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- [00:00]
Isaac Saul
Does it ever feel like you're a.
- [00:02]
Camille Foster
Marketing professional just speaking into the void?
- [00:06]
Ari Weitzman
Well, with LinkedIn ads you can know.
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Camille Foster
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- [00:21]
Isaac Saul
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Camille Foster
We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign.
- [00:26]
Isaac Saul
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- [00:32]
Ari Weitzman
Can I make my site softer?
- [00:33]
Isaac Saul
Can I make my site firmer?
- [00:35]
Camille Foster
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Isaac Saul
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Camille Foster
Sleep number Smart beds offer temperature solutions.
- [00:54]
Isaac Saul
For your best sleep. Check it out at a Sleep number store or sleepnumber.com today. When you're starting off with something new.
- [01:02]
Camille Foster
It seems like your to do list keeps growing. Finding the right tool helps. And that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of US e commerce. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything.
- [01:17]
Ari Weitzman
From managing inventory to international shipping.
- [01:19]
Camille Foster
If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial@shopify.com retail. Go to shopify.com retail.
- [01:31]
Isaac Saul
Coming up, we talk the Trump Russia Zelensky latest a very interesting report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and a discussion about this very, very, very intense article from the Atlantic about Canadians and medical assistance in dying. Yes, a quick warning that we are gonna do a whole segment on something that is pretty, pretty related to medically induced suicide. So fair warning for anyone who has any kind of particular sensitivities to that issue. It's a really good, interesting episode. You guys are going to enjoy it.
- [02:11]
Ari Weitzman
From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.
- [02:26]
Isaac Saul
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to Suspension of the Rules, our newest podcast here from Tangle Media, Tangle News, whatever we're going to decide to call ourselves. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. I'm here with Camille Foster, our editor at large, and Ari Weitzman, our managing editor. And I just got done reading about an Eric Adams advisor trying to give a journalist a bag of potato chips full of cash, which is maybe my new favorite New York City corruption story of all Time. How are you gentlemen doing today?
- [03:00]
Camille Foster
I'm doing good. Although I don't know if we can call $100 a bunch of cash.
- [03:05]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, it depends the denomination.
- [03:07]
Camille Foster
Like, I know journalists aren't doing that well, but come on.
- [03:10]
Isaac Saul
Did you see? I think my favorite part of the whole story was that the woman was. Her, like, attorney reached out and said that it was. She apologized. It was part of her Chinese culture to just give. I was like, every time I hear.
- [03:24]
Camille Foster
It, it's a brib.
- [03:27]
Isaac Saul
That's the best that you guys could do is that it's part of a. It's just a cultural thing to pay off people. Journalists who you just met with $100 bills stuffed into potato chips. I should actually.
- [03:39]
Camille Foster
Have you ever been to a Nigerian wedding, though, are throwing money on you so you smile?
- [03:45]
Isaac Saul
Bride exchange for bride?
- [03:48]
Camille Foster
No. If you're the new bride, that's what they do. They're just hitting you with money. They're throwing it on your person.
- [03:53]
Ari Weitzman
I will tell you, Camille, that the thing that sounds different there between that and the Eric Adams thing is everything except for maybe the presence of physical dollars. So I don't know if it's the best analogy I've heard from.
- [04:09]
Camille Foster
I'm just commenting on the ancient Chinese custom of bribing journalists to write good story about journalism with Chinese characteristics.
- [04:20]
Isaac Saul
Her attorney said, I can see how this looks strange, but I assure you that Winnie's intent was purely innocent. In the Chinese culture, money is often given to others in a gesture of friendship and gratitude. Winnie is apologetic and embarrassed by any negative impression or confusion this may have caused. Yes, we're all very confused. Oh, my God.
- [04:40]
Ari Weitzman
I wasn't aware that people gave cash as gifts. That is a huge cultural difference.
- [04:46]
Isaac Saul
Yes, yes. I've never heard of such a. This foreign concept money.
- [04:51]
Camille Foster
It's the potatoes chips, the potato chip bag. That's the difference.
- [04:54]
Ari Weitzman
To be fair, though, I have a wallet that's made out of Tyvek, and it's designed to look like an envelope. And it saved me before because I've lost it. So it looks like a piece of trash, and it's just sitting where I've lost it before. So the first thing I thought of was like, oh, so she just accidentally mixed up an empty bag of potato chips with her potato chip bag wallet and. Oh, no, I meant for you to throw that out for me, but I actually handed you my wallet and it's like, yeah, I get that it could accidentally mail my wallet someday. So I get it.
- [05:27]
Isaac Saul
If I were this journalist I'd be so pissed. I dream of someone trying to bribe me. I mean, what an exhilarating moment that must be. Someone slips like a envelope full of crisp hundred dollar bills across the table to you, and instead of having that incredible cinematic movie moment, you just get like a few hundred dollars bills stuffed up into this gross used potato chip bag just covered in salt and crumbs. Yeah, what a disappointing way to be bribed. I would. That would really take some of the romanticity.
- [06:00]
Ari Weitzman
Oh, so your anger isn't over the bribe itself, but over the bribe not being commensurate enough with how you think you should be compensated for your friendly jealousy? Well, yeah, I guess at this point.
- [06:13]
Isaac Saul
The Eric Adams corrupt. The Eric Adams and all the people around him are corrupt story is so obviously true and just baked into my brain that I am now officially. I've moved on to judging whether their means of corruption is classy enough for me or not. Basically, that's where I'm at now. Anyway, there's more important news, kind of. There's a lot more important news than that. But that was an incredible local. That's just like amazing, amazing local politics stuff. Maybe the biggest story this week that we touched on a little bit in the newsletter and the podcast earlier in the week was the Putin Trump Alaska summit, where people had pretty spared views about what exactly happened. And there was a lot of noise about the red carpet and the B2 bomber flyover and, you know, whether Trump folded or is Putin's puppet still. But what happened since that newsletter got published is that Trump and Zelensky and a group of European leaders actually met. And I think the headline coming out of that meeting is that Trump is trying to organize a face to face between Zelensky and Putin, which I commend him for. I think if the war is going to end at some point, these two guys are going to have to be in the same room together. The big story that a lot of people kind of led with was the fact that it was the first time a broad delegation of European allies had all been in the White House at the same time. Seven European leaders were there, NATO partners meeting, discussing the future of the war. What was going to happen? I'm kind of curious to revisit this for a few reasons. One, I guess I'm wondering if the tenor of the coverage should change at all based on anything that came out of the Zelensky Trump meeting. I mean, I think Trump meets with Putin. We see this wave of coverage about it. We did a whole newsletter on It Trump meets with Zelensky, there's kind of less tangible, maybe shifts in what we were expecting out of a resolution here. I didn't really hear anything, at least myself, out of that meeting that I think changed my view on how things down the road might look. Trump certainly didn't make any really hard and fast commitments, though there does seem to be increasingly more and more talk about some sort of security guarantee from the Trump administration and from these European allies for Ukraine, which I think is really, really significant and shouldn't be glossed over. Then, of course, days after the White House celebrated this kind of gathering, the Kremlin made it quite clear that its position hasn't really moved. It is not interested in any kind of peace deal that doesn't hand it the land that it already controls. And it doesn't seem like Vladimir Putin's particularly open to meeting face to face with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. So that's kind of where things are. I'm curious if you guys had a different read about what came out of the post Zelenskyy. I mean, we've talked a lot about the Alaska summit, but if anything came out of the post Zelensky meeting, that feels worth noting.
