The A&G Replay Friday Hour One

Summary

Armstrong & Getty On Demand — "The A&G Replay Friday Hour One" (Sep 19, 2025)

Hosts: Jack Armstrong & Joe Getty
Podcast Network: iHeartPodcasts

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Overview:

This replay episode of the Armstrong & Getty Show revolves around themes of generational change, the comforts and challenges of modern life, the origins of anxiety and dissatisfaction in youth, skepticism of large-scale government efforts (especially in climate policy), and growing concerns over cybersecurity and AI-driven scams—particularly those involving China. The tone shifts fluidly between nostalgic, humorous reflection and sharp, occasionally sardonic social commentary.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Generational Contrast: Life Then vs. Now

(00:41–11:21)

• Personal Family History: Jack reflects on his father’s rural Iowa upbringing—no electricity or plumbing, one-room schoolhouses, and outhouses in freezing winters.
  • Quote: “[My dad] turns 88 tomorrow… lived on a farm with no electricity or running water… moved into ‘town’… also with no electricity or running water.” (00:41, Jack Armstrong)
  • Memorable Moment: Jack and his son, Henry, visit the overgrown remains of the historic Diamond School, where Jack’s father attended classes.
• Rural Neglect in History: The hosts discuss America’s underestimation of rural deprivation, referencing the Rural Electrification Program, and how government learned that many Americans lacked basics well into the mid-20th century.
  • Quote: “Rural areas, particularly of the Midwest and South, it was like it was 1850 up until, like 1970, I mean, in a lot of places.” (01:41, Jack Armstrong)
• Perspective on Hardship: Life was physically harder, but perhaps less dominated by present-day depression/anxiety.
  • Quote: “So much less depression, anxiety, complaining, it seems.” (06:11, Jack Armstrong)

Timestamps:

• [00:41-05:17] -- Jack’s family backstory, rural hardship
• [05:17-06:11] -- Laundry, daily life, gratitude

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2. Modern Convenience & Its Discontents

(06:13–11:25)

• Are Labor-Saving Devices Overdone? Jack wonders if technological convenience has eliminated productive struggle, intensifying malaise.
  • Quote: “Is there a point where you go too far, obviously? Well, yeah. To me the answer is obvious, absolutely obvious.” (06:33, Jack Armstrong)
• Leisure and Comparison: With less work and more time, people focus more on relative status and comparison, breeding discontent.
  • Quote: “We’ve talked about the studies before… if somebody builds a nicer house next to you, your happiness goes down.” (07:54, Co-host)
• Children and Amish Counterpoint: Henry’s fascination with Amish life sparks speculation about their lower anxiety rates.
  • Quote: “I was wondering, I’ll bet there’s not a lot of depression and anxiety medication going on with those Amish children.” (08:54, Co-host)

Timestamps:

• [06:13-08:54] -- Labor, leisure, societal comparisons
• [08:54-09:58] -- Amish simplicity vs. modern anxiety

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3. On Digital Culture, Memory, and Anomie

(10:02–11:50)

• Phones and Memory: The hosts lament that future generations won’t recall pre-digital pleasures like reading books quietly or staring out a car window.
  • Quote: “There won’t be anybody around who can even remember that.” (11:18, Co-host)
• Nostalgia vs. Reality: Despite hardship, old ways of life sound appealing—yet were indisputably tough.
  • Quote: “It was really freaking hard, but yet it sound appealing on some levels… well, sounds kind of nice, right?” (11:25, Co-host)

Timestamps:

• [10:02-11:21] -- Reflections on lost traditions

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4. Youth, Voting, and Dissatisfaction — Data from Britain

(13:35–18:28)

• Lowering Voting Age: British experiment of allowing teens to vote prompts analysis. Parties hope for ideological gain, but radical politics may surge instead.
  • Quote: “The lefty party… thought, hey, this is a great idea because kids will fall for anything. But then a far lefty party emerged…” (13:35, Jack Armstrong)
• Poll Breakdown: Girls report much lower life satisfaction and higher anxiety than boys, and are politically more leftward—mirroring U.S. trends.
  • Quote: “58% of boys rate their life satisfaction as 7 out of 10 or higher, compared with only 37% of the girls.” (14:27, Jack Armstrong)
  • Memorable Stat: “Nearly three in five said they had stayed home from school due to anxiety.” (15:38, Jack Armstrong)
• Irreversibility of Youth Voting Rights: Once enfranchised, teens will likely always have the vote; swing toward left politics could become permanent.
  • Quote: “It’s a perpetual motion machine… could be one of the most disastrous experiments ever conducted.” (17:43, Jack Armstrong)

Timestamps:

• [13:35-15:52] -- UK youth, voting, mental health stats
• [15:52-18:28] -- Political implications, generational rifts

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5. Government Problem-Making & Climate Change Policy

(19:37–30:54)

