Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we react to reports that high rises along the Miami coastline are sinking. We'll also discuss the widespread use and abuse of ADHD drugs like Adderall in educational settings and also in high pressure work environments. And lastly, we'll weigh in on the bombshell rape accusation against rapper Jay Z and also take a look at his aggressive response to them.
Hello, welcome to the Car Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man whose takes can be loud enough to hot box a car. Tunde Yoga. Lana Tundra Tunday, are you ready to give out some of that antidote today?
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yes, sir. That's a good reference, the hot box.
Usually it wasn't my words making it a hot box in the car, but those are the good old days, so.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: The good old days. There we go.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Now I have a. Actually, now it's legal in our state and I have a card, so I don't need to be in the car hotboxing it. I can just be out back hanging out.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Not unless you wanted to.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
I'm too old for clothes to smell. Yeah.
So.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Well, now we'll get to the show.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Before we get started, it'll be better.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: If you enjoy the show. I ask that you subscribe and like the show on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out. Now recording on December 17, 2024 and last week, there was a report in the Miami Herald that many high rise buildings along on the barrier islands that are along Miami's coast, including luxury condo buildings and luxury hotels, were sinking, some by as much as 3 inches over the past eight years. Now, it was only back in 2021 that we saw the collapse of a tower in Surfside, which is a community along Miami's coast in that same area. And that tragedy killed 98 people. So naturally, this kind of report created some alarm because sinking can. It doesn't inherently, but it can create dangerous conditions, particularly if the sinking isn't even meaning if everything drops down on. Even then it doesn't create as much of a concern as if it's dropping down is slanting. So to get us started, you know, just what's your reaction to seeing these reports about these high rises, you know, in Miami that were, you know, along the Miami coastline that are just that are sinking into the ground at substantial speeds? You know, three inches in a few years is a lot.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
My honest opinion, the first thing I thought is, man, I didn't think I'd be worried about structural engineering issues in my mid-40s.
But on a serious note, it's interesting because at first I was thinking about all the, like you're saying, and we live in Florida, so obviously for anyone watching us, you know, that we understand things like threats to the coastline and also dealing with hurricanes and like you said about things like barrier islands, the nature's own way of protecting areas, you know, inward from the coast with, with things like mangroves and barrier islands and all that and how those have been taken away through development and buildings are on the coast and all that. So it is interesting.
And then I thought of, okay, so is this going to be something that becomes a mass hysteria? Like, you know, that this becomes now the big topic of and everybody's scared to move to the coast and all that.
And I also started thinking, it's interesting because with the industrial age and the ability to build buildings as big as we can build them now, because I started thinking that, you know, you think about what's on our coast here in, in Miami, where we live. And also like you mentioned cities like New York, Jakarta, Venice, these, these. And I know Venice is older, but, but for the newer cities, you know, you've got 100 story high rises, 70 story high rises. And these buildings weigh a lot. I mean, I don't even know how much a hundred story building weighs, but I can imagine it, it puts a lot of pressure on the earth beneath it. Then you think about in Florida, we're on sitting on limestone, which is kind of a porous stone, versus maybe other parts of the world where they have different type of stone and sediment underneath the ground. And it makes sense that we've had 50, 70, 80 years of this type of size of structures on the coast. And you know, if the earth moves underneath over time now we're learning that. And so I think the next question is how is humanity with 8 billion humans and a majority of them living on or near coasts, how are we going to account for this? And to me that's, that's the bigger part of this conversation. Because now that we know this is happening, what are we going to do about it?
[00:04:55] Speaker A: No, I think that's interesting. And I mean you mentioned some of those cities, you know, that we had talked about offline. You know, just like when, when I first saw this, what I first thought of was Jakarta, which is Indonesia, that's the capital. It has been the capital of Indonesia. And that's like sinking and has been reports of sinking, like by feet, like tens of feet. Like I think it's up in the reports like 16ft or something like that, that it's dropping down. And what that comes from a lot of is the. They're pulling out groundwater, you know, and then that's affecting what everything is sitting on top of the stone and all that. And so much so for them, like you said, what is this going to do? How are we going to react to this? Is going to create hysteria, you know, whatever. But like, in Indonesia, they're moving the capital, you know, from Jakarta, which is a major metropolitan area, it's been the capital for a long time, to another place that's not sinking, so to speak. So this is not something that is, you know, like, that is unheard of, you know, for, for cities. I mean, New York City, you know, the reports are that New York City is, is sinking, but that's millimeters. That's a small amount. And then as you point, you know, mentioned also we talked about Venice, you know, Venice being, you know, like an area where we, we associate Venice with being of the water, so to speak, and, you know, with the streets that are, that are canals and all that kind of stuff. And so this doesn't seem to be, you know, like. And then also, I guess you connect to the idea of climate change, you know, which. How Earth may be changing and if. Is it a bigger problem if something's sinking? In the abstract, is that one problem? And then if something sinking, if the land is sinking while the sea is rising, that may be a bigger problem or a compounding factor on that. So all of that thrown in, it seems that this is just something that modern society moving forward is going to have to deal with. And as you said, most population centers being close to the coast, seems like many of these are going to have to deal with either land sinking, sea level rising, or some combination of both. And it's going to. I don't know that we're going to have some mass exodus from the coast that may. It may come to that at some point, depending on what happens. So it really seems like. And like Venice, you know, Venice has these major structural plans and what they've been working on for. They have one they're about to complete that's been working on for a couple of decades now. And it seems like, like, again, those people aren't looking to leave Venice. They're looking to figure out ways using technology and structural engineering to make where. Where they are right now, despite the fact that it's sinking and the sea is rising to make it still habitable. So it seems like with the Miami issue The first question, and they seem to be looking at this is, okay, is it sinking? Is it even, you know, are we going to have structural issues in any of these buildings because of what's happening? And then the second thing will be, okay, well, what are we doing? And the city of Miami, or Miami, the South Florida region, like you said, we're residents of this. They already do a lot to manage water level, you know, in terms of pumping water here and there and everything like that. So that's not something completely new. And as you've talked about, you know, like, even with seawalls and stuff and how they've been building those up. So it's not something, it seems like that is. It sounds more shocking and more crazy. Like I said, if I said that Cobra or some villain was doing this, we'd be like, oh, you know, up in arms and stuff like that. But it seems like something that's just kind of a modern issue that populations, many population centers have to deal with. And so it's just a matter of how to deal with it. I don't even know that you'll even get much hysteria absent things like the tower collapsed and collapsed in Surfside years back. I mean, that will create it and your buildings start falling. But if things are sinking slowly or sea level is rising slowly, I think we've seen people aren't going to be inclined to change their habits.