- [09:40]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, and I'll start by acknowledging that you're. You're getting us to, like, talk about the post Zelenskyy meaning in particular and gesturing that, you know, we've talked about the Putin meaning in Alaska and we've covered it in the newsletter. We haven't really discussed it together, but to put them in the same basket for a moment, I think we still really are getting a sense of what came out of both of them. I think the thing that we were able to glean in our coverage when we wrote about the meeting in Alaska with Putin and Trump was more optical. I think that's a big thing that we're discussing and seeing what the tenor of the conversation was following. It was about peace deal, not ceasefire. And that being something that Putin wanted, but still not a lot of commitments, nothing really that showed us the directionality of a possible deal. And it's just extension of a theme, I think, with the meeting between Trump, Zelensky and European leaders, I think there's some optics, there's some discussion about the meaning went differently than last time when there's that big Oval Office blow up. So it felt different having everybody in the same room. Seems like it shows conciliation on Trump's part towards Europe's point of view. And the thing that we discussed a little bit in the newsletter was given that Trump does show this tendency towards being convinced by the last person he's spoken to. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It could be a good thing, actually, that he's talking to Zelensky second, rather than being second fiddle. You want to be the second voice in Trump's ear a lot of the time. So we are kind of looking at these broad things and making statements. But yeah, I mean, you're right, we don't really have anything concrete to sink our teeth into. We have some ideas about where lines could be drawn, whether or not Putin is interested in taking those lines. If it comes with a significant rider of security guarantees to Ukraine. Those are things that we're all sort of reading about, but we're not seeing anything actually put into terms on paper yet. We're just all getting these sort of inclinations about how different leaders could be leaning, which is, you know, to be fair, how diplomacy often works. We're getting a sense of the relationships as they're evolving. It's really squishy. So we're seeing the same squishiness in both meanings. And it is sort of indicating that there could be some deal that involves land concessions and that Putin's probably not interested if those concessions involve security guarantees, which Zelensky would only be interested if they do. So it's a lot of ambiguity and a lot of things that seem like they cancel out for now and more wait and see, I guess, from us.
- [12:20]
Camille Foster
Yeah, I would concur with most of what's been said. I think that the principal thing to take away here is that it doesn't seem like much has changed. This is a years long conflict. It's not going to be resolved overnight. And I think the biggest change might be the fact that Trump doesn't seem particularly interested in a ceasefire at this point and is much more interested in trying to get towards some ultimate conclusion, which strikes me as perhaps not particularly good for Ukraine. I think the longer this drags on, the kind of human toll for both countries is substantial. But Putin is somewhat insulated from the political cost associated with that. As I've heard in a number of instances, the official tabulation of Russ casualties is what exactly? We don't really know. And it's not clear that anyone in Russia really knows. So that's a bit of a disappointment. But I do think that there are some things that if we're going to look at the entire situation and take an appraisal of it, we can actually say, well, this is an interesting and perhaps very good outcome. I mean, the fact that you have all of these European leaders arriving at the White House on one accord and kind of lockstep with one another is a tremendous expression of European solidarity. And whether it was the intent of the Trump administration or not, whether or not it's a goal of their approach to diplomacy, this is an outcome of Trump's approach to diplomacy, as is anything that looks like a commitment from Europeans to spend their own money, to put their own people at the forefront of this effort, as opposed to the United States having to lead the effort. And I think that in general, Europe having more agency in its own affairs is a very good thing for Europe in general and probably a very good thing for its allies, like the United States won't have to shoulder all of that burden. The questions about security guarantees are palpable. There are just myriad. What exactly is the United States willing to do here? It sounds like it's not much in terms of putting actual troops on the ground and having something that essentially approximates a NATO security guarantee, but doesn't really, because it's the Europeans, if anyone, who are kind of putting lives on the line. It's the Europeans, if anyone, who are going to be spending capital, according to the White House, the Europeans are going to be paying for whatever support the United States is providing. There are going to be plenty of fiscal hawks who say that's a great thing, but there will be other people who say, hey, this is a major contest with a geopolitical rival and our allies, and we ought to be willing to confront them forcefully wherever they are. And it just still perhaps doesn't seem like this administration is really committed to doing that in the same way? And again, I think the delays generally seem to benefit the Russian regime.
- [15:11]
Isaac Saul
Do you guys feel like if you were in Volodymyr Zelenskyy's shoes, that you could take a territorial concession for the security guarantees? I keep going back and forth on this. It was really interesting. We have a new by the way, there's now a Tangle News subreddit, which I've started peeking at every now and then. And we posted a question there. We posed this question there, which elicited a lot of really interesting responses from some of our listeners. And maybe I should actually reframe the question because I think it's almost impossible to be like, if you were Volodymyr Zelenskyy in this foreign country, you have no attachment to, let's put it this way, live in a hypothetical, go on a journey with me for a minute. You're the President of the United States. China invades America and they make some inroads. Let's say they capture a fifth of American territory because none of our allies come to our immediate defense in the first six months or a year into the war. We hold them off. And then Europe and some allies in South America and India and the Koreas, South Korea and Taiwan, they look around, they say we need to help the US or they're going to fall to China. So we have this big meeting with our allies, and they say we'll come to the fight and we'll put our soldiers on the ground. We'll sacrifice the lives of our soldiers. We will offer these security guarantees to back you guys up, but we think it's a futile effort to win back the fifth of the territory that you've already lost, and you just have to let go of that, and we'll prevent it from becoming more than that. Is that a deal do you think you could take if you're the United States President? I honestly don't know. I mean, it seems like an impossible choice to make when I put it in those terms. And just to be clear, I mean, we did this in the newsletter, but I think and the podcast, it is worth reiterating before you guys answer. This is the equivalent of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and florid. That's a fifth of the land mass in the United States. Not a fifth of the population. It's probably more than that. But a fifth of the land mass? I don't know, man.
- [17:53]
Ari Weitzman
Well, I think it's tough to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who's leading any country. But in this context, I think it's also tough to put yourself in the shoes of a different country's leader. Because as Americans, we're thinking about, would we give up this country or any parts of it when the context is different? We have a country that's geographically extremely difficult to attack. We have a military that's historically powerful. We have an economy that's extremely strong. It's tough to think of what this circumstance would be in which we would do that and the dire straits we'd have to feel and the stresses we'd be under in order for that to happen. It requires a bit of sitting and really imagining the situation of your country that is in between other very powerful countries, especially one to your east, that has historically Been one that you were a part of a governing structure that contained your country in the Soviet Union decades prior, and that country has maintained a strong military presence. It's taken some of your country already. Let's not forget with Crimea. And what is there's a. Your pressure to both kind of be nice to them, but distance yourselves from them. And if you're too distant, then that's a problem. But you've got potential allies to your west and potential allies across the sea. And what does it feel like when part of your territory, in that context, when you're a country that's in between other powers, when part of your territory is threatened, you have to really consider what that would mean, what that, what that would mean for you. And the reality of concessions, because it's land and you don't want to give that up as a leader. But the thing you really don't want to give up is tens of thousands of more people to a front consistently that's showing that it's not budging against an enemy, that's showing that he's not budging. And in those terms, when you think about what your options are, I don't know if there are better ones than taking a strong backed with allies and friendship and guarantees some sort of strong concession. I think that's maybe one of the things that you swallow.
