Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we consider the rush to conspiracy theories that we saw following the assassination attempt of Donald Trump. Well, discuss whether companies should be allowed to keep archives of so much data about us and on us and from our activities. After a second huge data breach from at and t. And we'll react to the record breaking heat being seen across large parts of the US. And also discuss how extreme weather like this and the trends of extreme weather are really starting to add up as far as the costs that they have on us as a society and individuals.
Hello.
Welcome to the call like I see it podcast. I'm James Keyes, and riding shotgun with me today is a man who is known when he hops on the mic to be explosive. Tunde Ogun. Lana Tunde. You ready to show why all your real dogs still kick it with you?
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Of course, man. But I might spontaneously combust. So let's get through this show before that happens.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Before that happens. All right. All right, sounds good. Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, we ask that you subscribe or hit, like on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out of. We're recording this on July 16, 2024, in Tunde. Last week, we saw, I mean, not some ordinary occurrence, but an assassination attempt of Donald Trump. Presidential candidate Donald Trump, at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Shots were fired, and a bullet hit his right ear. The FBI identified Thomas Matthew crooks as the shooter and are currently saying he acted alone. Now, state voting record says he's a registered Republican. And then three years ago, apparently he donated $15 to a democratic PAC, political action committee. But that and whatever else the coming investigation, you know, will end up turning up may just be the boring stuff, because what really seemed to capture attention since right after the shooting was whether this was a deep state plot or whether this was a false flag event by the Trump campaign or other unsupported conclusions that, depending on who's saying it and who's listening to it, conveniently likely will reaffirm your, whatever your belief about our political politics or about Donald Trump or about Joe Biden or whatever, just reaffirm that. Anyway. So, tunde, to get us started, what do you make of kind of the rush to judgment? We could talk about how the confirmation bias in that, but just kind of the, this rush to judgment that we saw where not only did everyone, or not everyone, not only did a lot of people seem to have a great understanding of what happened or what was happening as it was going on, but just how that was something that was almost that was broadcast with such speed and quickness and with such certainty.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: My first feeling is that I'm glad that I don't frequent social media after taking a peek at our ex account on Sunday.
It's a cesspool out there, that's for sure. You know, it's a lot calmer inside my own head than in these, these, these areas where, where we all, you know, I say that kind of, you know, collectively, right, like we as a society, frequent now, between. And I'll include YouTube as social media here as well, which I do go on more than, obviously, any of the other platforms. But, no, I think you're right in saying that this is confirmation bias central at this point.
And I was gonna joke, as you were saying that, I was like, yeah, I've seen some of the regular cast of characters that we've seen, from George Soros to Obama and Hillary causes. There's a new one, though, that I saw this morning, someone accused Mike Pence of being behind this, that they were serious, and I was like, oh, so now Mike Pence is gonna be thrown into the conspiracy theory, you know, thing like that. So you. Yeah, I think you're right. From the immediate reactions we saw on kind of, let's just pick the two extremes, one being that it was a false flag operation by former President Trump, his campaign, or to garner sympathy or show how strong he is, and all that. And the other extreme would be that this was Joe Biden personally ordered a hit on Donald Trump. And so I think if we look at maybe those as the bookends, then you can bring in the other theories in between them. And I think what you started out with is exactly the facts that we know now is this is a 20 year old man who registered as a Republican. He gave a little bit of money to some democratic PAc, and he got this gun from his dad. And right now, that's kind of all we know. And I've seen some interviews with old classmates of his, and that's it. So, you know, with the absence of information, human beings are creating.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Fill the void. Fill the void.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Filling the void with their own silos of information.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Here we are again, filling the void. Like I said, people aren't filling the void with things that contradict their kind of positioning and beliefs.
It's always something that conveniently lines up.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: I've seen that it was Mossad and the Jews. Then I see, like, we were joking privately. I saw people already blaming the DEI, and apparently all I saw was white secret service agents. But I've seen people on serious shows blaming minorities. So it's the same.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah, here we are. I mean, no, it's like, to me, actually, I think that this might strike us in a certain way. And just saying, like, what struck me when, as this was unfolding was just that it was almost like there was an expectation that, hey, what do you think about this? And it's like, well, what is there to think so far? Right? We don't know much yet. You know, like, in order, at least, you know, in my mindset, in order to really have start putting together some thoughts about it, I'd like to know a little more. But that wasn't really what was happening. When, you know, people asked me what I thought about or anything like that, it was like, all right, well, I'm supposed to have a fully formed opinion on this and go forward, and then, you know, you look around and it's like, okay, yeah, the reason for that expectation is because that's what's happened. That's what's proliferating, you know, whether it be in conversations. And so what this reminded me of this. This is kind of just normal human stuff, but instead of, you know, like Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, we're talking about, you know, politics. We're talking about, you know, presidential, you know, candidates, you know, attempted assassinations and so forth. Instead of, it's gossip. Instead of, oh, this is why Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are getting a divorce. It's like, oh, hey, this is what happened here with this shooting and so forth. And so I think this is kind of just us as humans, how we process things.
It reminds me of in books that we've talked about and so forth and the development of human language and how it was tied, I think this was in sapiens tied to gossip being a big reason why humans develop language. Human beings develop language. And still, how much of communication between humans takes place as gossip? And so we have different words for it in the political context and in the newsy context. But it just really struck me as a lot of gossip. And just like, okay, yeah, we're just. Something happened, and then people immediately go into their circles and their corners and start gossiping about it, you know? And then it's like, again, it strikes us a little differently when we're talking about, like, a quote unquote news event, but it really resembles that. And if you look at it in that context, it kind of makes sense. It's like, okay, yeah, nobody knows what's happening inside, you know, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck's at home as far as why exactly they're doing this and doing that. But you can go grocery store and look at all the tabloid magazines and they'll have all this exclusiveness and all this information about it, and it's like, all right, yeah, that's, I guess that's kind of what we do, you know, so, you know, so in that case, it didn't surprise me as much once I kind of made that connection.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: Well, it's interesting because, I mean, you're absolutely right. I mean, the book sapiens, I think, was profound in many ways, but one of them was that that gossip appears to have been necessary for human survival and evolution and of larger societies.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Once you get societies larger than 50 or 100 or 150 people, gossip is a big part of being able to hold a society like that together.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And so it's part of our programming in a sense.
