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LA hi, it's Karen in Georgia from My Favorite Murder.
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We cruised around LA in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr.
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Want the full story? Take a listen. She starts dating Howard Hughes and in
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fact she helps him design a faster plane. So she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today.
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And he calls her a genius.
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Check out our new episode spotlighting groundbreaking
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innovators like Hedy and Lamarr and Billie
Jack Armstrong
Jean King presented by the Hyundai Ioniq 5.
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Goodbye Summer is here at Orderly Meds. We know this time is a reminder that life is full of new beginnings. Whether you're celebrating the nice weather, starting a new chapter, planning a vacation, or simply looking ahead to what's next, this season can be the perfect time to invest in yourself and your health. If you've struggled with weight loss and are curious about medications, Orderly Meds can help you learn about your options. Through a simple virtual process, you can connect with licensed medical professionals who can determine whether treatment may be appropriate for you. Getting started is fast, convenient, and happens online from the comfort of home. This summer, consider a new approach to feeling your best. Visit orderlymeds.com podcast to learn more. That's orderlymeds.com podcast orderlymeds.com podcast because every new season is an opportunity to take the next step forward, compounded medications are not FDA approved, eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.
Glenn Washington
I'm Glenn Washington, host of Snap Judgment from kqed. Every week, snap drops you inside someone's biggest decision. The kind of decision you can only make once. With everything on the line. What do you believe? What do you want and what would you risk to get it? Find out. Snap Judgment New episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcast,
Joe Getty
do you want to find a stress free way to buy your next car? Start at Carmax and shop your way. If you want to browse with confidence, get pre qualified online with no impact on your credit score and shop cars within your budget. From luxury cars to family rides, CarMax has options for almost every price range, including more than 25,000 cars priced under $25,000. So, hey, want to get started? Just head to CarMax.com for details and get pre qualified today. Want to drive CarMax? Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln radio studio at the George Washington Broadcast Center,
Jack Armstrong
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong.
Glenn Washington
And get.
Jack Armstrong
And now, here's Armstrong and Yeti.
Joe Getty
My son is about to have three different boy Scout trips in a three and a half week period. He's going to be home for like three days over three and a half weeks. And wow, it's going to be so weird for me because I have been with him most of every day of his entire life for 14 and a half years. So it's going to be very odd him not being around. Oh, yeah, Yeah, I am. It's going to be. I decided. I can't even imagine what it's going to be like to not hear dad every 10 minutes. I need this.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, it's the drop in energy and noise that, you know, I always noticed. And it was both kind of nice and also nearly as much fun around here.
Joe Getty
Right, right, right, right. I'm gonna try to be productive, get stuff done that is harder to get done when I'm. Yeah, parenting, sure. But will I be. That's the question.
Jack Armstrong
Pardon me?
Joe Getty
Will I be productive? That's the question.
Jack Armstrong
Speaking of the sunrise, sunset, perspective type topic, I've got this belief that's growing in me and I'm mostly amused by it, but somewhat sad. I spend all my time. Oh, I decided. I finally figured out what I do for a living. You don't know social. What's it.
Joe Getty
What's it say on your W2?
Jack Armstrong
It's misleading. I'm a social theorist.
Joe Getty
Oh, really? That's.
Jack Armstrong
I only know that because they quote Hannah Arendt, the great philosopher and colorist social theorist.
Joe Getty
That sounds better than disc jockey anyway.
Jack Armstrong
Oh, my God. Damn you for even uttering that phrase.
Joe Getty
I should hit the delay.
Jack Armstrong
But yeah, hit the delay. Michael, dump it. I'd rather hear an F bomb. The thought that keeps recurring to me is that I'm really making progress in understanding humankind and why people behave the way they do, including me and what's gone wrong with the modern world. And the day I achieve full understanding of this, I will croak and nobody will benefit from it at all. But again, mostly I'm amused by that notion because that is God's comedy.
Joe Getty
And what are you going to do on your deathbed? You will achieve total enlightenment.
Jack Armstrong
So I got that going for me, which is nice. This article was written months ago and I was very proud of myself for finding my way back to it. I can find anything. Lindbergh, baby. Poor Savannah Guthrie's mom, you name it. That was tasteless. Anyway, this was written in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk and it was about political violence. But it goes a hell of a lot further than that as he's looking for common threads of all sorts of different political and political adjacent murders, including poor Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO. And he says it's not the threat is not political ideology, it's not polarization, it's not harsh political rhetoric. Something else is going on here. He says.
