Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we consider whether sports gambling, particularly sports gambling through mobile apps, may be going too far in light of a recent lawsuit filed federal court going after one of the sports books for basically taking advantage of people's gambling or someone's gambling addiction.
We'll also react to the misinformation surrounding the FEMA hurricane relief, which followed, coincidentally or not coincidentally, 100 plus Republicans in Congress voting against the FEMA funding.
Hello. Welcome to the call like I see it podcast. I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man who, on a good day, you may catch busting loose. Tunde ogun. Lana Tunde. You ready to show us your own special kind of funk today?
[00:00:58] Speaker B: No, that would be an extremely good day.
If you catch me busting loose, those don't happen.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: All right, all right.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: I'll just bust something else, but not, you know.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: You're getting old, huh, man?
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I am.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Something busting loose might not be a good thing.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Might not be able to walk.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Got back pain, you know, so we'll leave it at that. Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: For sure.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: For sure.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: But we're recording this on October 15, 2024, and we recently saw a quarter billion dollar lawsuit filed by a former employee of the Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League against Fanduel, which is one of the huge mobile app sports books. And this is based in part on. In large part on claims that the sports book exploited his gambling addiction and by doing so, failed to follow its own policies, whether it be responsible gaming or money laundering and so forth. And now this informer employee, you know, Amit Patel, is currently serving a six and a half year sentence in federal prison because he was previously convicted of charges related to stealing $22 million from the Jacksonville Jaguars. So, you know, he's not coming into the fight, you know, with clean hands here. He's going after Fanduel, but he's. He's a convicted, you know, like someone who's already stole a bunch of money based on his gambling addiction. I don't know if that gives him less or more credibility in this situation, but the fact that this is happening on its own without trying to figure out somebody's a white knight and, you know, somebody's the person who's the villain here. Just that question, it raises the question itself and whether the mobile apps, particularly what we know about how mobile apps operate and to try to, you know, have addictive qualities and so forth, whether it be social media or whatever, I. Whether they may be going too far in terms of what's happening with gambling, which has recently exploded over the last few years. So tunde, what are your thoughts on the lawsuit and the claim that Fanduel was at least partially responsible for this guy losing all this money, stealing all this money because they were exploiting his gambling addiction?
[00:03:05] Speaker B: I think this is a kind of a fascinating case, actually. On the surface it looks interesting. But once you, like, you're saying once you start asking these deeper questions about know things like addiction, how companies deal with people that may have these things. And like you said, this is a guy who's stole $22 million. So, you know, I've also reading about it, I'm thinking, okay, is this guy just looking for any way to get out of jail, you know, or maybe make his time when he gets out of jail because like you said, he's currently serving make, make all of this effort a little bit better because if he can get a percentage of that $250 million, you know, lawsuit, then, hey, he recouped some of the money that he stole.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: I'm sure he could get the repayment, you know.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: So to me, that's why this, this does it again, on the surface, it kind of looks one way, but when you start really diving into these layers, which I know is why we found this an interesting discussion for our show, it does, it does get very interesting. So, so, yeah, it's, and also, as you're talking, this is one thing because you're an attorney, just for me to put out there because I'm not an attorney, it's almost laughable. Sometimes I hear like these lawsuits that the amount of the thing that someone's, the damages someone's seeking because it's like 250 million, like, where'd that number come from? He stole $22 million.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Well, I mean, just the technical piece about that is there's the damages, as in like the harm. And then he's also seeking what are called punitive damages, but those are supposed to be high because what punitive damages, the point of that is, is to create a deterrence amongst that company and other companies in the industry saying, hey, not only were you, we're going to make you compensate somebody for the actual harm that you cause. We want to make this so, so serious to you that everyone, you and everyone else in your industry sees that, you know, we as the society are not going to play by this, you know, so the punitive damages piece is where you get the inflated number. But some of that also is just to create a negotiating stance to where you start here. And then if you're going to start negotiating and settlement. Most civil lawsuits in federal court end up settled by far. You know, so you start with this high number. So the high number does a lot of things, and then it also creates a better headline, you know, so you're going to get more coverage. So that's happening, you know, on, underneath all of this kind of the machinations. And you're right. I mean, that's stuff that I see that and I have all those thoughts, but those aren't, those all may not be kind of, and they probably aren't just kind of intuitive to anybody who sees that.
To me, though, just kind of on the mechanics of it. Like, I kind of, part of it that stood out to me was I threw out in the intro is that I'm wondering, what I was trying to figure out was the fact that this guy was convicted, you know, a fraud, basically, of stealing all this money from his employer. Does that make him more credible or less credible here? Because normally if somebody's convicted of a crime of dishonesty, it's like, oh, well, that person is a liar, a cheater, you know, like, so people who lie and cheat, and generally speaking, in society, I mean, this is kind of getting broken nowadays, but generally speaking, if somebody's known to tell lies and stuff like that, then you hold the next thing that they say and the future things that they say with less, you know, credibility. It's like, oh, yeah, that he said this, but this person lies all the time. So. Or this person has a history of lying. So does, does the fact that this person has a history of deceit make him less credible here? Or could, which would be the norm, or I, the fact that this guy, if you look into it a little more closely, he was acting so like, what he got convicted of, it was so egregious. It's like this guy wasn't even really trying to get away with this stuff. You know, like he looks like a compulsive, like the conduct that he was convicted of looks like someone who can't control themselves. You know, it's like, oh, this, this guy, you weren't even, you weren't slick. You weren't trying to get away with this. You couldn't help yourself. And so that almost makes it seem like maybe he was, maybe between then, you know, maybe between the app and what was happening with the app. And then also, if you look into the case a little bit, they were contacting him when, when he wouldn't place a bet on a day, then they would fandue, would email him or text him, say, hey, man, what happened yesterday? You gonna bet? Like, it's like, okay, so maybe they were, you know, egging him on in a way that would have him do this egregious kind of these egregious acts out in the open because he just couldn't help himself. And so that piece, you know, because it defies or at least questions the normal expectations, made this interesting to me. But then also just. And then we can get into some of the nuances or the detail, if you want, which is just some of that stuff's pretty interesting. One of them being that they. I originally read the headline, I'm like, okay, yeah, so they're, they're using the note, all the things that we know that social apps, social media apps do to make things more addictive. As far as infinite scroll notifications and stuff, I assume. Okay, yeah, they're doing that stuff. But Fanduel was going beyond that and actually calling this dude. They had a guy assigned to be this guy's liaison. They were flying him out to all these nice trips and stuff like that. And it's like, so they were doing a lot more than just designing an app to be addictive. So, I mean, what about in your kind of, in the detail, if anything, stood out to you as far as that?