And that's why to me, it's an interesting tie into something like where technology has taken our society and given us things, the ability to do things like social media and all that, because you make a great point. I mean, I think about this sometimes when I go grocery shopping, they still have the national Enquirer and certain of these tabloid magazines and publications on the shelves of the grocery store I go to. And it's a good reminder when I'm there about this is how it used to be. Used to be the ability to get this fringe kind of conspiracies and all these things was limited on a day to day scope for most people because you didn't have that stuff in your face all the time, all day. And you could choose or not to choose when you're in that line, you know, sometimes you pick it up and look, but then you put it down, you don't necessarily buy it, and you leave the grocery store.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: It had less control over you in the way that I think I see where you're going as far as the way social media actually does exert a level of control over you, as has been said.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and it's because it's just, and it's not just I don't even want to just beat up social media anymore. It's like when. So I can take my phone out of my pocket and look at this information and all this, like I said, extremes, right? From a false flag accusation to it was the current president who ordered it personally, you know, from the Oval Office type of thing. Right. And then I can turn on my cable news. And that's what I mean. It was a very prominent cable news show where I saw the guy saying it was Dei's fault. And then, you know, so it's just like we're inundated with gossip and in.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: And it almost is.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: Gossip is facts.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: It's become the expectation also as well. Like, it's like. Cause remember, as far as conspiracy theories and so forth, this was, you know, you'd have sitting members of congress that were out here pushing a lot of the conspiracy theories, you know, and so it wasn't like it was just irresponsible people out there doing it. It's, it's news programs. It's like, that's, if you want attention from people, you're not going to be able, like, especially if you have, if you have a news station that plays 24 hours, you got to come up with ways to engage people and so forth. And this is how you engage people. Just reiterating the facts and saying, we don't know that much. And yada, yada, yada is boring. And so it's almost like it's, it brings me back to the, the Roger Ailes comment, you know, as far as that people want to feel informed more than they want to be informed. And I mean that, you know, and I'm sure he's not the first person to came up with that. But to put that in the context of modern media, it really does hit home in terms of, you know, like, wow. Like, yes, as long as your neck gets into the idea of confirmation bias and the different silos that people can engage with because, you know, they will. Like, hey, I want to feel informed, and I want these, these the things that I'm being told to make me feel like, to confirm what I already think to make me feel good about it. And so, you know, and I think the kind of, like, the other thing I'll say just remind this reminded me of was the fire hose of falsehood, which was the propaganda model that was really laid out by the Rand Institute. We talked about, we've talked about, we've referenced it several times over the years, but we talked about it in depth a few years ago and talking about how being first was so important in terms of people's perception of truth. And so whatever people hear first, whether that's objectively true or not, isn't that important if they hear it first and then they hear it again because of certain biases, like familiarity bias and so forth, the, it becomes true in their mind, whether, even if it gets refuted later or anything like that. It's so what you end up having is this rush when an event happens to, quote, unquote, frame a narrative, but you're really actually framing what people will take away as the objective truth. And so it makes sense in that sense, that people who understand that and understand that this is how people, the perceptions of people will be locked in. It's important to get out there and start saying things that confirm what it is, that what you already believe or whatever, like that, because that's happening across the board anyway. So, like, the propaganda style of communication, which it was kind of geared for this modern media age with, you know, 24 hours news, with social media and all that kind of stuff, with phone notifications and everything like that, it's like, this is the way that the many people, most of us, in fact, will learn about and come to have our understandings of what's going on. And, I mean, the question that this brings to me, and I'll throw it to you, is, are you concerned at a certain point that we get to a point that with events like this, whatever ends up being the actual fact won't really matter, because, you know, by the time, you know, it takes a while, you know, what is it? The lies can get around the world two or three times before you know, the truth and get his pants on, like the facts will, or, excuse me, the. The made up stuff for the stuff that people just come out with will always be first and will always be repeated several times before the truth can catch up, because the truth takes time to figure it out. So are we going to get to a point where the truth with a lot of these things does never, doesn't even matter, you know, like, people aren't. People are over it by the time the truth comes out.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we're into a certain extent. We're already there, unfortunately.
And it's funny you went there with the fire hose of falsehoods, because in my notes, actually, I wrote down Russia for the Russia fication of american society. And. And I don't mean that to pick on Russia in that way. Right.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Well, no, they. According to Rand, they're the ones that came up with this firehood and fire. Just. Just briefly. The firehood of falsehood was a propaganda model, like the old propaganda models required.
The state or whoever was trying to control the perceptions of people, to control all sources of information. The fire hose of falsehood model doesn't require you to control all sources of information. And so it's more geared for a 21st century media environment when even if you have state run media and everything. It's just difficult to control all sources of media. So how can you then put forth propaganda to influence a population and control a population? And so, and we'll have that, you know, I'll reference it again in our show notes. People can check it out because it's really interesting in terms of breaking down how that happened and how that works in kind of a modern media. And Russia kind of was the one, according to rand, at least that kind of innovated that.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's actually an interesting contrast because that's been what we've always been taught to fear. The totalitarian government that's going to have a one kind of message propaganda. But I think what we're identifying, and it's not that we're identifying it now, but many people have identified this already. But the idea of now we just have fractured information resources, which is probably a lot harder for one big bad boogeyman to control. But what's happening? And like we've talked about already in this discussion, our brains are already wired to gossip and have all these different nodes of connection and looking for information. And now we have platforms and technology that allow that. And to your point, it allows lies to travel much faster than the truth because right now, you know, the authorities and the people that are serious are still investigating what happened. Like, they don't have a vote.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: They don't have a vote of. So in terms of that's based on kind of evidence and sustainable things that you can substantiate. Like, they don't have that. Yeah, but, but we, everybody else does. Everybody else has noted.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: And that's the problem is that in. And that's, we've. Look, this why it reminds me a little bit of when the bridge collapsed in Baltimore. Right. And everybody had an answer before the investigation was done to find out at a container ship hit a bridge and it knocked it down. But remember, it was Dei's fault. It was everyone else's fault. Yeah. And it's just everything. I mean, we can go to that Taylor Swift Super bowl conspiracy stuff, somehow stuff gets out there and there's a certain percentage of our population that just will say, yeah, yeah, that's true. Without, without really having facts to back it up. It's just confirmation bias. But one of the things I wanted to make sure that it kind of pivot to as well in this discussion is also, you know, we can't ignore the backdrop of the culture that this is permeated against. And I want to be very careful and nuanced. Here at least try to be, because I think that, you know, we can have someone like this young man who maybe it ends up being that he was a lone wolf. He was just a disturbed young kid, 20 years old, and he decided he had to become a hero for some reason. And he wanted to assassinate a president. And that reminds me, or he had mental health issues. Like, remember, I was reminded watching just some of the stuff since this happened with President Trump, former President Trump, John Hinckley, who shot, tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan. Apparently he did it because he was trying to impress Jodie Foster. He was crazy. So sometimes people are just disturbed and they do things like this.
But I couldn't help but see some of the debates online about trying to compare rhetoric on both sides. You know, the Democrats say this and Republicans say this. And again, I think this is where we just need to be honest and say, you know, yes. Is there tough rhetoric in politics? Yes.
