Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we take a look at some recent efforts to warn people that Parkinson's and perhaps some other diseases, chronic diseases and so forth, are not being driven by bad luck or misfortune, but by, in large part, the chemicals that we voluntarily use and surround ourselves with.
Hello, welcome. Welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man whose best podcast takes are memorable enough that he definitely is considered notorious. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to hit us with some of that machine gun funk today?
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Yeah, man, it's funny. Cause I'm a big guy, so I guess I'm notoriously big. Can I say big?
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Hey, hey, you do what you gotta do, man.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Am I too old to make jokes like this now? So I guess the audience will tell us something. I don't know. The YouTube audience will tell us.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: We won't be the judge of that, sir.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Now, 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 26, 2025. And Tunde, we recently saw an article from Oprah Daily.com and it talks about a book.
The book's called the Parkinson's Plans, and it's by two neurologists and researchers, Ray Dorsey and. And Michael Akun. And the premise is basically that Parkinson's, you know, which is a chronic neurological disorder, is primarily caused by environmental factors. Not kind of like misfortune or bad luck or. Oh, you know, unfortunately, you got this thing, which a lot of times it's attributed to that, like, oh, unfortunate guy. You know, he came down. Or, you know, he developed Parkinson's and also. But this is something that could be treated, perhaps you know, successfully treated and even better prevented altogether.
So let's start with the first part of the premise. Tunde. You know, what do you make of this assertion that a very serious disease that, you know, is hitting, you know, million of people, Million people, You know, like that. Something that's spread out there, you know, that's out there. Something like Parkinson's is driven in large part by modern pollution and chemical exposure?
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it's put it this way, it's sobering, fascinating, all that stuff at the same time, because it's like, it's not a surprise for those of us who have just through reading just general media stuff, paid attention to the idea of pollution and how it can affect the human body over time.
And so, yeah, so I mean, it's sobering in a sense that it's another kind of revelation through an academic study of testing facts, you know, and, you know, using the scientific method in showing us that we are continuing to accept the idea of living in a world where we are just polluting ourselves and killing ourselves. And so it's, to me, it's, it's, it's also sobering because I know right now two people in my personal life that are going through pretty bad bouts as their Parkinson's is advancing. One of them is a gentleman in his early 70s that just broke his hip from falling because of the Parkinson's, you know, the way he can't walk properly. So that's what I mean, like to read this and think, okay, so this, this, these are things that if someone looked at a little bit tighter with regulation, like when we were kids and they regulated DDT out of the System and, and CFCs because of the ozone, you know, layer stuff. I mean, we, you and I, are young enough, but also old enough that we live through watching the government actually do things that got some of these pollutants out of our system. And it seems like there's more and more evidence that there's more chemicals that harm us that we are exposed to on a regular basis, but we don't seem to have the same zeal for wanting to get it out of our system in terms of regulating out of, you know, the industrial process of whether it's our food, our chemicals for dry cleaning, whatever. So that to me is a sobering thought, that it's just more evidence.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Sorry, I know you were.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: You asked me a question.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Hey, man, I warned us all it was going to come at us like a machine gun when you start going, so.
But no to me, I mean, I.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Actually, I missed that one, that analogy, but I appreciate it.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: What's very interesting to me about this is that it's like, you know, we as humans, you know, we as. We've improved substantially in some areas as far as managing health and being able to live. You know, like, we don't die from. We don't get an infection, we don't get a paper cut or whatever, a cut on a rock, and then get a gangrene and lose an arm or die from an infection. We don't do that kind of stuff anymore. You know, like, we, we've been able to make such improvements in certain areas as far as keeping ourselves alive and, you know, life expectancy going up and so forth. We're not. We're not. We don't die or get disabled from lion attacks, you know, things like that anymore, you know, and an infection really, more than anything, because that. That's always been such a. A big thing that humans have lived with and people used to think was just bad luck, you know, like, if you go back 5,500 years or something like that, or the gods, you know, something like that. Like, we've done so well with that, but it seems like at the same time, we've then introduced other ways to kill ourselves that they weren't there before, you know, so it's like, if you didn't know better, you would think that we just kind of want to have these constant threats around us, that if we get rid of some, let's just bring some other ones in, you know, like, if you didn't know better, that's kind of what it kind of feels, you know, like, oh, okay, well, we solved this. So we got to make sure we create some other problem to worry about, you know, so. And I don't know, I mean, I think it more so really stands out to me, though.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: Like, seems to be happening in our other parts of our society. So. You're right.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: I didn't think of it that way, but I didn't. Like, as you pointed out, it's not really a surprise that you don't really blink an eye when you see this, because it's like, okay, well, we know our food makes us sick, so it's not much of a leap to say that. Oh, yeah, the stuff that people are spraying on their lawn or on the golf course or whatever, or the stuff that is going in our dry cleaning might be killing us, too. Like, that's not much of a leap, you know, or, you know, and I'll say, like, it seems like from an industry standpoint, for the last couple hundred years, basically, Industrial Revolution on it has been a leap. First, hey, let's. Let's start doing blank.