- [20:14]
Camille Foster
Yeah, yeah. No, enormously difficult. I have to imagine that at the end of the day the United States and the Europeans will be in firm agreement that some concessions have to be made here. And they will certainly be applying pressure on Zelenskyy from the opposite direction, encouraging him to make some settlement here. And I have to imagine as well that dissatisfaction amongst Ukrainians in general with any sort of concessions will necessarily be tempered by the fact that the conflict will at least have been abated. I mean, I think the only practical objective for Europeans here is to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again. And the degree to which the kind of settlement of matters is fair or unfair to Ukraine is really a secondary consideration from the standpoint of people who are just thinking about, well, how do we ensure that the Russians behave themselves going forward? That's the principal concern. And secondary to that is what do we do for Ukraine?
- [21:13]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, and it is unfair. Right. They were the ones doing all the fighting and at every point the US and Europe gave them just enough to sustain, but not enough to win.
- [21:24]
Isaac Saul
Could I interject with just a tiny bit of lightheartedness, just something about this whole meeting before you move on that made me chuckle A little bit. Give it a try.
- [21:32]
Camille Foster
Why not?
- [21:33]
Isaac Saul
I don't know if you guys saw this, but NBC News described it as Zelensky. For Zelensky Monday also offered a reset after a tense Oval Office meeting earlier this year. He struck a more diplomatic tone on Monday, offering Trump and others his thanks more than a dozen times, including for the invitation for Trump's efforts to stop killings and stop the war, and for Melania Trump's letter to Putin asking him to protect children for a program to purchase American weapons, and to the European partners for their support on his X account. He offered profuse continued thanks as well into Tuesday. And he showed up wearing a suit, by the way, instead of his usual military fatigues. And he told Trump as he greeted him, quote, this is the best I had. Trump said, I love it. Ultimately sharing a video of the warm exchange on his social media platform, Truth Social. And when Trump was asked what his message to the people of Ukraine was, he told the reporter, we love them. Trump might be the simplest guy in the world to figure out. I just, like, if I think it's true. Yeah, if I were a foreign leader, I think I could make Trump my best friend in a single meeting. I really don't think it's that hard. Like, and I don't mean that in like a. I mean, I guess there's something about it that's like, a little bit denigrating to say it that way, like, but it's just so clear how he operates. Just be grateful, be very nice, offer profuse praise, be like, visually aesthetically appealing in every possible way you can. He clearly cares about that so much. Like, the. His sort of, like, appreciation for the vanity of things is so overt and obvious. Yeah, I don't know, it just made me laugh. Like, there, the number of times he said thank you. Oh, by the way, in response to an Oval Office situation, let's not forget where they freaked out on Zelensky for literally saying the thing that they have now come to realize themselves six months later, which is that Putin's full of shit. And his quote, unquote, diplomacy is not actually really diplomacy, because he never sticks to his word. The last thing Zelenskyy said before JD Vance freaked out on him and then Trump piled on, was asking them what they meant by diplomacy because they've tried diplomacy with Putin before and he breaks every agreement they make. And then they went off on him about how he's ungrateful and is litigating it before the press and yada, yada, yada, and Then six months later, Trump's like, I can't believe this guy Putin. I mean, we have a phone call, he seems so nice, and then I hang up and then he's bombing people and yeah, but Zelenskyy learned his lesson, I guess, showed up in a suit and said thank you more times than he probably said anything else in the whole meeting. So I guess it seems to have worked too, which is good for Ukraine.
- [24:38]
Camille Foster
No, I think that's a great observation and very well put. It is one of those things where it can be both a meaningful, genuine strength and positive attribute, and in another respect, kind of gross. It's almost as though the only game to play is the sycophancy game, even if you're only pretending and everyone knows you're pretending in its theater. And that's a bit despicable, I think, given the gravity of the circumstance. The idea that there is this preposterous game where someone has to say thank you over and over and over again, emphatically, and someone has to worry about whether or not they're wearing the right apparel. Where did your suit come from again? Just feels rather crude. And I think I saw many people trumpeting it on the MAGA side as a victory of some sort. And I think it's mostly just embarrassing. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with what Zelenskyy wore the last time, and the entire unseemly encounter in that first meeting, whoever you put the blame on could have been avoided. So it's preposterous that it's still casting such a long shadow in a circumstance that everyone would actually like to see. Resolution Foreign.
- [26:01]
Isaac Saul
We'Ll be right back after this quick break. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know the world is full of uncertainty and craziness right now, and amid all that, it's good to take care of yourself. Most people do this by buckling down and saving some money and making sure they have a nest egg. But one of the best ways that you can do it is to make sure that you're not underinsured, overpaying and underprotected. Especially if your life insurance policy is through your job. That's why I'm using Select Quote to find my own life insurance policy. For over 40 years, SelectQuote has been one of the most trusted brokers in insurance, and they help more than 2 million Americans secure over 700 billion with a B dollars in coverage. Their mission is simple to find you the right insurance policy for your unique needs. They shop and you save get the right life insurance for you for less and save more than 50%@SelectQuote.com tangle save more than 50% on term life insurance@SelectQuote.com tangle today to get started, that's SelectQuote.com tangle why drop a fortune on basics when you don't have to? Quince has the good stuff. High quality fabrics, classic fits and lightweight layers for warm weather. All at prices that make sense. Everything I've ordered from Quint's has been nothing but solid. I've been telling all my friends this summer that I am a linen guy. Now this is the summer of linen for Isaac because I have been absolutely raiding the Quint's wardrobe, buying linen shirts, linen pants, linen shorts. And it's not just the linens. Casual T shirts, fun jackets, long pants. Everything on their website that I've snagged has really been an awesome addition to my wardrobe. And, and I've gotten compliments on basically all of it, even from my wife who never really thinks I'm dressing myself well. So if you want to keep it classy and cool, I highly recommend the long lasting staples from quince. Go to quince.comtangle for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Quince Q U I N C E.comtangle and get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comtangle all right, I could stay on this topic forever because I find so many elements of it fascinating. But we have two other big ones that I want to navigate, the first of which is kind of a complicated, at least to me, complicated economic story. And maybe, Ari, I'll let you drive a little bit on this one if you're game for it. And then the last thing that we're going to jump into on today's show is maybe one of the heavier and more uncomfortable topics I think we've ever talked about. So I'm kind of curious to see where that conversation goes. But we'll start with the complicated nerdy economic stuff first. I guess the easiest thing to do before I pass it to Ari is just to say there is a story that's been percolating or a narrative, I think that the Trump administration's economic policies have drastically increased the number or proportion of working native born Americans, I believe. And maybe now we're not so sure about that data, which is a story popping up at a time when we have this new potential leader of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has drawn a lot of attention and skepticism about the Data. Ari, can you tell us what's going on here a little bit?
