Episode Transcript
The following is a computer-generated transcript.
WEBVTT
1
00:00:14.100 --> 00:01:12.770
Hello. Welcome to the Call It Like I See It podcast. I'm James Keys and in this episode of Call It Like I See It, we're going to react to a recent piece from the Wall Street Journal, which gets into what it believes is the fall of respectability in public life, particularly among amongst leaders. And later on, we're going to discuss a recently announced fusion power breakthrough and consider whether we're looking at a real game changer here as far as power goes or if the hype train may have gotten out. A little ahead on this one. Joining me today is a man who you will not find rejecting any social or political norms on any social media platform, at least under his own name. Tunde Ogunlana Tunde Day. Are you ready to tell the folks today how you keep that respect level so high?
2
00:01:14.600 --> 00:01:19.250
I only find out what it means to me. And then. And then that's when I figure it out.
3
00:01:19.250 --> 00:02:24.290
So there you go. There you go. All right. Now we're recording this on December 19th, 2022. And recently we saw this piece, like I was saying in the Wall Street Journal. And it considered whether the idea that being a leader in business or public life means being respectable is something that's still around, or is this a something that's really a casualty of the tech revolutions that we've seen over the last 20 years? And the article makes a pretty interesting case. It looks at modern conduct from people like Sam Bankman-fried or Elon Musk. Takes a look back at people like Andrew Carnegie and Dwight Eisenhower and explains how it looks at leaders in a modern sense and how they don't seem to be placing much, if any, value on behaving in a way that would traditionally be seen as respectable. So Tunde, what's your general reaction to this premise that as a result of the tech revolution being respectable, if you're a leader is no longer that important?
4
00:02:24.980 --> 00:02:41.570
You know, as a guy who's middle aged is one of these things that makes me feel like I'm getting old. So I feel like I'm just sitting there, like you said, in the I think it was last week, Chuck, you were joking that I was shaking my fist at the Internet. Yes, Yes. And telling it to get off literally.
5
00:02:41.570 --> 00:02:42.800
Yeah, the Internet.
6
00:02:43.040 --> 00:03:04.550
Telling it to get off my lawn, that's what. Sometimes I wonder when I when I think that you know, like you're saying with this whole lack of respectability and all that, I think, am I just getting older and I'm getting cranky and just tired of seeing all this stuff? Like this is like our grandparents in the 80s and 90s that didn't like us listening to like West Coast gangster rap, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
7
00:03:04.610 --> 00:03:25.550
Like rappers weren't respectable and like, well, you know, one interesting thing about this to me, like with the, the SBF, you know, Bankman freed, it's I think it's a different conversation than it is with Elon Musk. Like if you're a 30 year old, you're going to act, you're going to do different things than you're going to do if you're in your 50s, you know? And so it's just it's interesting how those both together.
8
00:03:25.560 --> 00:03:34.530
Now I'm just laughing like, yeah, 30 year olds, you're expected to be maybe a bit more of a jackass. Yeah. We still don't expect you to create an $8 billion fraud. That's right. Yeah.
9
00:03:34.980 --> 00:03:36.440
Yeah. Or at least youth.
10
00:03:36.480 --> 00:03:37.800
Won't get them past that one.
11
00:03:37.800 --> 00:03:45.490
Well, at least, though, like, when you're at work, you're supposed to act like you're at work and not playing video. Get it? Yeah, like, Oh, no, I'm just playing video games pass.
12
00:03:45.540 --> 00:03:48.690
For a shaggy hair that he's 30. He's not all buttoned up.
13
00:03:48.690 --> 00:03:59.910
But no, I mean, even if I consider that though when I look back. But that was like even rappers now you look at the 50 year old rappers, they're not doing the stuff that they were doing in the 90s. Those guys are all buttoned up now. You know, those guys.
14
00:03:59.910 --> 00:04:01.890
Are serious business guys now making money.
15
00:04:01.890 --> 00:04:20.760
Yeah, you know, those guys aren't running out of the club at four in the morning, you know, doing whatever. Like those guys are home with their families, you know? So it's just like there's an age piece. I agree with you on that. But I think the piece went beyond just age. And, you know, it really called out some things. So, I mean, beyond the age piece, what did you what were you thinking?
16
00:04:21.630 --> 00:05:52.030
Um, no, I just think it's it's. Look, I think I think we all feel it, that there's something in this era of Internet and kind of not just social media, but the way traditional media and the way our politicians now and leaders in in kind of society, if we want to call them leaders, just people that are well recognized and who command attention. So and in that sense, they are some sort of leader, whether one thinks that they're doing a positive job of leadership in the society or not is probably where the debate can lie. But for for I mean, you named a couple names already, people like an Elon Musk in this last, let's say, few months. You know, before our recording, we can point to people like, yay, formerly Kanye West, we can point to Alex Jones from Infowars. We can point to politicians who can be named, you know, But whether they're in Congress or presidential office or whatever, I think it's the ability for. Leadership figures in our society to have their constant their stream of consciousness on display for us at all time. I think that's something new for society because even with like what I said earlier when we were kids. You know, celebrities and politicians didn't have Twitter and Facebook and these other ways to constantly post to the public what's on their mind and for the public to constantly be able to react unfiltered.
17
00:05:52.030 --> 00:07:06.410
You know, like a lot of those people would have publicists and, you know, like they wouldn't be able to just fire off a tweet or whatever. So, yeah, I think the access piece is interesting. And what we're talking about here, I mean, just to kind of be a little more specific as far as respectability, it's kind of almost you can think of it almost as reputation management, so to speak. Like what the decline that's being pointed to is people desiring to be seen in a way like, oh, I keep my hands dirty. Like not saying people didn't do dirt, you know, like people did Dirt have always done dirt, you know, people in leadership positions or whatever. But there used to be and the premise here being more effort to hide your kind, the things that weren't the the things that wouldn't make people admire you, so to speak, like, oh, you know, that's a good guy. He's it'd be like if it became a virtue to to cheat on your spouse like and people just were flaunting that and they'd be like, well that's not something historically in the United States, at least, you know, in other countries that's I know France, like the mistress is well known or whatever of the head of state, but that's not something that people flaunt. And so it's the flaunting of behavior, really, that is that historically we've seen make people look at you kind of side eyed like, oh, that's that's not necessarily the kind of person I would want to follow, you know, so to speak.