And then we can look second to see if it's killing people. And then if we see it's killing people or making them sick, we may or may not do something about it, you know, which is. I know the point you wanted to get to. You know, it's like, all right, but so we've done a lot leaping, basically, and introducing all this stuff in, like, hell, yeah, we're going to do this. We're going to put this chemical in there. We're going to spray this on all the grass that we walk around on, you know, and Then we'll see what happens. And then if we see what happens, then we'll decide if we. If, you know, like, there's going to be enough willpower behind it to get it out. So, I mean, moving to that second point, you know, like, so you see a lot of people talk about caring a lot about health and making people healthy and so forth, or at least, you know, kind of like not killing ourselves slowly or making ourselves sick. You know, oh, dry cleaning chemicals may be making you sick, or lawn fertilizers or, you know, things like that maybe making you sick or might kill you. You know, you live next to a golf course, you're more likely to die because of what's happening on the golf course. Like, how are we able to see all this stuff on one hand and then not able to kind of align our behaviors with the idea of not walking into the lion's mouth?
[00:07:40] Speaker B: I don't know, man. I think that it's. So there's a couple things that I say. We have a lot of complexities in the world. I think it is.
It's a lot for people to try and keep up with all this stuff. Because as you're talking, James, I'm also thinking about other parts of our society, other threats we have, you know, whether it's, you know, stuff happening overseas, whether it's things in the government, whatever. And it's just like, yeah, there's a lot. We all, as basically citizens of the country that are supposed to participate in, you know, whether it's the representative government or knowing about the food pyramid, there's a lot going on. Right? And I think that. So part of it is just our ability to get through a day and to be able to focus on what we need to do to kind of just sustain ourselves and feed our kids and do whatever we do as individuals to get through a day. And then, you know, there's. There's a certain level of energy and ability to focus on other stuff. And I think that like. Like, we're kind of talking about. James, Both of us have acknowledged that when we saw this, we were not surprised. And so I think that is a tacit admission by ourselves that even we are.
We all are susceptible to falling in this trap of. You just kind of accept it. Right. And I'll share a story with the audience that I share with you this weekend about my dog, who is a chocolate lab. So it is a, you know, Labrador retriever, pretty standard American family dog, not some exotic breed. And he's been having, you know, he's 8 years old. He's been having some skin rashes and little things like that. And, and so we give him. Now he's on four pills a day.
One of them he's got to take two times a day.
It's costing me around 200amonth.
I was joking with my dog the other day because I looked at him as I was stuffing the pills under the piece of hot dog I was giving him and said, man, only one of us had a heart attack last year and it was me. But you taking more pills than me.
So he's a lot shorter than you though, too, though.
Yeah, but, but, but that's why this is. No, your point is about his body. But, but, but that's why this is happening to his body. Because you're right, he's. He's old in terms of his own lifespan. And so what has he been doing? I've been feeding him since he was little, the food I've been told to feed him, which is whatever good brand of the dry food that I feed him, right? And now the vet is telling me that in order for me to help him get rid of this whole thing in the skin, I need to not feed him any of that food. And I got to feed him grilled chicken and rice for 12 weeks and it should get rid of everything. And that's why I talked to you. That's why I mentioned it now, because I was thinking like, well, hold on, why don't I just feed him grilled rice and chicken in his whole life? Why am I wasting money, a hundred dollars on a bag of food that's supposed to be good? Why am I wasting money in all these pills when I go spend 50amonth buying some chicken thighs and some rice and making it once a week for him? You know, I'm feeding it. So that's what got me thinking, James, that now that the pet industry is like our human health care, and that's what I mean, it made me realize, oh, I'm just accepting the fact I gotta feed my dog dry processed dog food.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Well, I don't think you're accepting it, though.
