The Oligarchs Strike Back: The 326th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

Summary

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Episode Overview

Theme:
In the 326th episode of the DarkHorse Podcast, titled "The Oligarchs Strike Back," Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying examine the concept of modern tyranny in the United States through multiple lenses, drawing on recent political, legislative, and ecological developments. Using their trademark evolutionary lens, they discuss how unpredictability, regulatory chaos, and captured institutions challenge individual autonomy and social adaptation. Topics include erratic taxation in state legislatures, political capture and primary challenges, environmental toxins and media distortion, and the expanding use of eminent domain.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Political Unpredictability and State Governance

• [18:08-33:00]
  The episode opens with a discussion of former Washington governor Christine Gregoire's recent remarks criticizing the legislative unpredictability in taxation and business regulations:

  • Emphasizes how rapid increases in the state budget (from $33 billion to ~$80 billion over 12 years) have created instability and chased away wealth and philanthropy.
  • Heather notes that it’s not merely the amount of taxation, but the unpredictable “stochasticity” that makes adaptation impossible:

    “With predictability comes the ability to adapt... the fact that many people are leaving the states that are creating chaos with their laws and taxes... is a rejection of unpredictability and, and lack of understanding.” (Heather, 23:10)

  • Bret draws an evolutionary comparison:

    “What you're talking about in the temperate zones is a predictable oscillation... What we have here is a different kind of predictability—every excuse will be found to ratchet up the budget and the tax regime, with no plan for how to taper off or stop or reverse course or anything.” (Bret, 26:51)

• Both hosts highlight the disconnect between rising taxation and declining public services (notably in education), and how policymakers often have little to no business experience, exacerbating erratic policy outcomes.

2. Political Capture: The Oligarchs in Action

• [38:18-51:09]
  The replacement of Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie in a primary contest is examined as a case of democracy being overrun by outside money and special interests:
  • Despite strong local fundraising and broad support among younger voters (81% among 18–29-year-olds as per recent polls), Massie was defeated by a candidate buoyed by immense PAC contributions, notably from AIPAC and similar groups (over $15 million).
  • Bret contends this exemplifies external capture of legislative bodies:

    “What we have is a legislative body that doesn't represent us at all and does represent other people, people who have been able to buy influence or seat their own candidates or whatever they're doing. And the point is, that's actually a terrifying predicament ..." (Bret, 44:27)

  • The episode connects Massie’s fate with notions of tyranny familiar to the Founders:

    “The founders, the American founders… had experienced tyranny from the crown and their project… was specifically built… to frustrate that exact type of power.” (Bret, 45:09)

  • The discussion highlights generational disconnects, with older voting blocs enabling anti-reform outcomes despite younger voters' preferences.

3. Media Distortion and Regulatory Capture: The Case of Atrazine

• [51:09-64:37]
  Examining environmental policy, Heather reviews the Fish & Wildlife Service’s clearing atrazine, an herbicide known for disrupting amphibian development:
  • Scientific evidence: Atrazine is well-documented as an endocrine disruptor in frogs and possibly a contributor to sex/gender confusion in humans.
  • Media Bias:
    In 2023, The New York Times derided presidential candidate RFK Jr. for mentioning potential links between atrazine and human developmental issues; in 2026, with a new administration and different political context, the Times frames regulatory leniency as a major scandal:

    “The science has not changed, how it affects the frogs has not changed, how it affects the humans has not changed... But the fact is, in the end, this New York Times article reads like the kind of article—other than that—that I would want in a news source” (Heather, 61:23)

  • Both hosts underscore team-based logic in major media—positions shift with political winds rather than scientific updates.

4. Eminent Domain and Data Centers: Private Power, Public Cost

• [65:40-85:37]
  The hosts discuss high-profile cases in Georgia and nationwide where eminent domain is used to seize homes for private projects (notably, a $17B data center requiring massive energy lines):
  • Personal Testimonies: Ansley Brown, a young Georgian, documents forced home seizures for the project.
  • Legal/Ethical Frameworks: Brett explains the historical development of eminent domain: government must provide “just compensation,” but standards are weak, and protections have eroded over time (notably with Kelo v. City of New London, 2005).
  • Systemic Capture Theme: Both hosts tie this to the episode’s thesis:

    “The power of government is terrifying. It is in... it has been captured by entities that we have no influence over. And it is now using that. You can see it. Eminent domain is the tip of the spear, right? It's coming for us. It's coming for our houses. Our right to say no doesn't exist.” (Bret, 84:15)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Government & Policy Predictability
  • Heather: “It's not a rejection of taxation per se. It is a rejection of unpredictability and lack of understanding of the effects that you're having.” [23:10]
• Legislative Capture
  • Bret: “Thomas Massie was too much democracy for the people who run our system. And we need to understand that every time we get a little bit of democracy into the system, that thing comes and it unhooks it.” [49:32]
• Media Team Logic
  • Heather: “Now, that framing itself is unfair. The Trump administration didn't do this. The official Department of Fish and Wildlife under the Trump administration, with undue communications from members of the Trump administration. I don't know. Is that possible? Sure. Did that happen? Maybe. Is that even claimed in here? No. So that is a strange framing...” [61:23]
• Eminent Domain Summed Up
  • Bret: “Eminent domain is now showing up again. Why? Because data centers are suddenly necessary. Huge energy requirements are necessary... Eminent domain is the tip of the spear, right? It's coming for us. It's coming for our houses. Our right to say no doesn't exist because the constitution says the government has the right to take that property.” [84:15]
• Final Reflection (Returning to the Personal)
  • Heather shares a moving story/memoir about childhood, memory, and the inherited meaning we draw from the world around us, closing the episode on a note of simple beauty and reflection:

    “We see what we're interested in. My goodness, I think what an insight he has in a single moment, recognized how our individual desires and histories, how our personal biases create meaning around us.” [90:56]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Intro & Episode Outline – [01:09–02:20]
• Christine Gregoire's Governance Clip & Analysis – [18:08–33:00]
• Political Capture / Thomas Massie Primary Discussion – [38:18–51:09]
• Atrazine, Environmental Policy, and Media Distortion – [51:09–64:37]
• Eminent Domain, Data Centers, and Seizure of Private Land – [65:40–85:37]
• Personal Story – Childhood Memory (Heather) – [85:37–end]

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Summary Tone and Style

The tone blends frustration, urgency, and careful scientific reasoning, punctuated with speculative but evidence-backed hypotheses. The hosts use both personal anecdotes and evolutionary metaphors to illustrate structural social problems, remaining accessible and conversational, with flashes of humor even amid grave topics.

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This summary brings together the major threads and illuminating moments from the episode, capturing the flow and intensity of the discussion. Whether you’re concerned with state budgets, political corruption, environmental regulation, or questions of personal and democratic autonomy, this episode offers an evolutionary—and deeply human—view of modern American power struggles.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Welcome to the Dark Horse podcast live stream. I think it's number 326, because you told me that moments before we went on the air.

[B]

Yeah, it seems right.

[A]

Yeah,

[B]

it does, it does. I mean, not that we've been here before, but here we are now, and it feels like three. 26. What is going on? Yeah, well, I will keep talking here. You want to share mine? All right.

[A]

Okay. Hey, folks, welcome to the Dark Horse podcast. I am Dr. Brett Weinstein. You are Dr. Heather Hyink. This is live stream 326. We had a rare microphone. Technical difficulty at the beginning. Sorry about that. But we're up and running.

[B]

Yes, we are. Yeah, boy. My notes say Q and A today, but that's not true. That happened last week, right?

[A]

Hold your. Hold your cues, people.

[B]

Yeah, we have a Q and a next Sunday. Sunday.

[A]

Next Sunday. Sunday, Sunday. Super Sunday, you Los Angelenos on locals.

[B]

And we have a watch party going on there now, so join us on locals. We appreciate we're going to be talking about unpredictability in state legislatures and in primary elections and a little bit about maybe insecticides.

[A]

And we're going to be talking about tyranny from, like, six different angles. It all is kind of one weird story, but.

[B]

But no, because we're going to finish with something that has absolutely nothing to do with tyranny at all. Counterbound. It just has. It's just zero to do with that. So hang out if. If you're getting into a dark mood from the discussion of unpredictability in all things. But I do want to. Yeah, I don't like that framing, man. I think we can discuss some of this from the perspective of how other creatures on Earth would be responding to what is happening and why it is so difficult to respond as a way in through the evolutionary lens, which is, after all, what we are. I, at least, am best suited to do.

[A]

Yep, I don't disagree with that framing. I think you can choose your own framing at the end, but there's a thread that runs through many of these things, if not all of them. Anyway, shall we embark with the paying of the rent? Okay.

