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DarkHorse Podcast
He’s the Front Runner! The 335th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying
01:15:57
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to the Dark Horse podcast live stream. It is number 335. I am Dr. Brett Weinstein. You are Dr. Heather. Hunting. It's a little wild that I even know all of those facts given everything that's going on.
- [00:19]
B
It is indeed. Do we want to start by saying something about that? Sure.
- [00:25]
A
So Heather and I are a little discombobulated. I should start this the way all things should be started. Everyone is going to be fine. But our son Toby had a rather spectacular motorcycle crash two nights ago. He was headed home from work on my bike because his car was disabled, had a flat tire, couldn't be driven on, so he was riding home. We are all of us in the family concerned at the moment about deer, which in the early summer and late spring, that's the wrong order of those things. But you know, in this season there are a lot of naive deer who haven't learned the lessons of the road. And we have had many an incident. So Toby was thinking about deer and, and riding carefully and one came out
- [01:22]
B
of nowhere with no warning and he apparently bisected it.
- [01:28]
A
Yeah. The scene, the deer. It's hard to imagine how such a thing happens to a deer with a motorcycle. It wasn't, it's not especially big bike, but in any case, he didn't hit his head or his neck or his spine. And he's going to recover, though he is quite injured and disabled for the moment. So bear with me.
- [01:51]
B
One silver lining.
- [01:52]
A
Yeah.
- [01:53]
B
That I feel strongly is that one of the first things he said, and he is persistent in saying it since the accident, is that's the last time I'm ever going to be on a motorcycle.
- [02:04]
A
Yep. Yep, that, that makes sense. It was quite a way to learn that lesson. But there's a pattern in life which is you get very, very lucky right after you've been very, very unlucky and demonstrated that principle.
- [02:21]
B
So anyway, there were so many things that went right, including neighbors showing up at just the right moment and an extraordinary team healthcare team from the EMTs, the ambulance drivers, to the staff at the hospital here on the island, to the, to the pilots and people who medevacked him off the island. Just like really extraordinary. We are, we are grateful to, to all of them and he's going to be okay. But it's been, it's been very scary.
- [02:50]
A
Yep. And you know, I will say a strong testament to a small town health care and emergency response system where you actually would think a small place, you would suffer from it. And there's one way in which we did. We don't have a real trauma center on the island. We have an emergency room. But it is actually amazing. It is a stark contrast to the horror show that often happens in a major city hospital. Even when you have an emergency, if you're not bleeding out, then it can take hours and hours and hours. And the. The way in which everybody gave Toby attention and he was just in good hands the whole way through.
- [03:34]
B
That's right. So we are not entirely ourselves today. We are here and we are going to pay the rent up top here with our ads and. And talk to you about some of what we see going on in the world. But I don't know. Apologies for our errors and distractions. I. It is fully understandable why we would be making them and having them.
- [04:04]
A
Yep. All right.
- [04:06]
B
I think you're first.
- [04:07]
A
Oh, goodness.
- [04:09]
B
Yeah. So you're first with masa chips. All right. I don't feel like eating right now, but you might. And these are awesome.
- [04:17]
A
Our first sponsor today, Heather, is Masa Chips. Masa makes ridiculously delicious chips with simple, real whole ingredients. Organic nixtamalized corn, sea salt, and 100 grass fed beef tallow. Masa chips are made the way that all food used to be made. They are fried in 100% beef tallow. No seed oils ever, and no artificial dyes or additives either. You can taste the difference and your body can feel the difference. They're crunchy and delicious, and after you eat them, you feel satisfied and energetic. Masa also supports American farms and regenerative agriculture. Choosing real, healthy. No, choosing real food heals us, comma, and our environment, which in turn makes us even more healthy. Chips don't only avoid all bad stuff, they taste incredible too. There's a reason sprouts, farmer's market, Wegmans, Target, and Whole foods have picked them up. These are the real deal. Try masa chips with guac or in nachos or just eat them. What you could do is you could eat them straight out of the bag. How do I know that? Because I've done it. I've gone back to basics recently and I've gone back to basics recently with their original chips. But every single flavor is amazing. They've got white corn chips and blue corn hatch chili, carbonara lime and churro with cinnamon, which is really spectacular and very surprising from a chip. They are all amazing. Ready to give Masa a try, go to masachips.com darkhorse and use the code dark horse for 25% off your first order. One thing to know, because Masa uses real ingredients and makes everything in small batches. Certain flavors go out of stock regularly. We got our hands on Subcabanero again recently after it was sold out for weeks and we had a small cabanero famine. Apparently, it's pronounced cobina. I don't know how you would know that. It seems like. It seems like liberty involves.
- [06:18]
B
Because it has cobanero chili in it.
- [06:20]
A
That's why.
- [06:21]
B
Yeah.
- [06:22]
A
Oh, man. Yeah, I want to do over. All right. Anyway, yeah, we got some after the. The famous.
- [06:31]
B
There it is.
- [06:31]
A
Kobenaro famine of 2026. Again, it's masachips.com darkhorse and use the code darkhorse for 25% off or click click the link in the video description or scan the QR code.
- [06:48]
B
Okay. Dude. Yeah, I actually. I've never really spent any time looking at the back of a bag of these chips because one just rips into them fast.
- [06:55]
A
I have, but surprised me.
- [06:57]
B
This is going to surprise you because you didn't know it was cobanera grown near Coban, Guatemala, where we have been, I believe. No, we've been in Copan.
- [07:04]
A
Yeah.
- [07:05]
B
In Honduras.
- [07:05]
A
Yeah.
- [07:06]
B
I don't know where Coban is.
- [07:07]
A
The capital of the very southern edge of the Mayan empire.
- [07:10]
B
Yes. Grown near Coban, Guatemala. Cobonera is a rare Maya chili that brings the perfect combination of heritage and heat to our chips. Tasting notes. Want to guess what are the tasting notes of the cobonharo chili?
- [07:24]
A
They are tarmac. No, no, Try again.
- [07:31]
B
Well, I already know, but I'll keep making things up. Citronella. Shall I keep going?
- [07:41]
A
Yeah, you could get to the realistic.
- [07:43]
B
Really new tobacco as opposed to old tobacco. Okay, the. You were supposed to guess.
- [07:50]
A
Why? Why. Why was that even necessary if you're just gonna riff?
- [07:54]
B
Tasting notes. Papaya, roasted corn, and fire.
- [08:00]
A
Actually, yeah, I can see all three of those.
