Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we break down what's happening with the TikTok ban and its reinstatement in the US as well as take a look at the direction things seem to be heading in now. And later on, we take a look at the sentiment seemingly held by a significant segment of sports watching public, that the National Football League is rigging games for the Kansas City Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes.
Hello. Welcome to the Car Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man who knows that in the end, it's all about Guns N Roses. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to lay down some blueprints here for us today?
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Yeah, man, you're just making me feel old because I think of Axl Rose and Slash with a guitar that tells me I still remember the 1980s, which you're reminding me that I'm not a young man anymore.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: So, long way from that.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Thank you sir for that.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Long way from that.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: I guess I'm wearing the right shirt for that today.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Now, now, before we get started. Yeah, if you enjoy the show, we 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 January 28, 2025, and in the last week or so, last 10 days or so, we've seen TikTok go dark in the US for a few hours and then get revived, at least for existing users. Now, the ban was due to a law that required TikTok to be sold from the Chinese parent company ByteDance to a US based company in order to continue operating in the US and that was had to be in order to continue operating us past January 19, 2025. Since no sale occurred, the app was supposed to go dark, but then the revival happened as a result of an executive order from the President that basically said that the federal government was not going to enforce the that law temporarily, but the law remains on the books. So Tunde, just to get us started, what were your thoughts on the decision to not enforce the ban and the legal limbo we kind of stand in now?
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's a great question, man. I think the way you wound it up is great because I think the first concern is, like you said, the legal limbo. That legislation was passed last year by the Congress, signed into law by the President at the time, and now we have an incoming president that is basically made an executive order to tell companies, hey, you don't have to abide by that law that Congress just passed last Year. And so my concern, this isn't some.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Law from 100 years ago that we're like, oh, nobody's really thought about this for a long time.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: Yeah, well my concern is that, I mean this is a one off so far, right. So let's not get too, I'm not trying to make this into something that's way bigger than it is right now, but if we see this happen more often, right. We're on the first week of the administration, so if we see this happen more often over the next four years, one of my main concerns would be that over a long period of time, you know, slowly, this would be the kind of death by a thousand cuts kind of, of our just legal and enforcement mechanisms in the United States.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Just real quick, let me jump in because that brings something to mind. It's very interesting because you're like, so are we going to go into this situation where like when each administration comes in they just give us a list of the laws they're not going to enforce anymore? Yeah, well that's not really what you're supposed to be doing there.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: But on a serious note, think about what this means. You have companies like Apple, right, that have, I think the number I saw recently was 170 million people.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Well that's across TikTok users in the US but, but Apple and everybody.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Okay, so that's the total. So a big chunk of them come through Apple, you know, people with that iPhone because that's one of the major, you know, providers of phones and the.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Rest would be Samsung more or not Samsung but excuse me, the Google through.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: Yeah, with the Android phones and all that. So the thing is, is that what I read was that the fines from the legislation last year can reach up to $5,000 per person who accesses TikTok from one of these companies platforms, right.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Google or Mic or updates it or anything like that.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: So yeah, and the number that I saw in the article was that would be, you know, 170 million times a 5,000, be around 865 billion in total fines if everybody, you know, they really applied it to everybody and all that. So clearly that seems even unreasonable for companies as large as Apple and Google. But even if it was on that.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Point though, on that point Apple and Google have not reinstated, quote unquote TikTok. Part of the legal limbo we're in now is that while Oracle and let's.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Say that actually for, for the explanation of the follow up because.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Well, let me get into.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: Yeah, that's all I wanted to say. Though was that, let's assume like just 10% of that $800 billion was actually applied as a fine because people were using it. That's still a lot for these industries. So that's what I was going to. Your point was that Apple and Google have not reinstated the ability for people to download TikTok since it went dark on January. I think it was 18th or something like that, or just recently in this recent few weeks. So that, that's what I'm saying is that one of the. And I think this is, this is. And you've told me this, that we need to let this play out. Right. I think Americans underappreciate the fact that the world capital is comfortable coming here because traditionally American politicians and leaders haven't behaved like this. Whereas because business like certainty, markets like certainty, large corporations like to be able to forecast a few years out with some certainty. So to have a law passed like the one that was passed last year, that could have these fines that are in the tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars range, which is important for a company to be able to forecast and all that, and then to have a new administration, like you said, come in and just say wheels up on that one, you guys can do what you want. But then like you're saying the law is still on the books.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: So my concern if I'm Apple or Amazon, looking at the way that kind of the way of being of this type of leadership that we've had come in, which seems very.