[B]

With the ads, let us. Let us start at the top of the hour as we always do with our three sponsors. As always, if you hear us reading ads with our own voices, it means that we have truly vetted these products or services and stand by them. Our first sponsor this week is Mud Water. If you like the routine, here's a can. The one thing I like, I like, I like their Cans, but it's hard to know what what the forward facing part of it should be. So there it is. If you like the routine of making and drinking a cup of warmth in the morning but don't drink coffee, or if you're trying to cut down your coffee intake, try Mud Water. If you're looking for a different way to kick off your day with a delicious warming enhancing Dr. Drink, try Mud Water. Mud Water makes fantastic products. Their original. This one super functional coffee alternative has a beautiful list of ingredients that includes cacao and chai for just a hint of caffeine, Lion's Mane mushrooms to support focus, cordyceps to help support physical performance, Chaga and Reishi to support your immune system and cinnamon which is a potent antioxidant. That's what's in their original coffee alternative. But MUDWTR also makes a Matcha coffee alternative which is like their original but has matcha instead of cacao and cinnamon too. If matcha is your thing. And Mud Water makes a mushroom coffee which has Arabic coffee plus all the mushrooms already mentioned. Lion's Mane, Cordyceps, Chaga and Reishi. They've got a turmeric forward drink that is caffeine free and has the same mushrooms plus ginger, cinnamon and baobab. I still don't know what the baobab is doing there, but I'm intrigued.

[A]

Sprinkle of baobab.

[B]

The sprinkle of. It's hard to imagine how you sprinkle baobab. If you look at that and you don't think that's going to be light and airy, but somehow they've done it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an odd tree. And even harvesting from it. I mean these must be tiny baobabs.

[B]

Bonsai babos.

[A]

They gotta be.

[B]

I don't know. I mean, I doubt it.

[A]

How else then?

[B]

I mean the yield's gonna be so much smaller.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, maybe we'll find out.

[B]

Maybe we'll. If we keep saying yep, it's got baobab. We don't know what it's doing in there. Maybe we'll hear from someone. But it's intriguing. And Mud Water has a drink they call REST which has robos tea and valerian root, turkey tail and ashwagandha, chamomile and passion flower. There are more products than that too. So you should go to MUDWTR and find exactly what you're looking for. Every single ingredient in their products is 100% USDA, organic, non GMO, gluten free and vegan. MudWTR's original flavor is warm and spicy with a hint of chocolate, plus masala chai, which includes ginger and cardamom, nutmeg and cloves. It's also delicious blended into a smoothie. Try it with banana and ice milk or milk like substance if that's your thing. Mint, a touch of honey and cacao nibs. This is delicious. Ready to make the switch to cleaner Energy? Head to mudwtr.com and grab your starter kit today. Right now, our listeners get an exclusive deal. Up to 43% off starter kits plus free shipping and a free rechargeable frother when you use code Dark Horse. That's right. Up to 43% off with code DARKHORSE. @mudwtr.com they've just streamlined it and taken the vowels out of the second word entirely. Mud.

[A]

Were you going to use them?

[B]

Yeah, I wasn't.

[A]

No.

[B]

Now mudwater.com M, U, D, W, T, R dot com. After your purchase, they'll ask how you found them. Oh, you found them. Please show your report and let them know we sent you. That was a lot of pronouns for one sentence. That wasn't at all. Woke.

[A]

Well, you can never have too many of those things.

[B]

I think you can. I think you do.

[A]

Yep. I got a few. I got a few. But that is. That's a private matter.

[B]

Yep. Okay. Our second sponsor today is Sauna Space. What?

[A]

Well, I've got the eye in me. Oh, goodness. It's all happening, isn't it?

[B]

I think so, yes.

[A]

Yes. All right.

[B]

Well, that got through, even though I'm in airplane mode. So I don't know what's going on for. For all sorts of chaos.

[A]

Yeah, we got all sorts of chaos. You're discovering I have pronouns. Really? They're all ones you've encountered nothing surprising, but you just.

[B]

You cla. I mean, I made an off. A flippant comment. Maybe you just responded same way. But you suggested that you had a lot too many. Something.

[A]

You know, comedy requires a certain freedom of the truth. Yeah, exactly.

[B]

Yeah. Liberty license. Liberty, Freedom. The whole thing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Comedy does require actually all those things, which is part of why the humorless are a problem.

[A]

Yes. And why they targeted comedy so directly for so long. It seems to have broken out largely, I think, due to Joe Rogan and Dave Chappelle. But.

[B]

Well, I was thinking more about the fact that the instigators of the tyrannical revol. Both right and left, but especially left, as we've been so called. Left, as we've been saying for the last many, many years are themselves humorless and, and, you know, cannot laugh at themselves or others. They just, they, they, they seem to find laughter and affront to their mission, which I think is a clear indicator that something has gone awry, as if there weren't plenty.

[A]

Yep. And then we have the question of the AI and humor, which is an interesting one. We should, we should cover that sometimes.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It's not there. They can't do it, but it's, it's heading in that direction.

[B]

I don't know what that pivot was. Are we still talking about the woke?

[A]

Yeah, we're talking about the woke lacking humor, which you and I have talked about many times. And then there's the question about AI and can it generate humor, which it can't.

[B]

But that doesn't have anything to do with the woke. That's it. That's the, the thread. There was humor.

[A]

There is humor.

[B]

Yeah, I see. Okay. Our second sponsor today is Sauna Space, which makes amazing saunas and therapeutic lights. Sauna Space combines red light therapy, near infrared, radiant heat for whole body results. At home, they don't make harsh LED panels or giant wooden boxes. After over 10 years of R D, SaunaSpace has developed a proprietary sun like Firelight Spectrum. It's flicker free, glare free, and comfortable to use with long life incandescent bulbs that stay consistent for more than five years. If you've looked into saunas or red light therapy, you know the market is a mess, full of claims that seem designed to obscure rather than heal. It's hard to know if any given product is effective or what frequencies it produces or whether it emits harmful electromagnetic radiation. 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 be used by the desk or bedside. It can alleviate screen fatigue and the ill effects of blue light and helps with skin, mood and energy concerns. It's great to use at night as your only light source and also works as spot relief for sore backs, tight shoulders or cramps. I've mentioned before that cats seem to adore it as well. And we've done a number of things to help our lovely black cat, who is 15 years old, Tesla, improve his health. But him sitting in front of the Glow in the evenings when I have it on has is at least one of the ingredients that has caused him to now look like a cat five years younger and be. Be Quite healthy.

[A]

He enjoys staring into it.

[B]

In fact he does. He does. He seems to find some, some deep truth in it as he enjoys staring into the fire. And we have a fire in our wood burning stove.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

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[A]

I don't know what you said, but it sounded like take your mollusks to the next level.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Yep. All right. I don't see any reason why you wouldn't. They might not like it, but wellness, wellness. It's not just for non mollusks anymore.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yes. Get. Get your mollusks up and running. I don't think that you should actually put your mollusks in a. In a sauna.

[A]

Get your mollusks up and running. If there's one thing mollusks don't do, it's that you put them in the little wheelie guards. Actually, you've seen these videos of octopuses running. I mean they're capable of doing all underwater presumably.

[B]

Or underwater.

[A]

But nonetheless it's like, you know, it's the exception that proves the rule about mollusks not running.

[B]

I think. Right. On the other hand, the cephalopods are, I think I may be wrong, the only legged mollusks. It's hard to run without legs.

[A]

No, I have so every time I've been without them. So. Yes, good point.

[B]

Or like in a dream, you don't Actually have use of your legs in a dream, and it can be hard to run, at least as soon as you start thinking about it.

[A]

Yeah, no, you've got a point. I also don't have wings, but I can fly sometimes. So.

[B]

Yeah, maybe because the part of your body that's trying to enact the flying isn't actually there, so it's not fighting back.

[A]

Yeah, the feedback is more at best. But our next sponsor is relevant to this discussion.

[B]

Oh, yes, of course.

[A]

Yes. Our final sponsor this week is Helix. Helix makes truly fantastic mattresses. We've had our Helix mattress for well over four years now, and it continues to provide amazing sleep just as much as it did when we first got it. It's firm, which we like, but if you want a soft mattress, they have those too. It's cooling, it's quiet, it's just lovely in every regard. And will help you fly in your dreams if that's what you're trying to do. Everyone has had bad sleep. Sometimes that's attributable to modernity. The light shining in your window, the noises of humanity that you can't shut out, the churning of your brain. Your psychology has been mangled by fake food and pharmaceuticals. All of that contributes to bad sleep. So does the flak when you're having a flying dream in a fighter. But bad mattresses have their contribution as well. Helix. I'm afraid so.

[B]

I object.

[A]

You do?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, all right, my next.

[C]

You make.

[B]

How often.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Have you been flying through. Flying without benefit of a plane through wartime, in a dream and COD flag?

[A]

I have had the benefit of a dream plane and I have encountered.

[B]

Oh, you had a. You had a plane. You weren't just flying because we were talking about flying, even though you don't have wings in real life.

[A]

True. All of that is true. But one also flies in planes in their dreams, if their dreams are high quality and.

[B]

Oh, wow. Okay, I see. I see how it's gonna be.

[A]

No, Well, I mean, it's as. As far as I can tell from my vantage point. I can say nothing about others, but I can make my assumptions. But in answer to your question, I have experienced flak every damn time I've been over the target. You know what I'm saying? It's just the way it works. But I have now.

[B]

So the target is always defended. That seems unlikely.

[A]

In World War II era flying dreams, the target is always.

[B]

Yes, but you were making a greater, more metaphorical point, were you?

[A]

Yes, I was. I was. And it has now gotten rather far afield for mattresses. But we'll, we'll reel it back in.

[B]

Helix.

[A]

Reel it back in. As if having a fishing dream. Helix makes excellent mattresses.

[B]

How many of those do you have?