Joe Getty
We've all said that.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah. Who wrote this? Mike Kasper, whose work I had not previously known. Yeah, absolutely. It's something we've been talking about. And he says the place to begin is with the phenomenon first described by 20th century social theorist Ding Hannah Arendt that's become known as mass loneliness. And it's not simply the experience of isolation, which there's way too much of, because as he points out, we and she did. We experience loneliness most acutely in the company of others. The feeling that we don't belong in this place or in this group or in this world is the loneliest feeling in the world. I've felt it yet is mass loneliness describes this experience happening at scale arising. And here's where he gets to the key part of this. As people lost stable bonds with institutions and traditions that provided a sense of meaning, identity and purpose. So we've lost a sense of connection with each other. And then he quotes the philosopher Charles Taylor, another guy who I didn't really know, and I know where you're gonna go at first with this because I went there too. But to have patience. Taylor once described how a person living in the pre modern era had a bundled identity. They would never ask questions like am I a Christian or a Buddhist? What do I want to be when I grow up? Where will I live? Nor in many cases, who will I marry? Because all of those questions were essentially given by virtue of who you are and where you lived and the rest of it. And they were so fixed by institutions and traditions that it was really difficult to break free, which was one of the great things about the United States. It enabled people to break free Free and liberty is a wonderful thing. And I was thinking, well, wait a minute, dude, I'm in favor of all this stuff so far. But he talks about how the story of modernity is the story of the unbundling of all that identity. And he gets into liberal democratic capitalism and mass transportation, Industrial Revolution, Protestant Reformation allowed people to reassess all this stuff and choose it for themselves, which so far I like. And he says, from one perspective, this unbundling looks like liberty. We're free to pursue a new identity in a variety of ways, but a byproduct of that liberty is anxiety. Not only are we free to answer these questions, we must answer them. And even after the answers are found, the questions remain. You married? But did you marry the right person? Did you choose the right career, move to the right town, choose the right religion? And it goes on and on. And then he said, and it finds a parallel in the existential uncertainty. Human beings used to have a vision of what they were in God's creation, and now we're just beings in a giant empty void.
Joe Getty
For a lot of people, maybe you are.
Jack Armstrong
I'm not the ever expanding void of the universe.
Joe Getty
So is this like what you used to call video store disease, going way back to when you would go rent videos at the video store? Because that's what it sounds like to me.
Glenn Washington
Wow, good point.
Joe Getty
And I wonder about that. With my kid being gone, I've had this experience. I think this is a common human experience. So your video store thing was like, you got these movies you want to watch, but then you finally get time to watch a movie, and you go to the video store and you're just like, paralyzed by.
Jack Armstrong
Overwhelmed by how many choices I have
Joe Getty
the right now I get to choose. And I got free time. Sometimes I would walk out of the store with nothing. Like, I'm not even sure I want to watch a movie.
Jack Armstrong
Part of it was because the act of saying no. And granted, we may be a little nuts in this way, and you might think, I never had that problem. Good for you. But part of it is saying no to all the other choices.
Joe Getty
Yeah, but I think that. I think it's a common human experience because, like, I have this problem the rare times I get free time away from my kids. At this point, I've got all these things I want to do every single day, and it's very hard to get to them because I got all these parental job duties. And then when I have free time, it's like something happens where you can't nail it. Down to one of the things you've been wanting to do but didn't have time for. There are too many options.
Jack Armstrong
Right.
Joe Getty
And I either end up doing nothing or feeling like, I don't know, emotionally not well, of some sort.
Jack Armstrong
I know a sad jackass who spent last evening flipping through YouTube videos of his favorite bands playing shows, but only 10 minutes at a time, for instance, that sad, sad jackass.
Joe Getty
So. But now, it didn't used to be that you had really any choices ever. Of course you're going to be a Christian. You're growing up this village where everybody's a Christian. Nobody even questions the idea of what else you're going to be. Of course you're going to be a farmer. It's what you're the last 50 generations have done in the next 50 you're going to do and nobody even thinks about it and all. And everything else.
Glenn Washington
Right.
Joe Getty
Yeah. And now we have choices all the way down to what gender do I want to be today.