- [08:02]
B
Exactly. So really good chips, really great company. Buy them. All right, our second sponsor this week. That says first. That's definitely our second sponsor, though, is new to us. It's American Financing. High prices are here to stay. Gas and groceries, insurance and utilities, everything costs more than it used to. If you're a homeowner who has credit card debt, and you may have a apologies, guys, American Financing tells us this, and it's true. High prices are here to stay. Gas and groceries, insurance and utilities, everything costs more than it used to. If you're a homeowner who has credit card debt, you may have asked yourself if you should refinance your home to pay off that other debt. It's a hard moment to make that decision because your current mortgage rate is probably low compared to today's rates. But that low rate, it's not saving you if you're also paying credit card interest at 25% or more. If you're only making minimum payments on your credit cards, that debt will follow you for years. American Financing is saving customers an average of $800 a month by using their equity to finally break free from credit card debt. There are no upfront fees and there's no pressure, no hard sell. With American Financing, it costs you nothing to find out what you could save every month. And if you start today, you may be able to delay two mortgage payments. Owned by a family in Colorado, American Financing is known for its salary based mortgage consultants, custom loan programs and faster than industry average closings. We interacted with them a few months ago and they were great to work with. Call American Financing 866-886-5350. That's 866-886-5350 or americanfinancing.net Darkhorse our final sponsor today is Saunaspace, which makes amazing saunas and therapeutic lights. SaunaSpace combines near infrared red light therapy and deep radiant heat for whole body results at home. They don't make harsh LED panels or giant wooden boxes. SaunaSpace has developed a proprietary sun like Firelight spectrum that's flicker free, glare free and comfortable to use with long life incandescent bulbs that stay consistent for more than five years. I think I've had mine, the one for my glow for over three at this point and it's, it's going strong. There's no signs of, of wear. Yeah. Or tear which you wouldn't really expect in a bulb.
- [10:12]
A
It's really an amazingly designed object.
- [10:15]
B
Yeah.
- [10:16]
A
That you can tell that aesthetically they cared a great deal and they, they spared nothing on the materials and the craftsmanship.
- [10:23]
B
It's the fit and finish as he sometimes say.
- [10:25]
A
Yeah, the fit and finish is awfully good. Yeah.
- [10:28]
B
The Sauna and Red Light therapy markets are a mess, full of claims that seem designed to obscure rather than heal. The only product I have found that clearly lives up to its scientific and health claims is Sauna Space. Sauna Space has two flagship products, the Glow and the Firelight Sauna. The Glow is a single large light that can alleviate screen fatigue and the ill effects of blue light. You use it at night as your only light source, which I often do anytime as spot relief for tight muscles or just to help with skin mood or energy. Sauna Space's Firelight Sauna is a full body sauna that promotes sweat while also providing red light and near infrared therapy. From deep detox to pain relief to better sleep, this sauna is amazing. No preheat necessary and sessions are shorter than with traditional saunas. You're sweating in minutes. The Firelight is a beautiful canvas sauna that fits in a spare room or corner. All Sauna Space products are built with integrity and handmade in Missouri with organic cotton, bamboo, sustainable unfinished basswood and medical grade stainless steel. No toxic glues or plastics and no off gassing. The grounding mat and optional silver lining Upgrade blocks Environmental EMEFs like Wi Fi to enhance healing and you get a 100 day home trial and outstanding customer care. Take your wellness to the next wellness Take your wellness to the next level with sauna space.
- [11:37]
A
Will your wellness to the next level?
- [11:39]
B
Will your wellness to the next level with sauna space? It's the CTA that we're not allowed to do that. We can't even exchange phonemes.
- [11:45]
A
I take it back, it was a. It was a freelance ad lib insertion. But you'll say all the things you gotta say.
- [11:53]
B
Yeah, yeah, I totally will. Take your wellness to the next level of Sonic space. Dark Horse listeners can get an exclusive 10% off site wide when you shop at Sauna space Darkhorse. That's S a U N a space slash Darkhorse discount will be automatically applied at checkout.
- [12:13]
A
All right, shall I start?
- [12:17]
B
Yes.
- [12:18]
A
All right. We are going to talk about a story that may seem a bit technical and dry, but when you actually look at what it is, it is one of the most jaw dropping stories I've seen in a long time. And that's saying something. This is the question of President Trump and his Truth Social platform, of which he is the primary owner. It's publicly owned, I believe, but he is a major stakeholder. They have announced that they are going to sell a kind of subscription service where those who are willing to pay the fee, and apparently it's going to be quite a fee considering something like $100,000 for people who pay that fee. They are going to be given a direct feed from Truth Social that provides the tweets or what would be tweets or the truths or whatever it is that they call those things on Truth Social.
- [13:22]
B
They don't call them truths, do they?
- [13:25]
A
I don't know. Because nobody uses Truth Social except to go see what the President is thinking.
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B
Okay.
- [13:31]
A
But the platform exists. They are going to sell this millisecond access to the top 10 or so accounts on the site.
- [13:44]
B
Okay, I apologize.
- [13:45]
A
No, you.
- [13:46]
B
I'm not. Where. Like, I don't understand what millisecond access means. What do you mean, millisecond access?
- [13:51]
A
Okay, this is. This is why the story is interesting and bizarre. Millisecond access means they're effectively going to provide for institutions a feed that directly hands you the equivalent of a tweet from True Social if it comes from The President or RFK Jr. Or Cash Patel or Pete Hegseth rather than you getting a notification.
- [14:16]
B
What do milliseconds have to do with.
- [14:18]
A
Milliseconds are the measure of the delay between the person.
- [14:25]
B
Millisecond, 5 millisecond advance access. Is that the words that are missing?
- [14:30]
A
They are not.
- [14:31]
B
Millisecond access doesn't make any sense.
- [14:32]
A
Millisecond. Millisecond is the scale. You are going to get this within milliseconds of it posting to the site
- [14:39]
B
milliseconds earlier than other people will get it.
- [14:42]
A
Yes. Something on that scale, other people will get it through a notification or something like that. And those things take time and they don't arrive all at the same moment because there's a big distribution network and there's a lot of, you know, nuances. Now, at first, of course, it seems like milliseconds is not interesting. It's too tiny to be relevant. But the fact is, milliseconds are actually something on which fortunes can and will be made. And that is really the story here. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the history of these tiny little time advantages and what role they play in our markets. And I want to talk about what it is that the President is actually innovating here by offering this subscription service. So first thing to say is that if we go back into history, we find that people have figured out not only that slight advantages in time provide an opportunity to make money, to make a profit, but that they have done it in numerous different contexts, from low tech to high tech. So the examples that I find are. First, one is quite famous. In fact, I've talked about it before, which is Galileo. Now, Galileo was not doing this activity, but we're talking about Galileo, Galilee, Galileo Galilei.
- [16:07]
B
Not some new software program called Galileo, because there probably is one.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Talking about Galileo the man.
- [16:12]
A
Yeah, Galileo the man. The myth. The myth is that he took his telescope and pointed it at the sky. But why was there a telescope? There was a telescope because other people were using it to discover what ships were pulling into the harbor. Because if you knew what ships were pulling into the harbor. You knew which commodities were about to have an increase in their supply and therefore a decrease in price. So the market, this is a bit technical, but the market effectively is a mechanism for discovering the correct price of something. Information changes the correct price of something. Information can be that thing that costs $10 is about to be very inexpensive because some new thing has made it obsolete. Or information can be a container of those things has just arrived in the port and therefore the supply is about to go up. But if you know something, either because you can surmise it or because you have early access to information, you can monetize it. So people were monetizing information in the harbor by telescopes. That being the earliest to know when a ship was coming in, gave you the ability to arbitrage the price.