18
00:07:06.410 --> 00:08:07.760
But there seems to be more of an audience for that as well, which you get into with the Twitter piece, the well, with just, you know, with the the social media piece where you fire off. And so I think there's something to the ability to instantaneously fire off thoughts. And I think there's certain personalities that that probably affects more than others and they can't resist that. Like, yeah, some people are like, Oh, I don't have to tell everybody what I think all the time. And other people are like, Oh, well, if I think it, I want to say it. And just like all spectrums of personalities or many spectrums of personalities are amongst the general population, you'll have that amongst prominent people as well. And so because it's not like every person in business leadership or in political leadership is behaving in this way, but we have certain personalities. That's the question I have actually more than anything is in my reaction to this, is are we just looking are we selectively looking at certain people that just can't resist, you know, just can't resist trying to hear their name all the time and get in front of the public all the time? Is this really a trend or can we just see the people who are wilding out more visibly because of the age that we're in now?
19
00:08:08.720 --> 00:08:56.120
Um, it's a good question. I'd probably say there's a little bit of both in there. I think, like you said, the. The ability to be truly unfiltered as a person. I think there is some of what you said. I mean, there's there's there's different. Sociopathic and kind of psychological states of people's minds. We all know or many people know of things like narcissism as one personality type that probably feeds off social media more so than other types. But there's another type, and it's called the Histrionic, and it's another I don't like to use it. The term is personality disorder, but I don't mean to use it as like a pejorative that someone's got a problem. I just think, you know, this is the way someone's what they call it.
20
00:08:56.150 --> 00:08:58.670
Yeah. This is what they classify it as that.
21
00:08:58.670 --> 00:09:44.430
Yeah. And the way I look at it, this is just, you know, we're all human beings. We're all wired differently. And some people are born with different brain chemistry. And like you said, whether someone is of high net worth or political class or they're the everyday person, there's just the same percentage of people that have different types of personalities in all these different groups. So the histrionic personality, they have symptoms that involve expressing excessive emotions, being very proactive and seeking, seeking excessive amounts of attention in ordinary situations. So when I when I think about that, coupled with a trait like narcissism, if you were to say, okay, 10% of people in any society have something like that. Right?
22
00:09:44.850 --> 00:09:49.290
And we've all seen people like that, like just in life, like people that like to show off, you know, kind of thing.
23
00:09:49.290 --> 00:10:00.090
And I'm just thinking, okay, well, hypothetically, if there's, you know, 250 million adults in the United States or whatever the number could be, well, 10% of that's 25 million people. And if half of them are on social media.
24
00:10:00.820 --> 00:10:04.990
Like you said, by the way, those are the kind of people that would gravitate towards social media more. Yeah, good.
25
00:10:04.990 --> 00:11:14.180
Point. Right. And so and so that's a very good point. And so what would happen is I think it's the marriage of it, right? If you already have that kind of tendency, then being exposed to social media may actually promote more of that coming out of you. Right. And so I think that it's natural. And that's why in answering it, it's kind of twofold and then I'll pass it back is one is I'm sure because the access to these kind of platforms is there, like you just said, it attracts more people that have these tendencies and probably helps bring it out more within them. And then the second piece is, has it always been there? I thought back to other just leaders, like whether you think of what they've said about Julius Caesar, whether you look at the the charisma plus delusion of someone like Adolf Hitler, you know, there's leaders in the past we can all say had personality disorders and other things and were very charismatic and got people's attention. I think the difference now is, like you just mentioned, the ability for 24 over seven constant, unfiltered, direct from the horse's mouth, like we've never seen this before in society. And yeah, I mean, this is how it's playing out.
26
00:11:14.270 --> 00:12:34.160
If we had Caesar's tweets for like being like it might have been just like this, you know, like so versus not every senator in Rome might have been like that, but some of them might have been. And some of them are more reserved, like I think. Yeah. And I want to get into how because I think another piece on that would be how this type of stuff is incentivized and put in front of us more if you're on social media as well. But one thing I want to mention before that and this kind of pushes back on the notion that it's a it's a cultural change or a societal change. But I remember a couple of years ago there was an executive with the Philadelphia 76 ERs basketball team, Bryan Colangelo, and this guy was he had basically a burner Twitter account and he had a real one. And that was like his official one and everything like that. But then he was he was discovered that he had a burner account and he would be disparaging other teams, other players, talking stuff about the players on his team. And the difference in this, though, he did, he had a burner account because he wanted to be anonymous. Burner accounts are supposedly prevalent, you know, in terms of. So there are plenty of people still maintain the desire to want to do this kind of stuff to to be to say what they want to say. But very few seem to really want to attach their name to all of it. And so that to me is really where I see the difference is that, yeah, people are talking on Twitter all the time.
27
00:12:34.160 --> 00:13:42.110
I mean, it's 90% of what it's there for, but most of the time, at least historically, we we consider people doing that, you know, you know, like they're doing it under burner accounts, which you could arguably say that's that's that's deceptive. You know, at least the people at least Musk says all this stuff, so to speak, just straight up. That's just him, so to speak. But it underlies this kind of point that, oh, well, but the reason this guy used the burner account, Colangelo used a burner account is because he thought that and his impression was that he couldn't do his job effectively as the leader of the organization. If people saw him saying all this stuff. And and once his burner account was discovered, his suspicion was right, he got fired. You know, and part of that is probably the dishonesty. But a large part of that is like he just burned all this trust that he had, you know, in the building, outside of the building, he was going to deal do trades with other executives and so forth. So it it's interesting to me, like, again, that's the interesting part to me about it is this owning this stuff, you know, like this isn't just, oh, you know, somebody saying what they want to say or keeping it real. This is like, no, no, no, no. I want to I want to do all this stuff. I want you to know it's me.