• Skepticism Toward Government 'Crises': The government is accused of inflating issues as excuses for power grabs and budget windfalls (notably under the banner of climate change).
  • Quote: “Government comes up with various hobgoblins or problems or crises… they use them as a pretext to throw zillions of dollars around because that’s how you grow your power…” (19:37, Jack Armstrong)
• Absurd Policy Recommendations: British government tells citizens to delete emails/photos to save water due to data center cooling—debunked with basic math.
  • Quote: “To save as much water in data centers as fixing your toilet would save, you would need to delete 1.5 billion photos or 200 billion emails.” (22:21, Jack Armstrong)
• Climate Report Controversy: Discussion of Steven Koonin’s report, challenging the mainstream narrative of catastrophic warming, and “the threat from greenhouse gas emissions has been exaggerated.”
  • Key Insight: Agreement exists: climate is changing, CO2 is rising; main question is severity, cost-benefit of remedies.
  • Quote: “The climate is changing. The climate’s always changed. Maybe part of it’s man made. None of the measures we’re talking about would do any good.” (20:56, Jack Armstrong)

Timestamps:

• [19:37-23:21] -- Climate policy skepticism, deleting emails myth
• [23:21-27:43] -- Koonin report, media narratives, policy implications

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6. Global Action and Futility on Climate

(27:43–30:54)

• International Disparities: Hosts note that while Western societies hobble themselves for climate, China (the largest coal consumer), India, and others ignore the issue.
  • Quote: “China now burns 61% of the coal burned on earth, China alone.” (27:43, Jack Armstrong)
• Wind/Solar Limitations: Renewables are unreliable for baseline power, useful only as "ornaments."
• Real Point of Climate Activism: Upright purposes aside, the real engine is the distribution of trillions in subsidies.
  • Quote: “...those trillions of dollars are the point. That’s why they’re doing it… The climate change is the excuse to do the thing. The thing is handing out monies.” (30:54, Jack Armstrong)

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7. China, Cybersecurity, and the Age of AI Scams

(33:23–39:45)

• Salt Typhoon Hack: Chinese cyber espionage group may have stolen data on virtually every American and 80+ countries.
  • Quote: “The Chinese may have stolen data from almost every single one of us Americans, not to mention the other 80 countries.” (33:23, Jack Armstrong)
• Pervasiveness of TikTok Surveillance: Chinese intelligence highly values TikTok as a trove of American data.
• AI Voice Scams & Deepfakes: China uses AI to convincingly impersonate U.S. politicians (e.g., Marco Rubio). Everyday people are likely next; voice-faked scams exploit family trust.
  • Quote: “You already have grandmas getting calls from their grandsons saying, hey, I got arrested, I need $200 bail…” (37:28, Jack Armstrong)
  • Advice: Consider using family “code words” to avoid falling prey.
• Skeptical Wisdom: Most people won't fall for these, but scammers’ ingenuity still ensnares the “nice idiots.”

Timestamps:

• [33:23-37:28] -- China’s cyber capabilities, TikTok, deepfake threats
• [37:28-39:50] -- Family safety, code words, phone scam anecdotes

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On hardship shaping mindset:
  “If you lived in San Francisco and there were cars and electricity in the 1800s, you can’t even imagine that’s true… The first half of his schooling was in a one-room schoolhouse…” (02:13, Jack Armstrong)

• On manufactured crises:
  “Government comes up with various hobgoblins or problems… they use them as a pretext to throw zillions of dollars around because that’s how you grow your power.” (19:37, Jack Armstrong)

• On digital malaise:
  “I remember when I could sit down with a book in the quiet and read for a couple hours and be perfectly happy. And I can’t do that anymore. But there won’t be anybody that can remember that.” (11:04, Co-host)

• On water-saving myths:
  “To save as much water in data centers as fixing your toilet would save, you would need to delete 1.5 billion photos or 200 billion emails.” (22:21, Jack Armstrong)

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Segment Timestamps (selected)

• [00:41–06:11]: Family history, rural hardship, generational differences
• [08:54–09:58]: Amish comparison, simplicity and happiness
• [13:35–15:52]: UK youth, mental health, voting, politics
• [19:37–23:21]: Climate policy, deleting emails to save water myth
• [24:52–27:43]: Koonin climate report, mainstream consensus and divergence
• [33:23–39:50]: Cybersecurity, China, AI-generated voice scams, TikTok surveillance

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Takeaway

The episode sharply contrasts the “hard but satisfying” lifestyles of past generations with the ease—but also discontent—of modernity, particularly among youth. It links these social trends to broader skepticism of government intervention, especially in immense issues like climate change, and closes with a cautionary tale about technological vulnerability, both from foreign adversaries (China) and everyday scams made possible by AI. The Armstrong & Getty Show’s trademark tone—nostalgic, witty, and often skeptical—pervades, challenging listeners to question comfort, progress, and where society may be headed.

