Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we take a look at the culture of fear that many scientists are saying has developed around gender medicine research and specifically research onto medication and treatment for transgender individuals and discuss how that seems or may be affecting the research and society in general. And in part two of our discussion, we'll react to the rat beef involving Drake and Kendrick Lamar and other heavyweights that recently exploded and consider why it seems there don't seem to be many high profile or many high profile rat beefs in modern times relative to maybe 20 years, 2030 years.
Hello.
Welcome to the call like I see it podcast. I'm James Keys, and riding shotgun with me is a man who may not be a chef, but he definitely could tell you what's beef Tunde Ogun. Lana Tunde. You ready to make sure that people get their feel today?
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that was a good one.
I was anticipating a reference to Raekwon, but what's beef was good? Oh, there you go.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: All right. All right. Now, before we get started, I ask that if you enjoy the show, please hit subscribe and like the show on your, on YouTube or your podcast app. That really helps us as far as getting the show out. Now, we're recording this on April 16, 2024. And Tunday last week, we saw an interesting article in the Guardian which discussed how many researchers and scientists are either getting out of or just actively avoiding the field of gender medicine research because they're concerned that any discussion, you know, once they have results and anything, that any discussion on those results will produce such a strong backlash amongst interested parties, whether be people that are pro transgender rights or people that are trying to take away transgender rights or whatever.
And now that kind of backlash is damaging, can be damaging to the reputation and subject them to abuse, whether online or otherwise. Essentially, there appears to be a concern that there are people that are so invested in a particular outcome that they're not. They are resistant to scientific inquiry to the extent that scientific inquiry doesn't affirm what they already know, aka confirmation bias or what they already believe they know. And, you know, this may be something that's now affecting people's decisions in terms of what to research and what fields to go into. So, Tunde, what stood out to you in this article discussing this idea of the, quote, culture of fear, you know, in gender medicine research?
[00:02:42] Speaker B: It's a very interesting topic because what stood out to me was it's very similar what's going on in this specific area of scientific discussion and research, or lack thereof, that we might be discussing today due to these pressures from those outside the scientific community.
It mirrors certain other parts of our society, which, you know, I'll discuss during the show what. What my observation is there. But specifically to answer. I mean, I think it makes sense that in something that where we have new technology, in terms of the medical technology, to be able to allow people to, I guess, engage.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: Yeah, like that.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: Things that didn't exist 200 years ago.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. That's my point. Engage in being a transgender person in a much different way than ever was possible historically. Right. So I think because of that newness, just like we've seen in other parts of our society, it's natural that we don't have a lot of scientific research and facts based evidence type of studies about how this stuff affects humans, as well as why, all of a sudden, is there a larger amount of people that feel this way. So there's two different ways, you know, multiple reasons why this stuff should be studied by people that are already in the scientific field dealing with biological stuff within humans. And I think that real quick, like.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: Why are there more people here and how best to help them? I mean, I think that's really, when I was looking at the article, I was one of the things, it's like, well, how best do we. Do we help people that are. That are experiencing this, that are.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Interesting point, because that's where there's pushback in general from those outside the scientific community.
And it's like various. Like, you've got the pro trans crowd that pushes back against the scientific community, that tries to maybe bring in other ideas and conversations to why people are choosing to go down this road and more, so, let's say, than in prior generations.
