been asking, you know, for a few weeks now or maybe longer, you know, why so many Americans have been so willing to just walk away from principles, you know, that people say they care about things like free markets, rule of law, every person under the law, due process. So where do you make a Koch suggestion that it may be the change, the chaos and the conflict that we're experiencing in our society today that's driving people away from their principles and towards just this idea of using power for immediate gratification for whatever they want.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: It's a great. This is the question of our era, isn't it? And so I think that there is, there's a lot to unpack there. And I know we'll get into some of the ideas, you know that later in the show. But I do think that James, there's a lot of examples in the conversation we've been having recently around the sports area.
And we did a show just recently about the draft.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: You've been noticing some of that stuff, I know that.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: And like, oh yeah, you know, and last week's conversation about the draft, is it un American kind of the concept of drafting players and not allowing them to choose where they want to go. And so, you know, a right to work type of environment. And so I think in this conversation I found it very interesting, the name and likeness conversation, nil. And the idea that I saw an article this week about the potential now for the President of the United States to maybe use some executive action, executive orders to deal with this idea of young people, let's say college age people or people in college sports being paid for their likeness for.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Let me jump in real quick. I know this one got you hot and like when we were talking over the week and so but I want to set it up a little bit. So basically over the past few years, historically for college athletes, they were required to sign over their name, image and likeness rights to the ncaa. Let the NCAA make all the money from marketing and putting them on tv, marketing, putting them in advertisements, anything like that. Recently that's been held to be unconstitutional over the past five years or so. And so this marketplace has exploded. There's no regulations, there's no rules. It's just. And well, there's very few. And so particularly in areas in sports where it's big money, there's billion dollar TV contracts and things like that.
The schools at present aren't allowed to pay the players. But what can happen is that through nil collectives or individuals, you can pay a player for their name, image and likeness, so to speak. You can pay the players and hey, go to this school, play football here and we'll write you a check for a million dollars, you know, and so players have been getting paid through this. Some of it's with advertisements. You now see college athletes, you'll see Caitlin Clark in a GEICO ad or something like that, or you'll see College athletes, juju Watkins, we've seen, and Gatorade, I think. And so, but they're getting paid for that now, whereas previously they couldn't, they couldn't do that. They couldn't get paid for those types of things. And then also it happens that the local guy at the car dealership, you know, might pay some money. And it was reported like in the past year, Ohio State, the football champion, they paid their nil collective and all of that paid about $20 million for the whole roster. So there's a lot of money flowing here. And then a lot of the older school people, you know, and I know in the story you're citing, Nick Saban's involved, a former coach are really upset about this. They're upset that the players are getting paid. And so it's gotten to Trump now and he's saying, oh, well, maybe I'll do an executive order to. We don't know what this means, but to limit the payments to go to the, that would go to the players. And yeah, I know that you were really, you, you got hot about this. Like, well, hold up, what about contracts? What about, you know, all this stuff? So, so, so please continue.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just interesting, man, because of course, as a layman to the law, that's why it's nice doing this show with an attorney. Especially this, this is a good topic for you because you're an intellectual property attorney. So you're talking about contracts and rights and property rights and things. It's, it's up your alley. And so, but for a layman like me that had to go learn what an executive order really is, you know, so I gotta love this, this type of environment chaos, it's a decree. No, because I actually just went and looked up the definition of executive orders. And it's one thing I learned is, you know, they usually are only they can only really be applied to federal agencies and directing them on how to do things. So again, this idea that we're gonna.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: See, that's what they're supposed to be. Yeah, that's not what's happening right now.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: No, but that's what I'm saying. Like, like that's why it got me hot thinking about this idea that everything is going to just be solved from the mountaintop down. Like now we've got this issue with young people and money in an environment where it wasn't before in this way. And let me just say that from 30,000ft, meaning like you said five years ago, players in college athletics, where there's A lot of money to be made, tv, all that kind of stuff, like you said, even in the local environment of just car dealerships that want to have more notoriety in the town where the college is, like you're saying about Ohio State, we live in Florida where football's huge and there's a lot of schools. Florida State, University of Florida, which is in Gainesville. Right. So there could be businesses in those areas that just from their own marketing and, and good reasons like that find value in sponsoring kids on the team.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: They may want to have an athlete show up at their location or just put a social media post out, hey, just put this on your Instagram or whatever. And here, here, maybe we'll pay you, quote, unquote, more than we would pay somebody else for that. But, you know, because we want to entice you to come to this school. But all the same, it's still a marketplace. And to be fair, it is chaotic, you know, but kind of.