Transcript

[Jack Armstrong]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Joe Getty]

And now broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln radio studio at the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.

[Jack Armstrong]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

And now here's Armstrong and Getty.

[Jack Armstrong]

You have tuned in to a real treasure. It's an Armstrong and Getty replay.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Well, let's think about the reality. But you don't listen to the entire 20 hours every week. So there's a bunch of stuff, even though it's not live, you've never heard before. I mean, let's be honest. And it's pretty good. So kick back and enjoy an Armstrong and Getty replay. So my dad grew up in rural Iowa. He turns 88 tomorrow. 88 years old tomorrow. He's one of seven children in his family that lived on a farm with no electricity or running water. Then they moved into town. Using my finger quotes, I don't know what it was, a hundred people or something like that, also with no electricity or running water. And we were there sitting with my. With my son. He wanted to see some of this stuff and meet some family. And we were in Iowa at my aunt's house. That's my dad's older sister. She's 94 and still way more with it than Joe Biden ever was there at the end. But they were talking about their childhood and everything like that. And just I was struck, first of all of how hard it would have been, just how much more difficult life would have been. If you live in an urban area or on the coasts, you quite possibly are completely unaware that rural areas, particularly of the Midwest and South, it was like it was 1850 up until, like 1970, I mean, in a lot of places. And you just didn't know that. I read a book, Freedom From Fear.

[Jack Armstrong]

Great book.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Won the Pulitzer Prize about FDR through the Great Depression in World War II. But anyway, he sent it turned out to be Hoover, who ended up being President, President, out to canvas the United States and bring him back a full assessment of how people were doing. This was during the Great Depression. And he came back and told fdr, we got lots of people in this country. They don't have any electricity or running water. It was shocking to the elite in Washington, D.C. and New York and San Francisco and Chicago who had had electricity since, like 1860, that there were people in 1950 that are 1940 that had no electricity. And so that's when they started the rural electrification program and the government attempted to get electric lines all across the country. But the elite of the country, the big cities, didn't know everybody was living such. I don't know if you use the term backward or non modern lives would be a better way to put it. Non modern lives. And my dad is one of those people. His seven brothers and sisters. It was in the 50s. He graduated high school in 1955. They went to school and in a wagon, drug by horses. It's unbelievable if you, if you live in San Francisco and there were cars and electricity in the 1800s, you can't even imagine that that's true. But anyway, the first half of his schooling was in a one room schoolhouse where all the grades were in one room and it was only dozen or so kids, kindergarten through senior year. And it's, some of those schools are still out there and they're historic artifacts. There's a sign out front that says Diamond School, Iowa Historic Register. It's out in a field. It's now overgrown with bushes and trees. You can't even hardly tell it's there. In fact, we missed it a couple of times driving down this dirt road that leads to it. It's so covered up with, with, with overgrowth that we couldn't even find it even though my dad knew where the school was. So we stop, we walk over there to it. My dad gets out his pocket knife and cuts away all the vines and stuff near the front door and we managed to pull open the front door and actually go inside and, and I got a good picture of him and my son in there at the chalkboard where my dad would have learned his letters and math and stuff like that way back in the day as a.

[Jack Armstrong]

Little kid and about the, the gender.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Bred person and of course, yeah, about the different genders that you can be and, and there was a pride flag in the corner because they spent an entire month celebrating all that. I kid, of course my son was really fascinated by that obviously as you would be seeing your family heritage, not to mention just the time machine that that whole thing is. And it didn't have electricity or plumbing either. The overgrown little hut over here is behind the bushes. But I, my dad showed that's. That was the girls outhouse and the one over here was the boys outhouse. And if you were there in class and you needed to, you know, do number one or two, you'd go out in the dead of winter in Iowa where it might have been 30 below zero and walk across this little field and sit there on a wooden plank with a hole in it and do your business as an eight year old girl before you go back over to the school and learn your reading and writing.

[Jack Armstrong]

I've got frostbite on my willy.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Oh, good Lord. Absolutely amazing. Night after night. And my aunt, who's 94, talking about, even when they moved to town, it was her job when they got home from school every day to get several buckets and go to the town, pump and full it, fill it up with water to bring water back to the house that they would use for cooking and doing laundry. And then they got into the conversation on how much work laundry was. The women did about it all day long. It was just, it was just. It was such a. A project just to have clean clothes, obviously. And so what do you do with that information about how much harder life was physically anyway, but so much less depression, anxiety, complaining, it seems.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right, yeah.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Feeling oppressed or. You know, we're doing that. We've done a couple of studies today, both in the United States and Great Britain about people who have so much anxiety and they feel like their lives will never get better and they're miserable. Right now. Your life is so much easier than the one I just described. I mean, it's like it's being a different species. It's so much different.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right. Easier. Well, I think if you, if you separate yourself and your life and a feeling of being judged from the conversation and you just ask the question. Human beings have always had work and in certain periods of history, leisure time, different people, different amounts. Right. And labor saving devices, technology to lessen your work and increase your leisure time have been, you know, worked on and developed and embraced just, you know, from the dawn of time. Purely abstract discussion. Is there a point where you go too far, obviously? Well, yeah. To me the answer is obvious, absolutely obvious.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