And then there's the pushback from the anti trans side, which, you know, is kind of saying that any scientific sunlight on this is an affirmation that this is okay. So we got to be against that. So there really isn't room. And that's where I think it's interesting to me to see the fear part come in, because in some of this stuff that we read, where the scientists are surprised themselves, they're like, this doesn't really happen in other areas of clinical research. So there's something greater. And we all know this. I mean, everyone watching this, I'm sure, understands that transgender topic, or as a topic, is much more polarizing in our political discourse than many other topics today. So I think that has a part to do with, as well, in terms of why people have latched on emotionally on either side of the debate and aren't willing to kind of look at some other way to discuss it, positive or negative.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the thing about that, I think that's distinguishing here is that the newness of a lot of this stuff. Like you said, there aren't long term studies examining the different interventions. For example, if you're talking pharmaceutical interventions or things like that, hormone blockers or, you know, all these various things, there aren't long term studies on that. And so it, you know, like, it's one thing to be polarized about high taxes or low taxes or, you know, things that, you know, we've seen a lot of different, you know, kind of outcomes from that. It's not really, you know, medicinal in that sense as well. You're not changing, you know, the body in any way. But what. What I see with this is just this issue, actually, is we human beings tend to. This would suggest to me that we just want to view, or a lot of times, people want to view things in a polarized lens, but this is one of those things that seems like it's just not really suited for a polarized lens, because the people that have already decided that these pharmaceutical interventions are the best way to do it, and they don't any research that questions whether, okay, is that the best way to do it? They're like, oh, this is anti trans. You know, by questioning scientific. From a scientific inquiry standpoint, whether this is the right way or the best way to do it, or if there's long term effects that we should be aware of or concerned about or whatever, cause that, then. Now, from my standpoint, that's very important because I'm, as an attorney, I'm very interested in informed consent. You know, if you're gonna do anything, consent on what you're agreeing to, both now and in the future, is very important. And so, you know, to me, I look at that like, well, no, you need to know that because that's the stuff that you need to be. Know what you're agreeing to. Um, but then. And then on the other side, that there seems to be a fear that there's going to be scientific or they're going to uncover, from a scientific standpoint, maybe that this stuff is not some abomination that they. They want to believe it is, or that there's some kind of, again, adding legitimacy to it, like you pointed out. And so the. The particular sides, and we always have to be careful assuming that everybody is. Is on a edge here. You know, usually with these issues, with issues like this, most people are somewhere in the middle, and then you. But the loudest people are further on the edges. And the fact that it's almost like trying to pull the scientists, like, from the edges, they're trying to pull the scientists into one of their camps and say, okay, well, if you're gonna be in my camp, then we can only say this, and if you're gonna be in my camp, we can only say that. And that's like the exact way you cannot do science. You know, like, the reason why we, we live in a society now that's advanced as much as it has in the past 5600 years is because we've tried to, and in many cases successfully been able to keep science out of these type of arguments and disputes because this type of, again, this is a natural human thing. But if, for example, the church is able to shut down the idea of, hey, the, the sun is the center of the, the earth revolves around the sun, not the sun revolving around the earth. If the church is successfully able to shut that down 600 years ago, then that doesn't allow science to continue to progress after that. And then, you know, who knows where we end up. So the ability for science to continue to ask questions and to constantly question itself is very important to what we consider progress in many ways. So to me, this is why this stands out. Like, oh, whoa, whoa. It's actually trying to prevent the ability for scientific inquiry to do its thing.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think it's very interesting because as you're talking, it reminds me of the period we were in four years ago with COVID where it was something similar, where we had something new that was scary, you know, and intimidating to most of us in society. A pathogen that's a pandemic and all that. And, you know, and also not long.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Term studies on the safety of, well.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: That'S what I was getting at is science had to play catch up in learning, you know, how to build a plane while they were flying in terms of how this pathogen affected humans and how it spread and all that. And so you saw this divide, right? People that said, okay, we should listen to people like the scientists and Doctor Fauci and Doctor Birx, the other people that said, no, we should listen to the politicians who are telling us that, you know, everything sucks and we shouldn't be locked down and the herd immunity should. And the point is, you know, I'm not here to make an opinion on either side, but it's a good example of how the scientific method of facts based evidence and the time needed to do that was just not there. And the public moves slow.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: You made this point during the time like that. It moves slow, whereas people want immediate answers.
Don't move slow.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: But here's the interesting comparison to this, and I'm sure many other things we can find in our society and in history is without the ability for science to have time to do its fact based kind of studies and all that. Like you said, people want answers. That's the natural human part. So what gets filled in that void normally is negative, ideological based stuff. Right. And that's where the idea of things like conspiracy theories and all that pop up.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: So people know biases and stuff like that. Yeah.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: And so it's no surprise that when you have a topic like transgender, which is very personal and has to do with something like male and female and gender and things that people have, pretty much most people have feel is generally settled in the human discussion, if you don't have very fact based evidence to support any of it or deny any of it, it's just that it's going to get filled, this void. And then both sides of that, like you said, the. The. It's kind of that horseshoe theory thing. Both sides of that spectrum, on the extreme, begin to behave very similar, where it's ideology that begins to dominate any form of evidence. And I want to throw this back to you, because as you were talking to, I wrote down the word secularism, and I thought, you know, it's an interesting example. I mean, again, why the United States is such an experiment historically, because what science really is, is a secular way to look at things. It's trying to bring in evidence and not use emotional ideology, whereas as humans, we are really built on our irrational beliefs and ideologies. And, you know, as you're talking, as it reminds me of things like Pope Francis and the Catholic Church getting a lot of pushback because of his progressive stance on lgbt topics. And I'm not. I know that lgbt gay people are not transgender, so I want to make sure that that is recognized. But it's another example of, in a religious context, a lot of it is opinions and how you feel about it. Some people are very offended in the Catholic Church about how Pope Francis is behaving. Other people welcome it. But with science, it's not supposed to be like that. And that's where I think this is still that big battle in the human experience between secularism and belief, and it's crashing up here.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: It's a good point to make because secularism is hard, like our natural way, so to speak. If you judge based on thousands and thousands of years of the human experience, our natural way isn't to do the secularism kind of thing, like our natural way seems to be driven by the passions. And that makes sense to me because for most of human existence and even to this day, for some things, humans didn't understand why things happen, you know, like that. Why did it rain? You know, like that? There wasn't some scientist that was going to give you that answer. It was going to be some shaman, you know, and, you know, whether he was right or not, he gave you an answer that satisfied, you know, so that's, it makes sense why people would, you know, that those kind of answers, you know, like the shaman answer, is going to be more fulfilling a lot of times than the scientific answer. Another big reason for this, and COVID illustrates this as well, because the scientific inquiry is that constantly questioning yourself, constantly questioning somebody put a theory out there, somebody else trying to knock it down, that takes time.