[A]

Fishing dream.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Not many. Yeah, I gotta say, not many. I wish I had more, but then you don't fish. Very relaxing. Well, I'm going to.

[B]

Not if you're sport fishing. That's not relaxing.

[A]

No.

[B]

Exciting.

[A]

No. That's probably not my style of fishing. Frankly, I'm more a fly fisherman who probably will never get around to fly fishing. But I mean, agreed. Right.

[B]

I don't think you get to claim to be a fly fisherman.

[A]

Never fly fish. It's. It's my ethos. I'm much more like a fly fisherman. If I was going to be a fisherman, fly fisherman would be the way, you know the biology of it. Tricking the animal with a well tied fly, the whole thing making the behavior of the fly look right. That's my style of fishing. But it's also a lot of work to do it well. And I'm a busy guy, so I'm probably not going to get there, but I don't know. Hey, you know what? If I get completely canceled, then I might become a fly fisherman and be, be happy. I don't know.

[B]

The fly fishermen of the world unite. If you want more among you, work on canceling Brett. Now that's actually.

[A]

That begins to be a pretty cool narrative. Like the fly fishermen, but only if

[B]

they want another guy taking up their streams.

[A]

They just like me and they're trying to liberate me to their awesome hobby. Yeah, by getting me thoroughly canceled finally, once and for all. I mean, I kind of like I would go see that movie, you know what I'm saying? Well, let me tell you more about Helix mattresses. Helix makes excellent mattresses, every one of which combines individually wrapped steel coils in the base with premium foam layers on top, providing excellent support for your spine. So not for cephalopods. Take the Helix Sleep definitely online and in less than two minutes you'll be directed to which of their many mattresses is best for you. Do you sleep on your back, your stomach or your side? Do you toss and turn or sleep like a log? Do you prefer a firmer or softer mattress? Once you've found your perfect Mattress, you have 120 nights to try it out without any penalty in the unlikely event that you don't love it. Helix Asleep Sleep Midnight Luxe hybrid mattress won both Forbes and Wired's best Mattress Award of 2025. It sounds good.

[B]

Wired.

[A]

Wired. Okay, we're there. Okay. Wired. Helix mattresses are made in America at their own manufacturing facility. And unlike many mattresses now on the market, all of Helix's Mattress mattresses are 100% fiberglass free. Helix mattresses are built for human bodies and built to last. Helix also supports the military, first responders, teachers, and students by giving them a special discount. Everyone we know who has slept on a Helix mattress raves about it. Seriously. Some families slept on our Helix mattress for a few nights, went home, and immediately ordered one for themselves. And Zach's got one in his college apartment, which he loves. Helix just makes fantastic mattresses. We've heard about people having or directly experience them better sleep. Wait, that was poorly read. We have heard about people having or directly experience themselves better sleep. Less sleep apnea, less back pain, fewer temperature problems. I got through it. So go to helixsleep.com darkhorse for 27% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com darkhorse For 27% off site wide. Exclusive for listeners of Dark Horse. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you. Once again, that's helix sleep.com dark horse for a seriously comfortable mattress. All right, shall we begin with the loss by Thomas Massie?

[B]

No.

[A]

Oh, that's not where we should start.

[B]

I thought we were going to start with the video from Christine Gregoire.

[A]

We'll come back to Thomas Massey.

[B]

Yeah. So Christine Gregoire, who was the governor of the state of Washington from, say, 2000, 2004, 2005 through 2013. So has been out of office for 12 years. More than 12 years is the clip's been going around, and we're going to show that to you here. And actually, maybe we should just go to it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

She was a Democrat in Washington state, and here she is talking about her, what she thinks is going on now.

[A]

Do you think majority leaders understand, do you think our legislature understands the impact of the policy environment as it relates to the economy?

[C]

No, I really don't. As evidenced by. You mentioned the estate tax. I argued to some folks about the estate tax. We were the highest in the country, tied with Hawaii at 20th, 20%. We went to 35. We're not just the highest, we're beyond the highest. And I said, now you understand the consequences of this. Can I see your fiscal note? Because I'd like to help it, because here's what you can expect. Those people are not homeless. They will not pay. They're leaving. When they leave, they stop Paying cap gains. When they leave, they stop giving significantly to philanthropy which would otherwise be necessary by government. So do you understand? Do you see the consequences of what you're doing? And the answer is no. I left office with a budget of 33 billion, and the budget today is 80 billion. I think that's a little bit too much of a growth. And yet how we find ourselves at the end of every legislative session now is in the hole and projected to be in the hole. I would suggest to you, we don't really have an income problem. We have a spending problem. And we're answering, And we're answering it by stacking one more tax, one more rule, one more regulation. And the one thing that the business community doesn't need is that lack of predictability. How many people in either of the Democratic caucuses have come from a business past? Okay, so if you haven't come from it, you don't know it, you don't understand it. And therefore, to me, we all collectively, and Chris and I have talked a lot about this, have to educate from the outside in. We have to explain things like sales tax on services you thought was a nice attack on big business. And here are the small businesses that have been tremendously adversely impacted, as well as the customers.

[B]

So just a couple of clarifications. She's talking about budgets for bienniums. So these are numbers over the course of two years. So the Washington state budget when she left office in 2013 was around 33 billion. And for the biennium that just passed, the budget for the biennium that passed for now, the bay name that we're living in now, it was like 78. She said 80 billion. She rounded up a couple billion. But point is, point is that it is closing in on tripling. It's, you know, well, more than doubled in the time since she left office about 12 years ago. And that's all true. And certainly the state budget increased substantially while she was in office, not nearly at the same rate. And there are many who had major problems with her when she was in office and will say that she helped create the conditions that led to what is happening now in the state of Washington. But the key point that I wanted to point out here, because there are many. We've talked a lot about what's going on in the state of Washington, and we will continue to do so. But her line, in which she says, and the one thing that the business community doesn't need is that lack of predictability, that feels to me like the key point here that it would be quite one thing if we felt that the legislators had understood fiscal responsibility, had a plan, had a sense of, or at least could spell out to us why they felt that, that the things that they are doing were going to have the following downstream effects as opposed to what it looks like, which is they're just sort of gleefully finding ways to, to create more taxes without any particular order or expectation of stability. And the thing that I wanted to get to before, before perhaps we talk more explicitly about tyranny and all of these things, is that this is exactly the thing that throws non human organisms into chaos as well. That the stochasticity in an environment, the changes that are not predictable, are the things that are the most difficult to adapt to, that we have. You know, if you have in the temperate zone, which you have pointed out for decades now, the temperate zone is strangely named because it is really only very temperate as you slide through spring and fall. And in many places, not, not here in the Pacific Northwest where our summers are simply glorious, but in many parts of the temperate zone, especially in the middle of continents, you have excruciating summers and excruciating winters, and it's really not that temperate at all. And it's kind of hard to imagine how it is that so many organisms have adapted to live in such environments. Well, they have because, yes, you have particularly scorching summers sometimes, or particularly mild summers and particularly brutal winters or mild winters. And so things do vary, but every year there will be a summer, every year there will be a winter. You know what, the photo, the photoperiod does not vary, you know, year to year. It varies very much day to day in the temperate zone, but in a predictable manner. And so with predictability comes the ability to adapt. And so, you know, the fact that many people are leaving the states that are creating chaos with their laws, with their taxes, and you know, Washington is hardly unique among, among the sort of blue states, mostly along the coasts, California, Oregon, New York, in which this is happening is not a rejection of taxation per se. It is a rejection of unpredictability and, and lack of understanding of the effects that you're having.

[A]

Yes, I would say it allows you to adapt and to plan. If you think about the way creatures in the temperate zones do deal with the striking difference between the temperatures in the very same spot from, you know, let's say January to July is the. Some of them opt out, right? They decide they're not going to be here in January and they, you know, using photoperiod or other cues, they decide this is the moment to fly somewhere more hospitable during that period. Or the ones that stick around.

[B]

May migration, in case that wasn't.

[A]

Yeah, in case that wasn't clear. Migrate migrators opt out of winter and they accept a different cost in order to do so. Other creatures that can't do that will put on fat, will change their coat, will go into torpor, whatever.

[B]

So, or, or I mean, everyone change their diet to some degree. And of course, we know that indigenous peoples who lived in places that are so called temperate change their diets inherently over the seasons because. Because what is available changes.

[A]

Yep. But I do want to point to an interesting dichotomy in what we're calling predictability. Right. So what you're talking about in the temperate zones is a predictable oscillation that, you know, is wildly different between its extremes. But you can roughly tell when it's going to happen.

[B]

Winter is coming.

[A]

Winter is. Winter is coming as soon as it's over. And what we have here is a different kind of predictability, which is actually what has people spooked, which is the predictability is that every excuse will be found to ratchet up the budget and the tax regime with no plan for how to taper off or stop or reverse course or anything. And so there is.

[B]

That's. It's. It's really too bad, and it sounds cynical, but the evidence is in front of us. The, the fact of the budgets going up and up and up and the deficit going up and up and up and the services going down and down and down. Those three things are so disconnected. Where is the money going? How is it that the services are failing, that half of the biennium budget for this year, just about close to it, is going to education. And our schools are some of the worst in the nation. They are so bad.