If you got up in the morning and they probably all had to work together to get some sort of breakfast together and get dressed and everything like that, and then get the horses ready and hooked up to the wagon and all the different things just to get to school and then school being what it was, and then get home and then have work immediately. As soon as you got home, you wouldn't have a lot of time to ponder how happy you were.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

None, actually.

[Jack Armstrong]

Or to worry about. Crap.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Yeah, to worry about. And then there's also the just expectations, I would imagine, because he told me he'd never been to Des Moines until he was. I don't remember how old. You wouldn't have anything to compare it to, obviously, without any sort of social media or every town around you being exactly the same and you weren't going anywhere Anyway, that's a lot of where happiness or fulfillment comes from. We've talked about the studies before where, you know, if somebody gets a. You might be perfectly happy with your house, but if somebody builds a nicer house next to you, your happiness goes down. I mean, so it's all just comparing things as opposed to what you have.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, and studies have shown that if you're making $80,000 next to somebody who's making 70, you're happier and perceive yourself as better off than if you're making 90 next to someone who's making 100.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Right. We. Even a more stark example of this is we. Henry saw his first Amish people, which me being around Iowa a lot, I'd seen that a lot. But we stopped at a little very rural town, gas station, and there were some Amish there, and they had their buggy parked with their horses, living their Amish lifestyle. And just like you see in tv, in the movies, the big long beards and everything like that. And they had a table set up and they were selling stuff, and Henry bought some sort of, like, apple pie treat thingy. That was delicious. And I was wondering, I'll bet there's not a lot of depression and anxiety medication going on with those Amish children. Not. Probably not a lot and probably not a lot needed.

[Jack Armstrong]

No. No.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Will we. Will we recognize this at some point as a society and decide to. Will we be able to pull back? Will there be any push to pull. The push to pull back from any of this to make ourselves happier? Or is that just. It just is an inevitable head toward modern convenience? More stuff, faster, until we're so crazy we all just, I don't know, implode.

[Jack Armstrong]

That one. The second one.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

The second one. Right.

[Jack Armstrong]

I just. I don't think. And everybody can form their own opinion of this, obviously. I think the percentage of the human beast, the humankind that actually thinks about this sort of stuff is fairly modest. I think a lot of people just do what they see other people doing around them, and they don't ever think, Mark Zuckerberg isn't trying to make me happy, he's trying to make more money. His offerings, as shiny and as attractive as they are, are not good for me. I'm going to reject them. Well, that's. That's not the majority of people, I don't think.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Well, how about just for your own self? And I always use the example of those of us who ever lived any other way are going to be dead soon. And then if you were staring at a phone, your Entire life. You can't have the memories like Joe and I have or anybody over the age of whatever who can at least look back and say, I remember when I could sit down with a book in the quiet and read for a couple hours and be perfectly happy. And I can't do that anymore. But there won't be anybody that can remember that.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Or drive down, go on a road trip with no podcast, Netflix for the kids in the car or anything like that. And we just looked out the window and talked and. And everybody was perfectly fine.

[Jack Armstrong]

There won't be anybody.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

There won't be anybody around who can even remember that.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right. Right. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Is. It's wild though, to hear a life described like that, which I'm sure was really freaking hard, but yet it sound appealing on some levels, like it did to me. It was like. Well, sounds kind of nice, right?

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, absolutely. I know what you mean. We probably ought to take a break, but there are a hell of a lot of people can. Oh, we gotta. Okay.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Right.

[Jack Armstrong]

I forgot. Privileged. Delighted to bring you a message from our friends at Trust and Will you need an estate plan? Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Who's gonna get the buggy and the donkey? You don't know. You know. And then you don't have to have a legal battle over that when you pass away. Who's gonna get the donkey?

[Jack Armstrong]

Kids both think they ought to have the donkey and end up hating each other and then the government takes most of the donkey, which is really an unpalatable, you know, metaphor.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

At the end of it, you think, I don't believe anyone won here.

[Jack Armstrong]

Who wants a third of a donkey? In the final analysis, we didn't think this through.

[Joe Getty]

The Armstrong and Getty Show. Get more Jack more Joe podcasts and.