Can become adversarial and all that kind of stuff, I'd be concerned if I'm Apple or Google, that could the rug be pulled from me six or 12 months from now, in the event that this administration becomes unhappy with me, would they then say, hey, that executive order we did in January, you know what, now we're change our mind on that we're going to actually apply those laws from last year. Now you got all these people on your platform, haha, here's a way to punish you for whatever you didn't like somewhere else.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: I mean that's. To me that's the biggest takeaway here is this is kind of ruling by fear, like by just by, you know, we're just going to give orders. Executive orders is not the way our government is supposed to run. And the reason for that is because the law is supposed to be a little more deliberate and predictable. And so in this instance there's a law that again debated through Congress, through all these committees, and that is supposed to be a deliberative process. It's supposed to be something that takes a while and you got to really mean it, so to speak. And then once it's on the books, it's hard to take off the books. And so that's the setup of our system. Just basically, you know, Congress makes the laws, courts interpret the laws, Executive branch, whether that be the President and all the, you know, DOJ and all that enforces the laws. That's the separation of powers. And so while this could be, it's not plainly illegal for the President to do this, so to speak, because that's the enforcing of the laws. Part of the thing is you get to decide how vigorously you're going to enforce each law. And so him coming out and saying, hey, for 75 days, I'm not going to enforce this law for the President to say that. And I'm not going to have the Department of Justice and all that go after people for this. It's one that's outside of, like, that's the law is on the books. The law has been made, the court has interpreted the law and founded it to be constitutional. So that's all happened. And so now we're just looking at the executive branch. And so the executive branch, this is something that creates a level of unpredictability that we're not supposed to have in our system. It's supposed to be once. Once the law goes through, all that stuff is supposed to be something that the presidents and the executive branch enforces. So what this creates, like you kind of alluded to, was this idea of manipulation and trading favors amongst the president, like, well, hey, this law is on the books, but if you guys do this for me or you guys do that for me, then I won't enforce that law against you or against. Because right now it's like, okay, well, I won't enforce it against anybody. But what happens then when it's like, okay, well, I want to enforce it against this person and this person and this person, but I will enforce it against everybody else. Like, you go down a slippery slope here as far as, okay, well, now we're starting to picking and choosing. And we see this. You know, we've seen this in various settings when people talk about how the Justice Department or either federally or in states have prosecuted drug crimes, things like that, people get favored status and the law doesn't apply to them the same. So to me, I'm concerned about it from that standpoint. Like, if. If we don't want to do the TikTok ban anymore, then let's pass another law. You know, let's go through that process and if we are going to do the TikTok ban, and let's do the TikTok ban, but this kind of limbo thing, and we're going to see how this plays out, we are going to start doing favored nation type of thing where we're going to certain people. We've seen reports now that, okay, well, you know, the president may want certain people to buy this and not just anybody, not just anybody with the money, but whoever like, oh, well, this is my friend. I want my friend to buy this and then we can have that. So we go into this place, man, where, you know, we're getting further and further from rule by a constitution and more by just the whims of the presidential office. And that's.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: You said it, man. Rule by decree. That's what you said. And I think that's what this type of. At least the spirit and sentiment of the type of leadership.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: It sounds a lot like that.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: Yeah. It seems like they prefer to be able to rule by decree than, like you just said, have the deliberative bodies that were designed, you know, by the founders of this country in the Constitution, particularly the Congress, you know, the U.S. congress made up with the House representatives in the U.S. senate deliberating to, you know, reach a compromise based on the will of the people and all this stuff that, you know, we were supposed to hold dear in this country. So it's interesting. One of the things before we jump to kind of the next phase of the conversation that I want to just piggyback on is, you know, I appreciate the way you bring that out, especially for the audience. James is an attorney, so there's a lot of knowledge and history on the way this legal system is actually, and legislative processes is supposed to be carried out. But then there's the other part of the conversation that is, I think, just adjacent to everything we're talking about, which is again, and this isn't like a law or a rule, but I think this is more like norms and the kind of soft underbelly of the democracy that we've learned is so valuable. But it's not something that is really like a rule of law type of thing. It's. And it's just like I said earlier, like the way this all looks, right? And the communication from our leadership. And now this would be successive administration, I'm saying to the public, and it's like, so which one is it? Right? Like, is this thing so, like dangerous that is, you know, The Chinese are spying on us and, and we got to be so scared and all this. Or is this thing like a thing for our kids to be on? Like, my point is, because you made.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: The football, is this something that we're trying to extract concessions? Is this a negotiating ploy?