[00:08:15] Speaker B: No, that part of it stood out a lot to me. And that's where I was gonna go as well with some of the nuances here, like, because it's interesting. So you're right. He had a vip host, is what they called it.
And that gentleman's job was to court Mister Patel and make sure that he kept being a great customer. I mean, it's regular business 101, right? He's a concierge in a sense. And so, and so that's, to me, where this becomes very interesting, because, excuse me, like many other discussions we've had, not just you and I, but I'm saying our society has had in the last probably ten years, is the infiltration of big tech and the ability to influence people's behavior with a device that's in the palm of their hand, which is much different than, let's say, a television that's a static in someone's living room, or a newspaper, or other forms of communication that we used to get as consumers from companies, let's just put it that way. And so what it got me thinking, James, which is interesting, is I started thinking, like, okay, so let's see other environments where there could be risks of an addict getting worse, or people that aren't exposed to it becoming addictive. So I thought about things like alcohol, that industry. I thought about tobacco. Um, you're thinking about, you know, things like that, right?
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: And I thought, like, yeah, would it. Would it. Would we be okay with, like, you know, Jack Daniels or Philip Morris? You know, kind of having data about who drinks the most or who smokes more packs of cigarettes. And then if someone, you know, was taken three, four days off from drinking that, like, you know, the representatives of Brown, Foreman, you know, the parent company of Jack Daniels and other brands just calling, like, have some vip guy calling, say, hey, man, how come you didn't have a drink today?
[00:10:13] Speaker A: Hey, man, let me fly you out to this big party.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Bottles waiting for you, man. What you doing? And imagine the same thing with, like, tobacco.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Like, they thought the same thing. Imagine having an alcohol, a concierge for somebody who's an alcoholic. An alcoholic. Just like, hold up. That doesn't sound right.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Correct. And that's what I mean. Tobacco, same thing. Like, if someone did not smoke a pack a day, that they started getting harassed by Philip Morris, like, well, how come you weren't smoking today? And the thing I thought of, you.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: Could say harassed, but it could also just be prodded like, hey, man, don't, don't. You. You didn't smoke as much as cigarettes.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: That's why I wanted to bring that up, because I think you and I and most of the people watching us today can appreciate that that seems a little bit out of the norm. If we were to do that or see companies do that. And so. And it's because now I'm thinking of, okay, well, that would be a company then promoting things that we already accept and consider very unhealthy long term. We know smoking cigarettes, you know, heavily is bad. We know drinking heavy leads to other factors, health wise and family wise and all that. And I think just gambling is one of those things because there's not a visual victim, you know, there's that you don't get lung cancer from it. You don't go home and beat your wife over it.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: You know, like, you know, they're excessive for you. I got one for you. I had this similar thought, but the example I had in my mind was a different example. It was porn. Imagine so.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Same thing.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Somebody had this, like, a porn app. And then if you don't, if you're not watching it, I'm calling you up.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Like, hey, man, you didn't want 6 hours of porn a day? What's going on?
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, yeah, your porn consumption has gone down over the past couple of days, man. What's up? You know, like, let me fly you to this porn convention. Let me send some more porn. So, yeah, I mean, things.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: Here's why it's a good conversation for society, because both porn and gambling, unlike cigarettes and alcohol.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: That's what I was gonna say.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: The damage. So they all can do damage. And I think it's a. It's a great conversation about addiction, because if you're addicted to porn and gambling, you're gonna mess up something in your life anyway, just personal relationships. Maybe you're gonna lose too much money on those things, whatever the case is. And maybe you're not gonna get a direct health issue like lung cancer or heart disease, like you would from too much drinking or smoking. But.
But the effect, there's still an effect that's negative on the human and on their surrounding. The surrounding environment that they're in.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: Well, I don't think you need. I mean, like, that's. That's the concept of. That is addictive behavior. Addictive things that are potentially addictive can then create ripple effects in your life. And the substances is an example, you know? But the reason I like the comparison to the porn, like, we talked about onlyfans a couple weeks ago, it's like, if onlyfans had a system like this where, yeah, if you aren't viewing it enough, then they start contacting you and stuff like that. I think marriage.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: What do you think?
[00:13:08] Speaker A: I think the question of, like I said, I came into this thinking we were going to be talking about notifications on the app and stuff like that. Things that are meant to prod you to go back and open the app again and stuff like that. But this was even more egregious than that. So, I mean, I think that I came out of this, I came into as skeptical of this guy's kind of approach and acclaimed. I I came out of it saying, hey, whether this guy needs to win the lawsuit, quote unquote, or settle, yada, yada, yada, yada, this is something society should be looking at. And so, therefore, this lawsuit should be or does serve an important purpose to get us to look at this kind of stuff, not just even in this gambling context, but I would say even with now. And this goes into your industry, into, like, the stock apps and so forth, like, because those, again, when we're talking about things that can potentially. Can be done in a compulsory manner, and then companies know that it can be done in a compulsory manner, and people kind of lose control, and then they prey on that. They see that as, I mean, they see it as a business opportunity, but they see it as a weakness. Like, hey, we can manipulate this person. We can get this person on a hook and then reel them in continually to our. To the bottom line of our business. The benefit of that, it's, you know, like, that's something that is that we as a society should take a look at as far as how far we are going to, from a regulatory standpoint, allow these companies to go, because, again, yeah.