[A]

Yeah, they're impossibly bad. I mean, and you could just say this across domains. There are lots of places in which the world that existed under Gregoire, and you can think what you want about her leadership, but the world that existed has radically decayed in the relatively short period of time since she left office. And I think it hints at something here that you cannot prove. But I think the reason you and I were both struck by seeing that video of this person under whose governance we lived was.

[B]

And we're, you know, I can't think of the word like we. We weren't fans, but we did. But I think, and I. I'm pretty sure I voted for her.

[A]

I'm Pretty sure I voted for her.

[B]

And I thought, she's okay.

[A]

Yeah, she's okay.

[B]

She's.

[A]

She's a. She's a run of the mill Democrat.

[B]

But certainly a lot of people now are saying she was always terrible. Like, I don't know.

[A]

Yeah, she may have been. We may have had blinders on. But I will also say that one of the things that I saw in just reminding myself about her tenure was that in 2004, there, the race was the closest governor's race, I think, in history. It was like less than 200 votes.

[B]

Yeah. And the results were.

[A]

The results flipped when there was a recount, which Gregoire paid for. Anyway, I don't want to get into all of that, but the point is, if you and I recognize this person as a creature of the Democratic Party that we were already very frustrated with, but we're not like, oh, no, won't vote for. Watching her baffled by what these descendants of hers in her own party are doing, as if they don't get the most basic things actually tells you where we are. Democratic Party has been fully captured by something unholy. And let's say that that's a hypothesis. I'm quite confident of it, having watched the Democratic Party turn into this thing. And then, you know, the last presidency made it obvious that the president wasn't the president and the, you know, would be successor was an empty suit. And so obviously the party is its own thing. And that's just, that's just clear, I think. But the. Once you make the leap and you say, well, what if the party was really some sort of a machine that isn't at all what it is, what it describes itself as, or what we think of it as, as citizens. Well, then what is it? You can reverse engineer what it is from its behavior. Right. The purpose of a system is what it does. What is the purpose of the Democratic Party at the moment? And the purpose of the Democratic Party is to wield governmental power to extract resources from citizens and conduct them into a black hole that presumably consists of the real constituents of the Democratic Party, which are businesses that get contracts or whoever. So the things that have corrupted the Democratic Party so completely are not losing in this deal the way those of us who are uncomfortable walking down the street in Seattle, you know, during the night or whatever, we're suffering. But somebody, maybe in a gated community, maybe somebody who doesn't even live in the state and is conducting business here, those are the real constituents. And so this is, this is the point. Why is Gregoire fumbling to come up with an explanation for the size of the budget and the incompetence of the governance going together. Why can these current office holders not appear to recognize that they've set in motion an escalating pattern that will blow up in the end? Right. You are going to drive out the people who can afford to move because it's so obvious that you're going to have to tax them more. You know, as soon as some start moving, you have to tax the ones who are here more in order to make up for the deficit. So it's obvious to Gregoire and I'm. And I guess the interesting thing is that she's apparently not in on the behind the scenes conversation. She's just like grappling with like, what happened to basic good governance?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it does the obvious complaint against the Washington state legislature, as many blue state legislatures of late, is you just keep finding new ways to tax people and we see no benefit from it. And the deficit keeps getting larger. So how does, how does that work? Are you not in possession of a spreadsheet? Can you not do really, really basic math? She also says, and I don't think it was in this clip, but in the same venue, she also asks how many people in either the Democratic caucuses in the state of Washington come from a business background. Now, if I had heard her say that 20 years ago, I would have thought, why do I care? What does that matter? Because I didn't come from a business background and I didn't know why it would have mattered. Now that we run a business kind of like, you know, we're neither of us come from a business background, we find ourselves, you know, not being W2 employees, not being salaried and having an HR department that can take care of all of our problems. Now, now I see why that is very, very relevant. And I also see the naivete that many people on the left will have in response to that question. Like, what does it matter? Well, you can see what it matters in the ways that these decrees are coming down, the ways that the bno, that the business taxes are being changed, the, the, and, and the occasional clip from either a legislator or like, you know, the mayor of Seattle, as we showed last week or two weeks ago, having apparently no regard at all, like just feeling like we hate the rich. So good riddance. Like, do you actually know where the tax base is coming from? You. Do you not have any understanding of that at all? And that at one level feels like just a really basic error of not understanding math, but it also does reflect a misunderstanding of how systems work. The only thing you've ever been is effectively part of the company store, right? Like if you've only ever been either, you know, be it hourly or salaried, working for someone else who takes care of all the complications. And that doesn't mean that you're being treated well, that doesn't mean that you're being paid enough, that doesn't mean that conditions couldn't be better. But if they are taking care behind the scenes of all the complications of doing business, you actually don't have any idea. And that's not on you. If you don't claim to have some idea and try to make policy for those who do. It becomes a problem when we have an entire legislature that clearly has no idea what it is like to actually try to wrangle a business with all the complications in an entirely non first principles system where you can't just say, okay, I just need to think this through and go back to basics and figure out what is true. Like this is entirely a social construct. And with the legislature making new taxes, new laws all the time that add complexity, that's where you have people having to spend their time instead of on the innovation that is part of what made the state so great for the last 50 years.

[A]

I think the disconnect is the result of the fact that you have two components in this machine, right? You have one component that's actually driving, right, the thing that decides what policies it wants. And then you have the I, you know, it's become a hacking term, but the useful idiots on, you know, the woke left, the far left, the, you know, the average person who's enraged by the thing that they're told to be enraged by and is saying the right things and angry at the right people, us included. So those people are playing a role, which is they're providing a rationalization, not a rationale. This is one of these distinctions I draw. Rationale is the reason you do something. A rationalization is the false reason you claim to have done it. Right? They're providing the rationalization for why you would engage in terrible fiscal policy like this. Right? The answer is those people aren't paying enough and they're not taking care of these people. And that's why we've got to add this tax and add that tax. And the point is they don't know what they're talking about. I mean, Katie Wilson clearly doesn't know what she's talking about.

[B]

She's the mayor of Seattle.

[A]

She's the mayor of Seattle. And her purpose is to, you know, put a commanding face, to say tough things, to explain why we're doing these things and, oh, they're not really going to leave and all of that. Right. But she's not deciding on the policy. She doesn't know anything about it. She's effectively doing a job for the machine that actually has a purpose in doing this. And that purpose might be. One of the things that is hard for me to get past is the idea that the degradation of the west coast states is actually somehow part of a real estate scam where the idea is to depress property values, snap up that property which will always be in this most gorgeous, like no other place location, and then put it back together when you own it. Right. So I don't know if that's what's going on, but it's something like that, that this has the sense that we, we citizens have no control over that government structure. We are being forced to endure what it comes up with even when it does things like says the state of Washington now has the right to mandate any medical treatment as long as it's in the public interest.

[B]

Right.

[A]

What? Violating informed consent in the state of Washington. And nobody's going to say anything. Right.

[B]

And that was that, was that that new piece of legislation had the word emergency in it, which means that it can't be reversed by referendum.

[A]

Can't be reversed by referendum. And you could say the same thing across many different policy domains. The thing is working for somebody else and it is targeting us. And it keeps coming up with rationalizations for why we should want this. And at some point you can't beat it. Because our ability to elect people who actually just, just want to work for us, you know, we elect them, they do our bidding, they get popular and get reelected. That would be a natural, but we can't even do it. There's so much money in the system at the electoral level that it is impossible to displace the people sitting in those chairs with people who just simply wish to do the public's bidding.

[B]

Which is a decent segue to what you want to talk about. In which. Not that, but something unfortunately deeply related happened yesterday in Kentucky.

[A]

Yes. Well, yesterday in, in Kentucky, Thomas Massie was defeated in his primary bid against Ed. I think it's Gallerin or Gallerain. In the most expensive primary in American history, some 30 plus billion dollars were spent. Did I say billion?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Let me figure out what the exact numbers were. Yeah, that doesn't seem Right.

[B]

That seems impossible.

[A]

Sorry. Okay, but let me remember. Sorry. That's an embarrassing error. I'm so used to saying billions. Yeah. Ed Galrain was outraised in his personal campaign 2 to 1 by Massey, but he got a 16 to 10 ratio in pack money. So he got.

[B]

So hold up, you had Massie and what's the. What's the guy's name who won? G. Rain or G. So Massie pulled in more direct donations for his campaign in the primary. He's the incumbent two to one.

[A]

I think he got five million to G. Rain's. He got almost six million to G. Rayn's. Two and a half.

[B]

But Galrain pulled in something a similar ratio in the reverse. More in PAC money.

[A]

He got 16 million in PAC money and Massie got 10. 3 to 2. Yeah. And so anyway, PACs were the answer to what happened here. But the answer is even more interesting when you look at who was persuaded to vote for Galrain. So do you want to put up that poll? Okay, so here is the breakdown by age. I don't know how well this is going to show up on your screens at home, but they have age ranges.

[B]

There's no caption. There's like, what?

[A]

So we don't have the caption captured here. I'll explain it to you. So what you have is the Massy percentage in each of these age groups and then each of these generations in red, and then I guess Galrayn is in blue. So amongst 18 to 20, which is

[B]

a little confusing in terms of color coding because Galrain is also a Republican. This is a primary.

[A]

Fair enough.

[B]

Let me just say, like, Massey's on the left here.

