Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we take a look at Project 2025, as well as the apparent moonwalk that presidential candidate Donald Trump has been doing away from it lately. Well react to the gender controversy involving algerian boxer Iman Halev at the Olympics, and well discuss a recent story on the technological advancements in making it rain on demand. Like the weather.
Hello. Welcome to the call like I see it podcast. I'm James Keyes, and riding shotgun with me today is a man who may have or may not have been involved in efforts to make it rain when he was younger. Tunde Ogun. Lana Tunde. Are you prepared to show us what can be done with a handful of stacks today?
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah, Mandy.
Not even going to go any further.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: All right, all right, all right. Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you hit subscribe or, like, on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out.
Recording this on August 4, 2024, and till day. We've seen a lot of discussion over the past few weeks about Project 2025, which is an initiative by the Heritage foundation, which purports to lay out the plan for what the next republican president should do with his power, his or her power. The plan is embodied in a 922 page document, and document is publicly available, and it appears to focus on a couple of main, like, areas, you know, like the concentration of power in the president, you know, in the presidency, you know, for the whole executive branch, also abolishing government agencies and, or making the, the actors in those agencies more partisan and lessen kind of rule based. And just, you know, it's a position, it's a job. And also trying to make more fundamentalist christian beliefs, trying to base more laws and so forth on the sensibilities of fundamentalist Christian.
And it's generally a pretty ambitious plan. And, you know, like, to remake the government. And, you know, like the critics of it say that this is a plan to try to take the United States closer to a dictatorship and curtail liberties and all of other things that, from a constitutional standpoint would be unacceptable or bad. And some of this controversy has popped up, and we've even seen Donald Trump attempt to distance himself publicly, at least, from project 2025. So, tunde, to get us started here, what stands out to you in the Heritage Foundation's project 2025 and the plans that it's laying out for? What it's saying is we a second Donald Trump, presidential terminal?
[00:02:47] Speaker B: No, it's good. Good topic and good questions. I mean, what stands out to me? We'll be discussing through this conversation. So I'm not going to rattle off a list this second, but give me the number one.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: Give me.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: What's the number one? I mean, there's not a number one. There's actually several, like you said. No, that's what I mean. This is going to be a discussion on things. So, I mean, look, there's the changes to the makeup of federal employees that they will no longer be classified as silver civil servants who got there based on their merit, maybe over successive administrations through different parties where they get stay.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Over successive administration because they're good.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Yeah. They'll be officially labeled, you know, political appointees. So, so, you know, that's one example. You, like you mentioned, alluded to certain of the desires to bring religion more into the function.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Let's stop on the first one that you mentioned, though, real quick because I think that's interesting because, like, the way I see that is like, okay, like a political appointee would be like the press secretary of the White House. And you understand that's a person getting up there and saying, hey, you know, like, I, you know, this, this is what our story is coming from the White House, from a, and that's gonna have a partisan lens. And, you know, like, we understand that we're like, the, the type of employees. So that's something that wouldn't change. But what we're talking about would be something like, you know, the medical directors or, you know, people that work in, you know, National Weather Service or, you know, things like things that are, people that are supposed to be there because of expertise in a field. And this will go beyond that. This will be, go, go into, you know, Department of Education or Department of Justice, you know, things like that. But where you take areas where there's supposed to be a certain expertise of the worker who's there, and they work on behalf of the federal government at large, writ at large and the interests of the government. And you're going to replace those with people who are there to serve the interests of the, the current president. And, you know, they're their political party, their political apparatus and so forth. So, and in that context, competency may not even be an initial bless that. Competency may not even be the number one thing you're looking for. You kind of, some people might be looking for loyalty over competency in that situation. So, I mean, I think that's definitely a good place to start. You know, and looking at what they're talking about, let's make, let's make things less competent as far as the people.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: To draw that line out. And I think this is where it's difficult for people, because, number one, in the United States, we, no one alive at least, has ever lived under that kind of system. I mean, to extrapolate further, if you really get into this thing, it's a manifesto for a third World Banana republic. I mean, that's basically what people want to, some people, I guess, want to turn the United States into. And I mean that dead serious, you know, what has made, I will say, United States and other western nations similar, even if they have different governing apparatuses, like parliamentary versus our democratic republic system type of thing, like Canada, Australia, UK, France, Italy. What really separates those countries from the third world banana republics is these separation number one of certain things, like religion and other things that create passions and people from the actual running of the government. So the idea of a secular government where you have laws that aren't based on, let's say, biblical law, and we.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: See this really some, one person's interpretation or one group's interpretation of biblical law.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: A bunch of different. Well, but that's the kind of thing that inflames the passions and hash.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: 39 let me just keep, yeah. For the purpose of this conversation, just to give an example, you would see countries in the Middle east, like Iran or Saudi Arabia, that do that with the muslim faith. Right. That they govern those countries from the religious law, which then creates other dynamics in the society, like how women are treated, how other religious groups, or like you said, people that just practice the same religion but a little bit different. So, like Shia and Sunni Muslims, we know, have an, it have issues.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: That's what I'm talking about. They then fight all the time.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Religion should be the, the basis of the law and so forth.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And they can't coexist within the same border. So what happens is the society ends up focusing on those issues instead of issues like technology and developing infrastructure and all that kind of stuff.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: So that's why cultural issues, you know, like they end up fighting culture wars instead of creating a prosperous nation.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Correct.
And that's a great point, because, I mean, think about it. If we look at even this election now in 2024, right now in August of this year, one candidate is talking about their vision for the future. And look, that's a vision many Americans may not agree with, but it's what, it's ideas about policy and all that the other candidate is talking about, you know, the racial makeup of the opponent, opposing candidate, meaning it's all culture war stuff, right? And like you alluded to in the beginning of this, that the next topic we'll talk about is about an olympic boxer. That's a culture war issue that has somehow made it into american political conversations. So what happens is that, yes, I said it as kind of half in jest, but it's unfortunately true that this reads as the manifesto for people who want to take the United States and turn it into a similar type of environment that we see maybe in certain middle eastern countries today. And a lot of Americans maybe don't see that long arc of a tie in. But once you start dismantling certain norms and laws, eventually that we've had and held dear in the United States, like the separation of powers, for example, or like we talk about now, making every or large swaths of the federal employee base political appointees. That's a recipe.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: That's the one. I wish we would have stayed on that one, because what that reminds me of, really, you say, like, the third war, banana Republic. Like, that's kind of like the system in Venezuela right now where they just had an election, and the reports from the people who counted the votes are like, that one side won, like, 70% of the votes. But the people who were in charge of the elections, those civil servants in charge of the elections are partisans. They are partisans in favor of the guy that's in charge now that got, like, 30%, reportedly got like 30% of the vote. And without releasing the results or anything, like detailed results and stuff, they just said, yeah, we won, you know, 51%.