Whether. Okay, can you do these concierge type stuff if you have these event, these compulsory type behaviors? Can you. How much can you do these, the notifications and so forth? We're pretty much kind of hands off on a lot of that stuff when it comes to a lot of, whether it be social media or anything like that. Maybe we should. Maybe we shouldn't. So now, last question on this, and because I do want to look at the piece of this from the standpoint of, does this case, like the fact that he is a convicted, you know, that he's a convicted criminal in terms of stealing money, do you think that itself is something that helps or hurts his case in the sense that if this was just like, you know, a victim, but who, a victim who looked better, you know, like, hey, I'm not a liar. I don't, I don't. I'm not a cheater, yada, yada, yada. But this is what's doing this to me. Does that undermine the person's credibility, that the company's conduct made them lose control? Like, is this. Is this an upside down world where the kind of the non clean victim ends up being a better person to complain about this?
What do you think about that? Like, if you were on a jury, you know, how would you see that person? Do you look in and say, look, man, you still shouldn't have sold because you stole that money? I'm not gonna. I'm not. I don't want you to prevail here, you know? Or is it like, oh, because you stole that money, clearly you. You were being taken advantage of. What do you think about that? Like, just from how it turns that upside down or particularly?
[00:15:56] Speaker B: I just, you know, it's. It's interesting. Cause I'm sure that's gonna be each of us personally assessing the situation and looking at the person that's been convicted or whatever, you know, shown that they've been on something wrong and just assessing. What do we think about that?
[00:16:10] Speaker A: Let me throw something in real quick. Cause that's, that's a really interesting point because I'm looking at it just from, like, a, a strategy and a gamification standpoint. But you're right, it ultimately does come down to individual. And what it might end up lead to, honestly, is kind of like a confirmation bias thing, like whatever. That if you want, if you read all this or hear all this and be like, yeah, Fanduel's going too far, then you'll probably look at that guy as the, as a good plaintiff. And then if you go in and say, not, you know, I don't, I don't think that the apps have gone too far, then you might look at him and that, then you look at his background and start saying, those are the reasons why this is that, you know, this is just, you know, this is something that should be, you know, kicked off.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: One of the things that got me thinking about this, I mean, not to go off topic here, but it's just because this is something everyone will listening, will understand, is look at Donald Trump and his legal cases. I thought of something similar, which is you have someone that's been accused of doing something wrong and there's evidence of it, but yet there's some truth to the fact that has the government always been fair and how it's prosecuted people and all that know that there's evidence behind that as well. So when there's a little bit of truth on both sides. Right. It makes it. That's where the confirmation bias set in.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: And that's something that, though, can be misleading, though, because prosec, you know, like kind of prosecute, cure prosecutors discretion is just a known thing in the law, but a skillful person in terms of crafting narratives will use that and say, hey, this discretion is only, is being used unfairly, which I know there's people from a civil rights standpoint that have been saying that for decades, like, yo, you guys prosecute?
[00:17:43] Speaker B: That's why I didn't want to go into a tangent, but saying something that.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Everyone, let me relate, brought it up. So I want to say one thing with that, though, because I think it's a related thing. Like, it's the same concept, though, of where someone, depending on where you come down on a person, and you could use Trump as an example of this, if a person is, is accused of 30 crimes by four or five different people, or four or five different jurisdictions, and you're convict, you're accused of all these things and indicted. So it's not just accusations. There's probable cause there's, you know, like, there's a reasonable, you know, like, there's a reasonable case here going on. Some people would look at that, you know, and say, that must be a bad guy because, you know, like, who gets accused of that many things by that many different people who aren't, you know, aren't working together and aren't in the same thing? Other people might look at that depending on what they think. It all depends on what they think of the person and be like, oh, that's a, that person's just being unfairly targeted because all these independent people are coming down on them. And so you either can walk away saying, oh, this person's being targeted, or, yeah, man, that guy might, must be really bad if he's committing crimes all over the place, you know, so to speak. Yeah, well, so that's.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Well, and that's where I'm getting back now to the gentleman at hand, which was the sports betting thing, which is. It's too, because we know that companies, especially with this online stuff and going through the phones and the apps, do prey on people. It can become addictive. They know how to deal with the human psyche and how to make the colors right. And all this stuff keep us on it. And like, we're saying there was a guy, they even had a concierge for the guy to egg him on. Why aren't you gambling? So in that sense, there's some truth there that the company is probably pushing a bit more than we're used to seeing in an area that we know historically has attracted addicts. Right. People with addictive mindsets. And then you're right on the other side. We got a guy who stole $22 million from his employer. And one could make the argument that, yeah, he did it because he was addicted and because this thing drove it into it. Or he's a. He's making all these claims and trying to sue for a quarter billion dollars because he got busted stealing 22, and he spent it all on chasing girls in Miami and buying flashy cars. So, you know, that's my point of saying that it's difficult because I think it does come into, then what do we think about all these other factors? And one of the things that I just wanted to get with this, because it's interesting, as you were talking, it made me realize that with other things, like we're talking about specifically tobacco and alcohol, remember, there was a time when those were new to industry as well. You know, tobacco's been around and alcohol been around for hundreds. Or if not thousands of years, but they were industrialized just really in the last 100 to 150 years. And so once that happened, industry gets their hands on it, and then they enhance certain things that make it either more refined, more addictive, more dangerous in its outcome, whether health wise or dealing with other people.
