Mash Up Episode ft. Why We Don’t Learn from History, Empire of the Summer Moon, and a Late Summer Wrap-Up w/Tom Libby & Jesan Sorrells

1
00:00:01,360 –> 00:00:05,080
Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and this

2
00:00:05,080 –> 00:00:08,080
is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast

3
00:00:09,200 –> 00:00:12,000
bonus mashup episode.

4
00:00:13,440 –> 00:00:17,240
So we’ve we’ve been running these mashup episodes this year as

5
00:00:17,240 –> 00:00:21,040
part of our new format. And mashup episodes are an opportunity for us to talk

6
00:00:21,600 –> 00:00:25,440
with a guest about different topics from different books

7
00:00:25,600 –> 00:00:29,410
that we have covered on the show and to link those topics

8
00:00:29,410 –> 00:00:33,210
to future books that we are going to cover on the show. It also gives

9
00:00:33,210 –> 00:00:36,690
us an opportunity to bring in elements of popular culture, including

10
00:00:37,330 –> 00:00:40,130
film, which we do like talking about on this show.

11
00:00:40,930 –> 00:00:44,610
Technology, sometimes politics, but other areas

12
00:00:44,610 –> 00:00:48,050
that touch on or discuss other areas that touch on business

13
00:00:48,210 –> 00:00:51,730
and leadership. And we always get great insights

14
00:00:51,810 –> 00:00:55,470
during these episodes. Matter of fact, the first one that we did was with

15
00:00:55,470 –> 00:00:59,150
Neil Kielachovsky where we talked about Lord of the Rings and its

16
00:00:59,150 –> 00:01:02,470
overlap into World War I and Pink Lloyd.

17
00:01:03,030 –> 00:01:06,070
I would encourage you to go back and listen to that episode

18
00:01:06,870 –> 00:01:10,230
today on the show. Our mashup episode will be

19
00:01:10,230 –> 00:01:14,070
pointed towards both the past and the future. We are going to

20
00:01:14,070 –> 00:01:17,790
be talking about and laying the foundation for what we are going

21
00:01:17,790 –> 00:01:21,470
books. We are going to be discussing the next couple of months on the show

22
00:01:21,630 –> 00:01:24,190
as we close out a

23
00:01:26,430 –> 00:01:29,550
interesting and dare I say,

24
00:01:29,550 –> 00:01:32,270
momentous 25th year.

25
00:01:33,550 –> 00:01:36,990
Huh? I’m going to say it this way. The 25th year of the 21st

26
00:01:37,390 –> 00:01:41,110
century. Meaning that there’s 75 more years

27
00:01:41,110 –> 00:01:43,870
to go in this bad boy before this is all said and done.

28
00:01:45,240 –> 00:01:48,680
And unfortunately, tragically for all of you, I will not be around

29
00:01:48,840 –> 00:01:51,480
at the end of it, I don’t think,

30
00:01:52,520 –> 00:01:56,280
however, books will be around at the end of it. And some of the books

31
00:01:56,280 –> 00:02:00,040
that we will be talking about today will be around at the end of

32
00:02:00,040 –> 00:02:03,880
this century because they explore timeless themes

33
00:02:04,200 –> 00:02:07,840
that aren’t really going to change because they’re about human nature and human

34
00:02:07,840 –> 00:02:11,670
psychology. No matter how fancy our drones get or

35
00:02:11,670 –> 00:02:14,990
our large language model driven robots

36
00:02:15,310 –> 00:02:18,910
that will eventually do all of the. I’m going to tip my hand here,

37
00:02:18,990 –> 00:02:21,550
eventually do all the fighting and living for us

38
00:02:22,990 –> 00:02:26,750
because we’re just about ready to outsource that. And

39
00:02:26,750 –> 00:02:30,310
so today on the show we are joined by my

40
00:02:30,310 –> 00:02:34,150
semi regular guest host, Tom Libby. How you doing

41
00:02:34,150 –> 00:02:37,710
today, Tom? After that intro, I think

42
00:02:37,710 –> 00:02:41,480
I’m doing just Ducky. And

43
00:02:41,480 –> 00:02:44,520
it’s been a while since Tom has been on the show. Tom did not join

44
00:02:44,520 –> 00:02:48,200
us for our Sci Fi jaunt, with the exception

45
00:02:48,200 –> 00:02:51,440
of. No, not even. No, not even for the episode around Philip K. Dick. We

46
00:02:51,440 –> 00:02:55,279
did none of that. Did Thomas. And Tom’s been out for a while and

47
00:02:55,279 –> 00:02:58,240
so what have you been doing, Tom? So we’ll catch up with him for a

48
00:02:58,240 –> 00:03:01,320
moment here. What have you been doing this summer? Have you been just living your

49
00:03:01,320 –> 00:03:05,040
best life? I mean, yeah, I’ve just been, I’ve been, I’ve been

50
00:03:05,510 –> 00:03:09,270
constantly thinking or wondering why I haven’t been on the show. And that has been

51
00:03:09,270 –> 00:03:12,910
my, my summer thinking. You know, did I say something

52
00:03:12,910 –> 00:03:16,710
so controversial that the audience just didn’t want me back? Or

53
00:03:16,710 –> 00:03:20,510
like, I understand, look, I understand. It’S been a K pop,

54
00:03:20,510 –> 00:03:24,150
demon hunters driven summer for you understand. You’re,

55
00:03:24,150 –> 00:03:27,910
you’ve been all over that and, and you know, it’s been a, I mean, it’s

56
00:03:27,910 –> 00:03:31,630
been a big film summer. Superman came out. I mean, I know you really enjoyed

57
00:03:31,630 –> 00:03:35,410
that movie with the dog, and dog. Was the best

58
00:03:35,410 –> 00:03:39,170
character in the movie. And that was, that wasn’t even a real character because

59
00:03:39,170 –> 00:03:40,330
the whole thing was cgi.

60
00:03:43,930 –> 00:03:47,490
And, and I know you’ve been busy, you know, with whatever it is you do

61
00:03:47,490 –> 00:03:50,730
around your house. I believe one conversation I had,

62
00:03:51,050 –> 00:03:54,210
you, you were well on your, you were on your way to, to doing some

63
00:03:54,210 –> 00:03:58,010
yard maintenance because of, well, because of a dog. I know that you,

64
00:03:58,170 –> 00:04:01,930
you’re here doing some of that. And, and yeah, I mean, I guess, I

65
00:04:01,930 –> 00:04:05,210
mean, I don’t know, I don’t know what else, what else? One

66
00:04:05,370 –> 00:04:09,210
huge benefit to this year, I’ll just tell you. So in years

67
00:04:09,210 –> 00:04:12,770
past, I, I have a decent sized piece of property and I’ve always tried to

68
00:04:12,770 –> 00:04:16,090
have a garden that we could actually eat food out of. Not, I’m not trying

69
00:04:16,090 –> 00:04:18,570
to be a homesteader or anything weird like that. I just, I just want to

70
00:04:18,570 –> 00:04:22,370
grow a couple of vegetables and, and say that I, you know, grew

71
00:04:22,370 –> 00:04:25,730
what I ate on my plate, so to speak. And in the past years, I’d

72
00:04:25,730 –> 00:04:29,460
get maybe a zucchini, maybe a tomato or two.

73
00:04:30,260 –> 00:04:33,820
This year. This year I don’t know what the hell I did differently, but my

74
00:04:33,820 –> 00:04:37,540
garden literally exploded. I think I was eating zucchini at least twice a week for

75
00:04:37,540 –> 00:04:41,220
like a month and a half. I’ve got about 18 squash out there that I

76
00:04:41,220 –> 00:04:44,660
don’t know if I’ll ever be able to eat all of it. They’re gigantic,

77
00:04:44,660 –> 00:04:48,420
probably twice the size of my head. I’ve got tomatoes.

78
00:04:48,420 –> 00:04:52,060
I, I’m gonna throw away more tomatoes than I can eat, I can promise you

79
00:04:52,060 –> 00:04:55,070
that. I, I, I don’t know what the hell was different in the garden this

80
00:04:55,070 –> 00:04:58,430
year, but all of a sudden it just exploded with

81
00:04:58,430 –> 00:05:02,190
vegetables. So that, that was definitely an interesting part

82
00:05:02,190 –> 00:05:05,750
of the summer for me. That’s good because, you know, look, my

83
00:05:05,750 –> 00:05:09,150
garden. And I am. I am one of those wackadoo people trying to be a

84
00:05:09,150 –> 00:05:12,750
homesteader out here in the great fruited plain of the middle of

85
00:05:12,750 –> 00:05:15,510
America. My garden did not do so well.

86
00:05:16,470 –> 00:05:20,190
So maybe, maybe all of the growth went to you. That would

87
00:05:20,190 –> 00:05:23,900
be. That would be just about. Would be just about correct. Yeah.

88
00:05:23,980 –> 00:05:26,580
Again, I don’t know what I did. I do know. I do know that I

89
00:05:26,580 –> 00:05:30,220
spent. I. And I actually, now that I think of it out loud, I probably

90
00:05:30,220 –> 00:05:33,780
should say I knew I spent an ex. A much

91
00:05:33,780 –> 00:05:35,740
longer period of time this spring

92
00:05:37,339 –> 00:05:41,180
getting the garden ready. Like quote unquote, getting the garden ready.

93
00:05:41,180 –> 00:05:44,980
So I tilled the soil and then I fertilized it and then I tilled it

94
00:05:44,980 –> 00:05:48,140
again and fertilized it. And I didn’t do that before. I just kind of

95
00:05:48,850 –> 00:05:52,690
threw. Threw some fertilizer on the top and planted some seeds and

96
00:05:52,850 –> 00:05:56,570
said, what the hell, let’s see what happens. The other thing I

97
00:05:56,570 –> 00:05:59,930
did differently, I guess. I guess I did do a tremendous, A lot. A

98
00:05:59,930 –> 00:06:03,730
tremendous. A lot more differently than I expect than

99
00:06:03,730 –> 00:06:07,330
I. That I really gave it credit for. Because I also have a indoor

100
00:06:07,650 –> 00:06:11,250
greenhouse that my family bought me for Christmas last year.

101
00:06:12,210 –> 00:06:14,890
It’s basically you put it in your basement, you plug it in and it’s got

102
00:06:14,890 –> 00:06:18,300
the UV lights and it’s got this one. It’s a. It’s a greenhouse effect. So

103
00:06:18,300 –> 00:06:22,100
I had all these little seed starters. I bought these little seed starters and I

104
00:06:22,100 –> 00:06:25,340
planted a ton of seeds in the greenhouse

105
00:06:25,580 –> 00:06:29,140
early, like in beginning of April. And I don’t know if

106
00:06:29,140 –> 00:06:32,540
anybody knows where I. We talk about where I’m from a lot on the

107
00:06:32,620 –> 00:06:36,460
show, but being up in the New England area, you can’t plant in April.

108
00:06:36,460 –> 00:06:40,140
Like there’s nothing you’ll grow in April. So. Yeah. So but planting

109
00:06:40,140 –> 00:06:43,580
them inside in April and then transplanting them outside

110
00:06:43,740 –> 00:06:47,410
in the end of May were already starting to

111
00:06:47,410 –> 00:06:50,810
grow. They were. Already had significant growth before I even put them in the ground.

112
00:06:50,970 –> 00:06:54,730
So it. That again, thinking. Now that I’m thinking it,

113
00:06:54,970 –> 00:06:57,690
thinking it out loud because I’m just thinking, oh my God, I don’t know what

114
00:06:57,690 –> 00:07:01,050
the hell happened. The garden just exploded this year. Now thinking,

115
00:07:01,210 –> 00:07:05,050
like actually saying it out loud, I realized I actually did that.

116
00:07:07,850 –> 00:07:10,490
By accident. Influen over that.

117
00:07:11,780 –> 00:07:15,180
Well, it’s interesting because my wife can’t. So we. We tried

118
00:07:15,180 –> 00:07:18,980
starters and my wife has gone off and on

119
00:07:18,980 –> 00:07:21,540
depending upon which season you know, we’re in

120
00:07:22,580 –> 00:07:26,380
with gardening and over the last five years, I think she’s gotten one good year

121
00:07:26,380 –> 00:07:29,980
out of starters, and the rest of it’s just been a massive frustration. And she

122
00:07:29,980 –> 00:07:33,580
winds up throwing them all away and cursing and then just

123
00:07:33,580 –> 00:07:37,180
like. And like, that’s the end of that. I think the difference is people who

124
00:07:37,180 –> 00:07:40,820
try the starters and, like, again, you get starter seed kits, and you just, you

125
00:07:40,820 –> 00:07:44,100
know, throw them in your. On your kitchen counter until they start. Until they start

126
00:07:44,100 –> 00:07:47,900
sprouting out, and then you transplant them. Yep. The difference

127
00:07:47,900 –> 00:07:51,620
with the greenhouse is you can actually let them establish a root system, like,

128
00:07:51,620 –> 00:07:55,340
and actually get a little. Get a little significance under their

129
00:07:55,340 –> 00:07:58,460
belt before you actually pull them out and transplant. The other thing that I did

130
00:07:58,460 –> 00:08:02,220
again, so your food for thought for your wife. The starter kits that I

131
00:08:02,220 –> 00:08:05,100
bought were not plastic. I bought starter kits, actually

132
00:08:06,150 –> 00:08:09,830
compressed manure. So it was actually actual

133
00:08:09,830 –> 00:08:13,150
containers. All you do is you just rip the bottom off and put the whole

134
00:08:13,150 –> 00:08:16,630
thing in the ground. So you don’t have to actually pull the plant out of

135
00:08:16,630 –> 00:08:20,310
a starter. Right. And put it. And put it in there.

136
00:08:20,550 –> 00:08:24,070
Right. You just literally put the whole thing in there because the. The actual

137
00:08:24,390 –> 00:08:27,670
container is made out of manure, so it just

138
00:08:27,750 –> 00:08:31,470
biodegrades right into the ground. And it’s also fertilizer. So there you

139
00:08:31,470 –> 00:08:34,960
go, fellow. Three times. I didn’t even think of that. Three times. Now I fertilize.

140
00:08:36,880 –> 00:08:40,480
Now that. Now that I start saying this out loud, Han, it’s actually no

141
00:08:40,480 –> 00:08:44,080
wonder that outgrew. Like, I have a. I have a

142
00:08:44,080 –> 00:08:46,520
squash plant out there. I swear to God, it looks like the Little Shop of

143
00:08:46,520 –> 00:08:50,280
Horrors. I’m expecting it to eat somebody at any given point, because the thing is

144
00:08:50,280 –> 00:08:51,840
so gigantic.

145
00:08:54,240 –> 00:08:57,960
I w. Saw that. She was like, is it yelling feed me, Seymour yet?

146
00:08:57,960 –> 00:09:01,670
Like, yelling. Is it yelling? Actually, it’s. It’s. It’s

147
00:09:01,670 –> 00:09:04,430
actually right behind you right now. You might want to look at

148
00:09:05,710 –> 00:09:09,350
that. Green spot, that green blotch right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s. It’s

149
00:09:09,350 –> 00:09:12,590
the. It’s the squash. Okay. No, that’s good. I. I, you know,

150
00:09:13,310 –> 00:09:16,910
sounds like your. Your gardening adventures.

151
00:09:17,550 –> 00:09:21,150
And it’s. You know what? I. Look, I’m a big fan of

152
00:09:21,870 –> 00:09:25,670
anything, particularly if you live in a more urbanized area rather than

153
00:09:25,670 –> 00:09:29,450
a rural area. But I’m a big fan of growing your

154
00:09:29,450 –> 00:09:33,250
own food and of growing your own or

155
00:09:33,250 –> 00:09:37,050
raising. Raising a plant of some sort,

156
00:09:37,850 –> 00:09:41,490
because I think there’s something. Not only think. I know there’s something primal involved in

157
00:09:41,490 –> 00:09:44,410
that, but also it’s,

158
00:09:45,130 –> 00:09:48,210
you know, our food systems are all screwed up and have been for many, many

159
00:09:48,210 –> 00:09:51,650
years. And our food distribution

160
00:09:51,650 –> 00:09:55,490
systems are all screwed up and have been for many, many years. And

161
00:09:55,490 –> 00:09:57,730
I’m not going to go down the road of whether or not that’s a conspiracy.

162
00:09:57,730 –> 00:10:01,430
I’ll leave that for other f to do. I will merely say

163
00:10:02,230 –> 00:10:05,830
that you probably would have had not probably

164
00:10:06,150 –> 00:10:08,150
people before the 1950s,

165
00:10:10,470 –> 00:10:14,150
health wise, had better outcomes. And

166
00:10:14,390 –> 00:10:18,070
it took, you know, us eating 50 years or 60

167
00:10:18,070 –> 00:10:21,870
years of processed food to get to the point where we are, where we

168
00:10:21,870 –> 00:10:25,470
are right now. Everything from lower testosterone in

169
00:10:25,470 –> 00:10:29,280
people’s diets to apparently there’s a whole thing that I

170
00:10:29,280 –> 00:10:32,680
have found out about relatively recently about how much

171
00:10:32,680 –> 00:10:36,440
plastic apparently people are eating. Yeah, the

172
00:10:36,440 –> 00:10:40,280
microplastics. So anytime you can, anytime you can strike even

173
00:10:40,280 –> 00:10:43,920
a, even a small blow, you

174
00:10:43,920 –> 00:10:47,400
know, against that system that benefits you and your family, I’m all in favor of

175
00:10:47,400 –> 00:10:51,120
that. Absolutely. You know. Awesome. Well, I

176
00:10:51,120 –> 00:10:54,890
did. No, go ahead. I was gonna say,

177
00:10:54,890 –> 00:10:57,650
I, I, I think my favorite thing out of all of it, though, to be

178
00:10:57,650 –> 00:11:00,930
honest with you, was that I grew basil. Like the, the herb basil.

179
00:11:01,650 –> 00:11:05,410
It’s, and, and we had enough to, I mean, I think we ate

180
00:11:05,410 –> 00:11:09,210
caprizi like it had to have been a dozen

181
00:11:09,210 –> 00:11:13,050
times this, this fall. Well, like the end

182
00:11:13,050 –> 00:11:16,730
of summer so far. Because we take, you take the tomato

183
00:11:16,730 –> 00:11:20,410
basil and mozzarella balsamic, you

184
00:11:20,410 –> 00:11:24,050
know, just eat it just like that. It’s like a little salad, little

185
00:11:24,050 –> 00:11:27,730
mini salad. Right. Anyway, yeah, I, I, I think we, we had

186
00:11:27,730 –> 00:11:31,130
enough basil and we’re, we’re still pulling basil out of the ground to make

187
00:11:31,130 –> 00:11:33,370
pesto. So we’re going to be making some pesto sauce.

188
00:11:34,890 –> 00:11:37,890
Might as well. I mean, look, at a certain point, Tom, you’re going to be

189
00:11:37,890 –> 00:11:41,610
selling the Little Shop of Horror squash to your neighbors. Yes. Like, this is the

190
00:11:41,610 –> 00:11:45,250
next step. Yeah, yeah. Feed the

191
00:11:45,250 –> 00:11:47,050
neighbors to the plant. Never mind. The other way around.

192
00:11:51,670 –> 00:11:55,430
Well, we, we, we. I love my neighbor. Never mind. Love that. No, never.

193
00:11:55,430 –> 00:11:59,270
I love that. It’s love thy neighbor. Love thy neighbor on the show. No, I

194
00:11:59,270 –> 00:12:02,110
mean, we had the same thing with chickens this year. So our chickens were very,

195
00:12:02,110 –> 00:12:05,910
very productive with, with the eggs.

196
00:12:07,110 –> 00:12:10,870
We did have a whole plan for my youngest son to actually sell

197
00:12:10,870 –> 00:12:14,390
eggs like a roadside stand gets to be a little

198
00:12:14,390 –> 00:12:17,750
challenging because where I live, triple digit heat is definitely a thing

199
00:12:18,700 –> 00:12:22,460
between like the end of June and now. So

200
00:12:22,460 –> 00:12:25,140
that gets to be a little bit, that puts a little crimp in your, in

201
00:12:25,140 –> 00:12:28,940
your, in your step with that. But we have found a way to basically either

202
00:12:28,940 –> 00:12:32,700
Give away, sell or eat the majority of the

203
00:12:32,700 –> 00:12:36,460
eggs that have been produced by, by our chickens. And we only had six.