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: No, not chaotic.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: Going to say.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: We can. We can separate this conversation a bit, which is, yes, there does seem to be some chaos because it is an unregulated space right now. Kind of like cryptocurrency. There's chaos there. Right. People have their coins, wallets stolen, and FTX happened. Right.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Maybe people should be doing an executive order. We should find a guy to push for an executive order that limits how much money that people can make on cryptocurrency.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Interesting concept. I wonder if there's a guy who.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Like, hey, man, I got to start ducking arrows saying stuff like that.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: I'm not joking.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: Let me make that clear. But it just reveals. And to me, I mean, I think that this illustrates. I'm glad you went there. Because it does illustrate kind of how the chaos of what's happening admitted anybody on any side of this issue would tell you, yeah, it's chaotic. You know, it's chaotic. You know, these contracts, people are trying to figure out, like, oh, a player signed an nil contract, then he wants to leave and he's like, okay, well, so do you. Does he get out of the contract or does that contract, if he's not there at the school anymore, already over or what? You know, and so. And then there's been contracts and then people, you know, the person supposed to pay, is it paying? And then what happens?
[00:08:59] Speaker B: Well, what you let in with, I mean, one business paying a whole team $20 million. That's where that money go.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: I mean, so it's like, is chaos happening? And so it. You are seeing and in response to that chaos, like, we do have systems in place to address that. Like you said the word regulation, the Congress can pass a law through, like what we learned through civics, like Congress passed, both houses of Congress pass it, the president signs it into law. That's kind of how we usually do rulemaking and lawmaking here. Or if a certain agency can take it on and say, okay, here, we're going to regulate it like this, within their power. What's different here is that now, to be fair, the NCAA has been trying to do that for a decade or for a long time, trying to get Congress to do something our Congress doesn't really do much anymore. So, because that, that is, that's chaos, you know. So what you're having now is they're saying, okay, well, let's try to. Even though this isn't the way the American system work and the principles of, you know, of three part, three branches of government and all of that stuff, we're going to go around that. And let's just. This guy who's in power now seems to be, you know, cool with just exercising it, whether it goes beyond what he should be doing or not at all. And so let's just go to him and say, hey man, why don't you give us an executive order that says these things? And so we can. We can control the chaos as opposed to going about it the way that you want to. So with this is. This is an example of kind of like what Koga is saying to say, people, the chaos is causing people to not go about things in the way that we have them set up in the country, but trying to go around it and just cozy up to power, particularly power that seems interested in wielding that power. You know, someone in power seems interested in wielding that power without regard for really what the limit should be. And let's, you know, let's get this guy to just hook us up and then we're good. We don't need to go through the lawmaking process and, and get.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: Let me address that real quick, because it's like the whole executive.
You know, the executive order thing to me is just very interesting because I also think it's a test on the system, because technically, an executive order should not be able to influence any of this, as just like many of the executive orders we've seen since January 20th. So, meaning that they aren't what actual executive order is meant to do, which is affect how an agency operates or things like that, these are executive orders trying to affect how things are done from a legislative standpoint and legal standpoint. So I'm sure they'll get challenged in court and something like this if an executive order is attempted. I'm sure, and many have.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: I mean, that we've seen this. There have been executive orders around birthright citizenship. They've been challenged in court and they're losing and stuff like that. So. But just to be fair, I want to say this. This isn't the first president that's used executive orders, and honestly, this isn't the first president that's used them in ways that arguably exceed the scope of the office.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: In fact, one of some of the first executive orders that Trump did, we're reversing a bunch of executive orders that Biden did. And that was what Biden did when he got in was from the first executive orders he did were reversing stuff. And that's kind of why we don't want that. One of the reasons why, other than obviously we don't want lawmaking power in the hands of the person who enforces the law, too. Like, we have one branch that makes the laws, another branch that enforces the laws. But beyond that, if our laws are supposed to be a little more durable than this, like, they're not supposed to just be, all right, well, the executive changes. So all these executive orders are going out the window. When you actually have to pass a law through Congress, then it becomes something much more durable, something that will last, that sticks to our country as opposed to just administration by administration.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: So, but go ahead, Darren Points. The dysfunction of Congress over the last probably 20 years or so. But that's what led us to this. I mean, I had issues with that even during the Obama administration, how many executive orders he felt he had to do to get around the dysfunction of a Congress not doing his job.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And so it's worse now, but the trend began prior to now.