Go ahead.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Well, I think, like our society is just accepting and one. And I'll finish on this. The one thing I share with you in a conversation was that I can remember in the 1980s having pets and they didn't get these issues.
They still ate dry foods. That tells me that there's something like you're saying they're doing something else with the animal food, probably making it worse. So that there's more profit margin. And then the other thing is that when my kids are my age, they're not going to have the memory I had. They're going to have a memory that, yeah, my dad used to buy pills for the dog, so I need to buy pills for the dog. And this is kind of how these things slowly creep up and become normal. Just become.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Why? Yes, in your, in your own way, I don't think you put it together.
You started out, you're saying, why. Now we're talking about individuals. Why do individuals have a hard time of like, comporting their behavior a certain way? One of it is, I would think, like you said, kind of like just the knowledge, you know, but the knowledge is out there sometimes. But you started out talking about how the world is complicated, our lives are complicated. And so what, the dog food, the dog food, the bag, you know, dry dog food. What that's offering you from a transactional standpoint is ease of living, comfort, convenience.
And so there's this balance of comfort and convenience and easiness that we do. That's the trade off. The trade off is it's not going to be as healthy. They're trying to convince you that it's healthy enough. Well, healthy enough for what? You know, like your dog has lived, you know, pretty, pretty strong life for a dog, you know, so it's like, hey, we're not saying you're going to live, you're going to thrive your whole existence. We'll get you, you know, if you're a big dog, we'll get you six years, seven years, you know, and then it's going to all this kind of stuff. So it's, it's that balance. And I think, you know, like the, when you're talking about humans, you know, we do like we're looking at immediate threats, you know, and that's kind of what. And I honestly, you can see this online, you know, like in terms of how people are made afraid of things, like, and they're told these are immediate threats in order to get their attention online and so forth. It's the idea of, hey, if you do, if you, you know, do dry cleaning and then you throw it in your closet, keep it in the bag and all this other stuff and you know, like, something may happen to you in 30 years, we're just not wired to kind of deal on that, you know. Again, humans evolved at a time when, you know, life expectancy might be 50 years or something like that. So it's not something that we do well. With, with long term threats and small changes in behavior to avoid long term threats. But not all of us. Like for myself, for example, you know, like I try to account for this type of stuff. If I get dry cleaning, I let, let it, I leave it in the garage and let it air out, you know, take out the plastic, open it up, let it air out, you know, for a day or two before I bring it in the house. You know, even with it, like I've been, I've thought it's crazy for a long time that we spray all this poison, these chemicals, these poison chemicals to kill all the weeds. Not thinking that this stuff is bad for us, like it's poison. So all the sidewalks, everywhere we go, like I. From my own house, you know, I take off my shoes when I come in the house, you know, and it's like, well, why people think it's like because of dirt. And I'm like not careless about dirt. I, I just don't want all the poison that we have to like we have to step on poison all the time because people are. Everybody's pavers has all this poison sprayed on it so that they, you know, then grow. So, so it, you know, stuff doesn't grow there and it's like, well, things don't grow. That means it kills living things. So there are probably small steps we can take. I don't know if that reduces my, my exposure greatly, but it's something I can do, you know, so hey, I can take off my shoes and then at least I'm not tracking poison around because remember those. That's the kind of stuff, dirt you can wash off. No big deal. These chemicals are made to be resilient. Like they, they don't just wash off. They don't just, you know, break down or anything like that. They stay around. And so I think a lot of it is the balance. But, but I. People want, you know, like they don't want little weeds growing in their pavers and they don't want to get over there with the back breaking labor of picking up the weeds. You know, I make my son do it because it's. Picking up weeds is tough.
Yeah.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: You don't want to be the guy with the weedy lawn and everyone else got a nice lawn.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. And you got it.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: It's interesting.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: My point being is just that we're balance. We are making decisions. We're balancing comfort, convenience, ease.