204
00:12:37,260 –> 00:12:41,020
So you would think six chickens. Yeah. You know, you think if you’re not

205
00:12:41,020 –> 00:12:44,700
used to raising chickens. No. Or you have no clue, like, you’d be like, oh,

206
00:12:44,700 –> 00:12:48,250
that’s, that’s not that many. But the average hen will produce

207
00:12:48,250 –> 00:12:51,730
anywhere between if she’s really well, producing two to four eggs a day.

208
00:12:52,450 –> 00:12:56,210
Oh, wow. So. And a below average hand will produce

209
00:12:56,210 –> 00:12:59,850
one egg a day. And that’s

210
00:12:59,850 –> 00:13:03,649
usually in the first year of those hens being, being, being raised. Particularly if you

211
00:13:03,649 –> 00:13:06,290
have a, have an aggressive rooster the way that I do.

212
00:13:07,250 –> 00:13:11,050
He’s, he’s a full white rooster with

213
00:13:11,050 –> 00:13:14,290
the, with the red, the red thing. So he’s, he’s very,

214
00:13:15,710 –> 00:13:19,150
he’s very aggressive. Let’s just say that. And we also have a couple of turkeys

215
00:13:20,590 –> 00:13:24,030
who I have, I have named them Christmas and Thanksgiving.

216
00:13:24,350 –> 00:13:28,030
My daughter, my daughter has named them something else.

217
00:13:28,030 –> 00:13:31,790
I, I don’t remember. I keep telling her I love her, God

218
00:13:31,790 –> 00:13:33,590
bless her. I keep telling her. And I know I’ve said this on the show

219
00:13:33,590 –> 00:13:37,430
before about her. Don’t name your food. Stop. What, why are you naming the food?

220
00:13:37,430 –> 00:13:40,910
We’re gonna eat these things, but the turkeys.

221
00:13:42,430 –> 00:13:45,150
And then I’m not going to go too far down this road, but the turkeys.

222
00:13:46,670 –> 00:13:49,950
There’s a hierarchy of stupidity in bird

223
00:13:50,510 –> 00:13:54,310
world, Right. If you raise chickens, you’ll know what I’m about

224
00:13:54,310 –> 00:13:58,150
to say. Turkeys are dumb. I

225
00:13:58,150 –> 00:14:01,990
thought chickens were dumb. No, no, no, no, no, no. Chickens are like

226
00:14:01,990 –> 00:14:05,550
Einstein level super geniuses in comparison to turkeys.

227
00:14:07,150 –> 00:14:10,990
And a buddy of mine once, he said to me, because he also raises, raises

228
00:14:10,990 –> 00:14:14,310
chickens and has for many, many years, his kids do like 4H and all that

229
00:14:14,310 –> 00:14:18,150
kind of stuff. And they were raising like bunnies and

230
00:14:18,150 –> 00:14:20,990
cows and ducks and

231
00:14:21,950 –> 00:14:25,310
all kinds of things. And all kinds of things. He’s been down a road that

232
00:14:26,190 –> 00:14:29,390
maybe with my grandchildren, I might go down that road if I feel so inclined.

233
00:14:29,950 –> 00:14:33,590
But he was saying to me that, yeah, if the chickens were

234
00:14:33,590 –> 00:14:36,960
smarter, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t be as delicious

235
00:14:37,280 –> 00:14:41,040
because we wouldn’t be able to catch them. Yeah, that’s actually not a

236
00:14:41,040 –> 00:14:43,920
bad point. That is a very good point. Very valid point,

237
00:14:44,560 –> 00:14:48,240
actually. Ergo. But I did that this summer. Then

238
00:14:48,240 –> 00:14:51,840
we had what we have, we had home Reno

239
00:14:51,920 –> 00:14:55,200
projects. Because when you go on vacation, you come back and things are

240
00:14:56,480 –> 00:15:00,200
broken, for lack of a better term, you must fix

241
00:15:00,200 –> 00:15:03,770
them and you must spend thousands of dollars to do so. So.

242
00:15:04,090 –> 00:15:06,970
Or spend tens of thousands of dollars and have somebody else fix them for you.

243
00:15:07,690 –> 00:15:11,410
That is correct. That is correct. So because. Because you’re

244
00:15:11,410 –> 00:15:14,570
better at earning the tens of thousands of dollars than you are at the fixing

245
00:15:14,570 –> 00:15:18,370
of the. Exactly. So that’s the, that’s the space that

246
00:15:18,370 –> 00:15:20,730
we wound up, wound up around with that.

247
00:15:22,570 –> 00:15:26,330
And so, yeah, that was, that was the summer, I think, at a national level,

248
00:15:26,810 –> 00:15:30,650
you know, summer was, with the exception of a few things, this summer

249
00:15:30,650 –> 00:15:33,290
was remarkably quiet at a national level, which I like.

250
00:15:34,650 –> 00:15:38,370
It’s probably because this was not an election year for

251
00:15:38,370 –> 00:15:41,930
any national elections. So there wasn’t any, there weren’t any

252
00:15:41,930 –> 00:15:45,730
national sort of shenanigans. One thing I will bring

253
00:15:45,730 –> 00:15:49,050
up on the show, and I did a shorts episode about this last week, so

254
00:15:49,050 –> 00:15:52,490
I did talk about Charlie Kirk and the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

255
00:15:52,730 –> 00:15:56,550
I think as a podcaster, it’s worthwhile to talk

256
00:15:56,550 –> 00:15:59,630
about, regardless of the man’s politics or what you may have thought of what he

257
00:15:59,630 –> 00:16:03,430
may have said or how he set up his life. A couple of things I

258
00:16:03,430 –> 00:16:06,190
will say, actually, three things I will say. Number one,

259
00:16:08,350 –> 00:16:10,709
and this is the biggest thing that I said in my shorts episode, and I’ll

260
00:16:10,709 –> 00:16:14,390
repeat it here with Tom. We have been here before as a

261
00:16:14,390 –> 00:16:17,230
country. We’ve always

262
00:16:18,110 –> 00:16:21,540
had political violence. That’s not anything knew.

263
00:16:23,060 –> 00:16:26,860
And this is also why not to make a joke of it, but Dave

264
00:16:26,860 –> 00:16:30,420
Chappelle makes a very good point. In one of his standups years ago, he

265
00:16:30,420 –> 00:16:34,260
said, you know, the framers of the Constitution

266
00:16:34,260 –> 00:16:37,940
understood something about the First Amendment. Government

267
00:16:37,940 –> 00:16:41,700
can’t stop you from saying what you want. Government

268
00:16:41,940 –> 00:16:44,500
can’t stop you, but

269
00:16:45,540 –> 00:16:49,230
other people can. And so you’re going to need the Second Amendment.

270
00:16:49,550 –> 00:16:53,390
You’re going to need a gun. And I’m not saying that Charlie

271
00:16:53,390 –> 00:16:55,910
Kirk could have shot back or any of that kind of stuff. That’s not what

272
00:16:55,910 –> 00:16:59,630
I’m saying. And even he understood that, apparently for the way he lived his life.

273
00:17:02,110 –> 00:17:03,790
And because two things could be true at once,

274
00:17:06,510 –> 00:17:10,270
we’re going to have that sort of, those sort of engagements in

275
00:17:10,270 –> 00:17:13,900
our culture because people do get

276
00:17:13,900 –> 00:17:17,700
upset about words. People do. And they don’t

277
00:17:17,700 –> 00:17:21,500
know how to control their either they don’t know

278
00:17:21,500 –> 00:17:24,980
how to control their thinking, they don’t know how to respond, or they’re emotionally

279
00:17:24,980 –> 00:17:28,700
driven. Right. And when the amygdala kicks in, when the fear

280
00:17:28,700 –> 00:17:32,300
centers kick in, people behave in all kinds of ways that,

281
00:17:32,780 –> 00:17:36,500
you know, we’re trying to tap down, but they still exist in human

282
00:17:36,500 –> 00:17:39,110
nature, which ties into some of the things we’re going to talk about with, with

283
00:17:39,110 –> 00:17:42,790
some of the books that are upcoming. So that’s the main thing. My main point

284
00:17:42,790 –> 00:17:46,550
on Charlie Kirk, the other point that I would like to

285
00:17:46,550 –> 00:17:50,270
make on this is that regardless

286
00:17:50,270 –> 00:17:53,910
of what you may have thought about his politics, the man had

287
00:17:53,910 –> 00:17:57,550
guts, period, full stop. He had

288
00:17:57,550 –> 00:18:01,310
guts. Now, did he have the guts to, or the

289
00:18:01,310 –> 00:18:03,350
courage, such as it were, to

290
00:18:05,360 –> 00:18:09,120
to maybe argue or debate people who were maybe

291
00:18:09,120 –> 00:18:12,080
at a higher intellectual level than him who were not on college campuses?

292
00:18:12,720 –> 00:18:16,560
No, but he understood something fundamental about the way the college

293
00:18:16,560 –> 00:18:19,240
system works in the United States. And almost no one on the political left or

294
00:18:19,240 –> 00:18:21,920
the political right, which is why, by the way, there’s been no imitators of him.

295
00:18:22,640 –> 00:18:26,440
This is very important. And even on the left, when political left

296
00:18:26,440 –> 00:18:29,520
in this country, when imitators do try to come out of the woodwork, they don’t.

297
00:18:29,520 –> 00:18:33,150
Doesn’t work. Because the hot house of academia

298
00:18:33,470 –> 00:18:36,750
is the last sort of pressure cooker for people’s ideas

299
00:18:37,790 –> 00:18:41,470
and future leaders of America, whether we like it or not, right, left and center,

300
00:18:41,710 –> 00:18:44,510
come out of that pressure cooker. We’ve spent a lot of time in the last

301
00:18:44,510 –> 00:18:48,350
60 years pushing people, and we can argue about the

302
00:18:48,350 –> 00:18:51,470
right or wrongness of this, but pushing people into the college system.

303
00:18:53,150 –> 00:18:56,510
And when you push people into the college system, what did you expect to have

304
00:18:56,510 –> 00:19:00,130
happen? You know? Now

305
00:19:02,210 –> 00:19:06,010
he went there because that’s where in

306
00:19:06,010 –> 00:19:09,090
our country, ideas about

307
00:19:09,090 –> 00:19:12,570
progressivism or anarchy or fascism or communism or

308
00:19:12,570 –> 00:19:13,570
socialism or

309
00:19:15,490 –> 00:19:19,210
libertarianism and libertinism are all fully played

310
00:19:19,210 –> 00:19:23,010
out among a hot house of people and a pressure cooker

311
00:19:23,010 –> 00:19:25,150
of people who quite frankly,

312
00:19:27,310 –> 00:19:30,670
lack a fully. And I’m being

313
00:19:30,910 –> 00:19:34,430
biological about this lack of fully formed prefrontal cortex.

314
00:19:36,350 –> 00:19:40,190
Yeah. And so of course he was going to go there. He played

315
00:19:40,190 –> 00:19:43,950
the game. And that’s also why I don’t think

316
00:19:43,950 –> 00:19:47,790
you’re going to fill that hole anytime soon. Nobody else is going

317
00:19:47,790 –> 00:19:50,670
to fill that hole, either right or left in this country. I just don’t think

318
00:19:50,670 –> 00:19:54,260
it’s going to happen. That’s. That’s probably the only thing that you said that I

319
00:19:54,340 –> 00:19:58,020
might disagree with because the, the whole next man

320
00:19:58,020 –> 00:20:01,700
up syndrome is just runs rampant. Right. So it does.

321
00:20:01,860 –> 00:20:04,660
Maybe, maybe somebody’s not going to fill his spot.

322
00:20:06,180 –> 00:20:10,020
Exactly. And maybe it. The time frame is like,

323
00:20:10,660 –> 00:20:14,060
maybe we could debate time frame, whether it’s in the next six months or next

324
00:20:14,060 –> 00:20:17,300
six years or whatever, I don’t know. But yeah. The fact of the matter is

325
00:20:17,690 –> 00:20:21,370
there’s going to be another Charlie Kirk come Around the corner, whether it’s

326
00:20:21,530 –> 00:20:25,050
tomorrow, six months from now, six, I don’t know. Again, we can debate the time

327
00:20:25,050 –> 00:20:28,890
frame, but that’s the way all of this works. There’s another,

328
00:20:28,970 –> 00:20:32,170
there’s somebody that, there’s a next man up syndrome in every

329
00:20:32,570 –> 00:20:36,290
environment that we’re talking about. So I, I, I do think that’s probably the

330
00:20:36,290 –> 00:20:39,850
only thing that you said that I don’t necessarily disagree with. Because the other thing,

331
00:20:39,850 –> 00:20:43,570
like I was going to say, your, your statement about the whole college

332
00:20:43,570 –> 00:20:47,310
environment, it’s literally like throwing gasoline on a wood fire. Oh, yeah,

333
00:20:47,310 –> 00:20:50,670
like, like, it’s literally that, it’s that it’s that

334
00:20:50,910 –> 00:20:54,550
volatile when it comes to ideologies, ideas and things. Because

335
00:20:54,550 –> 00:20:58,190
to your point, they have no idea what life is about yet.

336
00:20:58,270 –> 00:21:01,310
They have no inkling of how what

337
00:21:04,910 –> 00:21:08,750
somebody, somebody who’s 50 that says

338
00:21:08,750 –> 00:21:12,170
you don’t understand the trials and tribulations of a black man is different

339
00:21:13,290 –> 00:21:16,890
than an 18 year old? Because quite honestly, you’re

340
00:21:16,890 –> 00:21:19,610
right. You don’t know. I don’t care what color your skin. You’Re is,

341
00:21:20,730 –> 00:21:24,450
you have no idea. You’re 18. You haven’t gone through trials and

342
00:21:24,450 –> 00:21:28,050
tribulations up. You have not. You have no idea what trials and tribulations

343
00:21:28,050 –> 00:21:31,810
are. So like, you know, well, and if. You,

344
00:21:31,810 –> 00:21:34,090
if you watch some of the, and yes, look,

345
00:21:35,530 –> 00:21:39,100
Charlie was an editor of Instagram and he was a user of social

346
00:21:39,100 –> 00:21:42,820
media. And that’s one of those, when people complain

347
00:21:42,820 –> 00:21:46,100
about him or use that as a critique against him, here’s what I say to

348
00:21:46,100 –> 00:21:49,740
them, here’s my response. You’re hating the player

349
00:21:49,740 –> 00:21:53,580
and not the game, right? Yeah. The game of Instagram is the

350
00:21:53,580 –> 00:21:56,820
game he played. And if you don’t like the game,

351
00:21:57,620 –> 00:22:01,380
you can either play it better than he did or

352
00:22:01,860 –> 00:22:05,510
you can go play a different game. Right? Right. Just go play a different

353
00:22:05,510 –> 00:22:09,270
game. Right. That’s like complaining that Michael Jordan was good

354
00:22:09,430 –> 00:22:12,910
at dunking when dunking’s critical to

355
00:22:12,910 –> 00:22:16,590
basketball. Shut up. Just go, go work on

356
00:22:16,590 –> 00:22:20,430
three pointers then, I don’t know, whatever. Go figure it out. Go

357
00:22:20,430 –> 00:22:23,750
become Steph Curry. Right? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

358
00:22:24,390 –> 00:22:27,350
I’m not complaining about Steph Curry. I don’t really like an outside game. It’s not

359
00:22:27,350 –> 00:22:29,510
as exciting to me. But you know what? Hey, that’s the game.

360
00:22:31,470 –> 00:22:35,190
It is what it is. And again. And Charlie Kirk was the same way. Did

361
00:22:35,190 –> 00:22:38,950
he edit his Instagram videos? Yes, he did. Did he, did he open the mic

362
00:22:38,950 –> 00:22:42,790
for people and, and, and ask them to come up? And did they? Yes, he

363
00:22:42,790 –> 00:22:46,190
did. Is he going to edit that to show the most outrageous things?

364
00:22:46,990 –> 00:22:50,350
Yes. And did those people say those outrageous things? Yes.

365
00:22:50,990 –> 00:22:54,630
So what’s your point exactly? And again, to your, to your

366
00:22:54,630 –> 00:22:58,050
point, whether you agree with him or not, whether you agree with his

367
00:22:58,050 –> 00:23:01,730
politics or not is not the relevant point of his death. Like, I’m sorry,

368
00:23:01,730 –> 00:23:05,530
but his death was completely. And again, I don’t care what side

369
00:23:05,530 –> 00:23:09,370
of the coin you fall on, because death was unnecessary. There was

370
00:23:09,370 –> 00:23:12,930
no reason for that. There was. No, there was. You can’t. To your point,

371
00:23:13,170 –> 00:23:17,010
it’s that whole prime that the primalness of

372
00:23:17,570 –> 00:23:21,370
emotion that comes out when people just, it’s

373
00:23:21,370 –> 00:23:25,040
just the switch flips. And what are you going to do to stop it? Like

374
00:23:25,040 –> 00:23:28,880
the only you and somebody like him

375
00:23:28,880 –> 00:23:32,480
who is bold enough to stand out on that stage again, right, left or center,

376
00:23:32,480 –> 00:23:35,040
I don’t care who you are and I don’t care what you’re. But if you’re

377
00:23:35,040 –> 00:23:38,720
bold enough to stand out there and stand for what you believe in, then

378
00:23:39,039 –> 00:23:42,640
you’re going to take that risk. You’re going, you, you have to know, going

379
00:23:42,640 –> 00:23:46,400
into, you’re taking that risk. Now, that’s the one thing I fault him for,

380
00:23:46,560 –> 00:23:50,340
is I don’t believe he felt his life was at risk

381
00:23:50,340 –> 00:23:54,020
ever, because quote, unquote, they’re just words. I, I really

382
00:23:54,020 –> 00:23:57,820
believe he felt that way, that, that you could, that you can debate with people.

383
00:23:57,820 –> 00:24:00,500
And as long as you keep it civil, as long as you don’t, as long

384
00:24:00,500 –> 00:24:04,220
as you debate people in a debatable fashion, then everything should be

385
00:24:04,220 –> 00:24:07,420
fine. And that’s where I think you got it wrong. Because at some point you

386
00:24:07,420 –> 00:24:10,980
are going to piss off somebody enough that they’re going to take

387
00:24:11,940 –> 00:24:15,620
a more, a more drastic measure. And then, then

388
00:24:15,620 –> 00:24:19,410
just a debate. So that’s where I would disagree with you. I would say that.

389
00:24:20,050 –> 00:24:23,010
I don’t think he discounted that. I think he actually knew that that was,

390
00:24:23,890 –> 00:24:27,610
that was the thing that was on the line. And I think

391
00:24:27,610 –> 00:24:31,170
he was. Oh, I think, I don’t think he

392
00:24:31,170 –> 00:24:34,530
confused or, or looked at that as a

393
00:24:34,530 –> 00:24:37,850
ceiling to the speech because a lot of people will look at that and they’ll

394
00:24:37,850 –> 00:24:40,570
say, well, I’m a self censor or I’m not going to go as far. I’m

395
00:24:40,570 –> 00:24:44,270
not gonna. And he said, I think he looked at that and said, yes, that’s

396
00:24:44,270 –> 00:24:47,990
the price I’m willing to pay. And I have no idea when that cost

397
00:24:47,990 –> 00:24:50,830
will come. I have no idea when that, when that will come due,

398
00:24:51,550 –> 00:24:55,350
I will do the thing that I am. And for

399
00:24:55,350 –> 00:24:58,589
him according to his own words. He felt it was a calling based on his

400
00:24:58,670 –> 00:25:02,430
Christianity and how he walked that out. Okay, well, you know,

401
00:25:02,830 –> 00:25:05,470
if you look at history, if you look at Christianity and what

402
00:25:06,350 –> 00:25:08,670
genuine Christian belief asks Christians to do

403
00:25:10,380 –> 00:25:14,180
Christ. Christ prayed so hard in the garden of

404
00:25:14,180 –> 00:25:17,780
Gethsemane before he got hauled off to the cross that he was bleeding and he

405
00:25:17,780 –> 00:25:21,460
went off to the cross anyway. Okay. You

406
00:25:21,460 –> 00:25:24,540
have to know that that’s the thing

407
00:25:25,180 –> 00:25:28,620
that’s at the end of the path, maybe to your point, because the

408
00:25:28,620 –> 00:25:31,900
passions are so much. And once you’ve.

