Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we take a look at the debate that seems to be consuming the WNBA over whether transgender women should be allowed in.
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man who should have been podcaster rookie of the year year in 2020.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Tunde.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Ogunlana Tunde. You're ready to show them why you got the money back?
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I just, you know, gotta talk to you about that new contract.
I was that good as a rookie. You know, we need to talk up.
They call my.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: They got you on your rookie deal, man.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
How do we negotiate this one, man? Yeah, yeah.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Now before we get.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: See you after the show.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Before we get started, 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. We're recording on August 18, 2026. And Tunde, there's been a lot of coverage of the WNBA lately, but unfortunately this has not centered on all world rookie Olivia Miles of Minnesota or the unprecedented excellence of Asia Wilson of Las Vegas, but rather on Sophie Cunningham, a bench player for Indiana. She recently waded into the transgender debate, essentially asserting that transgender women should not be in women's sports.
And as we all know, there are a ton of people that are chomping at the bit to have this fight at all times. So once she throws that out, there are people, you know, it creates a lot of controversy and conveniently or not, substantially increases her profile now adding some fuel to the fire, which, you know, it didn't really need. You also have two washed out NBA players, former NBA players who washed out, each with some controversial things in their public past, now asserting that they're transgender and demanding entry into the wnba. So, Tunde, just to get us started here, what do you think, you know, kind of big picture wise about the transgender in women's sports debate as we've seen it evolve over time, which now, you know, is involving the WNBA and has caught fire. Now, you know now that Sophie Cunningham, a name that we all know, we didn't know before, but now we all know now, and now we got former NBA players in it and everything like that. What do you see what's going on here?
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Man, I see a big mess, but I don't.
So it's, it's a big mess, but it's got a lot going on in it, which is interesting.
So, like, like you mentioned, right, like we got former NBA players who are trying to, you know, say that they could. Should be able to play in the NBA because they feel like they're trans. And you have someone like you said Sophie Cunningham, who I think herself represents a lot, which is very interesting.
So we'll get into it. But I do think one of the things that struck me in thinking about this, as I was preparing for this conversation, I was brought back and thinking to the book that we did a year ago or maybe a little bit longer, Sapiens. And what we learned in that book was the importance of gossip in human evolution.
And that's where the serious part of this, to me, and not serious in a negative way, just thinking that, wow, this is playing out like the book described. Gossip is very important for us as humans. And this is a great example of it, because when I think about this topic of transgender, specifically in this sports stuff, specifically in the wnba, I'm thinking, okay, the facts are that there is no transgender player in the wnba, and there never has been.
There hasn't really been any serious talk about bringing transgender people into the NBA and all that. So it's like, all right, so there doesn't seem to be anything serious behind any of this stuff.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: This seems to all be abstract.
Yeah.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: And so that's why I started thinking about the term gossip. I was like, all right, seems like this is consuming a certain segment of our population, this topic. Right.
This is just another iteration of it with Sophie Cunningham.
She represents something herself, which I find interesting, just like the NBA players. And I wanted to just say this, and then. And then I want to hand it back for your thoughts. I looked up. I find Sophie Cunningham herself interesting. She said about NBA players, male, you know, the men basketball players, quote, they don't have the brain we do. And her point was saying that the men basketball players aren't as smart as the women players because they get to rely on their athleticisms more. So female basketball players have a much higher iq.
That was one thing she said. The other thing she said was that about Christianity and being Christian in the wnba, they want to hush you. And she said that there's a lot more women in the WNBA that would be open about their Christianity, but they might feel that that somehow would be seen negatively. So I'm not saying that to bring up those points for us to discuss. I'm saying it. Sophie Cunningham seems to be opinionated in many ways.
So, again, that's why it's interesting to me that this transgender thing is the one that catches fire. That's why I think of gossip. Okay, well, she said A lot of interesting things. But why is this the one that everyone's piling onto? And I think with the male NBA players, I would just say this.
I think they're just opportunists. I don't think this is. This is serious for them. I think they just, you know, like a lot of people we see in today's media landscape, this is a good way to get attention for yourself when you have failed somewhere else. So these guys didn't have good NBA careers.
They didn't. They couldn't make it against their own peers in a male meritocracy. So now they just want to, I think, be gaslighting and, you know, kind of keep themselves in the. In the media spotlight.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: The timing of it suggests that this is pure opportunism. Just that, you know, and you can go back and look at, you know, some of like one of the players, you know, has. Has been opportunistic before in terms of trying to take advantage of issues and push political agendas. One of them, you know, made claims previously about having some difficulties with mental health. So, you know, it's. It's, you know, it's hard to take that seriously. I agree.