And we've just admit because the harm is so far off, we tend to lean more into the easy and the comfort and the convenience.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: You make a great point. Yeah, no, because I want to just kind of follow on you because the idea of convenience I think is great. And I didn't think of that, but I want to, I want to kind of, you know, kind of stay on it. Because when you, as you're talking, it also has me thinking of things like fast food. Right. And I know this, that's not necessarily about chemicals directly, like can cause Parkinson's, but we already know and you and I have a library full of shows about, you know, how the dangers of the type of food we eat in the United States versus just if you leave this country, what you what the difference in quality of food that you'll find.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: So that itself is the definition of comfort versus long term.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: And so like that's what I'm saying, like, because that's what I thought of fast food when you're talking about the convenience part of it, that. Yeah. And this is where I want to be fair to a lot of Americans. This goes back to things like the relationship between industry and labor. You know, people having enough time in their daily life to actually do things to take care of themselves. And you know, if you only got 10 PTO days in a whole 12 month period, 365 days, and your boss is saying, I don't care if your kid's sick, if you got to stay home and take care of them, you're going to get one of your PTO days. You got to use. People don't have time to cook a good home cooked meal or to do certain things. And then what you're saying about your dry cleaning is very interesting because think about it, you and I are both service professionals. You're an attorney, I'm a financial planner.
We're lucky enough and fortunate in this environment that we have our own businesses and we run our own practices and all that. But there were times when me and you were younger, I worked in corporate America at a big 60,000 person Fortune 50 company. And you, you know, were the kid coming out of law school going to a big ass law firm in the downtown of a city. So guess what? We had to get dry cleaning. Right? You can't show up to work in a wife beater and a pair of basketball shorts and expect to have a job.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: So. Or you don't really have time to sit there and wash all your shirts and then iron them, press, you know.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: What I'm saying, like the way it needs to get. That's what I mean. It's, it's It's. And you're not. And probably you're not going to do as good a job as a dry cleaner. So I remember when I was young, trying to throw my clothes in the dryer, like the nice shirt and just, you know, you gotta show.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. You would eventually, but there'd be some, some months in between if you did that. If you're doing it every day or every week for a while, you would get better. But yeah, you wouldn't still.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying, James. But think about the advice. You just gave a little tip that, that just. People, this is where the education piece comes in again. And that's where it gets frustrating because then you got to do this with everything you do every day, which is one way to help the long term negative effects of the chemicals that go into dry cleaning that they have cited cause Parkinson's disease. So this is not a, this is not an if. Yeah, is if you're fortunate enough like we are to have a house, then you just take your dry cleaning out of the bag and hang it up in the garage for a day or two, let it air out, let the chemicals get out that way. But if you live in a studio apartment in the middle of Manhattan, you might not have that luxury. Right. So there's. And, but the first thing is knowledge. The first thing is even knowing that that's something you should do.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: Because people would be knowing that that's. Yeah. Knowing that that's a threat in a different way to kind of at least mitigate the threat to some degree.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And to your point too, that from an evolutionary standpoint, where, you know, the fight or flight deals, you know, with us not getting eaten by a lion. And so we're kind of built to look at threats that are in front of us immediately, but these long term threats just like why? Again, another part of life that again is complicated and people got to think about is why most people don't save for retirement. Because most people just can't think 20, 30 years out. And not because they're stupid, just because humans aren't really wired for that. We're wired to think in more immediate terms for survival.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: The retirement plan for humans for most of history is, is have kids. And we're good at that.
That's the retirement plan that we came up with from evolutionary standpoint. This other stuff is totally different.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: All my kids, as they get older, they keep moving away though, so that's not gonna work for me.
I gotta talk to My wife. That might not be a good reflection on us.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Hold on.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: I just messed myself up.
I gotta leave this show now and.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Go have a conversation.
Well, I'll tell you this one other thing. I wanna move to the next section, but just real quick. The other thing I note though, with this is kind of this. There is amongst. And I'm talking about now about the people that are motivated, that it's kind of easy to fall into a trap of absolute purity versus incremental improvement. And what I mean by that is that a lot of times you'll see these, like. These movements or these things where it's like, all right, we have to throw this entire thing out, you know? And it's like that. It sets, like, an almost an unrealistic kind of expectation.