[00:11:19] Speaker B: Like, yeah, I mean, like, it's becoming more obvious that this is the way this is being used. Because like you said, if there's 170 million Americans on this platform, that's more than 50% of this country, clearly, which means if it is a national security risk and all the espionage stuff for the Chinese, it seems pretty serious. Right? Like, like, why are we. Now it's been saying about it. Trump first brought this up in his first term is 2025. Now, that would have been somewhere between 2017 and 2020. So if it's that much of a national security risk, why we got now the third administration dealing with it and it wasn't dealt with pretty quickly. And then we have the real things that are well documented that people can go look up, which is the direction of this leader and how he's dealt with it. So he came up with the idea to ban it first. But then about a year ago when it was campaign time and there was a billionaire hedge fund owner that had $30 billion worth of ByteDance stock, which is the parent company of, of. Of Tick Tock. Apparently when he got friendly to the, to the candidate who's now the president and said, hey man, if you leave this thing alone and stop talking like this, I'll give you some money for your campaign, all of a sudden the direction of the rhetoric changes into, oh, well, you know, maybe we can keep this thing, but like you said, but it's got to be sold to one of my buddies. So it becomes like this. That's what I mean. Like, this is, this is fine to me. This is where we're going and this is what America voted for. But it's just, I think we need to be prepared as Americans that the business community, the international community of capital, those kind of things, if this continues, this type of picking winners and losers by the political class, which has not happened in American history in a public way. I'm not saying behind the scenes there weren't some picking winners and losers.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: Like, it used to be like, they.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: Had to go to smoke filled rooms. Yeah, they had to do that. Now they do it on the Internet.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: They do it.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. This is like they don't even go to the smoke filled rooms.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: I'm laughing because you're right. You're about to make me wish for the days of smoke filled rooms and make decisions behind the scenes where none of us could see. I'm like, man, this stuff looks sloppy.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: This is what y'all were doing in.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Those smoke filled rooms. Hey, man, I got these two guys over here, they need to buy this Chinese company. I'm thinking like, what's BMW and Mercedes gonna say? Eventually it's like, hey, we don't like the way you guys are making cars, man. Hey, my buddy over here at the country club, he's gonna buy Mercedes, okay? You can't sell any cars in America unless this guy gets 30%.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: Well, I mean, as. As cars get all these chips and cameras in them, I mean, arguably these laws are going to start applying to them as well, you know, to say, hey, your car spies on you too, you know, but it will at a certain point.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: So I never thought of this until we're joking.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: Another thing though, let me just say.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: This joke and then we'll move on that. Honestly, I never thought of this until we're joking. Now this could be the slippery slope into like doing what they did in Cuba or what they do in China, like a state owned company where eventually it's not sell it to my friend, but it's like, hey, we just need this stuff, you know, we're gonna own it as the US I don't think.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: It'S gonna be the US that gets the benefit of that. It's gonna be some person at the head in the government of the U.S. it's like, no, I'll just control it. Which will be. You know, that goes into a lot of dark places. But all right, the other.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: Maybe I'll go work for the government now, huh? Maybe I'll just go work for the government. It seems like that's gonna be pretty lucrative.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: I don't know, man. You gotta be ideologically aligned now to work for the government.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: I bought into this whole small business ownership thing over the last like 30 years. So now maybe buy into the go and work for the government to make be rich. So anyway, keep going. Sorry.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: The other piece though, that, well, that I just think needs to be emphasized here is that when we're looking at TikTok and we're saying, okay, yeah, a lot of people were concerned, a lot of people don't care, like, oh yeah, national security, your data. And so. And so when TikTok was quote unquote saved, there were cheers, you know, from the public and so forth. But it's like Again, we were talking about before how it was saved. It was saved by decree, you know, by fiat, by the ruler says, you are okay to continue on. And then some of the companies go with it and say, hey, okay, yeah. Oracle says, okay, yeah, we'll route traffic with TikTok still, you know, as we kind of alluded to earlier, Apple, Google have said, no, no, we're not going to be involved in this. You can't download it from our app stores, you can't update the app. So the app is, you know, potential security vulnerabilities or can get exploited, can't get updated. So there's, we took something that the government told us was unsafe already and have made it more unsafe now because it can't be updated, it can't be patched with security fixes, anything like that. So all of that being said, the larger question that this starts to bring into is, okay, well now, so we already have, when we saw in the inauguration and so forth, it seems like social media in general has become closer and closer with our certain parts of our government, whether it be executive branch, the president and so forth, whether it be Mark Zuckerberg who controls Facebook, Instagram, you have Elon Musk controlling Twitter x. And now TikTok is seemingly saying, hey, let's, let's funnel this to someone else who's friendly to us. Are we, should we be concerned at all that social media, which is such a persuade, you know, where most people get their news and is as demonstrated to be able to persuade people these algorithm put these in people in these algorithmically created worlds and information bubbles that they just, they have a certain view of the world and the facts what's happening, should we be concerned or how concerned should we be? I should say that now we're actually going to start directing social making laws to force sales of social media companies and then as a part of that sale, we're going to direct it to people who may be friendly to us or, you know, and I'm not saying we as Americans, I'm saying we as a certain constituency or a certain person even.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Oh, so you mean like selling it to billionaires from other countries who come in our country, make a lot of money, but disrupt our cultural narrative?