You know, that part is kind of the. I think that I termed it as adding fuel to the fire because as you pointed out, this conversation is having happening in the abstract. Now, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have the conversation, but let's just means that the stakes of the conversation maybe should not be on 10 for everyone. Everybody's acting like this is do or die, because right now we're really just having the construct conversation in the abstract. And for me, I guess, you know, Harari, the author, you know, Yuval know, Harari's gonna get a lot of shout out today because this reminded me of the book Nexus, you know, and also just talking about how the ability to have a conversation, you know, and what I'm looking at, this, the transgender thing, and what it really reveals to me is our inability as a society to have a conversation. Like, I don't think it's a problem for Sophie Cunningham to bring this up now. Again, I note that she's coming from a place of not a lot of things fame, not a lot of notoriety. So this does conveniently raise her profile in a lot of ways. Makes gives her opportunity for endorsements that she might not have because of her play. This is very convenient for her. But if she's opinionated, she's opinionated, you know, like Charles Barkley is very opinionated. And he's made a media career after that, after a Hall of Fame basketball career. So they're not the same in that. But he was a Hall of Fame player and now he's a Hall of Fame, you know, media guy because he has opinions and, and that's fine. But what really seems to me, what stands out here is that anytime this topic gets brought up, the ability to have a conversation which is vital for people in a democracy, our ability just falls apart completely. You know, like this, this becomes a matter of the passions.
You know what it seems like to me, this is what I mentioned to you offline. It's like everyone has to be in one camp or another. There is no conversation. There is no exchanging of ideas. Well, what are we doing here? You either have to be in the camp of I hate trans people and we have to do everything we can to either make them not want to do this, not want to be public about it or something like that, or just go back to doing, living the life that I think they should be using living, or we have to be in this side of Trans people can do whatever they want and it doesn't matter the existing structures in society that may have been created without any thought of them. This isn't something like segregation, where segregation was created with black people particularly in mind, like those people right there. We're trying to keep them out.
Women's sports wasn't created with trans people in mind. Nobody was looking at trans people say, hey, how can we keep them out? Let's create a women's division. That's not how it worked. So you have to be in this thing of we're going to take apart structures and such things that we've had set up for other reasons and let trans people do whatever they want or I have to hate them one way or the other. And it seems like that's where the debate goes a lot of times with this and even with some of the comments that have happened afterwards where people want, like they, they want, like the people who are on the, in the camp of we, we should hate trans people and try to guilt them into or, or make them feel compelled to, to not live the life they want to live. They've been trying to get her to go further and like, oh, you know, and we should do that and, and, and that hasn't, you know, it hasn't played out necessarily the way that they, they, they've expected. But nonetheless, I, I, I really am struck by, hey, where are the people that are trying to say, hey, you know, like, which I would think would be the majority. So I'm surprised. Where are the people saying, hey, we don't have to hate people. People can. We could try to set up situations for people to live their lives, but at the same time, everything isn't about you. And, you know, if, if this is a society, we all have to work together. We have to live together. So just because you feel something doesn't mean that society has to bend and change everything in that moment, things that had nothing to do with you and the lifestyle you want to live. And so to me, like, there is, there's just a missing part of, of this debate that I rarely see. And maybe it's because anytime somebody tries to, to, to stake out, and it's not a middle position, it's not a moderate position, it's a position just acknowledging what's going on. But anytime tries to stake somebody tries to stake that out, they get attacked from both sides. And so then you end up, you know, again, sapiens. You end up better. You better pick a community, because at least if you pick a community, you have some, some, some support, you know, because if you're out in the middle, in no man's land, and again, not the middle of the debate, but just kind of a, A, A position that acknowledges the facts on the ground, then you're going to get attacked from everybody. You're not going to have a community.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. So there is one group that's trying to have this conversation publicly, and it's the WNBA from their, from, from their corporate office. Funny, it's here. I printed their response, and it's funny, I didn't know you were going to go here, but I won't read the whole thing. I'll read one little paragraph. Hate, abuse and demonization of any person or group of people, including transgender people, only feel fear, division, and harm. We will continue to have hard conversations, but we will not be used as political pawns.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So they're basically saying, just real quick, they've been attacked by the people who are the people that are hating the trans. And they've been attacked as not sufficiently strong against this issue. And then, and they've been attacked by the people who are on the side of, hey, let's let trans people do whatever they want, saying that, oh, they're not sufficiently accommodating and they're not making people feel welcome to. So that's kind of my point.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Because the interesting thing is, so there was another article I printed, which was basically no need to read it. But it basically was that there were people at a game recently, in the last two weeks that had shirts on basically supporting the idea that women's sports should be only for natural born female women. So clearly these people don't appear to be fans of transgender people playing sports with biological women.