- [17:27]
B
Seems like a total aside and it's not necessary. But if that kind of thinking is appealing and you're interested in a fictionalized version of it. Taipan, which is James Clavell's the second book in his Shogun in his Asian saga, I think it's what it's called, of which Shogun is the first and most famous book. Taipan is about the founding of Hong K. And it's extraordinary. It's really, really an excellent book. And the Taipan, the.
- [17:57]
A
The.
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B
It's been a while since I read it. English, Scottish guy, I don't remember the white guy who effectively helps found Hong Kong does something like this and, and gets an advantage over his competitors by being able to see in advance what is coming into the harbor and make his. Make his trades. Make just a tiny bit earlier.
- [18:25]
A
Yep.
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B
So it's. And, and, you know, so I, I do not remember you telling that story about l before or like why the telescope existed before. But the, the. The businesses, the business advantages that you can get through utilizing arbitraging, maybe even the technological advances that already exist are extraordinary and really beautifully fleshed out in Taipan the book.
- [18:52]
A
Yeah. And because markets effectively go back to the, you know, first civilizations, this is something that is repeatedly rediscovered is tiny little advantages provide the opportunity to make a profit, not the same thing as creating wealth. And I increasingly think people should focus on the distinction between these two things. The fact that you made a profit does not mean that you create wealth. Markets create wealth by discovering the correct price of things. And the idea is the closer the actual price, the price you can buy something at is to the correct price, the more efficient the market can be in allocating capital. So we all benefit from A market that works well, and we all suffer from a market that works badly. And if you are arbitraging the advanced knowledge of the ship coming into the harbor, you're not creating wealth, though you may get wealthy doing right.
- [19:46]
B
Personal wealth acquisition is rarely the same thing thing as wealth generation.
- [19:51]
A
Right. And so you could imagine your slice of the pie getting bigger because you've got a nicer telescope without the pie itself getting bigger. That's. That's the point. Okay, so another example, that one I had never heard of is that a guy named Nathan Meyer Rothschild at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 was apparently arbitraging a system of horses and pigeons and other contrivances to take advanced knowledge of who was winning the battle back and use it to trade in the market. That's interesting. And then there's a guy named. Forgive me if I mispronounce it, but it's Thomas Peter Petter Fee, who in the 1980s created a fortune for himself. I believe he is now a billionaire as a result of his innovation, essentially arbitraged his ability to streamline the communication from NASDAQ computers to his trading computer by wiring directly into it. So in other words, he just figured out that if you could optimize the tech, that you could effectively do what the guys who paid for telescopes in ancient harbors were doing. And he made a huge amount of money on it. He also effectively, I think, founded the sector that is now dedicated to what is called high frequency trading. So high frequency trading is effectively a strategy for doing nothing but this taking tiny little temporal advantages where you know that something's about to happen in the market because some trade takes a moment to flow through something and you get ahead of it. Again, a lot of money is made this way. Wealth is not created this way. There's a clear question as to whether or not we should prevent such profits from being made by, for example, processing trades in big batches that neutralize the tiny little ebb and flow that people are profiting off of. But anyway, let's put that aside for the second. So people use temporal advantages to make profits that are not serving the public. But you know, if it's legal, more power to them. In general, if we don't want this behavior, we should make it illegal or make it impossible. Now, people will remember that we have talked about the Time Traveling Money Printer on this program many times, and I want to just give a brief reminder of what that is, because it's about to get an upgrade. The Time Traveling Money Printer is The idea that if you had a time machine, everybody knows how to make money. There are two basic plays. One is you can go back in time and you can buy Apple and Nike and Nvidia and whatever else and then profit from owning those things in the present. Or you could go forward in time and you could figure out what the next big thing is and you could come back here and buy it before it goes up. Right. Obvious to everybody, but there are no time machines as far as we know. What there are are ways that people with power can create something that works like a time machine. So for example, if you have the ability to create historical events, then you know what's coming when other people don't. You know there's going to be an event and you can surmise what effect it's going to have in the market. And you can position yourself in the market. The event happens, you make your money. There's another innovation which is maybe you can't make events, but you're in a position to know what's happening better than other people. Right. If you're at the nsa, you have the ability to look into all the phone conversations that are taking place. You know what trades are going to occur, you know that somebody's planning something, and you can position yourself in the market and it's going to print money for you. So that's the Time Traveling Money printer is either by creating historical events or slowing the public down in its ability to register that an event is happening, you can profit in the market. Now that's obviously a deeply immoral thing to do, but it's nonetheless a possibility that we have to recognize. And I have argued that this might be a reason or the reason that our public truth seeking institutions are all broken. Right. If you were going to profit from the Time Traveling Money printer by slowing down other people's ability to detect what was going on, you wouldn't want vibrant newspapers or universities or courts that could properly function to be able to spot your activity. You would want the public to effectively be blind so that you could keep profiting at their expense. Okay, so what is going on with Truth Social? Well, Truth Social's subscription service effectively innovates a 2.0 version of the Time Traveling Money printer. There are so many different ways you could describe this, but the basic point is actually this is, I think, an innovation in corruption that effectively by creating a subscription service in which enterprise customers can get their millisecond advantage on things that are being said by powerful people in our administration that they are creating A three tier structure. What we had was a two tier structure where you had the insiders who knew what the hell was going on and the rest of us people out here who were in a position to be taken advantage of because their information was of a lower quality. Now, now we have a middle tier. The insiders are still the insiders. They know before anybody sits down to type a tweet what's about to happen. So they have the ability to position themselves very early on. Now, yes, that's illegal, but it doesn't mean it doesn't happen all the time. And the basic point is it's only as illegal as our enforcement mechanism is successful, which is to say not successful at all. So I want to talk a little bit about the various ways that you should look at this. One that I think is critical is there is a mechanism for making money that is, it is a concern that brokers will do something called front running customers. So brokers are in a position to know that a trade is coming because they're involved in the details. It takes time to agree to make a trade, to get the money into position, to sign the paperwork and make it happen. So the point is, if you know that a big trade is coming, then you can position yourself for the change in price of the commodity in question. And that's called front running. And it is again, not a wealth generating activity, but it is a very profitable activity. It is an illegal activity, but if you're sophisticated about it, it can be cloaked. In other words, people buy things all the time for different reasons. And sometimes those things go up for the reasons that they thought they were going to go up. And sometimes they go up for a different reason and they make a profit even though it was a lucky guess. So it's very hard to ferret these things out. And so front running is a real, a real issue with just regular brokerage. But here, with this truth social millisecond, elite service subscription, whatever it is, you're charging people who want that advantage a fee. And you are effectively front running the public with these elite customers. In other words, you're not the insider who's making the event or knows that the event's going to happen because it's just naturally happening. But what you're doing is you're creating. Hey, you want to be an insider? Well, we can't exactly do that for you, but you can be a lot more inside than those guys out there who have no idea what's coming and can't pony up $100,000 to sign up for this service, nor would they have the architecture to leverage the information if they had a millisecond advantage. Right.