The answers don't like, I think COVID was a good example that we lived through where after the fact, when it was back in science was, okay, yeah, we got this part right. We got this part wrong, yada, yada, yada. And people were mad like, oh, you got this part wrong. And it's like, well, but that's the part of their process is they're gonna try something and they're gonna see what happens, and then they're gonna evaluate it ideally. Now, again, that's when you have the scientific method and scientific inquiry done correctly. Now, we'll talk in a little bit about how that doesn't happen all the time, and we can't always take that for granted. But I look at this in the sense that when we have issues that are of high passion, this is going to happen. This is just gonna, like, there's no way to say that this is not going to happen. That scientists are out there talking now like there's a culture of fear and so forth, is an alarm, essentially, where ideally, as a society, if we can try to pull that tension and that pressure back, it would be helpful. This is where, using one of your terms, leadership is important to try to give science a chance. What we don't want to have happen in a situation like this is where the scientific process shuts down. We want them to continue operating ideally. And right now, the concern or the complaint is that it's an untenable situation. Like in the article, one of the scientists is talking about, oh, well, you know, she gets hate mail when she reviews and looks at a study talking about trans women giving hormones in order to breastfeed. And then so she, one group of people attacks her at that point, and then another group of people attacks her when she raises questions about the research. And she's looking at research as far as athletic performance in trans women relative to regular women. And so it's like, hold on there. Essentially, any step she makes, any step she takes it, she's being accused by different people of conflicting things. And it's like, well, there's nowhere to go, essentially, in that kind of situation.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: And that's where I feel like, you know, there's a lot of people with a lot of. A lot of other agendas on both sides of this. People that want to take other people's rights away and using this as another way to convince their fellow Americans that, hey, people like this shouldn't have equal rights and all this. And that could lead to slippery slopes with other groups. And then there's people that support trans people and, you know, genuinely think and believe that they should have rights and not be discriminated against, which I agree with, not discriminating against anyone. But then, like you're saying, the idea of a scientist saying, hey, let's study actually what blocking a 13 or 14 year old's hormones is going to do to that human being long term and any real physiological, emotional change they might make. They also beat up that scientist and say that they're anti trans and that they're a bigot when they're asking genuine questions from a scientific background. So I feel like it's, again, this ideological extremism gets played out and has an outsized influence on the rest of us. And it's just like COVID, like the big lie, like other things that have been allowed to permeate since the plethora of social media and the Internet and smartphones in people's hands.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: Well, but I mean, I think you can. That's more tied to the human experience. And the reason is really because issues that tend to create hard lines and force you on one side or another, people who try to accumulate power, you know, tend to like to use those, you know, like they. Those are issues that can say, hey, you're either with me or against me or whatever like that. So this issue, it's unfortunate that it's become one of those kind of issues because it's not necessarily, again, like I started this out with, this isn't, in my view at least, this isn't an issue that really lends itself along polarized lines, unless the polarized lines is, okay, should we give people dignity or not? But that's not really the discussion. You know, like, because I think that, again, most people, you know, if you're, if that's the only question we're asking, then I think that you would have an overwhelming support on the side of, yes, giving people dignity, but the issues become a lot more clouded than that and fear is used and all that. But I didn't want to go down that path as much as it's a related path, though, that I wanted to ask you and to get into is that it does seem like with this, what we're seeing here is that a lot of times people are looking past necessarily what the scientist or the researcher is saying and, you know, like, okay, what is the, they're looking past, what does the research say? Like, oh, okay, what is the hormone? If you give someone a hormone blocker when they're 13, what does that have? What, what does that do to that person physiologically over the next ten years or whatever, they're looking past that and they're more concerned with, okay, well, once a study like that is published, what will someone else do with that? Will someone else do use that to then try to take something away or anything like that? And so the question I have for you is that do you think that kind of leap in this, in putting that on the scientists and say, hey, you can't discuss this because if you come up with an answer that is concerning for us, then people who are operating in bad faith maybe are going to take that and use that to try to take away people's rights and so forth, do you think that kind of leap is fair in this situation?