409
00:25:32,220 –> 00:25:35,150
I don’t want people to confuse. This is where I disagree. I don’t want people

410
00:25:35,150 –> 00:25:38,150
to confuse that ability to be okay with that end

411
00:25:38,710 –> 00:25:42,230
with a dismissal of the end. I don’t think he dismissed it. I think he

412
00:25:42,230 –> 00:25:45,630
was just okay with it. It was, it was the price he was willing to

413
00:25:45,630 –> 00:25:49,390
pay. Now, you and I could both be wrong because who knows what

414
00:25:49,390 –> 00:25:53,150
was genuinely in his heart, right? You know, and

415
00:25:53,150 –> 00:25:56,990
so we’re just rampantly speculating based on what we’ve seen. And the thing. And by

416
00:25:56,990 –> 00:26:00,470
the way, I barely paid attention to him. I wanted to go on record, I

417
00:26:00,470 –> 00:26:03,780
barely paid attention to the man. Like, I was aware of what Turning Point USA

418
00:26:03,780 –> 00:26:07,620
was. It was sort of on the back end of my brain. I knew

419
00:26:07,620 –> 00:26:11,140
that I didn’t even know. His name until he died, put it that way. Right?

420
00:26:11,140 –> 00:26:14,660
I, I knew. Well, and I knew his name only because I pay attention,

421
00:26:14,740 –> 00:26:17,700
I pay attention to politics. And I know that during the,

422
00:26:18,500 –> 00:26:21,140
during Trump’s run in

423
00:26:21,380 –> 00:26:25,100
2024, in the summer of 2024, there had been

424
00:26:25,100 –> 00:26:28,610
some chatter among Republican donors that

425
00:26:28,610 –> 00:26:32,450
Turning Point usa, who the Trump administration had given a lot of money to,

426
00:26:33,090 –> 00:26:36,770
was having trouble signing up college age men

427
00:26:37,170 –> 00:26:40,730
to come out and get out and vote. And they were, they were, there were

428
00:26:40,730 –> 00:26:44,450
some, some grumbling from older folks, to your point, about the 50

429
00:26:44,450 –> 00:26:47,730
year old, some older folks in Republican donor circles,

430
00:26:48,290 –> 00:26:51,370
there was some chatter among them about why are we spending all this money on

431
00:26:51,370 –> 00:26:55,090
this kid Charlie? Like, what’s he going to deliver to us? And so they

432
00:26:55,090 –> 00:26:58,490
were having a real problem. And I, I vaguely remember

433
00:27:00,090 –> 00:27:03,890
hearing him having to go to like, some donors and, you know, calm them

434
00:27:03,890 –> 00:27:06,570
down and da, da, da, da, da. And this is all part of the game

435
00:27:06,570 –> 00:27:09,969
he played, you know. And again, anybody on the left or the right, not

436
00:27:09,969 –> 00:27:13,170
everybody, people who are political on left and right do this kind of stuff all

437
00:27:13,170 –> 00:27:16,810
the time. Okay. This is less, again, less about the, the

438
00:27:16,810 –> 00:27:20,610
particular, the less about the particular party or

439
00:27:20,610 –> 00:27:23,770
the particular position. You’re playing and more about the fact of the game itself.

440
00:27:24,480 –> 00:27:27,280
And so that’s where I had heard about him. And I kind of had a

441
00:27:27,280 –> 00:27:30,200
vague idea of who he was then. And I kind of glanced a little bit

442
00:27:30,200 –> 00:27:33,800
at Turning Point usa, but I’m not in college, I didn’t

443
00:27:33,800 –> 00:27:37,480
know. And so it was only after his death when

444
00:27:37,480 –> 00:27:40,199
things started popping up more and more and more, I was like, oh, this is

445
00:27:40,199 –> 00:27:43,280
what he was doing. Oh, I see the game he was sort of playing. Now

446
00:27:43,280 –> 00:27:46,920
I will say this. My 20 year old daughter knew

447
00:27:46,920 –> 00:27:50,680
precisely who he was. And so this is the last thing

448
00:27:50,680 –> 00:27:53,600
I’ll say. And we can move on from this because this is my third major

449
00:27:53,600 –> 00:27:57,240
point. I think the death of Charlie Kirk for a certain generation of people

450
00:27:57,240 –> 00:28:00,440
is their JFK moment. Yeah, I agree with that too.

451
00:28:01,320 –> 00:28:04,360
Regardless of, by the way, which side of the politics they’re on.

452
00:28:04,920 –> 00:28:08,319
This is one of those things where if you’re between 16 and

453
00:28:08,319 –> 00:28:11,640
35, you knew who that guy was, right?

454
00:28:12,600 –> 00:28:16,360
And even if you disagreed with him vociferously and went on his Instagram and

455
00:28:16,360 –> 00:28:19,900
went on TikTok to like argue with him because you were in

456
00:28:19,900 –> 00:28:23,660
opposition to his ideas, you knew who he was, you have to know

457
00:28:23,660 –> 00:28:27,460
him to be in opposition to his ideas. And so this is just

458
00:28:27,460 –> 00:28:31,300
an example of how in our culture,

459
00:28:31,460 –> 00:28:34,060
and we’ll talk about this with the books that are coming up, because the same

460
00:28:34,060 –> 00:28:37,700
thing’s happening now in a lot of other areas. Things are

461
00:28:37,700 –> 00:28:40,900
shifting to a new mode of engagement,

462
00:28:41,780 –> 00:28:45,530
a new way of dealing with

463
00:28:46,330 –> 00:28:50,050
ideas, philosophies, positions in the

464
00:28:50,050 –> 00:28:53,650
world. And it’s not, quite frankly, the ways that you or I would deal with

465
00:28:53,650 –> 00:28:56,290
it. You know, we’re in our 40s and 50s. It’s not the way that we

466
00:28:56,290 –> 00:28:59,770
were raised to deal with it. Like, I would never, I would never go to

467
00:28:59,770 –> 00:29:02,170
an open mic. When I was in college, I wouldn’t go to an open mic

468
00:29:02,170 –> 00:29:05,610
thing and argue with somebody. I would maybe go see a speaker,

469
00:29:05,850 –> 00:29:09,650
right? And hang out and then I would leave and argue about it with

470
00:29:09,650 –> 00:29:12,760
my friends and then go back to my dorm room and have a beer and

471
00:29:12,760 –> 00:29:16,360
go to bed like that. That’s the extent of it. If I’m really

472
00:29:16,360 –> 00:29:20,160
riled up, maybe like, do you remember the movie PCU

473
00:29:20,240 –> 00:29:23,800
back in the day? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m gonna do that. Like, they’re all

474
00:29:23,800 –> 00:29:26,320
gonna be with their little tables out there. I’m gonna pick up one of the

475
00:29:26,320 –> 00:29:30,120
ducks and throw it at somebody. You know, it’s gonna be that

476
00:29:30,120 –> 00:29:33,840
kind of thing, right? But this generation of 20 year olds, 16

477
00:29:33,840 –> 00:29:37,520
or 16 to 35 year olds. It’s a totally different engagement

478
00:29:37,520 –> 00:29:41,360
because of how the phones work. And again, Charlie understood that he was

479
00:29:41,360 –> 00:29:44,700
31. He was. And he just,

480
00:29:44,940 –> 00:29:48,700
he used the medium that he was offered. And the door is open

481
00:29:48,700 –> 00:29:52,060
to anybody who has a phone and an Instagram account. You could do the exact

482
00:29:52,060 –> 00:29:54,620
same thing. Yeah,

483
00:29:56,220 –> 00:29:59,980
left or right, you could do the exact same thing. Agreed.

484
00:30:00,460 –> 00:30:03,420
So. And starting a Nonprofit when you’re 18,

485
00:30:05,340 –> 00:30:07,180
a political nonprofit when you’re 18.

486
00:30:10,230 –> 00:30:12,990
Don’t tell me this kid didn’t have some vision of like, oh, this might not

487
00:30:12,990 –> 00:30:16,790
work out well in the end. Well, again, I’m

488
00:30:16,790 –> 00:30:20,470
not. Okay, so I’m, I’m just to clarify what

489
00:30:20,470 –> 00:30:24,150
I’m saying here. Sure. I’m not suggesting he wasn’t

490
00:30:24,150 –> 00:30:27,910
willing to make sacrifices or that he assumed everything was going to be hunky

491
00:30:27,910 –> 00:30:31,710
door like. Or that he was. No, no, I just, I’m saying he

492
00:30:31,710 –> 00:30:35,310
didn’t expect to get shot like that. Sure. Yes.

493
00:30:35,310 –> 00:30:38,830
Like. Yeah, yeah, I was talking about the actual, actual. Yeah, yeah,

494
00:30:38,830 –> 00:30:42,350
okay. I, I thought he was very

495
00:30:42,510 –> 00:30:46,310
well prepared for all of the roller coasters of life, the ups

496
00:30:46,310 –> 00:30:48,870
and downs. He could have got canceled. All that other stuff that we talk about,

497
00:30:48,870 –> 00:30:51,830
the cancer culture, all that whatever. I think he was ready for that. He was

498
00:30:51,830 –> 00:30:55,550
willing to sacrifice his own name even for,

499
00:30:55,630 –> 00:30:59,230
for his principle. What I’m talking about. He did not expect

500
00:30:59,550 –> 00:31:03,310
to be sitting on a stage like that in some. Yeah, I’m sorry, again, whether

501
00:31:03,310 –> 00:31:06,230
you agree with his politics or not, some coward to just shoot him out of

502
00:31:06,230 –> 00:31:09,990
nowhere. That, that’s cowardice to me. That, that’s somebody who, who, you know,

503
00:31:09,990 –> 00:31:13,230
who doesn’t have the intelligence level to go debate him, who doesn’t have the,

504
00:31:13,550 –> 00:31:17,190
the, the political acumen to, to stand against him. They don’t have

505
00:31:17,190 –> 00:31:20,830
the, the moral compass to fight

506
00:31:20,990 –> 00:31:24,470
against him on an equal playing field. So they revert to violence and they just

507
00:31:24,470 –> 00:31:27,910
shoot him. I think that’s what I was getting at that, like, I, I think

508
00:31:27,910 –> 00:31:31,230
he was ready for all of those other things. He was ready. He was ready

509
00:31:31,230 –> 00:31:34,760
for the cancel culture. He was ready for. He was ready for his, his

510
00:31:34,760 –> 00:31:38,600
ideologies to tip the other way. Even I, because I, I saw a few things

511
00:31:38,600 –> 00:31:42,200
for him where he backed off of some of his ideologies because somebody,

512
00:31:42,360 –> 00:31:46,000
again, to his credit, somebody made a valid point that, that challenged

513
00:31:46,000 –> 00:31:49,760
his intellect and he was able to say, I

514
00:31:49,760 –> 00:31:53,520
got you. That makes sense. Let me. Whatever, like, so I think

515
00:31:53,520 –> 00:31:57,080
he was okay with some of those, those circumstances that Came at

516
00:31:57,080 –> 00:32:00,120
him. He wasn’t ready for a gun is all I was saying.

517
00:32:01,070 –> 00:32:04,870
That’s all I was saying, that he wasn’t ready for that. Yeah, I don’t think,

518
00:32:04,870 –> 00:32:07,630
and I don’t think any of them are, by the way. I don’t think JFK

519
00:32:07,630 –> 00:32:11,110
was. I don’t think MLK was. I don’t think Malcolm X was. I don’t think

520
00:32:11,110 –> 00:32:14,510
any of those people that sat on that vocal platform,

521
00:32:15,710 –> 00:32:19,310
were they willing to die for what they believed in? Sure. Were they expecting

522
00:32:19,310 –> 00:32:22,910
to? No. I think, I think as long as there is

523
00:32:22,910 –> 00:32:26,430
verbal and debate, as long as the debates are peaceful

524
00:32:26,430 –> 00:32:30,240
debates, you should not expect that to be a viable,

525
00:32:30,240 –> 00:32:34,080
A viable outcome is all I was getting at. Well, that. And that ties

526
00:32:34,080 –> 00:32:37,160
into what I, what I said at the beginning. My, my main point about free

527
00:32:37,160 –> 00:32:40,840
speech. You know, the government can’t stop you. And

528
00:32:40,840 –> 00:32:44,640
we don’t want the government engaged in a process of force or

529
00:32:44,640 –> 00:32:48,480
fraud or whatever, leveraging power either

530
00:32:48,480 –> 00:32:51,240
in front of the scenes or behind the scenes. We don’t want government involved in

531
00:32:51,240 –> 00:32:55,090
that. Somebody should let the FCC know that. Yeah, well, you know,

532
00:32:56,210 –> 00:32:58,690
Jimmy Kimmel’s a little bit of a different thing, but I agree, I, I do

533
00:32:58,690 –> 00:33:02,250
agree in principle. Absolutely. That’s the principle. I don’t care about Jim either. I’m just

534
00:33:02,250 –> 00:33:06,010
saying that. Well, well. And here’s what I think about the Jimmy Kimmel thing. Just

535
00:33:06,010 –> 00:33:09,010
as a side note on this, I was telling, I was telling somebody who I

536
00:33:09,010 –> 00:33:12,610
was talking to about this. I said, listen, here’s what I suspect.

537
00:33:17,010 –> 00:33:19,330
I think Jimmy Kimmel wanted out of his ABC contract.

538
00:33:22,120 –> 00:33:25,960
I think he did it on purpose. Very possible. Listen, so listen, I, I have

539
00:33:25,960 –> 00:33:29,480
this debate in my house all the time because they’re saying, Jimmy Kimmel, the First

540
00:33:29,480 –> 00:33:33,160
Amendment, blah, blah, blah. And I said, listen, the First Amendment does not apply

541
00:33:33,240 –> 00:33:37,000
to your employer. No, it does not. If your employer

542
00:33:37,000 –> 00:33:40,520
says, don’t say that and you say that, you get fired.

543
00:33:40,600 –> 00:33:44,120
And whether you agree with Jimmy Kimmel or not, again, I don’t give a cr.

544
00:33:44,120 –> 00:33:46,680
I don’t care what his politics were. I don’t care if he loves Trump, hates

545
00:33:46,680 –> 00:33:50,160
Trump. I don’t care if he’s left or right. Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. It does

546
00:33:50,160 –> 00:33:53,920
not matter. You are employed by a company. The

547
00:33:53,920 –> 00:33:57,600
company gives you a directive. You ignore the directive, you get fired. It

548
00:33:57,600 –> 00:34:01,280
happens to every, anybody who works for someplace. Like it doesn’t matter.

549
00:34:01,920 –> 00:34:05,520
Bill, Bill Maher was talking about this on his show real time,

550
00:34:05,920 –> 00:34:09,760
24 years ago, apparently to the day. ABC also

551
00:34:09,760 –> 00:34:12,400
Canceled Politically Incorrect for something that Mars said

552
00:34:13,769 –> 00:34:17,609
Right. Back in the 90s when we were all cool and stuff.

553
00:34:19,929 –> 00:34:23,569
So ABC and Bill Maher made this joke. He’s like, they great.

554
00:34:23,569 –> 00:34:27,329
Always be caving. I love that joke. You know, and I’ve. You know,

555
00:34:27,329 –> 00:34:30,369
I. I struggle with Bill Maher politically because I think he’s kind of all over

556
00:34:30,369 –> 00:34:32,289
the map. And I don’t know what’s happening to him. He’s going through some weird

557
00:34:32,289 –> 00:34:36,009
evolution. But he makes a good point. Yeah. Where

558
00:34:36,489 –> 00:34:39,360
it’s not. To your point. It’s not

559
00:34:40,080 –> 00:34:43,800
Jimmy. It’s Jimmy’s

560
00:34:43,800 –> 00:34:47,240
employer. Right. And Jimmy not. It’s not a First

561
00:34:47,240 –> 00:34:50,720
Amendment, and it’s. Not a first nomination, a First Amendment issue.

562
00:34:51,200 –> 00:34:54,920
Now, if Jimmy had. If Jimmy Kimmel had said something off the air in

563
00:34:54,920 –> 00:34:57,840
an interview or whatever that his employer disagreed with.

564
00:34:58,560 –> 00:35:02,360
There’s a little bit of a gray area there. Yeah. It also depends on

565
00:35:02,360 –> 00:35:05,320
what his contract says, because there are some. These. And this is what I get

566
00:35:05,320 –> 00:35:09,120
to. That’s right. When you get to the millions of dollars per year, people. These

567
00:35:09,120 –> 00:35:12,840
are. These people are under. By the way. By the way, the same

568
00:35:12,840 –> 00:35:16,320
thing happened. How quickly we forget in the

569
00:35:16,320 –> 00:35:19,920
NFL with the whole kneeling down at the national anthem. Oh, yeah. We

570
00:35:19,920 –> 00:35:23,760
forget that there were teams that were just. That just flat out said, you

571
00:35:23,760 –> 00:35:27,600
will not do that. And not a single player, black, white, or any

572
00:35:27,600 –> 00:35:31,360
other race knelt during the national anthem because guess what?

573
00:35:31,590 –> 00:35:35,430
They’re employed by those teams. They are employees

574
00:35:35,510 –> 00:35:39,230
of those teams. And if those teams decided. We’re not doing this. Now,

575
00:35:39,230 –> 00:35:42,510
granted, there are teams that were all over the place. And you saw that. Oh,

576
00:35:42,510 –> 00:35:46,310
yeah. Some NFL owners were okay with it. Some weren’t. Some. Some said,

577
00:35:46,310 –> 00:35:49,550
don’t do this. And players responded in a different way. And I won’t bring up

578
00:35:49,550 –> 00:35:52,710
any particulars because we don’t have time for that because we’ll be here all day.

579
00:35:52,870 –> 00:35:56,710
But. But employ like I. But they

580
00:35:56,710 –> 00:36:00,480
all handled it and different ways. This is the same thing.

581
00:36:00,640 –> 00:36:04,280
It’s. It’s. I. It’s identical. The

582
00:36:04,280 –> 00:36:07,600
employer says. If the employer gives you a directive and you ignore it, you get

583
00:36:07,600 –> 00:36:11,440
fired. That is the simple thing. Now, if Jimmy Kimmel

584
00:36:11,440 –> 00:36:14,640
feels like he was terminated, which, by the way, you haven’t heard anything from him

585
00:36:14,640 –> 00:36:18,400
yet. No, you haven’t. Which is why I say it was on purpose.

586
00:36:18,480 –> 00:36:22,080
That’s why I think it was on purpose. Exactly. Jimmy, trust me when I tell

587
00:36:22,080 –> 00:36:25,090
you, with somebody who has that kind of money and that kind of

588
00:36:25,490 –> 00:36:29,290
clout and that kind of recognizability and all Those things. If he

589
00:36:29,290 –> 00:36:33,010
felt he was terminated wrongfully,

590
00:36:33,250 –> 00:36:36,890
there would be a wrongful termination lawsuit already on the

591
00:36:36,890 –> 00:36:40,449
table. Yep, that would have happened immediately. Immediately.

592
00:36:41,010 –> 00:36:44,810
So the fact that he didn’t tells you something else is at play

593
00:36:44,810 –> 00:36:48,130
here. Like, come on, guys, stop

594
00:36:48,130 –> 00:36:51,830
reacting to every snippet of information you see on the

595
00:36:51,830 –> 00:36:55,510
Internet. Come on, use your, Use the brain that’s

596
00:36:55,510 –> 00:36:58,510
sitting inside your head. There’s a lot of folds in that brain for a reason.

597
00:37:02,110 –> 00:37:05,950
Jimmy. Jimmy couldn’t figure out how to get out of his contract. Jimmy wanted to

598
00:37:05,950 –> 00:37:09,670
jump high. Jimmy wants to do a podcast or maybe wants to do

599
00:37:09,670 –> 00:37:13,470
a substack. Jimmy wants, Jimmy wants all the money and doesn’t have

600
00:37:13,470 –> 00:37:16,910
to share it with abc. Whatever. Jimmy wants to go work for

601
00:37:17,420 –> 00:37:21,140
cnn. I don’t know. Whatever. I don’t know. Whatever. Whoever. Right. Maybe, Maybe Jimmy’s,

602
00:37:21,140 –> 00:37:24,740
maybe Jimmy’s in negotiation. This would be ironic. Maybe Jimmy’s in

603
00:37:24,740 –> 00:37:27,340
negotiation to go on HBO against Bill Mark.