- [28:24]
B
Is that the fee that.
- [28:25]
A
I think they're considering that as the fee now?
- [28:28]
B
My guess, this isn't live yet.
- [28:30]
A
August 1st is apparently when this goes live. So. And, you know, there's also the question of, well, if this scheme works, you know, if this does not get shut down by federal authorities and they have their job cut out for them if they even want to shut this down, because this is novel. And so the question, the point is, a tweet is public information. At what point is it public information? Right.
- [29:00]
B
You know, if it's been written but not yet out, is it public?
- [29:04]
A
Presumably not. But the point is the person hit send. Maybe it's public now and you get a little advantage because you got it before the people who had to wait for, you know, mortal notifications. But effectively, it. It's not public, even if, legally speaking, it lives in a gray area. So it's going to be very hard to. To do anything about that. What's more, and this is a little bit tougher to puzzle out, I spent some time thinking about it. My sense is that the true insiders, the one who know that the event is coming before they sit down to write the tweet, their corruption is going to be masked by the wave of elite customers who pile onto these things before anybody's ever read it. I mean, the point is, these advantages aren't long enough for you to read the tweet and know what's supposed to be traded. Your AI is going to read the tweet like that, and, you know, you're going to, you know, you're going to have a fancy AI with a huge amount of computing power that can read faster than other people's AIs. It's going to spot what commodity is supposed to go this way and that way. This basically a destroys the ability of the market to find a correct price because of the greater fool principle. So the greater fool principle, which I did some digging, I cannot find the original source of that term. And it's possible that nobody knows what the original source of the term is. But the, the greater fool principle is the idea that it doesn't matter that the price that you pay for something is too high. What matters is that there's somebody who knows less than you to whom you can sell it for even more. Right? So the point is this isn't, you know, you can say I'm dumb for buying you know, Apple at this price, but if I can sell it for a higher price, I'm not dumb. Even if Apple is overvalued. So the greater fool principle, think about how that works in the context of this true social madness. What you've got is a guarantee that when the person hits send the enterprise customers get their information. The market is guaranteed to leap at that information because you've got all of these people who there's no human in the chain. It's going to be automated, so you know it's going to leap and the ability to detect those leaps. If you can get in ahead of the person who's just a little bit slower than you, then you can ride whatever bubble the thing creates. Person could put out on truth social, it has to be one of these fancy accounts. But if they put out pure gobbledygook, that suggests that, you know, oil is about to collapse because the unicorns are in heat. Right?
- [31:53]
B
Are they again so soon?
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A
It's actually a little late, it's summer, so no. But let's just say hypothetically, if you said that, then the AI reads it, it's engages in the trades. People who spot the activity of this first wave are going to pile on a second wave. And the point is you're going to keep clobbering the person who's trying to find the actual price of the thing and trade based on it. Right. This is mechanized high tech, front running from the very top. Right. Another way to look at it is do you all remember Hunter Biden? I remember Hunter Biden. Now it takes something to make Hunter Biden style corruption seem quaint, but it does. Hunter Biden was involved in deals that leveraged his dad's office, you know, over old fashioned tech like email and stuff. So do you remember when he was caught, he had sent an email in a negotiation, I think with a Chinese energy company in which they were hashing out, you know, who gets what for this deal. And he famously said something like, oh, and 10% for the big guy. And it later came out that, yeah, the big guy was his dad, but you know, I mean, he's the vice president, he gets 10% in this deal. Can we all agree on that? Right, well, okay, 10% for the big guy. What this really means is that Trump is saying, hey look, let's not be children. This is all about corruption. If you want to pay to have an advantage, you can pay. So basically you're going to front run the public. Who's going to pay the price here? You're going to get the advantage of what the public is about to know, and I'm going to get a cut. That's what it is. Right. So this is just mind bending on so many levels.
- [34:01]
B
You didn't expect to be finding that the Trump administration might have more corruption in it than the Biden family?
- [34:11]
A
Well, I will say, when Trump first showed up back 2015, ish, I mean,
- [34:18]
B
he was around before that.
- [34:19]
A
Yeah, he was definitely around. But when you showed up as a political force of nature and people were responding very positively to him, and lots of people were scratching their heads over that, I did say, you know, I think part of what's happening is people are so sick and tired of the crime families that have had their foot on the neck of the public forever that it's a relief to watch somebody kicking their ass. And Trump was kicking both their asses, the Democrats and the Republicans. He decapitated the Republican Party and took it over and he kicked the ass of the Democratic Party. And people were like, hell, yeah. And you can imagine, right, your neighborhood has been run by some corrupt family that, you know, you know, is raping and pillaging and running extortion rackets, and somebody else comes in and starts, you know, you know, bloodying them up, and it's like, it's about fucking time. But it did feel like a new crime family. And I, you know, obviously I didn't campaign for Trump, but I certainly advocated for him in the run up to, to the recent presidential.
- [35:29]
B
Only in 2024.
- [35:30]
A
Yeah. But, you know, I wanted him to be elected. And at this point, I still don't know what I was supposed to do because the other side ran an attack on the Constitution, effectively a non president. And so, you know, one of my arguments for Trump was, hey, at least if you elect this guy, he is responsible. You can haul him in front of Congress, you can make him answer questions, he can be prosecuted if he does bad stuff. So I still think that was an argument for him.
- [35:58]
B
Absolutely.
- [35:58]
A
But my God, the brazenness of this is absolutely unbelievable. I mean, the guy has balls the size of Pluto, so not technically a planet, but still really big balls. To do something this brazen, it's amazing. Yeah.
- [36:19]
B
Not being a man and never therefore having been in possession of balls, but do men actually crave balls the size of planets? Or would things that are not planets but still astronomical in scope, be sufficient?
- [36:29]
A
All right, two points. One, I cannot speak for men. No, no, I do not speak for men. I speak for me as a man. No, I, I wouldn't think.
- [36:40]
B
I mean, because we. We saw that one deer that one time with like, really, like, clearly he had something going on with him, but he had balls that were almost dragging on the ground, and that did not look good.
- [36:50]
A
He had a pathology. The unfortunate thing for our audience is that I did get a picture of that deer.
- [36:57]
B
You do not have access to it right now, though.
- [36:59]
A
No, but I do not. I could give it to Jan and we.
- [37:01]
B
You will not be able to find it.
- [37:02]
A
I can. Can find it. I sent it to Joe Rogan to ask if he knew what the hell was going on with this deer. I can find this.
- [37:09]
B
As I remember, his response was something like, oh, dude, that deer is in trouble.
- [37:12]
A
Yeah, I think that deer made it actually. But.
- [37:16]
B
Well, at the moment though, that wasn't. That wasn't like a terminal diagnosis on Joe's part. It was more like a. Yeah, that's. That can't be comfortable.
- [37:22]
A
Yeah. Oh, it was not. It clearly not comfortable. So anyway, both.
- [37:26]
B
The size of Pluto does not necessarily sound like a. A desired state of being.
- [37:31]
A
You know, I have to say. Okay, I think I don't understand other people a lot of the time.