Jack Armstrong
Right. Right. Yeah. And you know, I may be in the happiest marriage in marital history, but there are absolutely times you think, is this working out really? Is this it? Or whatever, because you constantly reprase those choices. Getting back to the essay, a little bit disenchantment and the unbundling of our identity, our identities, help explain how we arrived at the condition Arendt describes as mass loneliness. Modern people have thin or fragile bonds to ident identity, forming institutions like family, nation, vocation and religion. Then he says, quite amusingly, to be sure, there are other narratives one could tell about modernity that better acknowledge its benefits. I for one, am glad not to be picking potatoes 18 hours a day, destined to die at 32 of blood poisoning from, say, an infection I contracted from an ingrown toenail. I like Big Pharma, which recently saved my daughter's life. And then he name checks, air conditioning, democracy, NFL Sunday ticket and doordash. But as Sowell noted, the great time of Sowell in our world there are no solutions, only trade offs. And the abundance and liberty we've gotten comes with a world where our ties to institutions are brittle, if they exist at all. And then he circles back to the question of political violence, or, you know, just violence in general, honestly. And what drives lonely people into the world of radical ideology? Because on this show lately, we've really arrived at what seems like a pretty firm conclusion that a lot of this murder is lonely, angry people with no sense of self and belonging that latch onto an ideology. Oh, and they're angry and they want to hurt somebody to express their pain, and they latch onto an ideology, and four weeks later, they murder people in the name of that ideology. It's not like it's animated their entire lives or it's a performative suicide, which is the same thing. But he says the need for meaning is what drives lonely people into the world of radical ideology, conspiracy theories. Theories and political violence. And he talks about Fight Club, where the Tyler Durden character says, we're slaves with white collars. We're in the. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives. And he helps lonely men feel alive by inviting them to beat the hell out of one another.
Joe Getty
Tyler Durden actually was Ed Norton.
America 250 Announcer
What?
Jack Armstrong
Spoiler alert. It's a near perfect allegory for political radicalization. A lonely person without a sense of meaning or purpose is drawn into violence not because they've been persuaded by ideology, but because they've found a community.
Joe Getty
Yeah, that was the premise of Fight Club. Man, oh, man, that's really, really interesting. I have had this feeling so many times in my life, and I worry about it when my kids are gone, have it happening to me a lot more. Just the. There are all these things you'd like to do. And then when you have the option to do anything, something like. I don't know if it's ennui or it just loses all its vim and vigor for some reason. I've had this happen many times in my life. Again, I don't know how many people. If people are listening, thinking, yeah, me too. Or if people are listening, thinking, I have no idea what you're talking about. But I've had it happen to me on a Friday night recently where, God, I'm begging for a free half hour every day, and here I have the evening couple hours to do what I want. It's just like, yeah, I think I'll just sit here and flip through the channels.
Jack Armstrong
I can't decide which of the great things I want to do, so never mind. Yeah, then you know what? Indulge me.
Glenn Washington
Let's.
Jack Armstrong
Let's do one more short segment on this because he quotes Alexander Sulzanitsyn with a blockbuster quote about how people end up doing evil things.
Joe Getty
Ooh, that's a good one.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah.
Joe Getty
If you have any thoughts on this, can relate to it at all. I'd be interesting in how much outliers we are. Are we the every human? Our text line is 415295KFTC Armstrong and Getty. Armstrong and Getty here for hims, there are all kinds of great weight loss approaches that fit into your world out there. They've got them at hims with a wide range of affordable GLP1 options.
Jack Armstrong
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Joe Getty
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Jack Armstrong
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America 250 Announcer
July 4th come celebrate at America's Block Party Hosted by America 250, America's Block Party is a can't miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes and the kickoff to giving 4th, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history.
It's more than just fireworks.
Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block party tickets now for $17.76 at america250.org LA Summer is here, which
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means we all want to look and feel our best. A GLP1 may be right for you. Visit orderlymeds.com to learn more about which GLP1 you could be eligible for. Getting started is fast, easy, and happens virtually through telemedicine from licensed professionals. Check it out for yourself. Go to orderlymeds.com podcast that's orderlymeds.com podcast taking care of yourself feels great. Compounded medications are not FDA approved. Eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.
Glenn Washington
Every week, the Snap Judgment Podcast drops you inside someone's biggest decision. The kind of decision you can only make once, with everything on the line.
Jack Armstrong
What do you believe?
Glenn Washington
What do you want? And what would you risk to get it? Find out Snap Judgment New episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts,
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com
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Jack Armstrong
on Friday, the Obama Presidential Library officially
Joe Getty
open to the public.
Jack Armstrong
At the center's opening, Joe Biden was left standing awkwardly on stage and asking
Joe Getty
where his granddaughter was.
Jack Armstrong
Bill Clinton also asked where Biden's granddaughter was.
Joe Getty
Wow. Wow, great Gutfeld Trafficking in the worst of stereotypes about some of our Democratic heroes. Keeping our eye on the negotiations with the war in Iran. Probably be talking about that more tomorrow trying to figure out who's lying. J.D. vance came out and said yesterday that they have agreed to nuclear inspectors getting back in there and the Iranians came out today and said no we didn't. So we'll have to figure that out and we'll have the latest tomorrow for you.