Then the government had to say, okay, this is affecting society. And that's when there started to become a regulatory framework around alcohol and tobacco and things like that. And I think this is an example where this Internet stuff and the way that humans relate to online activity is still so fresh that I think we should be prepared to see more cases like this that are kind of in this weird zone where, you know, on the surface it kind of looks and you start looking deeper, and it's like, well, yeah, I should a company sort it out?
[00:21:06] Speaker A: Basically, we seem to have sorted out kind of what, what alcohol and tobacco companies are, how they're allowed to advertise, how they're not allowed to advertise and stuff like that because they're not able to do everything that they want to do. Like the things. Yeah, they were doing much more, from a marketing promotion standpoint, 50 years ago than they do now.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: You know, because they had to be reeled in because of not, not the exact same thing here, but kinds of things like this where it was creating pressure points in society that overall society was like, all right, that's a little too much. So that's really the kind of. To your point, that's the, the wrestling match that we're having right here. One thing I did want to provide an answer to the question I throw to you, and I think that objectively, you know, and which is does objectively doing a lot of work here, it helps from a case standpoint, his, as long as his bad behavior or any bad behavior that's brought in only relates to the gambling stuff that we're talking about here. Like, it doesn't help if, you know, in college he stole, stole a little bit here or like, some other time. Like, if he has a history of deceit or lying, that it goes beyond this confined area of gambling and gambling adjacent activities dealing with even more. So, if it's only dealing with this app, you know, or any gambling app, then I think it may help his case, you know, because it's like, look, this guy was a, you know, like you, this guy was a lawyer, was, was an angel, you know, going around, you know, hot valedictorian is class and all this kind of stuff. And, and then, you know, and then he got ahold of this app, this app pops up on his phone, and then he becomes this degenerate, you know, like, and if you build that case versus, hey, man, this guy was, was crossing lines and all that kind of stuff, you know, ever since he was 18, you know, and then, so I.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Think that this guy was, that he was at p. Diddy's freak offs, you know, we got his phone, we see him texting with Jeff Epstein and Diddy. This guy was all over the place.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. So. And then it would hurt him. So I think the swing basically is like, it's not neutral, you know, it's not neutral. It either helps him if it be, it represents a break from who he was before, and it hurts him if it represents a consistency from who he was before. So that may be more legal analysis I wanted to get into in this, but it's still, again, it's interesting how that same fact can swing so far one way or the other. So, no, but I think it's something that we have, we should monitor because, you know, with gambling being opened up, you know, over the past few years, you know, in so many states, and then particularly, it's not just gambling in sports books, where you got to go physically be there, even where you got to call somebody, it's like, yo, this thing is on your phone, and you can swing wildly up and down in the course of the day and so forth. And we know from just past history that that has created issues, and a lot of people talked about, oh, what issues is going to create with the integrity of the game and whether the players get, you know, tied up and stuff. And that stuff is real, too, but just private citizens as well, you know, like, how is this going to affect us and whether or not any guardrails are going to need to be put up, you know, that's what I think you put it. Well, like, that's kind of what we're, this is a part of the negotiation process of that, you know, so, so, yeah, I mean, it's something interesting. We'll keep an eye on it. Yeah, I think that we close up this topic from here. We'll have a second topic. We hope that you join us for that as well, and we'll talk to you then.
All right. Our second topic today, wanted to take a look at just what's been stuck us. Very alarming, man, is the kind of attack with misinformation on FEMA, which is your federal agency, federal emergency management, going, you know, when we have the aftermath of hurricanes or any natural disaster. FEMA shows up, brings in money, brings in manpower to help the cleanup, help people get their lives back together. And until, I guess, pretty recently, this was not a controversial or a political thing. This was just something that was happening in the background and, you know, in addition to, you know, people doing stuff with charity. But FEMA was like an organizing factor of this. And so, but in the aftermath of Hurricane Helena or, excuse me, Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, we saw a lot of claims coming in from right wing politicians and the Republican Party.
Allegations, misinformation, however you want to put it, disinformation that FEMA was not helping people or that FEMA was only helping people if they were a certain political affiliation or that FEMA spending all its money on immigrants or something like this. A lot of this stuff now, obviously a lot of this stuff is baseless. You know, like, it's not like people are citing things. It's just what people have learned kind of in this Internet age, you can throw stuff out and if it's inflammatory enough, the, it'll get picked up and circulated because it's inflammatory, not because it's true. And so, you know, like that's become a technique now, you know, where you just throw something out and it'll circulate. And then once people see it a certain number of times, as we know from the fire hood of fossil propaganda model, once people see it a number of times, it becomes true in their mind. And so I wanted to ask you though, tunde, like this is now in following this, we've seen reports now that people are threatening FEMA workers and so forth. And I guess the last piece I'll add to this introduction was just that we know that recently also when it came to authorizing FEMA funding, there were a lot of right wing or republican congressmen, over 100 that voted against the, the funding of FEMA. You know, so they vote against it, the funding of it, and then now the measure passed, but it passed over their votes against it. And then they, when FEMA shows up, they start disparaging FEMA and, you know, and so forth, trying to get, turn people against FEMA. So I want to get your thoughts on this. Like, what do you think about the way that FEMA's been attacked in the aftermath of these hurricanes, you know, and, you know, whether you want to connect it to that funding vote or, you know, anything, you know, like just what are your thoughts on that?
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Man? It's, I'm actually very sad just that this continues in our culture and our nation.
And you know, there's a lot going on with everything you just said and everything that's going on now. So let me try and unpack it a bit that I'm sad because we are witnessing really like the breakdown of trust, like nationally, um, whatever little bit of it was left before this is broken down even further.