- [37:37]
B
Sure. If, if we're being honest, that is true for all of us.
- [37:41]
A
Yes. But when it comes to things like balls or frankly, breasts, I think the obsession with size is a little weird. Right.
- [37:51]
B
Wait, do people actually have an obsession with ball size?
- [37:54]
A
Well, men do, because we use it as a metaphor for, you know.
- [37:57]
B
Oh, sure. Like, it's not really big balls, but like, I think the obsession is the better analogy for breasts is to penis length.
- [38:05]
A
Yeah, that's true, that's true. But nonetheless, people are weird and clearly. Yeah. So we have now digressed radically at the end of this, but I welcome.
- [38:17]
B
Yeah, I mean, you did bring up the Pluto sized balls, but still, it's hard not to take that and run with it.
- [38:24]
A
Yeah. Okay. So it, it's. Yeah, it's a. It's. It's. It the level of brazenness of this administration with respect to this new form of corruption. I mean, I will say that there is this element where like, yeah, I'm livid about this. I'm impressed. I mean, it's pretty amazing.
- [38:47]
B
The whole circus has been impressive from the beginning. Even. You know, you and I were not excited in the beginning, and I was positively, deeply concerned. And you thought there was a possibility it wouldn't be as bad as everyone that we were hanging out with at that point thought, but it's always been impressive in terms of some combination of audacity and capacity. Actually, I think there is, there is skill there and just seeing opportunities, seeing opportunities in the market, which, as you point out, a president should be interested in generating wealth for the people of his country. It seems to me that that's actually one of the fundamental goals of a president. And in fact, what we have here, as you have so eloquently spelled out, is a president who now and presumably in the past is interested in generating wealth for himself, increasing his personal wealth without doing anything to generate wealth for the people, which obviously was some of the promises that he was running on, that he would help the people of America to find, you know, find better days. That's what the again in MAGA is about. Like, you know, we, we can once again be, be great. And greatness is in part resting on the capacity of, of Americans and the country to generate wealth. And that does not seem to be what we are doing.
- [40:19]
A
All right, I want to say a couple more things on that one. I'm not convinced that he didn't want to make the country wealthy.
- [40:28]
B
I think he did.
- [40:29]
A
I, I still don't, I don't know. But I, but I, but I, I
- [40:33]
B
want to believe that he did and I still think it's likely.
- [40:35]
A
Yeah. Now the question is, you know, he, I think he also wanted to drain the swamp. And I think when he got to the swamp, the swamp won. And so at some level, you know, my old joke from, from 2015ish, was that he wanted to drain the swamp. Yes. But he wanted to do it to put in a golf course. And I think you can imagine that a guy like Trump gets in there, the swamp reasserts itself and that he's cashing in because the option to do what he, I think, hoped to do is not there.
- [41:18]
B
Now that's absent the capacity to do what he intended to do. He might as well get something out of it.
- [41:22]
A
Right. And, but this, there's just no excuse for this. This is because clearly it's not, there's no argument by which this is harmless. You are creating an opportunity for the most. It's basically class warfare because the only people who can get this advantage are people who can A, pay your fee and B, leverage the information. So you're talking about ultra wealthy and powerful entities to begin with. This is an exclusive offer for them. Yes.
- [41:55]
B
Technically not newly so, because as you keep pointing out, they already have to have the infrastructure and the technical capacity to make the information that they are paying for useful to them.
- [42:05]
A
Right. And for a president who often points to the market as the barometer of the quality of the presidency, which is a mistake. If the market were functional, then it actually wouldn't be a terrible indicator because it would indicate that more wealth was being generated. But the amount of the stuff in the market, that is not about wealth. That's about rent seeking. It may be in many cases about things that are actually wealth destroying that make a profit. Right. So given the failures of the market, it's a bad barometer. But the point is, okay, you've got a market that you, Mr. President, point to all the time as an indicator of the success of your presidency. You are destroying the function of that very market by creating a bubble, making a bubble blowing machine on which people will make wealth while destroying the ability of the market to establish the correct price of things. Right. You are destroying that. And the people paying the price are the public. It's all the little people who can't leverage this thing. So that's. It's stunning. And we, the public, have to figure out what to do about it. Can't be allowed. This can't be the first foray in this novel landscape of new levels of executive corruption is. We have to end it. But how is that even possible? I don't think so. So what now is really the question. All right. That being said, I want to go back. You threw me there. Oh, a little bit.
- [43:39]
B
Didn't mean to.
- [43:40]
A
The breast penis analogy with respect to size.
- [43:43]
B
Dude, you were the one who made the breast ball analogy. I was just correcting.
- [43:47]
A
Yeah, yeah, that was.
- [43:48]
B
That. That was not me.
- [43:50]
A
Well, but here's the interesting point. The penis part of that equation is arguably a functional preference. The breast part. I've never seen the. I mean, to a point, bigger breasts indicate greater fertility, but only to a point, which then raises a question about male preference. And this is the thing that I've never understood is, yes, it's also on
- [44:15]
B
display in a way that most men do not wear clothes that display the size of their goods.
- [44:20]
A
For now.
- [44:21]
B
I mean, it's. It's done in places, but in general, it's not. It's not what is considered. It's certainly not couture.
- [44:28]
A
Right. The grape smuggling.
- [44:31]
B
What?
- [44:32]
A
Oh, that's. That's what people say about Speedos and things.
- [44:36]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [44:36]
A
Grape smuggler.
- [44:37]
B
But. But, you know, that's. That's beach wear. Yes, That's. That's not businesswear.
- [44:43]
A
It depends on your business.
- [44:44]
B
Like grape sprinkling in the boardroom.
- [44:46]
A
You're selling, you know, coconut drinks or something then it's your business. But perfect. All right, this has gotten silly. Corruption is not silly, but it leads to the consideration of absurd things.
- [45:00]
B
Yeah. So we, we had talked on Monday about also talking about sort of other ways in which it is becoming not even look other ways in which the advantage comes from knowing what is coming when other people don't. So your time traveling money printer has many manifest patients in the world. The one that the, the story that you just gave is a perfect and grotesque encapsulation. We were going to talk about a couple of examples that may or may not be evidence of this because it's really hard to know what's going on. I find myself really not entirely capable of focusing on cyclospora, which is what we were going to talk about today. That's the, that's the protozoa that is causing the explosive diarrhea across the land which we, I think maybe we will come back to next week unless the story has completely fizzled out by then, which I doubt it will have. But I think given where we are personally as a family, where we started the top of the hour telling you about. What I'd like to do actually is read what I put what I post on Natural Selections this week because it went out after we were already sort of mid chaos and trauma in the aftermath of Toby's accident. But I literally finished posting it to go out the next morning minutes before you got the call from our neighbor that there had been an accident. And it was a long time before I at least understood just how serious this was. Like, I don't know if long time here means minutes or hours, but was it was. In retrospect, it feels like far too long for me to even begin to put together what was going on. And that's partially because one never often one doesn't know the extent of damage as it happens. So this, this piece that I published is actually about in part an embrace of risk. And I had thought about putting an addendum to it and saying, you know, this just happened and I still stand by this. And so I think I haven't put an addendum out yet, but I'd like to read what I wrote before the accident that that could easily have taken out our son that happened on Monday night. And then, and then finish by maybe us talking a little bit about risk and why still, still we both feel that embracing risk and letting your children take risks is absolutely necessary to creating functional and productive adults. You wanted to say something before I
- [47:41]
A
get to it Yeah. I just wanted to say that your failure to understand how serious it was I think is a byproduct of just the geometry of the situation. Toby was almost at home on his bike.