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: Yeah, well, let's not. Let's hope not for the sake of our property values. So in South Florida. But now when you're talking about the Jakarta moving to capital at that main. See, that's why it's good. They didn't build the capital. They didn't pick south beach as the capital, United States, you know, that would have been a problem, right? Yeah, would have been a problem having a bunch of politicians on south beach trying to work, but that's a whole different story.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Hey, the way things are going now, man, people probably wouldn't have that big of a problem if the politicians sunk into the ocean.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: No comment.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: No comment.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, but self citizenship, man. Yeah, no, but it's, it's, it's an interesting conversation because, I mean, look, the reality, and I think this is what I'm saying, like, it's kind of like climate change and how people that were more on the denying that humans were affecting the change of climate, let's say in the last hundred and fifty years, their argument would be, well, you know, the climate's changed over world history, you know, the history of the earth. And it Changes. And we've had ice ages and this, that. And that's true, obviously, to me, I still believe that humans have influenced the rate of climate acceleration in the last hundred years. But both can be true. Right. And so my thing is, we also don't appreciate, I guess, as much that the ground moves too. It's not just earthquakes that cause the ground to move when you're on a coast, especially a coast, not like let's say the Pacific coast, which has a lot of cliffs and kind of more rocky outcrops in the sense that, that it takes much, much longer, like eons for the earth to kind of move, you know, that type of stuff. On the, on the east, on the Atlantic side of the United States, we have a much more sediment and kind of porous coastline. And, you know, Savannah, Georgia is all swamps, Florida's all swamps, you know, like up until probably you get to the Northeast, like you're saying, even I would say north of Washington D.C. in the Chesapeake, that's all swampy, kind of traditionally area. So to build large structures right on the coast.
Yeah, for 20, 30 years, 40 years, probably. It's all good. But at some point, you know, Even if it's 100 years from today, you know, that coastline might naturally move on its own. And, you know, again, this is where I think the greater combination of all these forces in our society play out, right? Because we have developers who want to build something and make money now, that's their business model. They're not necessarily worrying about what's happening in 70 years. You got people that want to live on the coast, right? It's nice to live on a beach and be the eighth story and look over the ocean every morning. So they're not trying to, you know, worry too much about things that are happening way down the road that they might not even be alive for. And in some cases, you might have the politicians that want to get a little bit of grease just because to go around an environmental law or some law about how close you should build or how high you should build.
And then you have the regulators and the kind of overseers from the bigger parts of the government that are either going to do their job and enforce certain things for the long term good of the nation and for the structure of properties and all that, or they're not. And so I think when we're talking about these big long term things and how the earth affects where we live and all that, it kind of takes a combination of, from that developer, from the ground all the way to the High level of the regulatory state. And, you know, that's ebb and flow.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Yeah, well, but, and we know that generally speaking, people don't move until the problem reaches a certain critical level, you know, like. And so, like, with the tipping point, so to speak, like, that's why the example of Jakarta is pretty instructive in that, yeah, once you start dropping 10ft, 12ft, 15ft, people will take action. They're like, all right, we got it, we're just leaving, you know, the capital, you know, we're just leaving and then we're going to do what we can to try to save as much of the city as we can, you know, but when you're talking inches, when you're talking, you know, things like that, it's just not going to be something that really gets people going. In the same way that, like, and we've talked about this, like, the people who deny that human activity was connected to the climate changing at all, a lot of times it wasn't that they were coming at that from a basis of scientific rigor. They were, they didn't want to have to change anything. You know, like, it's always like, all right, well, I don't want to change. So I'm going to say, what allows me to take that position that I don't want, that supports the fact that I don't want to change. Why would I go down the road of a logic and reason and, or science that would make me do something I want to do? You know, and so we see that, we'll see that with stuff like this as well, you know, like, and again, the, the type of immediate issues that would cause people to immediately say, hey, what do we need to do here? We need to do something immediately would be as if buildings start falling or, you know, like the example of Jakarta where it's like, okay, yeah, we're dropping, you know, yards, you know, something like that. And so it's something again, we're going to be living with it, we're going to be dealing with it. I think with the climate change piece, it's probably more of just an exacerbation, really. This seems to be a population growth piece, like just more and more people trying to squeeze in more and more areas.
One way you do that is to build up, you know, and so, and as you said, those, those building up those structures can be very heavy. And, you know, we'll see over time how that affects the ground underneath. So, but nonetheless, I mean, like I said, it's something interesting, something to keep an Eye on, you know, we're not. We don't have to belabor the point. So, you know, I definitely want to move on to the next topic.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: We can, if people are very interested in hearing about the structure of buildings on the coast, I mean, we could stay on this for like two hours.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: You go into structural engineering and drainage and all that kind of stuff.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Yeah, we don't have to, of course, keep us moving.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: So. But yeah, we definitely appreciate you joining us on this, this part, this part one of our episode. Join us for part two and we'll have a part three as well. And we'll talk to you then.