Jack Armstrong
Maybe they can negotiate that. So getting back to the piece we're talking about about the great unbundling of humanity and how we're all paralyzed by too many choices too often and have no beliefs and connections and institutions and the rest of it. And it makes people lonely and angry and they want to hurt people.
Joe Getty
Well, and your point I think is even whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, personal freedom and all these different sort of things, it's never happened before. Human beings have never had the opportunity to choose married and not married, kids or not kids. What I'm going to do for a living, religious or not religious. What kind of religion? Gender? All kinds of different things. Work or not work right.
Jack Armstrong
Again, to quote Thomas Sowell, it's a series of trade offs. So what have we traded? Is there a downside? And I think the answer is yes. But as I promised Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's great quote, to do evil, a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good. And radical ideology does that. It offers a vision of the future based on utopianism or nostalgia or whatever in which grievances are resolved and the world is set right. It delineates the obstacles for that future. Maybe it's the bourgeoisie. Maybe it's capitalist, maybe it's the Jews or whatever, some other group and identifies them as necessary targets for marginalization or in the worst examples, destruction. And he cites the Nazis, obviously. Long, slow expansion of Marxist revolutionary ideology. And it reminds me very much of another essay we were talking about the other day in which the guy said the cure for antisemitism isn't just saying stop with the antisemitism. It's giving, giving people something to believe in because they're desperately searching for a belief system, worldviews. This country's wonderful, the Golden Rule, be kind to people, freedom, blah, blah, blah. These are great beliefs, but they've been beaten out of kids in schools for one thing. I'm a proud American is a nice bedrock to start with. And it's been beaten out of the kids in schools.
Joe Getty
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was a dissident in the Soviet Union and thrown in prison and wrote from prison, ended up winning the Nobel Prize for literature many years later. His most famous work being the Gulag Archipelago, which is a word I can't say. Anyway, the. What do they call it when they truncate a big really long book.
Jack Armstrong
Oh yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about. That word. The Reader's Digest version they used to call abridged.
Joe Getty
Abridged version of that is really worth reading. But. So he is a guy who grew up under socialism. He'd be shocked that we're going to talk about this next segment. As this is now happening and with the predictable results, more and more people in New York City are not paying their rent because of Mamdani's new rules where you can't be evicted for not paying your rent.
Jack Armstrong
Who saw that coming?
Joe Getty
Who saw that coming? Byron York writing in. Actually, it's in Politico today. Have to give you some of the details on that. Hilarious. And there's a whole bunch of socialists that are going to win elections all across the country today in primaries, beating the more mainstream Democrat in the primary. The socialists are likely to win, including a whole bunch of candidates actually backed by Mamdani. He's the one that put him on the map.
Jack Armstrong
That's where the energy is on the left these days. Scary.
Joe Getty
Really interesting. Some of the details on that coming up.
Jack Armstrong
Armstrong and Gettysburg this July 4th.
America 250 Announcer
Come celebrate at America's Block Party. Hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Experience music, performances by major artists patriotic tributes and the kickoff to giving 4th, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history.
It's more than just fireworks.
Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Black Party Tickets now for $17.76
Orderly Meds Advertiser
at america250.org LA Summer is here at Orderly Meds. We know this time is a reminder that life is full of new beginnings. Whether you're celebrating the nice weather, starting a new chapter, planning a vacation, or simply looking ahead to what's next, this season can be the perfect time to invest in yourself and your health. If you've struggled with weight loss and are curious about GLP1 medications, orderly meds can help you learn about your options. Through a simple virtual process, you can connect with licensed medical professionals who can determine whether treatment may be appropriate for you. Getting started is fast, convenient and happens online from the comfort of home. This summer, consider a new approach to feeling your best. Visit orderlymeds.com podcast to learn more. That's orderlymeds.com podcast orderlymeds.com podcast because every new season is an opportunity to take the next step forward. Compounded medications are not FDA approved, eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.
Glenn Washington
I'm Glenn Washington, host of Snap Judgment, the award winning storytelling podcast from kqed. Every week Snap deals a new card. Like the girl whose sister was a monkey, the man who lived in the woods for 30 years, or the woman who snuck her lover out of prison in a dog crate. Pick a card, any card. Snap Judgment from kqed. New episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts.
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just 15amonth. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway, give it a try@mint mobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45
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Jack Armstrong
you ever found yourself craving a cold snack?
Ryan Reynolds
Yep.
Jack Armstrong
Do you even know what a cold snack is?
America 250 Announcer
I do.
Joe Getty
Well, some of you may have noticed I've been wearing a Montucky shirt on the video version of the podcast.
Jack Armstrong
And that's because Montucky makes my favorite cold snack. That's right, it's a cold snackable beer
Joe Getty
and Summer is the best time to enjoy it.