And they just expect everybody to go about their business, and it's like, well, they got 30 something. There's purportedly 30 some percent of the vote. And their answer is, okay, well, yeah, we counted everything. You don't get to see it, but just know we got 51%. And so that's the nature of a partisan doing a job versus a civil servant doing a job. And, you know, it really, like, when I read the summaries and parts of the. I haven't read the whole thing, but when I read parts of it and summaries of it, what stands out to me is really a disdain for the american system. And you've asked the question many a times like, okay, is this America idea, or is America a certain group of people? And this seems to really make that clear. You know, like, to them, it's not about the ideals of the american system, separation of powers, separation of church and state, you know, freedom of religion. Everybody gets to practice their own religion, and so forth. It's not about those things. What it's about is a certain group of people who get to do what they want to do in the country, you know, and that's what project 2025 is ultimately about. And they're like, yeah, the things that are stopping this certain group of people from just doing whatever they want are all of these things that are in the constitution that are creating all these inconveniences, like, oh, Mandy, you know, we got, you know, the Department of Justice and, but the president can't control them and just make him allow him to lock up people he wants to lock up. That's a problem for us because we want to be able to, in order to, to implement our goal, we need to be able to lock people up who don't agree with us, you know, even if they haven't committed a crime yet. And so all of these things that project, that are attacked in the project 2025 approach to making things more partisan or, you know, getting political appointees in certain key positions or getting rid of certain agencies and so forth, it's really about saying, okay, we want to take apart the american ideals that would prevent us from shaping America in the way we want, whether the people are on board with that or not, you know? And so that, to me, is just like, man, they really don't like the fact that you have a three, you know, three branches of government that are, that have checks and balance on one another. Like, and this is stuff that's not, like, I'm not speculating here. Like, there's this unitary executive theory where the unitary executive gets to do whatever he wants to do and is above the law and gets to operate the Justice Department and do all these other things. And it's like, wow. So that stuff in the constitution about how the president is subject is under the law and it can be checked by the legislative branch or by the judicial branch, you guys just don't like that stuff. And so you want to rewrite things or redo things to get rid of it. So to me, that's really, it's the hostility towards the system. You know, it's unfortunate in one sense that Americans don't learn to take pride in these funk, these features in our system, these things that allow us to ideally have a government that's focused on progress and focused on big picture things so that, you know, we can, as a society move forward at a rapid pace. And we have been able to do that because I don't see a lot of pride in the american system when people publish things saying, hey, let's take apartheid, these part, this part of the american system. Let's take, let's take down the separation between church and state. And it really says to me that a lot of Americans just don't. Either they don't know they have it or they just don't have it because they never learn to appreciate it. A, an appreciation and a pride in these things that really do make America exceptional. It makes us unlike other countries, you know? And so, yeah, it's, it's, it's unfortunate, but the idea that there's been some pushback against this and people have been raising the alarm is, is encouraging to me because, yeah, this is, if you like the ideals of America, then this thing is a declaration of war on many of those things.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and it is. And if you think about it, like you said, I mean, the press could be doing a better job of actually really alerting Americans to this. But this is the importance of a free press. Right. The idea that the press is not stopped. We're not stifled from being able to see this information publicly and talk about.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: It and stuff like that.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Now, the thing about this, and this is really interesting about this whole, the federal, we were just staying on this thing about the federal employees because one of the things, and this is the thing, I mean, you're right.
I did read, I didn't read the 922 pages front to back, but I spent a lot of time over several days reviewing it and reading chunks of it. And, yeah, they're very specific on what they want. And it is really a manifesto of changing the United States government as a literal apparatus, like how it works.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: And so when you think about some of the people. Sorry, just real quick. It's written by people who have served in administrations in large. They know this from the inside. Okay. Here's when I wanted to, you know, do x, y and z, you know, like all these civil servants who weren't partisan or all did this, this separation of powers thing, stopped me from doing it. So here's how we can get around that. And I can, if I wanted to make a decree based on a religious text, here's what I need to do in advance in order to be able to do that.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And, well, here's the thing, is that, because I think a couple things, and my brain's all over the place with this one, is the heritage foundations has been, has been the mouthpiece for those, I guess, behind the scenes in power who'd like to see this happen. Since about 1980 and so we've seen through the last 40 some years these attempts at trying to get this in the desk of said president. Right. And some of these things land well, and some don't. And you're right. At this point, the nature of the change in the Republican Party means it's been taken over now by people who do believe this stuff. And so what I'm saying is there's a lot of contradiction with the way that the Constitution works. Like, for example, one of the ways they're gonna do this thing with the federal employees is by having a screener questionnaire. So basically, they're gonna ask people to tell them, the government is gonna ask people to tell them about their loyalties and all that. Well, that's probably gonna become a violation of the First Amendment.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Correct?
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Because the government is not allowed to tell you how to think. And if you like a politician other than the one that's in office, the government is not allowed to cause you harm from that. And I guess firing you would be considered causing you harm. So there's a lot in this, in this, in this manifesto that does attack the system that we have in place right now, and it's very evident. And so, and another one would be.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: Just compelling people to have to give all that information, you know, like that.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Like, freedom of speech means also that you could decline. You know, you say, hey, you know, like, I'm, I'm not going to share that. I, my personal beliefs. Like, it's not, it's one thing if you're out there posting on social media, but if you have it to yourself and say, no, I'm going to make you tell me this. You know, like, that's, that goes beyond whether it violates the Constitution out route. It goes beyond the principles that America has espoused for a couple of centuries at this point.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's when I was preparing for this conversation, James, I really started thinking like, man, the projection is amazing because this is extremely orwellian. I mean, this is like 1984. You're going to make people have to fill out loyalty questionnaires and stuff for the party. This is like the Nazis or Mussolini. Yeah, like, and remember, that's why this.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Is all.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: It'S very easy to see if you look at it at least from that lens, because similar to the Nazis in Germany and other times, this has come up in large societies.