- [29:35]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, it's a simple thing or it's a, there's a simple headline and then a bit more of a complicated backstory behind it and there's a, there's a sort of cloud of uncertainty that it's all within. The simple headline is the BLS Bureau of Labor Statistics released some numbers recently that showed that there's a decline of 1.9 million in foreign born working age population in the US and a subsequent increase of 3.3 million in the native born working age population since December.
- [30:11]
Isaac Saul
And can I just interrupt you really quick just briefly, just to say this is a really important headline for the Trump administration because there is a, there is an outcome that they have made very clear. They are driving towards with many of their policies which is to increase the amount of working native born Americans and decrease the amount of like illegal and native or foreign born labor here, which are not the same. But to decrease both of those things in favor of, you know, real Americans getting these jobs. Because that's something they accused the Biden administration of, of having all this job growth driven by immigration. Sorry, go ahead.
- [30:56]
Ari Weitzman
Right, like that. That is very much the outcome that they're looking for. So in terms of that, in terms of the policy goals, good numbers. The interesting thing is they're also kind of impossible for that to happen in the context of the other numbers that we're getting from the bls. Like we're seeing jobs generally going down. So it's not impossible, it's not really possible that since December there'd be an increase of 3.3 million native born jobs while there's a decrease in foreign like foreign born jobs. The, the explanations like there's obviously this big pall around it of okay, well now the BLS is getting politicized. So are we then dismissing these numbers as completely fraudulent? There's kind of a banal explanation for this. We, there's room to ask how much this would have been different under a different head of bls, but not a huge amount. This is not a thing where it's just been a spike this month. It wasn't like in July we saw a 3 million increase. That's not what happened. It's since January there's been this monotonic increase in the number of native born jobs that BLS is reporting and at the same time a monotonic decrease. Mostly there's like a little bit of a flat line around March, but monotonic decrease in foreign born jobs and that's based off of a difference from the numbers that they're getting from the census to estimate the proportion of people in the country. The Census Bureau estimated more foreign born workers because there's a big boom in immigration from 2003 to 2004. As we all know, it's one of the reasons Trump got elected. And at the same time, since the election and since Trump has been doing well on the campaign trail going back to October, there have been decreases in the number of foreign born workers who are responding to requests for survey data. So we've talked about how requests for survey responses have been tough for the bureau generally over the last couple years. That's just been magnified with foreign born workers. And why would you like. It's a risk that you can understand. If you're somebody who's not authorized to work in the US and you have a job, what's the incentive to report it? So since Trump's been elected, they've been responding less. We know that at the same time the census has been estimated that there's more. They're looking at the jobs numbers they're getting from employers and they're making proportional assumptions on who holds which jobs based off of the responses to surveys. So it's not reliable data. And we have been criticizing the BLS for potentially putting a new head in who would give us data that we have reason to be suspicious of. But at the same time, it's not something that only happened since MacIntarfer was fired. It's something that's been in the works. It's actually one of the reasons why you might say we're getting unreliable data at bls. We should shake it up. But it is now with this new head, something that E.J. antony, who Trump is nominating, he's not the head yet, but there's an acting director. There's reason for us to look at data coming out of the BLS and asking, is this political? So in that whole cloud, there's the story, this headline of increased native born decrease foreign born. That's not new per se. There's a reason for it. But now we're asking, okay, moving forward, how's this process going to change? Because we do want the person who's in charge to make these, make this data more accurate. But we have good reason to doubt that it's going to be improved in a way that makes it more accurate in this case, given that it's something that reinforces what the Trump administration wants to be true. So that I'll kind of track. It is a little mushy.
- [34:45]
Isaac Saul
That tracks to me. So I guess maybe a straightforward way to kind of sum it up is that we can look at the proportion of the native born and foreign born population of the working Americans, the employed working Americans, and those proportions have basically stayed the same. Right. I mean, that's one of the ways they kind of disprove this idea or that this Bloomberg article that came out about it sort of disproved this idea is that the proportion is not actually changing the way it would have to to necessitate these numbers being so different.
- [35:28]
Ari Weitzman
Right. And if you assume that those proportions are relatively similar from last January, which like you don't need to assume, like you can actually see that in different data, then these numbers don't track more or less. But it's not like they just stopped tracking. It's that this is the continuation of a trend that we've been seeing since Trump was not only in office, but elected.
- [35:52]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it doesn't justify the changes at bls, but I think maybe justifies the scrutiny of our economic data. I mean, it was kind of a wild realization to me to be like the timely data that we are working off of on a monthly basis is based pretty much entirely on survey response rates. I mean that's kind of it. We figure it out, it's why we get these revisions. It's not like it's the sound like that's it and then it's done. But it's a little bit jarring to realize that we are at the whim of whether people are going to answer these calls or, you know, I actually don't know how they conduct BLS surveys, whether it's phone calls or online or in person. But I presume it's probably a mix.
- [36:54]
Camille Foster
And there are, I mean, fortunately there are a lot of private and not a lot, but there are some important private benchmarks that we can look at. I think ADP and Moody's both have these competing models for helping to understand what's happening with employment in the country. And my suspicion is that the net effect of all of this, the questions raised by the administration, the appointment by someone new, essentially the explicit politicization of this project. Even if they do their best to kind of deliver the numbers in an honest way, it looks political. There was an allegation of malfeasance on the part of the prior administration's appointee. There have already been suggestions that the new guy is someone who isn't trustworthy. And the President has a very explicit perspective on what the numbers ought to be. It is impossible to avoid the appearance of this seeming like the numbers are being screwed around with. And the net effect is going to be greater doubt and suspicion of these agencies and the data that they're providing, no matter what, going forward. And that is going to be true for Democrats and Republicans. You may see perhaps an initial bump. But my suspicion is that, especially if we're in a kind of somewhat tumultuous economic circumstance in the years to come, that people are going to have lots of questions about whether these numbers, whether or not these numbers can be trusted, which perhaps will lead to the development and deployment of more private models to help people understand what's happening with employment, because that is really valuable information to have. It's not just a matter of whether or not voters believe that the person who's in office is doing a good job. Planning for the production of your particular in your industry depends a hell of a lot on what's happening in that industry with jobs. And being able to find new ways to actually make predictions about where the trend lines are and where they're going to be is going to be a hugely valuable thing. So while I have my concerns about this, I'm at least optimistic that we'll have some alternatives that help us make sense out of things going forward. But it is a little frustrating that the kind of pessimism and institutional skepticism that we've seen grow and grow and grow in recent years, that has impacted government broadly and the media and universities and the academy and expert opinion in general, it's happening here and is going to continue to happen. And I think that there, you know, there's reason to be frustrated about that. Even if you are the kind of person, like me who believes that in general, people ought to be cultivating as many kind of school skills and abilities as they can to make up their own mind and do their own research in as broad a universe of context as possible.