All right. For our next topic today we saw a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal talking about professionals, young professionals in the financial industry, particularly that and just the epidemic of Adderall and ADHD drug use in terms of the one, the work demands that they're under, you know, working 20 hours a week, you know, 18, 20, 22 hours a week or excuse me, a day, 80, 90, 100 hours a week. And that this has become, or it's gone in many cases hand in hand with increased use of these ADHD drugs like Adderall, which allow you to. To focus and improve your ability to do these kind of things and to be able to go that hard, so to speak. And what it reminded me of when I first saw that was just like I remember seeing this and having this be a thing as far as in educational circles as well, higher education, college students, even down to high school, in some cases, graduate students, everything where that would be part of the studying and. Or the booking kind of thing. And so wanted to get your thoughts on it. So what is your reaction? Tunde, as a man who came up kind of in a part of the financial industry and so, you know, the kind of competitive nature it is and how, you know, and trying to outwork people and trying to always be, you know, have these deliverables you got to hit and how the pressure might be on to get every edge you can. But, you know, do you think this is something that. Is that we should be concerned about from a societal standpoint or is it just kind of not. Not that big of a deal? Not too much different than people drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: I'm thinking about the audience right now because there's a group of people that I'd be happy and upset if I say yes or no, depending on.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: You can't do that. Gotta call it like you see it, man.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: No, no, I'm saying depending depending on how they Behave, they'll be happy or sad. With, with my response, I would say this.
I think, you know, like anything artificial, if you're, if you're abusing it. Yeah. Could it be an issue? Yes, it be an issue with society. I think right now what I saw in the article we read is that around 14 million Americans are prescribed these type of drugs right now, you know, or whenever these stats were taken in recent times. So we got 330 million Americans. So that's well under 10%, you know, closer to maybe four, three and a half, 4%. So I wouldn't say it's an epidemic or a big thing to panic about, but what I would say is there's something to be said that those 14 million people are most likely, like you said, concentrated in parts of our economy and our culture and our lives. In terms of finance, Wall street, law, let's not forget your profession, the legal profession, pretty sure they're taking advantage of these drugs. The medical profession, right, Like ER doctors, you know, staying on their feet for hours. Maybe they're need a little bit of help. Politicians that, that need to go all night, you know, that kind of stuff in terms of, you know, being in different places. And that's what I mean.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: Probably seems like politicians than the aides of the politicians.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: Yeah, but, but that's what I mean. It's like, but these are people. Think about it. If you're in healthcare, law, finance, politics, they are in an important part of our society that's, you know, you know, people at the top of those various sectors of our, of our, of our system are making decisions that affect all of us. So that's where I say, I wouldn't call it a pandemic or epidemic, but if you've got a, you know, that type of drug use and a concentration of people that are making decisions about the rest of us, I would be a bit concerned because what the article shows us is that this reminded me more like steroids in sports, that it's going to all be about performance, to win the game at all, at whatever cost. And I think if we're looking at our society like finance, like health care, like law, you know, maybe I don't want someone at the top of a firm just worrying about the immediate gratification of settling that transaction so they can make, you know, a billion dollars when it might be, you know, these might be decisions that they're making that affect all of us and how our society functions. So, you know, I don't know if that's a long way Away long winded way of saying that I don't think it's an epidemic for all of us, but I'm concerned that this seems to concentrate in areas kind of in the halls of power in these various parts of our, of our, of our society that are important.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, and I think that with this, you know, this is, kind of brings in that classic balance of hey, it's a free society. And you know, many people would say, hey, you know, we shouldn't be. Drugs should be, you know, something that people can access to if humans have wanted to alter their consciousness or alter their state since humans were humans. And so this is just kind of a part of that, the Stewart analogy or kind of tie that you drew. That's where my mind went to immediately here, this, these, it sounds like the reason then I thought the same thing when these, when we talk about this a lot in higher education, but the reason people are using these things sounds a lot like the reason why people use performance enhancing drugs in sports. Now those are directly competitive, but when you're in school, you know, it's indirectly competitive. You're trying to get as high up in your cl. If you're doing this, you're trying to get as high up in your class as possible. You want to be number one in your class or in the top 10% or whatever it is, or if you're at the lower end of the spectrum, you're trying to get over some threshold. So there's an indirect level of competition with there or going on there. And then in these, you know, these, these type of highly competitive, highly rewarding from a financial standpoint professions then. Yeah, like that, that's something you get a million dollar job by, by doing this, you know, and then going 20 hours a day or something like that. And so it definitely. Now the difference is, you know, in directly competitive situations like with sports, if you allow this to go, then it creates a situation where everyone, almost, almost everyone has to do it. Because if everybody, if you do it and everybody else is, then you're going to be at such a disadvantage that you won't be able to compete, so to speak. Now in an indirectly competitive thing, like who is the real victim here is the guy who doesn't, won't take Adderall and therefore can only work 8, 16 hours a week and therefore gets his performance review and gets fired. That is that something that we're cool with as a society. If the bar is raised to where, you know, whatever drug is needed in order to consistently hit that Bar, then are we pushing out people who aren't willing to sacrifice their bodies in that way? And ultimately, that's the question that you come to in this respect. The other thing that stands out to me about this is the social effects. Like, it seems like when they talk about a lot of these drugs and the focus level that it allows you to attain, it seems to come at the expense of other things. Like, it seems to make people more antisocial in terms of doing things other than work. You know, like, oh, I don't want to interact with people because there's no direct benefit to my objective here. And so as you've talked about the concentration of where people are in this type of thing, like, are we good with. I mean, people. Everybody's so worried about AI and depersonalization of all these decisions and stuff like that, whether it be in health care and all that. It's like, well, hold up. We probably are losing if we got people that are, you know, juiced up on after all making a bunch of decisions too, because they're. It's definitely going to have them looking at things not from a socialized standpoint, but more in a robotic way.