We're looking at a breakdown of truth. And like you're saying that there's just everyone's, can walk around with their subjective truth. And, and I know we're going to talk about FEMA today and what happened with these hurricanes. I think that's extremely important. That's why I feel like this is an inflection point because this is, now we're talking about natural disasters. We're talking about more than 200 people dead. And we're talking about the role of leadership, the political class in governing our country for the long term and not lurching from crisis to crisis because they're emotional.
And when you mention about 100 republican people in Congress, let's look at those numbers. There's 435 members of Congress, of which 220 are republican from the Republican Party. That means almost half of the entire congressional delegation of one party voted against keeping the government open and funding our natural disaster, our largest solution for natural disasters in the middle of hurricane season when the forecasters are telling them that these hurricanes are on their way.
And so to me, that's a lack of governance and taking serious your role as a political leader in the country.
But that's a, that's, that's so, that's one prong that I'm seeing.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: The, the inability to govern from the Congress, which is set.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
Before you get to the second one, let me just react to that r1 quick because I saw that too. And it's kind of like, kind of that, that, I don't know, the poor governance two step, you know, where you kind of, you work to kind of create or exacerbate an issue or to not address an issue. And then if the issue comes up that you kind of work to undermine, you find a scapegoat, you know, usually some kind of outsider or someone that has that it's difficult to defend, can't really defend themselves or somebody that gets people riled up emotionally. So, and I look at that as both. And I know we're going to get to this later, but just like the climate change aspect of this, you know, like I was just blown. Like you got Congress, republican congressmen talking about people are, people are using lasers for hurricanes and doing all this and it's like people have been talking about that climate change is gonna cause bigger and better storms for decades now. And then bigger and badder storms start happening and they're like, oh, and how could this happen? It must be something like, what are you talking about? Like, people been talking about this for decades. And so it's that piece and then it's also the funding piece. It's like, yeah, you're voting against keeping the government open, against federal funding for this. Then the reason for that stuff happens and you don't want to talk about the fact that you were voting against it. So you talk, you make up something else, you know, like, so it's this two step that is very manipulative, but, you know, it takes advantage of in the same way, like in our first part, we're talking about how the gambling, the apps were taking advantage of weaknesses in people who were, you know, like, who may have or prone to addiction with gambling. This takes advantage of people's biases, either their biases or they're not following all the information or anything, but it's throwing out red meat to keep them looking away from the fact that these people aren't governing in a way. What, you want government, you want leadership to be looking at this stuff in advance and making plans and not just making it up as they go along or running around with the hair on fire all the time.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really dumbfounds me how grownups who are elected to Congress, like, just don't appreciate that Rojin roads and bridges don't grow naturally from the earth, right? Like, they're not trees and they don't just, they're not just there forever. They need maintenance. They need, you know, we need to, we need to shore up our system. I mean, so, so anyway, that was kind of my first and my second one. That, that why I say there's a lot going on and I just see a lot here.
And that's why I want you to comment on what I'm going to say here now, because the second one is this kind of post truth, which comes from the type of leaders we have in our society. Right? So again, this is a great time. This is natural disaster. To contrast the style of leadership. I mean, it was one thing when we did the show just a few weeks ago about the haitian migrant thing and all that, and then the sitting senator of the state, which is being attacked for this Ohio, and the current vice presidential nominee acknowledges on a CNN Sunday show that he made the whole thing up. And so now here we are just a few weeks later with something even bigger affecting tens of millions of Americans. Like I said, there's been deaths. There's people without homes. I mean, and I take this maybe a little more emotional because you and I live in South Florida. I've been through several serious hurricanes. I know what it's like to not have power for a week. I know what it's like to have my roof have issues. And water leaking in is very personal. And it's, you know, it's your home. And these things affect people. And to sit there like, you know, we have one leader, and I don't care what people think about either Trump or Biden, but I'm just looking at them in this moment. Biden is an old man that gets made fun of because he can't talk and all that. But you know what? When he gave a speech about this recent hurricane stuff, it was normal what you would expect from someone, everybody come together. Let's stop the B's, let, you know, let FEMA do his job. We're going to support everybody. Donald Trump in the last week not only has lied about the federal government and the response, he continues to push things like illegal immigrants have taken over apartment complexes in Colorado. He's pushing the immigration thing on the migrants. And then he's also now threatening the state of California that if he wins again, he's going to withhold aid next time they have fire because he doesn't like their governor. And I'm just looking at this contrast because, again, we have a leader in our state en Ron DeSantis, the governor who's refused to meet with Joe biden twice right now because I'm sure he doesn't want the optics that he met with a democratic president right before the election. I don't think that's right. But that's kind of my point is saying we have one set of leaders that in this moment where everybody's hurting or a lot of people are hurting, it's just all they can do is politic and make it about the other side and try to do that. Not that this was a natural disaster. Like, that's my point. That's why I just want to hand it to you. But I want to finish this about why it really bothers me that Donald Trump made the comments in California. He made forest fires are natural disasters. He's threatening a state that if he wins presidency again, he's going to withhold aid because he doesn't like the governor. Personally. I've never seen this in the United States. And that's my point, is saying leadership is important because clearly, because he behaves that way and he's a leader. There's a lot of Americans that are following that, and this is disrupting our entire country. I mean, we don't need the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians attacking us. We can do a great job from within.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, it goes back to the united we stand, divided we fall thing. And it makes you wonder, you know, kind of what is the overall objective? And at that, to me, like, it's interesting you went there because I was looking in the same frame but from an even broader perspective. Like, what's the goal of that? What's the goal of when a natural disaster happens, to try to say, okay, well, let me use this to turn people that listen to me against the government or against their fellow Americans. Like, is the goal to just divide Americans?