28
00:13:42.140 --> 00:14:29.650
Let me jump in here because I want to actually hit that point you just made. And then and then. And then there was another one we can come back to. But, you know, it's interesting, like you say, and it's a great example with with, you know, it's kind of a non-threatening example talking about a GM of a of an NBA team because, you know, this is that's not politics. It's not all this personality, culture, war stuff where people can kind of, you know, hear what you're saying and just immediately do the mental filing cabinet thing if you're on their team or not. And you're right, what a great example you give that. Yeah, he probably had his burner account because he understood that if. Now because of his position. He shouldn't be talking like that right under under kind of normal. What we consider the norms of our society. Right.
29
00:14:29.650 --> 00:14:39.130
Disparaging undermines this point or this thought that respectability is gone away, basically. Like now again, I'm pointing out, well, here's I'm not saying that they're wrong, but go ahead.
30
00:14:39.130 --> 00:15:58.560
In in I think in the kind of traditional, polite society that most of us have been raised in, you're right. People want to have a certain air of respectability. And you make a good point, too. There is I mean, let's be honest, there is somewhat of a dishonesty of that. If you're behaving one way in public and then, you know, creating a burner accounts on social media and starting to ripping everyone to shreds. And I mean, I think and I think there's probably more people that do that than we care to really want to know. But what I would say is. That going back to this idea of norms and what we used to call political correctness, which didn't, you know, a lot of people didn't seem to like, and now people are starting to discover it again because. Even someone like Musk right on Twitter who bought the company saying, I'm going to be this bastion of freedom of speech and all this And and guess what? When his buddy Kanye West starts going to anti-Semitic, he's got to cancel his account. And so my point is, is that you can't have it both ways. You either are truly going to let it go and be totally open, which means you've got to accept that there's going to be people saying very nasty, hurtful and ugly things or you got to have some sort of understanding that there's guardrails Some people can call a guardrails, some other people might call it politically correctness or norms. But I think that's the point.
31
00:15:58.560 --> 00:16:11.820
Of it being the point of it being that there's some type of wall or fencing in terms of antisocial versus social behavior. That's really what it comes down to.
32
00:16:11.850 --> 00:16:53.080
You made a great point that I wrote down a word. That's the word. Trust that at some point people need to trust the person in that position. And that's why I think as we're talking about this, this this idea of respectability or lack thereof, really what we're talking about are people that are seen as leaders in whatever position they're in, whether business, political, in this example with sports. And so and so that's what I'm getting at is. That's been how we were kind of raised. But I think with the technology now and this is where we get into sort of getting back to the things like the algorithms and all that is. They're designed to promote a combative environment because that's what sells, you know? Well, let me back up.
33
00:16:53.340 --> 00:18:01.100
Let me back you up because that's where I wanted to go next. But yeah, because that's what the next thought on this is. What do you think that what do you think as far as how modern culture has developed in terms of the value of getting and maintaining attention, how that encourages this? And so there's two prongs really that you can look at this. One is the algorithm piece that you were talking about that actually still is subordinate, though, to the overall main, major point is that negative and or conflict drives attention more than positive, uplifting things like that. And that goes back to when when you know, however far you want to go back when the joke used to be news is always bad news. You turn on the evening news and in 1985, they're not they're not telling you a bunch of puff stories. You know, they're telling you, oh, this guy got shot. This guy got you know, like this. There's fraud here, yada, yada, yada, because that stuff keeps people's attention more than than if they came and said, oh, yeah, you know, these this, this great firm, they donated all these, you know, all this money to somebody like that stuff, people like, Oh, there's nothing going on.
34
00:18:01.100 --> 00:18:59.600
And so when you combine that fundamental piece about how our attentions are with how what drives our attention and with the the unabashed at this point, there's so many forms of media at this point right now that all of them are competing with all of each other. You know, football is competing with with network television, is competing with movies, is competing with social media to some degree. You know, with for with TikTok for your attention. That's what it's all about. You boil it all down. People want your the business is made based on what has your attention. Everybody's competing for that. That drives where you get to social media driving. Okay. We want to build our algorithms to to build attention. What drives attention or to grow attention? What drives attention? This negative stuff, combat histrionics, all that kind of stuff. So that's they will bias their algorithms. So that's how much do you think that kind of drives this? Or again, do you think that's the that's the writer here or that's the driver?
35
00:18:59.990 --> 00:20:30.910
No, I think it drives a lot. I mean, look, like we just cited. Right. You've got half this country on social media at least. I mean, it's probably at least 150 million people that are at once a day look at something, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever. So the what these algorithms drive into people's faces, literally. Right? They're looking at a screen in their palm of their hand is very important because it sets the mood of a human being. You know, if you're always seeing negative stuff all the time. I mean, we've we've had this conversation in different ways on shows as to my experience why I got off social media because I recognized it was turning me into somebody that I didn't want to be. And and it was a lot of negativity on there. And so we can't help but be susceptible as human beings to things we're exposed to. So if you're constantly exposed to conflict and negativity, you know that that that will have an effect. You know, my example where things like, you know, the police, when I saw a bunch of black guys getting beat up constantly by police on my news feed, I started having, you know, anxiety attacks when a cop car would drive by me, even though I never had a negative encounter with police. Yeah. And I say all that doesn't mean I'm discounting the fact that. There has been issues with police and black people in this country that is real and systemic. I acknowledge that. And I and I support efforts to reform that. I'm just saying.
36
00:20:32.140 --> 00:21:08.470
But that's the fact that that's real. How it affects you can be can be a different thing, though, and how it actually and social media, the designers of it, they talk about how the one of the goals one of the main things it's able to do is have imperceptible changes in behavior. It can change your behavior without you knowing. And this is an instance where you recognize it was changing you and you're like, hey, you know, like I, I can support and hey, we got to knock out any kind of police officers that are that are doing this kind of stuff, all this brutality. But at the same time, I can't have this flashed in my face seven times a day or else it's going to it's going to turn me into somebody else.