[00:21:49] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think the article that we're kind of referencing here that basically.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Which will be in the show notes, by the way.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Yeah. There was a gentleman who mentioned that basically he found that not only that his behavior and how he looked at what he was doing for work had changed, that everything was about the transaction getting to the next thing. That was very impersonal in how he looked at his own work. It also hurt his personal life because he started saying, like, well, why would I go meet somebody new that's going to take me away from focusing on this? And he slowly started. Seemed like he lost friends and he kind of just had no social life. And they talked about some other examples. And that type of behavior for an individual can lead to things like depression and a downward spiral. Because again, we've talked about, not only in our show, but in our society, there's been conversation about things like the epidemic of loneliness. And I think you make a great point bringing up about the concern about, you know, we have, you know, this recent stuff going on with the shooting of the United. United Healthcare CEO and the idea that AI is making decisions to deny claims. And people don't like that because it feels very impersonal. And it's a great point you make that when people are hopped up on these kind of drugs, they're also very impersonal making decisions that have yeah, no, no regard for anything other than what's in front of them right now on a spreadsheet, you know what I mean?
And so I do think we need to broaden that part of the conversation out.
And it's because it comes back to like, well, what kind of society do we really want here? You know, and I know that sounds kind of utopian and like, you know, I'm trying to be Mr. Esoteric Guy, but if you look at what we're going through as a society right now here we're at the end of 2024, just to give some frame of reference, right. December of 2024 and we just had that healthcare shooting and there's big debates and national debates in our culture about kind of what, what's going on here, what's the role of health care, what's the role of all this stuff. And I think, yeah, when we see people at the top of these type of industries that like you're saying it's. And that's why I think the, the steroids and the performing enhancing drug analogy is so good because everything is so hyper competitive. And this again is where regulation is supposed to come in. Just in sports, like you said, they regulate what we can put in our body as athletes so that it keeps somewhat of a living level playing field, number one. Number two, that way the people that really have talent genuinely can excel and the people who might have excelled to.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Do things aren't forced to do these other things just to keep up with the, with the people who are less talented than them.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And then, and then you're also, what are you doing? Because historically it has shown that a lot of human beings will make decisions out of this type of competitiveness or fear of loss or whatever that really hurt themselves under greater society in the long run. Because even with sports we talk about steroids and stuff like that has negative effects long term on them, on their body. And just like these drugs have negative long term effects on how these people interact with society. So yeah, if more people were on these drugs, we'd probably have more tension and it'd be a more difficult society. So I'll say that. Interesting.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: I think you got to the right question and that is kind of, and I know you said kind of threw water on it a little bit, like it's kind of sappy, but what kind of society do we want to be? But I think we've already made that decision and like we have decided we want to be a push, push, push, go get it, you know, capitalist Growth at all costs, society. We've already decided that, you know, and so this is just a natural outgrowth of that. Like this is completely logical and makes 100% sense. If you put, put, if you put it in frame in that context of growth at all costs, your health, cool. That's a, that's a fair cost to give up for growth. The environment we've decided hey that, that's, that's a fair cost to give up, you know, from you know, for growth. Our families, you know, family life and family like people who make decisions, prioritizing family kind of look at a little side eyed like you know, I don't know that guy, you know, he could be doing a lot more, you know, but he's trying to be there at his kids sports games. I mean what's that all about, you know, type of thing. So we've already, we've decided, you know, and so if you, this type of thing, I don't know that this can be addressed from a regulatory standpoint because this is a cultural thing. And so unless the, the culture changes some, you know, then I think this is kind of the inevitable outgrowth of that. And that's where it's different so to speak than the, when you talk about competitive with sports, that is a sandbox, you know, like that, that we're creating a sandbox. When we're creating a national football league or an NBA or anything like that. Like we're creating a sandbox and then we're playing the rules of the game there, the salary caps and drafts and all these things that if you want to just have a pure, you know, competition, none of those things would be there. And so they, the ability to regulate performance enhancing drugs would just be, is consistent with all that, so to speak. But in the larger society growth is what we worship, so to speak. And so this is, this is kind of like this is the outgrowth of decisions as far as, or just the culture that we already buy into. And to me that's the kind of the biggest thing that you see here. And so yes, if you do, if you, if you're concerned about this then the way to address this is more about trying to, to, to create a culture where a more holistic view in terms of personal development and you know, just the, what we do, it's not all just we got how, how what, what, what percentage growth do we get this quarter, what percentage growth are we getting next quarter? Because that is what turns the gears of the society we live in more than anything else that I See, and I'm not saying that's good. I'm just saying that's what, that's exactly what's happening.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: Well, you're right. And that's the tension. I think that's why, honestly, so many people, I would say this. There's a lot of people who have. Are at the top of their various industries and you know, all that. And they're pretty miserable. And it goes back to this idea, money camp, all your happiness and all that. And, you know, I know a lot of people don't believe it, some people do. But the idea is like in the article that they interviewed a psychiatrist.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: But just real quick, I mean, yeah, money can buy happiness if you have no money, but when you, once you have money, you can't sustain the happiness. Like it's. Money can't buy happiness is like one of those relative things. Like, yeah, I can't pay for somewhere to live or I can't pay to eat. I'm unhappy because of that. Well, yeah, if I had money, it would solve those problems that just. It won't. Once those problems are solved, the money won't necessarily continue all those needs.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Yeah, and so, and so, and that's what I'm saying, like, that's what I mean, we have this tension in our society because think about it, we all, I mean, most people seem to like the ideas of things like family values, right? Like you said, we have to make those. Well, but that's where I'm going. Like, you and I both are in industries that are very, you know, can be very taxing on your time and emotion and energy. If we're at, let's say, a big firm, right? And if we were at the Manhattan firm or whatever, and you're right, you and I have kids and we're married and there's a tension there, right, because our kids have sports and their wives want to see us, you know, and all that stuff. And so I've been in corporate America where that culture was like that, you know, 20 years ago, where it was like if you kind of were a dad that wanted to go see your kids, you know, softball game on, you know, 5:00 in the evening. You, you people look at you funny when you left at the office, like you weren't, you know, go on, it's fun.