- [48:00]
B
I had just. I had just prepared his dinner.
- [48:02]
A
Yeah.
- [48:02]
B
I put a plate in the microwave with a sign on it, said, Toby dinner.
- [48:05]
A
Like, we knew he was in motion. You know, he was.
- [48:08]
B
We can see him. Yeah.
- [48:09]
A
He's 20 minutes away. And then I get a broken phone call. The first phone call didn't work quite right. And I, you know, Toby's number called. I hear a woman I don't recognize. I hear the mention of a foot, and I thought, okay, Toby has fallen. I know where he has to be. So, yeah, I'm gone.
- [48:33]
B
But you went.
- [48:34]
A
Yeah, and arrived before the police, before ambulance. So the point is, this is. There was no information here other than something has happened. So anyway, it was weird and you know, that it ended with a, you know, a helicopter ride and all his. It. None of this, the information, the way the information accumulated was very strange.
- [48:57]
B
Yeah. I guess anyone who's been involved in traumatic situations will. Will recall that there are pieces of it that seem utterly clear in retrospect and. And were completely unclear at the time. And sometimes that's even the main thing, the through line, which, you know, in this case, somehow a deer got bisected and a motorcycle got destroyed and our son survived. And he's going to be fine.
- [49:22]
A
Yes. Of the three, he definitely did best.
- [49:24]
B
100%. Okay, so can you see my screen? Awesome.
- [49:29]
A
So one thing is working in the whole universe.
- [49:34]
B
No, I hope that there's more than that. Okay, so this is what posted yesterday morning on Natural Selections, but which I finished writing and getting prepared to publish just before we heard about the accident, the motorcycle accident that Toby was in. I called it Scared Rabbits. Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Fearful Liberal Woman. And I was just going to read part of it, but I think I'm going to read the whole thing. It's not that long. In Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder's father has built the family a house, but runs out of nails before he is able to build a door. After a pack of wolves surrounds the house one night, howling, he decides to hurry along the door project. I have no more nails, but I'll not keep on waiting till I can make a trip to independence, he told Laura. A man doesn't need nails to build a house or make a door. I have been thinking recently about the value of making things and of play of exploration and risk, of pain and beauty, and of moving between an analytical frame of mind and an intuitive one. This all in service of a book I am writing in which those starting paragraphs about PA Ingalls also show up. Paul Ingalls seems to me in the example above, using what he has to get a job done, as in so many other examples throughout the books, to exemplify many of these virtues, Little House on the Prairie is having a cultural moment. The books written in the 1930s and 40s by Laura Ingalls Wilder about her childhood in the 1870s and 80s, have been a feature of many American childhoods ever since. The original television show, which premiered in 1974 and ran until the early 1980s, was also beloved by many. Even as it departed somewhat from the books, Wilder has been taken to task for being of her time, including especially for having inappropriate views on Native Americans and African Americans. She's even had her name stripped from a long standing children's literature prize. Now Netflix has produced a new series based on the books, which takes further liberties with the books. The Netflix series, like the books and the television series that came before it, are all very much of their time here. I must confess I read all of the books when I was growing up and I loved them. When my boys were growing up, I read the books aloud to them as a child. I watched the original series and found it mesmerizing as well as I've even read Confessions of a Prairie by Alison Arngram, who played the mean girl Nellie Olsen in the original series. It's a fun book too. She's a good person. I have not Glad to hear that.
- [51:58]
A
Actually.
- [51:58]
B
Yeah, I have not seen any of the new Netflix series. I have, however, read two reviews of it. This piece, the piece that you are currently reading, is a kind of review of those reviews rather than a review of the show that they are reviewing. These reviews, like the books, and both of the shows, are also very much of their time. The first was published in New York magazine on July 10, the day after the Netflix series first aired. The second was published in the New York Times about a week later. From the reviews, I have learned the new Netflix series cannot abide politically incorrect views on race and therefore elevates people of color to positions they did not have in the original books. Laura Ingalls Wilder has been accused more than once of putting a gloss on the treatment of Indians in particular, and she was writing many decades after she lived the experiences she was writing about. So there may well have been some sweeping of inconvenient or even awful activities and memories under the rug. Or perhaps the relationship of white settlers to the Native Americans whom they were patently replacing was fraught and did move between vague unease and real hostility. Friendly encounters surely occurred, but they may well have been rare. Certainly Laura and her family did not have the relationship with Native Americans that modern white readers like to imagine that they would have had. The revisionist history apparently on display in the Netflix series helps nobody Pretending that good people have always believed what the good people of today believe is arrogant, simplistic, and stupid. That is not what troubled me in these reviews, however, imagining that racism can be solved by pretending that history was different is a common enough error these days. And while I wish we would grow up already, I have somewhat accepted that that isn't going to happen anytime soon. No, the thing that really got to me in these reviews were the attacks on the character of Pa Ingalls. Both reviews questioned Pa Ingalls responsibility towards his family. Among other things, they wonder why he kept moving, why the family was always being taken to new places. Both reviews seem to have never considered what a man is, what a frontier is, and what the intersection of the two looks and acts like. In New York Magazine, the author of the review remembers fondly how disturbed her own mother was at Pa Ingalls behavior when she was reading the books to her children. Why on earth did they decide to homestead so far from everything else? What possessed Pa to keep moving them with all these little kids and no assurance he'd be able to feed them? Memorably, our reading reached a chapter from the Long Winter, which included an illustration of Pa with a thousand yard stare, bundled up in many layers of clothing, trying to twist haystocks into sticks because they'd run out of fuel to burn. Why won't this idiot move back to town? My mother said. That's from the New York Magazine review on July 10. A week later in the New York Times, the different author of that review is similarly troubled by Pa Ingalls quote. Reading the books again as an adult, however, can sometimes feel like reading a horror novel. The family frequently lived in destitution. Their dugouts seemed magical to be as a child. But it hits differently when you think of Ma dealing with her period, for instance, under such primal conditions. There are other more troubling questions that nag at the reader. Why is Charles Ingalls dragging his family from place to place? Exactly? Did they really want to go? That's from the New York Times, July 18, a horror novel we have become such a pampered, timid people. Or no, that's not quite right. Our culture is being shaped by pampered, timid people. We have apparently forgotten that exploration, discovery, and a deep yearning for the unknown is how we have arrived nearly everywhere that we have gotten. Instead of celebrating courage and stamina and deeply hard work, our culture makers embrace small lives and small thoughts. It will surprise nobody to hear that the authors of both reviews are women. I don't like that this is true, but my feelings about it don't change reality. Women have historically been the ones to keep the home fires burning. As such, women tend to be less adventurous, less game to see what's over the next hill, and are more likely than men to be anxious and afraid. The trouble begins when the fearful ones begin setting rules for everyone. Their worries and safetyism, their narrow horizons, should never have been allowed to set expectations for the rest of us. The authors of these reviews and the audiences to whom they speak would seem to be scared little rabbits who are simultaneously empowered and so clueless that they