And they were asked by the Indiana stadium security to put on a shirt over their shirts. And the WNBA actually came out and defended those people in the crowd.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: They shouldn't have been.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that they should. They shouldn't have been made to cover up. And they were saying freedom of speech and all that. So the point is very well taken, James. And as you're talking, it makes me think of the concern I have for our country at a bigger level. Not a joke here, is that our system was created to force debate and compromise. You know, the Congress, the co. Equal branches, everyone is supposed to stop and say, okay, maybe I can't get 100% of what I want, but if I can get 75 ratey and you get 75 ratey, we can do this together. And again, I think what you're identifying is the modern kind of, I'd say, information age media landscape, the way the Internet is and all that kind of forces us into our corners and doesn't allow us to have that. Because that's why, as you're talking, I'm like, in my head, that's why I pulled that quote out. I'm thinking, yeah, actually the WNBA themselves is trying to address this, but no one seems to care what they have to say. And they don't because why does it matter, James? Right? It's all about the baby faces and heels and who I like and who I hate. So it's, why do I care actually what the source is? I mean, we saw this with everything from the pandemic to serious things about economics like the tariffs and all that. One wants to listen to the people that seem to know what they're talking about. They want to listen to the people they like.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: Or. But also another thing you bring up here that I think is a very good point is that the sides, so to speak, have been battling over this for a long time. So they've coming in, they're. They're coming in ready to fight already. They're not coming in to try to learn what's going, you know, like, hey, what's. What, what are the facts on the ground here? You know, again, what's the history of women? You could get like, I'm not a person that says, you you should have to compromise on every issue. Some things, you know, like, hey, let's not do genocide. Like, that's something I don't. I think that there should be a debate and one side should win the side against genocide. But there are situations where, again, the facts on the ground matter. And if this was a situation where women's sports was created to keep trans people out, then the debate is different than if women's sports were created for the specific purpose of giving biological women something to do before. Before there was even a trans issue. Then you have to look at it differently. It's a different issue. It's not one of, hey, let's. It's not one of exclusion. You know, the issue isn't one of exclusion. The issue is one of how can we create something for someone? So do we undermine that purpose completely if we go in and allow people that were born men but then have transitioned to women into that? Like, should we create another lane? Like, what? We need to be a little more creative here in terms of our. Our conversations about this is kind of my point.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: I'll give you my direct answer. My answer would be, yes, we do undermine it. As much as I say that wanting to respect the trans community. Right. I think you're right. Women's sports was created for a reason, and it needs to be left alone.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: It predated this debate.
Predated this debate. Yeah.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: And I think that. And I think that, you know, we should be able to say that, but also still say, you know, we don't need to disrespect transgender people in general in our society. And I think that you're right. We did a show probably a few months ago, earlier this year about the Enhanced Games. And that was a separate lane created for people who want to compete in Olympic style sports, but take enhancements. Right. Steroids and growth hormones and things like that. So it's a way of saying, all right, there's enough people that want to do this. We can create a separate league for this or Olympics, another set of games for this, but still allow the purity of the Olympics without drugs also to exist. And I think that, you know, at some point we need to have this conversation of women who are born, women who grew up as women, who stayed women with all the estrogen and all that, and never changed anything, deserve to have their own sports leagues separate from transgender people who, we should all acknowledge there is a scientific reality of males and females. And, you know, without us making a whole separate show about that, it's not the same as straight, you know, 100% women born at birth who stayed women up until 30, 40 years old. Right.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: So.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: So I think that's. That's something we can all acknowledge. And I think that this reminds me, James, I just want to say real quick as you're talking, I keep thinking of Colin Kaepernick because you said something very important, which is Colin Kaepernick was. The situation of him kneeling was made to be a spectacle by those many in power at the time, but also those in media and people who wanted to grift and make money off of it.