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: And so, and that's a pressure, right? And so we say we, we say we want to have family values and have the nuclear family stay together, but then we have an environment where if we, if we don't somehow like you said, create the culture. And I don't know how you do that, but it's just if we don't change and say, okay, not everything is about growth, right? Like, not everything is about squeezing the last blood out of, drop a blood out of every piece of stone here. And you know what? People should have a life because it makes them happier. And if they're happier, they'll probably be a different type of worker and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And when I, when I thinking about that psychiatrist in the article who said over 50% of his patients are Wall street types and it was actually two of them, they interviewed two psychiatrists that both said the same thing. And obviously these guys were in New York where they're in, obviously they're in an ecosphere where there's more of those people around. But it made me, reminded me that there's been studies done that people at the top of these type of industries, corporate titans, law, Wall street, there's usually a level of sociopathy. And I think that's one thing that these drugs like Adderall help. People that aren't natural sociopaths become a little bit sociopathic. So they can stay in that focus and they can stay in that kind of mindset where they don't have empathy and they're not worried about going home to watch their kids sport. They're not even worried about themselves. They don't stop to eat, you know, stuff like that. They're just on. And again, that goes back to okay, so, you know, is that how we want everybody, if as a parent, me and you and anyone listening that has kids, is that how you want your kids to grow up, to be stressed out work? I mean, this article says some of These people work 20 hours a day on like a six week project to close some 26 billion dollar deal. And I get it, you know, they're probably celebrating all that afterwards. But that's so unhealthy.
And they talked about, oh, go ahead.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: But no, I was gonna say, I mean, because I do want to wrap this up. And yeah, this is, but this is where you get into the idea of the free society. Because the question of whether or not that's something that we, that I would encourage my kid or you wouldn't like, you, you know, for your kids or whatever, like what you, what a person would encourage. But also the other question is whether or not you think that society should be cutting that off altogether, you know, like, should that be an option for people? And so, and that's where you get into. It's like, well, hold on, your sensibilities aren't necessarily the sensibilities for, for, for everyone, you know, so to speak. So while I might think that this is an unhealthy way to be, and then I might be willing to say, hey, I'm going to prioritize, you know, time with my family a little bit more, you know, then a person who does this, these, a lot of the professions now I'm in a profession and that I'm, as an attorney, that it does lend more towards, hey, push, push, push, push, push. But if, you know, if I, if I take the mindset, okay, I'm not going to necessarily do that. I'm going to try to find a way to, to, to, to earn, but also to, to have the family life, then that option should be available to me. But I don't know that I'm in position then to turn around and tell everybody else who, you know, hey, you guys got to be like this as well, you know, so that's where some of it is, a choice, you know. And so the question is, and as you pointed out, once it becomes the pressure to turn people who may not, who may not be self selected as a Wall street professional because they, they just want to go hard 20 hours a week, but they're there and then they feel the pressure to be in that because that's how you get ahead there. Is there a solution for that? I'd say probably not. You know, it's probably the kind of thing where it's self sorting. Like if you don't want to have that lifestyle, then you have to decide not to be there. Which is something that we saw in the article. People, they were like, I got to remove myself from this situation because yeah, this situation is not something that's complimentary to the way I want to live my life, so to speak. And so, and you got to, you got to, I don't know that you foreclose that option is what I'm saying. But you can still, you can talk about how one thing that does come up often, you know, whether it be at the schools or at these professions, is that a lot of people, not all people, but a lot of people will say, I just didn't know all of the downsides that came with this, you know, beforehand. And they may have chosen it even with knowing, you know, but I think freedom is one on one part, being able to make choices like that, but on the other hand, at least having some level of information to make informed choices. So you Know, but, but I definitely want to close this up from that.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: That was the first time I got drunk. That was my, when I was young. That was my attitude. I didn't know, I didn't know it was going to be like that.
I didn't.
[00:33:52] Speaker A: Well, well, I think from the message on your shirt and I. The shirt for, for the party, the audio audience, Bourbon makes it better. I think that, that I don't think that not knowing was too big of a problem for you.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
When I was a teenager, I couldn't even handle a bourbon. So this shows, this shows my maturity now. But back then it was, you can.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: Handle structural engineering, you can handle bourbon.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Bourbon. Yes. Back then it was Southern Comfort and Mad Dog and St. Ives.
All the really exotic stuff.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Oh yeah, exactly. All the young man stuff. Not Adderall, but. Yeah, the Mad Dog.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: Exactly. But I think. Remember that?
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I remember. I remember. Remember the headache.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: There you go. So, but yeah, we'll close this topic up from there. We'll have one more topic later on. So please join us then as well.
All right. For our next topic today, we wanted to discuss the. Well, we've seen these recent allegations, accusations against Jay Z. Rape accusations.
The accusations are that he and Diddy were involved in a rape of a 13 year old and which is, you know, pretty serious, serious allegation and there's a lawsuit behind it and so forth. And now understanding that it's very difficult in situations like this to really know what is true and what is false, particularly at this initial stage where, you know, anybody can make any accusation and, you know, like file a lawsuit, you know, so, and then anybody can deny anything. You know, like there's, there's no connection to what's true and what's not at this stage, as far as what we've seen reported. But that set, setting that aside, one thing that is of note in this instance is Jay Z has had a very, very, very aggressive and strong response to the accusations and the lawsuit. And so I wanted to ask you, you know, what, like, obviously whatever comments needed as far as the actual, the allegations and what he's been accused of in this civil lawsuit. It's not a criminal lawsuit, but a civil lawsuit.