I don't know.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: I mean, apparently when I got no gripes with politics all over the world.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: Too, hey, it's like I got no gripes with these non Americans coming in messing up our country. But, but no, I think it's an interesting point, James, because I think it like as you're talking it's like I'm thinking, okay, so what's the why here? Why would people, why is there so much interest from this billionaire class and these political leaders to. I would use the term control what social media companies are doing and how information flows on their platforms. So that's my first question.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: It's kind of a why we all asking right there.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Yep. And, and here's the thing where I think again, people have talked about this horseshoe theory when it comes to extremes. I think there's actually a healthy, if you think of the Venn diagram, there's a, there's a healthy moderate group of people on the left and right that I think have a healthy skepticism of too much concentrated power in the hands of. And we talked about this a couple weeks ago on the show, whether it's government or corporations. And I think that that would be my concern that I would share with anyone within the middle of that Venn diagram because that's why it doesn't matter their political ideology, but the idea of having a healthy skepticism about power and authority. And I think it's a very good point you bring up because what social media has allowed with disseminating misinformation and this kind of firehose of falsehoods, ideas and the ability now for bots and AI like non human actors to actually be out there continuing to fan the flames and pour gasoline on cultural fires. What we've really seen is, you know, the ability, it's almost like an ongoing experiment that we are the, you know, we're the petri dish, us as the, as the consumer, we're the, the test subjects where it's like these little levers can be pulled and we respond and behave, meaning en masse as populations a certain way. And so that's where I think this is very interesting, where I have a healthy skepticism. And I think this is the problem with social media too. Social media can take what most people would consider a healthy skepticism about a topic and accelerate that into conspiracy very quickly. And we've seen this from the Haitians eating pets to the stuff about FEMA last year with the hurricanes, to the LA fires now to the genocide in.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Myanmar, you know, last decade, you know, like it's, it takes, you know, relatively, you know, like tame positions and mindsets and can amplify them into something where people start killing people, you know, like en masse. No, I mean, you're right. I'll tell you man, I think that what we are seeing here is the result of Musk buying Twitter and what that demonstrated to that billionaire class is that this is the way of the future, so to speak. Hey, if we can own new social media, yeah, if we can own these social media companies, then we can do whatever we want from the population standpoint, because we can use the algorithms to just control essentially the narrative that's happening in large swaths of the population. And so because of that, I think that what we're seeing now with TikTok is the effort is to get that into, quote, unquote, friendly hands in the same way that Twitter is in friendly hands. The irony is that I don't know that this was particularly like the full extent of this was known when Musk bought Twitter, you know, but we've even seen Zuckerberg actually turn his direction and attention to be more like Musk at this, at this juncture. And so I think this has been seen. Social media basically is viewed, I believe, by this oligarch class, this ultra wealth class, as a means of population control. So if we control the social media, if we can turn, decide what part of the algorithms to turn up, which part to turn down and so forth, what things people see. We already have reports of, well, we had reports last year of Facebook and Instagram blocking, negative stories of candidate Trump at the time. We have reports now TikTok people saying their algorithm changed. You were telling me, you know, about how Facebook now makes you follow certain people or something like that. And so I think that they have realized that control of social media allows complete control of large parts of the population. And so therefore we're seeing that, and that's what's about to play out right now. Is the objective being we're going to control population and be able to do whatever we want, because using these algorithms, we don't have to sit there and work hard every day to do this like you would. From a propaganda standpoint, we can just like control, turn the dials every now and again and the population will take care of themselves.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: Well, I think there's actually some interesting history if you look at for people. This will be take people to want to look this up because it's a separate show. I'm not going to get into it in detail, but look up the history of the Nazi party and radios in Germany in the 1930s. Because radios were very expensive at the time, most Germans did not have them. The Nazis instituted a program in conjunction with certain radio manufacturers in Germany to manufacture a very cheap radio. They disseminated it to the mass population, but it only tuned to one station, which was a station ran by the Nazis. So that's how a society, or not the only thing, but one example of how society was changed so rapidly because of control of information by the central.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Authority and a new media and basically a new form of media and an establishment recognizing the power in that and saying, oh, hey, if we, we can, with much less effort than it might take to pamphlet people, we can control large numbers. And that's not, I don't, I don't think the point of this is to say that the people who are doing this are Nazis necessarily. Like whether they are or not is irrelevant. It's just seeing this trend and being able to identify this trend of, hey, this is a more effective and efficient means of population control.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah, well, though they might not be Nazis, but one of them did make a fun gesture that reminded us of hey, man. Other gestures we've seen in the past.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: You see, the social media said that that didn't happen.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Like you said, that didn't happen. So, I mean, I don't know how.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: I'm not going to believe my lying eyes. But, but that's a whole nother topic. But, but, no but. So here's the thing. You're right. And that's why the example you give about Facebook was actually my wife who this week told me that the presidential account, you know, the president's Facebook account was forced on her, that she was, you know, she all of a sudden was following it. She decided to unfollow it because, you know, she's not political. And then it was put on her again. Like the company forced it her to follow it again. And then she unfollowed it again and they finally left her alone. So that's the thing, James, and I think you're right. Like we, we. This isn't about. And that's what I mean. Like this is tough, right? I've got a healthy skepticism of this. I'm trying to stop myself from going into full conspiracy boat, which could be pretty easy because it's easy to scare myself. Right? Like I kind of, you know, it's kind of comforting to get all scared and act like I'm going to go start finding out all the, the stuff about the guys in the smoke filled rooms. I guess they make it a lot easier for us now because they just announce it in public.