604
00:37:28,780 –> 00:37:32,540
That would be hilarious. Hilarious. Hilarious. By the way, by the

605
00:37:32,540 –> 00:37:35,420
way, another, another very, very vocal person,

606
00:37:36,220 –> 00:37:40,020
John Oliver. Like him or like him or not, love him

607
00:37:40,020 –> 00:37:43,870
or hate him, agree with his politics or not. Irrelevant. Because John

608
00:37:43,870 –> 00:37:47,670
Oliver flat out said, if HBO wants to fire me, let

609
00:37:47,670 –> 00:37:51,470
them. I have enough, I have enough following, I have enough backing. I’ll just

610
00:37:51,470 –> 00:37:55,310
spin up a YouTube channel. I’ll get all those viewers back anyway. And

611
00:37:55,310 –> 00:37:58,350
he flat out said it. He goes, let them fire. I don’t care. I’m going

612
00:37:58,350 –> 00:38:01,470
to say what I want to say and let them fire me. And what did

613
00:38:01,470 –> 00:38:04,950
HBO do? They went, we’re just going to let him do what he wants to

614
00:38:04,950 –> 00:38:08,550
do. Right? Because HBO’s war is owned by Warner Brothers

615
00:38:08,790 –> 00:38:12,640
and Zaslav over there has bigger problems than, than John Oliver.

616
00:38:12,880 –> 00:38:16,520
Right? This is how this

617
00:38:16,520 –> 00:38:20,280
goes. This is how this goes. And so, and

618
00:38:20,280 –> 00:38:22,800
at the end of the day, here’s the thing, the other thing I said to

619
00:38:22,800 –> 00:38:26,640
the person when I said this is probably an on purpose thing. Not a, not

620
00:38:26,640 –> 00:38:29,200
a, not a, just an utterance out of the sky,

621
00:38:33,280 –> 00:38:37,080
out of all of these. So now Stephen Colbert is going to wave

622
00:38:37,080 –> 00:38:40,800
the free speech flag around Jimmy Kimmel eventually. Because people are

623
00:38:40,800 –> 00:38:44,440
venal in Hollywood going to wave the free speech flag around and

624
00:38:44,440 –> 00:38:47,760
he’s. They’re both going to get hired and they’re both going to get fetted and

625
00:38:47,760 –> 00:38:51,480
vetted on podcasts that have more listenership than this one. Fine, go

626
00:38:51,480 –> 00:38:54,520
ahead, play the game. Whatever. Out of all of them,

627
00:38:55,800 –> 00:38:59,640
I want, and honestly, I don’t even know who watches late night shows.

628
00:38:59,880 –> 00:39:03,320
This is the Most conversation anybody’s had about Jimmy Kimmel in years. Most

629
00:39:03,320 –> 00:39:07,080
relevant he’s been in years. Okay, I don’t watch late

630
00:39:07,080 –> 00:39:10,400
night shows. I think they’re all garbage. I’d rather watch Alvin Hitchcock Presents reruns on

631
00:39:10,400 –> 00:39:13,160
Prime Video and go to sleep, which is what I do.

632
00:39:14,760 –> 00:39:18,440
But the winner out of all of this is actually not the

633
00:39:18,440 –> 00:39:22,160
fcc. It’s not Donald Trump, and it’s not Jimmy Kimmel. The

634
00:39:22,160 –> 00:39:25,480
winner out of all of this nonsense is Jimmy Fallon.

635
00:39:25,800 –> 00:39:28,440
Oh, God, yes. The most milquetoast,

636
00:39:29,080 –> 00:39:32,610
unobjectionable to make it about race and

637
00:39:32,610 –> 00:39:34,690
white man on television right now.

638
00:39:35,890 –> 00:39:39,650
Softball questions, lowballing it and hanging out

639
00:39:39,650 –> 00:39:42,850
and just. He has mastered the art

640
00:39:43,330 –> 00:39:47,010
of saying nothing offensive at all, ever. Which is

641
00:39:47,010 –> 00:39:50,490
the same lesson, by the way, that Jimmy Kimmel should have learned from Jay Leno

642
00:39:50,490 –> 00:39:53,810
but didn’t, and that Jay Leno learned from Johnny Carson

643
00:39:54,530 –> 00:39:58,240
and allowed him to have a 30 year career. Jimmy Fallon’s gonna have a third.

644
00:39:58,320 –> 00:40:01,760
What? A 15 more year career. He’s gonna be on for a long.

645
00:40:02,080 –> 00:40:05,680
Easily, easily. Because he’s inoffensive. He understands something

646
00:40:05,680 –> 00:40:09,520
about late night that I wish all these morons understood. Like 10

647
00:40:09,520 –> 00:40:13,120
years ago, when Trump came down the, down the, down the,

648
00:40:13,600 –> 00:40:17,120
the, the escalator and blew everybody’s brains out, apparently in the

649
00:40:17,120 –> 00:40:20,760
mainstream media. And that’s a terrible way to

650
00:40:20,760 –> 00:40:23,720
frame that with what we just talked about with Charlie Kirk. That’s a terrible way

651
00:40:23,720 –> 00:40:25,830
to say that. I retract. That

652
00:40:27,270 –> 00:40:30,990
blew everybody’s paradigm. There we go away. That’s a better way to say

653
00:40:30,990 –> 00:40:34,830
that. Because when Trump came down the escalator, everybody in the media lost their

654
00:40:34,830 –> 00:40:38,270
mind for some reason. And I’m still not clear why. But Jimmy

655
00:40:38,270 –> 00:40:41,510
Fallon didn’t. Because here’s what Jimmy Fallon understands.

656
00:40:42,390 –> 00:40:45,750
Regular people just want you to shut up and dance. Yes.

657
00:40:46,550 –> 00:40:50,310
Yeah, yeah. Just shut up and dance. That’s the

658
00:40:50,310 –> 00:40:54,130
entire game. Did you see Jimmy. Speaking of which, did you.

659
00:40:54,210 –> 00:40:57,650
So I, I actually do. I watch none of them except Jimmy Fallon,

660
00:40:58,050 –> 00:41:01,810
partly because I think, honest to God, I think he’s the only one

661
00:41:01,810 –> 00:41:05,650
that’s actually funny. Okay. I think the rest of the guys,

662
00:41:06,050 –> 00:41:09,850
when they like their, their jokes are, they, they just don’t hit the same.

663
00:41:09,850 –> 00:41:13,490
I, I think Jimmy Fallon does the best job. And I think it’s because specifically

664
00:41:13,650 –> 00:41:17,450
they have his stint on Saturday Night Live. Yeah. Like, because of his.

665
00:41:17,450 –> 00:41:21,150
That, that ability to read the room, so to speak. Right,

666
00:41:21,150 –> 00:41:24,950
Correct. Right. Yeah. Right. So. And I know Saturday Night Live throws

667
00:41:24,950 –> 00:41:28,590
some real feces at the wall. So, I mean, I’M not suggesting that Saturday Night

668
00:41:28,590 –> 00:41:32,390
Live is, is, you know, the best at this. I’m just saying that I think

669
00:41:32,390 –> 00:41:35,990
that go. Seeing what he saw at Saturday Live, going through what he saw and

670
00:41:35,990 –> 00:41:39,550
being, and now being able to. His monologue

671
00:41:40,110 –> 00:41:43,870
after Jimmy Kimmel got fired was some of the funniest

672
00:41:44,590 –> 00:41:47,710
garbage on TV that I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t know if you

673
00:41:47,710 –> 00:41:50,430
saw it, but you should go back. No, you can find it on YouTube and

674
00:41:50,430 –> 00:41:53,930
stuff like that. Because to your point,

675
00:41:54,090 –> 00:41:56,810
kind of to your point. And I. Again, I don’t know if

676
00:41:58,090 –> 00:42:01,890
I, I would. I hope and, and I hope this. And because you

677
00:42:01,890 –> 00:42:05,450
brought the race into it by, by saying, I did, I did,

678
00:42:05,690 –> 00:42:09,450
I did. I hope that anybody in any

679
00:42:09,450 –> 00:42:12,650
race or color or creed and Jimmy Fallon’s

680
00:42:12,970 –> 00:42:16,330
situation would do the same thing. I, I would. Oh, yeah, I would hope.

681
00:42:16,920 –> 00:42:20,200
Because I mean, think of like guys like Steve Harvey

682
00:42:20,760 –> 00:42:23,880
Mack, if they had a late night show, I think they would be similar to

683
00:42:23,880 –> 00:42:27,600
Jimmy Fallon. I especially like Steve Harvey, I think would

684
00:42:27,600 –> 00:42:31,200
be better than Jimmy, than Bernie Mac. But I think Ron Fooks from

685
00:42:31,200 –> 00:42:34,000
Parks and Recreate, he was on Parks and Rec, I think the black guy for

686
00:42:34,000 –> 00:42:37,720
Parks. I follow his stuff on Instagram because he’s freaking hilarious. Hilarious.

687
00:42:37,880 –> 00:42:40,600
And one of the things he says about. And he stays out of politics, he’s

688
00:42:40,600 –> 00:42:44,380
like, I don’t like talking about things that I don’t understand. Yeah.

689
00:42:44,620 –> 00:42:48,060
Anyway, so Jimmy, go back and watch it because it’s,

690
00:42:48,460 –> 00:42:51,740
it’s hilarious. It’s hilarious because he,

691
00:42:52,060 –> 00:42:55,900
Jimmy Fallon says flat out, he’s like, jimmy Kimmel gets fired for talking about

692
00:42:55,900 –> 00:42:59,540
Trump. Not me, not here. I’m gonna talk about Trump just like

693
00:42:59,540 –> 00:43:02,860
I always do. And he goes, here, we’re gonna start with this trip over to,

694
00:43:03,340 –> 00:43:06,900
to England. And he goes, did you see how he,

695
00:43:06,900 –> 00:43:10,300
he. And he. It just. There’s a voiceover that comes over and says,

696
00:43:10,610 –> 00:43:14,050
looked dashingly in his suit and Jimmy Collins in the background. Go like,

697
00:43:15,810 –> 00:43:18,970
he goes, when he met with so and so. Did you see how his skin

698
00:43:18,970 –> 00:43:22,570
tone was? So. And it comes out nature like he’s

699
00:43:22,570 –> 00:43:25,410
freaking out. It’s so, it’s hilarious. And I’m like,

700
00:43:26,130 –> 00:43:29,810
to your point, I don’t care what color he is. He’s brilliant

701
00:43:29,810 –> 00:43:33,170
in the fact that he’s gonna, he’s gonna make, he’s gonna make, you

702
00:43:33,570 –> 00:43:37,090
know and understand that he is making fun of the situation without saying

703
00:43:37,270 –> 00:43:41,030
anything. Exactly. Without saying anything that’s going to get him fired,

704
00:43:41,030 –> 00:43:44,870
get him canceled, get him terminated, get like. And I’m

705
00:43:44,870 –> 00:43:48,390
telling you, if Donald Trump decides to go after Fallon because of what he thinks

706
00:43:48,390 –> 00:43:51,790
and says, he’s it’s not going to work. People will push back on that because

707
00:43:51,790 –> 00:43:54,590
they’d be like, what are you talking about? Jimmy didn’t say that. Or Right. Talk

708
00:43:54,590 –> 00:43:56,990
like that. He didn’t word it that way. He didn’t say it that way. He

709
00:43:56,990 –> 00:44:00,710
wasn’t political about it. Like he, Jimmy Fallon is,

710
00:44:00,710 –> 00:44:03,930
is the, is the, is the Johnny Carson of this generation for sure.

711
00:44:04,330 –> 00:44:07,210
So we’ve talked. Maybe you and I haven’t talked about this on the show. Maybe

712
00:44:07,210 –> 00:44:10,490
I talked about on the show with another guest, Libby Unger, probably.

713
00:44:10,730 –> 00:44:14,050
She’s big on, she’s big on free speech. She’s my free speech person. She’s big

714
00:44:14,050 –> 00:44:17,770
on this. Right. And one of the points that

715
00:44:17,770 –> 00:44:20,330
I’ve made with Libby, matter of fact, I think we were talking about

716
00:44:21,610 –> 00:44:25,090
talking about Shakespeare. It might have been one of our Shakespeare episodes. It wasn’t King

717
00:44:25,090 –> 00:44:28,730
Lear, it was another episode. Doesn’t matter. Point is,

718
00:44:29,060 –> 00:44:32,820
in Shakespeare, the idea of the court jester is huge. Right.

719
00:44:33,300 –> 00:44:36,580
And throughout Western culture, throughout Western

720
00:44:36,580 –> 00:44:40,380
leadership. Right. There’s an idea that I

721
00:44:40,380 –> 00:44:43,300
think a lot of modern leaders just to drag this back to leadership now that

722
00:44:43,300 –> 00:44:46,820
we’re like 45 minutes in. Well,

723
00:44:47,380 –> 00:44:50,980
you had to cover current events. So there’s this

724
00:44:50,980 –> 00:44:54,340
idea embedded in Western leadership that doesn’t get explored nearly enough,

725
00:44:55,460 –> 00:44:59,060
that the king, the leader, such as it were, of position or title,

726
00:44:59,620 –> 00:45:02,740
has to be able to handle the court jester.

727
00:45:03,140 –> 00:45:06,860
Because the job of the court jester, number one, is to

728
00:45:06,860 –> 00:45:10,699
point out that the king has no clothes. The emperor

729
00:45:10,699 –> 00:45:14,540
is naked, whether psychologically naked, politically naked, or

730
00:45:14,540 –> 00:45:18,380
even in some cases, as in that story, physically naked. Right. The

731
00:45:18,380 –> 00:45:21,870
job of the court jester is to keep the king grounded

732
00:45:22,030 –> 00:45:25,310
because everybody else around the king is a bunch of yes men. Even the king’s

733
00:45:25,310 –> 00:45:28,830
wife, even the queen is a yes woman. Right. Because every wants to suck up

734
00:45:28,830 –> 00:45:32,630
to power the people that. And by the way, the king

735
00:45:32,630 –> 00:45:36,390
that understands that the role of the court jester is important, demands only one

736
00:45:36,390 –> 00:45:39,630
thing from the court jester. And this is what I think Jimmy Fallon gets.

737
00:45:40,270 –> 00:45:42,790
And this is why Trump will never have a problem with him. This is what

738
00:45:42,790 –> 00:45:46,570
Dave Chappelle gets. And this is increasingly already brought up. Bill Maher. Bill

739
00:45:46,570 –> 00:45:50,250
Maher started to get this, too. It’s about time. Yeah, I know, right?

740
00:45:50,250 –> 00:45:53,730
It’s only took him a little while, but, well, you know, slow learners.

741
00:45:53,890 –> 00:45:56,370
The slowest boat eventually gets to shore. Eventually.

742
00:45:58,210 –> 00:46:01,690
But the king wants the court jester to Be

743
00:46:01,690 –> 00:46:05,490
clever. That’s the only demand the leader makes of the jester.

744
00:46:05,970 –> 00:46:09,810
Just be clever. Don’t be stupid. You can’t simply point

745
00:46:09,810 –> 00:46:13,570
out that you’re unintelligent. You have to make it seem like it. Like you’re,

746
00:46:14,210 –> 00:46:17,730
you’re challenged in, in ways that it’s not

747
00:46:17,730 –> 00:46:21,290
obvious that you’re, you’re dumb. Right? You do not tell you.

748
00:46:21,290 –> 00:46:25,130
Right? I, I agree. And it’s, that’s why the other thing

749
00:46:25,130 –> 00:46:28,730
too is like, that’s why I think we still have roasts,

750
00:46:28,730 –> 00:46:32,250
right? Like the roast of Tom Brady or the roast of so and so.

751
00:46:32,250 –> 00:46:35,850
Like Alec Baldwin is what I saw the other day. When the

752
00:46:35,850 –> 00:46:39,390
day comes that you take yourself so seriously that you cannot fit.

753
00:46:39,620 –> 00:46:43,060
Find humor in your own actions or,

754
00:46:43,380 –> 00:46:47,060
or that’s when that, that, that will be the demise of the human

755
00:46:47,060 –> 00:46:50,180
race. Honestly, because I’m sorry

756
00:46:50,580 –> 00:46:54,420
if it doesn’t matter, you cannot tell me your life is so serious

757
00:46:54,420 –> 00:46:58,140
that there’s no room for laughter, right? You can’t tell me

758
00:46:58,140 –> 00:47:01,900
that you’re, that you’re so good at your job, you’re

759
00:47:01,900 –> 00:47:05,460
infallible. They can’t find a hole, a single hole in

760
00:47:05,460 –> 00:47:09,300
anything that you do that they can poke fun at. Because if they do,

761
00:47:09,620 –> 00:47:11,940
then it’s just a lie. Like, because that’s,

762
00:47:13,460 –> 00:47:17,180
that’s where you get the, the, the, the, the balance of

763
00:47:17,180 –> 00:47:20,980
power faulting, right? So when you think that you’re so perfect that

764
00:47:20,980 –> 00:47:24,180
any, anything somebody says against you is a flat out lie,

765
00:47:25,060 –> 00:47:28,580
that’s, that’s a problem. Because nobody is perfect. Nobody.

766
00:47:28,740 –> 00:47:32,180
Sorry, hate to tell you folks, but there is no

767
00:47:33,150 –> 00:47:36,870
that. There’s nobody that is perfect. That’s

768
00:47:36,870 –> 00:47:40,590
on. That’s by design, by the way. We’re not perfect by design.

769
00:47:40,590 –> 00:47:44,390
Because how else are you supposed to learn, grow, like,

770
00:47:44,390 –> 00:47:47,950
develop your own, you know, your own, you know, your own

771
00:47:47,950 –> 00:47:51,350
personalities and in your own legacy. You cannot build a legacy if you’re

772
00:47:51,350 –> 00:47:55,030
infallible. Like, it doesn’t. Not only can you not build a legacy if

773
00:47:55,030 –> 00:47:58,710
you’re infallible, there’s two

774
00:47:58,710 –> 00:48:02,370
sides to this, right? So there’s the, there’s the side of the king. The king

775
00:48:02,370 –> 00:48:06,010
has to know that he’s infallible and that there’s problems. And I’m sorry,

776
00:48:06,010 –> 00:48:09,330
ladies, it’s usually a he. I’m just using he as a general he. Right?

777
00:48:10,130 –> 00:48:13,690
Even the queen needs to be able to be mocked by the court jester sometimes,

778
00:48:13,690 –> 00:48:17,170
which we won’t even get into that. But let’s be let. But let’s be real

779
00:48:17,170 –> 00:48:21,010
Queen Elizabeth. That just Recently. Oh, yeah, yeah. Exceptional

780
00:48:21,250 –> 00:48:24,050
sense of humor. She did, she did. She,

781
00:48:24,930 –> 00:48:28,500
she took the position seriously, but not herself seriously. Yes,

782
00:48:28,500 –> 00:48:31,460
exactly. Right, exactly. That’s, that’s a distinction with a difference.

783
00:48:33,140 –> 00:48:36,860
And so we tend to focus on the leader because the

784
00:48:36,860 –> 00:48:40,260
leader has the more power. Has the power in that, and that clearly has the

785
00:48:40,260 –> 00:48:43,940
power in that situation. But that’s why the First Amendment is important, because

786
00:48:44,420 –> 00:48:48,180
the other side of that coin is the jester. The

787
00:48:48,180 –> 00:48:50,900
jester. There’s a responsibility for the jester

788
00:48:52,100 –> 00:48:55,790
to actually be in intelligent.