They need, you know, the ability to get the population in a place where they would accept this because they can't bring this stuff to us as Americans through the popular vote. You know, that's why Donald Trump, you know, and I know we'll get into this about him distancing himself from this now when there's so much evidence that he supported it in recent years, because this is the stuff that most people don't like. Most people do like the freedoms in America, right?
[00:17:12] Speaker A: They at least don't want to hear it. You know, like, well, like. And whether they like it or not, they at least don't want to hear it. They don't want to think of themselves as going down this path. If, you know, if you take them incrementally, they can end up there. But people don't like to be like, oh, yeah, yeah, let's, let's shut up, everybody. That I don't agree with, by and large, I mean, most people.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: But think about what we just talked about, most Americans, I think that the whole thing about a loyalty test, once you actually follow it through just with a few steps logically, like we just did in this conversation, and say, okay, well, hold on, if I'm not posted on social media and somebody comes, ask me, did I vote for this president, or do I believe the 2020 election was stolen? And I say no and I get fired. That is currently, that's against the law. The Constitution and the First Amendment don't allow the government to fire employees based on how they view politics. I think a lot of Americans, if they found out that that's what these people want to do and that they would have the power to do it, I guess because the president now has full immunity, they may not be comfortable with that. So in order to get enough Americans distracted, that's why we got to hear about things like the gas stoves and, like, transgender people and, like, all these cultural. And why we got to hear about Kamala Harris being indian or black, because none of that stuff, that's not policy stuff, that's to get people distracted. So that, I guess the heritage foundation as a version of a deep state, you know, people who are trying to tinker with the government apparatus can be left alone to do it. So when, you know, if somebody wins an election and gets in, this is all just going to happen. No one's going to say, hey, what do you think I should do at that point? They're just going to implement it.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, and the thing is, is that it's distraction, but it's also fear. I mean, and that's always, I mean, if you look at any time in societies where people go from open societies, law based societies, to, you know, authoritarian style governments. It's generally because the population was made afraid of something. And so a lot of that is the same as, well, it's the making people trying to otherize people or trying to say, hey, they're coming for, I guess people really have a lot of affection for their gas stove. And so they're coming for your gas stove is gonna make them really afraid. And so they'll say, hey, yes, protect me from the person coming to take my oven or stove or whatever. And, you know, but, or anything. I mean, immigrants is obviously the, one of the bigger fear based motivational tactics. And, you know, one thing I'll point out, but I do wanna get to the second part of this, is that the loyalty test, you know, like that is, there's no secret behind that. And what that is basically is an attempt to ensure that the people who work in an administration or in the government are loyal not to the constitution, but to the party or the person, whoever is at the top at that time. Which, again, that's something that's very anti american system. Like, the whole point of the american system would be that you trust the Constitution and the rule of law so much that even if you don't win the election, well, they'll be still be, you know, we'll still be here four more years or two more years or six more years, and so we'll go for the next one. And so a lot of this stuff kind of looks like they don't trust the Constitution. They don't trust the american system. Cause they're like, hey, we gotta, you know, we gotta get in and we gotta put all the people that are loyal to me, not loyal to the constitution in. And that's, I mean, again, that's the departure from the rule of law and so forth. And that's outwardly where it seems like they're trying to go. Obviously, we touched on how this isn't something that would, well, let's keep, let's keep moving, though. But the thing that, like we had mentioned before was just kind of how this, if you go out and out say it like, you might be able to back people into something like this if you make them afraid enough and things like that. And some people, honestly are just more stimulated by fearful messages. They're there. You can get them afraid really easily, and then they're willing to do anything really quickly because they're afraid and, you know, fearful, you know, they're fearful people out there. But I, you know, like, but when everybody's kind of just, you know, standing, you know, and not in that state of perpetual fear. This type of stuff has shown to be not that popular amongst Americans. And so, you know, Donald Trump, to his credit with, you know, he has, he's typically shown pretty solid political instincts in terms of the kinds of things that will help him or hurt him in the public at large.
He's been trying to distance himself from this as this has gotten more coverage over the, you know, maybe like over the course of the month of July, he's tried to pull back and say, oh, I'm not a part of that, or, I don't know. He said he didn't hurt, he hadn't heard of it or didn't know the people. And, you know, saying, throwing out a lot of things as far as just basically saying that he's not a part of this. He doesn't want, he doesn't want to talk about it or anything like that. What do you make of that? You know, especially considering that, you know, like a lot of people who were in this have been talking about his second administration is when they want to do it and are people that were in his first administration and, you know, again, are almost, in a sense, reacting to some of the, what they felt were handcuffs, you know, which we would call the constitution and things like american ideals, but they were preventing them from doing the things they wanted to do.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I, you know, look, like you said, donald Trump is what he is. The amount of times he's denied things that he before was okay with, I mean, we can't even count them on hands and toes and whatever. Right.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: And so this isn't really his thing.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: And I mean, and I don't think he would deny that. Like he says in the moment. Well, I mean, it's just like being truthful, being insistent isn't really his thing. Whatever. He'll say something. He'll say what he needs to say in the moment. You know, and some people believe that.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: As a virtue, you know, but, but let's keep going. Yeah. That we don't. Everybody watching this has their opinion made up about, I mean, I'm saying that objectively.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: I'm not even saying that as a.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's why we don't. Yeah, but I'm gonna make a read, a quote that he had at a heritage foundation dinner where he spoke. That's my point. Just saying he doesn't know who people are. And when people like Ben Carson and Ken Cuccinelli are writing chapters in this thing, he doesn't know who anyone is. But he quoted saying, we're going to lay the groundwork and detailed plans for exactly what our movement will do. And it's a good point because, again, this is what it supports, what we've been saying on this discussion, that this is a movement. Right. This isn't the normal republican politics versus Democrats. And we want to keep it within this framework of an argument around something called the Constitution and around how we.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: See ideology about the Constitution being like the sandbox and go all play.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. We're willing to play in that sandbox. That's a great point. Correct. There's somebody now outside stand. No, no, I'm just going to pee in the sandbox and we're going to do it out here my way. And, and so, and that's, to me what this project 2025 represents. It is a movement. And it is the thing that I find I'm offended by as someone who appreciates good conservative ideology and its importance in any society, which is, this is not a conservative movement. This is a radical movement. These people are radical. They don't want to conserve anything. They don't want to conserve the constitution. They don't want to conserve the way the United States has behaved internationally. They don't want to conserve the great allies that we've had post world War two, the way we've, we've kind of dominated the world stage, but preserving the status quo.