Do we no longer agree that united we stand, divided we fall? Are we not a stronger country if we work together on things? And is that out the window now? So I'm looking at it like our enemies, meaning our adversaries, you know, however you want to put it. Like, the Russias of the world want us divided. Why do they want us divided? Because our adversaries view the american public at each other's throat as helpful for their interests. So why do we have our adversaries externally trying to divide Americans while we have one of the two political parties in America using opportunities like this to see, seeing these things as opportunities to divide Americans as well? What side are you on, you know, when your goal becomes. And again, this is, this is because it's a natural disaster. I think it really stands out when a natural disaster happens. Ha. This is a great chance for me to try to make people who listen to me hate this other person, that this other american, or hate this other, these other group of Americans? You got people threatening FEMA workers. Like, what is the goal here? You know, like, and so I think from a bigger picture standpoint is, I think we just have to look at this and wonder, is the goal here to divide Americans? If so, do, do we think now, or do some of us think now that that's a better approach is to divide Americans, that some Americans, we're not stronger together where that we need to, we need to be divided and so forth? And if that's the case, if you think that or if someone thinks that, why do they think, why do you think that our adversary nations want to divide us as well? You know, like, do they do they think that makes us stronger too? You know, and so that's why they're trying to divide us. No. And so it really, it's concerning to me because, and I know we're going to have a show about this, but the idea that we have a show like this in the future is concerning to me because our system relies on, and, you know, this is a consent of the governor, our democratic system, our system, we're going to come together, government of the people, by the people and for the people. You have to want the system to work. You know, this isn't the kind of system that you impose on someone. Hey, we're going to vote. We're going to elect people. And then, you know, once the elections happen, we'll, we'll roll with the government for a while and then we'll have another election after that and so forth. That only works if everybody buys in or if, you know, they, a critical mass of people buy in. If the goal is to divide people, to turn people against the government and against their fellow Americans, to me, I see that as the goal of these Republicans or these right wingers is to make it so our, to break our system because our system doesn't work. If one of the two main political parties decide that they don't want it to be in it anymore, it doesn't work anymore. So if they're opting out of the system, we're in trouble, you know, and that's what it looks like. I can't think of any other reason why you would spend so much time, energy and effort and use natural disasters as opportunities to divide people.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: Yeah, well, like you said at the beginning, part of it may be just to save face because they voted against funding.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: I think that would be just trying to save face from the standpoint of, oh, I voted against FEMA funding. I don't want that to be the topic of discussion. Let me just throw out immigrants or something that would be better. Then I'm just out on the idea of a representative democracy.
[00:38:00] Speaker B: Well, that's why. I mean, the reality seems to be that democracies and republics that have some sort of representative government do tend to end through internal combustion and not from external forces. And this is how it happens. To your point that enough people just check out from respecting the idea of doing things together?
[00:38:20] Speaker A: Yeah, working together.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: You know what I was thinking of when I was preparing today and I was reading about the 100 people that voted against funding the government just to keep it open? That's my point is, and that's my thing, too.
[00:38:30] Speaker A: Like a lot of these people bearing down on us, looking at the radar.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: No, I know, but it's also like a lot of these people that work in the government are Republicans and they, you know, a lot of them voted for Trump and they want a republican administration back and all that stuff. So it's just terrible. Like you're saying that they're turning people against their own constituents in a sense, you know, people that support them otherwise. And so what I'm saying is, you know, like, because the third thing, you know, I know we had the first, the second, now the third one for me that's interesting is kind of this, this questioning of truth which goes into everything that we've just discussed. Right, the ability of the ecosystems, but then having leaders that are willing without shame to lie. And then, as you're saying, having a population that then gets disturbed enough that they find their fellow citizen to be more of an enemy than an external adversary, especially in a time of stress and need, like a natural disaster. So, and that's why to me, the natural disaster really stands out more than, I guess, other things because you and I, let's just talk about 2024. Forget about, you know, prior years. What have you and I discussed on this show randomly, a couple things I can think of, like the fact that yesterday, I mean, we didn't discuss this before yesterday because this happened yesterday. But the things like the economy is where I'm getting at. We've discussed that yesterday. The stock market, again, both the S and P and Dow indexes hit new highs all time, but yet there's a high percentage of Americans that think the stock market is lower right now than it was in January of this year.
Why is that? Right. That's not because they're stupid, is because, number one, there's people in their leadership bubble that say it. And number two, in their ecosystems of Mediaev, social media, cable tv, they're being told these things.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: So there's able, there's, the technological advances allow people to be isolated and correct in information bubbles, and they're in these information bubbles. And so they don't know whether it's light or day outside. They only know whether, like, they're literally in a, in a black box.
[00:40:38] Speaker B: No.
[00:40:39] Speaker A: And they only know about the outside based on what the people, you know, at the door say. The people at the door are saying, hey, it's dark outside, you know, yada, yada, yada.
[00:40:48] Speaker B: The other is, like I mentioned at the beginning, that a whole town was taken over by illegal immigrants. You know, my first thought in my head when I heard that about two months ago or something was, where's law enforcement? Like, wouldn't, wouldn't they? If the local police can't handle them, the state troopers of Colorado show up. And if they can, they got swat teams. Then you got a national guard. I can't believe that a bunch of Venezuelans would, you know, some AR 15s took over at the entire city so and so when. But it's like, okay, I don't live in Colorado, and like you said, information silos and all that. But now here we have a natural disaster that affects tens of millions of people and people are hurting and it's like the same thing. And the fact that first time we've.
[00:41:27] Speaker A: Ever had a natural disaster, so we had a hurricane.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: And it's not like we don't know that hurricane season is between, you know, late July through November. It's the, you know, exact time that hurricanes always come, September, October, normally. And it's the same thing to sit there and say that they control the weather and all this conspiracy stuff. And now this is, again, where there is a kernel of truth sometimes. Is there something called cloud seeding that the government has attempted in the past? Yes. To try and make it rain and precipitate a bit more in areas that are arid. That's far different than saying that you can cause a category five hurricane by sprinkling some stuff in a cloud. And so, and again, it's a, instead of, and this is exactly what you and I predicted. People that have been not, they've been denying climate change and who have made the environment into a political football for reasons unknown to me, unless you're allowed.