789
00:48:57,550 –> 00:49:01,390
And this means. I’m going

790
00:49:01,390 –> 00:49:05,110
to make a moral claim here. This means the more intelligent you are,

791
00:49:05,110 –> 00:49:08,190
the less malicious you should probably be. Because you probably think through what you’re going

792
00:49:08,190 –> 00:49:11,950
to, what you’re going to actually say. And maliciousness

793
00:49:11,950 –> 00:49:15,670
with no intelligence is going to make the leader to the

794
00:49:15,670 –> 00:49:18,270
point about Donald Trump that you just made is going to make the leader

795
00:49:19,390 –> 00:49:22,690
irritable. And you keep, you keep being malicious without

796
00:49:22,690 –> 00:49:26,530
intelligence, then the leader is

797
00:49:26,530 –> 00:49:30,330
gonna be like, I’m cut your head off. Which is why in that bit, Donald

798
00:49:30,330 –> 00:49:33,850
Trump’s never gonna come after Jimmy Fallon because it’s clever. He probably laughed at that

799
00:49:33,850 –> 00:49:36,850
himself. At 11 o’ clock at night, he’s like, yeah, no, that’s actually, that’s actually

800
00:49:36,850 –> 00:49:40,610
really good. I’ve actually heard worse than that from Baron, so come for me,

801
00:49:41,010 –> 00:49:44,810
it’s fine. And that’s the sort of attitude you have to have. But when it

802
00:49:44,810 –> 00:49:48,430
wanders into maliciousness and we

803
00:49:48,430 –> 00:49:51,670
don’t have, we don’t have strong laws because of the way a First Amendment works

804
00:49:51,670 –> 00:49:55,390
here against slander or defamation, we don’t really have strong laws against

805
00:49:55,390 –> 00:49:58,790
that. But when it gets into different

806
00:49:58,790 –> 00:50:02,630
spaces of speech like news organizations and blah, blah, blah. The New York

807
00:50:02,630 –> 00:50:05,750
Times is different than Dave Chappelle. And everybody knows this. Like, this is not news

808
00:50:05,750 –> 00:50:09,550
to anyone. Right? Yeah. So Dave Chappelle

809
00:50:09,550 –> 00:50:12,930
write an opinion column for the New York Times. That’s funny. Sure,

810
00:50:13,010 –> 00:50:16,530
maybe. But they’re not going to hire that guy to do that. They would hire

811
00:50:16,530 –> 00:50:20,050
Rod Dreher to do that or, or

812
00:50:20,530 –> 00:50:24,090
what’s his name, Thomas

813
00:50:24,090 –> 00:50:27,930
Friedman. Right. To do that. Because it comes with a different Elon. Because

814
00:50:27,930 –> 00:50:31,410
there are different status things going on. And Thomas Friedman isn’t the court

815
00:50:31,410 –> 00:50:35,130
jester. Thomas Friedman is the political advisor. And the political

816
00:50:35,130 –> 00:50:38,610
advisor is never the court jester. Those two roles don’t overlap. So

817
00:50:39,030 –> 00:50:41,670
we know all this stuff, but we don’t want to say it out loud. We

818
00:50:41,670 –> 00:50:44,150
don’t want to put it out there in public. We would just have it rather

819
00:50:44,150 –> 00:50:47,790
Be, be just something that’s just known. And then when people

820
00:50:47,790 –> 00:50:51,630
violate the rules or to your point, or in the gray areas, we want

821
00:50:51,630 –> 00:50:55,190
to punish people inside of the gray areas or let people go

822
00:50:55,190 –> 00:50:58,990
inside the gray areas because it works for us. And you got to

823
00:50:58,990 –> 00:51:02,630
have what people are really irritable about. I think in general, average people,

824
00:51:02,790 –> 00:51:06,250
they don’t know how to articulate what I just said. So hopefully what I just

825
00:51:06,250 –> 00:51:09,730
said gives people some ideas. But people get irritable because they know what the rules

826
00:51:09,730 –> 00:51:13,050
are. That’s why people get irritable. And they would like some

827
00:51:13,050 –> 00:51:16,890
consistency. So Jimmy, Jimmy Kimmel

828
00:51:16,890 –> 00:51:20,450
will be fine. Oh, he’s definitely not going to be poor tomorrow. So I’m not

829
00:51:20,450 –> 00:51:23,850
going to worry about. Worried about Jimmy Kimmel. He’s not gonna be standing outside, outside

830
00:51:23,850 –> 00:51:27,530
ABC studios, you know, with a cup, you know, like hanging out. Can I have

831
00:51:27,530 –> 00:51:31,210
some bread, please? Hey, I ain’t worried about

832
00:51:31,210 –> 00:51:34,970
him. I also am worried about Stephen Colbert. He’s gonna be fine.

833
00:51:36,090 –> 00:51:38,970
You know, I’m of the opinion, and this is the last thing I’ll say on

834
00:51:38,970 –> 00:51:41,450
this because we have switched to our books that we’re gonna be focusing on for

835
00:51:41,450 –> 00:51:44,930
the next few months. I’m of the opinion that all late night shows should be

836
00:51:44,930 –> 00:51:48,650
canceled, period. Full stop. I think it’s a dead genre. I don’t know who’s up.

837
00:51:48,810 –> 00:51:52,450
We have streaming, we have movies, we have books, we got a

838
00:51:52,450 –> 00:51:56,090
wealthy TikTok. TikTok is just killing all of this

839
00:51:56,090 –> 00:51:59,790
stuff, particularly among the 16 to 35 year old

840
00:51:59,790 –> 00:52:03,510
demographic who are not watching this stuff. So I for

841
00:52:03,510 –> 00:52:06,710
the life of me can’t figure out how these shows still remain on the air.

842
00:52:06,710 –> 00:52:10,390
And they are expensive to produce. I mean, there is a budget, there’s staff. I

843
00:52:10,390 –> 00:52:14,230
think Sarah Silverman was one of the writers on Jimmy Kimmel’s show

844
00:52:14,230 –> 00:52:17,310
and Sarah Silverman’s married to Jimmy Kimmel now.

845
00:52:18,510 –> 00:52:21,990
Sarah Silverman hasn’t been funny in years. So I don’t know exactly what she’s doing

846
00:52:21,990 –> 00:52:25,770
in that writer’s room. And yes, I did say it out loud and whatever. It’s

847
00:52:25,770 –> 00:52:27,170
fine. It’s free speech. I say what I want.

848
00:52:29,890 –> 00:52:33,090
You. I can’t get canceled on my own platform. Exactly.

849
00:52:35,170 –> 00:52:38,970
But, but, but there’s a little bit of, to me, that’s a little

850
00:52:38,970 –> 00:52:42,170
bit of double dipping and some other ridiculousness that I probably wouldn’t have allowed if

851
00:52:42,170 –> 00:52:46,010
I were abc. But be that as it may, maybe that’s the game. Maybe

852
00:52:46,010 –> 00:52:49,250
Jimmy Kimmel’s agent is just a better negotiator than ABC was,

853
00:52:49,900 –> 00:52:53,500
yeah, that’s it. So, you know, but yeah, I,

854
00:52:53,500 –> 00:52:57,340
I, I don’t. This recent contra Trump is a tempest in a teapot. It’s

855
00:52:57,340 –> 00:53:01,060
not a free speech issue. As far as the FCC chair goes, look, if you’re

856
00:53:01,060 –> 00:53:04,700
running the Federal Communications Commission, your only

857
00:53:04,780 –> 00:53:08,580
role, whether you like it or not, is to shut

858
00:53:08,580 –> 00:53:12,220
up because you’re, because your,

859
00:53:12,300 –> 00:53:16,110
your department shouldn’t exist anyway and

860
00:53:16,110 –> 00:53:19,350
you don’t really want us looking too hard at that, do you?

861
00:53:19,910 –> 00:53:20,710
So, shh.

862
00:53:30,470 –> 00:53:34,030
FCC chair, you should have learned. And I know it’s not the same FCC

863
00:53:34,030 –> 00:53:36,550
chair who was in the 90s. I know it’s a different person. It doesn’t matter.

864
00:53:37,270 –> 00:53:41,110
Go in the archives and pull out all of the,

865
00:53:41,540 –> 00:53:44,580
pull out all the old recordings of Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh from the early

866
00:53:44,580 –> 00:53:48,420
90s when you were screaming and yelling, when your place was screaming and yelling,

867
00:53:48,420 –> 00:53:52,180
and all those battles you lost then against both of those guys who

868
00:53:52,180 –> 00:53:56,020
actually, between the two of them, whether we like it or not, again,

869
00:53:56,100 –> 00:53:58,820
politics is out on this. I listened to both of them.

870
00:54:00,900 –> 00:54:04,740
Both those guys saved radio in America in the late

871
00:54:04,740 –> 00:54:08,590
20th century. They just did for sure. Because what else

872
00:54:08,590 –> 00:54:12,190
are you going to be listening to? So if you’re the

873
00:54:12,190 –> 00:54:15,630
FCC chair, your thing shouldn’t, shouldn’t exist anyway.

874
00:54:15,950 –> 00:54:19,790
So just be quiet. Even if Donald Trump told

875
00:54:19,790 –> 00:54:22,949
you to do something, just shut up. Shut up. Don’t say anything. Why are you

876
00:54:22,949 –> 00:54:23,550
talking to people?

877
00:54:27,710 –> 00:54:31,390
Speaking of why you’re talking to people. That’s a good transition.

878
00:54:31,550 –> 00:54:35,070
It’s a good transition. What was, what was this book we. Were supposed to be

879
00:54:35,070 –> 00:54:38,920
talking about? So this book is up, we are going to be covering some books

880
00:54:38,920 –> 00:54:41,800
about, about, about.

881
00:54:42,840 –> 00:54:46,440
So October and November on the podcast is typically a six week

882
00:54:46,440 –> 00:54:50,280
period between the middle, sorry, around middle of the end

883
00:54:50,280 –> 00:54:54,120
of September and then all the way cutting into, into Thanksgiving where

884
00:54:54,120 –> 00:54:57,720
we switch into our more holiday oriented, oriented

885
00:54:57,720 –> 00:55:01,240
fare. And this year in that space, we do have a couple of holiday books.

886
00:55:01,240 –> 00:55:04,100
We have a Truman Capote that we’re going to look at. We have a GK

887
00:55:04,100 –> 00:55:07,780
Chesterton that we’re going to revisit and we also have a

888
00:55:07,860 –> 00:55:10,260
CS Lewis that we’re going to, we’re going to try to, we’re going to put

889
00:55:10,260 –> 00:55:14,020
in there very holiday oriented. Before we get there, we have to kind

890
00:55:14,020 –> 00:55:16,820
of go through a little bit of a, and this period always feels like a

891
00:55:16,820 –> 00:55:19,620
little bit of a slog, particularly if these, because these books are about hard things,

892
00:55:20,100 –> 00:55:23,780
but they’re also about real things. We’re going to cover

893
00:55:23,780 –> 00:55:27,380
books that are about war and about warfare.

894
00:55:27,700 –> 00:55:30,920
So one of the books that I’m working my way through currently,

895
00:55:31,480 –> 00:55:34,280
I don’t know that I’ll have it done in time for the podcast is

896
00:55:35,880 –> 00:55:39,640
the Empire of the Summer Moon, which is a great book

897
00:55:39,720 –> 00:55:43,200
about the Comanche and the US cavalry in the

898
00:55:43,200 –> 00:55:46,960
1880s and in the 1890s and even down into the

899
00:55:46,960 –> 00:55:48,600
1910s and 1920s

900
00:55:50,840 –> 00:55:54,520
in the American west, particularly in the part of Texas where my

901
00:55:54,520 –> 00:55:58,080
studio is located and where I live. This is an area that was deep in

902
00:55:58,080 –> 00:56:01,490
Comanche territory. Matter of fact, I went on a,

903
00:56:02,130 –> 00:56:05,810
went on a gondola ride this weekend with my, with

904
00:56:05,810 –> 00:56:09,330
my wife. And the lake, the artificial lake that we were, we were on.

905
00:56:09,890 –> 00:56:13,530
That property had been brought up by one family back

906
00:56:13,530 –> 00:56:17,130
in the 1860s or 1870s and has been owned

907
00:56:17,130 –> 00:56:20,690
consistently by that family all the way down. And they’ve divided it up and it’s

908
00:56:20,690 –> 00:56:23,970
been developed and major city is around it now anyway,

909
00:56:25,170 –> 00:56:28,750
but the gondola driver was telling us, or the gondola pilot was

910
00:56:28,750 –> 00:56:32,510
telling us that apparently that area

911
00:56:33,230 –> 00:56:36,630
was huge Comanche territory in the

912
00:56:36,630 –> 00:56:40,030
1860s and 1870s and even into the 1880s and 1890s.

913
00:56:40,430 –> 00:56:44,110
And he said that his family was one of the families that moved there

914
00:56:44,350 –> 00:56:47,710
from the east way back in the day. And so he had done some genealogy

915
00:56:47,710 –> 00:56:50,790
research because he didn’t know anything about his family. And he’s like, oh, well, wow.

916
00:56:50,790 –> 00:56:53,870
We were like, we were like right. We were like right in this area.

917
00:56:55,550 –> 00:56:59,110
And so that’s very fascinating to me. The

918
00:56:59,110 –> 00:57:02,710
Comanche as a tribe were. They were

919
00:57:02,710 –> 00:57:06,310
warriors. Just. That’s the best thing you could say about them. They were warriors. They

920
00:57:06,310 –> 00:57:09,950
were like. I think of them like the old school samurai warriors before guns showed

921
00:57:09,950 –> 00:57:13,710
up to Japan. Yeah. And, and before everything just shifted. And

922
00:57:13,710 –> 00:57:17,150
now like, you’re in a totally. They’re like the end of the, the end of

923
00:57:17,150 –> 00:57:20,750
the. What was it, the Edo period? I believe it was in Japan.

924
00:57:20,750 –> 00:57:24,430
They’re kind of like that. They’re the last remnant of like just we’re

925
00:57:24,430 –> 00:57:27,430
gonna have an old school battle with each other and it’s going to be a

926
00:57:27,430 –> 00:57:31,070
thing. I was thinking more the old Zulu. Like the Zulu or them. I was

927
00:57:31,070 –> 00:57:34,790
thinking. Yeah, I thought I, I thought they were more of a like literally a

928
00:57:34,790 –> 00:57:38,430
direct one for one. But, but I think the jet, the Japan

929
00:57:38,430 –> 00:57:41,550
reference is probably, again, if you think of their

930
00:57:41,550 –> 00:57:45,270
swordsmanship, I don’t think it’s the same like. So I think the

931
00:57:45,270 –> 00:57:48,950
Zulu were probably closer in the, in that respect. But again, you could probably

932
00:57:48,950 –> 00:57:52,710
make. Well, in A lot of different ways. Well, the samurai could ride on horseback

933
00:57:52,710 –> 00:57:56,270
and shoot with the, with the bows like they were

934
00:57:56,270 –> 00:57:59,430
insane. Yeah, yeah, yeah, those guys were.

935
00:58:02,070 –> 00:58:05,789
Yeah, you didn’t. You left them alone. Let’s just say

936
00:58:05,789 –> 00:58:09,510
that you realize. You realize. So, so to your point, right

937
00:58:09,590 –> 00:58:13,030
now, the Comanche were going against cavalry members that were.

938
00:58:13,590 –> 00:58:17,360
That were training to shoot from horseback with a six shooter, right?

939
00:58:17,360 –> 00:58:19,400
And the Comanche could still fire.

940
00:58:20,920 –> 00:58:24,720
They. I heard a statistic that they could fire arrows two to

941
00:58:24,720 –> 00:58:28,560
one with a. With a handheld six shooter. Think about that. So in

942
00:58:28,560 –> 00:58:32,120
the time it takes you to shoot six shots on. This is all on

943
00:58:32,120 –> 00:58:35,760
horseback, of course, by the way. So on horseback, because you have to balance

944
00:58:35,760 –> 00:58:38,840
yourself, you fire the gun, you have to make sure, you know, you get a

945
00:58:38,840 –> 00:58:42,560
clear shot, whatever, right? So in the time they shot six bullets from

946
00:58:42,560 –> 00:58:45,210
a six shooter, a Comanche could fire 12 arrows.

947
00:58:47,200 –> 00:58:50,960
That to me is absurd. That now, again,

948
00:58:50,960 –> 00:58:54,640
I wasn’t there. So if those numbers are skewed, please don’t shoot the messenger here.

949
00:58:54,640 –> 00:58:57,280
I’m just saying this is some of the statistics that I’ve read and

950
00:58:58,320 –> 00:59:00,480
you know, and these are supposedly

951
00:59:02,480 –> 00:59:06,320
some of the journal entries

952
00:59:06,320 –> 00:59:09,240
that I’ve read and things like that are coming straight from cavalry members in that

953
00:59:09,240 –> 00:59:12,730
era. Like they’re writing these things going, I cannot keep up with the

954
00:59:12,730 –> 00:59:16,250
arrows fired at me, so to speak. Right? So as you’re ducking

955
00:59:16,250 –> 00:59:20,090
arrows, trying to shoot your six. Shoot your six shots and

956
00:59:20,090 –> 00:59:22,930
then forget if you have to reload. Like, if you have to reload, you’re done.

957
00:59:22,930 –> 00:59:26,769
You’re done. It’s over. It’s over. Well, they are the. And

958
00:59:26,769 –> 00:59:29,730
this is why I draw the parallel from Japan. But yeah, I’ll buy absolutely the

959
00:59:29,730 –> 00:59:33,130
Zulu warriors when they will go up against the. Go up against the British

960
00:59:34,970 –> 00:59:38,570
or even, oh gosh,

961
00:59:39,450 –> 00:59:43,290
the. The Mongols, right, When they would ride across the steps,

962
00:59:43,290 –> 00:59:47,010
right, and just rip the hell out of.

963
00:59:47,010 –> 00:59:50,570
Out of. Out of. Out of native

964
00:59:50,570 –> 00:59:54,130
Russians in the Urals and everywhere else on that

965
00:59:54,130 –> 00:59:57,970
flat plane that is Russia. One of the reasons why I’m very

966
00:59:57,970 –> 01:00:01,170
interested in the Empire Storm Moon, beyond just the history of it and my connection

967
01:00:01,170 –> 01:00:04,800
to it in the area in which I live is that

968
01:00:04,800 –> 01:00:08,080
book represents an inflection point between

969
01:00:08,400 –> 01:00:11,840
old and new ways of fighting as a warrior or the person who has a

970
01:00:11,840 –> 01:00:15,480
warrior mindset and has for a long

971
01:00:15,480 –> 01:00:19,200
time. That inflection point is fascinating to me because

972
01:00:19,440 –> 01:00:22,400
just like with World War I, it’s a space where

973
01:00:23,040 –> 01:00:26,080
old things are ending and new things are coming in,

974
01:00:26,640 –> 01:00:30,360
but there’s an arbitrage there where learning

975
01:00:30,360 –> 01:00:34,120
can happen. And sometimes the arbitrage lasts. Like in

976
01:00:34,120 –> 01:00:37,760
case of World War I, the arbitrage lasts for four years, and then it’s over.

977
01:00:37,760 –> 01:00:41,000
The door closes. Right. With the

978
01:00:41,000 –> 01:00:44,400
Comanche, the arbitrage was like 15

979
01:00:44,640 –> 01:00:48,320
years maybe that they had. And I think I’m probably being

980
01:00:48,320 –> 01:00:51,480
generous, I think it was probably closer to 10. But let’s say 15 years that

981
01:00:51,480 –> 01:00:55,320
they had where they just owned all the new things they just did. They just

982
01:00:55,320 –> 01:00:58,410
owned it. And it’s those. It’s one of those spaces where

983
01:01:01,450 –> 01:01:04,890
if you’re a person who is trying to understand

984
01:01:05,130 –> 01:01:08,930
how things shift from a leadership position, there’s some interesting

985
01:01:08,930 –> 01:01:11,770
lessons to be learned there. And we’re gonna. We’re gonna talk about some of those

986
01:01:11,770 –> 01:01:15,490
on the show. Go ahead. I was just gonna say, I. I. Not only do

987
01:01:15,490 –> 01:01:19,330
I agree with you from the. The. That whole pivot there, not how we’re.

988
01:01:19,330 –> 01:01:22,980
Sorry, the word used arbitrage. No, no, The. The.

989
01:01:23,540 –> 01:01:26,900
It’s like there’s. There’s a. There’s. There’s a time frame there. It’s like a

990
01:01:26,900 –> 01:01:30,500
pinnacle there. You can see things shifting from side to side

991
01:01:30,980 –> 01:01:33,780
a lot. One of them that nobody talks about

992
01:01:34,180 –> 01:01:37,700
extensively that I found through some research and stuff that I think is

993
01:01:37,940 –> 01:01:41,540
one of the more glaring, like,

994
01:01:42,500 –> 01:01:46,100
opportunities for us to learn from is how they treated captives.