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: That's a really good point. That's a really good point.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Speaker one. So they are radical. It's a radical movement. And I think this is why this maybe helps answer why Donald Trump now has to feels, at least he has to distance himself from it, because, again, this is radical. And as more people and voters get to learn about it, they have the similar reaction that you and I seem to be having. And again, this is why, this is the projection of things like deep state and all that, even George Soros and all that. When I think about the amount of billionaires that support this kind of stuff and the country to go this direction, it's really just, that's why I keep thinking about George Orwell and Ayn Rand, and both of them must be flipping in their graves watching people really close to implementing this in the United States. And it's coming from the crowd. I used to tell us to be scared of this stuff, which is interesting to me.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: Well, it's interesting. I like the point that you made. You know, just that, you know, kind of how it's, it's very radical and, you know, like, and the people that are leading this are radicals. They're not conservatives. And so what it actually, what that leads to the understanding of is that essentially these radicals are putting on the clothing of and attempting to appear as conservatives. So it's very important to them, for them, you know, if you are, if they're a wolf in sheep's clothing, basically, like, they're saying, hey, we're conservative like you people, and we just want to do conservative stuff. And this document is plainly a radical document. And so Trump recognizes the need to put the sheep clothing back on and say, no, no, no. You know, like, that's, that's, he recognizes that this is something that would be seen as radical by anybody who looks at it closely and says and understands that, no, no, no, we are, we're not, we're not out here doing, you know, showing ourselves as wolves. We have to show ourselves as sheep, that we're the conservative ones, that we're fighting to just keep things in the status quo and stop these other cause. Remember, they position themselves and say that the other side is radical. So it's important. So I think he recognizes that need. But the denial is like, it made me chuckle, I mean, honestly, because what it reminded me of, and, like, we've lived through this over the past couple of years where, like, you look at the Supreme Court justices that were appointed by Trump and even before going back all the way to Roberts or whatever, going back to Bush and everything, just that, you know, when asked about Roe, it was always a Roe v. Wade. They were like, oh, well, that's settled law, yada, yada, yada. Like, they said what they needed to say at the time, or our president. Should presidents be above the law? No. They say, no, no. They testify, no, no, president shouldn't be above the law. But once they got the critical mass in the court, you know, like, they, all of those things they testified to, you know, when they were being vetted for the job out the window, you know, so I, this, to me, seems a lot like that. Like, he recognizes that in order to try to get where he wants to go, he can't, as a wolf in sheep's clothing, he has to continue to wear the sheep's clothing and say, look, no, no. Like, I don't know who those people are. Like, yeah. And so it's, it's just, it's solid political instinct. You know, it's just to say that, yeah, if I reveal myself as a radical to people who I've been courting that are actually more, that lean, more conservative, then I may lose the support of them, or I may lose at least the undying devotion, at least of some of them that I have. And the interesting thing about the Trump coalition that he's put together is they can't take any leakage. Like, he needs people to be fully engaged and fully on board to win elections. This is why, like, when you go 2020 or things like that, the, the party, when, since the party's hitched his wagon to Trump, they don't perform as well when he's not on the ballot. And it's because he's able to keep that engine, that coalition that they've had operating close to 100% participation. If they start dropping down, they don't have the, the margin of error in their coalition because their coalition is, is, is very passionate, but it's relatively small. And so they need everybody there, and then they need to discourage people in the other coalition, you know? Cause they can't have that coalition operating at near 100% because then they'll lose. They need that one down. And, you know, and which is the comparison between 2016 and 2020. So, I mean, I think, I think the instincts are correct for him to do this. I don't believe him. I mean, I think that it's pretty clear what's going on. But, you know, it's something that, you know, like when he says that, oh, yeah, I don't know who these people are, and then on the other side, he says, hey, hey, we're getting it set up so that you don't have to vote anymore.
I mean, those two, those two can't be harmonized together.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: Yeah, but I think that's, that's, but that's like, to tell, right? Like, yeah. When we talk about the civil service now being all political appointees, the thing about, like, the 20, 30,000 federal employees no longer being just secular employees, in a sense that can work under different administrations.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: They will be expertise, space. Like, they're there because they're good at something, not because they're with the passions of the day, so to speak, of whatever.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: Correct. So the goal for Project 2025 is for the Trump administration to replace these people with nothing but loyalists. And this is how we get from America. Like I said about a banana republic or the system that we seem to have liked all these years to something more akin to, like, an eastern european style autocracy, like a Russia or Hungary, where, yeah, there's some political parties and all that to make it look like some people got some options. But when everybody in the government is beholden and is a political appointee of the president, like Putin, then they make sure that they come up the works so that the election only goes one way every time.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: So that's way like, we literally just saw this in Venezuela.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: Yeah, but that's why when Trump's out there last week saying, if you just vote this one last time, you're not going to have to vote again. I mean, there's something honest about what he's saying in terms of the goals of the project and the people he's bringing into his administration that he's already put out there, because that's basically what he's saying is that's the point. Well, if you let me in this time, we're going to fix it, which is what he said, too, so that you don't have to vote again, which would be the way that they want to, which is then you don't have to get up and leave your house and vote on voting in election day, because it's already going to go that way anyway. Just like with Putin and Russia. Nobody watching this believes that Vladimir Putin is winning genuinely honest elections. He might be winning the elections, but they're not honest.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: We got to jump. But there's one, there's one word I got to look at or just talk about, because you meant, you emphasized it there. And he said, yeah, we're going to fix it. And so the question is, does he mean we're going to fix it, like repair it or we're going to rig it? Mister always talking about rig elections, right? Are they going to rig it so that you don't have to vote anymore? And, I mean, obviously that's one of those things where people are going to project the meaning onto it. But I found that wording to be, like you said, a moment of kind of clarity, like, you're going to fix it so people don't have to vote anymore? Huh? That sounds. That sounds to me very much like rigging.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: You know, what is the most important one? I know you want to jump, but the fact that they want to ban Pornhood, that's. That's the one we gotta leave with that, man.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: What stood out?
[00:31:10] Speaker B: I can't believe that is even in writing. I can't believe Donald Trump would put his name behind something like this after he's banged a lot of porn stars and he's bragged about it.