But it's like how I've seen recently, people of prominence in politics trying to compare, like the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton, after her last question about the russian influence and all that, even though she did concede that she lost that election to the attack on our electoral system by former President Trump after he lost, and for four years continue to lie and not accept that he lost that race. And those two aren't comparable to me. And the comparison of someone calling Trump a fascist or something like that, or saying that he's going to be a dictator compared to what we've seen. I went back and looked, you know, in the, there were breakdowns done by this in the 2022 midterm elections, there are 104 ads created by MAGA candidates, and I'm going to separate MAGA from Republicans.
And those 104 videos, you know, their stats out there, and we'll have them in the show notes how many of them had guns in the videos, you know, threatening other Republicans, going, you know, that the famous one, Eric writes, who was running, I believe, as a governor of Ohio, had a, had a thing with going rhino hunting, rhino being Republicans in name only. So it's like, this is, this is also, we can't deny there's a culture on the right of violence and of wanting to show yourself as tough. And remember, we talked about guns.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: I mean, like, yeah, it's, it's, and interestingly enough, I mean, that was something I thought that was underplayed here. And which, the point you just made was that violence towards other Republicans, that was kind of like, it's not, it's violence towards Democrats. A lot of times as well. But there's a thing of, hey, Republicans who we don't agree with, we need to go, quote unquote, rhino hunting or, you know, we got the crosshairs and stuff like that. That I thought was that I didn't see a bunch of conspiracy theories about that one that was, I guess, but again, that didn't, and there weren't enough people whose biases that would confirm, apparently, that you did that, that didn't pop out there. And so a lot of these things end up becoming, they say more about the speaker or the, or the consumer of the information, really, than anything else because all of, well, not all of it other than the substantiated information.
It's all unfounded at this point. It's all, it's not being supported by evidence. So, I mean, hey, once people start having evidence behind this stuff, I'd like to look at it more closely. But whatever you are gravitating towards at this point, if it's all unsubstantiated, really says more about the person who is, you know, is consuming it and saying, yeah, I want more of this. I want more of this. Because that's really saying, hey, where you are like, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Well, to a partisan, everything here is partisan. So if you're a person who is defined by partisanship and everything, you look at political conflict. So not in the terms of, you know, american or american first or constitution or anything, but you look at it in terms of my party, then you will see this and you will gravitate towards the conspiracy theories or unsubstantiated messages that make this about partisanship, you know, and so, or if you're, you know, like, if you're a victimization type person, it's like, oh, well, I'm a victim. Everything, woe is me, everything like that. So that's something I wanted to make sure I got to that before. I know we're gonna move on here in a second. But because we live in this choose your own adventure kind of reality from a preliminary information standpoint. And again, the follow up information as far as what actually was discovered a lot of times, you know, never really makes it that, that prominently or broadly, whatever you're consuming is really more about what makes you feel good or what confirms what it is that you want confirmed and so forth. So I think that's something people can look in the mirror with that and, you know, and just say, hey, you know, like, this is, why is it? Or, you know, like, why is it that these are the messages either that I'm being shown, if I'm being shown these messages, a lot of times it's because the algorithms think that, that this is what's going to appeal to me, this is what's going to keep me on the screen or what media I'm consuming. And this is what, this is what they're fishing for my attention with. So, you know, it's interesting.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Well, and the other thing I feel like, because when I'm thinking about things like, you know, Paul Pelosi, the former speaker of the House's husband, when he was attacked with a hammer at 80 something years old, you know, unfortunately, former President Trump was making fun of that while he was giving a campaign speech. And my point is, is that I'm seeing some people, not everybody, when I'm looking at some of the stuff from the media on the right, the ones that are so apt to say that this was Joe Biden personally and this is all the Democrats. And it's just interesting to see the landscape of our political leadership. And that's why I'm going to default to MAGA here and not blame all Republicans in the republican party because I haven't seen, and I'm not a Democrat. That's why it's interesting for me to watch this kind of from the outside.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Just to make it clear real quick. I'm gonna let you get this out. But, yeah, you're talking about blame for what? We're talking about the, the post shoot, not blaming for the shooting, but for the way things unfolded afterwards in terms of the information ecosystem.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: Well, some people are even blaming the shooting on, you know, but in terms.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: Of the messaging and so forth. But go ahead.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Yeah, the messaging for sure. And, and the thing is, is that, but it's also how we've gotten here. You know, I was looking at, this has happened like a week ago that the gentleman, Mark Robinson, who's running as the gubernatorial candidate for North Carolina, which is a big state, right? Like, these aren't, these aren't nobodies in the party. Quote, some folks need killing. It's time for someone to say it. Not a matter of vengeance, not a matter of being mean. It's out of necessity. Remember when DeSantis, Ron DeSantis, our governor in Florida, was running for president? What did he say he was going to do on day one if he won the presidency? He goes, I'm going to slit the throats of the federal workforce. There's always, I mean, that's what I'm saying that's why I went back to the 22 election and how many ads had firearms, had pictures of people in crosshairs. All that kind of stuff is because there's a culture of violence on the right right now. Maybe that wasn't the case 1015 years ago, but it is right now. And I'm not, again, I'm not blaming President Trump for this personally. I'm not blaming that this kid did it because of that. But I'm saying that, pointing it out, we can't not talk about that and be honest in this conversation.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: No, I mean, it's a fair point. And really, I think to say it a little more specifically, there's a culture of violence that is like, because you could probably find a culture of violence in a lot of different circles. But this is one that, to your point, it's embraced at the higher levels of leadership, correct?