995
01:01:47,230 –> 01:01:51,070
There was a vast difference in the. In how they treated the prisoners,

996
01:01:51,070 –> 01:01:54,910
prisoners of war, captives, all that stuff, because the. Some of the original

997
01:01:54,910 –> 01:01:58,270
versions of this were assimilation, right? So, like, we would.

998
01:01:58,670 –> 01:02:01,550
Especially from the native side, they would. As they were capturing people,

999
01:02:02,270 –> 01:02:05,910
especially women, they would just assimilate them right into the

1000
01:02:05,910 –> 01:02:09,510
tribe. And there was a pivot point where they saw what captives were being treated,

1001
01:02:09,510 –> 01:02:12,230
how captives were treatment on the other side. And they said, we’re not doing that.

1002
01:02:12,230 –> 01:02:14,360
If they going to treat our people like that, we’re going to do something different.

1003
01:02:14,440 –> 01:02:18,120
And they just started torturing and. Because Native people were not

1004
01:02:18,680 –> 01:02:22,400
really, like. There was no real evidence of severity

1005
01:02:22,400 –> 01:02:26,080
and torture in any. Any. Any way, shape or form until around

1006
01:02:26,080 –> 01:02:28,960
that time frame. And then all of a sudden things just changed. And it was

1007
01:02:28,960 –> 01:02:32,720
like. It was not about. And we could. Scalping

1008
01:02:32,720 –> 01:02:36,560
aside. There were some scalping things that. That’s. I’m talking about actual

1009
01:02:36,560 –> 01:02:39,940
treatment of people that they took into their camp. Not what happened on the

1010
01:02:39,940 –> 01:02:43,780
battlefield, but when they took people into their camp. I mean,

1011
01:02:44,180 –> 01:02:47,900
everybody. Not. Not everybody. I mean, probably two thirds of the planet

1012
01:02:47,900 –> 01:02:51,620
has seen Dances With Wolves, and there’s a particular character in there, the white

1013
01:02:51,620 –> 01:02:54,660
woman in The. In the Lakota camp that

1014
01:02:55,300 –> 01:02:59,140
eventually is treated as a Lakota woman. Like that’s just the way it.

1015
01:02:59,300 –> 01:03:02,980
And that was very typical. But to your point, I think that

1016
01:03:03,140 –> 01:03:06,870
that, that area, that time frame in that area of

1017
01:03:06,870 –> 01:03:10,670
the country showed a lot of changes in the

1018
01:03:10,670 –> 01:03:14,470
way that. In the way that things happen in the interactions. And I

1019
01:03:14,470 –> 01:03:17,590
don’t think a lot of emphasis is put on it. I don’t think enough emphasis

1020
01:03:17,590 –> 01:03:21,270
is put on that. That, that shift. That, that shift in mindset of how

1021
01:03:21,270 –> 01:03:24,910
the prisoner of war was going to be treated. Well, it’s interesting because.

1022
01:03:25,630 –> 01:03:29,470
So we’re also going to cover. I just. I actually double

1023
01:03:29,470 –> 01:03:32,250
ordered this book. I didn’t remember that I had it. And so I ordered a

1024
01:03:32,250 –> 01:03:34,130
second copy and then I was like, oh wait, I already have this book on

1025
01:03:34,130 –> 01:03:37,530
my shelf. What am I an idiot? But the Earth is all that

1026
01:03:37,530 –> 01:03:40,970
lasts, right? And. And

1027
01:03:41,530 –> 01:03:45,370
this is about. It sort of

1028
01:03:45,370 –> 01:03:48,170
goes along with Empire, the Summer Moon, because it’s about things that are happening at

1029
01:03:48,170 –> 01:03:51,210
this exact same time, but in the Northern plains, right

1030
01:03:51,930 –> 01:03:55,770
between Crazy Horse, which I don’t really like that name, but okay, let’s just.

1031
01:03:55,930 –> 01:03:59,650
That’s what’s going. That’s what we’re going to use. And again, the

1032
01:03:59,650 –> 01:04:02,260
US Cavalry, right, Trying to,

1033
01:04:04,660 –> 01:04:08,340
as I said before, navigate the arbitrage. Right. Of things that are happening.

1034
01:04:08,340 –> 01:04:11,540
And you can see. And this will, this will sort of

1035
01:04:11,940 –> 01:04:15,340
not round out, but this will sort of give you three legs to the stool

1036
01:04:15,340 –> 01:04:18,780
that we already had that we started off with Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

1037
01:04:18,780 –> 01:04:21,940
Right. And I’m not saying this covers all

1038
01:04:22,500 –> 01:04:25,620
obviously opinions or ideas. Does that possible. Right.

1039
01:04:26,190 –> 01:04:28,990
Um, but it’s three examples

1040
01:04:29,790 –> 01:04:33,230
of. To your point about shifting torture, shifting

1041
01:04:33,230 –> 01:04:36,990
psychological things that we can see happening or psychological approaches

1042
01:04:37,310 –> 01:04:40,990
to how we deal with human behavior that we can even see happening in our

1043
01:04:40,990 –> 01:04:43,950
own time. We’re in the middle of a weird shift between.

1044
01:04:44,830 –> 01:04:48,630
And this is. This is relevant to the Charlie Kirk assassination, but it’s also relevant

1045
01:04:48,630 –> 01:04:51,230
to the thing we were talking about with Jimmy Fallon is. Or not Jimmy Fallon,

1046
01:04:51,230 –> 01:04:54,960
but Jimmy Kimmel as well. We’re at

1047
01:04:54,960 –> 01:04:58,480
a weird inflection point moment right now

1048
01:04:59,040 –> 01:05:02,320
where old things are passing away in

1049
01:05:02,320 –> 01:05:06,160
leadership, in not in human nature because that’s

1050
01:05:06,160 –> 01:05:10,000
eternal, but in leadership and in how behavior

1051
01:05:10,000 –> 01:05:13,680
manifests and where the whack, a mole pops up and then the reactions that people

1052
01:05:13,680 –> 01:05:17,440
have to that. So the reactions that people have to an

1053
01:05:17,440 –> 01:05:21,010
argument online are

1054
01:05:21,010 –> 01:05:24,690
radically different than the reactions that people had to an argument

1055
01:05:25,010 –> 01:05:28,770
to my point about when I was in college, to an argument offered by a

1056
01:05:28,770 –> 01:05:32,570
speaker from a deus, you know, 30 years ago. We’re

1057
01:05:32,570 –> 01:05:35,330
at an inflection point, and warfare,

1058
01:05:36,290 –> 01:05:40,010
you know, war is the father of us all. Heraclitus said that 33,000 years

1059
01:05:40,010 –> 01:05:43,250
ago, and to a certain degree he was correct.

1060
01:05:43,890 –> 01:05:47,410
It’s where the point gets to be the sharpest. And that’s what we’re going to

1061
01:05:47,410 –> 01:05:50,920
talk a lot about, you know, coming up, coming up this, this year.

1062
01:05:51,000 –> 01:05:54,640
Because when all the laughing is done and like, we’ve all decided,

1063
01:05:54,640 –> 01:05:58,240
okay, this is the shooting that we’re going to do, and you’re armed and I’m

1064
01:05:58,240 –> 01:06:02,040
armed, and now we’re going to, we’re going to do the thing. A

1065
01:06:02,040 –> 01:06:05,840
lot of the dross gets, gets stripped away. A lot of the

1066
01:06:05,840 –> 01:06:09,320
nonsense gets stripped away. And now we’re, we’re super hyper

1067
01:06:09,320 –> 01:06:13,040
focused on, for better or worse, we’re

1068
01:06:13,040 –> 01:06:16,710
super hyper focused on what is the thing that we need to do in order

1069
01:06:16,710 –> 01:06:20,070
to accomplish the goal that we’ve set out to accomplish, whatever that is.

1070
01:06:21,270 –> 01:06:25,110
And you see it in the wars between the U.S. calvary and

1071
01:06:25,110 –> 01:06:28,830
the Native American tribes in the west, in America. And we’ll see it in

1072
01:06:28,830 –> 01:06:32,670
those two books. You also see it in a

1073
01:06:32,670 –> 01:06:36,510
book that I’m currently working through, which we’re going to cover, called War by

1074
01:06:36,510 –> 01:06:40,310
Sebastian Younger. This is a book about the battles in the Korengal

1075
01:06:40,310 –> 01:06:43,270
Valley in, in Afghanistan in

1076
01:06:43,590 –> 01:06:47,310
2002, 2003, 2004. And that’s

1077
01:06:47,310 –> 01:06:50,950
fascinating to me because the 10th Mountain Division,

1078
01:06:51,670 –> 01:06:55,510
which is the elite division of mountain

1079
01:06:55,510 –> 01:06:59,350
fighters that the US Military had the most elite division of mountain fighters that

1080
01:06:59,350 –> 01:07:03,150
the US Military has produced, could

1081
01:07:03,150 –> 01:07:06,870
not subdue the Afghan Taliban in the

1082
01:07:06,870 –> 01:07:10,610
Korengal Valley. And the guys that they sent in there after

1083
01:07:10,610 –> 01:07:14,330
them in 2002, 2003 and 2004 had

1084
01:07:14,330 –> 01:07:18,170
a ridiculous level of casualties just trying to hold a corner

1085
01:07:18,170 –> 01:07:21,930
of a mountain. And I

1086
01:07:21,930 –> 01:07:25,770
don’t really know what to do with all that because I know, I personally know

1087
01:07:25,770 –> 01:07:29,610
people who went to Afghanistan. And it’s interesting. So

1088
01:07:30,330 –> 01:07:34,010
in the early 21st century, we had Afghanistan, we had Iraq.

1089
01:07:34,470 –> 01:07:36,950
And guys who went to Iraq, they get a lot of play and a lot

1090
01:07:36,950 –> 01:07:39,830
of coverage and there’s a lot of yapping, particularly in online spaces, if you know

1091
01:07:39,830 –> 01:07:43,230
where to look. But Afghanistan is real quiet. It’s like the difference between

1092
01:07:43,230 –> 01:07:46,950
Vietnam and Korea. We don’t talk a lot about the Korean War,

1093
01:07:46,950 –> 01:07:50,550
just like we don’t talk a lot about what happened in Afghanistan. We

1094
01:07:50,550 –> 01:07:54,070
particularly don’t talk a lot about it now in light of

1095
01:07:54,150 –> 01:07:57,350
Our evacuation of Afghanistan during the Biden administration,

1096
01:07:58,230 –> 01:08:01,670
which I personally, as a person who has had veterans in my family,

1097
01:08:02,180 –> 01:08:05,940
I found that to be shameful. Absolutely. I’ll go on record and say that

1098
01:08:06,260 –> 01:08:09,380
a major superpower doesn’t. You don’t leave a country like that.

1099
01:08:10,020 –> 01:08:12,780
And we already did it once in Vietnam. I would have thought we would have

1100
01:08:12,780 –> 01:08:14,900
lost, learned our lesson, but apparently,

1101
01:08:15,860 –> 01:08:19,060
apparently not. So

1102
01:08:20,180 –> 01:08:23,820
at this point, I’m not sure how many times I’ve said this on this

1103
01:08:23,820 –> 01:08:27,620
podcast, but I know I’ve said it several

1104
01:08:27,860 –> 01:08:30,809
times, that the more things change, the more things stay the same. The more they

1105
01:08:30,809 –> 01:08:34,369
say the same. That’s right. That’s right. I don’t.

1106
01:08:35,169 –> 01:08:38,969
It is at some point, at some point, I

1107
01:08:38,969 –> 01:08:39,489
feel like

1108
01:08:43,089 –> 01:08:46,929
we have. I don’t. I still have no idea how we have not learned

1109
01:08:46,929 –> 01:08:50,769
lessons throughout history to not repeat the same mistakes, but we can

1110
01:08:51,089 –> 01:08:54,889
continuously do. And I don’t. I’ve never understood this

1111
01:08:54,889 –> 01:08:57,220
because quite.

1112
01:08:59,540 –> 01:09:03,100
Because quite on a smaller

1113
01:09:03,100 –> 01:09:06,620
scale, it does actually work, by the way. So an

1114
01:09:06,620 –> 01:09:10,260
example. I have five children, as I’ve mentioned again

1115
01:09:10,340 –> 01:09:14,180
several times in this podcast. My youngest

1116
01:09:14,180 –> 01:09:17,980
daughter. My youngest daughter. My youngest child of five. I have four sons and

1117
01:09:17,980 –> 01:09:21,700
a daughter. My youngest child of five almost never

1118
01:09:21,700 –> 01:09:24,700
got in trouble like she. In.

1119
01:09:25,500 –> 01:09:28,980
From an outside perspective, looking in, she would look like the

1120
01:09:28,980 –> 01:09:32,700
golden child or, or like the perfect kid or

1121
01:09:32,780 –> 01:09:35,980
whatever. Whatever classification you want to give her.

1122
01:09:37,020 –> 01:09:40,780
But that is not the truth. And if

1123
01:09:40,780 –> 01:09:43,380
you asked her, by the way, she’s an adult today, and if you ask her

1124
01:09:43,380 –> 01:09:46,140
today, she will tell you this. She. She will tell you this right out the

1125
01:09:46,140 –> 01:09:49,900
gate, that she is far from perfect and she’s done some really stupid things

1126
01:09:49,900 –> 01:09:53,500
in her life, in her childhood, but she was a good

1127
01:09:53,500 –> 01:09:57,260
observer of what the other four kids got in trouble for and what they

1128
01:09:57,260 –> 01:10:00,740
got away with. She learned by watching them

1129
01:10:00,740 –> 01:10:04,180
and didn’t do the same stuff. Like, she just didn’t do it,

1130
01:10:04,340 –> 01:10:08,060
like. So again, was she perfect? No, of course not. Did she

1131
01:10:08,060 –> 01:10:11,820
get, like, reprimanded here and there? About some. In most times, to be honest

1132
01:10:11,820 –> 01:10:14,550
with you, it was her mouth that got her in trouble more than anything. It

1133
01:10:14,550 –> 01:10:17,710
wasn’t her physical. Like, my boys would, like, they would do the

1134
01:10:17,710 –> 01:10:20,910
stupidest godforsaken garbage stuff,

1135
01:10:21,870 –> 01:10:25,590
jumping off things, destroying. One of my sheds in

1136
01:10:25,590 –> 01:10:28,230
my. One of my tool sheds got destroyed because one of my sons thought it

1137
01:10:28,230 –> 01:10:31,270
would be funny to do something that I’m not going to read. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1138
01:10:31,270 –> 01:10:34,430
Don’t give anybody ideas. I’m not going to put it on the record Here, I’m

1139
01:10:34,430 –> 01:10:38,230
not going to give anybody else ideas, but my daughter saw that, saw

1140
01:10:38,230 –> 01:10:41,610
the trouble that he got into and was like, okay, note to self, don’t do

1141
01:10:41,610 –> 01:10:45,170
that, don’t do that. Like it. She was just a really good

1142
01:10:45,170 –> 01:10:48,930
observer of forward facing history. Meaning, like, right,

1143
01:10:49,490 –> 01:10:53,330
she’s seeing people get in trouble for things. I know now not to do those

1144
01:10:53,330 –> 01:10:56,930
things on a global scale. We can’t do this.

1145
01:10:58,610 –> 01:11:02,250
It’s fascinating to me that we continue the same

1146
01:11:02,250 –> 01:11:06,050
mistakes over and over and over again. So one of the things, and

1147
01:11:06,130 –> 01:11:09,490
we’ll cover this book as well, the First World War by John Keegan.

1148
01:11:09,650 –> 01:11:13,330
Right. This is probably the best book ever written, ever,

1149
01:11:13,810 –> 01:11:17,650
ever written about the history of the First World War. And

1150
01:11:19,090 –> 01:11:22,890
Keegan opens with this line, which, I mean, I’ve said it before on

1151
01:11:22,890 –> 01:11:25,930
the podcast in a different kind of context, but it is a, it is a

1152
01:11:25,930 –> 01:11:29,730
great line, right, Going directly to what you’re talking about. And then we’ll, we’ll talk

1153
01:11:29,730 –> 01:11:32,370
about BH Liddell Hart and why we don’t learn from history.

1154
01:11:33,870 –> 01:11:37,510
But, but John Keegan opens the First World War with this. The

1155
01:11:37,510 –> 01:11:41,070
First World War was a tragic and unnecessary conflict.

1156
01:11:41,950 –> 01:11:45,670
Unnecessary because the train of events that led to its outbreak might have been

1157
01:11:45,670 –> 01:11:48,950
broken at any point during the five weeks of crisis that preceded the first clash

1158
01:11:48,950 –> 01:11:52,630
of arms had prudence or common goodwill found a

1159
01:11:52,630 –> 01:11:56,350
voice. Tragic because the consequences of the first clash ended the

1160
01:11:56,350 –> 01:12:00,080
lives of 10 million human beings, tortured the emotional lives

1161
01:12:00,080 –> 01:12:03,880
of millions more, destroyed the benevolent and optimistic culture of

1162
01:12:03,880 –> 01:12:07,680
the European continent, and left when the guns at last fell

1163
01:12:07,680 –> 01:12:11,440
silent four years later, a legacy of political rancor and

1164
01:12:11,440 –> 01:12:14,919
racial hatred so intense that no explanation of the

1165
01:12:14,919 –> 01:12:18,200
causes of the Second World War can stand without

1166
01:12:18,200 –> 01:12:19,960
reference to those roots.

1167
01:12:23,560 –> 01:12:27,160
We go down the road of tragic and unnecessary conflict. And even John

1168
01:12:27,160 –> 01:12:30,560
Keegan brings this up later on in the first couple of chapters of the First

1169
01:12:30,560 –> 01:12:34,380
World. And it goes directly to what you’re talking about, Tom. We go down

1170
01:12:34,380 –> 01:12:36,460
this road and this is one of the other areas that I want to talk

1171
01:12:36,460 –> 01:12:39,780
about because of generals and

1172
01:12:39,780 –> 01:12:43,220
politicians and their desire for the

1173
01:12:43,220 –> 01:12:46,540
protection of honor and prestige and

1174
01:12:46,540 –> 01:12:50,260
status. This is why we go down these roads.

1175
01:12:50,900 –> 01:12:54,740
And if we want people who will learn from

1176
01:12:54,740 –> 01:12:58,300
history and who will look at the mistakes and

1177
01:12:58,300 –> 01:13:02,150
say, we’re not doing that again. We need to

1178
01:13:02,150 –> 01:13:05,990
pick leaders and we can do that. No matter what you

1179
01:13:05,990 –> 01:13:09,110
may say about the election process in the United States, we can still do that.

1180
01:13:09,590 –> 01:13:10,870
Unlike other places,

1181
01:13:14,310 –> 01:13:18,150
we need to pick leaders and we need to raise up leaders who

1182
01:13:18,230 –> 01:13:21,430
actually can lay aside hurt Feelings

1183
01:13:21,990 –> 01:13:25,390
and hubris and arrogance and

1184
01:13:25,390 –> 01:13:28,990
pride and say, no, you know what? We’re not going to do that

1185
01:13:28,990 –> 01:13:32,670
again. That’s the only way that works. That’s the only way it works. And by

1186
01:13:32,670 –> 01:13:35,990
the way, this doesn’t start with the presidency or with the Congress. It starts with

1187
01:13:35,990 –> 01:13:39,750
your freaking school board. That’s

1188
01:13:39,750 –> 01:13:43,510
where it starts. You don’t want to have any more major wars. You don’t want

1189
01:13:43,510 –> 01:13:46,710
to have a useless and tragic and unnecessary loss of human life.

1190
01:13:47,350 –> 01:13:50,500
Pick better people to be on your local school board

1191
01:13:52,490 –> 01:13:56,250
in America. That’s how it works. Now. Other places, it’s

1192
01:13:56,250 –> 01:13:59,850
going to be different. I’m going to have different problems I can’t solve for.

1193
01:14:00,010 –> 01:14:03,850
Authoritarian or aristocratic or theocratic. You all got different kinds of

1194
01:14:03,850 –> 01:14:07,610
problems. You got different picking system. But here in this backyard,

1195
01:14:08,090 –> 01:14:11,690
people come from leaders. Leaders come from somewhere. They don’t just pop.

1196
01:14:11,770 –> 01:14:15,210
They don’t just pop out of the woodwork. Yeah. And they’re

1197
01:14:15,210 –> 01:14:18,610
trained somewhere and they’re educated somewhere and they rise through the ranks

1198
01:14:18,610 –> 01:14:22,440
somewhere. And Keegan talks about all of this in.