[A]

Yeah, they're both.

[B]

And Galrain's on the right.

[A]

Yeah. So Gallerain or Gallerain was supported by Trump very vocally. So amongst 18 to 29 year olds, Massie got an 81.5. This is from five days before the primary. This poll, 81.5% of the voters. And then the older you get, this drops until you get to the very last age group, which is actually compiled here into 65 plus. But 18 to 29, Massey is 81.5% support. 30 to 44, he's 70.7%. 45 to 64, he is practically dead heat. Yeah, practically a dead heat. And 65 and over, he's at 38.9. So this was done.

[B]

And that those numbers end up resulting in him losing, because even though the demographics of Kentucky, which I didn't look into before we started talking about this, are presumably not super old, but the demographic of people. Excuse me, but the demographic of people who vote is very old as it is everywhere.

[A]

Yes, and this is one of the things I wanted to point out here. So all of the people who I have the same argument many, many times a year, somebody will tell me proudly that they don't vote because the system isn't democratic enough to be worth their time. And I say this is a mistake. You are taking yourself off the electoral map and you are making it impossible to distinguish between your interests and the interests of the tuned out voter. Right. If you're tuned in and disaffected, you don't want to be grouped with the tuned out people who are paying no attention to anything. And so anyway, here you can see, is our system Democratic? No. You have very few people in Congress who are representing your interests. But Thomas Massie has at least been not representing any party slate. He votes Republican 91% of the time, but votes against them when they do things like start new wars. He's voted against foreign aid. So in any case, this is a real live congressman who has now been primaried with a massive influx of money. A huge amount of it came from AIPAC and other. I don't know that the term Israel first donors is fair, but people who appear to be committed to American support for Israel no matter what it does, under, you know, all conditions. So you had a massive influx of money that wasn't about Kentucky at all. Do you want to show that? AIPAC's Twitter account. So AIPAC is retweeting an account called the APAC Tracker. The APAC tracker displays how much money people have gotten from aipac. So it does this for all of the members of the executive and legislative branch. You can see Massie has taken zero and Galerin has taken 15 and a half million dollars. So massive influx from a resolutely pro American support for Israel pack. So this isn't about Kentucky. And yeah, you know, the, the.

[B]

Whereas Massey is.

[A]

Massey is, and I will say his race got kind of nationalized. I participated this at the point that it was clear that he was facing a serious challenge with massive monetary influx from outside. This looked to me like a referendum on consent of the governed. I donated to the campaign. I suggested that other people donated the campaign. Massie raised a couple million dollars in, I don't know, week and a half or something like that. Obviously it wasn't enough, but what this really says is you've got a body, a legislative body that's supposed to work for us. And we are supposed to be choosing. You know, the way it's supposed to work is we're all supposed to want a strong, effective country that is good for the citizens. We can have disagreements over how to get there, what the policy elements are of good governance, but those people are supposed to be representing us. What we have is a legislative body that doesn't represent us at all and does represent other people, people who have been able to buy influence or seat their own candidates or whatever they're doing. And the point is, that's actually a terrifying predicament to be in because of exactly the thing that the founders understood so well. The founders, the American founders, when they constructed our country, had experienced tyranny from the crown and their project. The federalizing of these colonies was specifically built in many different regards to frustrate that exact type of power. The ability of a king or an oligarchy to simply inflict its will on the citizenry was anathema to them. And so all sorts of things about our system were actually. They seem mundane to us because we were all born into a system that had them. But things like, you know, the standard in a criminal court that you have to be proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I mean, this is one of these things, it seems like, oh, that's how much. How strong the proof should have to be. Why? Because if you use the logical standard, which is a preponderance of the evidence, the standard we use in a civil court where there is no governmental power, if you use that standard, the extra power that comes from being the government and having the ability to search your home and do all of these other things is overwhelming us little people would stand a chance. You have to set a standard so high that even in the context of tyranny, you still get your day in court. You have to be shown the evidence against you. You have to be able to confront the witnesses against you. That's how it's supposed to work. Because the founders were so worried that we would get to a place where we were unrepresented against a power that simply decides what it wants to do for its reasons and not our reasons. That's where we are again. We're right there.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

You know, you had one good congressman, and now he's gone. Right? That's an amazing turn of events. And I think the reason that I see this as part of a connected tyrannical threat is over here in the state of Washington, you have financial shenanigans that are actually, frankly, from the point of view of citizens of this state frightening, because it's pretty clear we didn't choose to let the. The services of the state degrade, and we didn't choose to inflate the budget to an insane number, and we didn't choose to not investigate where all the money is going. Right. This has all happened. I mean, what was that story two weeks ago you pointed me to? Half a billion dollars was the Homelessness

[B]

Authority that was started in Seattle in 2019 has just been. Been disbanded with the acknowledgement that homelessness has not gotten any better in Seattle. In fact, it has gotten worse in the six or seven years since it was started. And the funds were misspent, and a substantial portion of them are simply missing half a billion dollars.

[A]

Half a billion dollars. How do you misplace half a billion dollars? That's a huge amount of money. And so the point is, that's like the curtain getting pulled back this far. That's like, okay, money disappears. It's going somewhere. And it didn't go to the thing that people thought they were voting for. Take care of the homeless. Well, it didn't go there. That's a lot of money, like, per homeless person. So. So anyway, I guess that was.

[B]

That was Seattle specific rather than state.

[A]

Yeah, that was Seattle. But we are now getting the same message across domains after domain. Right. This governance thing doesn't care about us. It is supposed to be us governing ourselves through representatives. That's not what it is. It has very little of that ingredient. Left, right. Thomas Massie was a concentrated drop of that ingredient in a big bucket full of other stuff. And he had to go. You know, that is interesting that it rises to the level of a president targeting him and these massive donations from these outside groups, groups. You know, that was too much democracy. Thomas Massie was too much democracy for the people who run our system. And we need to understand that every time we get a little bit of democracy into the system, that thing comes and it unhooks it. And whether that's President Trump behaving in a way that does not match what he promised us when he was elected, or that's Bobby Kennedy being a very clear and I think a good actor who gets into office and we go from the things that were high on the American priority list with respect to improving the health of Americans. And, you know, we get little things. We get food dyes and other small concessions, but the big things that we were concerned about have been sidelined. Right. That's not Bobby's doing. That's something having exerted control, sidelined or

[B]

the opposite it that what the Maha movement was expecting and hope for has happened and expansion per President Trump of glyphosate production in order to somehow secure the interest and security of the nation. And this other story I wanted to touch on briefly Department of Fish and Wildlife after Federal Department of Fish and Wildlife after many, many concerns, many investigations by the epa, by various legitimate advocacy groups looking into atrazine, which we've talked about before, we talked in depth about in episode I want to say 2182 back in July of 2023. Atracene is a widely used insecticide. No herbicide, sorry, widely used herbicide just like glyphosate. Different, very different thing. But glyphosate and atracene are both widely used herbicides. Atracene is, has been known for a long time to cause hormonal and developmental disruption in amphibians. In fact, I was lucky enough to be at one of the early talks of Dr. Tyrone Hayes in which he was discussing some of his early work on this. And then we've talked before about some of his work. But here's one of them if you can see my screen here. This is from 2003. Atracine induced hermaphroditism at 0.1 parts per billion in American leopard frogs, Rana pipiens laboratory and field evidence. This is Hayes and his and his group at Berkeley where he's in an endocrinologist and also in the Museum of Zoology there or Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, an extraordinary researcher doing extraordinary work. This of course, like this is what Alex Jones was on about when he was on about they're turning the frickin frogs gay. Well no, they're not turning the frickin frogs gay. They're turning them into really confused aggressive pseudo hermaphrodites which doesn't have quite the same ring to it. But you know, it is this like atrazine is the thing that does it and it is known, it is, it is well established and as we actually write about in our book here actually in Hunter Gatherer's guide to the 20th 21st century in the very end of the Sex and gender chapter. Interesting. I thought we had talked more about it, maybe just we lost it in edits. But the only place that we mentioned atrazine in the book is at the end of the sex and gender chapter in the Corrective Lens we say keep contaminants away from fetuses and children. In several species of frogs there is an established relationship between exposure to common environmental contaminants like atrazine and herbicide and an increase in hermaphroditic individuals. While sex determination in frogs is different than in humans, we will not be surprised if it turns out that some of the modern confusion around sex and gender ends up attributable to widespread endocrine disruptors in our environment. Environment. And we footnote to a couple of research papers there, including this Hayes et al. Paper from 2003. So, yes, frogs are not humans and humans are not frogs, but the idea that this is a known endocrine disruptor in other species of vertebrates and it also has a half life that is incredibly long, that it doesn't decay in soil with any speed at all, and it actually takes more than 100 days to. It has more than 100 days half life in water. It's incredible. Like, most of us are exposed to Atracene on the regular and it is a known endocrine disruptor. So, you know, our audience is going to be well familiar with other endocrine disruptors in the environment, but atracene has just now, after, you know, many years been basically given a pass by Fish and Wildlife here in the States. And, you know, the, like, the stupid media connection here is that when we talked about this last, looks like I may have, I may have lost it. But in 2000, in 2023, the New York Times was busy complaining about how Bobby Kennedy had all these conspiracy theories, including that atrazine might be involved in gender confusion. And just now, and if you want to pick up something in a minute, I'll, I'll find this new article. Now the York Times is talking about this Fish and Wildlife decision, but claiming that it's a Trump administration decision. So now they don't seem the New York Times, and this is of course not the first time we've said this to have opinions based on anything like independent thought or critical thought. They have their opinions entirely based on whether or not they like the person or the administration that it comes out under. And that is how they frame it and that's how they know it to think. And this is the opposite of how, of how we win as individuals and as a society. Like, you just cannot operate by looking at other people and going like, well, does the right person think what I want them to think? Okay, I'll do that. It's insane.