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a better way to put it. Yes, of course. There are violent people on the left, democratic party that would do extremely.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: There's violent people everywhere. Like, violent people is not a partisan thing. That's something that ideally in a society like ours, that's supposed to do politics separate from violence. The goal of the leadership would be to keep the violence out of the politics. Politics by another means. War is politics by another means. So the goal would be for leadership to keep the violence out. If you want to have more of a civilized approach to politics, what happened? This is kind of the default to a lot of times in human history where I, politics and violence haven't been kept separate. And so that's the concern that we would not want to slip into and why violence from violent messages from leadership should be rejected by people of all stripes, you know, if you know it, because, again, the goal of a constitutional system is to, there's no, there's no violence written into the constitution. The point is to have debate, to be able to do all that stuff and to keep the violence out. So, no, I think that's a good.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: Point that I'll just finish on this because I appreciate you kind of clarifying that because that's really the point I was trying to make as well. And I guess, let me say it this way, even for the audience, I'm 46 years old. You're right. This isn't the first time in human history this has happened. But as an American, this last kind of eight years of my life has been the first time that I've seen political leaders in our country that have endorsed violence. I mean, that's what I'm saying when people do campaign ads where they're kicking in a door and they have a Mossberg shotgun with deer slugs in it, and they're saying, I'm going rhino hunting, that they want to go hunt people in their own party, other human beings, they can say they're joking all they want, but if 1% of the us population is unstable and takes that serious, we got 300 plus million people in this country, that's 3 million people that'll be running around thinking that they got instruction by their political leaders to go behave like that. And, you know, I would like to see, hopefully out of this, maybe cooler heads prevail at the leadership level. And I guess, let's see. It's too soon to say, but let's.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: Go beyond saying, and you've seen this from some of the leadership in various places in the country, saying, hey, we gotta turn down the temperature and so forth. And that's a fair message. But that message applies more to people who have been turned, who have been giving you violence. You can say that everybody needs to turn it down. But when you say that, you're really talking about the people who have been using violence in their rhetoric or embracing it. Like, if you have a married couple and one of them's cheating and one of them isn't, and they say, yeah, we both need to make sure we're faithful. Well, the person who's faithful already is not the person that needs to take heed to that message to the same degree as the person who is cheating. And so that's when you both side things like where you're coming from matters in that standpoint.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: But you know what? It's the gaslighting of all lives matter.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. It's just saying. It's just saying. I'm not even gonna pretend to acknowledge that, you know, there's something else going on here. I'm just gonna come back with this.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I mean, that's a fair point because it's like, well, yeah, black lives matter did not mean that other lives don't. Yeah, correct. It's been like, oh, yeah, we're gonna obscure that. You know, and then also all lives matter overlooks the fact that the lives that were appearing to be under assault at a, at a pace that was not consumer with the watches the whole thing over. Yeah, exactly. Like, well, hold on.
Specific problem here. Let's, let's ignore that specific problem.
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's why people are whitewashing the, the whole political violence message.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And try to you look at it from a holistic and not actually where you have, like, hey, Lee, we have an infection in our arm. But hey, let's just, you know, let's treat the whole body. And it's like, well, hold up, but we got actually something here, so. But nonetheless, you know, we can. We can close this topic up from here. We appreciate it. Bye. For joining us on this episode. Call, like, I see it. This is topic one. We'll have two other topics today, so please stick around for that, and we'll see you there.
All right, our second topic today, just, I guess, within the past week, at and T. At and T has announced that there was a hack of data involving cell phone calls and text messages and so forth, involving pretty much all of their customers back in 2022. And this had me wondering, you know, like, okay, well, they're keeping all this information for a period of time, you know, and so, like, what responsibility should they have now? There have been class action lawsuits filed as a response to this. And, you know, this is at and t second data issue this year. But I want to start, you know, I want to kick it to you on all of this stuff, but I want to start just with what's your reaction to seeing, you know, like, at and t again in the cross as here, but, you know, this huge data leak, cell phone, you know, like calls being made, text messages and so forth, like, all their customers, 70, some million or more. What did you make of that? Or what was your reaction to seeing that?
[00:28:47] Speaker B: My initial reaction as an at and T wireless customer myself was, I'm glad I don't do any crazy stuff behind my wife's back that someone could blackmail me with. So that was what I feel good that if it had to be my.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: Service, what's my exposure level? I'm good.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: Exposure level, that's not that bad. So we're good.
So that's true that I am an at and T customer, so everyone can go on the dark web and start, you know, analyzing who you were calling in text. Yeah, exactly. You'll see all of our stupid texts between each other now. But. But on a serious note, I mean, look at, one of my first feelings was, it's another confirmation that privacy is not what it was when you and I were little. You know, this idea that you can find privacy in maybe the way that you communicate now in the modern era, and to think that no one's ever going to see it kind of reminds me of, I remember when a few years ago, Emmanuel Macron, who was the president of France. It came out in the news that his WhatsApp account had been hacked. And at the time, a lot of people thought that WhatsApp was totally encrypted and unhackable, and it was just like, you know, to me, it's like that. Like, all right, well, anything that a human being makes, I guess, someone else can figure out how to break. And it's just the old cops and robbers thing, right? So, you know, that's kind of what I felt like. All right, well, that's another example. There's no privacy and, you know, we all gotta be careful about what we put in writing and put in these devices and all that. And that's it.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you put into the air basically, because. Yeah, only safe places in your head, you know, like. And that's been, you know, that's recorded in movies for now. And so. Yeah, for now, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, uh. But actually, I took it one step further than you. Like, I agree with you that, yes, the, the. Anything that is you, you put into a device or, you know, like, you know, again, it could just be out into the air because, you know, the old fashioned bugging, you know, rooms and all this other stuff, but. And that could be your own cell phone, by the way. You know, you carry around the bug because you got this live mic there, you know, that, hey, when you. You can say, you know, hello, Alexa, or whatever the prompt is, and if it can hear that and respond, that means it's always listening. So beyond just that, I think if you ask the question of why there's no more privacy, like, we had telephones, you know, in the eighties or nineties or whatever, but the systems weren't in place and the technology wasn't such that it could record all. Record all the information and store it indefinitely. And I think this really goes back to the storage of this information indefinitely. Now we're going to talk about this. There could be reasons to store information and so forth. As far as, you know, it could be, oh, well, we want to store people's calls in case we want to go back and look for terrorist attacks and all this other kind of stuff. But that's the real vulnerability here, because it's very clear that anything that's stored can be accessed by illicitly. And so the real question to me, this boils down to is that, well, I think, and I don't think we're having this conversation as a society, and I think we should, is what should be allowed in terms of storing of information. Like, should they be able to store our calls or our text messages or, you know, whether it's just the number that was actually communicated with or the actual content or any of that stuff. Should they be allowed to store that stuff for indefinitely, you know, like. Or should you be able to say, hey, I want all my stuff deleted after a month, or all my stuff deleted after two months or six months or whatever it would be, should you have control over that? And then if they don't do that, obviously that would create a substantial amount of liability on their part, which would ideally be the deterrence. But that's where my mind went to with this, is that, well, hey, why don't I have any control over how much they're stealing my debt? I have control, like if I want to keep, you know, if I get bills mailed to me or whatever, if I want to keep them all after a year, if I want to go take them and shred them or whatever I get, that's my choice. And if I keep them all at my house and then somebody gets into my house and takes all that paper, that's my fault. But I at least have the control over how long I want to hold things, keep things, and the things that could be used, I learned about me. But the incentive on the other side is that they want to keep all that stuff so they can analyze it and do stuff with it and commercialize the information. So there's a give and take there, but it seems like the consumer is not really accounted for.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think that's where you're right. I mean, the word consumer is great because this is where things like consumer regulation and laws come into play.
Cause I'm thinking about what you're saying is accurate, that everyone, the data itself is an asset. And everyone, not everyone, but the different factions, like me or you as a consumer, versus at and t or Verizon or whoever else's service provider, we both have a different way that we see that asset. For me, I'm thinking as my asset, this is my information.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: And they're looking at it as a pot of gold.