37
00:21:08.770 --> 00:22:34.520
Because another good thing for me to say is I always recognize, you know, since I was a little kid, that, you know, the dynamic between black Americans and law enforcement in this country. But I never felt the way I felt until I started getting these videos put on my face all the time. And that's when I started having panic attacks with cop cars behind me and realizing that what's wrong with me? You know, two years ago, my heart rate wasn't going up when when I had a cop car behind me. Now it is. What's the difference? Oh, it's because I'm on social media and I'm constantly the algorithms keep feeding me this information. And the interesting thing was I talked to one of my white friends about it and he's like, Tunde don't get any of that stuff to mind. He tells me. He's like, I keep seeing images of white kids getting beat up by black kids. That's what the algorithm. So the algorithms, the AI is so good that the computers all know who we are as individuals and send us things that disturb us so that we keep clicking. Because we've also identified another discussions. That fear holds a person's attention more than anything else. Like you mentioned, you know, the feel good stuff is great, but why do politicians campaign on fear is because it works, right? And so and so now we have the fear pumped into us. And here's where I'll go. Because, you know, I don't want to make this all about bashing social media, but because that's what brings the attention, the eyeballs, which registers in a lot of ways to dollars.
38
00:22:34.520 --> 00:22:35.270
It does.
39
00:22:35.270 --> 00:23:23.030
Then then that's where the people, whether it's Alex Jones types, whether it's Donald Trump as a politician who in a smart way figured out with Twitter that he could go through the old campaign structure, you know, and just create his own megaphone through Twitter as to become president, whether it's Elon Musk now given us all his updates on what he's doing after buying Twitter through Twitter. It seems like that's where I think that it's now feeding on itself. And it's like the snake eating its tail where now certain personalities have seen that they can get more notoriety and become more famous and wealthy by using continuing to push kind of this conflict on these platforms. And that's where I think the respectability piece from leadership is coming into question.
40
00:23:23.030 --> 00:24:43.030
Well, it was it's been discovered basically, and now you've got people replicating it like, okay, because I look at there's two examples I give and I'll go back to really, you know, this is. You go back to LaVar Ball and then at the same time, I pointed out, I would point to him and I would point to Donald Trump and this was before Trump was what he is now, basically. I mean, he's still the same person. But before we weren't as far down the road, basically. But the question always was for people because I'm looking at traditional media here, why does traditional media cover LaVar Ball now? Lavar Ball is the father of several prominent basketball. They were prep basketball players at the time. They weren't pros. They were one of the oldest was in college at UCLA. Lonzo Ball, the middle kid, didn't go to the NBA. And then the younger kid, Lamelo Ball, plays now in the NBA. But, you know, he was he was like in high school or junior high when we started hearing about LaVar Ball. And then you had Donald Trump as well. And then people were like, well, why does the media cover these people so much? And I would tell people it's because when the media covers these people, people watch, you know? And so if you can drive on social media, they call it engagement. When when people say crazy things, everybody's, you know, opens those tweets, they reply, they respond, they forward them, they retweet them. All that stuff that is measured by the social media company they want. They want more people to do that. So they they promote that stuff. They know that that promotes more and more engagement.
41
00:24:43.030 --> 00:26:08.710
And so respectability does not promote engagement. So you have people, again, have observed this and say, okay, well, if you're the kind of person that will lean into, hey, I need the bottom line, I need the results, I need more notoriety, respectability has got to go. And then if you look at traditional media again, respectability doesn't drive eyeballs be getting up there, being, you know, being very, you know, staid and respectable. That's not going to put you on television with that, you know? And so LaVar Ball realized very quickly, I just got to I got to say outlandish stuff and they'll just keep putting me on. I'm a I'm nobody. My son is the is the basketball prospect. I'm just its dad. But if I get out here and say I can beat Michael Jordan in one on one which he said then SportsCenter will be interviewing me and stuff like that. And I'll just say, Oh, my son's going to be the best basketball player of all time sports centers talking to him or, you know, he's on Sports Illustrated or whatever. And so basically the hack that has been discovered in our hypercompetitive media environment again, and I'm going beyond social media, just hypercompetitive media environment, is that whatever will drive eyeballs, media organizations will gravitate to put that stuff on. And I mean, Trump is the best example of this, though, because they're saying millions, possibly billions of dollars in free campaign advertising, basically that he was able to gain out of the media by just being wild and crazy and they just would cover everything he did. They would cover it. And he didn't he didn't need political ads because let me jump.
42
00:26:08.740 --> 00:27:34.030
On that television. Let me jump on that one and follow you. Exactly, because I'm seeing the same pattern again. It's very interesting for me to watch this, actually, because there's some shows and I share this with you offline that I used to like watching just as normal shows in the morning that I, you know, I'd have my cup of coffee and kind of get my head in the day and they would have good conversations and they'd be diverse conversations about different topics on a regular basis. And then from 2016, 2017 to almost now, those same shows have only been about Donald Trump. But they're the sides. They keep detracting against him. And I stopped watching them after, you know, early in his presidency because I realized how unhealthy it is to constantly talk about the same person all the time, whether positive or negative. Yeah. And what I started giving these shows a little bit of a side eye is to your point, they're the ones that all took his they all gave him the free airtime during the campaign. And what I'm getting now to talk about Trump so much, but it's a style of the media, like you said, because people keep a lot of people think the media is always attacking certain individuals or the way certain people think. But it is about really ratings because now those same outlets are doing the same thing with Elon Musk. Like literally half their shows are dedicated towards him. And I'm thinking like, you guys are doing the same thing. You're propping up someone you say you don't like and you're making them more popular. And it's just interesting to me that you're right.
43
00:27:34.030 --> 00:27:37.020
Like it's because of the eyeballs thing. Yeah.