Jack Armstrong
You're right, Ders. Montucky is a light American lager from Bozeman, Montana. It's snackable, shareable, and perfect for all occasions. Hey, that sounds like the dream beer to me. Go to montuckycoldsnacks.com snack finder to find
Joe Getty
Montucky cold snacks and a retailer near you.
Jack Armstrong
And if you're looking for some Montucky merch, use important snacks all one word for 20 off their merch store. They got some cold horses on those cans. Cold snacks.
Joe Getty
Both parties are in really interesting times. We, we definitely have a realignment going on. How this is going to shake out, how long it'll take to shake out, I don't know. Same thing's happening over in Britain.
Jack Armstrong
I was just going to say, interestingly enough, it's kind of. Well, it's halfway shaken out in that. That they don't have two parties anymore. The two party system's crumbling.
Joe Getty
Oh yeah, and Emmanuel Macron, who's been prime minister for quite a while now in France, he was from an out of nowhere third party that had never won anything ever. It only had been two parties their entire history of the Republic. And then along comes this because people are unsatisfied. So I'm just like for instance getting into this discussion about the Democrats in the left. But Tucker Carlson announced yesterday he will no longer support the Republican party because in his view the party has abandoned the interests the of. Of ordinary Americans, become too willing to support foreign wars, powerful special interests, etc. Etc. And you know where the whole working class left, the Democratic Party came to the Republican Party followed. A lot of people follow Tucker and Candace. Where they're going to end up, I have no idea. And then on the Democratic side you got today a bunch of socialist candidates running against other Democrats in the primaries. This didn't used to happen, man. When we first got into talk radio, that's not where the action was. Not in the primaries. The, the, the guy or woman who already had the seat. They didn't get challenged in the primaries. It was all about whether or not you got beat by somebody from the other party. But now it's all about losing to somebody in your own world.
Jack Armstrong
Generally to your left on the left
Joe Getty
or to your right on the right or how you even define that, I'm not exactly sure in some cases
Michael
the
Joe Getty
right until your socialist on the left. As you get a bunch of socialist candidates today running against more mainstream Democrats that are likely to win, the socialists are likely to Win in some cases. And we'll be talking about that a lot tomorrow. Whether or not they can. I would assume these are mostly safe Democratic seats. So the social it's the way AOC became a House member. You challenge the mainstream Democrat in a safe Democrat area and you end up winning the election. We could have a bunch of socialists in the next House of Representatives. Just trouble.
Jack Armstrong
Wow. Will Democrats go ahead and vote for them? So far would seem. Well, it's better than an evil Republican to that point.
Joe Getty
Some of the reality on the ground rent collections are down in New York and no one's sure why. Well there are some theories. One of the theories being that during COVID and then it got extended under come dummy. The idea of not making people pay their rent. You can't. In other words you can't. You're supposed to pay your rent. You have to pay your rent. You got to pay your rent. But we can't rent. It's too damn. But the landlord's not allowed to evict you. So if the landlord. If you don't, if the landlord is not allowed to evict you if you don't pay the rent, guess what? You don't actually have to pay your rent. Turns out to be the case. They've got some housing complexes where 25% of the people are not paying rent. Apparently the cutoff is around here. I'll get you the actual numbers here. This is higher than you would think but last year rent collections were at about 89% according to data on the affordable properties. This is your lower income properties in New York City property. The dip from 95% pre Covid to 89% might not sound like much, but all these properties operate on a very tiny margin and that is enough to make it so you can't keep the doors open. I mean it just, it doesn't work money wise any anymore. And there's, there's a lot of pushback against the crowd that says well it's because if you can't evict people they're not going to pay their rent. And there's a big pushback to that. No, that's not the reason. People are not choosing not to pay their rent just out of selfishness. It's because things have gotten too expensive, they can't afford it, the rent is too damn. Which obviously capitalism obviously could be true in some people's cases. But I'd like to see if you've got an iPhone or what you did for vacation last year or how often you eat out or all kinds of. What kind of shoes you're wearing. I'd like to know all kinds of things before I buy the whole. You're not not paying your rent just because you know there's nothing anybody can do to you.
Jack Armstrong
And come on, what happened when it became clear in, say, California that would you. You would not be prosecuted for shoplifting, including up to large amounts. Did that cause A, a decrease in shoplifting or effing B, a huge increase in it?
Joe Getty
Effing B, Yes. So Cancel Rent became a big thing during COVID because during COVID there was an eviction moratorium that was from March 2020 to early 2022. And the activist class in New York worked really hard to try to get cancel Rent going. Like you don't have to pay your back rent.
Glenn Washington
Wow.