[00:33:44] Speaker B: Yeah, they're looking at it as an.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: Adding to this pot of gold, but, yeah, but then they create this target that.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Well, but where I was going is there in their mind, the asset can be commoditized. And that's where you're going at either internally for them to help themselves get, learn how to get better at refining things like their marketing and how we buy and consume from them, or b, they can sell it on the data market, which is a huge market. And for other people that want to, or other companies that want to learn about us as the consumer and how to market to us. And this is a thing that how we, we all get taken into this because everybody watching this, I'm sure because you're either listening or watching it to it on some platform, that you had to sign a term of a service, term of service agreement type of thing.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: And a license agreement to use the.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: Software, which was in two point font that you scroll down, you know, and didn't read any of it and you hit okay, because you wanted to use the device or you wanted to get on YouTube or whatever it was. So I think that's how this is a classic example of kind of the push and pull with, let's say, the regulatory environment, where the regulatory environment is.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: Needed because individual consumers would never be able to, like, if you don't want to sign those terms and conditions, you just can't use the device, you know? And so it's like, so you either have to turn all that stuff down and not have access to any of that stuff or you, you have to just accept these contract terms, these contract of adherence. And so, yeah, for us to have any shot, that's what a government and regulators are for, is to give us some, some negotiating power. We the people versus these huge commercial entities.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think part of the problem this might not be as much with telecom right now, but more with kind of the whole real big tech and algorithms is these things are becoming such black boxes. Kind of how the technology works now. We got AI coming into this and all that is, number one, it's moving so fast. And number two is it's complex enough that a lot of the regulators don't even understand this stuff.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: Lawmakers, I mean, you have regulators at least get it. But a lot of times the regulators, as we just saw with the Supreme Court, they get their legs chopped off and they aren't able to really make the changes. So what do you think on the flip side or just kind of looking at it holistically? Just asked a question. Do you think they should be allowed to the companies like this, whether it be, you know, telecom, whether it be big, big tech, you know, whatever? Because as you pointed out, AI part of the, what AI is doing. They want to feed all this data into AI and then get recommendations or figure out ways to optimize and further commercialize it and so forth, how to market to us and everything like that. So it, the use of that is ongoing and will be ramping up. So do you think they should be allowed to, that businesses should be allowed to keep in storage all this data, or do you think consumers should have more of a say in what you can keep, how long you can keep it and so forth, especially because, like, they can't, you know, people can't secure it and, you know, just factors, you think, that are important when looking.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: No, it's a good question. I'm kind of neutral on it, honestly. I could, I could think of various arguments, both sides, obviously, feeling as the consumer that it's my information, it's private, all that, you know, obviously, I could, I could take that side.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: Secure it.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: No, but what I'm saying is, but as a, as a business owner and then as a professional who's licensed in an industry that requires maintaining certain information, even after, let's say, a client relationship is separated, then I understand that side. So, for example, I'll expound on that real quick for the audience. I'm in, I'm in the financial world, so I've got securities licenses. So FINRA, which stands for the financial industry regulatory authority, mandates that we hold client records for seven years after a client relationship's terminated. So if this person is a current client, you got to hold the information because they're a current client, you know, forever, as long as they're a client. But even if someone were to die or decide to leave me because they don't like me, they want to go somewhere else, I have to keep all their stuff on file for seven years. Why is that? It's not because I, I'm trying to go and look at it two years after the person's no longer with us and start looking at their social and all that. It's because there's a statute of limitations in the law and there's things that could come up. I might get a subpoena from the IR's two years after the relationship has ended with me, because the IR's has a tax fraud case on this person that goes back five years, and they need information from when the client was with me. It could be that the client's getting a divorce, for example, and maybe they left me six months ago or they died or they can't get a divorce.
[00:38:22] Speaker A: I don't know that that was.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
Abortion. Yeah. So, but, but, no, but you get it, like, if there's a divorce or something after the fact. So the idea, so if you think about it, then that makes sense based on the way our society structured that there's something called a statute of limitations in terms of bringing legal action against somebody after the fact. So what the industry said is, we need you to be able to keep. You have to keep these records for x amount of years, because think about it, somebody could plan to do a crime, jump from one financial firm to another, or plan to divorce and screw their ex spouse out of income. And if we didn't have any of these regulations, when someone leaves, I could decide, hey, I don't want to have to pay for the area to store all this data. Because I remember when I started in the industry, I mean, I started as a young guy in a big corporate office that was 30,000, took up a whole floor of an office building. Half of that at the time was storage cabinets, filing cabinets for paper. And a lot of that was some of these old records that the firm had to keep. So most companies don't want to pay for that kind of like real estate. Like, why pay that rent for that if I don't need to? So without regulation, they wouldn't keep it. But I understand the regulations there because the society may need to go back for those records within the first few years. So that's why I'm neutral.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that's instructive because, I mean, in my industry as well, in the law, I'm an attorney, and in my industry, there are certain requirements in terms of maintaining paperwork, documentation, and so forth. But I think that could be instructive in terms of, okay, so maybe you don't want. A lot of times the solution to something isn't just to go the complete 180 and go the exact other way. Like, so there could be. It could be a setup where unless there's a legal requirement otherwise, saying that you have to keep the information for a certain amount of time, then you have to give the customer a choice or whatever. Like, though there are ways still to solve it. But I would agree with you that it's not something that you can just say, okay, everybody just has to delete all data after six months. That wouldn't be a real solution. Rarely are solutions ever that simple. But I do think the conversation needs to be had, and also from an industry wide or industry standpoint, because I don't think that those same concerns, there are concerns from a social media standpoint or from a telecom standpoint in terms of if we're, you know, like wanting to, you know, the big thing, ever since 911 was invading privacy for the purposes of preventing or solving terrorism, which whatever you think about that, you know, in terms of whether or not you can, you give up liberty for security and Benjamin Franklin and all that stuff. That's the law of the land now. Um, and so there may be reasons why at and t or, you know, social media or whatever would keep information for those purposes, but I'm sure smart people can get in a room and figure out a way that we can minimize the risk to everyone. With these hacks happening all the time or these breaches happening all the time, we can minimize the risk while still serving those purposes. And I just don't know that the conversation is being had at all, because from the company standpoint, they're not going to start the conversation, um, even though they, like at and t is getting sued over this most recent hat. And so they're going to deal with a class action lawsuit. A lot of times, that's a way when regulators don't come along, class action lawsuits come along and can, can force change in an industry. But absent some clear what we think the standard should be, I think it's difficult for all of us. It makes it more difficult for the businesses. It makes it more difficult, like in your industry, for example, is a good example. It's not difficult because you have a clear directive on what you have to do, what you're required, and you understand why there's no reason why we can't develop that more broadly, you know, in places where it's needed, places where it's not, where information can be taken, can be kept, where either it can't be kept or you have to give the customer an option. And then, you know, that creates the real legal incentive, because if you're not allowed to keep it or if you have to delete it, unless the customer opts into it being kept or something like that, and then you keep it, a lawsuit then is going to be, is going to be devastating, you know? So, but again, to me, the biggest issue is that we need to have the conversation. I'm not saying I have the full, laid out answer at this point, but the conversation needs to be had because this is just too much. And, yeah, I mean, yeah, your, your initial point, privacy is just, doesn't exist anymore. Is, is largely true, but let's look at the reason for that. And the reason it did for that is in large part because all, nothing ever is gone. Nothing ever goes away, you know?