[A]

Yeah, well, logic does not work with you starting from the conclusion and working backwards. And the problem with this team mentality is that it does exactly that. And Bobby Kennedy is confusing to them because he comes from what was once their team. Their team became intolerable. He's now working for the other team. But the values. The environmentalist is still the environmentalist, and he's saying very reasonable things based on his encyclopedic knowledge of them. But nonetheless, this is all. Now, if you look at what the Maha Moves movement was about in the run up to the 2024 election, and you look at what fraction of that has been put on the national agenda and frankly, what losses we've taken, you know, with immunity for glyphosate, this is. This is a strange battle, but the message is the same. It's not. We do not rate in their calculus. How that works, I don't know. Presumably, yes, they all eat organic and they think that's got them safe from glyphosate, but it doesn't make you perfectly safe. Frankly, I have been avoiding all wine from California, organic or not. Why? Because it all has glyphosate in it. Even the organic stuff. Yeah, right.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

That's an insane thing. You can't even protect yourself. But somehow this system has been driven by people who have a certain insulation from the consequences of the system. And you can imagine if you discovered that power was proportional to the amount of wealth you were willing to throw at the question of governmental policy, and you were very, very well positioned, you might think, oh, that's a system I can live in, one in which I have disproportionate power. Sure. But the point is, we have to understand what has happened. We are being treated like cattle on a feedlot. And that's the message from everything that's going on. The part of it that looks like democratic governance is increasingly theater. And any little piece that isn't is targeted. What does that tell you?

[B]

Yeah, just to provide the receipts for what I referenced earlier, this piece in the New York Times from 2023, which we talked about at the time, seven noteworthy falsehoods Rober Kennedy Jr. Has promoted. I'm not going to go through all of them. I think we did earlier, but I'll put it in the show notes. But, you know, he's falsely linked vaccines to various medical conditions, etc. The fourth one is he has made baseless claims about a connection between gender dysphoria and chemical exposure. A lot of the problems we see in kids, he is quoted as saying on Jordan Peterson's podcast, particularly boys. It's probably underappreciated how much of that is coming from chemical exposures. Including a lot of sexual dysphoria that we're seeing. He's said he referred to research on an herbicide, atracine, in which scientists found that it, quote, induces complete feminization and chemical castration, end quote, in certain frogs. And the New York Times continues three years ago, but no evidence exists to indicate that the chemical typically. Typically used on farms to kill weeds causes the same effects in humans, let alone gender dysphoria. Well, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence and all the reason in the world to think that it would. The default assumption should be that if it's having such extraordinarily disruptive effects in pretty low amounts in frogs, that it's going to have some effect in humans, even though amphibians are effectively, you know, amphibians are with regard to environmental exposures, the canaries in the coal mine, because they are amphibians, because they have life stages that are both some in water, some in land. And so they get it coming both ways. So that's part of why amphibians do fail first in systems and why we can use them as an indicator of the troubles to come.

[A]

Yeah, I think your. Your use of canary in the coal mine is exactly right. They are early indicators. But there's just a basic piece of logic here, A, you're intervening in a complex system, you can expect unintended consequences. Here is one. Nobody intended to mess with the sex characteristics of frogs. They show up as a blaring signal that this chemical does that, but that frogs, and we inherited our male female distinction from an ancestor that had it. So the point is that system is not completely reinvented, and there's reason to imagine that things that disrupt something with such an ancient ancestry would be consistent across creatures. So the upshot of that logic is you would expect frogs to be much more sensitive, but you would expect us to respond to the same kinds of disruptions.

[B]

Yes, although the particular mode of sexual determination is different. Inherited, but.

[A]

But doesn't matter.

[B]

But yes, we have. We have been since before frogs exist and before humans existed in the same lineage with frogs, uninterrupted sexually reproducing beings with two and only two and no more than two and no fewer than two sexes for at least half a billion years, perhaps as many as 2 billion. So that was from New York Times in 2023. Here we have from just a little bit less than three years later, different administration. Right. And so the New York Times feels that anything coming out of the government now is inherently bad. That seems to be the logic behind Fish and Wildlife Service clears a weed killer, saying it won't cause extinctions. The finding effectively paves the way for continued use of atrazine, a widely used herbicide that has been linked to birth defects of cancer in humans. Canc Now, I agree with this headline. I agree with this article. But what changed in three years, other than the politics? Because the science has not changed, how it affects the frogs has not changed, how it affects the humans has not changed. And yes, there continues to be research, but the research itself does not point in a different direction now than it did three years ago. So let's just see the framing in the first paragraph here. It's a different author, et cetera. But still, the Trump administration has determined that atrazine, a weed killer used widely on corn and other crops, does not pose an extinction risk to threatened or endangered wildlife, effectively justifying its continued use, according to a federal review made public this week. Now, that framing itself is unfair. The Trump administration didn't do this. The official Department of Fish and Wildlife under the Trump administration, with undue communications from members of the Trump administration. I don't know. Is that possible? Sure. Did that happen? Maybe. Is that even claimed in here? No. So that is a strange framing to begin this article with. But the fact is, in the end, this New York Times article reads like the kind of article other than that, that I would want in a news source that the very end here we have. It's not a very long article. There is limited direct evidence linking atrazine exposure to declines of threatened or endangered animal species. Substantial evidence exists, however, that atracene can cause endocrine disruption and other harms and amphibians. So of course there's limited direct evidence that it is the thing causing declines and threatened or extinct species. Because imagine how, like, how rare it would be to have that kind of evidence for anything. Just like the. Statistically, you're not going to have that kind of evidence. That's not the way evidence shows up in field science. However, we get to basically the right conclusion here, a conclusion that we couldn't arrive at from the same publication three years ago, because then the argument was against a guy, Bobby Kennedy, who was making a lot of sense, but they couldn't see it. And now the argument they're trying to frame this as against a guy, the current president, even though he may or may not have had anything to do with this, and clearly he doesn't have his fingers really, really deep in fish and wildlife, this is the wrong decision from Fish and Wildlife. But why we are continuing to politicize that as opposed to try to understand what the science is and get these freaking toxins out of our ecosystems? I don't. You don't know?

[A]

Well, I would argue that more or less the game is you've got different teams of corrupting forces and a lot of overlap, but that basically the New York Times, which once upon a time I think was a newspaper, has now become a broadcaster of team propaganda.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so that does invert depending upon who has power and who doesn't have power. And so. So basically what you can infer from the New York Times is whether or not their corrupting force is in favor of this corruption or if that's a competing corrupting force that's pushing it. And you know, it's an absurd way to live, but you know what? It isn't. It isn't about us people and what we should want. This is about a tyrannical force that doesn't have a name, that is beginning to. Is continuing to degrade the quality of life for citizens without appearing to care at all that it's doing it.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Again, we don't rank. We're like animals on a feedlot. Right. People go to McDonald's, they don't think a lot about the life of the cow that produced their hamburger. It's actually many cows.

[B]

When you have a hamburger, McDonald's from like multiple hemispheres.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it totally is. Is. All right, are we there with respect to atrazine and that set of considerations? Okay, so one final piece from my side. I wanted to highlight the discussion that is now happening over eminent domain as a result primarily of a project in Georgia, a 17 billion dollar. That's where my. My billion dollar gap earlier in the episode came from. A $17 billion project to put a data center in Georgia that is apparently going to take more power than a nuclear reactor would typically deliver. Massive project and eminent domain is being used to usher people out of their homes to make way for this. I think it's an 800 acre project and all of the lines that will have to feed it. So can we show the video of a young woman, 27 years old. I think her name is Ainsley Brown, who has caught the attention of a large fraction of the public here.

[B]

Hey, you guys, my name is Ansley. I live in Coweta County, Georgia. I wanted to come out here and show you guys firsthand what is happening to our county. So as you can see behind me, we have these power lines Georgia Power is going to expand these lines to support power to the data center. What they're doing to homeowners is they're taking their homes. This is my childhood home behind me. It is being taken by force by Georgia Power. Homeowners in this county do not have a choice. It is called eminent domain and they will take it.

