Episode 2992 CWSA 10/18/25

Happy Saturday that we sometimes call Saturday.

Does anybody see any kings?

Any kings?

I think it's working.

No kings here.

All right, everybody come in and grab a beverage.

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Oh, so good.

So good.

Well, I gave an update to my local subscribers, but I'll give you a quick update.

Yesterday, I did a special kind of a medical PET scan that is specific to test to see if you would be a good candidate for this new cancer drug called Plu Victto.

Um, I do not know how to read the results of my tests, but the results do say that I have high sensitivity to this PSMA stuff that they put in your body, which I believe means I'm highly qualified for the drug because they test they test the radioactive drug to see if it can reach to all the right places and light them up.

And apparently, it did.

So, I spend 20 minutes in a PET scan machine, which forced me to lay straight on my back, which is insanely painful in my particular situation.

And despite having really good pain meds, they made no difference at all.

It was like I didn't have any pain meds at all.

So for 20 minutes I had to endure the worst pain of my life and not move or I would die.

Well, let me say that again.

Since this is the only path that I have identified that might, you know, keep you alive for a while.

If I had moved and therefore ruined the PET scan, probably I wouldn't have tried it again cuz it was it wasn't just a little bit painful.

It was monstrously painful.

I c I can confidently say it was the worst 20 minutes of my life and I doubt it'll ever be worse.

It's the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life.

And you and you had to not move, you know?

So, I'm like holding on to this thing trying not to move.

If I moved a little bit, I might die because I wouldn't be able to get the treatment.

Let let me tell you that was no fun at all.

But you know what is really good?

You know what is the good news?

It's over.

Oh my god, does it feel good when it's done?

You know how when when something's bad happens and it feels extra good when it's done?

Imagine the worst pain you've ever felt in your life and then when it's over.

Cuz when it's over, it's completely over.

I mean, it takes 60 seconds to get in a position that doesn't hurt.

So, what a day.

Anyway, so the good news maybe we'll have to see is that I should be qualified for the drug and there's a probably a one in three chance it'll make a big difference.

So, we'll see.

Well, I know that you like to see the reframes from my book, Reframe Your Brain, Changing Your Life at a Time.

So, here's one of the reframes, and I'll just pick one here randomly.

This is one of my favorites.

Uh, one of the usual frames that people think is that the odds of success are low.

Whatever it is you're doing, you know, it doesn't matter what you're doing.

We we often think our odds of success are low.

But uh the reframe is maybe I'm bad at estimating the odds because I remember when I went to become a tried to become a cartoonist, I was told the odds were, you know, 1 in 10,000.

But it turns out I was bad at estimating the odds cuz I made it.

And it turns out that it never was one in 10,000.

that if you looked at all the people who tried to become a cartoonist, there might be 10,000 a year who try to become professional cartoonists and fail because it's hard.

But the number of those 10,000 who actually could draw a comic and write a joke, a dozen.

So I was really only I was only competing with maybe a dozen people in the entire country.

All the rest wanted to be cartoonists, but it, you know, even you could look at their work and say, "No, no, this is this is not close." So, here I thought I was competing with 10,000 people in almost impossible task.

Probably it was 12.

So, here's the the reframe is that sometimes a task is impossible.

Sometimes you're bad at estimating how possible it is and you have to get those clear.

So that's your uh reframe for the morning.

Might have another one for you when we're done.

After our uh podcast today, Owen Gregorian will be doing his spaces after party.

So, just look for uh Owen's space uh after after we're done here.

Tomorrow, Sunday, toward the end of my podcast, I'm going to have a guest, King Randall.

Uh I tried to have King Randall on before, but I had a little medical emergency when I was going to.

So, anyway, but I think it'll work tomorrow if I do it as part of the end of the show.

So, it won't it won't be its own broadcast.

will just be tackled on the end.

Um, so probably quarter to the hour or so at the end.

Um, oh, let's look at the news.

Let's see if there's any uh science that they didn't need to do.

Oh, yeah.

Did you know that people's views on immigration are shaped by whether they think the immigrants will vote the same way they do?

Are you surprised by that?

Is there anybody who didn't know that that would be true?

So apparently if you think the immigrants are uh going to vote the same way your political party votes, suddenly you don't mind those immigrants nearly as much.

So do you think that that uh something that they needed to study?

No.

You didn't need to do a study to find out that people like it when people agree with them.

People like it when people agree with them.

All things being equal.

And guess what?

Eric Dolan of Cypos is writing yet again about psychedelic experiences.

And apparently uh a brief experience with psychedelics can reduce your lifetime use of cannabis.

So apparently uh one of the benefits if you're looking to cut down on your marijuana use is that uh psychedelics might do that for you.