[00:42:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:47] Speaker A: And if it stays, it can be accessed eventually.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: And I think also part of the paradigm shift I think we just have to make as humans in our society is that, whether intentionally or not, I mean, we've gotten to this point where our entire society now it's necessary for us to operate within by being plugged into this grid. Right, like the tech grid. So at some point, in order to get plugged in and be part of this society, man, unless literally you want to live in the middle of the mountain somewhere and be off the grid. So in order to be part of our society, at some point you got to plug yourself in, which means that you are giving your information to someone else. Yeah, and that's what I'm saying. Just having a cell phone account, having a computer, you know, all this stuff just means you're somehow, you're, you're now a node in the bigger thing.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: Yeah, there's no, there's no general way to opt out of this stuff.
[00:43:39] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: So, and that's, I think, you know, it's in all of our interest to, to make sure that we're at least thinking about if there are better ways to handle this than what we're doing it now or how we're doing it now. So. But no, I think we can wrap this topic from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this part two of this episode. Please stick around and join us for part three as well.
All right, our third topic this week, we keep seeing reports. Now, Tunde and I are both in south Florida. So it's warm most of the year, but it doesn't really go, it doesn't go too crazy to the high or too crazy to the low. It's just always between maybe mid nineties and mid seventies.
But, you know, reports around the country, around the US have been these record breaking temperatures this summer. And there was a spate of it a month ago, and we're in one now, heat domes and all this other stuff. And, you know, just what, you know, really wanted to ask the question or wanted to have a discussion about, you know, the, what's going on here with the heat waves and whether people are desensitized to it and also whether or not, you know, like, or how we plan to pay for the increased costs that come along with the more extreme weather, whether that be the rain or the storms or just the ac, the air conditioning that's needed to keep functioning the way we function in these heat domes. So tundra, seeing the reports of all the record breaking heat and so forth and just kind of the storms and stuff that we've been seeing, do you think that this is kind of an exaggeration? You know, like we're, again, we're looking at it from afar in many respects. But do you think that these are exaggerated reports or do you think that people maybe are desensitized to it? Because if you look at this stuff just in the abstract, it looked like we should be, look, we should be considered this kind of a five alarm fire as far as what's going on. So as far as our environment, wherever we are becoming less hospitable or less hospitable than it was, just what's your, what is your reaction to seeing this?
[00:45:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that we are becoming more desensitized to it. There's my direct answer. But like many other things in our society that have crept up and one could look back like, let's say 1020 years ago, if you took a time machine and asked someone, hey, if, if this were to happen in our country, what do you think the outcome? How do you think people would react? And I'm, you know, back then, people would probably be like, oh my God, this would be crazy.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: People would be.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: So an example I'm thinking of. No, but just to give a different example and go somewhere else. There's things like mass shootings. I remember seeing a report on July 1 of this year, which is the 50, you know, halfway through the year, 50, 50 yard line of the year, that we had 255 mass shootings in the United States so far, the first half of 2024, and there's only 365 days in a year. So if I were to take a time machine 40 years ago to 1984 and stick a microphone on the street in people's face and say, what do you think american people would do if we had more mass shootings in the first half of the year than there were days in the year or the first half of the year, I'm sure that we would get a different assumption of how people will respond than how we're seeing us as a society deal with it today, right now, we don't even talk about it. And I think it's the same thing as it comes to climate. If you were to go back 100 years ago and ask somebody, what do you think would happen if we had storms getting worse, sea levels rising, temperatures were hotter, people dying of more of heat strokes, all this, do you think society would be alarmed to want to do something? I'm sure they would assume yes. But here we are, and everything I just said has been happening for the last decade or two, much more pronounced to the point where guys like you and I in our mid forties can see a difference in our lifetime. And like you said about living in south Florida. And so, you know, I mean, you illustrate that.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: I know, you know, with you because you're a boater, you know, you've talked about how you've observe this as being on the water in terms of the sea water.
[00:47:33] Speaker B: Well, here, I'll say I was going to save this for later, but I'll get it out now, which is. You're absolutely right. And for the audience, what I, what I've told to not only James, but other friends in private, I've been boating since 2017. So it's seven years. Right. It's not a super long time in terms of the geological history of the earth. Right. And the same area where I'm in South Florida and intercoastal here is because there's a lot of construction in Florida, because there's a lot of money being invested here.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: So I'm looking at, especially along the waterways, that.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: Yeah, especially that PPP money and all that bitcoin money that came down here. So. But, um. But no, but on a serious note, I've seen houses being built in 20 18, 20 20, 20 22. So. But what happens is that what I can see is the new seawall regulation. And there's houses I saw built in 2021, let's say. And there's houses right now I'm seeing being built next to those houses. The new house on the seawall is 3ft higher, two to 3ft higher than the house that was just built a couple years ago. And what it tells me is this is both the insurance company as well as the city who's giving the permit. You know, the municipality, like the city of Fort Lauderdale giving the permit. And that, to me, is like, when the money speaks, when the insurance carrier forces certain things, and when the municipality is saying, in order for us to, you know, not have a financial disaster in the next hurricane, we're now requiring you to build a seawall this much higher. That's what tells me that this is undeniable, because this isn't about a woke ideology. It's not about any of that. It's about the bottom line. And when companies and cities start showing you by their own actions that they're worried about their bottom line based on sea levels, that tells us it's been rising.