[A]

Okay, so she's put up several videos highlighting homeowners. One of the her other videos, homeowners having part of their property commandeered. So some massive right of way is going to be put through their backyard. It's going to eliminate their pool. And she actually has the homeowner there. And the person says, look, we're too old to rebuild what we've built here. Yes, they did offer to buy the entire home if we wanted that, but for a fraction of what it's worth. And so basically they're being put in this utterly impossible position even before you consider what it might mean to be that close to, to lines carrying that much power with that much of an electromagnetic field. But I wanted to, I wanted to put this in context because if you take what I said earlier in the broadcast about there's a thing with a ton of power and it's now doing exactly the thing that the American founders feared when they constructed our country, something we were supposed to be able to prevent. What it is doing is, it is using the terrifying power of government to do what what other people who are able to buy their influence over the system want done, irrespective of the harm to us. And in my house, eminent domain was a relatively frequent topic of discussion. My grandfather remembered the story of Chavez Ravine in which a bunch of in la Latin American immigrants were thrown out of their homes to make way for Dodger Stadium. It was something he, he was a Los Angeleno and he had lived through this period. And so anyway, he talked to us about eminent domain. This was not, I think, a clear cut case of it, the Chavez Ravine case, for a reason that I think people need to understand. So eminent domain apparently goes back into antiquity and nobody knows how far back, but it derives from the fact that the monarch was presumed to have the right to do anything that he wanted to do. That begins to get limited with the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta outlines that we, the public, actually have rights and our Constitution is derived from the Magna Carta. Our Constitution actually formally enshrines eminent domain with a limit in the Fifth Amendment Amendment. And what the Fifth Amendment says is that government cannot deprive you of your property without just compensation.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So you have two concepts there, or three concepts. One is the government can deny you, it can take your property, but it cannot do it, not only without compensating you, but the compensation has to be just. It can't cheat you. And so the way eminent domain is supposed to work, work is if there is a public project, then the government can decide you are in the way of this public project. We have the right to buy it from you, but we will buy it from you for what it's worth, so you can go buy something of similar value somewhere else. That's the way it's supposed to work. This gets complicated in the 19th century as a result of railroad. And the reason that railroads complicate the issue is that railroads obviously cut through an arbitrary set of properties because where you put the railroad is dictated by the form of the land. There are mountains that rails can't climb, so you put them where they go. And the point is, well, who was there beforehand? Do they have a right to keep their property and stop a railroad? Well, no, but unlike the government saying, well, we're going to buy your property and put in a railroad, it's private corporations putting in the railroad. So in this case, the courts, in a case called Bloodgood vs. Moak Hudson, that case in 1837 enshrines the government's right to exert eminent domain in cases where the entity doing the building is actually private. Now, in the case of railroads, now knowing the history of the country, I think we can all recognize that although that's a frightening barrier to breach, it's understandable why it was in the interests of the public. It was certainly in the interests of all sorts of barons to be able to take property. But it was in the interest of the nation to have a system of railroads that facilitated the transportation of people and goods.

[B]

And many of us would argue that it's not in the interest of that nation to have all of those things themselves be governmental services.

[A]

Right, Right.

[B]

So if we, if we want to keep eminent domain entirely governmental, that means that we are arguing for the public nature of all of the major services, which many more of us now than 10 years ago even would argue sounds like an invitation to tyranny. And no, we don't want that.

[A]

Yep, exactly. So you don't want the creation of a public bureaucracy where private, private enterprise is going to do a better job of doing the work. You need something public spirited to balance the rights of individuals against the rights of the nation to do things that are Actually in our interest. Right. And I think every reasonable person would agree that it is both frightening and that there are cases in which it is likely necessary. Now, when an entity that is doing this is private without government power. In other words, when somebody wants to put up a shopping center or another private enterprise, they have to buy you out for what you want. Right.

[B]

So most people, you get to set your price.

[A]

Right, you get to set your price. This is traditional. So you get to set your plans.

[B]

And that was. That was established with the. Whatever it was. Bloodgood versus Mohawk and Hudson.

[A]

That Bloodgood versus Mohawk and Hudson is basically the erosion of this principle. The originally, if the government said it since the Constitution, if the government said we get to take your property, they had to justly compensate you. And you couldn't say no, a private enterprise didn't have that power, which then creates a game theoretic.

[B]

But justly compensate doesn't say anything about whether or not you get to set your price.

[A]

No, justly compensated doesn't say that the government gets to determine what your property is worth the same way that they assess its value currently in order to figure out what to tax you on it.

[B]

So I was just curious about when I get to set my own price. If you're going to take my land shows up.

[A]

You don't get to do that when it's the government. You do get to do it when it's a purely private enterprise like a shopping center. And so that creates actually an interesting phenomenon, something Eric pointed out to me many years ago, which is something called. Called in China, they would be called nail houses. In the west, they're often called holdout houses. But anyway, I've got. I've sent you a few images of these things. So this one, I believe is actually in Seattle. Here's somebody who refused to sell their property, and I think it might be an apartment complex was put up around

[B]

it can't be fun, though.

[A]

This one, I believe is in China. I don't know how yet. So it's amazing actually how many of them are in China, which does not really fit with my understanding of how China has worked. But this person has obviously.

[B]

So for people listening, what are we looking at?

[A]

We're looking at a house that appears to be in the middle of some kind of road. How that works, I don't know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right, go ahead. Here's another same thing. A house smack dab in the middle of a road. You got to admire these people. Here's a place where a giant excavation for some sort this is, again, as in China. And I think that the roof of this one says SOS on it.

[B]

But this one, this doesn't make any sense because the building is built at the bottom of the quarry.

[A]

I think. I think something has been built up around it in preparation for. Okay, okay, next one. This one, I think, is fascinating. This is a grave site that somebody refused to allow to be moved. So it now. An excavation has been done around it, and it's now sitting on, like, an artificial maze mesa.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And then that one is in Chicago.

[B]

I was gonna say that looks like

[A]

the U.S. yeah, that's a Chicago. It's a. Like an old.

[B]

And that's beautiful. Like, that actually really reveals, like, the. The buildings around it in this case aren't by any means the ugliest modern buildings you've ever seen, but they are so hideous by comparison to that. Whatever, you know, late 19th century, early 20th century architecture that remains.

[A]

Yep. Yeah, I agree. And that the contrast is really, really stunning here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But anyway, the point is, if it's purely a private enterprise, you get to say no, which means you can set your price. And ultimately, if you refuse to sell, they have to build around you. If the government wants your property, it gets to set the price, and you don't get the right to say no. And then with the data centers, the Bloodgood Railroad decision, we. We breach that boundary and we start to blur this distinction, and the government can now liberate you of your property using eminent domain and hand it to a developer when it deems it in the public's interest. And then there's another decision that makes this even worse later on. This is kilo versus the city of New London in 2005.

[B]

That's in the US though.

[A]

Yeah, I think so. Yes.

[B]

Connecticut.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And it, for the first time, enshrines into law the idea that you can be liberated of your. What was their term? Your, I think, unblighted home. That a perfectly good home can be taken from you if it's part of an economic renewal project, checked for your neighborhood. Right. So they can give it to a developer. So this spooked a lot of states, and something more than 45 states have enacted either constitutional provisions or laws to prevent this from happening in those states. But in at least, we are not among them. I think. Think for. No, we are among them. We are among them. But in any case, what I want to highlight here with the Georgia project and Ansley Brown and her pointing to these homeowners who have done nothing to deserve this. They are having their homes liberated by government, which is not paying them just value.

[B]

And why are you using their term of liberation? This seems like a disgusting use of it.

[A]

They're having their homes stolen by government on behalf of a private developer for a project that none of us signed off on. Right. Notice we have not had the proper public discussion to say whether or not we want massive data centers with massive energy and water requirements or we want, want the right to decide collectively where those things should go, what limit should be put on them. The idea is if it's progress, we're going to do it. It's all private.

[B]

But that's, that's not new. Right. Like, presumably there was no giant, lots of people involved discussion about the railways. That was obviously well, well before our time. But there was no giant, lots of people involved discussion about wind farms or giant solar farms.

[A]

But here's the difference, both of which

[B]

are now, I think, increasingly w understood to have been extraordinary mistakes.

[A]

Yep. So here's, here's my argument and historians may correct me here, but once upon a time we did send representatives to represent us in discussions where those things were decided. We're not, I'm not an expert on data centers. I don't know what their energy requirements are, what might come in the future. I don't know any of those things. I'm not supposed to have to. I'm supposed to have a representative who stands for me in those conversations and decides whether or not it's actually in the public's interest, A, to have these things, B, to put them here rather than there. I'm not involved in those discussions. I'm entitled to be, but I'm not. Right.

[B]

Whereas. But separately, we see evidence that the people whom we have elected to represent us have no idea what's going on. So that's the connection here.

[A]

Yes. They have no idea what's going on. Or if they do, they're actually, actually working for somebody else whose name I don't know and they may not even know. Right. And the thing that is absolutely clearest here is we all, if we imagine that we, the public, all have symmetrical rights with each other, we all have the right and should want eminent domain to be held to not only in terms of the sober responsibility of taking your property from you, but the obligation to pay justly for. For it. Right. The fact that the state does not represent us, of course they would cheat and pay you too little. Of course they would. That's the whole point. Right. The point is this isn't about you, frankly, we'll pay whatever we can get away with. If we could take your property without paying you anything, we'd do it because it's never going to happen to us. Right? The people running the system are not the people living under the system. They have exemptions. When they decide that they're going to surveil us, us. They presumably know how the surveillance works. They have mechanisms to avoid their stuff from registering. So

[B]

most states have property taxes. Maybe all states, I'm not sure. Property taxes historically famously lag the actual value of the property somewhat. You don't necessarily get reassessed until you sell, but it should be reassessed more often than not. But most places there's a lag, but there's, there's not a really substantive lag. It seems to me that that at baseline, just, just at the, at the worst case scenario should be the benchmark by which homeowners are being told what their homes are worth, given that they've been paying taxes into the system based on that assessed value.