And as a consumer of that product, I'm very upset.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: You didn't leave with it, Mandy.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: You wouldn't have let me lead with it. That's why audience had to sneak this one in on the back, you know? Cause now he can't stop the show we already recorded.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You snuck it in at the end, man. That was, that was your project 2025 on the show right there.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: So I had to get it out because we need as many people to know how bad this thing is. That's right.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: Band together.
But no, but we appreciate everybody for joining us on this part, part one of the show. Make sure to join us on part two and part three as well, and we'll talk to you soon.
All right, our second topic to get today, we want to get into the controversy that's when coming out of the Olympics involving the algerian boxer Iman Khalif. And this is a competing, she's a woman boxer competing in the women's division, but she has higher testosterone than normal, apparently, naturally has higher testosterone than normal. And in fact, some have claimed that she actually has xy chromosomes, but her whole life she has been and, you know, always competed as a woman and was identified as a woman at birth and so forth. So it's really an interesting case. It's it's not necessarily when we have this conversation as part of the, the culture wars in the US, it's about people transitioning from one, you know, being one gender and then deciding to transition to another that may or may not align with genitals or, you know, may or may not align with chromosomes and so forth. But this is a situation where there's actually a level of ambiguity from a scientific standpoint. And so some people are upset this, she just qualified for meddling at this point. And by the time you hear this, you know, just maybe further made me know, like, whether she got gold or anything like that. But Tunde, you know, what stands out to you in this controversy and, you know, whether it be in the direction of actual sport or in the direction of, you know, like the, the culture war pieces of it.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, you know, to me, unfortunately, it's the culture war part that stands out. And, you know, I'm just kind of disappointed that, again, this becomes something that for some reason our political class and, you know, the news media and everyone else is talking about when it doesn't really matter for us in the United States, just like the opening ceremony at the Olympics, I don't know why that became the responsibility of, like, some people wanted the american president to say something about it and all that. Like, first of all, who cares? Second of all, meaning, you know, that's another country and they're doing stuff right. Second of all, you're right. This specific boxer thing, it shouldn't be huge news, because, again, we've had in the last hundred years or so of women competing at high level international sports activities, including the Olympics, there's been questions of sometimes coming up about, as someone a little bit more masculine, then. Then we expect women to appear and things like that. And to your point, this person has, this lady has actual xy chromosomes, so on and so forth. I also learned in this period of just reading about this stuff that transgender is illegal in Algeria. Like, they don't allow any of that stuff. So what happens is this appears to be a woman who has male characteristics and elevated testosterone, which probably is a condition that happens in one of every however many humans. There's probably men who have more estrogen. And maybe you could find a guy with some xx chromosomes who was born with a penis and born a man, and maybe it happens in one in every 10 million humans. And this boxer happens to be just one of the humans that happened to. And so that's why it's just the fact that it's become such a huge, like, fox News and all these places are spending so much time on it just tells me, like, it's just more to distract the public and try and keep eyeballs than actually a serious conversation, either about a condition that this person has, which I guess is a serious conversation, or let's not talk about it at all, because this doesn't appear to be anything transgender related.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: No, I mean, I think that you're good. You make a good point, because to me, the more interesting piece is, okay, we'll say, hey, everybody that's so sure about all this stuff, you know, hey, maybe you need to back up a little bit, because this does definitely. This makes the. The transgender conversation more complicated as well, because, like you just pointed out, when we have such a large sample size of humans that conditions that may be considered rare may not even come up in a group of 100,000. But when you got a community of 8 billion or 7 billion, you know, seven plus billion, almost 8 billion, then these things will come up and they won't be very relatively rare. Like, I think in this instance in women's sports, it will actually be biased towards us seeing stuff like this. Like, again, someone who's born and in the hospital, they're like, oh, that's a woman. And, you know, they're not checking cheek swabbing and checking chromosomes in the hospital. They take a look, you know, like they've been doing, you know, for however long humans have been and say, okay, that's a man as a woman. And so, and then she lived her whole life as a woman, you know, competed. It's not like her first boxing match. She competed as a woman. She's lost to women. You know, she's not, like, undefeated or anything like that. And then it's like, oh, we do a cheek swab or we do a test of your blood, and it's like, you got more testosterone. Oh, you got xy chromosomes. And so, and like you said, this could be, there could be this, you know, with men. And. But obviously with men, if it's happening with men and they may have two xx chromosomes, they're not going to be advantaged in sports. So they may not stand out in the way that a woman who may have advantage for having more testosterone in women's sports. So, but to me, it just is like, oh, so this is, all of this is a lot more complicated than people who, you know, a lot of times argue so passionately about this stuff, want to make it, you know, and so what I say all that to say that what we're really missing, and I'm not saying I have the answer, but I can, I definitely see the question that needs to be asked and that serious people need to have the conversation, or at least in their own mind, need to think about, is we don't have an agreed upon standard, apparently, on distinguishing gender because I thought, you know, like, okay, well, X X chromosome, XY chromosome, done deal. But apparently, you know, with a condition like this, that's not necessarily the case. And in fact, people walking around today refute that. Now, is that just the exception and we can still keep the general rule or not? Or is it your sex organs at birth, the ones that are visible? Because then there's these things, whether sex organs are not outside, and then it's like, okay, well, what does that mean then? So is it, are we doing sex organs? Are we doing chromosomes? Or are we doing a person's, you know, subjective identity in their own mind? You know, like, so there's all these different ways, basically that all these different quote unquote tests or distinguishing points, and we don't have one that we agree upon, basically. And, you know, it gets to the point where it's like, well, until we kind of work this out amongst ourselves, then we're just going to constantly have people that are so sure about it for whatever reason and without a way to kind of say, okay, well, objectively, here's what we're doing. Here's what we're going to do as a society.
[00:38:15] Speaker B: Well, I'm smiling because as you were talking, I realized, well, that's why we have Project 2025, because they're going to solve it all for us. You know, soc, this complicated world where all these culture wars, man, just get these guys.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: Just let somebody. Let somebody else do it. Yeah. Let someone else make us all feel.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: That's the answer. Project 2025 will solve it. But, um. No, but here's where it makes this interesting, man, because as you're talking, it's reminding me of conversations we've done about quantum physics and astrophysics.
So I never thought I would tie all these topics together.