[00:42:22] Speaker A: To divide Americans, apparently that was the goal.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: The only way it makes sense to me is if you're an executive at a fossil fuel company, then I'd probably.
[00:42:29] Speaker A: Yeah, then it's your bottom line.
[00:42:31] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: But to make it a political issue.
[00:42:33] Speaker B: They'Re a very small percentage of the.
[00:42:34] Speaker A: No, no, but get to your point, though, because I know this is a.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: Good point that I need saying is that at the end of the day, that I do believe that instead of coming together and saying whether you believe in climate change being man made or not, at this point I'm beyond that. It's more of the earth is warming, these storms are getting worse. Just how are we going to deal with it?
[00:42:55] Speaker A: To your point, though, but what you were about to say, though, that we've talked about for years now, is that when the storms start getting worse or going into places that they historically wouldn't go into. These people who are denying climate change weren't going to turn around and say, oh, you guys are right, I was wrong.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: You know, they're not going to do that.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: They're going to be like, no, they're going to make up some other stuff. You know, they're going to blame black people.
[00:43:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: That's what we always are. To be. To be fair, that's what happened. That was the hate.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: They were going to blame their fault. Yeah.
[00:43:24] Speaker A: So they're like, they're going to blame.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: Black trans, back then they didn't exist, but, yeah, they're blaming them, too.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: Those black people must be the worst. Yeah.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: I think. And describing it as post truth, I mean, and I've heard this and you and I are both, I mean, we're reading the book nexus and we'll be talking about that in the coming, you know, in a month or two. But like, and that talks a lot about this in terms of truth, you know, and information, whether information is about truth or whether it's about order, different things like that. And so post truth, you know, I'm not going to go into that kind of the conversation. But the idea, like, I do see, though, when you talk about how you create these information silos, you know, you put somebody in a black box, so you put, you know, 50 million people in a black box and say, okay, only listen to what I say. Only listen to what I say. Don't listen. Don't listen to what anything cell says. Don't look at radar maps, don't look at weather maps. Only listen to what I say. If I tell you it's raining, that means it's raining. If I tell you it's not raining, that means it's not raining. I don't care if you feel stuff falling on your head. So when you do that, what you're, what, what you've done basically at that point, one, that's a very autocratic model, you know, is only allow information from one source. But two, you're basically setting up a situation where your information, you see information as a weapon, you won't see information as some kind of way to, to discover more, you know, the truth or anything like that. If truth is irrelevant, information is a weapon. So they're using the control of the information that's being seen and heard and everything like that over a certain number of people as a weapon. And again, this is where you get back to, well, why or weapon against who? And it's against other Americans. The weapon. They're using this information as a weapon against other Americans. What's going on there? Again, does that mean that they're out on America? They're like, yo, I don't want America where all of us are in it here together. That's what it looks like to me. And that, to me is unfortunate. What I hope is that people can break out of the black box and be able to start seeing things on their own and so forth, and therefore may say, hey, yeah, we as a country can be stronger together. You know, like, I'm not out here saying my answer to this isn't to point to some enemy from within, you know, which is apparently now what the Republicans in the right wing are saying now is that now it's about these enemies telling all these people in the black box that only listen to what they say, hey, there's an enemy within that we gotta worry about. And so all of the objective seems to be to turn people against other Americans, turn Americans against other Americans. And I don't know how that ends in a positive way if that's gonna continue down that path. We got, like, people got to break people out of the black box that's being controlled, you know, by these right wing information systems.
[00:45:55] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I can't predict the future, but historically, it's never ended well. I mean, it's just. I mean, this is how you get to Rwanda.
[00:46:01] Speaker A: That's not necessarily true, though.
[00:46:02] Speaker B: Balkans.
[00:46:03] Speaker A: But you got. Also got McCarthyism. If you also got McCarthyism, you also got, you know, like, there's.
[00:46:09] Speaker B: If it's not. If it's not stopped. I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm saying, like, if we don't somehow put a kibosh on this thing, it's gonna lead to just a disraveling of this society.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: Unfortunately, what people like Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney see is just like, that's why they're there in there. They're Republicans, lifelong republicans. You know, Dick Cheney was one of the top republicans of the past 50.
[00:46:33] Speaker B: They're rhinos, don't forget. You know?
[00:46:35] Speaker A: I mean, but that's. That's. That's only to the people that are in this black box that aren't allowed to see or hear or. Or view anything outside of the black box, only allow them to know one thing about what they're being told.
[00:46:45] Speaker B: I want to get on, as you put in the black box point, because as you're talking about, reminds me of another theme we've talked about, and it's really evident here, again, with the, what do you call it?
Sorry. With the allusion to the natural disaster is the fact that we, you know, this is an abusive relationship, like, to the core between this set of leaders who are behaving this way and the audience that keeps, you know, wanting to converse with them.
[00:47:18] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, I've always, I've noticed that for a long time. And here it's like an abusive spouse.
[00:47:23] Speaker B: Just why it's, it's, it's, it's more, it's more evident now is because think about what we're saying.
Human beings have been hurt in a natural disaster, really bad in the place. I've seen some of those images from North Carolina. It's terrible. Like roads are freaking wiped away. People can't get, they're trying to fly in supplies on drones. I mean, this is serious stuff.
[00:47:43] Speaker A: And it's like, who looks at all that and says, okay, well, what political party are they in? Like, who does that?
[00:47:48] Speaker B: Well, here's, well, here's my point is saying. So now we have a guy running for president, United States, and people who are elected in Congress right now saying that the people that are trying to like, literally go through mud to help other people and to rescue them, that those people are bad. And so it's like the victims of the storm are being attacked twice. The first attack was the natural disaster and now the second attack is by our elected leaders who are doing this, who are making it more difficult, like you said. I mean, I read the thing about the militia in North Carolina that showed up armed and the FEMA had to leave.