[00:49:17] Speaker A: Besides what the bottom line matters, you know, like. And we'll get to that. Yeah. Like, I think. I think there's a level of desensitization. I think you illustrated it well. You know, like, there's the old kind of story that I think I've heard it with the frog. I heard it with the frogs primarily, but I've heard it with crabs more recently. Cause some people say, oh, the frog piece isn't true. But it's just if you stick a frog in water and then one and you boil the water, the frog won't jump out because the water temperature rises slowly. If you, obviously, if you try to throw a frog into boiling water, it'll jump right back out. And so it's the, the acclimation of the water warming slowly. The frog doesn't notice. It is the, again, is the story. And some people might not like that story or that that kind of, you know, parable or whatever, but it reminds me of that, basically. And actually maybe a little too spot on in terms of actually warming, but just that when something happens more gradually, you are less prone to notice it happening. And so I think that's really what's happening with us here because, and I want to get to the money piece of it because that, to me, is the part that I think is really the question that we're going to have to grapple with. Like, the science is pretty clear from everywhere, but fossil fuel companies and, you know, I guess people that, from an ideological standpoint, want to harm the earth, but, you know, or want to make the earth less hospitable, I should say. But our reaction to it, and again, that that's a lot of times what I think is more interesting is kind of our reaction to what's happening around us is when I'm looking at the temperatures that they're talking about around the country and so forth and how these temperatures are staying persistent, whether it be in the midwest or the east right now, we've seen it out west or fires and things like that. And there are, like, you would hope that at a certain point, and you would think going back, like, oh, well, at a certain point, people's survival instinct will kick in and say, we have to do something about this. We have to make this priority one and so forth. And, but that's not what we're seeing. We're seeing actually a lot of deflection and we'll see conspiracies and people, lasers are starting fires and, you know, fantastical stuff, you know, and this is like, okay, so is, do we need something? We need things to happen rapidly or suddenly for that instinct to kick in, but otherwise, are we just gonna get boiled alive like the frog in the pot? And so that, to me, is what I'm wondering. The money pieces, you know, which I'll go ahead and get to now like that we're seeing in that, you know, whether it be, you know, recovering from storms, you know, whether it be rain or you know, hurricanes or you know, you know, things like that or just the running of AC like air conditioning so people don't die in the extreme heat. Remember in Florida, while a lot of homes are built to account for the fact to dissipate heat, you know, when you're up north, you know, when you're in the midwest or the east or whatever, a lot of the homes there are because cold was generally the bigger threat. They're meant to hold heat for the wintertime and so it's really difficult to keep things hospitable in those environments. So just in terms of the power usage that we're gonna need and so forth moving forward, like where do you think we're gonna go with this? And I mean I guess people will find something to blame, you know, but like the increasing costs, like do you think as a society we're prepared to absorb these costs or that or to defray these costs or like what do you think as a society we're gonna have to, we're gonna be able to do over time as the costs of climate change or just increasingly inhospitable temperatures or inhospitable environment, you know, like it keeps becoming more of a reality.
[00:52:50] Speaker B: Well I'll make it short that it's going to be all the fault of Dei when this all goes down. So that'll make it quick and easy and we can end the show, man. It's going to be Soros and the lasers. Don't forget to see. You were right about the space laser. So. Well that's honestly man, that I say that as a joke, but it's like kind of one of those jokes that's funny and not funny because it's true, right? Like that's what cry later. Yeah, let's cry now and cry later I think. But no, it's because here's kind of my attitude of this climate stuff, right? Like I. So I'll put it here. I believe that the climate has been increasing at a more rapid pace in the last hundred years due to the human producing of fossil fuels and other things that, you know, and it's not just fossil fuels. I mean the fact that we have so much, so many cities in the world that have concrete and buildings and all that, it's been proven that those things trap heat. And think about how hot black tar in the street gets when you got millions of square miles of that around the world, it heats up the earth. So there's a lot of reasons why modern society today has caused heating of the earth. Now, I say that to say, am I blaming humans for being bad and blaming everybody? No, I'm just stating a fact. Now, I'm also of the mindset that we're not going to reverse it at this point. So I'm not sitting here trying to say that means we have to cut off fossil fuel tomorrow, everybody goes solar, and somehow we're going to reduce the heat. In my lifetime that has been put out there, I don't believe that either. I think this is a new plateau, and let's try and continue to slow the rate of heat increase going forward, hopefully. And what my concern is is that that takes actual leadership, both within one society as well as coordination amongst the global society. And it's tough enough to get people in one country or one society to agree on everything on this stuff, this kind of big ideas of how do you move energy and how do you do all this stuff? And, you know, if we had the proper leadership, we would be having these conversations in our society right now of how do we prepare for what we know is coming. Number one, the increase in the power of storms and the erosion of coastal environments, where we already know 70% of the world's population lives on coast. So what are we probably going to see more of? We're probably going to see more of human migration, like the people from the Middle east trying to get to Europe. Except last time, maybe last decade, was from ISIS, next decade might be from climate change, and that people can't live in the desert anymore. It's just too hot. Remember this year at the Hajj in Mecca, 1700 people, I think, died of overheating. It got to 125 degrees. So if this continues, then there's going to be sections of the planet that may be uninhabitable.
Human societies generally don't respond well to shocks of migration from new people. So maybe we should be planning for. How are we going to deal with this when huge parts of the world need to migrate other places, the other things will be like, you're alluding to, and I'll put it back to you, like, the increase of costs we're going to see domestically, things like insurance premiums, all that.
I would ask you, how do you think we're going to deal with that as a society?
[00:56:15] Speaker A: Well, see, now, I think that I'm going to go to a tunde truism, and that to me is, you have to consider whether you're looking at things from a lens of scarcity or a lens of abundance. The costs that we are going to experience by doing nothing, we can see that's going to continue to escalate, and they have escalated over the last ten years, 20 years, whatever, and they're going to continue to escalate because the power demands and the rebuilding demands or the demands to try to fortify things for what's coming, that's going to continue to go up. But we can look at it in a different way, and that there can be economic opportunity here, that by preparing society for dealing with what's coming, there's going to be economic opportunity by coming up with technologies that will mitigate some of the problems. There's been leaps and bounds in technology in terms of dealing with this kind of carbon capture and all this other types of stuff. There'll be more. I think the biggest concern and the thing that bothers me the most is the collective lack of will as a society to, to try to address this problem. I'm pretty sure that if I were society, just the United States, if the United States decided to take a leadership role and say we're going to solve this problem in the same way that United States decided to go to the moon, that this would be something that could be addressed and that could put the world on a completely different trajectory and that a lot of people would make a lot of money in doing so. But I, what my concern is, is that right now, and this goes to the leadership, like, like you were saying, that the, the prevailing kind of sentiment amongst some leaders is to try to either deny it or to try to, you know, demonize people because of it, or, you know, like blame, you know, things like that, everything but trying to address it, which I think is a huge opportunity being left on the side, you know, for whatever reason. And so that to me, is, the bigger concern is that the will, and I don't know, you and I have talked about this offline, like you would think, you know, just pure logic. And again, pure logic doesn't work when you're breaking down the activity of humans. But you would think from a pure logic standpoint that at a certain point, things would get so bad that humans would say, all right, enough, we're going to figure this out. And, but what may end up what we're seeing with a lot of things, and what we may see here is that as things get worse and worse, people just blame random things. To your joke at the beginning of this, more and more. And it doesn't galvanize people. It tears people apart. And so a lot of that's leadership, and a lot of that is how we're interacting and engaging with each other. So I think, though, that if we, if we look at this the right way, there's a huge opportunity. This is, you know, life isn't about what happens to you. It's about how you respond, you know, and that's one of, you know, those truisms. You know, you can get like, from self help, but that works as a society as well. Like, this is happening. This has happened to us, you know, like, or this, we've contributed to it, but this is what's happening. So how are we going to respond, I think is the real question that we need to be answering and what the type of leadership that we look to in order for a response. Do we want a leadership that looks to blame and looks to deflect, or do we want a leadership that looks to say, hey, let's make this an opportunity. Let's make this something that we can grow from and build, build something better?