And really, it's the ability to observe and because of better scientific observation through computers and all this kind of stuff, right?
[00:39:02] Speaker A: Like we're saying blood test chromosomes.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: 50 years ago, we couldn't tell the Xy chromosome or DNA or testosterone levels at the same way we can now.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: And wouldn't just be rudimentary, that people was just looking at people and be like, oh, yeah, that's not true. Just based on looking at them.
[00:39:17] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I don't mean this to sound, you know, I don't want to disrespect anybody, right, but. But you, someone would have said, okay, that's a. That's a woman, yet she was. Was a woman born with a vagina. Okay. Just a woman that looks like a man or more manly, right. There's maybe taller and more muscular, but there would have been no one. So everyone would say, okay, this is a chick that kind of looks a little bit more masculine. And now with. In 2024, we have the ability to go on this granular level, right. The molecular level and C levels of testosterone, CXY chromosomes or XX and all that. So. And I'll give you a personal example that I learned recently about myself. You know, I learned that I was born a certain way, that my pulmonary and my aortic arteries cross over. And it said to me, it sounded like, holy crap, the cardiologist, like, yeah, don't worry about it, is one in every 500 people are born with this. And then he proceeds to tell me his 99 year old mother has it. And she was fine until 88. One day I had to just put a stent in there. So my point is, is that I just learned that I'm one of 500 people on this earth that's born with a certain way to my arteries go the wrong direction over my heart.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: That's.
[00:40:26] Speaker B: I'm sure that many of us are one of x amount of people that are born with some issue. This one happens to be somebody that's born with the issue that deals with chromosomes and the estrogen versus testosterone mix. And to your point, maybe this. I mean, I'm a little bit simple minded, so I don't want to think this is going to make us rethink gender and all that, but it's. We're clearly learning more that is forcing us to have these conversations. And, yeah, as we do that as a society, it's probably going to be uncomfortable like it's been, which is going to give more, more ammunition to the project 2025 types to come in and tell us, just give us the power, we'll fix it.
[00:41:06] Speaker A: Be very afraid. Give us the power.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: Yeah, because that algerian boxer in Paris is threatening you directly.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: No, I think it's an excellent point, though. The, as our ability to observe improves, we, things don't necessarily always get. Get more clear. Sometimes they get more complicated.
[00:41:23] Speaker B: You know, it's like a James Webb telescope. Yeah.
[00:41:25] Speaker A: Or quantum physics in general. Like we thought we had physics figured out until they start looking at the quantum level and then you got superposition and you got all these other things and it's like, well, none of this stuff fits with the physics we thought we had, you know, and so, you know, entanglement.
But, I mean, again, like, I think where, this is where jokes, I'm gonna.
[00:41:48] Speaker B: Keep them in here. Okay.
[00:41:52] Speaker A: To have serious people that can, can kind of deal with this stuff in the sense that anytime you have a departure from the expected, you have several different ways that people tend to want to deal with it. Some people go to the supernatural or, you know, kind of religious type of thing from a control standpoint. Some people go to a kind of spiritual or religious kind of thing from a compassion standpoint, which a lot of times those are divergent completely. Like, we hear more from the people who want to control than the people who approach, you know, kind of spiritualism and religion from compassion, but they exist as well. And other people are looking at, okay, well, how do we fit this in the constraints of a civil society? You know, and another people are saying, hey, let me tell how do I take it all over? But they're saying that no matter what the stimulus is, but in this instance, I mean, they're going to be different kind of approaches that are thrown out there as far as how we need to either what we need to think about this or how we need to kind of rationalize or deal with this. And there's going to be. What we've seen a lot is this is an attempt to, for some people to conflate with larger social issues. And it's unfortunate, you know, because honestly, this is a chance actually to learn more about our species a little bit and try to come up with ways from, obviously, I'm more biased towards figuring out ways. Okay, well, how can we live and let live yet operate in a civil society, you know, where if this person is, you know, from a competition standpoint, it doesn't seem like if she's competed as a woman the whole time, it doesn't seem like she has some, some crazy inherent advantage. Like, I saw her record was, you know, 39 and nine or something like that. Like, that's not like Mike Tyson. You know, like Mike Tyson is, you know, undefeated or Ali or like, that's like somebody who's pretty good but not the most amazing person ever. So how do we do this in the context of sport?
I don't know. I mean, I think that we need to get to a standard pretty quickly, though. What it's going to be, you know, whether it's going to be levels of testosterone, which in some competition she was barred from competing and in others she's able to compete. So that's not a uniform standard, whether it's going to be the chromosomes and so forth. But I don't think now that we see it, now that we've had a chance to react, I think we should, serious people should get together and try to figure out, okay, well, how do we want to deal with this in the future in a way that's fair and a way that people can predict and be consistent. Because remember, that's the whole point of having rule of law and things like that, is that you want the law to be consistent and predictable. If it's just one person making decrees, then the law changes. You don't know whether you're doing stuff in violation of the law or not. And so what we want to do is create rules, standards, and to say, okay, here's what it is. You know, like, this may not be perfect, but it's fair. And this is what we're going to go by. And the fact that you have this different in different competitions, I think, does the boxer a disservice, does the opponents a disservice because they just don't know from competition to competition what can be expected, what's acceptable and what's not. And so that's what I push for in a situation like this more than anything.
[00:44:38] Speaker B: No, I mean, it's look, as we close out, I just want to say this. You know, in the end, it's sad because you got. You know, I think that the boxer is 23 years old. I mean, and you got this kid that's just trying to box, right? And, yeah, she's not trying to make a. Comes from a small town in Algeria. Right. She's. She's nothing. Trying to be this world famous person for and some sort of spokesperson for whatever everybody else wants to put on her. And so I think that's where it's just, you know, unfortunately, there's people we know here in the american media that want to take advantage of these type of things to stoke more culture wars. And then there's going to be people online who are not happy with themselves and all that, and they. And they gonna go have to beat someone like this up and make their life difficult. And I just think, you know, that's really the sad part, is that this young lady, who's an olympian and representing her country now is being attacked for something that is like me with my heart defect that I share with everyone, is of no issue of her own or no choice of her own. It's just who she is and the rest of the world and society is out there making a bit, you know, pointing fingers at her. So, yeah, that's my point of saying that. This, to me, is not a conversation about transgender. This is conversation, like we said, a young lady that has a condition or born a certain way that because of culture wars, our media and people here in the United States are trying to bring it into a conversation where it doesn't belong. It's not a transgender conversation. And so, you know, well, take it.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: For what it is.