can act of the instinct to explore. Why? Why would you do that? What losers we have become. What scared, narrow minded Embrace the familiar, bubble wrap your children losers we have become. Pa Ingalls knew a thing or two about dealing with the unexpected. He was a problem solver and a man of skill and creativity. Modernity has smoothed many of life's rough edges away. We have been given a pureed version of reality, one in which nature's variety is blended into uniformity. This way we know what to expect. It's useful in some things, but even if you appreciate sidewalks, for instance, you can also recognize that trails are beautiful things. Beautiful and instructive. We should not default to uniformity, for down that path lies loss. Loss of skill, loss of appetite, loss of drive. Take risks, ask questions. Do not be bound by the lines drawn on the ground or by the voices that tell you what path is safe. Be bound by the lines only when it is best for you and those around you, when it is the right thing to do, and when it means being true to yourself. A life without challenge, without risk, is a life that disappears into a dull haze almost as quickly as it comes into existence. Was Pa Ingalls chasing something he could never find? I don't read him that way, but I suppose it's possible. What he was definitely doing was exploring frontiers with his living family, who were adventuring right along with him. Every single one of us comes from a long line of explorers, people who took risks, and through a Combination of skill and luck found a path that worked. We would all do well to follow our courage, not our fears. So that's a little hard to read 36 hours after our son almost died on a motorcycle. But I would not change his adventurous, generous, charismatic, risk taking spirit. If we had bubble wrapped him, if we had told him to live a life of fear or simply demonstrated to him that that was the way that we lived and that that was therefore how it is to live, this wouldn't have happened to him last two nights ago. But he would also not be the young man that he is, the man that he is becoming. He is smart and beautiful and beloved and so capable of so many things. I cannot imagine losing him. I'm still trembling from the thought. But I do think he's out of the woods now. I do think he is safe. It's going to be a while for him to be full again, whole again. But I think he's, I think he's going to be okay. And yet it is still the right move to encourage your children to adventure on this earth, to imagine what's over the next horizon, to consider what isn't known and to try to know it far better than the alternative. Actually,
- [59:10]
A
yeah, that is a beautiful piece. It goes many deep places and yeah, it's a particularly interesting moment to have to confront that. But you know, we've, we have said, I believe we say in the book that it is impossible to raise a child properly without exposing them to the risk that you will lose them.
- [59:32]
B
Yes, we absolutely say that. And hunter gatherer is good.
- [59:35]
A
And the reason for that is because if you are going to be an adult who is capable of managing risk, it is because you will have encountered risk and if it always goes well, then that's not enough risk. So the point is it has to go wrong some fraction of the time in order for you to understand many things. You know, how you're going to crash. How do you crash to minimize the harm. Right. That's a. We don't spend enough time training. We, you know, driver's training involves how not to crash. It doesn't involve how to crash, though it clearly should if you're a pilot. It sure does. But you know, so I've never come up with the right substitute term. But the term I use is the theory of close calls. That basically close calls exist in like a normal distribution from trivial to, you know, catastrophic. And most of your close calls are somewhere in the middle, but it is by watching them populate, you know, the dots show up on the graph that you come to understand what the risks in life are like, what the risks in the activity you've chosen are like, and therefore how to manage them. If you're having a bunch of, you know, near death experiences in which you're not injured, the lesson is not that you are doing something right. The lesson is that can only go on so long before the dice are going to come up wrong for you.
- [61:04]
B
Yeah. What tends to follow the injunction to hold my beer is often not smart adventuring, not smart risk taking. It's buffoonery.
- [61:12]
A
Right?
- [61:13]
B
That's not what we're advocating for.
- [61:16]
A
Right.
- [61:16]
B
At all.
- [61:17]
A
So the people you admire, and specifically the men you admire, are ones that correctly understand the risks. They don't lie to themselves about them. It's not, not, you know, untutored bravado. It's insight. And the thing that I want to get back to though is you. You point to this mindset like, why didn't POD just go back to town where it was safe?
- [61:42]
B
As if that's even an option, right? Failed to understand everything about the moment these people were living in, but failed.
- [61:47]
A
I mean, it's like you, you in one sentence, how do you tell me that your education was a total failure and that you don't know anything? Right? Because. Okay, yeah, town. How did town become town? Well, some pioneer went out on a frontier and established a thing and then people gathered there because the spring was good or the hills protected you from enemies or whatever. But the point is, there's a town there because there wasn't one and somebody started one who by definition did the thing you're telling Pa not to do. And what's more, it's not just a human thing either. One of the other things in our, in our book that is very important for people to understand is that life proceeds by finding frontiers and that those frontiers are an indication of great potential profit at risk. You can't separate those things. That's what the market is, risk versus reward. If there isn't much risk, there won't be much reward. That's a, that's a part of the emergent feature of nature. And so you are effectively looking at three and a half billion years of evolution that produced the miracle that is you and asking, well, wasn't there a lot of risk involved there? Why'd you all do it? And it's like, well, stop it. You don't speak for humanity. Nobody's inviting you to the frontier because you'd be useless and you'd be a Hazard, but don't tell other people. Don't go to the frontier and don't mock them if it goes wrong. People who go to the frontier understanding that there is risk don't always do okay, but the ones that do are the ones that make history. And so did you. Did you spot none of that in questioning what a truly brave, obviously compassionate family man was doing on the frontier? Did you really not spot it? Was this just about figuring out what you were going to say that was going to make the girls at the cocktail party laugh like it's insane? It's.
- [63:48]
B
It's totally insane. And it is. I mean, I remember, I've told you this before, but I remember an argument I had with a friend in eighth grade. So this would have been the early 80s, and the space program was not what it had been, but seemed to be in full swing. And she was just going off on what a waste of time and resources the space program was when there were problems to be solved here on Earth that we already knew about. And in that moment, I feel like, obviously memory is tricky, but I had an argument with her, but I remember thinking, my God, this is going to be a difference of opinion that proves to be monumental across society. I cannot imagine having in my head that we cannot explore until all local problems are considered solved. I cannot imagine thinking that. What a timid, scared, frankly loser mindset that is. Oh, and it is unfortunately much more common among girls and women than it is among boys and men. And yet, because we have this rise of toxic femininity, because we've already mostly, not entirely, of course, but mostly tackled the toxic masculinity, because it's overt and it's easy to legislate against and it's easy to punish, because law and order takes on toxic masculinity. Toxic femininity. Femininity is covert. Excuse me. And so it's taking over. It's taking over among men, too, where it's even, you know, less appealing. But these, these scared, loser rabbit women who would have you only focus on the local. Excuse me? Only focus on the local. Never think outside what you can see, never imagine the unknown, never explore beyond your backyard. They have been allowed to control the cultural narrative, and they are raising a whole generation of children. And we see it. We are seeing it. We have. It's been too comfortable for too long. And these people, you know, what did you say about that sentence? Tell me in one sentence that your education failed.