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: What they do.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: But, but, but no. So the, the, what I was going to say though is, is that the part that I have the healthy skepticism and not conspiracy on is this has been, that's why I love history. Look at the newspapers with the Gettys or the Hearsts and all that stuff. You know, look at, like we talked about in other shows about Henry Ford owning the Dearborn Press.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: And having a whole series of publications called the International Jew in the 1920s, which helped to lead to this bigger feeling of antisemitism both domestically and in Europe as well. So the idea of wealthy people wanting to control information because they feel especially the Gilded Age type of folks like Henry Ford or today, Jeff Bezos, for example, with Washington Post. Dave, I. I don't think it's unrealistic to think that if a human being literally gets to the mountaintop, kind of in a capitalist system, they're gonna feel that they are smarter than a lot of people and they did something right and they probably got some way to fix society. So sometimes you have people like a Bill Gates or Warren Buffett that do it in their philanthropic ways and there's a conspiracy theories about guys like that. Other times you got guys like Henry Ford or those guys who think of things like eugenics, that that's their ideology that they think is so smart and they're going to push that with their control of information. So that's what I'm saying, James, is that this seems to be, if you look at it historically, the healthy skepticism side of me says, okay, probably since people were putting cuneiform into clay tablets, the ruler of that society was trying to own whoever was in charge of the clay tablets. But the part to me that feels like it could go into a little bit more hyperbolic conspiracy concerns would be looking at specifically someone like Elon Musk that's now using his influence with these platforms to influence the politics of other nations like Germany and England. So that's like, in addition to our politics. Yeah, like. Like that's what I'm saying. Like, all right, now you're looking like a Bond villain. Like, you're just trying to disrupt everybody with this stuff. So that's, to me, like, maybe we're too early in it. I want to maintain the healthy skepticism side, but I feel like I'm watching some things that could lead me into conspiratorial theory pretty quickly.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, and that is. That's kind of for your own sanity, is to try to keep the healthy sanity.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: You're right.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: To help me. Skeptic.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: I'm trying not to go crazy without.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: Going full blown and so forth. I think that, like, this is. This is something our founding fathers thought about, though. I mean, this is why you have independent press and the press being protected. And the concern here is that it's not necessarily by laws that are being passed by the government that the press is becoming less independent and social media is the press. You know, like, there's no two ways about it, particularly the way that posts and so forth are algorithmically curated. You know, like they are deciding what you see, how often you see it, and when you see it. It's not just, oh, this was posted at this time, so you see it. And anything like, it's just your friends that you see, like, no, this is. It's done algorithmically, but it's done with intentionality and it's taking you places, whether that's designed to maximize quote, unquote, engagement or for other purposes.
So the other thing, though, I think that why the why, you know, part of the why on why powerful interests have liked to monopolize media sources is because when you get into these gilded age type of societies where the vast majority of the spoils and the resources in a society are not controlled or owned or accessible to members of the public, but they're all controlled, owned and accessible by just this small number of people, is that. That becomes a really hard life for 99.9% of the people, you know, or 95% of people, whatever it is a very overwhelming majority of the people. It's a very hard life for them because again, the spoils of the society being generated by the society aren't being distributed in any way, in any kind of intentional way, which, again, is the. That's the inverse of a New Deal type of society that the United States had in the mid-1900s, when a lot of people look and say, oh, this was a golden age of the United States. You know, then you had that time period. But they don't think about the economic.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: There's even people that say, make, Make America great again, thinking about that period, right?
[00:28:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. But they don't think about, you know, the economic structure that was in place.
[00:28:43] Speaker B: That's what I mean. But that economic structure is what they opined to. But they don't really.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: Yeah, but. But yeah, the mechanics of that is something that's kind of, you know, not thought of in that sense, but the need or the benefit of controlling the media and the media, the information flows in that type of situation is the ability to scapegoat when your life is hard. The reason for it isn't because you got 10 people owning 90% of the 90% of the resources and 90% of the wealth that's not why you don't have money, because that guy has all the money. You don't have money because of some immigrant who doesn't have any money either.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Because the Haitians ate your cats and dogs.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: Exactly. And so it becomes a means of deflecting people from. Because ordinarily, if one guy's sitting there with all the food and everybody else is hungry, they would turn and look at the guy with all the food and say, yo, that's not going to work. But if that guy with all the food is to say, hey, man, the reason you don't have any of this food isn't because I have it all. It's because that other guy, that other hungry guy, he, you know, he's standing on your land. And so that's why you don't have food. It's much easier. Again, population control. So, I mean, I think that it necessitates the ability to distract people, to get people looking at the wrong thing and so forth. When you, when you do concentrate all of the wealth and all of the spoils of a society into such a small number of people, and that happens based on the mechanics and the structure that are in place in that society. Are there mechanics and structure that. That tend to spread out success or are there that allow success to build on success and become concentrated? So, I mean, I think we're at the front end of something.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: I just want you to be clear.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: You know, let's get out of your last point.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's really for you, because you've mentioned a couple times population control. And just for the audience, I want you to be clarified. I'm assuming you're not meaning that they're trying to control the numbers of people in a population, like, like trying to bring us down.