- [39:36]
Ari Weitzman
Right. And there's only so much of your own research you can do when you're one person instead of a bureau with your hands on 631,000 workspaces that you survey. Like they have the ability to do this better than we do. And it is sort of jarring to think that in this day and age, we're still relying on sampling this composite sample and then doing a statistical extrapolation from it in order to get these jobs. Numbers do have other private metrics that, you know, maybe somebody could make a composite reading out of that can give us something that's a little bit more reliable. If only we had somebody who was instituted as the head of the BLS who had any background that showed they were capable of making such sophisticated statistical economic data analyses. That, yes, is a veiled criticism. Maybe not too veiled, but I think, I think there is good reason that the President did not give, but there would have been good reason to install somebody who was capable of giving us a little bit more reliability. And instead we got the opposite. And it is very frustrating.
- [40:41]
Camille Foster
I'm definitely going to look into this. My suspicion is that someone at Anthropic and OpenAI at least is already looking at this and had been and that they're probably redoubling their efforts to try and concoct some sort of LLM based model for making better, more accurate predictions around this stuff.
- [40:59]
Ari Weitzman
I'm sure what a university lab too doing that. Plenty of opportunity.
- [41:04]
Camille Foster
Yeah.
- [41:05]
Isaac Saul
How could we reasonably measure in the next year or two the success of E.J. antoni's tenure? I mean, I think it's pretty easy to sit here and be like, this guy is not qualified. And this is, you know, Trump. It's obvious Trump did what he did because he's upset about the revisions. He said it, he explained it. There's no need to invent things. You know, he thinks the BLS is rigged against Republicans or at least that's his stated view. So I'm not going to like pretend that he has some higher minded goal here. But I do think there's a question of whether some massive shakeup like this, like what if EJ Antonio does actually improve the way this data is collected and increases response rates. I mean, would that be a world where in a year or two we're kind of eating crow on this? I think it's an important gut check.
- [42:06]
Camille Foster
It's a great question. I think that the challenge here though is just that the way this has unfolded and that the rhetoric that's been used both before and hence is actually contributing to the skepticism and that skepticism is going to be durable and that it just, it casts a long shadow. And I think it's actually interesting that in a number of places, and we've talked about a few of them already and some we haven't, but this week the President is also making some noises about the Smithsonian and changes that need to be made there and alluding to what's happened to, with universities with respect to the push to combat antisemitism and the withholding of funding in order to achieve that end. And then forcing universities to agree to the things that many organizations, like fire, I'm a board member, have raised concerns about academic freedom and free expression in connection with the way that the Trump administration is approaching things. If they were to pursue pluralism and push back on kind of what they see as an intellectual monoculture or political perhaps, or partisan monoculture in certain institutions, if they were doing that in a deliberate manner and they were trying to be as kind of transparent as possible and not necessarily bull and China Shop like, then it's possible they might actually be able to bring some people over to their side and that we would be in a position where it's easier to adjudicate whether or not people feel a greater sense of trust and whether or not they're actually being successful here, but because they actually seem to prefer being confrontational here in contexts like this, because in many instances, it seems that they prioritize the kind of theatrical impression that we're getting things done and we're gonna own the libs that I think it may be the case that it's certainly important for us not to get out over our skis as people who survey this stuff. But it also just contributes to the fact that most people, or many people are going to be very skeptical. And if they want a different outcome, they should probably have a different approach to trying to get things done. I know that it's harder to be pragmatic, to try to be inclusive in context like this. I know that it can be bruising to bring Democrats into the fold who have perhaps been sharply critical of you, but I think it's the right thing to do if you actually want to make durable progress that's going to stand beyond the period of. Beyond the term of your administration. So much of what this administration has done is via executive fiat and not with respect to actual legislative change. And the only way you can get those legislative changes is if you're willing to do the hard work of the building a bipartisan coalition. And they just seem not just disinterested in it, but almost allergic to it.
- [45:03]
Ari Weitzman
Plenty of good reason to be skeptical of Antony then, Camille. But I think also to try to tie that into an answer of how will we know if we're wrong, though? Because, like, yeah, there's great criticism of the chosen methodology for change at the BLS and other way and elsewhere, but how could this work? Like, it's possible, right? And I have a couple things that inform my perspective here. As you know, Isaac, as you might not know, Camille, my dad worked for The Department of Labor for a number of decades he worked for osha, not the bls, but adjacent. And I sort of picked up over time and from talking to him after he retired that the worst appointed Secretary of Labor that you could work under isn't a person or would be a person who like has their way of doing things that is like not helpful and unconstructive and then enforces it. Somebody that's not the worst person to work under is somebody who doesn't know what they're doing and doesn't pretend to because then the people who do know what they're doing can self govern. So if you have somebody like Antoni who comes in, who makes it his job to continue to shitpost online and doesn't like, like he gives some directives but he's not hands on and saying this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong when he's wrong, you know, like, and obviously I'm baking this in like some assumptions about what he's going to be capable of doing to this question, but it's just to say that if he is hands off, then it's possible that people who know what they're doing can step up and do the job well. At the same time, it's possible that he has like an idea or two that people want to collaborate with, maybe he should post and then in the room he's a different person and he wants to collaborate and learn and has good feedback and it's possible there's routes where the BLS is doing well. How can we make that determination? I think the answer to that, Isaac, is sort of based on what I would learn or what I had learned from talking to climate modelers, which is just you come up with some omnibus way of trying to make measures of what the thing is that you're hoping to predict and then you retrospect it backwards and you say if I look as like a university lab, like I'm taking economic data, I'm taking ADP job role or like workplace role reports, and putting all of these private sector and publicly available data sets together, partial data sets maybe from the BLS2 and I try to create a metric, does that metric generally track with what then of available data that I had at the time? Does it track with what we're able to get from the eventual more reliable data we got from BLS at the end of the month? And then I would take that projection and move it forward and say, okay, I came up with something that roughly approximates what we're able to see historically and now I can project reasonably that over time that's going to be a good stand in for what the real quote, real numbers reported from the BLS are. If those numbers tend to align over time, if the thing that we design to approximate the BLS measure does track to what the BLS actually outputs, then we can say he's doing a good job. We could even say that if it gets closer, then he's doing better. If there's fewer revisions and those revisions tend to match with what we expect reality to be, then, yeah, we could say he's doing better. And if they don't, then we say that they don't. And I think that's. I can't think of any other way to do it that would be better than that.
- [48:34]
Camille Foster
Yeah, thank you for answering the question directly, Ari. You're exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. I think that actually that is consistent with some of what I was suggesting earlier about there being these other private sources of data. If it doesn't seem to conform to the stuff that you're getting from ADP and paychecks, then you're going to know there's a problem. If LinkedIn is showing you trend lines that don't seem to support what the BLS data is suggesting, that's going to be a problem you're going to have. And the revisions are particularly valuable. The fact that you're going to have these opportunities to, and it's already kind of built in there to take a look at the quarterly numbers and see if they match up with what has been reported, then that's all going to be an indication of whether or not he's doing a very, very good job. But again, I do think that the specter of impropriety is going to be very, very, very hard to evade here, almost irrespective of what happens. But we will certainly try to adjudicate things in a fair manner here very much.
- [49:45]
Isaac Saul
We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [49:51]
Ari Weitzman
I can't believe they're having a gender reveal for their dog.
- [49:54]
Isaac Saul
No, no, no, no.