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: You know, it's, it's, it's terrible. And so, but that's one of the things, again, going back to then, why is this important to us? Why was I hot? Right. Like, what you're saying is you, you make a great point, which is, again, the American idea is not to have all this power in the hands of one person. And what have we talked about in this particular one, as relates to the nil and the young people in sports is things like contracts.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: People have signed contracts, people have made arrangements and agreements with each other, and there are contractual rights. And you're right, there was. In preparing for today and learning, I learned about the Youngstown Steel case under Harry Truman, which was the first time that the Supreme Court really pushed back against an executive order. So this idea that again that, that the executive cannot, you know, that, that either Congress or the courts cannot push back on the decision or actions of the executive is false because we have many examples in history of that happening. And so that to me again is, is, is where I think David Koch and I know handed back. I want to quote, this is. Sorry, Charles Koch that Charles Koch said people have forgotten gotten that when principles are lost, so are freedoms and progress. And I agree with him. I mean that's, that's a profound statement. Because think about what we're talking here. If we begin to allow the executive of the United States and the President, you know, president, President of the United States to just decide on a whim when people can get paid and not paid based on, you know, like you said, a football coach having a meeting with him. You know what I mean?
[00:14:24] Speaker A: A retired coach.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. Yeah. I mean David Koch is right.
We run the risk of looting, losing the progress that's been made. You know, if you want to say that over decades and also our freedoms to have these kind of contracts and.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Negotiations, well, I mean it's bad for business. I mean, and I think I'd say that's probably where, you know, one of the areas where Coke is, is mainly looking at because I mean that's part of his whole thing for the last half century was that government staying out of it is good for business, so to speak. So having a whimsical executive out here just making rules is like, well hold up, that's going to be, that's the worst thing for business. And I think that it's also like, it's very offensive. I mean like in the sense that like, is he also going to do an executive order for coaching salaries? Because the coaching salaries are actually coming. At least the nil stuff is coming from private people. The coaching salaries are coming up out of the coffers of the university. Texas A and M just paid like 70 something million dollars to a coach to go away. Like that's where we have the biggest leakage in the system is you got state universities paying tens of millions of dollars on these buyouts to the coaches that they fire. Then like there's some waste in the system. If we're trying to actually protect the public here. It's not because 18 year old is making a million dollars. It's because you got a 70 year old or a 60 year old getting paid $76 million to go away. You know, so it's. That's. But I would say that that's a minor issue here. That just reveals to me the lunacy of it, you know, and also the selective kind of targeting of it, you know, like, oh, well, you know, that 70 year old probably is giving political donations. The 18 year old's not.
No congressman is seeing that money. So, you know, it reveals kind of the lunacy of it. But one other thing I want to move on. But the other thing I'll say though about this is that I wonder whether this is an excuse though, because sometimes it comes down to the character of the people. And also the character of the people one, and then two, the values that are being emphasized in a culture. And so I wonder right now if what we're seeing is not necessarily chaos and change and conflict driving people to abandon principles. I just wonder if kind of, I'm a big person on what are the incentives in place. I wonder if we are empowering people of poor character and if the values in our society that we're teaching on an ongoing basis and that we're emphasizing and that we are rewarding versus punishing, if those are leading us down this road. Much more so than chaos and conflict. Because I don't look back at a time like I'm looking at 1790 and when we got all these principled people putting together this framework of this constitution that didn't look like a time when there wasn't a lot of chaos and conflict. A lot of chaos and conflict then, you know, so this might be a convenient excuse to kind of let people off the hook.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: But say what now? Because as you're saying, I'm thinking of the chaos and conflict in the 1780s and all that. And what do they do? They put in things like an emoluments clause to make sure that people weren't on the take. Right. And I'm thinking as we're, as we're talking here, because they did it in.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: The midst of a bunch of chaos and conflict.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: I know, I know.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: It wasn't like everything was calm and serene and that allowed them to stay to their.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: But check out what I want to say.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: Just staying they were creating and staying to principles in the midst of chaos and conflict is my point.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: Yeah, and this is why this is painful, what we're going through, because what you just said before, this was pretty profound, which was, you know, we're all staring at these kids making this money, but no one is saying anything about the coaches that make, you know, the extra zeros much more and they're getting.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: It from the actual state, you know, like the highest official in most of these states is the football coach, you.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: Know, and I'm not here to argue whether that's right or wrong.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: I'm just saying that's a fact. And what I'm saying, James, is from the emollients of the reason why you made me think about it.