So, you know, setting aside, or if you commenting on that to the extent you need to, but also, what do you think as far as the way Jay Z has strongly pushed back against the allegations, including, you know, going at the lawyer who is, you know, who filed the case and everything like that? Like that, that the, the, the aggressiveness of his pushback has been not something that we see all the time with, with things like this.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, he, maybe he, maybe he saw, you know, someone won their second election and, and realized, hey, you know, you better fight like hell. Like it works.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: That's the right approach.
Taking notes.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's my compliment over there. You know, it's like, hey, that works. Obviously, people respond to boldness and, and to. Yeah, you know, the ability to really push back, you know, to show people that you're not going to be pushed around or at least that, you know, you're willing to stand up for yourself. And I think there's something kind of primal and subconscious when we all see someone do that within this.
[00:36:52] Speaker A: And just, I guess to fully frame that when you hear like PR traditionally you go back 30, 40 years or just kind of this traditional PR was kind of like you no comment, stuff like this, or you just deny. But not necessarily aggressively pushing back and not to give oxygen to the story or all of the different reasons that PR people have kind of taken that approach to kind of traditionally. But as you're right, as you've seen, like, you're talking about, you're correct. We've seen a different approach in recent years, recent decades. I guess just recently for some people, when accusations like this come out, to really, really go back hard, which is in contrast to kind of that traditional advice, but has proven, at least in some cases, to be effective in shaping the narrative.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: Well, and I also think it depends who the messenger is. I mean, Jay Z specifically, more than many others of his type of fame, is. Has been a very quiet guy who's a public figure. I mean, he doesn't sit there and all over social media all the time. He doesn't talk, do a lot of interviews. So I do think it's like Michael Jordan. I remember, remember when that guy Donald Sterling on the Clippers and all that racist stuff came out.
[00:38:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:03] Speaker B: And it wasn't sure what they were going to do with him. Are they going to make him sell the team or not? And I remember it was a Sunday afternoon and Michael Jordan made a statement that basically that he had to go. And I remember saying to myself, that guy's done, meaning Donald Sterling. Because I just thought like, Michael Jordan is always quiet. And so when he spoke, he was like, whoa, okay, now we gotta take this. And I feel like either that or.
[00:38:24] Speaker A: He had already read the room and saw that it was happening. And so either way, it was once Michael Jordan did it. You knew that the Level of controversy as far as pushing him out was going to be reduced.
[00:38:34] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
But it's like, I feel like it's a similar thing, obviously different topic, but, like, Jay Z's always quiet. He doesn't usually, you know, the public usually doesn't hear directly from him. So to hear from him in this bold manner, I think is a good strategy if you want to talk about the strategic way to deal with it, because kind of wakes everyone up. So, man, he's pretty strong. I wonder, is this real? And the other thing is, I mean, look, I don't want to comment on the actual allegation in too much detail because, look, if it's. We don't know. That's my attitude. If it's true, it's disgusting, clearly. And if it's not true, it's not true. Right. And so I'm not going to sit here and try and debate that. Now, I do find it interesting, and this is not to knock the alleged victim, but I mean, I think this is why we also have a statute of limitations, right? Because we're over here having to argue and rehash something that happened almost 25 years ago in terms of. Not me and you personally, but meaning the court of law, people got to go back and dig up witnesses and stuff. And I mean, the accuracy of that stuff, I would think can be called into question. And I'm not gonna. Again, I want to be very clear. Anyone who's been a victim of sexual assault, I think their memory will be pretty clear for the rest of their Life, whether it's 50 years, 25 years or whatever. So if this really happened, I'm not saying that this girl's memory changed. I'm just making the point that chauffeurs over the, you know, the limo drivers, the security people, all those people that 25 years, a long time. And so to be trying to have a serious case and bring something serious like this to the floor 25 years later, I'm not saying that if you, you know, the young lady doesn't have a right. I'm just saying that to me, this is why we have the statute of limitations, because it's hard to go back and start prosecuting stuff that happened so long ago that. That, you know, like, might not even be alive anymore, you know, also.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: But also witness availability. But also, reliability of memory is affected by time even. I mean, of anybody. I mean, that's kind of. Again, I'm not saying that specifically about any person, but, yes, that's that's always difficult for me as well is just when time goes by. It's just like I, I don't trust my own memories to be like a computer memory 30 years or 20 years ago. Like I feel, I know that my own memories are clouded by my experience, you know, and stuff like that and, and how I remember things kind of evolves versus if I watched a video of it like that, recorded it exactly how it happened. And so that's, that's risky, you know, it's risky. But like you said, trauma, we, we know that can do different things with the memory, you know, like that can make it more reliable, that can make it less reliable, but like it can do different things. And so it's unfortunate, I think, for everyone, you know, when it comes out much later, because it becomes harder to get to the truth of it because if it's true, then we as a society need to do something about it. And if it's not true, then it's going to be harder for the person who's the victim of a allegation is not true to prove themselves to disprove it. So it makes it, it's just harder on every, it's harder on everybody involved.