[00:46:07] Speaker B: But that's my two cent.
[00:46:08] Speaker A: I mean, and the transgender conversation that we have in the United States is not one conversation, because there's conversations over transgender and just rights in general. What should you be able to do as an adult, you know, with your own body or whatever? Then there's conversations about minors and transgender and what. How much control does. Should a minor be able to offer over their own body? You know, and that's. You know, we don't let minors do cigarettes or tobacco. You know, we don't. We don't let minors control their bodies 100%. And. But, you know, so there's that question there. Then there's the question of transgender in sports, and how does that. So we should acknowledge the fact that those are different conversations as far as how society should deal with those things. Hopefully, something like this can help inform people's opinions and positions on these things and saying, okay, hey, everything isn't necessarily as simple as you may want to think or that may make you feel comfortable and, you know, just to say, oh, this person is just crazy, or this is this that or society is just like, you know, this stuff isn't so straightforward. And so, you know, in a lot of cases, we, maybe we can have a little more grace. We still got to figure, again, figure out a way to be consistent, figure out a way to be fair, what makes sense in the context of our society and our values. And I don't say values like religious values, I mean values like, you know, age of consent and, you know, things like that and competition and all that kind of stuff. But ultimately, you know, some, some grace, you know, is needed a lot of times because we don't always come in with all the information that we need in order to speak intelligently or form sound positions on things. So continue to learn, continue to evolve. And I think this is something that can help us along that way, even though, as you point out correctly, this isn't a transgender issue.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: So.
[00:47:44] Speaker A: But yeah, I think we can close up the second topic.
[00:47:46] Speaker B: Hope you enjoyed it easy and just do project 2025.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: So, but I hope you enjoyed this topic. You can check out our first topic if you haven't already. And you can also check out coming up shortly, our topic, three for the day as well.
All right. Our third topic today, Tunda, you sent me something recently talking about how some of the technological efforts, you know, that are using technology in certain parts of the world to try to make it rain like precipitation, you know, make it rain on demand, you know, not in the club, you know, but like they figured that out in the club. They figured out already. They got pretty, they had that pretty good.
[00:48:23] Speaker B: Not this kind of rain.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: Making it rain. But I feel like I got to make the distinction because, you know, the, it's a phrase you hear, you know, and it might even invoke a certain thought in your mind. But we're talking about, I just want.
[00:48:36] Speaker B: To know, is it, is it going to be ones, twenties or hundreds, man, when it rain? Which one?
[00:48:41] Speaker A: So, but no, like the, the idea of creating precipitation on demand, you know, when it's, there's a drought or when it hasn't been raining and you know, that this is advancing seeding clouds and, I mean, this something the humans have been trying to do, going back to rain dances and sacrificing virgins, you know, thousands of years ago. So, you know, but this is, you know, I guess, more technologically advanced than those, but it's still something that we don't have down yet. But what are your thoughts on, you know, this as an aim, a technological aim, unintended consequences, and just kind of what's happening in this space right now, it's.
[00:49:17] Speaker B: I find it very interesting, but I do find your allusion to rain dances and sacrificing virgins actually very profound, because I would have never thought of that. Hey, man, obviously. No, but it's a great point.
[00:49:29] Speaker A: It's effort in the same direction.
[00:49:31] Speaker B: That's what I mean. It was a mental effort, but it was the idea of, yeah, we. If we do this dance or we sacrifice this person, we somehow gain control over the ability to talk, at least to the gods, about making it rain or not. So it's a great point.
It's a great point to say that, yeah. Whether we believed we were actually being effective or we're just trying that human beings have had a. Have wanted to control the weather or have the weather been to our whims for a long time. So. But no, I think, look, in reading the article and the country of where they're developing this technology and trying it in Yemen, like, one part of me, like, recognizes that the desert needs irrigation if you're going to have people there. So I appreciate it from a country that's all desert pretty much, or mostly desert that would try and say, hey, let's get some more precipitation, let's get more fresh water coming out of the sky here. My concern is the weather is the weather, and the earth has a long history of dealing with itself in a certain way.
And my concern would just be that if human beings began to tinker with the ability to produce rain, could that create unintended consequences that we do not yet see or appreciate? That would be my big feet.
[00:50:52] Speaker A: We know for sure it would create unintended consequences. The question is just how bad they would be. That's really. That's the one I don't even know.
[00:51:01] Speaker B: But, yeah. So mean. We can't. We might not even be able to imagine, potentially, what the consequences could be. That's what I'm saying is it's like. Like we'd be doing something to the planet that has never been done before, which is something outside of the planet itself controlling weather patterns. And I'm just not sure how the planet would react to that.
[00:51:21] Speaker A: Well, no, I mean, what stood out to me the most in this, other than, you know, like. Like I said, this. All this sounds like you know, brain dancing and all this other stuff, again, just higher tech. But is that the, what the approach that's being taken is not necessarily about getting more moisture into the, to the sky, into the clouds, but causing the moisture that's there to fall. And so basically there's not enough where the moisture is not in a, in a position or condition to where it will, enough of it's there and it's in the right spot to be able to fall from just straight, you know, physics. So they're trying to adjust things and change things to make the not primed moisture, which may not be, you know, again, it may not be a lot or whatever, but it's something fall which would seem to throw a lot of, would affect other things. You know, like when you just, you understand how the weather, weather works. This stuff is all interconnected. And so if you start making excess moisture or not excess, but just moisture that's not necessarily in a state that it should fall in one area fall, then how is that going to affect weather and others and connected areas or adjacent areas? And is that going to then cause moisture that's over here to start distributing out and normalizing or what's that going to do to pressure, high pressure, low pressure systems, everything like that? And so it seems like because this is something that's so interconnected that we're not going to know the unintended consequences of the extent of the unintended consequences. There's only one way to find them out. And human beings, you know, like, we tend to be not, what, we don't tend to just say, well, let's just not do this because we don't know how bad it's going to be. Like, we tend to just go ahead and do it and then see how bad it's going to be. And then you have some people saying, we don't care how bad it is, let's just keep doing it. And, you know, like, and then other people say, hey, this is pretty bad.
Try to adjust, profit to be made.