Like, that's.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: That.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: That's what I want to make sure. Because you said it a couple times. So.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, I'm talking about controlling the minds of a. Of a threshold of people so that you can either prevent people from acting in their own interests or you can make people act in your interest. You know, and so that's. That's what I mean. So. Yeah, I'm glad you clarified.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: It was important to clear that up.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So. But I think we can wrap this topic from there. Check out part two as well, and we'll talk to you soon.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: All right.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: For our second part today, we wanted to discuss the. There's a sentiment that, you know, one, it's the. It's the NFL playoffs right now, National Football League football playoffs of American football. And there is the super bowl matchup has been said it's Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. They've been playoff games all January coming up to this. And there's a sentiment that's permeating through a lot of the NFL watching public that the NFL is rigging games through the referees in favor of the Kansas City Chiefs. And normally, you know, like this type of thing you see from time to time when the Chiefs have been extraordinarily successful. You know, they've won two Super Bowls in a row and they've run, you know, three overall in the past few years and they're going for another one right now. And so, you know, when teams have dynastic success, we see this from time to time. But it's interesting the way that this really picks up on the Internet, you know. And so like I wanted to get your comments and just kind of you as a person who doesn't follow this very much, but I'm sure have seen a lot of this. Like which what have you noticed or what stood out to you as far as all these complaints and people being very vocal about NFL being rigged and not necessarily the players, necessarily to some degree you hear players complaining, but this is like the people who actually cover the sport that are, you know, pushing this, this narrative, so to speak.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you said it already. I mean, I'm thinking back to like the New England Patriots 20 years ago, how a lot of people thought that the NFL kind of was kind of rigging things in their favor because they were just that good and they kept winning.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: We saw this, remember, we saw this with the Golden State warriors in basketball or the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan, Chicago Bulls. We maybe, oh, they're rigging it for them. They get all the foul calls, things like. Or Shaq and Kobe. We've heard the allegations that people got that it was rigged in those scenarios.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: No, I think, and that's where even going from topic one, the kind of concept of having healthy skepticism versus having some sort of governing body in your mind to say, let me wait till I go to a full blown conspiracy. And I think, because when I think about healthy skepticism, I'm thinking about, I think it was what, 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, when that referee in the NBA actually was busted for cheating and went to jail for it. So clearly there was enough evidence in a court of law trial with a jury that this guy was cheating as a referee and betting on games. Now that's different.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Well, that's a Key point though is like what he was cheating for. Was he cheating some overriding league narrative or was he cheating for his own gambling purposes?
[00:33:33] Speaker B: Yes, that was him. His own gambling, his own greed. There's been players over the years. I mean I knew a guy, you know, personally, I knew him that Isaac Burton, that in the 90s was with Steve Headache Smith, part of a big point shaving scandal in Arizona State, their basketball team in the early 90s. So, so it's like that stuff happens. But to your point, those are people doing it individually for their own self interest of the gambling, not the league itself. Rigging an entire team to be in favor and all that. And I tend to think it's kind of like, I think of it like the kind of truther stuff from after 9 11, which I, you know, admittedly I tell people I started watching those loose change videos and got into it. I allowed myself to go from healthy skepticism to actually full blown conspiracy for a while until you know, I got more information that brought me back than the regular skepticism. But the idea is that the reason I compare it to that is that sometimes if something is so big, it's very hard to keep all of the people involved like to keep it a secret. And again the federal government doesn't seem that good to keep a lot of secrets. A lot of stuff gets out and gets leaked. So if there was some big vast conspiracy about Bush and Cheney to do all that, something would have gotten out in a certain way. And I just feel like if the leagues themselves were actually rigging these games where because think about it, you got to have then referees on it. Owners probably got to be on it.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Owners own other teams.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: And they're getting the short staff from because of this rigging, so to speak.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: Correct. Think about it. We just said again in the first part, we talk about these billionaires that own media. Right. Those are the same people that only sports teams. Yeah, you know, like Steve Ballmer, the founder of Microsoft. I mean this guy's got so much money as owning tens of millions of shares of Microsoft. I mean that's my point. It doesn't seem like what are they going to make an extra couple billion dollars for the entire league by rigging it if ratings go up a little bit. Like that's what I'm saying. Like it seems like a lot of to do for not a huge outcome to rig these things. And the second thing is think about how competitive these billionaires, billionaires are with each other. A guy like Mark Cuban, who's more public of an owner of the Dallas Mavericks, the way he was on the sideline, you think he'd be involved if the NBA was like, like you're saying, yeah, we're going to rig it where the Golden State warriors are going to rig the net, win the next five years. Yeah, I see these owners being like, no way I'm trying to win. Like, I want that accolades. I'm already worth $80 billion as an individual. I don't care about an extra 300 million I might make because we got good ratings. I'm trying to win. I want to go to the country club and everybody's looking at me that I want, you know, like, so I just, I just think you really, that's where to me, if you start thinking a little bit out, that's how you can maybe help yourself to maintain healthy skepticism and not go full out.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: Well, that's what it is. That's what it is actually is that it's the. You can't think it out once you kind of get pot committed into this kind of thinking and that you fall victim to your own confirmation bias. And so there are these high leverage games, like the NFL is a winner take all type of thing. Like it's not a series like basketball or baseball or hockey. It's like, hey, this game, this is everything. So everything that happens has a heightened importance. And if you walk in thinking that something is rigged, the way confirmation bias works is that anything that would suggest that the Chiefs got an unfair benefit would stand out in your mind and be like, you wouldn't be able to see anything else. Anything that suggested that when a call goes against the Chiefs, you don't even remember it. You don't, you don't. It doesn't even register because that doesn't support the belief that you walked in with. So to me, that's what I think that we're seeing here. Is that the kind of the meme or the kind of the thought process has been repeated so much that people watch these games with the mindset of that the Chiefs are going to get unfair benefits. And so whenever again, calls go different teams ways throughout the course of the game, I can point out to where calls went against them and where calls went for them. But the person who's invested in the idea that the game is rigged will only remember the ones where the calls went for them. And so I think that's really what we're seeing here. But we get to see it on such a large scale because there's once this thing becomes something that People pay attention to and people hear over and over again, they, again they become invested in seeing that.