Even with a limited exposure to them, you might have a lifetime decrease in marijuana use.

Do you think that's a surprise?

Not really.

Because if if you've had experience with both of those things, you would totally understand why the one would make the other less less desirable.

Well, apparently the Xplatform is going to have a whole new recommendation system uh in a few weeks, Elon Musk is telling us.

So, at the moment, I have no idea why X shows me what it shows me.

I I just can't figure it out.

It doesn't show me anything I disagree with anymore.

So X completely stopped showing me anything from any left-leaning anything.

Now maybe they all went to blue sky or something, but I don't get anything that's on the other side of uh of my political opinions.

Never.

So I don't know if that'll change.

But what they're trying to do is make sure that uh awesome small accounts can get recognized, which doesn't happen at the moment.

So I guess and then I guess you'll be able to just talk to Grock and uh just tell it what to prefer in its algorithm and then it will just do it.

That's kind of cool.

Uh, but Grock will literally read every post, Elon says, and watch every video, 100 million per day, to match users with content they're most likely to find interesting.

Do you think that'll make a difference?

I don't know.

There have been a lot of changes to algorithms that did not did not seem to be doing that, but maybe he can pull it off.

Speaking of Elon, um he's one of the people who pointed out, I think JD vanced it too, that in New England, um there are six states that have collectively around 40% of their population votes Republican, 40%.

So, six states, 40% of them are Republican.

Guess how many Republican representatives in in Congress they have?

40% of six states, none.

They They have zero zero Republicans, even though 40% of six different states are Republican and they have no representation.

Do you feel bad about redistricting now?

I don't.

I don't.

Well, uh, apparently there's a new Leonardo Di.

Caprio movie, um, that's called, uh, one battle after another.

And my understanding is that the critics like it and the public are saying, "What kind of uh, Antifa propaganda garbage is this?" Some are saying it's a pro- Antifa um, movie.

Apparently, it's on it's on uh it's on a track to lose a hund00 million, but I think Warner Brothers disputes that.

So, but the public doesn't like it nearly as much as the as the elites.

Well, as you know, today's the No Kings rally.

The no kings organizers think that they might get more than five million people at 2500 cities all around the country to march.

And uh I for one am certainly glad that they're marching for keeping the kings away because so far they're doing a great job.

Have there been any kings since the last no kings march?

No.

No.

So, if the last one worked that well, it just makes sense I'd keep doing it because, you know, if something works, keep doing it.

So, no kings so far.

And I think this one's going to work, too.

Um, I'm I'm not feeling any kings emerging.

So, kind of genius.

It's working.

It's funny that we even know the name of the organizers.

you know this guy Joel Payne, he's the chief communication officer for Move On.

It's one of the organ organizers.

So maybe I'm wrong about this, but uh give me a fact check on this.

If you do a protest and there's no violence and no threat of violence, does anything change in the real world?

Answer, I don't think so.

Because why would anybody do anything differently if there's no risk?

It's just people marching around.

Wh why would I change what I'm doing?

Because some people took a walk.

But if a protest looks like it is violent or could be violent, do things change sometimes.

because that that would be a signal that whatever they're protesting is so important, just so amazingly important that people are willing to get violent over it.

So the no kings thing is aggressively nonviolent, right?

Is there any chance that will make a difference in any way on any topic?

I think the answer is no.

There's no way it could.

There's not even there's not even an argument about how these set of actions could have a ripple effect that would cause something good to happen.

There's not there's not even a case, right?

It it's just completely disconnected from anything in the real world.

There's just people marching around and getting paid.

So, I think the organizers get paid.

That's why they organize it.

some of the protesters get paid and some of the protesters are going to be probably, you know, bad people trying to make bad things happen.

So, you could have fake protesters and your fake uh completely useless protests.

Yeah.

Anyway, um I asked Grock, what would be some of the examples of what the Trump administration is doing that would look like authoritarianism, which would cause the entire country to want to do a no kings uh kind of uh protest?

So, what exactly are the complaints?

Here are the things that Grock said.

That doesn't mean it's right.

This is just coming from one AI firing prosecutors and inspecting generals.

Is that authoritarian?

Firing prosecutors, doesn't it matter if the prosecutors were doing their job that they were asked to do?

If you fired them for no reason, maybe that would be bad.

But suppose you fired them because you asked them to do something and they were Democrats, so they decided not to do it.

Is that authoritarian to fire somebody for not doing what you asked them to do for their job?

Doesn't feel like it.

How about uh the lawfaring of uh John Balden and Comey?

Well, as far as we can tell, those are real crimes and at least Comey was trying to overthrow the government allegedly.

And uh and Bolton apparently was uh accusing Trump of all the same things that he was doing at the same time he was accusing him uh in terms of mishandling of classified information.