[00:59:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And the sad part to me, just as we round that out, finishing up talking about leadership, is what's sad is that somehow the environment and this whole topic of climate and all that, somewhere along the line in the last generation or two really became a political football where people feel like they have to line up on one side or another of that debate based on what political side of the discussion they're on. And so you know why that is?
[01:00:00] Speaker A: Because fossil fuel companies have better lawyers and better lobbyists than tobacco companies. All right, well, tobacco, they weren't. Tobacco tried to do that. They weren't able to pull it off, but the fossil fuel companies were able to.
[01:00:13] Speaker B: Well, honestly, I think your point about the boiling frog is crazy, meaning it's a lot harder to convince people that something, that you can see people smoking in their lungs and then getting lung cancer and those kind of things, a lot harder to say. That's not, that's fine and don't worry about it.
[01:00:28] Speaker A: If you said that in 1970, though, you know, people might think what I'm.
[01:00:32] Speaker B: Saying is, and that's your point, that it has to get bad enough. And maybe, you know, when we have cat, I mean, I think that the recent hurricane barrel was the first one they're considering making a category six, first time in history a hurricane. So if this gets worse and more infrastructure damage and all that, maybe we'll have the same thing where enough of the population decides that that's the logic.
[01:00:52] Speaker A: But the thing is, is that what we're maybe more prone to is more blame. But, like, again, it's gonna be about Dei. You know, hurricanes are worse.
[01:01:00] Speaker B: I agree.
And that's where. That's where I was going, is, unfortunately, because it's become ideological. I mean, look where today is. The date is July 16. I'm looking at an article from a week ago, which was July 9, titled House Bags bill to roll back efficiency standards for refrigerators and dishwashers. And it's just like, like. So with everything going on in the world, the United States Congress seriously has decided to spend their time to attack dishwasher and refrigerator efficiency standard regulation.
[01:01:33] Speaker A: To make them less energy efficient.
[01:01:34] Speaker B: Yeah, to make them less energy efficient for whatever reason, even though that would help people's bottom line at home to spend less money every month on energy costs. So that's an ideological thing. It's not about practicality. And I'll give you an even better one, which I got a big issue with our governor and our state of Florida. We live in Florida, which is a panhandle, which is sticking out there in the middle of the ocean and is right in what they call Hurricane Allen.
[01:02:01] Speaker A: Peninsula.
We have a panhandle, but we have a peninsula.
[01:02:06] Speaker B: Sorry. Panhandle is the Tallyas here. Yeah, exactly. I feel like an idiot. Cause I love the state. Sorry, Florida. But no, but the thing is. So here's the thing. This is where ideology kills me. So we, as part of just a regular thing between the federal government and the states, we had an opportunity to receive $700 million from the federal government to deal with pollution and climate related issues. Now, to me, pollution is separate from climate. You know, there's people that do have a different opinion than me and that don't believe that the climate's been affected by human use of fossil fuels and all that. I'm not gonna argue that point, but I think all of us can agree when we see plastic bottles in the waterways, if there's oil leaks and all that, that's pollution. That's.
[01:02:52] Speaker A: Nah, man. That's freedom.
[01:02:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
That's a whole different show. But I appreciate it.
[01:03:00] Speaker A: I'm sorry. Go ahead.
[01:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah, you're right. It is for some people. Yeah. So. But the idea is. My point is, I learned going to some nonprofit organization by helping the Everglades a year ago, that in Broward county, where we live, 40%. Only 40% of the things we put in to recycling are recycling bins that the municipality spends time and money making a separate and they have special trucks that come and recycle, you know, bring it for recycling. Only 40% of that gets recycled. And one of the reasons is because we don't have enough recycling facilities. So part of my thought was why would the governor of Florida, who we're, you know, like you said, we're peninsula. We're in Hurricane Alley. We have coastlines that are eroding due to the rising sea levels. We've got aquifers that freshwater aquifers under that are getting, you know, penetrated by seawater now because of the rising sea levels, why would he turn away $700 million of federal money that doesn't have to come from our state taxes and coffers and all that, when we know we have issues with pollution and we could build more recycle plants and all that to help with this? At the end of the day, it's ideology. And that's it. Because if the next president who comes in is of his party and offers the same money, he'll take it. But because the current president is, and he won't. And that's, to me, like you said, that's the direction we're going to go. I don't think we're going to unite on this, is now ideological, and you got to be on one side or the other. And that, to me, is sad because it's at the expense of all of us.
[01:04:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's the current trajectory. I mean, as long as that kind of behavior is either believed to be rewarded or is, in fact, rewarded, and that plays back into, you know, like us as people, you know, we, the people in the country, you know, what we reward, you know, as voters, what we. What we pay attention to as consumers of information. And some of that is, in some respects, we're in over our head because we have these biases that are built into our brain and those are well exploited by people who want to get stuff from us, whether it be attention or votes or whatever. But ultimately, you hope that with more time, with more exposure and turning of generations also, that a level of sophistication in dealing with this stuff will come. I mean, the first generations that dealt with radio or tv, you know, like, they thought that there were alien invasions going on based on programs that were put on the radio. So, I mean, us having a difficult time, you know, dealing with the new technology and so forth, is not the craziest thing in the world.
[01:05:35] Speaker B: But unfortunately, that hasn't changed. The people that still think we have.
[01:05:38] Speaker A: Aliens today, well, I don't know maybe.
[01:05:43] Speaker B: It'S not even get the percentage anyway.
[01:05:45] Speaker A: But, no, I think we got a wrap from here, man. But, you know, like, like I said, but ideally, though, we can slowly turn this ship, you know, towards something that where behavior that either denies the problem or tries to ignore the problem is not rewarded in behavior that tries to get our resources behind and our ideas behind. Solving a problem and all the massive economic opportunity that would come with that, you know, is the type of thing they rewarded.
[01:06:14] Speaker B: So, yeah, always a good, positive voice, James. I appreciate it. I will be quiet and not give us a reason to be negative.
[01:06:21] Speaker A: Won't give us glass half empty. I appreciate that. We got to get out. We appreciate everybody 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.
[01:06:31] Speaker B: Till next time, I'm James Keys, and I'll be positive.
[01:06:35] Speaker A: All right.
[01:06:35] Speaker B: All right.
[01:06:36] Speaker A: We'll talk to you next time.