One, and then two, it kind of sets you up for like, well, what do you do if that doesn't work? Well, you just throw your hands up and give up or you keep banging your head against the wall. Where I think a lot of times, for our lives, because our lives are lived one step at a time, one breath at a time, one day at a time, there's a lot of improvement that you can make from an incremental standpoint. If you just can make small changes, incremental changes, and then repeat those day by day, then you actually can do. You can. You can get yourself into a completely different place, you know, but that's hard. You know, like, that's hard to kind of get that mentality. Because a lot of times it's like, we learn something. And you again, you see this with these. With these movements or these things. Oh, no carb. And you know, all type. Like, it's endless, you know, like, there's stuff now like, oh, we gotta get rid of all vaccines. And it's like, well, you know, okay, yeah, there might be some stuff in vaccines that we need to be careful about, but I don't know if that means we need absolute purity or if we need to do this in a smarter way. Like. But the. I think the. For many of these. The personalities that are drawn to wanting to do something about it, this. The idea of absolute purity and is so appealing that it kind of clouds this view or this ability to make incremental change and actually get yourself to a much better place.
Leveraging the idea that life is a step at a time, a breath at a time, a day at a time. And then you can use that. You know, it's like compound interest, basically. You know, put it in your terms, Tunde. You Know, like you can make a lot of money using compound interest if you have time and you do things on a regular basis versus you gotta make it all at one time, you know, so to speak. So any last thoughts before we go? Because I want to talk society.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think it's because part of our, and I think this is today more in the American wellness industry, let's say of the last generation, this last 15, 20 years. And maybe it has to do with the Internet and marketing and the fact that there's so many new businesses and different people propping up to sell things like the supplements and all that.
In America we have a high distrust for authority. In certain examples, a lot of people distrust the government.
I also think Covid exacerbated this a bit. So I think in America, health care, a lot of people have this individual feeling like I know what's best for me. I'll give you an example, James.
So remember I had a heart attack last year. I'm on a statin and I'm on amlodipine, which is for blood pressure stuff.
I had a good friend of mine visit me this weekend that I haven't seen in probably two years. He moved up a little bit further north in Florida and first time, and we text and talk the first time he's been to hang out and we're talking about this. And he's big into all the other stuff, supplements, Internet stuff and all that. And I do take some supplements just to let you know, like for the prostate, you know, the certain things, and malign for my lungs, you know, that do take some things.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: But.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: He starts telling me why I shouldn't take a statin, why that's wrong, the side effects and that. I just need to change my diet to this and do that.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: And.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: And I don't argue with him, but in my head I'm thinking, dude, this is where the problem is, is that my buddy's a computer programmer, he's got no medical training, he never been to med school, he never. I mean, he might have read some stuff, but I don't know if he did, you know, really study biology ever, stuff like that.
But he's going to tell me that the medical doctor and cardiologist who prescribed me a statin is wrong. And the problem is, is that yes, I recognize synthetic drugs can have side effects and downsides and all that, but.
But also recognize that a trained cardiologist also has some value and does know what he's talking about in certain areas when it comes to My heart.
So that's where I think culturally, as Americans, we're at a little bit, which is this, this hyper individualism that I know everything, I'm going to study it myself. No one can tell me what to do.
I don't trust these experts anymore. And we've seen that in other parts of our society does create a more individualistic approach to healthcare, I think more so than in other societies, at least right now.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think that that's true, but I think that the distrust that we've seen has been well earned. I mean, so it's a difficult piece and this gets, this kind of bleeds into the societal piece. Because why we approach it individually may stem from the individual, individualistic nature of American society, but it also may stem from the fact that we've seen. I talked earlier about how we tend to, to leap first, you know, from a business standpoint and look, second, you know, when Vioxx is killing people in the 90s, you know, then it's like, well, there were plenty of doctors that were prescribing Vioxx, you know, and it's like, well, so how does that get through all that? So, I mean, the distrust is there, like, but this goes about the absolute purity part, you know, like, I've seen compelling evidence as to why statins may be concerning, but I also haven't taken. I, I can't, I wouldn't come to you and say, hey, you know, because I'm looking at that from a place of, of confirmation bias, you know, so I recognize myself, like, I didn't look at that stuff and then go try to refute, like, follow the scientific method. I have that and I have some thoughts, but I'm. They're not thoughts that have been teased out and defended. So it's like, well, you know, like I, I will in that case defer to, you know, like, just like you are. It's like, okay, well, unless I'm going to. From turing your mind. Cause you're a person that wouldn't just do anything somebody tells you to do. But unless you're going to spend the time not to just go from a confirmation bias standpoint saying, hey, I distrust this, so I'm going to find one thing that says I should distrust it and then run with that, but actually look at everything, you know, okay, I have this premise. Let me see if I can disprove my premise and really go about it. Like, you're not sure you're going to do that? Then it's like, you are just Kind of going into this and along the lines of what you're saying, like, oh, well, I'm just going to use my distrust to, to guide my, my decisions. Which is not any better than using absolute trust to guide your decisions. Like, if you're always. If you're going to guide your decisions based on absolute distrust or absolute trust, you're kind of in the same spot.