But the reason why you made me think about it when you said about the founding fathers and stuff, is because the man who is threatening this executive order that other people can't get paid and have their contracts honored because he might not like that, he's the same guy that as he was coming into his second term had a pump and dump meme coin situation where 800,000 people lost a combined $2 billion.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: And we're going to use the emoluments clause and say in this first term to say, no, I'm going to keep all, I'm going to keep making money from all these hotels and stuff like that. I'm saying, even though it says I shouldn't, you know, so that's why Charles.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: Koch is absolutely accurate. I'm going to read the quote again. People have forgotten that when principles are lost, so are freedoms and progress. And that's what I'm thinking about.
The principles of the guys that founded this country, that inserted certain things and checks and balances into, into this documents, those have been lost. And I think that to your point, James, the type of leadership we have now is just different and they want to control everything from the.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Well, it's not just the leadership though, it's the values, you know, it's the values of the society because we have a role in the leadership that we have. And so we can't just put it all on somebody else. This wasn't, you're, wasn't some king that came in and, you know, conquered us and then we're just stuck with the character of that person, this person, you know, whoever's in now reflects the values of a large enough part of the country. And so that's, and so what are we getting our values from? That's what to me, where you're looking at a breakdown much more so than the circumstances around us. We can either look at the circumstances around us, which is oftentimes the way people address problems where they say I don't have a control over this, or you can look at the things you can control, which a lot of times that's the values, that's the incentive structures that are in place and say, let's look at what we can change there in order to address this. I'm just much more inclined to look at it that way than say, oh, the circumstances just, they got us all, you know, like they got us all, you know, bent down and trying to do our best, but it's just too much. We're overwhelmed. So that's how I take this is just kind of like this is an excuse, like what are the values? What is the leadership? Now I want to, I want to lean into this a little bit more. Like kind of the second part I wanted to discuss here is that like, we live in a world right now. Like, yes, there was like, I can't eat chaos and conflict and so forth. If you go back, you know, a couple hundred years or any time throughout American history, like, I don't think we're looking at serene times. You know, people look at, oh, the 50s were so cool. Like it was a lot of crazy stuff happening in the 50s, you know what I'm saying? And, and so like there was chaos, conflict when people are hanging from trees, when, you know, like there's a lot of chaos and conflict going on at this whole time. You know, some of the most chaotic times are the 60s and 70s, you know, and lo and behold, we impeached the president who violated the Constitution and we were able to uphold principles then. But right now, unequivocally, our media environment thrives, particularly social media thrives on chaos and conflict. That's what drives it. So if this logic does hold, let's say it's not just an excuse, but it's a part of the factor, it's part of the pie, so to speak. Could we just be entering an age where principles are kind of going to get pushed to the backside in general and then people are just going to, to, to, to cozy up to power and try to, try to be, try to exercise their will and their gratification not through process but through, you know, through, through exercise of power.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think we're there.
Yeah. No, because as you're saying it, I'm thinking of, you know, look at great profiles and courage examples. Mike Pence, Liz Cheney. Right. People like that, that, that were principled in standing up for the Constitution in the United States. People like, you know, lesser known guys like Alexander Vindman, you know, Wendy's people, and Chris Krebs of this, of the cyber security. I'm just naming names of people I've heard of people that stood up, that blew the whistle when, you know, either they were the politicians themselves, like a Mike Pence type or Liz Cheney that just said, hey, you know what? I'm not going this far. I'm not doing it. Or they were people like the Krebs and the Vindmans. They were actual people working in the system that raised a hand and raised an alarm.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: You know, you gotta look at it. Just, just real quick, I don't want to miscast this. When you say Pence and Cheney, you're specifically, you're talking. Because there are people on the other side of the political spectrum that have been calling it out the whole time. There's the only thing that's unique about Pence and Cheney is that they got to a breaking point, like they were cool with it to a certain point, and then they stopped being cool with it. They were on the same side of the power, which essentially you have more to lose when you're on the inside versus when you're on the outside. You're kind of. You can reflexively do it.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I would say this, James, you bringing that up. And I'll be fair, you know, as a political, you know, nonpartisan type of.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: Guy, that, that, yeah, you're independent on the show, man.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. No, but I'm just saying, like, Bernie Sanders also proved that on the Democratic side. Right. That there was a lot of Democrats that didn't have the principles that they espoused about labor and about taxation and about things like that. The inequality of kind of the wealth gap, let's say it that way. And that has been exposed. So that's all I'm going to say, is that we've gotten here. I think you make a good point, that we're a democracy. So the leadership we have now is a reflection of where we've come as a country. And I think there's examples on both sides of the political spectrum in our country that principles have been lost along the way. And so where does that get us, James? I think a lot of things. One is the media ecosystem. I have a good friend of mine who said a profound statement I'm gonna bring up here, and he said that they were burning witches for a few hundred years after the invention of the printing press.