[00:48:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:31] Speaker B: Reading somewhere that in this one area of North Carolina where they had 250 emergency response people, they saved 3200 people. Literally saved them out of like flooded homes and bad areas. Nothing. So for every one rescue worker, that's over ten citizens of the United States that are being saved. And yet we have militias now that are going around scaring those rescue workers.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:56] Speaker B: And those malicious.
[00:48:57] Speaker A: Who's egged on by.
[00:48:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:49:00] Speaker A: Whose interests are being served by that? You know, like, and that's, and I mean, the abusive relationship, the full point, because we've talked about that for years, is the one thing an abusive spouse does to the abused spouse is try to isolate the abused spouse from their other, from other people, you know, so that they can't go to a friend or talk to a friend about it. The abusive spouse wants to isolate the abused and say, only listen to me. Like your friends all hate you, you know, all that kind of stuff. And that's what it sounds like when they're talking about, oh, yeah, you can't listen to what this media outlet says or like, they're like, no, only get, only, the only thing you can believe is what comes out of my mouth that sounds a lot like an abusive spouse because the abused spouse is make, made weakened. Could the abused spouse go, hey, remember, divided we, you know, divided we united we stand, divided we fall, where the abused spouse is stronger if they can be, if they can be surrounded by other people. And so the point being is that let's pull them away from other people and let's make them weaker. And that's what it looks like is what happened here. You stay here. You only listen to what I say, don't listen what anybody else says. If anybody else tries to help you, don't trust them. You know, yada, yada, yada. And it's like, yo, man, like that's, that very much looks like an abusive relationship and you have a large part of the american people being the abused spouse. And it's unfortunate, you know, like, that's not something that I want to see. You know, like I said, I want to, we got to figure out a way to break these people out of, of this situation. How can we get through to them? You know, say, hey, you might be getting manipulated here. So, I mean, I think that, I mean, I do want to wrap this topic up, but it's very, very alarming, you know, like, because the ability, the reason for having a nation, the reason for having to coming together would be stuff like national disasters first and foremost, you know, to be able to deal with nature. Like, the other thing I'll say about this just briefly is that as a nation, we draw strength from being so large, you know, having, being a large landmass, being, having a lot of people, that makes it more difficult because as we talk about, there's people in one state in Idaho or in Ohio have nothing, no idea what's going on in Texas. That makes it more, it makes it harder, you know, it makes it, they feel less connected. But when we're able to get it right, as we've seen throughout history, you know, the country has been able to do amazing things. So, you know, again, we got to figure out a way hopefully to break enough Americans out of this black box where they're just told that other Americans are really bad and everybody's out to get them all the time and they aren't able to get information. As far as what's really going on, the only information, the information is just used as a weapon for them, and it's a weapon against other Americans. I mean, you know, like, that's not a sustainable model, so to speak. That's mcCarthyism. We overcame that, so hopefully we'll be able to overcome this as well.
[00:51:35] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think one of the things, as we wrap up, for me, that that has been just eye opening, and I would propose we could even do a whole show on this, is this really brings to light some of the conversations we've had in our society for the last five, six years, ever since COVID which is about freedom of speech and some of these things on these platforms, on social media, like Twitter. I mean, this is where a lot of these conspiracy theories get legs and run wild. And again, this just being different, it's a natural disaster. So I get it. When there's a pathogen, a new virus, and it's scary.
People don't know whether the vaccines are serious or ivermectin or whatever all these drugs were that we were told, and these different ways of doing it.
When a road or a bridge is totally wiped out because of a flood, or when I look and see a whole neighborhood that's underwater or the roofs are all missing because the tornado came through, I don't need to be convinced over what's right or wrong. Those people need help, period.
You know, is it? And that's what I'm saying. Like, the thought now, should the government be contacting the social media companies and asking them to tamp down misinformation? I don't know. See, that's what I mean. It brings up these good questions.
[00:52:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's a heck of a thing to throw out at the last.
[00:52:54] Speaker B: Let me.
[00:52:55] Speaker A: But I'll say this. I don't know. Like, I think the approach with social media, and I've said this in the past, and, you know, like, it's. I've seen it, you know, now. You know, so I'm encouraged, you know, like the. Like I said, the book that we're looking at now with Nexus, they talk about it in there as well. Like the idea that it's not the social media companies as the publisher, where the freedom of speech issue comes up. It's the social media company as the curator, as deciding what stuff gets amplified, what stuff gets seen the most. That's where the question of the freedom of speech comes in. I believe more than anything, because I'm not, I don't think it's necessary to go around telling that social media companies, they got to remove a bunch of posts. But there does need to be some scrutiny on how they decide and whether it's, if it's a machine deciding it or whatever at this point, with the way that you have machine learning algorithms and so forth, but how they decide what to amplify and if they're doing it solely based on what's going to generate the most engagement, then what we do know is that that's going to be lies and misinformation. That's going to get the most engagement, because that stuff can be tailored to strike emotional chords in a way that's going to generate the most engagement. So if there, there's going to have to be some kind of reckoning with that. Like, if it's going to them. As a curator, though, is not necessarily saying, hey, you can or cannot allow this to be, you have to take this down. That's different than saying, you know, then saying, hey, I don't know that you can curate things in a way that is designed to misinform people. It may not be your intention to misinform people, but it's designed to do so because all you care about is how long their eyeballs are looking at the screen. So that's something to look at. You know, we'll definitely get into that in a later show, but at this point, we don't want to go down that road. So let's, let's wrap this topic up. We appreciate everybody, 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.
[00:54:38] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Wimada.
[00:54:40] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