44
00:27:37.020 --> 00:27:45.690
Whether intentional or not, it's driving all of us to look at the same stuff, which is all like, really just a train wreck, right? It's like a waste of time.
45
00:27:45.690 --> 00:27:50.070
It's called rubbernecking. And you see it on the road. I mean, that's literally the we're human beings.
46
00:27:50.070 --> 00:28:13.170
Kanye West and Kyrie Irving got so much attention in the media and they're not good people for being anti-Semitic, period. There's no excusing that. But I don't understand. Like, it's like the media was having that schadenfreude, that moment. They just want to just keep it's like the way they talk about the royals, like Harry and Meghan, like, who cares, right? But these are such things that like, well.
47
00:28:13.180 --> 00:28:25.210
No, but you're looking you're asking you're asking the wrong question. Clearly, people care because they're doing that stuff. They're squeezing that. They're squeezing that fruit. As long as juice is coming out and juice doesn't come out anymore. But they moved something else.
48
00:28:25.210 --> 00:28:44.990
But think about but that's what I'm saying. Like, obviously people care, but it's just we're talking about where the respectability go. And I guess this is where it went. Is that. Today's people in positions of leadership within their industries or wherever they're at aren't rewarded for being respectable. They're rewarded for sticking it in people's eyes.
49
00:28:45.320 --> 00:29:40.620
No, I think you have to say that the other way you can be rewarded for not being respectable. So more people are taking that bait because there's still I mean, I still think we're talking about a minority of it's not like you see the CEO of Exxon doing this and the CEO of McDonald's doing like it's not it's not every CEO doing this. So but this is another avenue to prominence. And one other thing that I wanted to mention and actually we had talked about this a little bit offline is how another feature of this, the fact that stirring up the pot is really good for getting attention is you almost have to do it yourself as well. It's no longer like people again, people have always done dirt, but historically, a lot of times we would see it done anonymously, whether it be Bryan Colangelo or the countless burner accounts on Twitter or going back. I was talking to you earlier about the Founding Fathers and how these dudes were doing hit pieces through anonymous sources. You know, media company wasn't Hamilton. Hamilton was one.
50
00:29:40.770 --> 00:29:47.370
But he was he had a journalist writing in a paper anonymously against Jefferson because he hated Jefferson so much.
51
00:29:47.400 --> 00:30:55.120
Jefferson had stuff against him like. Like this is what they did. This was the MO, you know, So it's not. But they they were very careful to not be associated with that stuff publicly. And so because then there wasn't this additional avenue that was up there that would say, okay, well, yeah, if you do this, you'll be less respectable, but you will get so many eyeballs that you might be able to make up for the lack of respectability, you know, in other ways, you know. So, you know, it's interesting. It's a new avenue. But let me just finish the thought, because essentially, to your point. This. There is now there previously wasn't a significant upside to being a rabble rouser to the core and that that's all you're known as. Now, there because of again, I'm pointing to the hypercompetitive media environment. There's not three media companies, one paper in every in every city, maybe two, you know, like. But it's so much media everywhere. Everybody's competing for eyeballs all the time. And again, that's sports, that's movies that's out like news. That's all that's competing for your eyeballs that now there's also an upside for not being respectable. And so people will do the dirt themselves publicly.
52
00:30:55.330 --> 00:32:02.900
Yeah. And it's interesting because when you going back to the founding fathers in that era of the pamphlets, what I find interesting is, again, this is about technology. Because remember, if you if you consider the printing press in Europe, kind of Martin Luther being the first guy to really use it as a disrupter against against the power at the time, which was the Catholic Church, I mean, that was, you know, a couple hundred years before the founding fathers. So that's when, you know, it might have taken you a whole day just to bang out one page on a printing press. By the Founding Fathers days, the technology had advanced to the point where you could make these pamphlets very quickly and disseminate a bunch of them out. So that at the time was akin to social media because remember, things look professionally done. They were printed. So it must be real. You know, if if someone could afford a printing press, they must have some sort of, you know, a wherewithal and the ability to have information. Just like today, if someone owns a tech company, Right. Sam Bankman Freed can convince me to invest 200 million in his crypto company while he's playing League of Legends. He must be that good. You know, it's just that same kind of, you know, mentality that that we're seeing today.
53
00:32:02.900 --> 00:32:07.910
And and so just like there's another piece I want to get to, though, before we we get out of this.
54
00:32:07.910 --> 00:33:14.570
Well, let me finish this, because just as the pamphlets were disruptive and now the technology of social media is disruptive, I think the difference and we're pointing it out here is. You know, there's still certain things that haven't changed in terms of how human beings receive and perceive things. And, you know, we did our show on the 48 Laws of Power a long time ago, which seemed to be historically those kind of things don't change with humans. And one of them was about there's several chapters, one about having a cat's paw, another about have other people get their hands dirty or don't get your hands dirty, have other people do dirty work for you. And I think that goes back to the idea of. Leaders in the past when they needed to do something dirty, didn't do it themselves publicly. And so I think this stuff is good short term for some of these people. We've seen in the in the current, let's say, leadership in our kind of cultural society today. But I think the word you used, again, trust is very important. And I don't think it I don't think you build real trust when you behave that way publicly as a leader. Well, that was.
55
00:33:14.570 --> 00:33:37.820
One of the points made towards the end of that that Wall Street Journal piece. And I want to I want to I do want to ask whether this matters from a societal point, but a societal standpoint. But, you know, it's interesting the way you point out, you know, from the 48 laws, because the image I get in my head is kind of like the mob, you know, like this is like Vito running around doing all his own. That's a great point. Yeah. And it's like, No, no, Vito. Vito stays clean.
56
00:33:37.820 --> 00:33:39.070
He doesn't even get on the phone.