I don't know who told me that, but I guess you'll never know. Yeah, that was James Keyes, by the way. I'll just put him on the spot. But I thought about that, James, actually, in preparing for today, because I thought about it because it is profound when you think about it. I mean, they were, I'm sure they were burning witches before the printing press, but.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: But not with the same scale, though.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Just the idea that that did. New technology causes information to get out in a way that is not controlled like it was under the old, you know, prior technologies. And I think as you, as I thought about that, I thought of just the Internet itself, the way it's fractured, you know, kind of the ability for the old guard to maintain control and the hierarchy of information, the old authority, all that kind of stuff. And something new is going to come out.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: We did the revolt of the public book.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And there'll be something, you know, over the next hundred, 200 years, the world will look different because the Internet and a lot of it will be because of these, what we're talking about now, communication, things like truth versus information, all that stuff. Because I'm thinking about this, James, and then I'll shut up. But let me just get through this one, because this comes to me where the media and social media play into partisanship. Because I don't know if it's that I'm old enough now to notice these things or because of the technology. We have these immediate contrasts now, because I thought about this. January in May of 2025, six months ago was an election in the United States. And I wrote down here, the big issues were DEI and CRT and all this stuff. Post birth abortions. Right. That doctors were somehow killing babies after they were born in the delivery room, transgender surgeries for kids. And the immigration was going to cause the majority group to get replaced. Here we are six months later. None of those things are an issue right now. They're not all over cable news. I don't see them all over, you know, the social media. The president's not talking about them that much. Maybe immigration a bit, but the other stuff, not really. And so that's what I'm saying, James. It's just interesting to see all this hyper partisanship brought us here, but now the leadership's in power and they're not really talking about this stuff that they were selling the public on. So I'm not sure where this goes because it seems like a lot of the public is a little bit sideways now as to what's going on, but also the public got us here. So.
[00:26:28] Speaker A: Well, I'll tell you, here's my thought on that. The. It's not just the Internet. What it is is the business incentives that are associated with how we use the Internet, whether it Be the traditional media on the Internet or social media on the Internet or whatever. It's the, it is that chaos and conflict drive engagement. Engagement drives dollars. So because it's not lost on me. You see, you shared something with me pretty recently that I think you said your wife shared with you was just, you know, like how other countries aren't necessarily electing reality show stars or, or you know, entertainers as, as in their leadership. You know, like Canada just elected a guy who, what was a Ph.D. you said, you know, like. And other countries have elected, you know, like very accomplished, very knowledgeable, smart, measured people and not. And we're just not. We're electing, you know, the person who, who entertains us the most. You know. So like. And who's.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: You share with me the article about Stephen A. Smith running for president.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Yeah, like, you know, like he's talking about running for president, which kind of fits. You know, if Stephen A. Smith is going to run for president, it kind of makes sense because it's like we, we seem to be gravitating towards the most entertaining people to, to run the country. So but so I, it has to be something about how, how we are using these things. And that is going to go back to the incentive. The business incentives are to create conflict and to create chaos and to be loud and to not think about things to just be, you know, stuff that immediately grabs you to be emotion tugging, you know. And so because it's, it's how we're using these business incentives that are set up on the, on the way, how we use the Internet are driving us here. And so, and yes you did kind of. I was going to touch on this as well was just kind of. I think we have to. To people who are over a certain age now tend to think that the time that they grew up in was kind of where society, that's like the base point of society and any deviation from that is like abnormal. I've come to believe that what we grew up in, in the 80s and 90s and I guess the 70s to some degree as well. But you know, just kind of, you know, three news networks and you know they did fairness doctrines and you know everybody's trying to paint a relatively still slanted, you know because it's human beings but paint a. People are trying to paint a relatively or at least they appear to be trying to like they, they try to tell you, they try to convince you that they're being fair. That stuff must have just been the exception because I'm sure it was Much more like this. If you go back to days when people were printing pamphlets, you know, now we can get into the. And