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[Jack Armstrong]

So the story behind the story of the whole Britain is going to have children vote now is the lefty party. The Labor Party thought, hey, this is a great idea because kids will fall for anything. But then a far lefty party emerged and said, yeah, no, we're even crazier than you and the kids will flock to us. And according to the polls, they're right. Probably. Yeah. It's because they're selling childlike fantasies of what the government ought to do. Oh yeah.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

If you're, if you're a normal Democrat in the United States, you would not want 16 year olds to vote because they would all become Bernie AOC types.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right. Right. So I found this very interesting. Asked to rate their life satisfaction on a scale of 0 to 10, girls in Britain nearly twice as likely as boys to choose an answer between 0 and 3.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

What was the question?

[Jack Armstrong]

Rate your life satisfaction on a scale.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Between 0 and 3.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah. Twice as many boy girls as boys. On the other end of the scale, 58% of boys rate their life satisfaction as 7 out of 10 or higher, compared with only 37% of the girls.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Man, if you're saying your life satisfaction between 0 and 3, you need a dose of perspective.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah. According to the poll by the think tank that there's a gender split and other things too, boys are nearly twice as likely to support right wing parties as girls. Keeping in mind right wing in Britain is Fairly moderate.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Right.

[Jack Armstrong]

Some 45% of boys age 16, 17 would vote for one of the more conservative parties. 45 to 24 of the girls. The super lefty. Let's see is. Well, it's the reverse. More than a third say they sympathize more with the Palestinian side in the Gaza war. 9% side with Israel, almost half. That's. That's a very British thing to ask. Almost a quarter of the 16 and 17 year olds say they suffered from anxiety. 34% among the girls.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

That's probably accurate.

[Jack Armstrong]

Nearly three in five said they had stayed home from school due to anxiety.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Wow. 60% of the kids say they stayed home for anxiety. When I was in school. When you were in school, that would be roughly.00 people stayed home from school for anxiety.

[Jack Armstrong]

69% of the girls, 48% of the boys more than 4 in 10 spend more than 6 hours a day on their phone. 6 and 9% spend more than 10 hours.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Says a guy who probably spends 8 hours a day on his phone. That number 7 out of 10 girls have stayed home from school from anxiety.

[Jack Armstrong]

And just that great sex divide of girls. Like women in the US because we don't let children vote, are way, way farther left than the boys, politically speaking.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

So would you guess this is an experiment that will be done away with, letting children vote or. I'm leaning toward this. Once you give that age group the right to vote, it'll never go away. There'll be no getting rid of it.

[Jack Armstrong]

I don't know. That's a great question. I think it, it might be one of those things that rectifies itself, rectifies itself over the long term because it will be a miserable, miserable failure. But it takes so long. I mean it's like how long did San Francisco take to come around? I just happen to be reading that their commercial real estate situation has really turned around now, partly because of it. Well, largely because of AI. But in the streets of San Francisco, much cleaner. The bum junkie camps far fewer and smaller. San Francisco's really turned itself around, credit where it's due. But how long did that take?

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Yeah, but I don't understand.

[Jack Armstrong]

Years and years and years of the, the failure being just plain. Everybody could see how miserable a failure all those policies were.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

But in this particular case, you give the 16 and 17 year olds the right to vote. I don't see how you'd ever get rid of it. It's going to change the politics so drastically, so quickly. How would you ever end up with a majority that wants to do away with it?

[Jack Armstrong]

Oh wow, that's an interesting point. Yeah, it's a perpetual motion machine. Yeah, I, I don't know. I think that could be one of the most disastrous experiments ever conducted.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Yes, I agree. This could be huge. Unless these 16 year olds when they're 40, look back on it and think I should not have been voting and do away with it. But that could take a long time. Obviously you can do the math on that.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, right in the new crop of 16, 17 year olds lacking all perspective and wisdom because that's the way you're supposed to freaking be as a child. There's no avoiding it. They will say, oh yeah, yeah, no, we know what's right for the world up with whatever.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

As opposed to male white landowners over 30, which is what it should be.

[Jack Armstrong]

I'm willing to expand the tent a.

[Joe Getty]

Little bit the Armstrong and Getty Show. Get more Jack, more Joe podcasts and.

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[Jack Armstrong]

What Government does and great thinkers going back to my hero HL Mencken in the very early 20th century points out pointed out government comes up with various hobgoblins or problems or crises, some real, some imagined, and they use them as a pretext to throw zillions of dollars around because that's how you grow your power in government. Okay. And so if you can convince people there's an existential threat, why, that gives you permission to throw around mind boggling amounts of money. And I wish we had time for some of the examples that have come to light in recent days. Stacey Abrams foundation that raised a couple of hundred dollars one year and the next year on their way out, the Biden administration gave them $2 billion. Wow. For environmental justice initiatives. Wow. Just to get a sense of how it works. All right. That's number one. Number two, I've always thought, yeah, the climate's changing. The climate's always changed. Maybe part of it's man made. None of the measures we're talking about would do any good. Plus, who knows what sort of, you know, adjustments the planet makes. If the level of this rises, does that cause a change in temperature or whatever that actually makes up for it or something? I don't know. Certainly not worth ruining an economy over.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

And throw in a dash of I'll be dead before it happens.