What's interesting to me about this also, like you said, it depends on who you are in terms of whether or not the strategy of pushing back aggressive can work for you in a situation like this. This also reminds me of kind of when Diddy, because Diddy is part of this accusation as well, and when Diddy first started getting hit with these types of things, you know, before the grand reckoning he's had, you know, over the past year or so, he would usually respond back very aggressively as well. And, but now he doesn't do that anymore. And so it's almost like now that he's been tainted to a certain degree, his PR team or his, you know, his like, look, it doesn't even make any sense like there people could opportunistically come after him now, so to speak, because it's like nobody's gonna believe him if he comes back super strong anyway. Like he's just, he, he's in a state where he's lost all of his credibility because of how hard he came out and because of what's been shown, what the videos that have come out and all this other types of stuff and you know, baby oil jokes and everything like that. So he's not just, he's not gonna come out like that. What's interesting though, when you, when you or so, so you take that in. But then it's like, okay, so it's interesting to me that she has this allegation that includes Diddy, but also Ropes and Jay Z, because she would have very little resistance relatively if she, if initially the other, the people being accused, it was just Diddy and the other people were, their names weren't released. And so I think there's, there were two other people and their names weren't released. And so when you bring, when Jay Z's name gets tied to it, like, then it's like, okay, yeah, you're going to get, you're bringing all of the blowback now because he does, his reputation is such that he does have a lot to lose one and then a lot to gain by trying to shape the narrative as quickly as possible and not have the accuser shape the narrative as quickly as possible. So it's just all of these kind of these and, or I should say this to your point there, it's that boldness piece. So it's all these things of trying to manipulate the court of public opinion and again, not getting into whether it's true or not, because again, I firmly believe that we won't find out whether this is true or not. Like, this is going to be an issue of she may be able to, to prevail in court, she may get a settlement or he may be able to prevail in court. But whether it actually happened or not, I think is one of the least relevant things that's happening now. And that's the unfortunateness about when, when you wait that long, you know, like, again, if it happened, I hope that she's able to get some redress from this. If it didn't happen, I hope that he's able to get his name cleared. But we really, like, we just aren't going to really find out too much this late in the game about whether it happened. Most likely, if we do, then great. And so that's the unfortunate piece about it.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: Well, and it's interesting because, you know, as you said about how the young lady accused Diddy and then brings in Jay Z, it reminds me of that young lady.
I remember her first name was Virginia.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: I don't want to say it as if, let me just, let me clarify. I'm not saying as if she later on decided to name him as well. Like, I think that the way it was set up is that Diddy was named publicly, was released. His name was released publicly at first. Other names weren't released publicly, like who the. All of the subjects, their names didn't all get released.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: That's where I'm kind of going is it reminds me of that young lady, Virginia Griff. I can't pronounce her last name. It starts with a G. She was the one in that famous picture with Prince Andrew when she was 17 at Jeffrey Epstein's place.
Because, yeah, she accused Jeffrey Epstein first. But it was interesting that she also pointed at Alan Dershowitz. And that was one that made me go, oh, that's interesting. You know, and I think like the Jay Z's one is kind of like, all right, sometimes, like we know that these men at a certain level of wealth in certain cultures flock together, right? Meaning, like Dershowitz and Epstein are kind of New York Wall street law and finance types and, and wealthy guys that party together. And Jay Z and, and Diddy are hip hop guys and wealthy guys that party together. And you're right. And that's why I wanted to ask your question, because in reading about this, I read that the attorney who brought this suit, brought this young lady against Jay Z, is representing over 100 people that say they're victims of Diddy. And so again, for me, I'm thinking, okay, that shouldn't matter. But like you said about this court of public opinion, I'm thinking, okay, well, is this guy just taking in anybody and throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks? You know, meaning out of 100 cases, maybe, you know, a dozen of them are serious that really did get hurt by Diddy, and maybe, you know, another dozen are people that maybe were in the orbit and then the rest are people just.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: Well, it calls into question, it calls into question how he's vetting them, you know, because it's like, okay, yeah, maybe there, maybe he. For all we know, these are the hundred that came up to him. Or for all we know, maybe 400 people came up to him and 100 of them are the ones he accepted. And so we don't have that information to be able to evaluate him. Now, this is also the same attorney, this busby guy from Houston that represented a lot of the women that accused Deshaun Watson, the quarterback for. He was the quarterback of the Houston Texans at the time. Now he's a quarterback of the Cleveland Browns. But and all the. With the guy with the. That would always try to turn massages into happy endings with, you know, massage professionals, not with people who were sex workers. You know, so and so, like, he, he has, I don't know if he gets credibility because of that. Just because of the people that he was bringing there, like he was vetting people supposedly there and so forth. But yes, it all. It is about, like, this. This is a whole wrestling match about the court of public opinion. Like, what's going to happen in the legal case is severely hamstrung by the time that it took for this to come out.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: And so, you know, it's going to be about, okay, where everybody's trying to manage this public. This case in the public opinion. And what's going to happen. We don't know. One of the things I'll mention though, and this is not to undermine the accuser. This is not to undermine the accused.
I think that. Think the sexual assault thing, particularly, you know, like the. The social baggage we bring into it makes us in the public opinion, like us people giving our public opinion. I think that we're. We're really handicapped when it comes to these because so much what. Who gets accused, really, we. We make a lot of conclusions based on that in. In all of these cases. And like, I think the. The Duke lacrosse case, which was in the news recently, but there was the accusations there were some dancers that the Duke lacrosse players had at a party. And then these dancers after the fact, these are black ladies after the fact, and these are white lacrosse players. They came out and said they were assaulted, and this is a big deal and everything like that. And then recently, one of the dancers said, yeah, I made it up, you know, but I remember at that time, people were lining up on the accusations of who they believed and what they, you know, who they were pulling for, so to speak, based on the identity of the people that were either the accuser, accusers, like, oh, you know, these. These privileged white guys, yada, yada, yada, this is. Or the accused, like, oh, you know, these dancers, you know, yada, yada, yada. Like the black ladies that, you know, women of color, this and that. And. And so, like, it was really interesting to me looking at that in hindsight now with this here, because I think we all need to look in the mirror when it comes to this. Okay, yes, we are the court of public opinion. We're going to be judging all of these things that are happening that are really unknowable to us based on. We're not going to be judging it based on the accusations themselves and how plausible this sounds, how plausible that doesn't sound, because really, that's difficult to do. Like, the accusations don't really tell us enough to say, like, who this was, you know, or what, whether this happened, who did it and so forth. And so I just want the word of caution I give is that we're all going to bring our biases in as this court of public opinion, and we're most likely going to come down and start believing who we want to believe based on who they are, who they represent to us. Or do we want to believe Jay Z? Or do we want to believe that Jay Z could be this monster operating with Diddy to do this terrible thing? You know, and so it's just a word of question.