57
00:33:39.080 --> 00:34:36.840
Yeah, people don't even see him give the order, you know? And so but and the speculation is and I mean, I think it's well founded, but is that that is because the way human beings are our human nature. Eventually there's going to be a there's going to be some kind of backlash against the person who's always who who owns the dirt in order to own the news cycle. And so we'll see. I mean, that's the piece we don't know because as long as the fall doesn't come too quickly, you're going to have more imitators and people that are going to see this as the avenue, this disruption avenue to to to become prominent. And so but I do want to ask, you know, and I don't want to spend too much time on this, but do you think this matters like, are we looking at some kind of real change in culture that could potentially spread out and be you know, we see something humans are like the way humans interact can can irrevocably change? Or is this kind of, you know, just a little blip and our normal, you know, just kind of evolution of societies?
58
00:34:37.140 --> 00:35:47.600
That's a good question. That one, I think is a bit of both. So I'll explain that. I think it does matter. Of course, you know how people in a society at any given time behave in terms of people at the top. And I think we saw that's why it's very interesting. And again, this isn't a show that we're having about politics, but clearly look at the contrast in leadership in the last couple presidents. And when Trump came in office, his leadership style just brought out different types of animal spirits within the American public than we had seen in a couple of generations. And I think that, you know, and we had talked in other discussions how other leaders in this country prior to him were able to keep a lid on that some of those spirits. And so if you have leaders continually. You know, fomenting this kind of combative nature of discourse in public. I think people there are certain people that will respond to it. And like we talked about, when you got 300 million people in a country, if just 10% are moved by certain leaders, then it's going to we're all going to feel it, right. Well, and.
59
00:35:47.660 --> 00:36:13.490
One thing to your point with that is that in order to continue to be to to get attention and to hold attention, you have to keep being shocking. You have to keep being like. So that's going to have to continue to escalate your rhetoric. You're going to have to continue to escalate what you're saying and what you're doing because whatever you did two years ago isn't going to move the needle the way it will or the way in two years later, so to speak. You're going to have to do something more. You have to say something even more extreme.
60
00:36:13.640 --> 00:37:31.830
And that's why I say it's a bit of both, because in the short term, yes, it's going to have a huge impact and we're feeling it. And it's the whole culture wars and all that stuff. I think in the long term, though, you know, like we talked about, whether it's the 48 laws and all that, I mean, human beings do revert back to certain patterns that make them comfortable. I think that's where the idea of trust comes back into play. And as you were talking again and I'm making this comparison very clearly, only as relates to the style of political leadership and charisma, again, Adolf Hitler. So I'm not comparing the Holocaust and atrocities. He was very charismatic in the German. People en masse supported him heavily by 1945. That wasn't the case because you're right, he had to keep going and going, and it kept getting worse and worse for the society. Over time, when everyone's dropping bombs on Berlin, you know, ten, 12 years after he first got in office. So I do think that there's a shelf life for this kind of behavior. So I don't think it lasts forever. But just with the example I just gave, the wrong leader can affect the world in a very short period of time, very negatively. So yeah, in the long run, that's why I said it's a little bit of both. In the long run I think things there is a mean that human societies revert back to but in the short term it can be very negative and disruptive If this continues.
61
00:37:31.830 --> 00:38:08.910
I think it's actually it's impossible to know at this point because I do think there's been a significant change with the social media and generally the fragmented media environment in terms of this. It's a race to the bottom in the media in many respects. And the media, the media of a society has a large effect on people and their what their happiness in a society, their ability to get together and move towards a common goal. Like in our media environment right now, there could be no Apollo program, you know, because 40% of the people would be convinced that it's the worst thing in the world and they got to do everything they can do to push against it.
62
00:38:08.910 --> 00:38:11.640
And so only if Biden announces it.
63
00:38:12.240 --> 00:39:49.770
Come on, nobody could nobody could announce it and it would get, you know, like like the most popular people have a 45% approval rating. And so I think that it's unknowable. But in general, I would I would think you're correct in the sense that human beings fall into certain types of patterns, but we are getting better and better at kind of drilling down and manipulating our own human nature. Yeah. And so that piece about it, I don't know where this goes. Basically, if it if things stay fragmented or if someone says they can fix it all by making things, bringing things all together into to something that's less fragmented, but that may be more autocratic, you know, like which would not necessarily be progress as well. And so because there's a lot of I think there's a lot of dissatisfaction in our society right now, and some of that is because dissatisfaction, if you're told to be dissatisfied and made to feel dissatisfied, that again, that drives attention. And so these types of people who show and this this was discussed in the Wall Street Journal piece, the people who show disregard and contempt for the system have more prevalence and can get more of an audience when people are dissatisfied with that system. So I think that that's an interesting piece of this, that you have the fragmented media and everybody has something to complain about. We've talked about it and, you know, different books. Everybody is a victim all the time now. You know, some people are legitimately victims and some people are make themselves victims, you know, like for for various reasons. And people like to feel like the victim and people when you're when you feel like you're a victim, then you get into this ends justify the means thing. And so you like people that talk extreme. So we're in this that's that's.
64
00:39:49.770 --> 00:39:53.580
A feedback loop. Yeah. We're in a very, very interesting points. Yeah.
65
00:39:53.580 --> 00:40:17.010
Because that I don't know how this plays out. Like again there's going to be something that that something's going to come along and say, okay, this is out of control. We need to make this more in control. I just hope that that's something that can stay, you know, decentralized and democratic and not something that becomes very hierarchal, because a lot of times the solutions when things go this direction or become very hierarchical, go 180.
66
00:40:17.430 --> 00:40:41.530
That's what's going to be harder for us to convince ourselves and the rest of the world that democracy is the way to go in the long run. I'm talking like over the next 50 or 100 years if this negativity continues. But you know what? I know you want to jump, but before then, I've been holding this in because I've thought of one guy who still wants to be anonymous. Who's that? The guy named Q. Right. Isn't that the guy's name?
67
00:40:41.530 --> 00:40:43.410
Q. The algorithm. The du.
68
00:40:43.450 --> 00:40:44.870
Einen. Isn't that anonymous?
69
00:40:44.990 --> 00:40:47.980
Yes. Yeah. No. The intelligence service name Q.