1199
01:14:22,440 –> 01:14:26,160
In the First World War. Another person who

1200
01:14:26,160 –> 01:14:29,200
talks about this is a person who was. Who served in the First World War

1201
01:14:29,200 –> 01:14:32,440
and was a historian of the First World War and then was promptly ignored on

1202
01:14:32,440 –> 01:14:35,400
the run up to the Second World War. A guy named.

1203
01:14:36,200 –> 01:14:39,320
Let me show you my shocked face. Oh, yeah. And then wrote a book in

1204
01:14:39,320 –> 01:14:43,040
the 1960s with the. With the appropriate title

1205
01:14:43,040 –> 01:14:46,680
and yellow cover. Why Don’t We Learn From History by B.H.

1206
01:14:46,760 –> 01:14:49,720
liddell Hart? We’re going to start off with that.

1207
01:14:50,680 –> 01:14:54,400
Now, one of the interesting things that Liddell Hart points

1208
01:14:54,400 –> 01:14:57,800
out in his book, and I’ve. I’ve sort of

1209
01:14:57,880 –> 01:15:00,680
looked at this as I’ve been reading it,

1210
01:15:02,360 –> 01:15:05,240
and he. I love what he writes in his introduction here. You’ll love this, Tom.

1211
01:15:05,480 –> 01:15:08,920
He’ll become your spirit animal here in a little bit. Just based on this.

1212
01:15:10,840 –> 01:15:14,470
Man seems to come into this world with it in an unalterable belief that

1213
01:15:14,470 –> 01:15:17,710
he. That he knows best and that he can make others think as he does

1214
01:15:17,710 –> 01:15:21,430
by force. How else do we explain why leading men in government madly

1215
01:15:21,430 –> 01:15:25,190
propose the use of nuclear weapons against the people of another nation because of

1216
01:15:25,190 –> 01:15:28,989
a trade dispute? Nations

1217
01:15:28,989 –> 01:15:32,790
delight in having a militaristic leader represent them and thrive on enforcing

1218
01:15:32,790 –> 01:15:36,630
their will on lesser powers with a righteous view to the glory and plunder

1219
01:15:36,630 –> 01:15:40,480
that will follow victory. Peoples are never so united as

1220
01:15:40,480 –> 01:15:44,240
in the early days of war, nor so determined to overcome once

1221
01:15:44,240 –> 01:15:47,640
they see that a greater effort and more sacrifices will be demanded of them. Before

1222
01:15:47,640 –> 01:15:51,400
Success is won. All very noble and all

1223
01:15:51,400 –> 01:15:55,000
fantasy. Has any war in the history of the world

1224
01:15:55,080 –> 01:15:58,840
followed such a pattern? None on the Ship of Fools

1225
01:15:59,160 –> 01:16:00,280
ever asks.

1226
01:16:05,330 –> 01:16:08,850
And he blames the historian. He thinks it’s the historian’s job

1227
01:16:09,570 –> 01:16:12,770
to be the, to be the person on the Ship of Fools who looks around

1228
01:16:12,770 –> 01:16:16,210
at all the other fools and goes, shut up, this is history. And he goes

1229
01:16:16,210 –> 01:16:19,810
right into historians. He just lambastes them in the first

1230
01:16:19,810 –> 01:16:23,610
like few chapters of, of this book. Well, I mean that, that

1231
01:16:23,610 –> 01:16:27,250
kind of makes sense to me because I, one of the, I, I,

1232
01:16:27,330 –> 01:16:31,090
I recently had a, an opportunity to

1233
01:16:31,410 –> 01:16:35,090
talk to a local college here in, in New England

1234
01:16:35,570 –> 01:16:38,850
about what they’re, they’re trying to understand

1235
01:16:39,170 –> 01:16:42,450
the foundation of decolonizing higher education.

1236
01:16:43,090 –> 01:16:45,890
Okay. Higher education apparent

1237
01:16:46,530 –> 01:16:50,290
whatever word I’m thinking, I can’t even think. But the, the idea or the concept

1238
01:16:50,290 –> 01:16:54,130
here is that, that higher education is designed

1239
01:16:54,610 –> 01:16:58,210
for white Anglo Saxon men. Okay. They were trying to basically

1240
01:16:59,220 –> 01:17:02,860
level the playing field. Sure. Okay. So, so in comes

1241
01:17:02,860 –> 01:17:06,580
your, your token Native American to try

1242
01:17:06,580 –> 01:17:10,420
to help you to understand colonization. Right. So

1243
01:17:10,500 –> 01:17:13,940
anyway. Oh boy. All right, well, you did take the gig.

1244
01:17:14,500 –> 01:17:18,100
You did say yes. I said yes. First of all,

1245
01:17:18,500 –> 01:17:22,260
I said yes because of several different factors. One was morbid curiosity.

1246
01:17:22,420 –> 01:17:26,100
Okay, all right, thank you for admitting that. I appreciate that it was an anthropological

1247
01:17:26,100 –> 01:17:29,790
experiment. Thank you for admitting that up front. Exactly, exactly. Because

1248
01:17:29,790 –> 01:17:33,510
I, I anyway, all right, so not to get into that, but, but, but one

1249
01:17:33,510 –> 01:17:36,270
of the things that came out from that conversation

1250
01:17:37,070 –> 01:17:40,750
is my, the statement that I made that,

1251
01:17:40,750 –> 01:17:44,430
that I, I think should not surprise anybody, but

1252
01:17:44,430 –> 01:17:48,110
yet still surprised a few in the room. And I said, the reason

1253
01:17:48,110 –> 01:17:51,910
you’re having the problem you’re having right now is because history is written by

1254
01:17:51,910 –> 01:17:55,640
the winners. Right? Like this is not

1255
01:17:55,640 –> 01:17:59,440
news. And to your point about the, the passages you read in the book and

1256
01:17:59,440 –> 01:18:03,080
why he went after the historians is because if you are a

1257
01:18:03,080 –> 01:18:06,520
true historian, the winner and loser is not the most important

1258
01:18:06,760 –> 01:18:10,400
part. Let me rephrase

1259
01:18:10,400 –> 01:18:14,120
this. Let me say this again. When you have a

1260
01:18:14,120 –> 01:18:17,880
war, the who wins and who loses is

1261
01:18:17,880 –> 01:18:20,110
not the most important, important part.

1262
01:18:21,870 –> 01:18:25,470
It’s the impact and after effect it has on everything else after.

1263
01:18:26,430 –> 01:18:29,950
Not so. So history being written by the winners

1264
01:18:30,190 –> 01:18:33,870
is not imp, it’s not, it’s, it should not be

1265
01:18:33,870 –> 01:18:37,070
the only thing we should be. It should be looked at as almost like

1266
01:18:37,870 –> 01:18:40,750
again, we talk about having two sides of the same coin all the time.

1267
01:18:41,390 –> 01:18:45,160
You’ve even said those exact words on this episode of your podcast here.

1268
01:18:45,240 –> 01:18:48,120
Earlier, earlier in this, in this conversation Yep.

1269
01:18:49,400 –> 01:18:53,120
Until you understand both sides of the coin, you have no idea how much money

1270
01:18:53,120 –> 01:18:56,920
you’re trying to spend. Right. I don’t know

1271
01:18:56,920 –> 01:18:59,960
if you’ve ever seen trick coins. I. I’ve seen them in sort of tricks here

1272
01:18:59,960 –> 01:19:03,040
and there. Whatever. It’s like the face of it is a quarter or the backside

1273
01:19:03,040 –> 01:19:06,560
of it’s a nickel. Whatever. Right. Like you got these, but there. There’s like these

1274
01:19:06,560 –> 01:19:10,400
weird. Unless you’re playing with the same denomination of

1275
01:19:10,400 –> 01:19:13,870
money and you’re looking literally at the top two sides of the same coin, but

1276
01:19:13,870 –> 01:19:17,630
now you’re seeing the truth of both sides of the coin.

1277
01:19:17,790 –> 01:19:21,630
Not. Not. Again, going back to a phrase.

1278
01:19:22,430 –> 01:19:25,790
If nobody. I’m not going to shamelessly plug my book, but

1279
01:19:26,030 –> 01:19:29,790
if nobody knows a book that I wrote, it’s all about quotes. And one of

1280
01:19:29,790 –> 01:19:32,510
my favorite quotes, which, by the way, is not in my book. And I did

1281
01:19:32,510 –> 01:19:35,070
that very purposefully because I didn’t want to

1282
01:19:35,710 –> 01:19:39,400
commercialize my own favorite quote. But the quote is,

1283
01:19:39,400 –> 01:19:43,160
perception is greater than reality. My favorite quote

1284
01:19:43,160 –> 01:19:46,760
of all time, and the simplest version of this I can give

1285
01:19:46,760 –> 01:19:49,480
people is Hasan and I walk into a room.

1286
01:19:51,080 –> 01:19:54,800
Fact. We both walk into the room. We both sit in there for

1287
01:19:54,800 –> 01:19:58,440
one hour. Fact, the length of time is one hour.

1288
01:19:59,080 –> 01:20:02,680
We both leave the room at the exact same time. Still a fact.

1289
01:20:04,450 –> 01:20:08,130
Somebody asks Hyson, what did you think of your hour in the room?

1290
01:20:08,130 –> 01:20:11,490
And Hy San goes, holy crap, that was a whole hour. I felt like I

1291
01:20:11,490 –> 01:20:15,130
was in there for five minutes. Opinion. The fact

1292
01:20:15,130 –> 01:20:18,730
was he was still in there for an hour. His perception of that

1293
01:20:18,730 –> 01:20:22,490
hour is that he was in there for a very brief period of time. Same

1294
01:20:22,490 –> 01:20:25,970
person asked me what I thought of my hour, and I went, good Lord, that

1295
01:20:25,970 –> 01:20:28,690
was only an hour. It was like the longest. It was like, I felt like

1296
01:20:28,690 –> 01:20:32,370
it was five days. Fact. Still an hour.

1297
01:20:32,530 –> 01:20:36,250
My perception of it, five days. Who’s right and wrong here is

1298
01:20:36,250 –> 01:20:39,930
not relevant. As a matter of

1299
01:20:39,930 –> 01:20:43,770
fact, neither one of us or both of us could be considered right.

1300
01:20:43,770 –> 01:20:46,690
It’s not a matter of right and wrong. It’s a matter of two sides of

1301
01:20:46,690 –> 01:20:49,490
the same coin. So again, it’s. It’s.

1302
01:20:50,690 –> 01:20:54,050
He has every right to go after those historians. And I agree with him 100.

1303
01:20:54,210 –> 01:20:58,060
Because the. His. If history is written by the winners, then we

1304
01:20:58,060 –> 01:21:01,860
are going to glorify all of the things that those winners wanted us to know

1305
01:21:01,860 –> 01:21:05,340
and understand about their. What. Whatever their perceived

1306
01:21:05,660 –> 01:21:09,420
irrationality about going to war was. We’re gonna.

1307
01:21:09,420 –> 01:21:12,940
Everyone’s gonna think that they were right because it’s written by the winners, without

1308
01:21:12,940 –> 01:21:16,620
understanding. And I think where we first started seeing some of this

1309
01:21:16,620 –> 01:21:20,420
stuff was kind of around the Vietnam era, understanding what

1310
01:21:20,420 –> 01:21:24,070
the. The quote, unquote, the enemy was thinking. The enemy was. We had

1311
01:21:24,070 –> 01:21:27,750
embedded journalism which we didn’t really have before. Like now

1312
01:21:27,750 –> 01:21:31,590
all of a sudden we’re seeing, we’re starting to. We’re just now starting to understand

1313
01:21:32,470 –> 01:21:36,230
that history should not be written just by the winners, that history should be

1314
01:21:36,230 –> 01:21:39,990
written by historians. And they should cover both sides of the coin, the

1315
01:21:39,990 –> 01:21:43,190
whys, the who’s, the hows, the what’s. All of it should be covered from both

1316
01:21:43,190 –> 01:21:46,070
perspectives. But

1317
01:21:47,430 –> 01:21:50,110
the problem that I have with it, and I think the problem with. And that

1318
01:21:50,110 –> 01:21:53,230
book was written in the 60s. And I think if he were, if he were

1319
01:21:53,230 –> 01:21:56,870
to write that same book today, I’m not sure a lot of the book would

1320
01:21:56,870 –> 01:22:00,470
change. Because even with that, we still,

1321
01:22:02,470 –> 01:22:06,270
we still don’t listen. We don’t learn. We don’t listen, we don’t learn. And

1322
01:22:06,270 –> 01:22:10,070
we’re allowing people’s egos to make decisions. Instead of

1323
01:22:10,550 –> 01:22:13,990
a moral compass or rely or, or an ethical,

1324
01:22:14,470 –> 01:22:18,110
morals or ethics. I don’t care which one you prefer to use to run your

1325
01:22:18,110 –> 01:22:21,630
life. But if you do not have a moral North Star, you’re probably

1326
01:22:21,630 –> 01:22:25,350
lost. If you don’t have a moral ethic, if you don’t have an ethical,

1327
01:22:26,070 –> 01:22:29,790
an ethical, you’re probably lost. And if we’re letting people with no morals

1328
01:22:29,790 –> 01:22:33,630
and no ethics run these things, we’re going to continue to go down the

1329
01:22:33,630 –> 01:22:36,310
same path and we’re going to have the same problems we’ve had for the last

1330
01:22:36,790 –> 01:22:39,430
eon and eon and eon of human history.

1331
01:22:40,820 –> 01:22:44,620
Well, and the things that

1332
01:22:44,620 –> 01:22:48,020
I’m seeing on the horizon and the way that war fighting.

1333
01:22:48,420 –> 01:22:51,020
This is the last point that I’ll make because we got to wrap up. But

1334
01:22:51,020 –> 01:22:53,620
the way that war fighting is proposed

1335
01:22:55,060 –> 01:22:56,580
to be conducted in the future,

1336
01:22:58,100 –> 01:23:01,660
increasingly, and we’re already, I mean, we’ve been seeing this for 15

1337
01:23:01,660 –> 01:23:05,380
years now. Increasingly, war fighting is done

1338
01:23:05,460 –> 01:23:09,190
on Internet platforms with

1339
01:23:09,190 –> 01:23:12,950
psychological operations being run via social media. Most

1340
01:23:12,950 –> 01:23:16,710
of the things that you see in your social media feeds, depending

1341
01:23:16,710 –> 01:23:19,190
upon which platform or which company you’re on,

1342
01:23:20,310 –> 01:23:24,110
are psychological propaganda designed to soften a

1343
01:23:24,110 –> 01:23:27,710
populace, whether that populace is in the United States or

1344
01:23:27,710 –> 01:23:30,950
someplace else, into accepting defeat.

1345
01:23:31,840 –> 01:23:35,680
Because it’s easier to psychologically soften a populace and then go in

1346
01:23:36,000 –> 01:23:39,640
and destroy the material than it is to

1347
01:23:39,640 –> 01:23:43,200
go in and destroy the material and then try to win hearts and minds. By

1348
01:23:43,200 –> 01:23:45,280
the way, that’s one of the lessons for Vietnam, right.

1349
01:23:48,960 –> 01:23:52,480
The other thing that we are going to be seeing coming up here

1350
01:23:52,640 –> 01:23:56,400
very shortly, again, if war fighting

1351
01:23:56,400 –> 01:24:00,110
projections and execution of war fighting is

1352
01:24:00,110 –> 01:24:03,950
correct, from the same ego driven generals who are

1353
01:24:03,950 –> 01:24:07,670
writing white papers right now about what will happen in the next 25 years,

1354
01:24:08,230 –> 01:24:10,870
in the next 25 years we will have,

1355
01:24:12,790 –> 01:24:16,630
for lack of a better term, robotic soldiers. Not robot

1356
01:24:16,630 –> 01:24:20,470
soldiers, but robotic soldiers that will either be in a support role for

1357
01:24:20,470 –> 01:24:24,150
human beings that may eventually, over the long course

1358
01:24:24,150 –> 01:24:27,690
of the next 75 years of this century, take over

1359
01:24:28,010 –> 01:24:31,770
the fighting on both sides. And

1360
01:24:32,010 –> 01:24:35,730
if you don’t need a human being to stand a post or stop

1361
01:24:35,730 –> 01:24:39,530
another human being from surprising you or invading you, and I’m not saying that

1362
01:24:39,530 –> 01:24:43,290
human beings will be completely taken out of warfare. I’m not that delusional. It’s

1363
01:24:43,290 –> 01:24:47,090
not going to happen in 75 years. But if

1364
01:24:47,090 –> 01:24:50,330
the F35 is being flown by an LLM

1365
01:24:50,970 –> 01:24:53,690
and the next generation fighters,

1366
01:24:54,900 –> 01:24:57,820
they’re not going to need, they’re not going to need a human pilot or the

1367
01:24:57,820 –> 01:25:01,380
human pilot will be in tandem with the machine,

1368
01:25:01,460 –> 01:25:05,140
right? And then eventually the human pilot and this is what the air Force wants

1369
01:25:05,140 –> 01:25:08,780
to do, totally taken out. So you’ll have a billion

1370
01:25:08,780 –> 01:25:12,260
dollar plane dropping an ordinance,

1371
01:25:12,420 –> 01:25:15,860
dropping bombs on positions that will be

1372
01:25:15,860 –> 01:25:19,140
manned by, think about this,

1373
01:25:19,870 –> 01:25:21,070
billion dollar robots

1374
01:25:23,950 –> 01:25:27,630
and, and when we’ve outsourced our war

1375
01:25:27,630 –> 01:25:31,430
fighting to machines, now I’ll be the first person to put my

1376
01:25:31,430 –> 01:25:35,230
hand up and hopefully my relatives will 75 years from now, you know,

1377
01:25:35,230 –> 01:25:39,070
the fourth generation down at Haison, why we’ll never meet, hopefully

1378
01:25:39,070 –> 01:25:42,270
they will be critical thinkers enough, hopefully that gene will be passed along

1379
01:25:43,070 –> 01:25:46,880
far enough down the line. We’re so someone among my folks will hand,

1380
01:25:46,880 –> 01:25:48,520
will put their hand up and will say

1381
01:25:51,080 –> 01:25:54,280
if we’re not actually, if we’re just destroying

1382
01:25:54,680 –> 01:25:58,200
stuff and calling it a war,

1383
01:26:00,680 –> 01:26:01,480
what’s the point?

1384
01:26:04,440 –> 01:26:08,200
Because we’re subduing a populace via psyops

1385
01:26:09,080 –> 01:26:12,760
and via psychological manipulation and then we’re just going to destroy their material,

1386
01:26:12,760 –> 01:26:15,400
to what end are we going to move new people into that space? Because that’s

1387
01:26:15,400 –> 01:26:18,090
traditionally what you do in a war. You clear out the old, you move in

1388
01:26:18,090 –> 01:26:21,850
the new. That’s traditionally what happens, right? If

1389
01:26:21,850 –> 01:26:25,290
we don’t need human soldiers to kill people and break things, we just want to

1390
01:26:25,290 –> 01:26:29,090
subdue a populace and then like destroy their material. What’s the point?

1391
01:26:30,770 –> 01:26:34,490
Why are we doing this? I’ll ask

1392
01:26:34,490 –> 01:26:37,650
a very lawyer question. This is the lawyer friend of ours on another project that

1393
01:26:37,650 –> 01:26:41,250
we’re involved in. We Love this. Cui bono. Who benefits?

1394
01:26:41,980 –> 01:26:45,740
What’s the point? And this is sort of what I’m seeing

1395
01:26:45,740 –> 01:26:49,420
because the move towards having machines fight our

1396
01:26:49,420 –> 01:26:53,180
wars, we’re already starting to see this with drone fighting happening in Russia, between Russia

1397
01:26:53,180 –> 01:26:56,700
and the Ukraine, with literally off the shelf drones

1398
01:26:56,940 –> 01:27:00,660
just like destroying air bases.