[00:37:50] Speaker B: You know, that's a great point.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: James. Just real quick, the other piece that you, that you brought up there is that if rigging the other. And this is where again, you just don't take the second to think beyond if the, any sports league was rigging anything, it's not going to necessarily be to get certain teams involved. It's the gambling thing is what we all got to be worried about. All of the, all of the, we've seen people rigging things in sports before for a long time. It's all related to the gambling stuff. You know, that's the concern we should all have about any of this stuff. And we've seen people get caught even recently, you know, like there was a, a player, you know, for Toronto, Toronto Raptors in the NBA who got caught, you know, like playing, playing with his over unders, you know, like, because, you know, he was getting money and doing this and all that is like, oh, like that's what we should all be worried about. There's gambling. You can't go two steps from any sports right now and see gambling, advertisement, gambling this, gambling that. If we're worried about like people doing things that are below board, that's where we should be looking. I'm concerned that all this, all this talk about the Kansas City like, oh yeah, let's help this middle America town, you know, get into the super bowl or do it. So because, and it's like, well, hold up. Why wouldn't they do that for Dallas or New York or something like that if they're going to be trying to.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: James, I get it.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: The gambling joint is the one to watch out for.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: I just, I just, I just thought about it. You know what it is, is because it's, it's, it's a DEI play because they have a black quarterback. That's why. So all those libs in the deep state of the federal government are pushing the NFL owners to make sure all those billionaires in the NFL, they're telling all these billionaires are pushing them around to make sure that the black quarterback gets to shine. That's. You know what? I'm glad that I'm so smart. You know, I think this show's over.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: But no problem solved.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: But here's the thing too, because as you're talking. So this is fun now. Let's have some fun because I'm just thinking about bro, like, because it's about the conspiracy theories like this that don't end up playing out and people like we are in a fire hose of falsehoods moment with all this Internet and stuff. And I do think it is a psychological warfare assault on the human mind. And I'm not saying that there's one actor in a smoke filled room doing this. It's all these companies, it's all this stuff going on at the same time.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: And well, honestly this isn't, let me just. It's not to actually cast a aspersions, but it's the capitalist incentive like the number one commodity right now. You know, it was data, but I'm telling you, it's attention. Your attention is what generates the data. And so maintaining attention, maintaining people's eyeballs is the thing that everybody's playing for right now.
[00:40:26] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and here's where I'm. You're exactly right, because here's where I'm going. So like it dawned on me as you're talking. I'm like, we're exactly one year away from the last year's Super Bowl. I mean literally the super bowl is next week, right? Early February. So what was it, what was the whole thing last year? It was that Taylor Swift, everybody knew, you know, people that want to believe. Seriously, that's what I mean, this is, it's like funny, but it's not Taylor Swift. Think about the conspiracy though. She was going to get proposed to by Travis kelce on the 50 yard line during halftime.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: And so they were going to, they were going to rig the Super Bowl.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: Yeah, they were going to rig the Super Bowl. So the Chiefs, then they were going to win. So then they would propose on the 50 yard line. And then for some reason during all of that, after he won the super bowl and they both just got mad, you know, they were going to tell.
[00:41:14] Speaker A: People to vote for Joe Biden.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: Correct. Then she was going to go do the politics and say, everybody vote for Joe Biden. And remember that clearly didn't play out. But nobody says, hey guys, this is just stupid. Why do we keep talking about this stuff?
[00:41:26] Speaker A: Right? Yeah.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: And that's what I mean, that's what I feel like with this stuff about the rigging thing. Like these things catch fire. And that's what I mean by this assault on our own like psyche as humans. Yeah, because it's all bs, it's all a lie. And then, and then what it is.
[00:41:40] Speaker A: But it's compelling at the time. Like it's laughable after the time, but it's compelling at the time. But if you stop and think about.
[00:41:46] Speaker B: It, like, but if we stop and think about, like we just did, right, Talking about the NFL, let's get back to the topic at hand. It's also laughable. Like we're saying about the only thing about it. Billionaires are going to sit there and say, yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna go with this other team winning for the next five years after I bought this team for $2 billion. I'm trying to make money. And I want the accolade, I want the shine. I want my city, where I live or I own this team to be. To be number one. You know how much money they make when they win championships from every other thing else, like ticket sales, tv. Right. All, you know, like, this isn't something that the other owners would be, you know, saying, yeah, I agree with the league should do this. And the owners own the league. That's why they're cartels. They're not. I mean, this isn't something where they have this small piece and like Roger Goodell tells them what to do. They tell Roger del. Yeah, exactly. They pay his salary. So that's all I'm saying is, is. Is if we all slow down. And I think that's the problem with this social media stuff and all that. It's the trigger and response. There's no. It doesn't allow people time. And it just, it bombards everybody with this bs. And that's why I thought about, as you're talking, like the Taylor Swift thing, as funny as it is, it's a great example because how many people do we know personally that were so invested in, that spent so much time, did their emotional state, all that prior to the super bowl, and then nothing happens.