[A]

Yes, I agree. And I don't know what the assessed value of these homes is and whether that is setting the price that's being paid for them. But I think the, the overarching picture is clear. Eminent domain is now showing up again. Why? Because data centers are suddenly necessary. Huge energy requirements are necessary. The right of way to get the energy from place to place, the power plants that are going to have to be put up. Eminent domain is coming. There is not. I've seen several people argue and frankly I don't know if there's a good counter argument to it. It but sounds compelling to me on first pass. Why aren't we sticking these data centers in the blighted parts of Detroit? You know, there you have a block on block of abandoned buildings. There's obviously economic stagnation. If you were going to put them somewhere, put them somewhere where you're not taking. Where you're taking houses from as few people as possible.

[B]

Where you potentially unblight an area.

[A]

You unblight an area.

[B]

Not that data centers are beautiful, but

[A]

it's better than, well, let's put it this way. I don't know long term whether there are a lot of jobs associated with these things. My guess is they're going to run with not that large a population of people. I don't know. But building them is certainly going to require a lot of labor. So maybe the point is Detroit could have an aria. I mean, look, I don't mean to pick on Detroit, but the Point is, if you've been to Detroit, we just

[B]

happen to have lived near Detroit for many years. And yeah, familiar with it's, it's very sad state.

[A]

So there are places that this would not be a giant step down, right? It would be industrial rather than, rather than residential. But there are places where you wouldn't want to live anyway. And so. And if that came with a big influx of money because somebody's putting in, you know, a $17 billion structure, then that brings in money that could be used for urban revitalization or whatever. So again, I don't know if there's a flaw. I don't know if that's just, you know, what it looks, you know, not in my backyard, but okay, that's okay in your backyard. I don't know if that's what I'm seeing, but at least I see an argument for it. And unfortunately, nobody is minding the store on our behalf. The power of government is terrifying. It is in. It has been captured by, by entities that we have no influence over. And it is now using that. You can see it. Eminent domain is the tip of the spear, right? It's coming for us. It's coming for our houses. Our right to say no doesn't exist because the constitution says the government has the right to take that property. And no kidding, they're going to under assess it and pay you too little because why wouldn't they? What do they care about you and your ability to recreate your life so somewhere else they don't. So anyway, that be the picture as I see it.

[B]

Okay, well, I have something better to end with.

[A]

Awesome. Yeah.

[B]

So Natural Selections, my substack. For many weeks now, I've been posting stories that I invited from the COVID era. And there have been some extraordinary ones. I have been. Yeah, I still have many dozens to look at that I haven't even looked at at yet. They've been truly remarkable. But this week, for the first time, I posted something entirely different. So this is not a Covid error story. This is a short piece, most of which comes is verbatim from something I wrote 12 years ago yesterday. 12 years ago from the date that I posted it. Shadow thoughts. Memories of childhoods. So the preamble I wrote 2 days ago. 12 years ago, when I was still a college professor and my children were young, we had a life that seemed identical, idyllic. We lived in a house in the forest across a dead end road from yet more forest, hundreds of acres in fact, forest dominated by western red cedar, which swallows light and furs and hemlocks, which stay green all year round, and maples of two types, big leaf maples spreading tall and wide, and underneath the vine maples, elegant and slim, their leaves bringing pale new green to the understory in spring. In that forest across the road, the boys and the dog could roam, building forts, climbing trees, and walking the deer paths back home. And here I have a picture from that era of Toby balancing, Zach considering, and the dog snarling. Our house in the woods was large and difficult to heat but well loved. Our boys shared a room. Even though we had enough space that they could have had their own, we thought it was good for them to share theirs. Was the room over the garage with a sharply slanted ceiling and a trapezoidal window at the far end, which looked out over the driveway and to the cedar tree that Toby once climbed to the very, the very top, the really charming windows, though the thing that made their room special was the line of clerestory windows along the top of the long wall through which rays of sun came in when season and weather and time of day aligned just so. At other times, moonlight streamed in more often. At night those windows were just black rectangles, suggesting an abyss on the other side. Twelve years ago today, on May 19, 2014, I wrote the following about being in that very room with my boys. I lie on the top of my children's bunk bed, late evening light filtering through trees blowing in a soft wind, the light filtering in through clerestory windows. This line of windows is just below the high spot on their room's slanted ceiling, which, at its lowest on the other side of the room, requires even the shortest among us to crouch. The three of us lie here crosswise on the bed, feet up against the wall, looking up at the windows in the fading light, the shadows flickering on the smooth, dry wall above us, perfect in which to see images at night. I see animals in the shadows, toby Sundays. He is eight. I saw a whale and a shark last night. The shark scared me a little. I see planes and cars, his elder brother offers. Zach is 10. I watched a single engine biplane fly in. He considers his claim in the careful, honest way that he does. I couldn't actually see all of that detail in the shadows, but I knew it was there because of what kind of plane I was seeing. I think it's interesting, toby says thoughtfully, that I see animals and Zaxy's machines. We see what we're interested in. My goodness, I think what an insight he has in a single moment, recognized how our individual desires and histories, how our personal biases create meaning around us. He has understood that what he thinks he has seen is in fact a creation of his own mind. He would not argue that Zack's World War I plane is not a plane, but a whale. They can see the same shadow and interpret it differently. They do not bicker about interpretation because they know at base that it is just that, interpretation. What they are seeing is shadows. Shadows made as a setting sun in late spring flows through cedars and furs and big leaf maples and into these high windows in their room. Their room where on this rare occasion their mother is lying with them after bedtime and talking about whatever it is that comes up. I look now not at the shadows on the ceiling, but at our three sets of legs propped lengthwise up against the wall. Shadows on them coming from the faint light in the hall. The bottoms of our three pairs of loose pants have slid. Slid down to the knees, exposing calf flesh that is repeated in pairs ever larger, three times. The light levels are not quite low enough for the image to be in black and white, but that moment is coming, that moment when color turns off. I feel an image burning itself into my mind's eye, an image of these legs, a memory of this conversation. Will this be one of the memories that either of my boys carries forward from child childhood? There are the repeated events which will be remembered in varying degrees of truth and fiction. The energy of the house on mornings before school, how field trips to Eastern Washington allowed them to run loose in an expansive landscape. How playing with their cats and their dog felt. And there are the big events, the outlines of which are certainly known, even if the details are held differently in everyone's their grandfather's death, the trip to Ecuador just a few months later. But what predicts which few memories, insignificant on their face, will be the ones that. That come up unbidden in adulthood. I lay there and listened to my boys talk, talking about how their preferences for nature versus engineering probably informed what they saw in their ceiling at night. And I looked at our legs and I thought, this I will remember. Is it less if this is not something that they will remember as well?

[A]

Wow, I'm really glad you captured that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, that brings back so much that, as you point out in the piece, might not return otherwise.

[B]

The obviously the most important thing is the children in the moment with them and capturing who they were then. But even just that spot in that house, which, you know, I say in here, it was too large and difficult to heat. But boy, did we love that house? Right. And we put a lot of ourselves into it. We did a lot of. We. We hired people to put work into it but we did a lot of the work ourselves. And that room of theirs was amazing. And it was their room for so many years. And I've got a picture from when we bought the house and it was someone else's room. And I've got a picture from when we sold the house. And in that last year we had finally split them so that they finally had their own rooms. And there's no place bunk bed. I don't know that I have a picture of the room with them that they grew up in with the bunk bed and the clerestory windows and clear story windows were there always. But a bunk bed in a room with clerestory windows where you can peer out or lie and look and look at the light coming in is a very rare thing. And you know that's. It was in some ways central to how we raised our children. And we may have no actual photographic evidence of it.

[A]

It's amazing how much many of these, I mean when something is so common in your experience, it doesn't register that it will be gone and you will wish you had the ability to, to look at it and remind yourself of the details of it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But anyway that's really cool. And yes, you did capture both of them and interesting. I mean, you know Zach is in college studying engineering. Engineering. Toby is in college studying biology. That thread was there from the get go.

[B]

It was. And they both, I mean they both have the interest in, in the other for sure. And you know, Zach is studying engineering and design and you know how, you know the, the not just the functionality but the beauty of human made things and how they interface with humans. And watching both of them with our animals now, you know their animals, our animals is, is extraordinary. They both have deep love there there but the initial instinct and it was sort of there. It seemed like from the beginning for both of them to be drawn more towards one thing than the other and to see that revealed in what they see in shadows. It's like what you see in clouds. You know, it could be anything. It's a Rorschach test.

[A]

Yep, it's a Rorschach test. Yeah.

[B]

All right, we will be back same time next week. I think it's Wednesday. Right. I've been having a hard time figuring

[A]

out what is Wednesday.

[B]

I know that yesterday wasn't ah, that's not sufficient information.

[A]

But you knew that evidence all the same yeah.

[B]

Okay. Check out our sponsors this week, which I can't remember what they were. They were Mud, Water, Sauna, Space and Helix. All, as always, excellent, excellent products, excellent sponsors. Please check them out, find us on locals, and until you see see us next time, be good to the ones you love. Eat good food and get outside.

[A]

Be well, everyone.