- [66:02]
A
You completely failed. And you know nothing.
- [66:04]
B
And you know nothing. And I'd add one piece to that. And you should never be in charge of setting a cultural. I don't even know what the noun should be of setting an agenda. You should never be in charge of setting an agenda for anyone. It's not yours to do. And you are a danger to all of us. And that's strange because you're speaking in the name of safety. But when all you do is think narrowly and in terms of very, very restricted versions of what safety might you risk destroying absolutely everything that you are relying on?
- [66:41]
A
Yeah, actually literally. And I should leave it where you left it, because that's beautiful. But you raise such a good point. If you prevent us from exploring until all the local problems are solved, you are literally closing up shop for all future innovation. Because the local problems will never be all solved. They can't be. Right. That's a systems level conclusion. You can. And state it with 100% certainty. They won't all be solved. So you have to have a portfolio. How much are you allocating to, you know, improving what's here and how much are you allocating to find what's next? That's the only reasonable way to approach things. And if you'll permit me, I think there's one story that's necessary here.
- [67:23]
B
Okay.
- [67:26]
A
On our study abroad in Ecuador, there were three incidents in which people were almost killed. It was a very. It was not. It was a beautifully planned trip, but the dice went bad for us multiple times. One young woman who we have talked about before, Odette, was in two of the three near death experiences. She was in the boat that Heather was on where Heather got so badly torn up in Galapagos as the boat capsized in heavy surf. And then a few weeks later, she was studying with a research partner at a field station in Ecuador and the two of them had gone to town. Her partner was Rachel, I should just mention that. And they had gone to town to use Internet and take a break from the field. And while they were in Paternales, Ecuador, a terrible earthquake struck and they were on the second floor of their hotel, a five story, unreinforced masonry building which collapsed on top of them. I think there were something like a hundred people in the hotel. I believe the two of them are the only ones who survived. And Odette survived. They literally clawed their way out of this rubble with help from somebody on the outside who detected that they were in there, found their way back to the capital city in a horrifying. You know, the country is in chaos. Dead bodies being pulled from the rubble. Out in the streets. And Odette, who had been a dancer, discovered that and is again, and is again discovered that her leg had been absolutely crushed and she wouldn't know how bad it was for quite some time, but requiring many surgeries to get her back on her feet. And the reason I raise her here is for multiple reasons. One, you have done a great job of modeling what it is to be a full fledged woman who embraces risk and confronts those things. And many young women who came through your classes learned that from you. So they are not these timid rabbits because they saw that there's another. Another way to be, and they went on to. To do the thing themselves, not just talk about it. But the thing that strikes me most is that after it was all over, Odette and Rachel are safe. They're back. Odette is on the slow, long road to recovery, still in a wheelchair. At the point that we had this conversation. Tell me if I have the details wrong, but I believe I apologized to her for taking her on this trip that had put her in mortal danger twice and had robbed her of her ability to walk at that point. I'm going to try not to cry as I say this, but he said even if I knew what was going to happen, I would do it again. It was that useful. It was that transformative.
- [70:38]
B
The whole trip?
- [70:39]
A
The whole trip.
- [70:39]
B
Not those two events, specifically the whole trip.
- [70:42]
A
The whole trip. So anyway, somebody who has, you know, gone from a person who dances ballet to a wheelchair, confronted risk, but is dancing again. Yes. But for her to say, you know, that even if she knew that the risks were not going to go her way, in that case, she would have done it again, tells you that spirit of adventure that puts you on the frontier, that does allow you to innovate the thing that then the future is built on. And, you know, if we stop doing that, what else is there? Right?
- [71:14]
B
Yeah. We lose our humanity. There's. There's so many ways to lose our humanity these days. But this is. This is apparently a very cryptic one to many. And somehow people consider it. Some consider it their right to tell us to stop. Tell us to stop taking risks and adventure and explore and look for new things. Because it feels like safety isn't a concern for your safety feels like it's not bad advice. But your understanding of what actually is keeping us safe and keeping us human is wrong. And I feel like at some level, these reviews in New York Magazine, the New York Times, reveal that not nearly enough was learned during COVID You know, you're you're forcing me to wear a mask so that you feel safer. No, you trying in all of these cases, you forcing me to get a vaccine because it makes you feel better, regardless of what your cover story is. You mocking alternative treatments because why? How does that make you feel safer? But it all came in the language of safety and protection of others. You know, this, this, this toxic empathy that is, that is not useful and it's being weaponized and that makes it less than useful. So at first I thought I read the first of these reviews and I, and I told you guys about it at dinner. You know, I told. I, we were, you know, Brett and Zach and Tobin. I were having dinner and I was just ranting about this review like, this is, this is so ridiculous. These small minded people. And then I saw the second one and I thought, okay, it's possible that this just borrowed. It's just piggybacking on the first. But now this feels like this narrow minded, loser rabbit mentality. Feels like what is rising in, in middle class, white bread, boring, safetiest American culture now. And even they, even the authors of these reviews, the people they're speaking to who are applauding them, would do far better if they were not just ignored, but actually instructed in why their approach is wrong and itself is bad for all of us. And I say that as someone who is just. As a mother who has just confronted the possibility for the most horrifying things that's possible. He's going to be okay. But we weren't sure. And still, risk is important and necessary.
- [74:01]
A
Amen. And hats off to you and all of the courageous young women that you mentored.
- [74:11]
B
All right, Maybe next week we'll talk about explosive diarrhea.
- [74:18]
A
Wonderful. I can't wait.
- [74:21]
B
Hopefully not from any kind of firsthand knowledge.
- [74:25]
A
Oh, God.
- [74:25]
B
Yeah. Okay. What do I even do now? How does this end? I have to look at my notes.
- [74:32]
A
How does it all end? That is. You're raising deep philosophical questions.
- [74:35]
B
I really wasn't trying to. Okay, okay. Those aren't even the sponsors. That's for week. Yeah, I'm not totally.
- [74:43]
A
Oh, it was, it was Mazda chips
- [74:45]
B
and American financing and sauna space. All, all terrific. Check them out. If you're interested in, you know, Masa Chips, American financing or SA Space. I can't even improvise at this point.
- [74:57]
A
There is no reason you can't use all three of those things at once.
- [74:59]
B
I, I don't think you want to eat in your sauna. I mean, you can use the glow light. Yeah, yeah. Be on the phone with American financing
- [75:06]
A
while using your glow light and chopping nice and warm. You're having some cob cob or hatch chili or white and you know you've got an excellent mortgage.
- [75:17]
B
Why not combine all three? Reminder that we are supported by you and we are grateful to you, our audience. Consider subscribing to the channel on YouTube or wherever you watch us. Like share all of that. And until you see next, until you see next. Until you see us next time, be good at the ones you love, eat real food and get outside.
- [75:43]
A
Be well, everyone.