- [49:54]
Ari Weitzman
This is a breed reveal. Oh. So, yeah, they're finding out the breed of the puppy they're rescuing.
- [50:00]
Camille Foster
So they could just be spending all their money on like pet insurance. Instead, we got lemonade for Roscoe and.
- [50:05]
Ari Weitzman
It covered vaccines, microchipping. We saved 90% on vet bills. Oh, here. What do you think beige confetti means? I don't know.
- [50:17]
Camille Foster
That we'll never get this Saturday back.
- [50:18]
Ari Weitzman
Get a quote for any breed@lemonade.com pet.
- [50:21]
Camille Foster
Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows home, so you don't have to don't know the difference between matte paint, finish and satin or what that.
- [50:30]
Ari Weitzman
Clunking sound from your dryer is.
- [50:32]
Camille Foster
With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro, you just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and and read reviews all on the app download Today.
- [50:50]
Isaac Saul
I want to give some healthy space to this last topic, and I think we've probably got 20 or 25 minutes or so, which won't be enough, but it'll be, I think, enough to get in the weeds a little bit. There is a story that came out in the Atlantic recently and the very captivating headline of it is that Canada is killing itself and the subhead says the country has given its citizens the right to die and doctors are struggling to keep up with demand. I'm going to read a couple excerpts from this story to just frame it for some of our listeners who I'm sure have not read it yet. I imagine some have and many haven't. When Canada's parliament in 2016 legalized the practice of euthanasia, Medical Assistance in Dying, or maid as it's formally called, it launched an open ended medical experiment. One day administering a lethal injection to a patient was against the law. The next it was as legitimate as a tonsillectomy, but often with less of a weight. MAID now accounts for about one in 20 deaths in Canada, more than Alzheimer's and diabetes combined, surpassing countries where assisted dying has been legal for far longer. There are a few other quotes here. I'm just going to pull out. It is too soon to call euthanasia a lifestyle option in Canada, but from the outset it has proved a case study in momentum. MAID began as a practice limited to gravely ill patients who are already at the end of life. The law was then expanded to include people who were suffering from serious medical conditions but not facing imminent death. In two years, MAID will be made available to those suffering only from mental illness. Parliament has also recommended granting access to minors as of 2023, the last year for which data are available, some 60,300 Canadians had been legally helped to their death by clinicians. In Quebec, more than 7% of all deaths are now by euthanasia, the highest rate of any jurisdiction in the world. One doctor, Claude Rivard, a family doctor in the suburban Montreal, said, I have two or three provisions every week now, and it's continuing to go up Every year. This story, I mean to me is fairly shocking. I want to talk a bit or try and explore a bit why it sort of maybe offends my sensibilities or draws such a strong reaction from me. But I'll start broad before getting into some more specific questions for you two. Knowing that the three of us all read this piece. And Ari, I'll start with you. I'm curious what your reaction was to it in kind of broad strokes or what you felt reading it.
- [53:48]
Ari Weitzman
Even. Yeah, thank you for asking and for choosing this story. I think it's something that first of all incredibly well written and something I'm really interested in learning more about and speaking to other people to learn more about. Because in Vermont there's some a similar provision that's different in some meaningful ways that allows for medically assisted dying. And it's very different. But I can't speak authoritatively on how. What I can speak authoritatively about is what you asked me, which was my reaction to this piece, which is like really just hot anger. It was really tough to explain how much of a like gut level, like back wet with sweat reaction that I had to this. And when I've had conversations with people trying to suss out why. And some of those stats are just like shocking. This idea that medically assisted dying accounts for 1 in 20 deaths, like, that's extremely large even compared to other countries where it's been illegal and legal for longer. Like In Belgium it's 2,3%. And that's already seems large to me. But 1 in 20 is pretty astounding. And some there's cherry picked anecdotes here. And I wouldn't claim to say that they represent the majority, but the fact that they represent something that can be legal is upsetting. And I'm gonna just like take some, just like a little bit from one of them. Which is the one that's the most startling to me, which is a person came into a practice in Canada asking who he was a person in his 30s who was suffering from a lung cancer diagnosis. He was given treatment options and he. Not lung cancer, I'm sorry, it was colon cancer. But he was from the beginning insisting that he wanted maid instead of treatment options, saying that he wanted to avoid the pain of the treatments. And the only way to do that was to go to medical assistant dying death, like to be killed. And I think one of the things that bothers me a lot is that these acronyms, I think like we say made and what we mean is a doctor killing you And I think when we choose language that's meant to be sensitive, a thing that we do is we make it more easy for us as language users to be shielded from the meaning of our words. And it really upsets me. I think you are asking a doctor to kill you. I think that that's something that. It sounds harsh and it's brutal, but that's the truth. And there's a difference between saying like, you have a right to death and saying you have a right to refuse treatment that's going to unnaturally prolong your life when you're ready to die and you have a treatment that's terminal. But to say I'm suffering from a cancer that's treatable and I could survive and potentially even recover and live a happy life, and I'm going to deny those treatment options. The treatment option that I want is to be killed is something that I think, like, based on some experiences that I've had, probably bothers me. Like, I think is the reason why it bothers me so much. Like, I've had a couple near death experiences that required me being hospitalized. When I was 15, I was in tumor or I had a tumor in my small intestine that made me, like, need to have a pretty immediate surgery in order to survive. And I had, I think like an 85% chance of survival from that, which, you know, as a kid I thought pretty good, I'm fine. But when I look back on it, realize how close to death that I was and how tough that was for my entire family and thinking like, there is no way through that process that wasn't going to be traumatic or painful, but that's the option. That's the option that I had. And I think having gone to the hospital with like other issues before, the only attitude that I can sort of. And I've seen family members, we all have family members that have suffered. And the way that I've seen family members recover and respond to treatments that were like, I have an aunt who has tumors, brain tumors, and the way that she's dealt with her treatment has been so inspiring to me. And to think that there's another way to respond to option, to like these diagnoses that are tough and challenging but aren't immediately going to kill you is to just say no and to just like jump straight to the end as a matter of a personal choice. It's something that I struggle with. And I think to legalize treatment for that as medical killing and to refer to it as treatment is something that really upsets me. And really, like, I just get worked up thinking about it. And I'm interested in learning more and trying to, you know, become a little bit more tempered in this because, again, like, they're learning about anecdotes that don't represent the majority. And there's majority cases here that I'm sure are very different. But the way the law is drafted encompasses some cases that I think, reasonably we should say it shouldn't. And that's what bothers me so much.
- [59:02]
Isaac Saul
Camille.