[00:18:45] Speaker B: I mean, I can see the concern because this is where, again, show we did in the past comes to mind on a topic of eugenics, whereas, I mean, let's replace the trans word with, let's say black people. If science came out and said, we found official now through scientific method and all that, that black people from Africa are less intelligent than other races on the world stage, you and I would probably get offended by stuff like that. And I'm sure a lot of people would. And then there's would be another side of that argument that would say, see, that justifies everything we always believe. And, you know, they did not forgive.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: The offense that people would take or the joy people would take from that or whatever and think about the laws that people might do then because of kind of where the rubber meets the road is, is they're saying, and just for the record, by the way, like, the thing about eugenics, which was, which was most notable when you look back about that, is that there was such an effort to try to prove that type of statement. There was such an effort made, and that that was, that was, they were never able to accomplish that, you know.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: And then genetics came.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: You know, once genetics advance, they find out they can't even tell the difference between races.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: Well, stay on there, because not only were laws, you know, implemented, I mean, these are things that affected people. I mean, think about it.
The 1924, we had immigration laws specifically based on eugenics in this country. And so it changed.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: Sterilized. And this goes beyond race, by the way, people getting sterilized. And, you know, there was a time when that was people of science thought that they were going down the right path. And again, it. It wasn't until science got better that they realized that. Okay. Oh, yeah. Wow. From a genetic standpoint, we can't tell the difference between what we classify as races. And so where we are with science now is different than where we were then because science thought one thing now that gets into the whole whether science is being done right, because you have these biases that a lot of time lead people to conclusions that don't necessarily stand up to rigorous scientific testing, but it takes a while to get there. And in the meantime, like you said, there was a lot of harm done with the, you know, with eugenics, for example, you know, in terms of different undesirable characteristics or individuals or groups.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: Now, the question, though, of, again, this goes back to, like, kind of like the word dignity. Like, I think that the sensitivity and the concern is real and legitimate because there are people out there that want to take away, you know, dignity and so forth from people, you know, trans people. And so the concern of giving those folks, quote unquote, ammo is a fair concern. But again, from, from, if you're talking about a societal management standpoint, that is, that's where you. You go down that path. Trying to shut down the science, though, is, I think, just the. That's the wrong approach to that. And so, like, we see this, and we see this, like, dealing with, with transgender issues in this, quote, unquote, culture of fear. And we see it come up publicly probably because of the nature of this, of, you know, just how polarizing the issue has been in society. But do you think, just briefly, do you think that, you know, how likely do you think this is happening in scientific communities all the time? This kind of let's shut this down or let's shut that down or either ideology or whatever dictating what we hear or what doesn't come out. How often do you think this happens and we just never hear about it? Because I imagine this can't be the only time this ever happened in a scientific context.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: You set me up with a loaded question. How many times do I think that?
[00:22:17] Speaker A: How likely do you think this is happening on a regular basis?
[00:22:21] Speaker B: If we never hear about it, then it could happen all the time.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: It's a black, but no, I get.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: The feeling that this is a little bit of an outlier more than normal. And I say that. I'm not saying that there aren't other topics that the scientific community today is wrestling with that aren't controversial and all that. I just think that the majority of scientific research doesn't deal with this kind of public scrutiny while it's ongoing, let's put it that way. I mean, we've done word there is.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Public, though, you know, like, like, I'll.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: Give you an example. We did a show a couple months ago about the change in geology with the amount of plastic in the earth. Right. And, and that they've classified into new, new forms of geology that have plastic.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: Plastic rocks, plastic rockstone.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: And so, but I get the feeling that they're, you know, first of all, that wasn't debated in public when they were starting to find this stuff and research it. Right. And it's not an emotional thing. I mean, the rock's got plastic in it, so be it. And it sucks.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Nobody's death threats at them.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's not, but people don't feel like that's going to threaten their children and their way of being and their culture and their religion and that's.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Where this probably should. Huh.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: Well, then we got to get into climate change and pollution. We're going to start a separate show in the middle of a new, you know, we can't do that. So we're good at doing that.