But he was trying to bring up a topic that this country knows is important and has dealt with for a long time, which is the relationship between policing and black people. Right. And so. And so I feel like it's another example of that, where we have these topics in our society that do need to be discussed. Right? We got the policing topics with 14% of the population and how they feel about their being treated with. We got things like transgender people. Maybe that's a smaller percentage of the population, but that's still important. You want to respect people and all that. And we do have a First Amendment with freedom of expression and a bill of rights that allows adults to, if they're not hurting anyone else, you know, be free to live how they want. And the rest of us need to respect it.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: But you got to be careful. Just for the purposes of being complete, you got to be careful. It's not a freedom of speech issue. Nobody got arrested for.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: No, no, I'm saying.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: But what I'm saying is it's a bad. Look, I agree that it's like, well, hold up. That's not inciting violence. That's it. Like, that's. You want to express yourself. What I'm saying is bounds of decency.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: But that's what I'm saying. I'm saying more from the expression of the transgender people themselves. They have a freedom to be who they are, is my point. And so I'm just making the point that it's very similar. That's why I wanted to bring it up that whether it's the Kaepernick thing or this, the way that we have these conversations in our country today is the gossip way. It doesn't seem like people want to come together and say, okay, we know we got this problem here. We're all staring at it and talking about it, but let's move beyond the staring and talking and pointing fingers. Let's try and solve it. And I guess that's the point of the Congress, then that's why it's dysfunctional.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And actually, that's the difference between the people speaking on it and the leadership. You know, the leadership. You would want leadership in this type of situation to guide people away from the my camp. Your camp mindset and more of a how do we solve this problem? Like I said it, when women's sports was created, and this is kind of where mine. My mind is on this, similar to you. You know, we. It was because society decided they wanted this lane for women, for women, people that women, people that were born women. That's what society decided. So unless we decide we don't need that anymore, again, which would be a conversation, then we have to come up with another approach to accommodate trans people. Have brought a new factor for us to consider. Okay, fine. I'm not saying you got to hide that or you got to do something with that. I'm just saying I don't know that you necessarily can just. Just automatically plug that into the existing systems. If you're bringing something new to the table, then let's figure out how we can bring that in. That's a discussion. That's not a demand. Let me in to the binary situation solutions that have been set up before I came along. And so the demand shuts down the conversation. And then obviously the hate. The let's. Let's make these people uncomfortable shuts down the conversation. And so we got to get people out of those camps so we can figure out what to do with this, you know, like. And right now it's just. And I was going to ask you the question. I mean, we can finish on this part.
You look at it from the standpoint of, okay, why is this coming up now when it's like, well, hey, it's an election year.
How can be you? So do you. Do you make anything of the timing of this coming up, election time? And it's like, hey, you know, we got this, this issue that our society completely is unable to have any conversation about. Let's talk about this right now while we. While we run up on an election with all this crazy stuff in real, like, real political crazy stuff going on.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: So yes and no. So. And I prepared for this.
So the answer, yes, yeah, no, because I got a few notes here. We'll try and get through them without being too sloppy. I think the answer is yes, obviously, we got an election in three months in a midterm election. So I want to say, yeah, obviously, I think both political parties will pull out all the stops months before an election.
And I think that the transgender issue is probably one of the few remaining issues that the Republican Party may still have a little bit more trust than the Democratic Party right now in August of 2026. I just want to be clear because I know that's a moving target of timelines here and when people might hear this discussion.
But that's why I say yes in that way. But I would say no in the sense of it seems like the culture. Because I'm thinking of the Dylan Mulvaney thing with the Bud Light. Can remember that one. And the Dr. Seuss and the gas stoves and the stuff we've talked about. Right. Like over the years in our discussions here about the culture wars and the need to have this kind of constant interference so that there's a certain percentage of the population that always feels there's something disturbing them. And so what I was going to think about, James, was 20 years ago, you and I remember this name, Frank Luntz, who at the time was the big Republican kind of consultant guy that would do all the focus groups and stuff like that. And I remember around that time, too was when Bill O'Reilly brought us on Fox News when he was prime time, the war on Christmas, remember all that?
[00:21:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: And kind of the whole thing because of the war on terror with Islam versus the west and all this. So again, it's kind of reminds me of all that, that this is again, another need because I was, I was just preparing for this discussion and googling a few things. I found, you know, Joe Rogan weighed in and I quote, he said it's mostly big black gay ladies and a few scared looking Sophie Cunninghams. And that made me and you know about this WNBA thing. And it made me realize so many people are going to put what they want this to be about onto it. And that's why I started at the beginning with the different comments Sophie Cunningham has made, which, you know, you could look at it, be offended about. You know, we could see her and cry as men and say, oh, she said women have higher iq, Whatever. Okay. But my point is, is people focus on this one. And for Joe Rogan to say that, it tells me that he's bringing in a little bit more of it into it.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: He's bringing in kind of the racial element because this WNBA thing has all the greatest hits. Black women, black gay women, you know what I mean? Organization of mostly black, you know, so it's like this can be the greatest hits for a lot of people in our culture that have issues with certain things. And I'll say this because I want your thoughts on this.