70
00:40:48.400 --> 00:41:02.820
But actually, look how powerful he is. He's anonymous. We don't know who he is. And then everyone else, the idiots who let us know who they are, they seem to all lose their power over time because no one wants to associate with them. So that guy is actually smart. Yeah. Got to go find this guy. Yeah. There you go.
71
00:41:02.830 --> 00:41:45.250
There you go. And just to circle it back to finish it up the the piece on trust and which was, like I said, you've mentioned a couple of times it was raised in the article was just that to get society to move to get millions of people to get on the same page, you do have to be a leader, has to be able to engender trust. And if you're always the one who's, you know, trying to thumb their nose at at norms, at convention, at social behavior, then you're not the type of person generally that can engender a wide range of trust. And so that does put a cap on the kind of change from a getting things moving in a positive direction or a direction that we would consider positive with the norms in our society more difficult, like getting people in the same direction is like at gunpoint when you're when you're doing it. Like, you know, it's interesting.
72
00:41:45.250 --> 00:41:53.440
If a leader could maintain the public and their kind of underlings trust, you know, they could probably actually pull off a coup.
73
00:41:53.590 --> 00:42:00.010
No, I mean, that's now you're talking scary, man. So but I think we can jump from in the human element.
74
00:42:00.040 --> 00:42:01.750
Trust is important. Well, that's.
75
00:42:01.750 --> 00:43:05.200
That's why those things are not those aren't things that have never happened. Those things happen. That's what I'm saying. So the next topic we wanted to discuss was like, there's media reports all over the place in the last couple of weeks talking about the the nuclear fusion breakthrough. And just briefly, what we have now, what we know how to do now is fission, which is nuclear fission is splitting the atoms, you know, like and that's you create radioactive waste, you create power, but you create radioactive waste. And, you know, you have nowhere to put that stuff. And some of that stuff will stay radioactive for hundreds of years, thousands of years. And there's just a natural ceiling because we don't have anywhere to put that stuff. And so that that's there, that creates power. That's our nuclear power as we know it. There is a what would be objectively a better way to do it. And it's actually the way that like the sun operates and, well, all the stars, they operate with nuclear fusion. And what that is, is combining atoms, smashing atoms together. And you know, they, they fuze together. And the most basic example is, is you have hydrogen atoms that will fuze together to make helium atoms.
76
00:43:05.380 --> 00:43:56.280
The sun does that and amongst other, you know, other things as it ages. But this is relatively clean and it's something that could power if you could. I mean, obviously the sun is an amazing source of power. And so if you can harness that type of technology, you could do a lot from a electrical standpoint, a power standpoint. And so for the first time, there has been, you know, from human activity, they were able to do a fusion reaction that produced more power than what they needed to actually make the reaction happen. Because obviously, if you can, you can make a fusion reaction. But if you use more power than you create, then it's a net negative. So they create a net positive. So Tunde. Thoughts on this man? Are we on our way to Star Wars man or excuse me, Star Trek? Are we on Star Wars two? Are we on our way to science fiction or is this maybe, you know, are we is this overhyped or properly hyped? What's your thought?
77
00:43:56.670 --> 00:44:41.340
I think my dog has a chip in his sown in him somewhere the size of a grain of rice that has GPS in it. So we're already there. So. So if I can track my dog through GPS, we're there. But no, this is very interesting. And I think just to to to add on to what you said and clear it up a bit is for the audience, because it's a little bit confusing, right, when you say that the amount of energy that they put into this, there was more energy that was put out and that's the energy that can be used. You know, just to finish the comment, that's the energy that can be used for society, right? So if the fact that there's more output than input once they did this and that's the.
78
00:44:41.340 --> 00:44:46.570
Breakthrough, basically. Yeah. Because when they've done this in the past, they've used more energy than they created. Yeah.
79
00:44:46.570 --> 00:45:10.120
Yeah. And so, you know, I think it's great. I think it's a great, you know, just discovery now does I think that's where again the media I get the media is the media and so in this time let's let's let's just clean up from the first part of the show. This is now positive technology that's happy and not something that's negative and going to get the world, you know, all they.
80
00:45:10.150 --> 00:45:14.770
Deem this to be something that would drive eyeballs, that was that was positive, that was.
81
00:45:14.770 --> 00:46:15.550
Positive. So that's a good thing Now, But in typical media fashion or, you know, kind of the way they tell stories, right? It's all the headline and the 32nd elevator pitch, but without the meat and potatoes. So that's what we're going to give here. And so I think that. The media obviously is discussing it. The risk that they run is to have a lot of people think that this whole idea of clean energy and all that is now over. That everybody's good because they figured out how to get a bunch of lasers to heat something up to 100 million degrees and they get more output than they put into it. So I think we've probably got decades, if not a century like we might not see this in our lifetime, me and you of fusion being harnessed to be able to power the lights in our homes or our cars or our airplanes, you know, spaceships. Yeah. And so but the breakthrough is great. Yeah. Like and. Yeah, go ahead.
82
00:46:15.560 --> 00:47:26.160
What I would add like, I would come at it from a similar perspective as that because to me, like when I saw the headlines, I'm like, Oh wow, this is amazing. And then I go read it and it's like, All right, well, yeah, you guys are still a long way off on this. It's like my, my thought on it is like, it's better that they did this than to have not done this. Like, hey, that is a step forward. But I am concerned that they presented this like, hey, yeah, we're, you know, we're five years out. We're ten years out to when we can make this thing. We just we don't need to burn oil anymore. We don't need to burn coal anymore. We're just going to be able to replicate the sun. And I'll have this in my garage and it's all good. So I think it's fascinating, though, that like, this is the you know, this is the ultimate if you're talking about power, this is the holy grail, so to speak, because the universe has no problem generating mass, mass mass amounts of energy for really, really, really long periods of time. And guess what? Hydrogen is the most abundant element around. So like, there's plenty of that, you know? And so the idea that you can take hydrogen or one of the isotopes deuterium or something like that and create energy from that is I mean, like that's, that's that's.