At least I am. I won't blame you. But I can go on a tangent like the best of them. So, so let's keep me focused here. But, but, but the, but that's what I'm saying is that it's, it's, it's kind of fascinating to watch it in that way because as we're talking, like thinking of one of the articles, because I try to find stuff from people on both sides of this argument preparing for it. And so I'm a quote a little bit from an article of someone who is very supportive of the transgender community who's also an associate biology professor. And she says, to be sure, science only takes us part of the way in understanding the true complexity of sex and gender. And then, rather than more anti science legislation, we need better public education so that voters, our politicians, can understand is the difference between sex, gender, and sexuality. And that's kind of what I'm saying. Okay. The first thing you're saying as a biologist is science can only take us part of the way. So that means you're already saying that science can't answer everything that I'm saying to you. So I got to give you my opinion in here. And that's what I'm saying. And that's someone that supports it, and that's no different.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Also public policy. And, like. Cause that's science can only take us part of the way. We also need education. We also need. And implicit in that is somebody just trying to. Or what the thought is is that telling people that this isn't the end of the world, so to speak, you know, like, educate. Here's what's going on and so forth.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: But here's where I find that interesting, because some of the stuff I read from, like, the pediatrics association, like, again, people that are actual, like, real medical doctors that study this stuff and researchers and geneticists, it's because we throw around the words so easily that reading this stuff was like, oh, yeah, that's true. That's kind of what I thought. And when I say this, no matter what you do to yourself, you cannot change, really, your biological gender. And they made some really sex, right? Yeah. Like, meaning that if I go through the full, as a man, the full thing, and let's say I got my penis cut off, someone puts in a vagina surgically, I get all the hormone blockers. I start taking estrogen and all that. At the end of the day, my genetics and my DNA is still male. It's xy chromosomes. So it's still trying to fight that battle against the changes that I'm artificially trying to put. Put in my body. And again, that's. Somebody could watch me say that that is on the extreme supporting side of trans and just say that I'm totally wrong and that I'm a bigot for saying that. I mean, I'm sorry if someone believes that, but that's what Y xy chromosomes are about.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: So in part of what that person was saying, though, was, you know, just that you also are setting yourself up for a lifetime of pharmaceutical intervention, you know, like that. Okay.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Now you're gonna have to, you know, you take pills for the rest of your life as well. So, you know, and, yeah, that stood out to me as well. You know, just the kind of that you can't change your biological sex and, you know, you can. You do different things as far as your gender identity and changing your body and so forth and your appearance and, you know, how you feel and so forth. But, you know, and a lot of that stuff with the hormones and stuff we don't fully understand yet, you know, which suggests that, you know, you should continue the scientific process not to say that, you know, to your point that you made, we'll ever get there. You know, from my standpoint, I look at this and the, I think that the key word you said was publicly. I think this happens all the time, that scientists face pressure from different sources. I just don't think it's usually coming from the general public, you know, social media or, you know, whatever people, you know, calling you a bigot or whatever. I imagine that, you know, like, enter large corporation x. If you want to say that aspartame causes cancer, then you're gonna get a lot of pressure from certain, you know, whatever businesses or that make that, that product, you know, that which is the artificial sweetener and, like, Diet Coke and all that. If you want to say, like, and I say this because I have knowledge that this happens, you know, and this happened with that cut, that chemical in particular in the 1970s, 1980s and so forth. And so, you know, and then recently that, that, you know, the World Health Organization has taken another look at that. I think that in a similar example, again, drawing on history, if you want to get out there and start talking greasy about Roundup and how that may cause cancer and all this other stuff, I think you're going to get a lot of pressure from insert company x that is going to say, if you publish this, we're going to ruin your career, yada, yada, yada. So I think the difference or the thing that stands out here isn't the pressure that the scientists are under.
[00:28:12] Speaker B: What about Pfizer on the show?
[00:28:15] Speaker A: All of them.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: All of them.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: All of them. Like that one was publicly debated.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: We don't know about the roundup researchers and aspects of it. We do.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: It just wasn't, it wasn't something that generated a lot of news, but it's out there. You can read about all that kind of stuff. So I think the unique thing is just that it's this general public pressure. Cause it's an issue that the general public is just so passionate about. So I say that to say, now, I don't know that the science always gets to the right answer in the face of pressure, either.
[00:28:41] Speaker B: So.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: And I think that you could cite examples where science kind of does just look the other way to keep the peace and to lessen the pressure. So I'm not saying this is going to all work out, you know, to our favor, but the idea that public pressure from the public at large caught my eye because, like, again, it's just different from. I don't think it's different from the pressure they normally face, but it's different source from the pressure they normally face. And, you know, like, that's. Maybe that is the world that we've entered where that might not have happened in 1980 because there was no way for the public to generally find out whether it be information or misinformation about it and then have an opportunity to express all that. But the public piece of this is what really makes it stand out to me.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: Well, I think just. It's. It's also just what it is. This. This argument about gender makes it something very personal for people, very emotional. And then also it allows for the creep of other ideological parts of our life that are very important to many people, like religion to come in. Like, religion probably wouldn't be brought up if the spat between some research scientists and Monsanto about some chemical they put in some soybean that wouldn't pick on people's emotional heartstring. But when you talk about LGBTQ stuff and transgender, and, again, we are in a current culture right now.