[Jack Armstrong]

Anyway, there's that. Yeah. So anyway, a couple of stories that I found very enlightening and or entertaining. The second one's much more significant, but this is a great substack. Andy Maisley is this guy. He writes mostly about the UK and what's going on over there, but the UK government recently formed a group. They all made money and they spent money to address the nation's drought. The group offered some ways everyday people can save water how to save water at home this is from the actual manual they distributed. Install a rain barrel to collect rainwater.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

To use in the garden like it's 1890.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, it's still good for your plants. Fix a leaking toilet. Leaky lose loo. That's a British ism. Can waste 200 to 400 liters a day.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Yeah, if you hear your toilet running, if you pay for your water, it gets really expensive really fast and it's like a super cheap fix.

[Jack Armstrong]

And then they say avoid watering your lawn. Brown grass will grow back healthy. Turn off the tap when brushing your teeth, blah blah blah. Delete old emails and pictures as data centers require vast amounts of water to cool their systems. What? Well, and Andy writes, obviously the last one caught my eye.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Delete your old emails.

[Jack Armstrong]

This may seem like a silly one off mistake, but it's blowing up and now being recommended as the top way a top way to save water by the Times, the Telegraph, the Independent and the Metro. Notice that none of these articles include any specific estimates of how much water deleting emails and photos saves. They just hand wave at the fact that data centers use water. The group failed to compare how much water each choice saves. Once you do it, it becomes clear how ridiculous this advice is. I did the math. Here are the results and how I got them. Anyway. Fixing a leaky toilet can waste 200 to 400 liters a day. To save as much water in data centers as fixing your toilet would save, you would need to delete 1.5 billion photos or 200 billion emails. If you took a tenth of a second to delete each email and you deleted them non stop for 16 hours a day, it would take you 723 years to delete enough emails to save the amount of water in data centers as you could save if you just jiggled your toilet. Maybe you should jiggle your toilet.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

I have roughly that many unread emails that I been meaning to get to, but I'm probably not going to delete them.

[Jack Armstrong]

And then he goes into a couple of the other ones like avoid watering your lawn. Brown grass will grow back healthy. If the average British British person who waters their lawn completely stopped, they would save as much water as they would if they deleted 170 million photos or 25 billion emails. A typical lawn needs X amount of water per square foot to stay healthy. Blah blah blah. Average blades of grass. The average person seems to have about 2,000 photos saved. Let's assume they're all backed up. If someone deleted all of their photos, the water they could save could support two blades of grass.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

This is similar to the engines that shut off at stoplights. The math on that is just ridiculous.

[Jack Armstrong]

If you could gather a thousand people together and convince them to delete every last photo they have stored together, you could save enough water as it takes to maintain a single square foot of lawn. But this stuff, because climate change is a craze, gets printed and taken seriously. Anyway, to the main gist of this, there is a controversial new climate report out headed up by Stephen Koonin. You may not, you might not know his name. He's a theoretical physicist. He went from working on climate and energy issues as a Department of Energy undersecretary under Obama to co authoring last month's report on the agency's current chief that concluded that the threat from greenhouse gas emissions has been exaggerated. What changed? That's right.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Al Gore does not agree.

[Jack Armstrong]

That's. Well, no, that's what you've been perpetrating, Al. Anyway, Coonan said when he started to dig more deeply into climate scientists in 2014, he discovered it had a dirty underbelly. That's a quote. I started paying attention to the representations of climate science in the media and political discussions and realized that things were just not being told straight, he said. And the 151 page report by the Climate Working Group signals a 180 degree shift from the Biden administration's climate Focus. Again, that true focus was handing out money to Stacey Abrams and her ilk, opening the aperture to theories and findings that might send Greta Thunberg into a coma. For example, the report said that the growing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, quote, has the important positive effect of promoting plant growth, and that much of the debate about the consequences of ocean acidification, quote, has been one sided and exaggerated, and that US corn yields have not been hurt by rising temperatures, temperatures as many studies have claimed. Last week, two environmental groups sued the Department of Energy over the report, alleging that Kuhn and his four co authors sought to manufacture a reason to deny the root causes of global warming and were recruited in secret and this is long and actually I'd Love to read it in its entirety, but they point out, look, and this will gratify you. If the media drives you crazy like it does usually. What does virtually everybody who studied climate agree on? The first is that the climate is changing. Yes, it is. It 100% is. How much is man made? Nobody's really sure. But yes, it's changing. But it's essential to distinguish between weather, which occurs daily, versus climate, which is the long term 30 year average of the weather. So what happens in one year, such as a drought or a tornado, is not climate. But how many tornadoes over 30 years? Is it more in these 30 years than in the last? That's a climate discussion. So the first is that the climate is changing. The second point I think everybody will agree on is that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are increasing mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels with some contribution from land use. Again, that is almost certainly true. The third thing that everybody will agree on is that carbon dioxide growing in the atmosphere exerts a warming influence on the planet. And other things being equal, it would cause the Earth to warm. I think where people then start to diverge is how much warmer it's going to get and what other changes we might see in the climate system that would either be beneficial or deleterious. And probably the last thing where everybody disagrees is what should we do about all of this? If you're going to have a sensible conversation about this, you need to know a good deal about not only how climate science works, but also about energy. And there aren't many people who are knowledgeable in both aspects of this.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