1399
01:27:00,660 –> 01:27:04,100
Like, that’s insane to me. But this is happening because this is the

1400
01:27:04,100 –> 01:27:07,780
continued evolution, that arbitrage thing I was

1401
01:27:07,780 –> 01:27:11,550
talking about, between the ending of an old thing, an old way of fighting, and

1402
01:27:11,550 –> 01:27:15,350
the beginning of a new way of fighting. But I think at

1403
01:27:15,350 –> 01:27:17,510
the bottom of it, because I don’t think we’re going to get rid of war,

1404
01:27:17,510 –> 01:27:21,350
unfortunately, I think at the bottom of it, even if it’s

1405
01:27:21,350 –> 01:27:24,990
not human bodies showing up to do the war fighting, the human

1406
01:27:24,990 –> 01:27:28,790
psychology will still be informing the war fighting,

1407
01:27:29,030 –> 01:27:32,870
even if it is done with machines. But who knows? I could be wrong. Maybe

1408
01:27:32,870 –> 01:27:35,740
we’ll all go back to sticks and stones at some point. I don’t know. I

1409
01:27:35,740 –> 01:27:39,580
was thinking, I was thinking go back. If we go back to one

1410
01:27:39,580 –> 01:27:43,420
representative, like you have a tournament. I like that. Yes.

1411
01:27:43,820 –> 01:27:47,420
Everybody sends one fighter. Everyone

1412
01:27:47,820 –> 01:27:51,660
sends one fighter. Last man standing wins. Like, you know,

1413
01:27:51,660 –> 01:27:55,500
whatever. Like Kuma style, right? Like sign. Like street fighter.

1414
01:27:55,500 –> 01:27:59,180
Exactly. Like street fighter. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, Just, yeah.

1415
01:27:59,180 –> 01:28:02,500
Sends somebody. And by the way, we’ll, we’ll have a massive fight in the United

1416
01:28:02,500 –> 01:28:05,980
States because we’re a multi ethnic, multiracial society about who should represent us.

1417
01:28:06,240 –> 01:28:08,640
We will have a massive fight about that. But eventually we’ll pick one person

1418
01:28:13,040 –> 01:28:16,640
they can tell and then all the rest of us can go back

1419
01:28:16,640 –> 01:28:20,200
to, I don’t know, eating grapes or

1420
01:28:20,200 –> 01:28:23,600
having strawberries fed to us while we lounge in a field

1421
01:28:23,600 –> 01:28:27,440
somewhere. I also think so again, the whole, the whole,

1422
01:28:27,440 –> 01:28:30,600
the more things change, more things stays the same kind of philosophy here, right too.

1423
01:28:30,600 –> 01:28:33,740
Like, what are we fighting? What are, what are we, what exactly are we waring

1424
01:28:33,740 –> 01:28:37,420
over at this point? Like, I, like I, not that, not that I would say

1425
01:28:37,420 –> 01:28:41,180
I understand, but at least you can. If you

1426
01:28:41,180 –> 01:28:44,340
look at, like, if you look at like the, the, the,

1427
01:28:45,060 –> 01:28:47,940
the, the early part of the last millennia, right? Like if you look at the

1428
01:28:48,020 –> 01:28:50,980
middle 14, somewhere between the

1429
01:28:51,540 –> 01:28:54,100
1100s and the, and the 1800s, I look at that

1430
01:28:57,510 –> 01:29:01,310
like they were trying to take over lands to better their own people,

1431
01:29:01,310 –> 01:29:05,070
right? So like, all right, we’re gonna go where we found a country that

1432
01:29:05,070 –> 01:29:07,710
has a lot of gold, we’re gonna try to take over that country so that

1433
01:29:07,710 –> 01:29:10,710
we can better our, our own people. We’re going to take over that, that gold

1434
01:29:10,870 –> 01:29:14,310
we found land that’s really fertile. We’re going to take over that. We’re going to

1435
01:29:14,310 –> 01:29:17,270
fight to take over that country so we can feed our own people. Like we’re

1436
01:29:17,270 –> 01:29:20,950
going to grow more crops, et cetera, et cetera. Right. There was

1437
01:29:21,350 –> 01:29:24,000
not that, I guess there was more

1438
01:29:25,680 –> 01:29:29,360
foundational purpose behind the wars, but at some point that

1439
01:29:29,360 –> 01:29:32,080
stopped. Like that, that stopped. And I

1440
01:29:32,960 –> 01:29:36,480
credit, I definitely credit technology for that part. Right. Like

1441
01:29:36,960 –> 01:29:40,560
we now, we now are seeing TikToks and Facebook

1442
01:29:40,640 –> 01:29:44,360
posts and whatever from people all over the world. We’re, we

1443
01:29:44,360 –> 01:29:48,200
were able to humanize each other through social media in that

1444
01:29:48,200 –> 01:29:51,820
sense where now when like the population

1445
01:29:52,060 –> 01:29:55,780
again, you go back to the Vietnam. One of the differences between Vietnam

1446
01:29:55,780 –> 01:29:59,380
and Afghanistan is the population didn’t need those

1447
01:29:59,380 –> 01:30:03,100
embedded journalists to tell us what was going on. We saw it, we saw it

1448
01:30:03,100 –> 01:30:06,780
live on TikTok right now what’s going on in Gaza and the

1449
01:30:06,780 –> 01:30:10,460
Palestinian. We don’t need journalists to tell us we’re getting video

1450
01:30:10,460 –> 01:30:14,180
streams straight from the people. So we’re humanizing what’s going

1451
01:30:14,180 –> 01:30:17,860
on in this warfare that we’re talking about and we can visually see how

1452
01:30:17,860 –> 01:30:21,620
it’s hurting whatever side of the coin or

1453
01:30:21,780 –> 01:30:25,580
hurting or helping whichever side of the coin you’re, you sit on. I’m trying

1454
01:30:25,580 –> 01:30:29,140
to be really political here. But, but the, I, but the, the point that I’m

1455
01:30:29,140 –> 01:30:32,500
making is at some point you have to stop and think what exact. What are

1456
01:30:32,500 –> 01:30:35,940
we fighting? What, what are we, what are we bombing over? Like, is

1457
01:30:36,100 –> 01:30:39,860
what’s it really going to try to, is the whole point

1458
01:30:39,940 –> 01:30:43,320
really just to make Ukraine an extension of Russia?

1459
01:30:43,800 –> 01:30:47,640
What, why does that matter anymore? Like, I don’t need, like there’s

1460
01:30:47,640 –> 01:30:50,920
so little like fighting, fighting over territory is

1461
01:30:50,920 –> 01:30:54,120
ridiculous. And, and to your point, a few minutes ago

1462
01:30:54,680 –> 01:30:58,520
it was, it is 100 ego driven. Like there’s no other reason

1463
01:30:58,520 –> 01:31:02,120
for, for us to fight over territory like that. However, however

1464
01:31:04,120 –> 01:31:07,760
that will no longer exist once that fighting over territory is not

1465
01:31:07,760 –> 01:31:10,960
Earth and we start moving to, you know,

1466
01:31:11,920 –> 01:31:15,720
planetary, you know, colonization because then it’s just going to be another

1467
01:31:15,720 –> 01:31:19,360
form of colonization and we’re going to fight each other up there and then

1468
01:31:19,360 –> 01:31:23,200
it’ll go back to, but we want this area because it’s fertile.

1469
01:31:23,200 –> 01:31:25,840
Yeah, because it’s fertile ground as

1470
01:31:26,560 –> 01:31:30,080
mineral. Rich elements to it and we’re going to fight over that. But,

1471
01:31:30,400 –> 01:31:34,240
but we won’t. We would not have learned over the right

1472
01:31:34,240 –> 01:31:38,080
here that we don’t need to do that. Well, let me, let me, let me,

1473
01:31:38,080 –> 01:31:41,920
let me Give you some. Let me give you some hope, right?

1474
01:31:42,800 –> 01:31:46,480
Sure. Here’s some hope on this.

1475
01:31:46,720 –> 01:31:49,920
So we, we, we read in our science fiction run through,

1476
01:31:50,880 –> 01:31:54,680
we read the Martian Chronicles, we were a stranger in a strange land. And

1477
01:31:54,680 –> 01:31:58,320
those two books struck me deeply

1478
01:31:58,400 –> 01:32:02,130
because the point that Bradbury makes in the Martian Chronicles, to

1479
01:32:02,130 –> 01:32:05,250
your point, Bradbury does anticipate in the Martian Chronicles, if you go and read that

1480
01:32:05,250 –> 01:32:09,050
book, that to your point, human beings will just take all their

1481
01:32:09,050 –> 01:32:12,890
old problems and go to Mars, right? And they’ll have a new space

1482
01:32:12,890 –> 01:32:16,730
to work out old problems in an old container. And yet the

1483
01:32:16,730 –> 01:32:18,330
twist that he gives it is this.

1484
01:32:20,970 –> 01:32:24,610
Mars changes you more than you think.

1485
01:32:24,610 –> 01:32:25,690
You change Mars.

1486
01:32:29,020 –> 01:32:31,900
It’s hubris. Human hubris and human arrogance

1487
01:32:33,260 –> 01:32:36,780
has a ceiling. And the ceiling might be

1488
01:32:36,780 –> 01:32:39,740
Mars. Interesting self. Interesting.

1489
01:32:40,620 –> 01:32:44,460
So, oh, this entity. Yeah, this is an interesting

1490
01:32:44,460 –> 01:32:47,820
philosophy because think about it, right? So like, okay, back in those colonial days,

1491
01:32:48,140 –> 01:32:51,700
France and England at war. France and England send colonies over to the

1492
01:32:51,700 –> 01:32:54,810
Americas. The, the, the,

1493
01:32:56,090 –> 01:32:59,370
the distance between the whole, the motherland and the colonies

1494
01:32:59,770 –> 01:33:03,490
starts to weaken the, the aggression of the, of each other.

1495
01:33:03,490 –> 01:33:07,210
Meaning, like, all right, hey, son, you’re French, I’m English, we’re going to trade

1496
01:33:07,210 –> 01:33:10,850
anyway. We just won’t tell anybody because it benefits us as individual people, as

1497
01:33:10,850 –> 01:33:14,690
human beings. So you’re, the theory that you’re talking about actually

1498
01:33:14,690 –> 01:33:18,290
kind of makes sense, the distance apart and the time it takes

1499
01:33:18,290 –> 01:33:22,030
for, for, for communications to travel and all that stuff.

1500
01:33:22,510 –> 01:33:26,350
You don’t have the luxury on Mars to fight with your neighbor

1501
01:33:26,430 –> 01:33:30,110
because your survival depends on your neighbor. And they don’t give a crap if it’s

1502
01:33:30,110 –> 01:33:33,790
a different country or a different race or a different whatever or different

1503
01:33:33,870 –> 01:33:37,550
ethnicity. You’re gonna, you’re gonna fight to survive over

1504
01:33:37,870 –> 01:33:41,310
the fight of the motherland, so to speak. Not only that,

1505
01:33:41,630 –> 01:33:44,630
I kind of like this idea. I hope you’re right. And this is, and this

1506
01:33:44,630 –> 01:33:48,260
was the idea that Robert Hyland brought up as Stranger in a Strange Land. So

1507
01:33:48,260 –> 01:33:51,780
which is why Stranger in a Strange Land to me is a natural sequel to

1508
01:33:51,780 –> 01:33:55,340
Martian Chronicles. So in Stranger in a

1509
01:33:55,340 –> 01:33:58,460
Strange Land, human beings go to Mars.

1510
01:33:59,180 –> 01:34:02,940
To your point, they bring all the old container things with them. They

1511
01:34:02,940 –> 01:34:06,460
don’t make it. It’s only like six people, something like that, eight people.

1512
01:34:06,860 –> 01:34:10,700
They don’t make it. But a baby is produced. The

1513
01:34:10,700 –> 01:34:14,390
baby is raised on Mars. A

1514
01:34:14,390 –> 01:34:17,430
second expedition goes up 20 years after a nuclear war.

1515
01:34:21,670 –> 01:34:25,190
And when they show up, they want to bring

1516
01:34:25,270 –> 01:34:29,069
the man from Mars back home to Earth. Except Earth is not

1517
01:34:29,069 –> 01:34:32,590
his home. Yeah, right. And he

1518
01:34:32,590 –> 01:34:36,190
winds up changing the Earth more than the

1519
01:34:36,190 –> 01:34:39,960
Earth changes him. Interesting. This is

1520
01:34:39,960 –> 01:34:43,520
the dirty little secret of what you’re. This is the hope. See,

1521
01:34:44,320 –> 01:34:48,080
I said this on the episode with. With Martian

1522
01:34:48,160 –> 01:34:51,280
Chronicles. I’m less concerned

1523
01:34:51,920 –> 01:34:55,200
about aliens coming here and us changing

1524
01:34:55,840 –> 01:34:58,720
us overthrowing religion or overthrowing social

1525
01:34:59,200 –> 01:35:02,840
societal structures. Or we find out that aliens have been visiting us for

1526
01:35:02,840 –> 01:35:06,420
10,000. I’m less worried about that. I think we could handle it, honestly. I think.

1527
01:35:06,420 –> 01:35:10,220
I think probably at least 50% of the populace believes that something’s

1528
01:35:10,220 –> 01:35:13,300
come here anyway and it’s been here for a while, and they would be fine.

1529
01:35:13,540 –> 01:35:16,820
I think Gene Runberg’s got us plenty. Plenty. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1530
01:35:17,540 –> 01:35:20,740
yeah, yeah. Nobody. I’m not worried about that. I think half the populace would accept

1531
01:35:20,740 –> 01:35:23,820
it. At least in our country. Half the population accept it. The other half would

1532
01:35:23,820 –> 01:35:27,220
be trying to get away. Actually, they’d be trying to be begging, queuing up to

1533
01:35:27,220 –> 01:35:30,380
be taken away. And then all the rest of us would just be sitting around

1534
01:35:30,380 –> 01:35:34,190
going, well, all right. I don’t know. Yeah, here we are.

1535
01:35:34,190 –> 01:35:36,470
I got. I gotta go put gas in my car. I got. I got bigger

1536
01:35:36,470 –> 01:35:40,110
problems. You’re gonna fix the gas in my car. You’re not. Okay, fine. Gonna give

1537
01:35:40,110 –> 01:35:43,150
me a longer lesson, you guys. Do you. I gotta go for. Yeah, you’re gonna

1538
01:35:43,150 –> 01:35:45,390
fix it. You’re gonna fix the climate. You’re not gonna do any of that. Yeah.

1539
01:35:45,390 –> 01:35:48,190
You’re just gonna walk around. I don’t care. I gotta. I got bigger problems.

1540
01:35:49,950 –> 01:35:53,550
Exactly like. But I’m less

1541
01:35:53,550 –> 01:35:56,990
worried about that. And I am more worried.

1542
01:35:57,330 –> 01:36:00,930
And again, I said this on the show. I am more worried about how

1543
01:36:01,170 –> 01:36:04,770
those places, when we go there, how our neighborhood changes us.

1544
01:36:06,210 –> 01:36:10,010
And we know for. Not. We know for a fact. I’ll frame

1545
01:36:10,010 –> 01:36:13,369
it this way. Mars may be dead from our

1546
01:36:13,369 –> 01:36:16,850
perspective. Right. Jupiter may be a gas giant from our

1547
01:36:16,850 –> 01:36:19,170
perspective with nothing going on in it. Right.

1548
01:36:21,010 –> 01:36:24,530
But that doesn’t mean that those places won’t have a deep.

1549
01:36:27,140 –> 01:36:30,820
And yes, I’m going to start with the spiritual. A spiritual impact, an emotional

1550
01:36:30,820 –> 01:36:34,580
impact, and a psychological impact that we are not ready

1551
01:36:34,580 –> 01:36:37,940
for and that we will not know how to handle. So

1552
01:36:39,060 –> 01:36:42,820
will that maybe push us backward and cause us to regress to some,

1553
01:36:43,220 –> 01:36:46,900
like at the beginning of 2001 A Space Odyssey, monkeys throwing, you know,

1554
01:36:47,060 –> 01:36:50,750
bones in an obelisk. Sure, maybe. But it

1555
01:36:50,750 –> 01:36:54,550
may also, to go back to 2001 A Space Odyssey, cause us

1556
01:36:54,550 –> 01:36:58,310
all to revert to being a baby and starting evolution all over again with

1557
01:36:58,310 –> 01:37:01,390
a different kind of mind. Right? The baby trapped in the obelisk. Right.

1558
01:37:02,030 –> 01:37:04,350
Which was the, which was Dave, basically,

1559
01:37:06,750 –> 01:37:10,510
we don’t know. And so for me, I take

1560
01:37:11,310 –> 01:37:14,350
maybe less solace in that, but I think that that’s

1561
01:37:15,390 –> 01:37:19,050
probably closer to the truth for what will

1562
01:37:19,050 –> 01:37:22,450
happen. I don’t think we’re going to take a nuclear war to Mars.

1563
01:37:23,010 –> 01:37:26,090
The moon, maybe. For sure. I could see us having a nuclear war about the

1564
01:37:26,090 –> 01:37:29,890
moon for sure. Because that’s like. Oh, yeah, for sure. Right

1565
01:37:29,890 –> 01:37:32,650
there. It’s right there. It’s literally right there. It’s like 10 minutes away. Come on.

1566
01:37:32,650 –> 01:37:36,370
Like, give me a break. It belongs, it belongs to us. Nobody else

1567
01:37:36,370 –> 01:37:38,690
deserves it. It’s ours. Right. Like,

1568
01:37:40,370 –> 01:37:42,530
I saw, I saw it first. I called dibs.

1569
01:37:47,580 –> 01:37:51,020
What else? What reason would we be fighting, exactly?

1570
01:37:51,340 –> 01:37:55,100
So we will have territorial fights over the moon or maybe an

1571
01:37:55,100 –> 01:37:58,460
asteroid. For sure. I could see that. But Mars?

1572
01:37:59,740 –> 01:38:03,420
No, I think Mars or Venus or any of those other

1573
01:38:03,420 –> 01:38:06,380
planets, I think they’re going to warp us in ways that we don’t expect.

1574
01:38:08,140 –> 01:38:11,580
And we just take for granted warfare and violence because it’s human nature. It’s what

1575
01:38:11,580 –> 01:38:14,910
we’re, what we’re what we’re used to. And we’re not allowing

1576
01:38:14,990 –> 01:38:18,310
agency, as usual, to

1577
01:38:18,310 –> 01:38:22,070
exist in those other kinds of places. And by the way, agency in ways we

1578
01:38:22,070 –> 01:38:25,830
don’t understand because it won’t be human agency, it’ll be

1579
01:38:25,830 –> 01:38:29,390
Martian agency or Jupiterian agency or Saturnian

1580
01:38:29,390 –> 01:38:33,190
agency. It won’t be human agency. I can tell you for damn sure it

1581
01:38:33,190 –> 01:38:36,790
won’t be that. And we ain’t ready for that. We can’t even contemplate

1582
01:38:36,790 –> 01:38:39,950
that. And that’s, that was the whole point of Stranger in a Strange Land was

1583
01:38:40,430 –> 01:38:44,230
this guy coming back looked human, but he was

1584
01:38:44,230 –> 01:38:48,030
fully Martian through and through. So anyway,

1585
01:38:49,070 –> 01:38:50,750
just, just, just some food for thought.

1586
01:38:52,910 –> 01:38:56,590
All right. Again, I, I, I think my

1587
01:38:56,590 –> 01:39:00,390
favorite, my favorite, my favorite phrase of all time is, you know, the

1588
01:39:00,390 –> 01:39:03,750
more things change, the more things stay the same. I, I say it so often

1589
01:39:03,750 –> 01:39:07,310
now that I, I, I, I might even, I might even be getting tired of

1590
01:39:07,310 –> 01:39:11,150
myself saying it. Yeah, I think, I think you need trademark it and

1591
01:39:11,150 –> 01:39:11,990
put it on a hat.

1592
01:39:18,870 –> 01:39:21,030
I’ll make the hat half red and half blue.

1593
01:39:24,790 –> 01:39:28,430
You got sell the hell out. Because to sell is

1594
01:39:28,430 –> 01:39:32,150
human. Sell the hell out of that hat. Sell is, is human.

1595
01:39:32,150 –> 01:39:35,430
I, I agree. All right, well, with that, well,

1596
01:39:36,560 –> 01:39:39,400
this is a great episode. Thank you for coming by, Tom. And I look forward

1597
01:39:39,400 –> 01:39:43,160
to having further development of these conversations around these books over

1598
01:39:43,160 –> 01:39:45,440
the next couple months. And with that, well,

1599
01:39:46,720 –> 01:39:47,440
we’re out.