So, is that authoritarian to to uh to indict Bolton when the crimes look really sort of obvious like you know maybe as a defense but what we know looks like a crime to me and Comey's the same thing.

Uh, Grock also said that part of the authoritarian vibe is that the hyper macho military, the Heg Seth and Trump are making the military hyper macho.

Is that authoritarian or is that just what a military should be?

Shouldn't a military be hyper macho?

Even if you have women in the military, shouldn't it still be hyper macho?

I don't know.

And then there's the issue of the National Guard cities um because they would be, let's say, walking on or ignoring the local government's preferences.

But correct me if I'm wrong, the National Guard is only guarding federal federal assets.

And if the local people say no, no, we don't need help, then they don't do it.

Right?

I don't know of any case where the National Guard is doing what the locals said don't do except protecting federal assets as far as I know.

Then there's the uh the law fairing with the DOJ which uh I'm totally in favor of as long as they're lawfairing the lawfarers and the insurrectionists which they are.

Um, Grock says that Trump is punishing critics.

Is he?

Well, a lot of people getting fired, but that feels like what happens on both sides.

You know, don't don't the Democrats fire Republicans when they take power?

Sort of ordinary.

And uh, let's see.

Grock says the authoritarianism included CIA ops in Venezuela.

Well, really?

I mean, don't we have CIA ops in other countries, especially South America, like all the time, like with every government?

Is that is that some new thing?

Then there's the rhetoric.

The rhetoric is macho according to Grock.

And uh and uh Grock also thinks that the administration is uh let's say misbehaving or disobeying the courts but is doing it by foot dragging and workarounds and you know nothing illegal but but that it's not kind of coordinating and and uh obeying the courts as much as it could.

Now which one of those things seems real?

Do any of those feel real to you?

They don't feel real to me.

It It just feels like list persuasion.

You know, I've told you about list persuasion.

If you don't have a good reason, put a bunch of bad reasons in a list and people will get the impression, well, you know, I I don't know about anyone any one of those reasons, but there's so many.

I mean, it's a list, so there must be something to it because it's a whole list.

Doesn't work that way.

List persuasion is persuasive, even if everything on the list is BS.

And I don't know, I I can see how they can cobble together a vibe, but no, this doesn't look like anybody's becoming a king to me.

Now compare this to what Democrats believed let's say even a year ago were their most important issues.

Okay.

So so a year ago most important issues uh whatever is happening in Israel and Gaza but now they just are sort of ignoring that.

So I guess that's not important now.

Uh climate change.

There was a uh I'll tell you there's an article in Wall Street Journal saying that the Democrats have backed off from climate change.

So it was an existential threat last year and for 20 years before that but suddenly not going to pay much attention to it now from existential threat biggest threat in the world to let's deemphasize this.

Then there was the uh the big issue of uh anybody questioning our elections was insurrectionist just just even questioning the but now it's uh even you know Kathy Griffin and um some other prominent Democrats are questioning whether the elections are rigged or not.

So they went from you cannot even question to questioning complete reversal from there's no way that these elections are rigged to hey you Republicans are going to rig these elections.

Then there was the open borders which were terribly important to keep open but now they're closed and don't hear a lot about it.

There were the COVID shots that were just the everybody had to get them but now not so much.

And then there was the everything has to be trans and now not so much.

So, so they got rid of all the things that they were worried about.

All the big things.

All the big things.

And I guess you could throw in tariffs.

Wasn't that long ago that tariffs were like the big big problem and uh Elon Musk being in Doge was the big big problem.

both of them just went away.

So Elon started working on Tesla again and uh they just sort of let go.

Those things that they were trying to sell us as the most important problems in the world were never problems.

So what did they do?

They have to come up with a whole new imaginary thing to about.

And it's this whole authoritarian king thing.

Everything they do is imaginary.

Everything that Trump does is measurable.

Is Is there still a war in Ukraine?

Yes, we can measure that.

You know, how's the economy doing?

We can measure that.

So, everything Trump does is measurable.

Everything that the uh Democrats are jabbering about seems like conceptual because they don't really have anything they don't have anything real.

Anyway, um Antifa is apparently or did you know that Antifa is a real organization?

Not what the Democrats say.

They say Antifa is imaginary.

So they think that the real stuff is imaginary and the imaginary stuff is real.

Uh but Antifa, the parts that are not imaginary, uh are asking for Antifa people to embed with the no kings thing to make it a little bit more, let's say, less safe because they want to they want to reinforce the fact that Antifa is not a not a safe organization, even if the No Kings people are mostly about nonviolence.

So, we're going to have this weird situation where you're going to have fake protesters because they're paid protesters.