And whenever you say, what are we going to do about it, do you mean we in the United States or do you mean we the world, which really needs to participate to have any chance? And India and China don't care.

[Jack Armstrong]

Oh no. China now burns 61% of the coal burned on earth, China alone.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

And they're building coal plants like every day, Right?

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah.

[Joe Getty]

How dare you.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Greta Thunberg is not happy about that.

[Jack Armstrong]

And so we've stolen her childhood. Well, right. You have stolen my dreams. Well, and apparently a single country, even a giant economy like ours, saying we will sacrifice ourselves or Europe. Oh my God, Europe has, has taken a poison pill. As if the socialism hasn't crushed their economies enough. They've gone so far down the we must do something about climate change. They have crippled their own economies and had zero effect. But it makes them feel good and enlightened. It's really, it's a mental illness. But as absurd as it is for a single country like the US to think, yes, we will sacrifice ourselves on the cross of climate change because it makes us feel good, even though it will have no effect, how absurd is it when, like an individual state like California or a dopey little country, pardon me, like, you know, France or Belgium says, yeah, we're going to hang ourselves on the cross of climate change and crush our economy, but it's the right thing to do. You're just. You're a moron. Especially given the unsettled, you know, many aspects of the science.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Stupid Euros and their tiny bathing suits.

[Jack Armstrong]

Amen to that.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Plum smugglers.

[Jack Armstrong]

Oh, here, here's. Here's a good one. I'll hit you with one of the questions from this long interview. UN Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who's doing a great job, by the way, have written and spoken about the continuing need for fossil fuels and how solar and wind are not up to the task of replacing fossil fuels. They're clearly not. President Trump leaves your message and has a particular hatred for wind turbines. Should we move away from solar wind? And what this scientist says is one aspect of having participated in this report is that many people believe I'm a Trumper, that I support everything that the administration is doing. Of course not. I think we've all tried as scientists to portray the fact. If they happen to align with the president's view, that's great. But our goal is not to support President Trump. Our goal is to portray the facts. So when you hear woke people, progressive people try to claim this guy is just some sort of Trump lackey, he's absolutely not. Then he says, now onto wind and solar. You often hear them touted as the cheapest form of electricity generation. And that's true if you don't care. When you get your electricity, of course you need the sun shining and the wind blowing. If you want a reliable electrical system, one that produces electricity 99.99% of the time, which is the US standard, by the way, or down less than a day out of a decade, then wind and solar can at best be an ornamen. Wow. You think about Obama's guy.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Yeah. And you think about all the scientist who says, I'm no Trumper, the Obama, Biden crowd, you know, opening new solar fields and all the farms and all that different sort of stuff and just.

[Jack Armstrong]

And subsidizing it right to the trillions of dollars. Never forget, folks, those trillions of dollars are the point. Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

That's why they're doing.

[Jack Armstrong]

They're not the cost of doing the thing, they are the thing. The climate change is the excuse to do the thing. The thing is handing out monies. End of lesson. Yes that will be on the test. A word from our friends at Trust and Will get the peace of mind you know you want. You know you need to do this. You just haven't gotten around to it. Get security and peace of mind by making an estate plan now.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

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[Jack Armstrong]

State and compared to the cost that you might think this would require, you know, going to an attorney or whatever, you can create manage a custom estate plan starting at $199 and trust based plan starting at 499 and you can manage your trust and will online with easy to use website bank level encryption. Secure your assets, protect your loved ones with trust and will get 20% off on your estate plan documents by visiting trustandwill.com Armstrong that's trustandwill.com Armstrong Jack Armstrong.

[Joe Getty]

And Joe Getty the Armstrong and Getty Show.