we're not going to. For. You can go back and watch our show when we did the book. Amusing ourselves to death. There's some. Some of that going on too, in terms of how television and video influence our ability to think. But again, that's not something that's unique to America. So if other countries are still able to be serious about the kind of leadership they select and we're not, it says more about what we're doing and again, what things we're valuing in our culture that are leading us to hear. And so that's. I think, what we're going to have to get a better handle on. But like you said when you referenced the printing press, this is just something societies are going to have to get a better handle on is how do you navigate large numbers in this new era, you know, like, where there's just, you know, like there's a lot more information out there. Most of it's not true, but the stuff that's not true is much more engaging than the stuff that is true. So how do you navigate that? And that's. We're gonna have to figure that out. And kind of we get to live through at least the beginning of the figuring out process. And so hopefully we're not burning witches. You know, like, I'd be the. If. I guess we're. That's progress. If we can. If we just aren't burning witches or doing other heinous things that, you know, we've seen, you know, when the introduction of the radio or things like that.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting, James. We're not burning witches, but we. We're sending back.
You know, we're sent or not back. We're. We're sending.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: We're disappearing people into.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Disappearing people that don't have criminal records to other countries, prisons, summarily without any hearing or. Yeah, so it's kind of the same thing, right? It's, It's. It's taken a part of society that is almost like an escape hatch for distress. You know, the transference of whatever stress is in the society and saying, whether I burn them, whether I lynch them from a tree, whether I deport, you know, deport them to some other hellhole. Because I was thinking about this. It could have been the renditions 20 years ago, remember all these black sites we heard about. And that's another thing as we end, James, because I thought about this in preparing for Today, when I wrote down to things like the post birth abortions, all these what I would call manufactured crises we've been dealing with. And maybe this is an example of being at the top of Maslow's hierarchy as a society. Yes.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: I've been waiting for the Maslow's hierarchy.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: We don't have anything else to do as a society. We're not fighting a war.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: We're not hunger. You know, we got more calories than we can eat. You know, in fact, we're dying of overeating, you know, but, yeah, so now things are. Our concerns have advanced beyond mere survival.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So a transgender person on a Bud Light can, or being told you're not going to be able to have a gas stove is something that you're actually going to go.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: The most important thing.
[00:31:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, because I was thinking about James, like 20 years ago was the year 2005. Think about that. We had come out of nine, 11, we were in two wars. We had a lot going on. I mean, it's just like the idea that somehow now we've got these national emergencies is a joke, you know, compared to other.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: Like you said, other compelling tv, man. Like, so that's everything. Everything that. That will keep you watching, on watching television is a national emergency, basically because of the incentives that we have in play, the business incentives we have in place on how we're using these new technologies. So, I mean, and I'm sure, you know, the, the Witch's Hammer is the same thing, you know, like, when we did that was amusing ourselves to death, I believe. And when we did that, it talked about, you know, Copernicus comes out with a book, the guy who reveals that the Earth revolves around the sun, that sells like 100 copies. The witch's Hammer, that talks about, you know, witches going around cutting people's penises off, you know, is the best seller of the ages, you know, so it's like, yeah, this isn't new, you know, like, again, it. This may just be kind of what we got to go through, you know, with our humanity. So we can try to, hopefully we can try to stay closer to our principles, though. And I think the way to do that isn't necessarily to remove all the chaos and the conflict, but it's to set up our society so that our values and our incentives are in line with people who are principled, as opposed to people who make us laugh or make us cry or make us scared and make us feel like everything will be okay if we just hold very tight.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Well, and I'LL be over there sipping on my whiskey with Charles Koch crying in the corner with him. You know, about this state of affairs. You know, it's, you know, we, we'll.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: Wrap this topic up from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call. I can 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.
[00:33:17] Speaker B: I'm tund.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: All right. We talk.