[00:43:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:04] Speaker B: Oh, wow. You know, and then, and then we could. Whether it's the big lie, whether it's, you know, other things that are serious to. In our dialogue as a country, you start looking under the surface and it's like there's nothing there. But we. All this just gets pushed around and this information gets enough people ginned up that it slows the rest of stuff down because we got to deal with all this conspiracy theories.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, and like I said, it plays on our. Like you said, it's a war on our psyche, but it plays on our biases. I mean, and that's kind of the. The way these things propagate. And then. Yeah, it. The other piece about that is that once it doesn't happen or once it's disproven to not be necessarily the case, people just move to the next one, you know, like, it's not like there's this kind of thing like mayhem. There's no reflection after the fact. Like, well, why did. Why was I so sure that this was going to happen? Maybe I should be more skeptical the next time something tries to get me all riled up about something and it doesn't play out like that, you know, and so it's, it is, it's unfortunate to see, but you see it recycle over and over again, and that's how you know that it's something with our humanity and the way that these things are presented to us in our humanity, that it could just get us so riled up. I mean, because, yeah, this. I mean, people swear to me that it's all rigged, and I'm just like, you know, if you look at it from any number of angles, it doesn't make sense that it would be rigged. But if you just watch the game with the mindset that it is rigged, your confirmation bias will take over and it will show you your mind will only remember the things that support that case, and it will not remember. It won't even notice the things that don't support that case, and you'll walk away from it as ever each time.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. I mean, my favorite joke is the Haitians eating pets. Because you're right. Like, that's meme swirled around enough. A few people, pictures of black dudes holding ducks, you know, on the street. And next thing you know, no matter what, the governor, the police chief, the mayor of the town, the people in the know are telling people the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the imprints and the images and the, and, and all that kind of assault on the mind from the, from the algorithms and, and the tech world made it real enough that this thing was the, the information became a truth to enough people. And I think to your point, like, this information about rigging NFL games is becoming truth to enough people. Not necessarily because it's true, but just because it's constantly being pumped in their face and it's just a good, it's like a good avatar which affects so many other topics that we discuss it all though.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: But I want to connect it because basically when it's pumped into your face like that and then confirmation buyers bias takes over, yet that affects your perception, and your perception then becomes your reality. So you get seeded with this information. If it hits you a certain way and you kind of like, hey, hey, yeah, I think there's something to this, then you watch with that in your mind, confirmation bias means that's all you see and then that becomes your perception and that becomes your reality. Perception is reality, as we have observed many times from a psychological standpoint. So there is a direct line to anything being presented to you in the right way, particularly if it supports existing biases or beliefs that you have becoming your reality just based on the repetition of it, seeing it and then looking at it through the eyes. From confirmation bias standpoint, it's a very kind of dangerous place to be that anything can become true to someone. But that evidence is that basically it's.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: Interesting, man, because we can't. I mean, I know we're going to end this discussion now and keep, keep, let everyone go go on their day. But like, I'm just going to say this because it's kind of crazy. Like if you really extrapolate it out, macro physics right now in this sphere of how our brains interpret information kind of behaves like quantum physics, which may. I mean, I've been reading stuff about, you know, how the scientists are saying that, you know, our neurons might actually communicate through a multiverse. And not to go on a total tangent, but the idea that observing something changes its state. Yeah, you see what I'm saying? Like, so the fact that we can observe certain things, it does change the state of our reality. And I think that's one thing that I've been more curious about, which is the idea of information and truth.
Information can become a truth even if it's not factual, if it's put in front of a person enough times. And I think that's one thing we're experiencing just with this Internet and the fact that.
[00:47:31] Speaker A: Or put in person, put in front of our hand right way, you know, like. And that we did Nexus, you know, the book Nexus a few months ago. And I mean, that got into how, you know, like that, that common misconception that information and truth were related, whereas that they aren't necessarily, you know, they could be, but that's not something that's inherent. And in fact, information has historically wielded more powerful, more, more power when it wasn't truthful, you know, when it was some in some other way compelling, you know, emotionally, information can be more powerful than just being true, you know. So I mean, and I think that, you know, this, this plays into that as well. And you know, it's just something that we should keep an eye on, you know, because it definitely plays into our human nature in ways that affect how we view things in the world we live in. You know. And so ultimately, I guess this is a small thing of that, but it's something that's of notice, something that's easy to see and easy to talk about. So, yeah, I think we can wrap from there.
[00:48:26] Speaker B: We appreciate to think of a parting joke in uniting the 2017 Charlottesville propaganda with the Haitians eating pets, but I'm not coming to it. So next show, I'll have. I'll have a joke for you guys.
[00:48:38] Speaker A: So, yeah, yeah, that's quite a tease, man. But we appreciate it 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.
[00:48:51] Speaker B: I am Tunde Iguana.
[00:48:53] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you soon.
I.