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[Jack Armstrong]

So speaking of defending ourselves against, well, somebody China, we're looking at you. The whole salt typhoon hacking attack that you may have heard of, it was way bigger and more significant than was even discussed, I think it was last year, a little before that. Apparently the Chinese may have stolen data from almost every single one of us Americans, not to mention the other 80 countries. Well, network targeted.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

If you just started with TikTok, that would be what, 70% of the country? I don't know. A lot of people have TikTok and that's a ton of information they steal just by if you download that app.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, right, right. And I know I have saved that article. I can't remember who wrote it, but actual. Oh, I think it was Michael Pillsbury who wrote the 100 Year Marathon, which is great book about China's rise and their intent. But the Chinese intelligence services Talk glowingly of TikTok and what a valuable asset it is. And if that isn't enough information for you, I don't know what you need to hear. But anyway, so the sweeping cyber attack by the group known as Salt Typhoon is China's most ambitious yet. Targeted more than 80 countries. May have stolen info from nearly every American. They see it as evidence that China's capabilities rival those of the US and its allies. It's not clear whether a lot of the stuff was swept up kind of accidentally and whether it's being stored or anything like that. You know, I personally knowing a little bit about China's track record, I suspect that yeah, they believe that information is power. Even if you don't know how you might use it someday, you just keep it and then what the fear is that the range of the attack, blah blah blah. Security officials warned that the stolen data could allow Chinese intelligence services to exploit global communications networks to track targets including politicians, spies and activists. They have everybody's digital footprint.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

I wonder if they act, do they actually have the ability to like coalesce, keep track of somehow, like they steal all the information from a 22 year old and that person 20 years from now becomes a US senator. Do they have the ability to keep track of that? I don't have any idea.

[Jack Armstrong]

I'll bet with AI they do now. Maybe because you don't have to have some poor analyst like you know, pawing through millions of pages of digital blankety blank or doing Google searches. You just ask AI. Hey Senator Jones, what do we have on him? Here's his last known addresses, blah blah blah. And in a similar ish story, you remember when the Trump administration's contentious trade talks with China were going to begin last summer, staffers on the House committee focused on US competition with China began to get weird emails from the committee's chairman, John Moliner, who's a Republican congressman from Michigan. Several trade groups, law firms, US government agencies, had all received the emails appearing to be from Moliner, asking for input on proposed sanctions with which the legislatures were planning to target Beijing. Your insights are essential. Blah, blah, blah. Turned out to be the latest in a series of cyber espionage campaigns linked to Beijing. They were impersonating the guy, trying to pump anybody for information who's willing to give it to them. And they tied that to when last year, I think it was somebody used AI to imitate Marco Rubio's voice.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Right.

[Jack Armstrong]

And had him leaving voicemails to people to all sorts of foreign officials.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

That's going to happen a lot.

[Jack Armstrong]

Oh, yeah? Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

I wonder.

[Jack Armstrong]

And.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

And just like in everybody's lives, you're gonna get a text that sounds like your wife saying something ridiculous. I mean, just as just messing with you, isn't it? Because it's so easy?

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, yeah, apparently. Well, not only do you have Marco Rubio being not, you know, I said. I almost said convincingly imitated, but it's not. It's his actual voice synthesized digitally. It's like, you know, if you're a guitar player, you know, they have these digital amp, what do you call them, imitations. There's. There's a word for it, models that actually take the audio data from, you know, a Marshall amplifier or whatever, and they can replicate it. You know, the sound waves are the same. So, yeah, it's his voice, essentially. But, yeah, you already have grandmas getting calls from their grandsons saying, hey, I got arrested, I need $200 bail, blah, blah, blah, send it right away. So, yeah, I wonder whether, do the Marcos Rubio of the world and the foreign ministers of Britain or whatever, do they already have protocols in place where if I see a phone call coming in that appears to be from you, for instance, and you say, hey, I need to talk to you about, blah.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Blah, blah, I've been arrested and I need $200.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right. Yeah. Good luck. Get it yourself. Click. Do they have, like, code words and stuff already?

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

I don't know. Are we all.

[Jack Armstrong]

Because I've heard that suggested that families have, that have a code.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Really?

[Jack Armstrong]

Yes. Wow. Oh, yeah. Wow.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Add none of that, huh?

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, you'd have to be a little naive or inexperienced in the ways of the world to fall for this stuff still. But that's. That's the thing about scumbags is some of them are pretty smart and they're good at their jobs. Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

I mean, if I got a phone call from my son, even if it sounded very convincing. Dad, it's Sam. I'm in Mexico. I'm in jail. I'd think. No, you know, you're not.

[Jack Armstrong]

You're at school.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

There's no way you ended up in Mexico.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, what about. I'm two towns over. I was ditching school, and one of my buddies was shoplifting, and I was with him, so I got arrested. I need 400 bucks. Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

How about you learn a lesson? Click.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah. Hang out with better people. Click. I think you would probably see where you're supposed to send the money. Wait a minute. I'm calling the cop shop, right?

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Yes.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, but a lot of people don't because they're fucking. They're nice idiots. No. Nice.

[Co-host or Guest (possibly Joe Getty or Jack Armstrong, depending on who is not A)]

Oh, okay.

[Joe Getty]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Jack Armstrong]

This is an I Heart podcast.