- [59:03]
Camille Foster
Yeah, I mean, I thought it was a really extraordinary piece of recording. I certainly had some things I didn't love about it, but I feel like I learned a great deal. And the first things that I thought about when I started reading it and I sent you guys a message almost as soon as I started reading it was Camus in the beginning of the Myth of Sisyphus, where he says, like, the first question that we have to ask in philosophy, the most fundamental one, is like, should I go on living? And the second thing that came to mind is this ancient Egyptian wisdom text, and I believe the title of it is something called something like the Dispute between a Man and his Ba and His Soul is what Ba is in that context. And it is an extraordinary piece of literature that was discovered. And the translation essentially, is this man in a context thousands of years removed from ours, having this internal struggle with respect to what he should do, living in a time that feels utterly alien to him and in a circumstance where he feels lonely. He doesn't suggest, you know, I'm not being well taken care of or something like that. It's just, my friends are gone and the people who I'm surrounded by feel like strangers. And my. My soul tells me, my. My subconscious, that I should perhaps just end it. And he's wrestling with this in this text, and it doesn't arrive at a place that says, you know, that is a. That is a horrible impossibility. It suggests that, you know, the west will deliver a kind of peace to me. And I think there is something to be said for taking count of the fact that our prevailing perspectives on death and life, on suicide, on someone's. And it's interesting to even describe it as a right to die. Like, it's my life. If it has become too difficult for me to live for whatever reason, the notion that I don't really have a meaningful choice in what I'm going to do is one that is first, like, formally just untrue and ridiculous, even if the state prohibits me from doing it. I could pursue this in other ways. And the United States being among the world leaders in overdose deaths suggests that perhaps lots of people are pursuing this in other ways. And interestingly, and I resonate with so much of what you said, Ari, but a thought that I kept having was, is it not the case that in countries and in places where we are, we imagine we can't permit this sort of thing? We've simply become accustomed to stepping over people who are heroin addicts, who are using on the streets, who are clearly killing themselves in front of our eyes, and we're comfortable with the way that they're going about it, slowly, publicly, in some cases, and privately, and in an agonizing manner, as opposed to some of what's depicted in these stories. People who are surrounded by family and who have had time to think about this and who even at the last minute, pull back and say, wait a minute, I don't want to do this. I actually want to stay. I have lots of concerns about this, some of them grave. I have to say, though, I would have far more concerned if there was not a great deal of consternation about this publicly, and if there were not a profound and obvious interest in understanding who should be able to do this under what circumstances, and how can we ensure that there's sufficient supervision and scrutiny to ensure that practitioners are going about this in a very kind of moral, above board, and transparent way? But I do think that there is some kind of legitimacy and credibility to the kind of death with dignity movement, and that while we've become accustomed to living very sanitized lives with respect to the fact of our own mortality, we don't even. We're not, most of us anyways, aren't accustomed to knowing anything about or even thinking about the death of the food that we eat, to the extent we eat meat, let alone the deaths of the people that we love, by the time we see them, they've been cleaned up. It is a real thing. It is common, to quote Hamlet, but that doesn't mean that it is trivial. So I think, provided we're attributing the right gravity to all of this, I feel not merely open to exploring this universe, but I think even a world where 1 in 20, you know, almost 5% of deaths are attributable to something like this, well, the question becomes, you know, are these people better off? And it's not impossible to imagine someone that is enduring such grave suffering, such intense loneliness that can't be ameliorated by, you know, monetary compensation from the state that this did turn out to be the best choice for them. And this was, in fact, a gift. And some people, including myself, may have moral challenges to that sort of circumstance. But I think we do have to, in a free, open society, accept that this might be a way that some people decide to live their lives and end them.
- [64:35]
Isaac Saul
I think what's interesting to me is I don't actually feel myself having any objection to the legal questions here. Like, I think there's a really strong argument that if a willing, I mean, there needs to be some sort of standard, I suppose, like qualification for what cases, you know, somebody can't just walk in. The mental illness thing worries me, but the physical pain and the, you know, people who qualify for the medical assisted death on the grounds of a diagnosis that's terminal, I think it's totally legitimate for the law to allow the patient to find a doctor who is specifically accredited in a way that they know how to navigate that situation. Whether it's like being sure that this person is sure and then also being able to administer, you know, whatever this cocktail is that's killing these people. I think I. My objection to that on the legal question of like, should this be legal? Is pretty muted. And I feel like people should be free to explore that option. To me, it's like the cultural kind of momentum around this stuff that I find so unsettling. It's that like, there is a bigger and bigger acceptance and it's sort of a chicken and the egg situation. Like, did the culture come first and usher in the legal elements or. Or does like putting the weight of the law behind this and making something like this legal sort of open the door to the cultural revolution that's going to drive more and more people to this decision. But I don't feel. What makes me feel really icky is like the, the just momentum it seems to have from a standpoint of like, this is more and more an option that's in the cultural ether that people are going to decide to choose versus, like, I can think of a lot of narrower grounds than maybe this article covers or that Canada is currently operating in, where, you know, if somebody is in extreme pain and they have a terminal diagnosis and they want to be relieved from like, that suffering, that there should be a way for them to do that that isn't, you know, committing suicide at home or whatever it is, or dying a slow, horrific death that's unnecessary and expensive for their family and all these things. I mean, yeah, I'm unsure about my objection to that as much as I am about like the broader really uncomfortable feeling I get thinking about this becoming common and accepted in culture.
- [67:50]
Ari Weitzman
The thing that was really maybe starkest for me was that I just finished reading a book that was given to me by a friend about the president of Uruguay who was often called the poorest president in the world. That was a little bit of a retrospective about his presidency and a period of imprisonment he spent which was nearly a decade. He was a former guerrilla fighter, he was captured by the government, he was imprisoned by himself like in a hole essentially for about 10 years of his life. And the way that he described his, his struggle and his thoughts was to put the idea of succumbing to madness or succumbing to the desire to die as a bridge that was not to be crossed and never crossable and like chant about to defeat to him. And he said it was the mind of a gorilla that maybe led him to that. But hearing about the way that he persevered made it really a very. Provided a very stark contrast to this 30 something year old with a 65% chance of having his cancer be treated, saying that he didn't want to undergo the possibility of pain in order to make that happen. And I think yes we can share a concern about the cultural momentum, but if the law is crafted in such a way to make that an option, then I think it is a problem with the law like straightforwardly. And there's something like Camille said, everyone has the right to die. Like in suggesting otherwise is a little absurd because saying, you know, if like I won't unpack that more. I think we're going to have a very healthy at the end caveat about not doing, not taking extreme actions. I'll forsage that here a little bit and say that I think like pushing living life and trying to saturate it with appreciation, enjoyment and staving off the. The end of it is like one of the largest, most principal foundations of, of life. Like in as somebody I don't believe. I'm not a religious person, so I don't know how much I can say the word but I do think life is sacred and I think the, the idea that we.
- [70:18]
Camille Foster
I'll allow it.
- [70:19]
Ari Weitzman
Thanks. Thanks Camille. Appreciate that. I think to the extent that we craft a law that says that you have the right to ask for this as a treatment, if you have in the way that it's written is if you have a diagnosis that is terminal, because that has a lot of gray area for one terminal. When like what, what is your timeline? Like what Is this like, what is the pain that you're under? What is the suffering that you're undergoing? Are you even undergoing it yet at this time? Because this is hypothetical and it's still being covered by this law, and that's subjective, so it's tough to answer those questions. So they're being kicked towards the patient. The patient has the right to define that. And then on the other hand, what is the medical practitioner required by the law to do so if somebody's insisting that this is an option they want to exercise as a medical practitioner, based on this article, it sounds like professionals are afraid to say, I'm not going to do that, because it does seem to be illegal to say, I'm not going to allow you to pursue that option medically. Like, I'm not going to connect you with a specialist who does that. Talk to somebody else. It's not going to be me, because that opens you up to a lawsuit. And that's, that's pretty chilling. I think if you have a patient who you think there's options to explore and they don't want to explore them, then you're liable for not then giving them a treatment that is going to sentence them to death. And that's like culture, yes, momentum, yes, lots of issues. But that's gotta be something that can be fixed legally. That seems way too permissive.