Joe Getty
And the state then came up with a 4 billion dollar pot of taxpayer money to pay the landlords all that rent so people didn't have to pony up the rent that they were behind on. But one condition of the landlords getting that money was they would no longer be able to pursue an eviction case for at least a year.
Jack Armstrong
Wow.
Joe Getty
So the people weren't paying their rent already. Taxpayers bailed out the. Those people didn't pay their rent. But it came along with the stipulation you weren't allowed to evict anybody for another year. So it was another year of people not paying rent.
Glenn Washington
Wow.
Joe Getty
We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. This person, this lefty person actually is smart enough to say, or fair enough to say. We have to consider what the unintended consequences are of public policies or practices where there are no immediate consequences for someone who falls behind. Unreal it. You have to come up with a policy for people who got extended to anything. You're supposed to pay for the food at this restaurant. But we won't do anything to you if you just come in and eat it. Lots of people would come in and just eat it and leave and not pay.
Jack Armstrong
It's just stop paying your dues at the gym. You can still work out here.
Joe Getty
Yeah. Use whatever example you want. Sure.
Jack Armstrong
Please. A hundred percent of the time you'll get the same result.
Joe Getty
You can come by this car. You don't actually have to. We'd really like you to make the car payment. You're supposed to make the car maintenance. But if you don't, we're not going to confiscate your car.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, we're not allowed to.
Michael
Yeah.
Joe Getty
I don't know what percentage of people would take advantage of that stuff. I wouldn't. But there's enough people that would that throw the whole system upside down?
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Joe Getty
Unbelievable. I'll never. My biggest problem with all of this stuff has always been what is your life experience as a lefty? Now, some of these people are Marxists. You always point out they want the system to collapse, to build something new. But I know enough people who aren't Marxists who actually believe everybody's trying their hardest.
Jack Armstrong
Those are the useful idiots.
Joe Getty
Everybody's honest and trying their hardest. And if somebody's not doing well, the system screwed them because they're working as hard as they can and they're paying their bills on time and they always will. If they didn't pay their bills on time, it's only because they can't. It's not because they're mismanaging their money or anything like that.
Jack Armstrong
That or there's victims here. Sure, yeah. In short, what.
Joe Getty
What is your life experience of that? Didn't you ever have roommates or friends that you saw take advantage of systems and realize, okay, there's some people that will do that? Or co workers? You didn't have co workers when I worked at ups. It was one of my first experiences with this sort of thing when I was in my early 20s. There's a bunch of people that wouldn't come to work on Friday night. We were Teamsters. So you couldn't get fired. We were all in our early 20s. I would come to work on Friday night, have to work my ass off to try to keep up with the flow of boxes because like half the people wouldn't show up because they wanted to go out to the bars on a Friday night and they couldn't be fired. What is your life experience? You've never come across these people?
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, it's amazing.
Joe Getty
I just don't get it.
Jack Armstrong
It's frequently what they call a luxury belief. I've got the weirdest example of a luxury belief I've ever come across. Maybe next segment. Speaking of the way of thinking on the left, I'm not familiar with this guy's work really. But I found this to be such a concise, everybody can understand it. Explanation of the of left wing psychology. Thought we'd run it for you. Start with 70.
Michael
Michael, here is a core part of left wing psychology you need to understand so that you could even just wrap your head around how anybody could ever vote for these freaks. Above all, the type of person who votes Democrat is desperately vulnerable. To peer pressure. Let me give you two examples that illustrate this right off the bat. Number one, many blue states were locked down because of the bad cold Covid for over a year. When I was in Portland, Oregon in April 2021, there was zero in person dining happening at restaurants. Not the wearing the mask and then sit down and take it off and you're magically okay. Not, not reduce capacity. Nothing. There was a chicken wing restaurant down the road from me that had this sign about how you can wear a
Jack Armstrong
mask or you can get out.
Michael
There is aggressive in group social policing that happens on the left in a way that is not comparable on the right or amongst more independent minded people. Even though none of it made sense and it was completely just security theater. You must must wear the mask. You must socially distance. These people would wear masks outside alone, you guys, because they have an extreme vulnerability of being labeled as a member of the out group.
Jack Armstrong
So I thought he went a little far with the bad cold code. It was more than that, but the rest of it was right. And there he gets to the point and we've always said what the f is the matter with you? You're wearing a mask outside alone. It is a frantic symbol of loyalty to the group.
Michael
He goes on the other one is the trans nonsense, you guys. There is one peer reviewed research study with a control group, large sample size and long term that has ever been conducted on this topic.
Jack Armstrong
Only one wasn't. It wasn't.