Like we talk about 50, 70 years ago, the culture was more racial that it was, you know, not good for the races to mix because of, you know, all these things. And like you've stated going back four or 500 years, it was Galileo getting put in jail because he challenged that dogma of the day that the earth was not the center of the universe and all this. So it. And again, that was. He was able to be seen as going against the religion, the authority of the time. So. So I think that a lot of this also plays into just when it's these topics that allow other, you know, people in this society that want to control others, just like the abortion debate and all that. The things that generally didn't come up in religion maybe 100 years ago are now all, you know, brought into these spheres of influence so that people can do what we've seen in the last few years, which is get their ideology into the school curriculum, all that. What they project and blame others that they're trying to indoctrinate and all that. And they use the fear that, you know, some trans athlete is going to somehow upend all kids sports.
And even though I don't agree that a kid taking hormones, that's a man or born a male, should compete at 16 with women, I don't think that's enough to stop our society. I think we can still have those conversations and not try and take everyone's rights away. So to me, it's very nuanced, but, you know, gotta stay on the side of equality.
[00:31:40] Speaker A: All right. All right. Well, I think we can wrap from there. Thank you for joining us. Part one of this discussion and part two will be coming up shortly, so I hope you join us with that one as well.
All right, for our second topic this week, rap beef has exploded over the past couple of weeks involving major heavyweights in the hip hop world, involving Drake, involving Kendrick Lamar. J. Cole was in, and then he kind of wasn't in, you know, so Rick Ross has jumped in recently. So it's, you know, it's a lot of the heavyweights, which we don't tend to see that much anymore. But before we get to the. Not tending to see it that much anymore, just kind of. What was your reaction to see this kind of, this high profile beef, you know, explode kind of out of nowhere?
[00:32:25] Speaker B: My first reaction is, I'm old, man.
So, yeah, that's.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: Well, I, for one, was excited by it. I mean, I think that the nature of hip hop makes it something that, like, draws energy from these kind of battles. These mano and mano battles provided, again, as the lesson we learned as, as youth, that you don't want to take it too far. And, I mean, and maybe that was one of those lessons people had to learn in actuality. But, you know, the one upsmanship that is present, always present in hip hop, you know, is something that lends itself to this kind of, this go back and forth. You know, what it reminds me of, in a sense, is, you know, kind of like a dunk contest, like the slam dunk contest or whatever. And this, actually, I look at a parallel between this and the slam dunk contest in the NBA in the sense that there was a time when, you know, like the dunk. Well, to draw the analogy, and slam dunk contests aren't about if somebody's just doing it by themselves. You know, just all. Just one guy goes up, does a couple of dunks. It's like, oh, that's cool, that's cool. But it doesn't have the same level of energy unless there's two people going at it or three people, like, people going at each other. Trying to one up one another is really, it takes. It amps up to a whole other level. And so just art of rap, you know, like the bars going back and forth, I think that you get some of your best music and your best kind of rhymes when there's one umpsmanship is present in that. And so, again, provided this then comes become something where people are getting shot at or something like that, which, again, was a lesson that had to be learned. So I'm excited by it. Just the idea that there's high profile people that are doing it. My thought, my hope is that we get some good stuff out of them from a musician music standpoint right now, from this. So, you know, I'm excited from that standpoint. And, you know, I hope that people don't try to make it something that it's not, you know, but it can be something where people go at each other and there's jokes, there's, you know, clever lines and everything like that. And, you know, it goes up and then it. Then we move on eventually, you know. So that arc, though, I mean, I think the Jay Z and Nas arc was, was interesting. They ended up working together shortly after. But it was something that you got two great rappers and you got some great. Some great bars out of it, and it was something that was pretty interesting and exciting at the time. And so I'm excited by it.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think it is interesting. I mean, there's an arc of this culture that I think is, if you think about the show we did in December on the 50th anniversary of hip hop. I mean, hip hop began kind of with rap battles in the seventies. And if you think about also the culture of breakdancing, you know, these were.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: Ways that, which was a one upsmanship kind of thing.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: Yeah. That young people actually, in a very productive way at the time in cities like New York, decided instead of having violence as a way to solve their beefs, you know, gangs and all that, that they would do rap battles and have breakdance, you know, contests and all that. And the winner was the winner instead of having a bloody, you know, fight with. With bats and knives and shooting each other. So in a way, it began as a way to have a positive outlet of this type of kind of young, raw energy.