You know, if you're gonna.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: I'm laughing because you're asking humans to do something they're not good at.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: Well, of course, yeah, yeah.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: Confirmation bias.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: Yeah. That is our normal. But what I'm saying is that.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: And to actually question their own thoughts.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: Well, but that goes to. My point of this purity piece is just like, okay, yes, because I'm skeptical of a lot of things, but I'm also equally saying, hey, well, unless I'm going to spend the time to really research it again, scientific method is you have an idea and then it's the opposite of confirmation bias. You then research and try to see if you can disprove that, which, which is why it actually leads to amazing discoveries. But it's really hard to do so. But nonetheless, from a societal standpoint, I think you touched on at least part of it, you know, like the, we don't address these things right now as a society because we tend to try to approach all this stuff individualistically. I want to ask you why you think that is and why as a society we have a lot of difficulty seemingly getting this stuff under control, particularly because it seemed like in the 70s and the 80s, 1980s, 1970s society was on a trend to try to, try to try to deal with this kind of stuff. You had Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act. You know, like you pointed out, we're getting, we're banning chemicals that are killing people and stuff like that. That doesn't sound, we don't operate like that anymore at all.
I mean, the government's doing the opposite. They're, they're saying, hey, yeah, yeah, you could put more pollution in the air, no problem. You know, like, so what's happening here? Why is a society. We're so, so, so much worse at dealing with this stuff.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: So, you know, Earth Day was promoted and basically created by the administration of Richard Milhouse Nixon.
You know, it's interesting that he obviously, you know, he's got a bad rap for things like Watergate and maybe certain things he did.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: We don't even mind presidents lying anymore.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: No, but that's, but that's where I'm getting at. James is seen As a very.
Yeah, he was. Well, he was, you know, the break to the modern kind of Republican Bahari in a lot of ways, and the post Southern strategy, all that stuff. Right. But he was a very effective president in many ways and did a lot of positive things as well, some of the negative things. But this is like a time when, like you're saying the environment was not a political football. You know, like, you know, when the lake in your home state, in the Erie Lake of Cleveland caught fire, people understood, okay, if a lake's catching fire, we got a lot of pollution in the water.
And so there. There was a concerted effort because, remember, conservative people that live in rural areas, like clean air and water, fishermen like clean air and water, hunters, like clean lands and clean air and water, and so do people in the cities. So that was a bipartisan issue, just like healthcare was.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: Well, and so I think that, you know, like, in terms of. Before it became just like a title or a gang sign, it actually was about conserving things, you know, like that's. If you go back and look throughout the history, like they were like, yeah, they conservatives were the original champions of the environment, you know, and served the environment.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: Who created national parks as a means.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Nixon created the epa, to your point, but go ahead.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: Yeah, and so, and so, and that's what I'm saying. That was the purpose of national parks that, you know, preserve the pristine nature of America for future generations.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Before anything else.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a conservative ideal.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: It goes.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: Everybody in the future could go to certain parts of America and see what it originally looked like, no matter how many oil wells we drills or skyscrapers we build.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: So.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: But you're right, I think in the last two generations, I think the Internet is a big part of this, the fracturing of our information system, because to your point, in the 70s and 80s, we were all kind of watching. 80% of the country was watching kind of the same stuff and got the similar narrative. And I just think that there's this, like we said, this is not necessarily anything good or bad. It's just the way the culture has developed, which is a little bit of the hyper individualism sprinkled with American capitalism and lobbying. So the, you know, these big corporations can lobby the government in a way that corporations on their companies just don't. When we talk about the chemicals and.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: Food, they can internalize their costs and internalize their profits by using regulation or lack thereof.
Correct.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: So I think all of those play into it. And I think now the public, understandably, is just Frustrated and tired. And I think it's like you said, we have a total right to be skeptical about pharmaceutical companies. I mean, you mentioned Vioxx. I was thinking more the oxy cotton thing that, you know, that Sackler family.