James, I almost called you Jalen, which is my son, for the audience. That shows you my middle age. That was bad, James.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: My bad.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Apologize to my kid, too.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: But.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: No, but I was thinking about James. What's going on now that could be talked about other than this WNBA thing right now? The USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier in the Gulf Mediterranean Sea, has soldiers that are jumping off the ship because they're that miserable. That's not. That's something that people don't want to talk about. We've been at war with Iran since February 28th, and it appears to be an absolute failure for the United States. We're looking like Russia and Ukraine right now. So that's something no one wants to talk about. Gas prices are higher. The tariffs have caused permanent inflation. You know, I'm not even going to keep listing it out. I'm just saying that there's important things that I think usually rank higher on people's list of things that they say they care about. Health care in the United States. The fact that we say we can't pay for anything, but we spent. We sent $40 billion to Argentina recently.
All these questions. And let's not get into the show we did about the financial disclosure by the president and other people in this administration. So I guess for some people, this is a lot easier to focus on and a lot less painful.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Than to discuss the realities of what we're dealing with as the United States.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Well, it also allows the people to invoke the passions. You know, this allows you a lot of these things that you can be offended by some of that stuff. You can be galled. You can be, you know, oh, my God, I can't believe this. You know, but this gets people fired up, and it gets even. Even more important. It gets people fired up on polar opposites. And so you really get. It's something from, from the standpoint. Yeah. It's. It's the gossip thing, you know, it's like, okay, yeah, yeah, we. We got this one. This one. And I think you're right. I think that when you. Or I think you're right in particular about how this is one of the issues that the, The. Let's say the. The right in our country feels like and may actually have the, The, The. The high ground. I would say that while their approach is. I would disagree with their mindset where they're trying to force the debate to. I would disagree with what. If you look at from a big picture standpoint, what's happening here is that something new more or less has been introduced in our society. And the question is, how do we deal with this something new? And if the. I think the case has to be made for, for how we should do with it. The case hasn't been made in my estimation, as somebody who's not hostile to trans people. The case hasn't been made that we have to jam this all into the existing structures, like how we deal with it. I love to have the discussion on how we can deal with it, how can we accommodate people and all that kind of stuff. But you got, if you want to just jam it into our existing binary stuff, you got to make the case for that. Like this is the only way we can do it. You know, if we try to do other stuff, this is why it won't work, yada, yada, yada, like. But that's part of, again, part of my issue with the lack of wanting to have the debate here because that's the stuff you would make during a debate and maybe you don't. The debate shouldn't happen with the people who are on the hate side. The debate should happen with everybody else. The people who are looking, hey, make your case. Help me understand why you're saying this is the only way to, that we can solve this problem is by just putting this non binary thing into our binary system and we can't, why can't we adjust our systems? Why can't, you know, things like that. So I think you're right with that. But then also I just think that this is the type of issue it comes down to. I mean, you started with it. It was a great place to start. This is just more gossip oriented. This is something that is easy to grasp. Everybody can grasp this pretty easily, you know, and the historical context, all the, all the intellectual stuff doesn't really matter, you know, so to speak. You know, like the fact that again, women's sports was created for a particular purpose, you know, and what, what people were saying about it back then, you would surprise you, so to speak, as far as whether or not we needed to do that as a society. But we did. And so, you know, like, I think that this is just an easier thing to talk about, to get people fired up about and to get them to look away from all these other things that let's say a rational, more rational discussion person may want to have in terms of this type of stuff. And so I think that it comes up around election time.
I don't Necessarily. I'm not the kind of person that thinks there's people sitting in a room deciding when to do this and how to do this and everything like that. I think that this comes up when it comes up, and this drives eyeballs. And so therefore, whenever there is an opportunity, this is kind of the opportunism of everybody. Whenever there's an opportunity to have this argument, the media is going to get behind it. They're going to be like, oh, yeah, because we know if we, if we have something on this, people will click. We, you know, like the, the media will. The politicians. Well, everybody jumps in. You know, like, they, like you talked about the USS Abraham Lincoln. There are a lot of people that are very bothered by that. I'm bothered by that. But if I want to have a show about that, for example, it's not. I don't. I. People aren't going to be flocking to that and saying, oh my God, I've been wanting to weigh on this forever. It's just kind of like, oh, okay, well, this is really not the way that we should be operating by how we should be. Be treating our, you know, our, our sailors. You know, this is something that's bad. This looks like incompetence in leadership.