- [72:03]
Camille Foster
I do think that there's a kind.
- [72:05]
Isaac Saul
Of.
- [72:08]
Camille Foster
Understanding amongst libertarian weirdos like myself that there is often a kind of false dichotomy that is either asserted or assumed where we're looking at a circumstance that has to be either a kind of prohibition versus sanction. And I think you're correct, Ari, to point out that to the extent there are legal requirements on medical practitioners to inform people of this option and not to dissuade them from this option, I think I would take issue with that because those are kind of speech restrictions of a sort, even an obligation to speech a particular thing, or to refrain from saying both of those are kind of speech restrictions. So that is an issue for me and I think is something that is worth raising concerns about. But interestingly, as you were talking, I think a lot about, and I think we all do, I suspect most of us listening think a lot about our kind of modern circumstance and prevailing norms in the Western world with respect to religiosity, with respect to the crisis, epidemic of loneliness. That's been alluded to in a bunch of different contexts where it's worth interrogating what our values are and what the kind of prevailing dominant philosophical ethic is the prevalence of ideas that we live in a cosmos that is mechanical and that has evolved in a particular way and is ultimately meaningless. That is a prevailing notion amongst the smart set. And I don't know that it actually stands to reason that if the universe is mechanical and that things have evolved to this point, that things are ultimately meaningless. And I don't know that the state has any role in trying to forge kind of better moral valence for us as societies and as individuals. But I do think that we all have some agency there, and it's worth kind of confronting and thinking about these things. And there is a sense in which even having this option available and having the opportunity to discuss these things and to put it in a broader context. And I think to the extent we're talking about the Trend and the 4.75 odd percent in Canada nationally, there are other places like the Netherlands, where this has been going on for two decades now, and where the numbers, rather than kind of continuing on some skyrocketing trajectory, have actually leveled off at a little higher than 5%, which suggests that there perhaps is a kind of normal baseline. Does that mean it's acceptable and ideal? No, but it perhaps does suggest that, you know, Canada isn't inevitably killing itself, that Canada is permitting some people to die and the aspiration is to permit them to die with dignity. Whether or not they're fulfilling that aspiration, I think is a real question. And there are perhaps a number, a universe of ancillary related questions.
- [75:07]
Isaac Saul
I guess I'm curious. I mean, draw the line for me between someone who is saying, I don't want to be a vegetable, or I don't want to be intubated or, you know, like, I don't want an intervention versus somebody who's making a decision after getting some kind of diagnosis like this, or experiencing some kind of pain that, like, I can see the road ahead and I don't want that fight. And I would rather, like, take this option that's offered to me. I mean, like, you know, I. I guess there's the distinction. I mean, Ari, you said, like, you know, there's a difference between the right to die and the right to be killed. But, like, is there a huge difference between, you know, somebody who says, I'm gonna. I, like, I am refusing to put up this fight and somebody who says, like, I want help giving up, basically? I mean, I just. I find that a little bit harder to parse than maybe the right to die versus right to be killed. Language portrays. It seems like those things are closer together.
- [76:50]
Ari Weitzman
I think it matters what the mandate is and who the actor is. And if you're saying there's so many ways to phrase it that feel agreeable to say, if I know what I'm. I know what I want and I know the suffering that I'm in for and that I've already started to experience, and I don't want that. I want to go before I start to feel it. I just want. I want help with that. I want to be eased out. It sort of sanitizes what the actual implication of that is, which is to say there's going to be a person in Canada, they have socialized medicine. So maybe it's different in the US or it would be because of this reason, but this is a person who's a worker of the state and he should have the state who now is obligated to act. And you're telling this person who's a medical worker who signed up to generally do the opposite and try to sustain life and ease suffering in a way that allows life to continue to exist to now say your obligation here is to inform this person of people who will do this, or you do it yourself. And that's a big difference to me. It's a huge difference to me. So if you are drafting a law that says you have one's contingent to say, like in the, in the. I can sign something if I'm incapacitated, if I'm going to be put on permanent life support, I want somebody, I want to be able to say, I have. I'm turning that down in advance of it. And then the medical team wouldn't be administering those treatments that would extend your life. And it's a different thing to say, I see what I'm in for, I don't want it. And I'm requiring you or an agent of the state to do this. And I think that's the difference is saying that the action is going to be final and the action's mandated by the law. And again, just because it feels so weird to continue to talk about this and it's such a sensitive topic, and I know we're going to say it anyway, but I feel the need to just say, if this is a thing you're struggling with and you're thinking about it, please do not. And there are people who are better at having those conversations and more qualified than I am, but talk to somebody about it and make sure if you're suffering in something medical like this and you're at the end of your life. I'm not in that situation. I can't know it, but I really, really hope that you consider all your options.
- [79:22]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I mean, we're certainly obligated to note that for, I mean, because we're talking about medically assisted suicide. So, you know, if you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide in Crisis Lifeline. Or you can go to speakingofsuicide.com for a list of additional resources. I have a flight to catch which is gonna save me from what would maybe be the most awkward transition in Tangle history to try and segue into grievances section right now after that discussion. So I'm not going to do that. I think maybe we can table a list of our petty complaints for the day at the back end of a discussion about medically assisted suicide. I'm really curious to hear from our audience on this though. So if you have thoughts about this topic and especially if you're somebody who is close to it in a particular way, either having experience it yourself or perhaps an expert in the field or a medical professional, I'd be really curious what kind of opinions exist out there. I don't have a great read on the room on where people land. I think my instinct is that if this were a left right issue, there's probably a lot more acceptance of it among people on the left side of the political spectrum than people on the right. But I don't know for sure and I don't know if there are really political divided lines, political dividing lines here. And I'm interested. So you can always reach us by writing to staffeadtangle.com or myself, Isaac or Ari or Camille, all@readtangle.com we've each got our own personal emails up and yeah, I'm interested to hear from folks on this one. So I wish I had a really good nice landing spot here, but I do actually very much have to go. And Ari and Camille, I appreciate you guys as always. The article again, for those of you who are interested in reading it, is headline Canada is Killing itself. It's in the Atlantic. It's worth the read. It's clearly a touchy and thought provoking subject. It's a really fantastic piece of writing. And gentlemen, we'll be back here next week, hopefully with a little bit of lighter fare to finish things up on. But really grateful to have two people to bounce some of this stuff off of whose thoughts I actually appreciate and I'm interested to hear. So thanks for being here today.
- [82:01]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah. Yeah, you got it. No palate cleanser feels a little strange, but yeah, I know a lot of people are upset or have their own grievances about our grievances, so maybe it's a thing we could talk about.
- [82:15]
Isaac Saul
We'll talk about that later. Yeah. All right, I'll see you guys soon. Our Executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will K. Back and Associate Editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@readtangle.com.
- [83:01]
Camille Foster
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