[00:30:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: They make. There were $12 billion by killing 400,000Americans. I mean, again, and this is about our priorities as Americans, because I bet you if we got told. If I was in a coma and got told that in the last 20 years, 400,000Americans were killed by ISIS, I'd be freaking out, be like, what the hell's happened? You know, all this. But if you just tell me how 400,000Americans got killed by a pharmaceutical company, again, we kind of just behave about it. Like the way we behave about this Parkinson's thing in the article, like, all right, I guess this is how it is. So it's, It's. I just think it's a combination of all of that, and I don't know where it goes from here, but it's. It's.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: I mean, for sure, I think that as a result, I think the information environment that we're in has contributed to it.
The ability to kind of like you pointed out, there were. There were less narratives from the environmental standpoint, you know, and the lobbying piece was less effective at combating that, you know, because it's like, hey, oh, this stuff is killing us. Okay, well, there's a limit on how much lobbying you can do to buy a politician to say, hey, yeah, you can continue killing people. You know, so now I don't think that that's the case. You know, like, it's like, okay, well, yeah, you know, we, we, we will just.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: It was like, you got to kill them slower so they don't see.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: So it doesn't affect my reelection camp, you know, But I think what it is actually, if you look at the longer arc, then business actually has been able to get away with this for the majority of the time. What we may actually be, what, what our generation may actually live through, is the idea that there was an anomalous period in the 70s, 80s. You can bring the 60s into this a little bit. 60s, 70s, 80s. Where the generation, maybe the greatest generation and the things that they went through, from a depression to a world war to being able to. Knowing how to work together to solve problems, to a media ecosystem that had accountability to the public and wasn't just all out to make money, where that era may have been an anomaly, where society was able to make things better for itself.
And we may be back to kind of the. What's the norm, so to speak, where media and information is unconstrained and people can say whatever they want and it's all based on can you deliver eyeballs where the generations no longer have had shared experience of struggle and of sacrifice and working together that they can lean on to then make their world better by working together. Like, we may be looking at that stuff and saying, oh, well, that's what we learned about growing up. Or, you know, and so that's something that is normal when actually that may be something that was abnormal and crazy, you know, in the grand scale of human history. And we're just kind of sliding back into the norm of, you know, the people who are in control of industry deceiving everybody else, having them, you know, like, fight each other about, you know, corporate logos and stuff like that, while they can continue to put. They can, hey, it's much cheaper to dump out a poison in the river or to. To than it is to try to dispose of it safely. And if it's cheaper to do that, you can make more profit that way. So the corporate.
[00:33:17] Speaker B: I thought of a joke that you're right. People care more about when a logo changes on a food company than what they actually put in the food.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: I mean. Right, right. Literally.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: And what they're consuming in their body. Right, yeah, correct. Quite literal. It's a fascinating statement.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: And that's because people are.
The information system is set up in a way that allows people's emotions to get manipulated and it's a free for all, so to speak. So again, it may be looking back to what was.
Is looking at kind of the anomalous period. And what we should leel in is looking back a little bit further when. When Teddy Roosevelt is coming out saying, hey, we need to preserve the parks. And he, you know, he had to fight really hard for that, you know, and he's trying to push against the oligarchy and the Gilded Age class and stuff. And so maybe we should be gearing up for that fight as opposed to thinking that the, the, the model that worked in the 60s, 70s, 80s is the one that we can still tap into now, you know, so we're going.
[00:34:19] Speaker B: To have to gear up for it because federal parks and lands are already being sold off to.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And they're not being sold off.
There's nothing cons.
So. But, yeah, but I think we can wrap this topic from there, you know, like. But, you know, there's challenges for the individual, there's challenges for the society. And you know, again, day by day, we could try to meet those challenges. You know, that's the only way. So we may not have the stuff to fall back on, you know, in terms of the shared kind of, you know, shared sacrifice, shared commitment to each other. But those are things that can be built, and a lot of times they're built through adversity. And it looks think adversity is coming, so we'll have the opportunity.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: Or James or I can go get a Big Mac.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: So whichever one or that. So we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call Like I See It. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Till next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: I'm Tunde One lineup.
[00:35:10] Speaker A: All right. We'll talk soon.