And so that's not an issue, again, that people are running to talk about. So I think that it's one of. It's kind of opportunism among the media. When the media is driven by eyeballs and not informing people, then this is the type of stuff, anytime it comes up, it's like, yeah, let's run with it. This is, this is the thing to make. Any other thoughts, you know, as we get ready to wrap this up?
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Yeah, man. Just one last thought. I'm going to quote the second half of the philosopher Lyndon Baines Johnson's famous quote, which was, if you give them someone to look down on, they will empty their pockets for you. And that is what I was reminded to as well, is just, this is another opportunity, that one, you know, some actors in our society are giving a bunch of other people the opportunity to punch down and as we've seen with humans, give them enough. You know, certain people an opportunity, they'll punch down and they'll take it.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: So, yeah, I mean, it's a good point.
I think that there are always a lot of issues that, you know, like when you have a large population and, you know, the idea of a democratic society and letting the people quote, unquote, decide is one that there's. There are pros and cons with it. I'm in favor of it, don't you know, but, but there are pros and cons with it. You know, even if you go back to the founding fathers, you know, like, and then some of them, you know, calling, you know, like, because remember everybody you know wasn't voting then, it's white male property owners, not even, not just all white men, but just it was because they expressed concern about allowing the quote unquote rabble to have too much of a say in what's going on. And this is the kind of stuff that's the reason why. Now that's, in my opinion that's not a reason to say that you, that, that people shouldn't have, they shouldn't have a say. The reason I would, I would give the reason, the reason. I don't think that though that inability to focus on serious issues or the desire to get overly emotional and stuff like that, those aren't reasons to not involve the people in a democratic way in a society like ours is simply on the fact that you can't fool all the people all the time. So anytime you segment who can participate, you can fool some of the people some of the time, you know, and so it's like you make yourself more susceptible to crazy things happening, to getting fooled, to getting bamboozled and all that kind of stuff. The more people you incorporate into any decision making process, in an orderly decision making process, then the harder it is to pull the wool over everybody's eyes. Some people are going to see what's going on. So I think it's more of a protection mechanism to stop us from being led astray. The more you, you, you narrow down who's participating, the easier it is to lead people and a group of people astray. So, you know, I think that, well,
[00:29:59] Speaker B: go ahead, you know, be really cool. It would be really awesome if someone created like this system where you would, you would, you would, you would have like the rabble and everybody could participate and they would then like elect somebody from like this geographical area where they live in and that person would be maybe a little more educated on certain things and all that. And they would go to like the nation's capital along with, you know, a few dozen, maybe a couple hundred other people like them represented by, you know, that they represent the interest of everybody, including the rabble. And then for them to like debate and like, you know, discuss all these things and then, you know, they can make laws and roll it up to the president, all that, man, it would be like, really awesome. If someone.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: No, that'd be great. You might have just invented the concept of a republic.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: Oh, interesting, man.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: But see, here's the thing. Here's where it can go astray, though, because one thing that you would have to put it on the people. The people. In that kind of scenario, the people would not want to send the more unscrupulous people. They'd want to send the best among them, the honorable ones. And so where you could get into trouble if is if they started sending the people who were a little more sketchy, you know, and if. If the ones that focus.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: The ones that focus on gossip, like those kinds.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: No, no, maybe the ones that focus more on their own personal gain. You know, if you start sending more sketchy people that are more interested in.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: In.
[00:31:21] Speaker A: In, you know, getting more money or things like that, then they won't have the interest. Because what you're saying only works if the representatives go and have. And fight for the interests of their constituents. But if their constituents, for example, are dollars, you know, or they see their constituents as dollars, then that kind of will warp that system. So.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: But I think that's interesting, man. I appreciate that. So I'm going to go talk to somebody about this republic thing.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: Yeah, spread the word.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Something.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: Go to the mountaintop. Spread the word, man.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: Let's start here on our show. But, yeah, I'm going to go to the next mountain I see in Florida and yell from the. From the rooftop.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: All right.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: The tallest place is 330ft above sea level in this state. So I want to. I'm going to go find it.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: State of Florida is not going to be the place where you'll find it. But, but now we. We appreciate, right, for joining us on this episode. 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.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: I'm Tun.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