[00:53:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Then it's even worse because you know what? This is making me think of just climate change in general, because think about what we're, what if you, if you follow it down this trajectory?
[00:53:19] Speaker A: My choice of words was, was, was definitely an allusion to the current arguments we have about climate change. Okay, go ahead.
[00:53:25] Speaker B: Well, then my subconscious picked it up.
[00:53:27] Speaker A: So let me run with it.
[00:53:30] Speaker B: So now, because as you're talking, it's like, wow, you got, you were seeding that in my head.
[00:53:35] Speaker A: I seeded that in your head, man. It's inception, man.
[00:53:38] Speaker B: Now let me reign it out is.
But no, because I'm just thinking. Think about it. It's natural that over millions of years, we have the reason why they're called fossil fuels, right? It's the last bits of organic material left over from plants and animals and all that that were alive millions of years ago, right. And pressed down by the earth's gravity and all that. And the ones that are hard are coal, and the ones that are liquefied are oil. And so what happens is, for 150 years, roughly, we've been sucking that stuff out of the ground so we can use it. And the unintended consequence has been, it's warmed the planet by a couple degrees. The unintended consequence of that is that the sea levels have risen, and it's caused hurricanes and storms to get worse and more and more, pulling all that. So.
[00:54:26] Speaker A: And whether we do have an example in general, you know, like, yeah, so.
[00:54:30] Speaker B: So we do have an example. And you know what's interesting, too? I learned that recently, reading something that because of all of the drilling for everything that humanity has done in the last century, meaning just oil blowing the tops off mountains, for getting minerals and metals out, drilling for fresh water, so it's not to pick on anything, we've actually tilted the earth an additional 0.3 degrees. We had just kind of thrown the earth off a bit. We put that much holes in it. So, you know, that's what I mean. Like, we. And who knows if that will have an unintended consequence, maybe centuries or millennia from now, the earth being a little bit tilted from where it naturally was. So that's my point, is that, yeah, we've tinkered with the earth enough by this point in humanity's existence that we've already seen some unintended consequences that may have taken decades or even a century to play out. And so this weather one, I don't think we should be that naive to not think that there could be some other unintended consequence if we really have the ability to control rain and weather patterns.
[00:55:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I would say, you know, like, another thing that when you look at this, you have to keep in mind is that. And this is kind of going back to the illusion I was making, is that these concerns aren't necessarily reason or cause that this will stop. And so what we're gonna have is this is gonna continue on to, whether it works or not, you know, in our current state of technology or, you know, what's reasonably attainable to us, we don't know, you know, but if it does work, then how does that, like, okay, so setting aside how that will affect everything else, you know, and the unintended consequences, what are the intended consequences? Because I think back to, like, agriculture and how agriculture changed the course of humanity and in substantial ways. Remember, we did the book sapiens a while back, which detailed a lot of that and. And also detailed how humans have been changing their environment since the very beginning, since. Since homo sapiens popped up and took over, been changing our environment. Mass extinctions everywhere we show up, you know, like, been we. This is how we roll. And so. But just the intended consequences. Are you going, like, to some degree, places that are inhospitable to tons of life are maybe better kept not having a ton of people there, you know, like, so, but if we do this, do we then create situations like, right now, you know, like we've created with air conditioning has made places that aren't generally hospitable for masses. We've had masses lift places now because of air conditioning, and we're relying on air conditioning in that way. So we're looking at potentially the same kind of thing here with desert or arid environments where it's like, okay, well, now we can have instead of 30,000 people here, you know, that are just, you know, like, kind of living, but it's not, you know, it's not overly comfortable. We got a ration water or whatever to now we're gonna have, you know, like, we're able to have a lot more people, you know, like, in these places, you know, like, or, you know, like, getting into just the. The nature of these consequences, they're like, do we see more? If you do this and this is going back to unintended, does it cause more evaporation? You know, like, which could do all these types of crazy stuff. I think that you can play it out in many different directions, but the intended consequences, to me, I'd be interested as well, you know, to not go completely off of that tangent, but do we end up with, again, more people living in places because we can make it rain than we need to, and then how does that affect society? How does that affect other societies and so forth? But to me, that, again, why are you doing this? You know, like, so that ideally, so more people can live there in the same way that when you could start growing food, instead of having a village of 20,000, you could have a village of 200,000, you know, just because instead of you're not doing hunter gatherers and you're not doing that kind of stuff, but you're just growing the food.
[00:58:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And, I mean, that last thing, and then I know we want to wrap it up is, you know, there's the. There's a lot of unintended consequences of weaponization as well. I mean, this is.
[00:58:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:58:24] Speaker B: Well documented. No, but it's well documented that the us government was doing this kind of research during the Vietnam War. They were trying to seed clouds where they're. They already knew that there was going to be a storm or typhoon to try and make it rain even more, to make, you know, the kind of land more inhospitable for the Viet Cong to make, you know, their trucks get stuck in mud that harder for them.
[00:58:48] Speaker A: To walk, maybe abandoned positions and all that.
[00:58:50] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And so, I mean, what if one country did that? One just said, you know, we're gonna.
[00:58:54] Speaker A: Make arrangements about it, man, like, whether countries do it or non state actors. Like I said, this sets the stage for every Bond villain or doctor evil. Or, like, this is. This is like, this is the stuff we see in movies. Like, yeah, you know, I would send my rain making machine on you $1 billion.
[00:59:15] Speaker B: This would be the perfect thing for someone like Elon Musk to say he's going to develop and perfect and then try and weaponize it against everybody. Like, now I got my rain laser beam or something. And so now I'm going to force you to buy the blue check on x. And. Yeah.
And I'm gonna say that it's freedom of speech, but just ban people I don't like. So, yeah, it'll be interesting. I think we should. We should actually. Now, I support it because it'll be fun to watch. You must get all over this.
[00:59:46] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. The potential for villainry.
[00:59:48] Speaker B: He's already got SpaceX, so he could put the rocket up there, just have this laser shooting down on the clouds to make it rain.
And then when he misses and starts a fire, forest fire than the other ladies who said it was space laser?
[01:00:00] Speaker A: It would be a space laser. Yes.
[01:00:02] Speaker B: See, man, I got this all figured out.
[01:00:04] Speaker A: You got it all figured out, man. You could tie all the conspiracies together, but no, I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of call. Like, I see it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[01:00:18] Speaker B: I'm tunde with Lana.
[01:00:19] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