[00:49:30] Speaker B: And, and because as you bring it up, that up, I, I actually one of the best examples kind of in our recent cultural memory will be the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.
[00:49:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:40] Speaker B: Because remember, the Supreme Court justice, and like you said, it's a very similar thing. We're talking about. They, that the people that accused him of doing negative stuff, what he, you know, what a young lady who is now a grown woman, that happened when they were 17 and this guy was 53 when he's getting, you know, confirmed by the Senate for the Supreme Court. And I remember learning recently that so, so to finish that thought is people who watch Fox News, which I talked to, they were telling me, oh, he's a good man. He's getting unfairly persecuted. And then people I talked to that watch MSNBC or something like that would think he's a, he's a devil. Like, he's the worst thing ever. And you're right, it's that court of public opinion. And that's the importance of things like the media. Because think about, like you said, the tape for Diddy is a big deal because that's when it was like, all right, no one can deny this, but if the media turns on Jay Z, that'll shape public opinion more than if they don't. And that's, that's kind of that fourth estate thing, the power of, of, of the influence of the media.
[00:50:43] Speaker A: Maybe the lesson, so to speak, that Jay Z is trying to take heed of, you know, in terms of how other people have used. Either you want to discredit the media in advance, you know, or you want to try to prevent the media from turning against you. And so that may be kind of what his tactic is based on.
[00:50:59] Speaker B: Well, you know, yeah, I was going to say Michael Jordan used to be very good at that, meaning kind of controlling the media from turning against him. And you're right, there's a bit of a skill with that, that, that, that, that give and take. But I just want to finish this about Kavanaugh what. What also came out this year was that the Senate went ahead and. And kind of kept moving, knowing that there were 4,500 incoming calls to that hotline about Brett Kavanaugh being a sexual abuser. And it goes back to the hundred cases. And you made a very good point that this lawyer against Jay Z, whether he just got 100 people and said, let's go, or if we had five or 600, and these are the 100 he picked because he vetted them properly, we don't know. But my point is, it reminds me, though, because, you know, look, whatever Brett Kavanaugh did or didn't do with the ladies when he was younger, I really think it's hard to believe that he sexually assaulted 4,500 individual people.
So what I'm saying is that when these things get into.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: Quite prolific, you know.
[00:51:57] Speaker B: Yeah, he would.
[00:51:57] Speaker A: The Wilt Chamberlain of law students, you know, and that's a terrible. I shouldn't make that joke. I said I shouldn't make that joke. But.
[00:52:05] Speaker B: But she did. So anyway, I'm not going to go to. But. But now my point is just saying that. That.
Yeah, it's. It's. We need to know that when these things get into the public eye, it doesn't take away from any victims of who really suffered from anybody, but meaning more people will come in. Because we got hundreds of millions of people in this country and maybe a thousand or two thousand people are that mentally disturbed that they want all in on some kind of story like this. So I think that's what, again, makes this also more difficult when you're talking about cases like we're talking about that happened decades ago, and then these are famous people who are in the public eye. The media is making a big deal. You're gonna trigger some people that might not have a full deck of cards upstairs to also call in and be kind of like, yeah, yeah, I'm one of these two. And it makes it harder.
[00:52:56] Speaker A: Or, I saw this, or I saw that. Because again, it could be a lot of different things. You know, like, it could be people saying what they saw or what they heard and things like that. And I'll say this, like, this kind of ending point being that the thing is that to address the issue, to try to make things better moving forward, what we need to do is you focus on the now, and we got to try to make it so that situations are conducive to women. When something happens, for them to come out right away, that's what we need to do. The women, when they don't come out right away, it makes it more difficult for all of us, including them. But it's difficult clearly for them to come out right away, or, I mean, right next day doesn't have to be next day, but within the first month or so, like just relatively soon afterwards, we need to have a society that's sufficiently supportive of the women that will allow them to say something sooner so at least we can figure out, we can get to the bottom of it, you know, like we're capable of it, because when you come out 20 years later, I don't know that we're even capable of really getting to the bottom of it. And so. And that. That hurts everyone, you know, and so that I think is a place where we can try to do better as a society. You know, when, when something happens, let's try to make a environment that's conducive for people, for women to feel comfortable saying something, speaking up right away and not being ashamed or not being afraid to where they hold it in for this amount of time. And then eventually when they come out, we have all these other issues that stand in the way of us either holding someone accountable or someone being able to exonerate themselves. So, yeah, from there, I think we can wrap this.
[00:54:29] Speaker B: I'll finish with this, too. We need to do a better job holding the people in the orbit that I would call the scaffolding of these type of men as well, because I'm thinking now, R. Kelly, Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Cosby, there has been, you know, it's evidence that all these guys had contacts in law enforcement that they were paying off, you know what I mean? And that they were getting tips from when their house was going to get raided, you know, and all that stuff. So if we were serious about this, we would also be investigating who within the system helped these guys continue to do this to try and deter other people from helping wealthy guys get away with committing crimes, especially against young women. So, yeah, you know, that's part of it, too. It's not just these guys by themselves.
[00:55:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Because the. That's what we have learned as well, is that they. They can't pull it off by themselves.
[00:55:17] Speaker B: For 20, 30 years. Exactly.
[00:55:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I think we can wrap this topic from there. And yeah, definitely check out part one, part two of this today's discussion as well.
Thank you 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.
[00:55:33] Speaker B: I am Tunde Walana.
[00:55:35] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you soon.
It.