Michael
And you're willing to go full crazy and believe the wildest thing that you could possibly believe that a male can be a woman when there is no credible science that supports any of it. But it doesn't matter because even though they see themselves as like we're the party of science and we, we respect the process of science, they are incapable of breaking from in group orthodoxy. I ask people all the time who try and at me, can a male be a woman, yes or no. And at this point in 2026, none of them answer the question because they know it's insane. They know it's discrediting, they know it's unpopular, but they are so afraid of their own peers, the social group that they chose that they can't bring themselves to disavow the insane position.
Jack Armstrong
And then in summary, at the end
Michael
of the day, these are people who choose their political beliefs based off of what is popular, not what is right or why. It's very easy and fun to say health care for everybody. Right? That's easy. What's not necessarily easy? But Way more prudent is to say
Glenn Washington
how do we pay for it?
Michael
What are the trade offs? And so these people default to the path of least resistance because they're weak.
Jack Armstrong
You know, again, I find them a little over the top. I don't have any need to own the libs. I would just like to understand what's going on. But we had the quote not long ago about how and this gal was writing, she said a lot of women in low testosterone males look at issues through the lens not of truth but of acceptability. Will I be accepted for holding this opinion? Will my peers reward me for it then that is my belief.
Joe Getty
That's the advantage of being a misanthrope with no friends.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, I couldn't give an s. Well,
Joe Getty
who would judge me? Nobody hangs out with me.
Jack Armstrong
Right. Well,
Joe Getty
I was just looking up at a video they had on Fox of a a fifth grade class in New York City. I didn't couldn't catch whether it was like a private school or a public school. Looked like it had the looks of a public school, but I don't know. Anyway, fifth grade class doing a dance where they dance around and pantomime being shot by the cops and then collapse because of all the police shootings
Jack Armstrong
targeting innocent black people.
Michael
Yes.
Joe Getty
Well, there was a variety of of people colors in the dance group.
Jack Armstrong
Well that's. You got to get the the white kids to convince be convinced that yes,
Joe Getty
they are bad because so many people are being gunned down by police that you have your fifth graders have a dance routine about it.
Jack Armstrong
So quick note on luxury.
Joe Getty
Weird freaking times, man.
Jack Armstrong
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Things are already weird and they're getting weirder fast. Elon. Anyway, more to come, huh?
Joe Getty
Without AI, our politics were getting weird.
Ryan Reynolds
Right?
Joe Getty
And AI is going to put it on just Astro Blue Blast or something. I don't know what will happen.
Jack Armstrong
We're doomed.
Joe Getty
Do we will finish strong.
Glenn Washington
Next.
Jack Armstrong
Things are getting weird and they're getting weird fast. Armstrong and Gettysburg.
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Glenn Washington
Every week the Snap Judgment podcast drops you inside someone's biggest decision. The kind of decision you can only make once. With everything on the line.
Jack Armstrong
What do you you believe?
Glenn Washington
What do you want and what would you risk to get it? Find out Snap Judgment New episodes every Thursday wherever you get your podcast.
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Jack Armstrong
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Ryan Reynolds
Yep.
Jack Armstrong
Montucky makes my favorite cold snack snack. It's a cold snackable beer. Montucky is a light American lager from Bozeman, Montana. Go to montuckycoldsnacks.com snack-finder to find Montucky
Joe Getty
cold snacks and a retailer near you.
Jack Armstrong
And if you're looking for some Montucky merch, use important snacks all one word for 20% off their merch store.
Joe Getty
This is what Trump truthed out today. Despite their protestations and false statements to the contrary, coupled with the drumbeat of fake news which is doing everything possible to make the US victory as small and insignificant as possible. Iran is fully and completely agreed to highest level nuclear inspections long into the future, infinity, exclamation point and beyond. They say they haven't. Only you and JD say they have. I hope they have. This will ensure nuclear honesty. If they did not agree to this, there would be no further negotiations. Exclamation point based on this. Well then why are they saying they didn't? I mean, what is the motivation for them to say they didn't if they did okay.
Jack Armstrong
And I agree to be Michael's slave for the next 20 years.
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Now.
Jack Armstrong
Good luck making it happen. I know.
Joe Getty
Human footstool.
Jack Armstrong
Exactly. All right, well, we'll have to see.