83
00:47:26.430 --> 00:47:37.920
Actually let me let me jump on that because that's great. I mean, so because you described fission as splitting of the atom and that's how most people understand nuclear weapons, Nuclear power, nuclear weapons.
84
00:47:37.920 --> 00:47:40.010
Yeah, that's the nuclear stuff we understand so far.
85
00:47:40.020 --> 00:48:15.390
Yeah, Well, but, you know, those are the bombs we dropped on Japan. Now we've already done fusion. That's a hydrogen bomb. The difference is that when you can't control the energy, that's exactly what happens when you fuze two atoms together. You. You blow everything up. You create a bomb that's that big that you blow up a whole city. So the difference is, and this is what's going to take a long time for the engineering community to work on, which is, yeah, you can create this, this, this fusion. How do you harness it and control that energy in a way that can then be used by society?
86
00:48:15.390 --> 00:48:25.440
And because you're talking, let's say 100 million degrees, like, yeah, this is we got are you going to put it in a, you know, magnets and vacuum and all that? Like that's not something you can just walk around with in your pocket. Yeah.
87
00:48:25.860 --> 00:49:54.790
No, exactly. And that's where, that's where the engineering comes in. And I saw a great interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, the well-known scientist and astrophysicist and whatever other ist he is. And he was actually on Fox Business News. They were interviewing him and it was a great interview because he went into this explanation because one of the the the woman interviewing asked, well, how long like is this something that society could could kind of like grasp quickly once the engineering community gets a hold of how to harness it? And he gave a great example, I thought, which was the horse to the automobile. And he said, look, for literally tens of thousands of years, we know that human beings were using horses as their main mode of transportation. And then he says, Now we discovered that oil and gasoline can, you know, be better sources of energy. Like you could create a fire or a bomb, right, Or something like that, a cannon ball, you know, the explosion. But it wasn't until they were able to harness that through an engine block because remember, you got all these pistons and stuff creating constant explosions in an engine. So it takes like you're saying, it takes a certain amount of steel and a real engine block to protect, you know, like a casing. So all that energy and commotion can happen inside the engine and then be pushed out into an axle to turn and then turn wheels. And now you have an automobile. Right. And he made a.
88
00:49:54.910 --> 00:50:03.800
Point he goes after remember that? That came after the the steam engine, you know, like which they they were able to do that first and they they understood that and then you get to the and that's.
89
00:50:04.030 --> 00:51:26.680
That was his point is saying that so even though we had been using horses for thousands of years and historically speaking a relatively short period of time of just a few decades. Right. Let's say from 1903 when the first automobiles made, let's say by 1953, most cities in this country were equipped to handle automobiles, meaning the roads and the bridges and all that kind of stuff. So he said within a very short period of time, society totally changed. It went from horses to automobiles because the. Technology. The engineering was done in order to mass produce these things and they were more efficient and people just gravitated. So it was a good example of, yes, I'm sure at some point that's what I said. We might not live to see this, but at some point there will be the engineering. Hopefully if we don't destroy ourselves before then, that that would allow for fusion to take place in a in a measured area where, you know, where this could happen. And then maybe society does pivot quickly because it's just more efficient. Yeah, but I tend to think that there's going to be industry that wants to own it. Remember Nikola Tesla, his whole thing was that he wanted to give away electricity for free. Yeah, Thomas Edison didn't. And Thomas Edison then caught the eye of a guy named John Pierpont Morgan, who was a big financier who backed him and not Tesla because he want to make some money. So, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if we see similar.
90
00:51:26.780 --> 00:51:30.190
That's just where everybody didn't catch that. That's Jp morgan, right? Yeah.
91
00:51:30.310 --> 00:51:38.560
So it's just that I joke and say, yeah, the altruistic idealistic people that try and carry this usually lose. And somebody from saying.
92
00:51:38.560 --> 00:51:41.830
That if this does happen, I'm still going to be paying FPL, you know.
93
00:51:42.230 --> 00:51:49.540
Want to buy the stock of the company that gets into harnessing fusion energy. I think we'll want to do that. It'll be like buying Standard Oil. Back in the day.
94
00:51:50.360 --> 00:51:52.120
The financial advisor comes out.
95
00:51:53.410 --> 00:52:02.440
And a hundred years later, when you have Texaco, Exxon, Chevron, you're sitting pretty as a shareholder. Yeah, but no, no. Very interesting. Yeah, yeah, it's very interesting.
96
00:52:02.440 --> 00:53:35.920
I mean, and really the I think one of the bigger things when you have an announcement like this and I think this is part of the design where they kind of do overhype it is to increase interest in things like this. Like there is there's so much we're talking about eyeballs earlier. We have so much to distract us all the time. Like who's who's going in, you know, who's in school right now trying to to become the next scientist that's going to do this or to do that and so forth. And so these having these types of discoveries, having them hit the news cycle, you these can be inspirational. You know, like to the person who is, you know, just wasting time on TikTok and it's like, oh, wow, this is amazing. And then they may read more about it and start getting into it and stuff like that. So keeping reminding our society from time to time that we can do incredible things. We can do things that haven't been done yet, I think can draw the kind of talent that we need into the scientific community to do these to keep this stuff going. You know, like you see the graying of certain industries and, you know, that's a knowing, a known phenomenon right now where, you know, certain industries, they're not getting a lot of young people in. So, hey, we need more future scientists that can build on this. So I'm in a sense, like I said, I think they definitely overhyped it in terms of how quickly this will impact our lives. But there's a design to that that I could get behind and saying, just like, yeah, let's let's get people wondering. Let's get people, you know, enthralled with the idea of something like this. And maybe we get a couple more scientists in 20 years out of it. Yeah. So but I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call it Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review us, tell us what you think. Share it with a friend till next time. I'm James Keys.
97
00:53:35.920 --> 00:53:36.970
I'm Tunde Ogunlana.
98
00:53:37.360 --> 00:53:38.470
All right, we'll talk to you next time.