And I think, like many things, I'm thinking, as you mentioned, the dunk contest, you made me think, too, of things like the 1980s NBA. I mean, remember the bad boys, the Pistons? I mean, the players like Kurt Rambis on the Lakers having fist fights with Robert Parrish on the Celtics? You know, the NBA was a lot more physical back then. And I think what happened in a similar, like, trajectory with hip hop is by. By. Well, but hip hop had some real stuff, like we say, by the mid nineties, hip hop had two of its greatest legends at the time assassinated and murdered because of this kind of east west coast beef. So I think within hip hop, that brought a chilling effect in the culture to having this kind of beef in general. And it kind of reminds me of the United States culture post 1960s, where after the civil rights era, kind of from there was less kinetic strikes on the racial side. Cause I think Americans were just kind of tired and saying, hey, you know what? We don't want to behave like that. We see how disruptive that can be. And I think the hip hop community also probably saw some of that and said, you know, we can't let these beefs get too out of control, because in the end, we all lose when we lose a biggie or tupac, you know, and then how do you do it?
[00:36:49] Speaker A: And how do you do it without allowing it to get too out of control? Because the heightened passion is part of the thing that drives it, you know? So it's, it's interesting from that standpoint. So there do appear, though. I mean, and I think along this line, there does appear. There's just less of these, or at least less of the high profile ones. I'm sure if you go to the lower level, there's still just as much. But do you think that is just the reaction? Like, is it because, again, the Jay Z nas came after that. Do you think that's just the reaction to this chilling effect, or you, you think there's more going on? Or you think, like, maybe the art form is maturing and the things that kind of were cool in the eighties and nineties, maybe early two thousands, aren't necessarily even part of what's what really, the art form does as much anymore.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's probably all of the above, but I think the last one is interesting about the art form maturing, because you're right. I mean, it's a very young art form, like we say, 51 years old this year. And if you look at other forms of music that are newer to humans, not classical music or something like that, but maybe rock and roll, you went from the Elvis to the Beatles, and then you had the era of heavy metal in the seventies and eighties, then you had the kind of alternate rock, like in the nineties of Nirvana and Pearl Jam. And now rock and roll is kind of all over the place. There's a lot of different types and different ways people can experience it. And I think hip hop's gone that direction, too. You know that if you look in the 1970s, early eighties, in the Bronx and in Queens and in New York, hip hop was very monolithic. It was very similar in terms of the type of beats and what people were talking about. Then in the eighties, you got kind of the west coast influence with the California and people like too short and NWA and all that. And then the nineties brought the glitz and the glam, and you had the.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: And also brought the south in.
[00:38:38] Speaker B: Yep. And Master P and people like that and outcasts, and you had kind of the gangster rap, and then you had the conscious people that were all about, you know, the struggle and all that. And then the early two thousands saw someone like Kanye west, who wore teddy bears on his t shirt and didn't fit into either one of those, you know, gangsta rap or the true conscious, and he started, you know, a new version, and then you had people again. This is what makes me feel old. People that I don't even know much about in terms of. I know their names, but I don't even. The type of hip hop isn't my kind of music.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: And these are people like the mumble rap.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: Yeah, mumble rap, like future or the Triple X and tacion. So it seems that hip hop has also now matured and is. Is a much wider genre than it used to be, where even someone like me that's a fan of the culture and grew up with it, doesn't recognize all aspects of it. And that's, in the end, it's probably for the better. I mean, you know, that's just what I think. Like I said, like rock and roll, these things just mature and become now.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: Saying mature from a diversification standpoint, I don't think that that necessarily means that you wouldn't necessarily.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: This.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: This culture of one upsmanship that may exist would go away.
I wonder, you know, like, along the lines that you're saying about the diversification, you know, there's just more rappers now, but there's also more space. And so I would imagine when people are kind of tighter together, you know, bumping into each other in the club, hey, I was talking to that girl, you know, yada, yada, yada. It seems like there were more. When things are more condensed, there's more opportunity for friction. So maybe the opportunities for slights to occur or beefs to develop may be less with things just being spread out more. Actually, what I think, though, the reason why we don't see them again amongst the high profile anymore is that I would say maturing in the sense of success.