Joe Getty
Based on this and other major concessions being made by Iran, I have agreed to allow the Strait of Hormuz to remain open. You've agreed to allow it to remain open. Okay, so all this stuff is up for
Jack Armstrong
debate updates tomorrow. A couple of things really quickly. First of all, New York Times, I was interested in this. Talking about the nation's birthday, blah, blah, blah. How historians have uncovered the fascinating dramatics lives of many players in the revolution whose contributions were previously overlooked or lost in the archives. I thought, oh, that sounds intriguing. Visions of America, the revolution as you've never seen it before. Story number one, a Native American who got screwed by the colonials. Number one in normal people whose roles were overlooked in the revolution. Number freaking one. F you, New York Times. I hate you. Secondly, this is so interesting. You know what luxury beliefs are? Prisons are racist. We should let people out because they're just victims of society. The people most likely to hold those attitudes don't live anywhere near the neighborhoods where those predators prey and hurt people and steal things and kill people. It's a luxury belief. Here's one of the weirdest, or a limousine liberal is the perfect example.
Joe Getty
I believe in open borders. I don't believe in fences, except for the giant one around my two acre compound.
Jack Armstrong
Here's the weirdest one. The most progressive people who rank the highest in saying, nobody should ever discriminate on you because of your name on a resume. If you have a weird name or a hard to pronounce name or a quote unquote black sounding name. The people who believe that most strongly tend to name their children the most traditional names.
Joe Getty
Wow.
Jack Armstrong
Isn't that weird?
Joe Getty
That doesn't surprise me.
Jack Armstrong
Revealing, right? A lot of Emma's, Henry's Charlottes and Theodores among those folks, right?
Joe Getty
I started stabbing myself during that for some reason. Here's your host for final thoughts, Joe Getty. Hey, let's get a final thought from
Jack Armstrong
everybody on the crew to wrap up the show. Michelangelo in the control room. Lead the way, Michael. I was just thinking when I was really young and buying my first car and that salesman started jumping up and down, why did I continue to sign the paperwork? I should have just ran from the
Joe Getty
building right then and there.
Jack Armstrong
Lack of experience. I didn't know what to do. Jack, final thought.
Joe Getty
I'm wearing a Dodgers hat backwards today and I saw a guy roughly my age the other day with his hat on backwards and I thought, dude, you're too old to wear your hat backwards. And I also am.
Jack Armstrong
So my final thought as I mentioned last week Judy and I celebrated our 40th anniversary on the 14th of June and we are taking a two week vacation to celebrate it because she's wanted to travel for years and years but because of the stinking dead end job, I can never get away for very long. So I'm getting away for very long. Please indulge me. Forgive me. I've prepared a special featurette for Friday and and Jack and his guests will you'll be in good hands. Good luck. Godspeed.
Joe Getty
You'll be an okay hand. Yes, Scranton is so it's a little sticky. We're short. Wrap it up. Another grueling four hour workday.
Jack Armstrong
Go to Armstrong getty.com We will see you tomorrow.
Joe Getty
I'll see you tomorrow. God bless America.
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Jack Armstrong
They won't lead you astray.
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Jack Armstrong
They'll bring you the truth.
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Jack Armstrong
That's Armstrong and Getty.
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This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Experience music, performances by major artists, patriotic tributes and the kickoff to Giving Forth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history.
It's more than just fireworks.
Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party Tickets now for $17.76 at america250.org LA Summer is here, which
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Date: June 23, 2026
Podcast: Armstrong & Getty On Demand
Host Network: iHeartPodcasts
In this episode, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty delve into the growing trend of non-payment of rent in major U.S. cities, with a special focus on New York's post-pandemic eviction moratoriums. The hosts explore the deeper societal roots of this phenomenon, from mass loneliness and the unravelling of traditional institutions to the rise of radical ideologies and so-called “luxury beliefs.” Throughout the episode, Armstrong & Getty use their signature blend of humor, cynicism, and cultural critique to question current policies and trends, asking what has gone wrong in modern America—and what the consequences may be if these patterns continue.
(Starts ~05:13)
(Starts ~09:58)
(Starts ~13:30)
(Starts ~19:59)
(Starts ~29:37)
(Starts ~39:44)
Armstrong explains “luxury beliefs”: Abstract progressive principles (e.g., open borders, anti-incarceration) often held by those insulated from their real consequences.
A guest (Michael) discusses peer pressure’s outsized role in shaping left-wing beliefs, with group conformity overtaking independent thought on topics from pandemic restrictions to gender ideology.
(Starts ~27:06, revisited ~28:41, 29:27)
Armstrong & Getty’s “The Rent is Too Damned High!” explores not just the surface issue of rent defaults in cities like New York, but traces it to the unraveling of modern social cohesion, the proliferation of choices, and the consequent search for new meaning—sometimes in destructive ideologies. With biting humor and accessible examples, the hosts question popular progressive “luxury beliefs,” roast well-meaning but naive policy makers, and highlight the growing schisms in American politics, all while wrestling with philosophical questions about loneliness, identity, and the unintended consequences of cultural change.