Just the upside for being a rapper. And the other people, the high profile guys, they are so successful now from a monetary, from a fame standpoint, that they just have so much more to lose. You know, like you. If the rat battle can be embarrassing, if you take an l that might knock you down, you might be the top guy and making $100 million, and then somebody just embarrasses you in a rap battle that might not be down, people might not be able to look at you the same anymore. So that risk is heightened when you got, you know, a billion streams versus when you go, yeah, I sold 50,000 records, you know. And so I think that, and that, I think, plays in with the analogy of the slam dunk contest as well, because you go back to the eighties, Michael Jordan was doing slam dunk contests. Dominique WilKins, these are all NBA players, the stars of the day were doing slam dunk contests. And, you know, like, showing out now, it's very rare for, and it's very rare now for you had to have slam dunk contests involving what would be considered stars. LeBron James has never done a slam dunk context. And I'm not saying that to knock him. I'm just saying that he looks at the situation like Michael Jordan looked at the situation like very little to lose, everything to gain. LeBron looks at it like very little to gain, everything to lose. You know, so as the, the, as the NBA has matured or as hip hop has matured and the spoils have gotten bigger and the people at the top have got, have increased, you know, what they're capable of earning and the notoriety they're capable of having. I think that the calculation changes in terms of this. So, which, again, makes this an aberration. I already see people talking about, oh, are they going to walk this stuff back? Because, you know, like, the getting is so good. Does anybody want to take this kind of risk?
[00:42:09] Speaker B: Well, the interesting thing. Cause, you know, as you're talking, it reminds me, too, it's actually similar to something like a political debate.
How many people have in politics been doing great in their campaign and all that, and then they have a debate that's horrible, or they're not doing that great in their campaign, and they have a stellar debate, and that changes the whole trajectory. So you're right.
I'd say the rap battle is even more intense for a rapper than something like a slam dunk contest. Cause, you know, if LeBron keeps averaging 30 a night and all that after, let's say, he got hung on the rim blowing a dunk, people will kind of forget about that maybe a year or two later.
[00:42:47] Speaker A: I don't know if they would, man.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: I don't know.
I just think that if someone like Drake really blew in a public, a rap battle thing and really got eaten alive by someone else, I think that would be a demise for that kind of star. And so you're right. And that.
[00:43:02] Speaker A: But it probably would depend on who, you know, because he had to put things pusher t a while back and push it. But Pusha t doesn't have the profile, really, that could, like a Kendrick Lamar would, you know, in terms of.
[00:43:12] Speaker B: But let's say something like that could raise a pusha t to become an, you know, a real star if he were to do that well.
[00:43:18] Speaker A: But that's that asymmetrical piece.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, the risk versus two Drake.
[00:43:22] Speaker A: Two heavyweights with Drake and Kendrick Lamar, like, you know, that that makes this different. Those guys have been at or near the top of the game for almost a decade at this point, but that they're going at each other now. You know, like, again, maybe the top isn't enough or, you know, maybe, you know, just being on the top line isn't enough for one or both of them now, and they want to be at the top by themselves. But in the event, or in any event, I think that this is ultimately just good for hip hop. I think you're going to get more excitement, more engagement. And again, this is, we talked about this a little bit with the, the Cheryl swoops and, you know what? Her comments on Caitlin Clark, this kind of stuff, this is that soap opera stuff that drives interest. This is good for the art form or this is good for the enter any entertainment form, I should say, in the same way that the swoops Clark thing I said was good for basketball. You know, like, that type of stuff drives interest. It makes it more of a soap opera, and that's what people tune in for as much as anything else. So I'm excited to see it. I got my popcorn ready, and, you know, hopefully they can continue to try to one up each other, but with the lessons we learned in the nineties and that, you know, Jay Z and Nas applied correctly, that this doesn't need to become more than about one upsmanship, you know, in the rap game, so to speak. And so that's, you know, so I'm excited by it, bottom line.
[00:44:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, just. I'll finish off with this. That it's, it's reminding me hip hop is such a reflection of our american culture because this is really, like, you're saying battle rap and all this. It's about competition and one upsmanship.
[00:44:50] Speaker A: Yeah, this is Coca Cola versus Pepsi, man.
[00:44:52] Speaker B: This is like. Yeah, no, this is like american capitalism at its finest. This kind of race to the top through competing, you know? And so I find it very interesting that hip hop is such a reflection of the american culture. It's very unique to America, and I think that's why, like Hollywood and other things, America has exported hip hop culture to the rest of the world. World. And a lot of the parts of the world have embraced it. So it's another, you know, we're going, I think it's another cycle we're gonna see now. This, this type of aggressiveness maybe come back up in hip hop, which, like you're saying, is probably for the better when it comes to an entertainment standpoint. I don't like the conflict that much. Cause I don't like. I don't like seeing people that, you know, good people at the top competing over what I think is petty. Like, who called me a name in the last song? But that's. I get it.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: That's all part of the fun. I'd much rather see him compete over something petty than something serious.
[00:45:49] Speaker B: I stopped watching WWE when I was like, twelve, but I get it. That stuff is entertaining, and a lot of people like country.
[00:45:59] Speaker A: I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate it.
[00:46:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: For joining us on this episode of call. Like I see it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:46:09] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Ogalana.
[00:46:10] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