They're going to be um possibly, this is pretty funny, so the protesters themselves will be mostly fakes because a lot of them are just paid protesters, but Antifa is going to maybe penetrate the fake protesters with fake protesters.

So, the fake protesters might be uh penetrated with other fake protesters.

And then on top of that, some of you are going to imagine that the FBI is going to send some fake protesters, too.

I don't think so, but maybe.

So, you have a fake issue that somebody's worried about a king.

Completely artificial fake issue.

You got your fake protesters.

And then on top of that, there might be some fakes pretending to be the fakes.

Yeah.

If you ever wanted a stronger indication that we've entered the golden age, this is it.

Can you imagine anything better than waking up and your biggest problem is that Democrats think they're fighting an imaginary king and and that all their protesters are fake?

It's the best.

It's the best you can imagine because it means we don't have any real problems that we're not dealing with in some creative way.

I feel like Trump with with the exception I'm gonna say health care health care stands out as something that's not dealt with by either side but if you take health care off the table and maybe you shouldn't but everything else looks like it's sort of getting handled as best it can you know even the war in Ukraine it's not over but obviously we're putting the the right kind of attention on it so It's like everything's being handled except healthcare.

That's it.

That's all they have.

So, John Bolton has been indicted as you know.

So, now it's official.

Apparently, what he was doing is he was taking notes from meetings and then including them on his AOL account.

Would you like me to make a joke about AOL and John Bolton using AOL?

Are you ready for this?

You've got jail.

How was that?

Instead of you've got mail, you've got jail.

All right.

Maybe not.

We'll see.

But um a lot of people are saying that the Bolton situation is just like Trump.

So, why did Trump get away with having those classified things when uh Bolton might not get away with it?

And the answer is, don't be an analogy thinker.

It's not a good analogy.

Bolton was not the president of the United States.

He had no authority ever to have classified stuff at his house or his office.

Trump was the president of the United States and was the ultimate decider of what was classified and what was not.

Trump, now this is, you know, I'm saying this is his defense.

I wasn't there, but his defense is that if he says it's unclassified or even acts like it is, it's unclassified because when he was president, which I agree with actually.

So, no, these are not these are not equivalent.

one had the authority to declassify and one never had that authority.

So I was telling you about uh oh was actually Politico not not the Wall Street Journal.

So Deborah Khan writing in Politico that uh Trump's victory taught Democrats about climate change and that climate change is out as a topic and energy affordability is in.

In other words, the Democrats just found out that everything Republicans have been saying forever is the right approach that you want energy affordability and ultimately that will get you, you know, better climate and everything else.

So, yes, affordability.

So, let me ask you this.

If the Democrats thought that was their existential problem, climate change, and they've all seemingly decided to deemphasize it, does that mean it was ever real?

And did they ever believe it was real?

Because how in the world do you go from this is the biggest problem civilization has ever faced, climate change, to why don't we stop talking about it?

Let's let's deemphasize this and work on energy prices.

Doesn't that tell you they never believed it or does it tell you they did believe it but they don't anymore because the the data has not performed according to their models?

Which is it?

But it does seem terribly important to understand the world that it went from the biggest problem in the world to maybe maybe we just, you know, shouldn't mention it.

Let's Let's just down down downplay this a little bit.

My goodness.

All right.

Well, Mark Ben off, CEO of uh and founder of Salesforce, apparently he's apologized for agreeing with Trump temporarily for just like a minute.

He had to apologize.

What he agreed on was uh in some conversation somebody asked him if he'd ever be in favor of the National Guard helping San Francisco with their crime and he made the mistake let's say a Democrat mistake of uh acting like that might be a good idea under the right circumstance now under the right circumstance.

So of course it's not just yes it's you know there might be there might be a situation where that makes sense.

Now that is the most reasonable thing that any leader could ever say.

Totally reasonable.

Yes, if crime is out of control, I can imagine a situation in which you would want to get it under control temporarily with but he got so much push back.

He said, quote, "Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials," he said, "I do not um I do not believe uh that I want that." All right.

So, he got beaten back to his his uh his side.

Sam Harris has emerged again, and he's being provocative.

So Sam thinks that uh the Joe Rogan style of conversation in podcasts and especially when he talks to Elon Musk in podcasts has done in social media uh is amplified misinformation and conspiracy thinking and then Sam goes further and he said and is frankly getting people killed.

Do you believe that things that Joe Rogan and Elon Musk have said on the podcast uh are in fact getting people killed?

Not just risking, not not just putting people at risk, but are getting people killed.

Do you think that's fair to say?

It might be slightly fair because they do talk about important, you know, health and lifestyle related things and probably there's somebody who made a bad decision because of something they heard.

I don't know what.

It wouldn't have been Ivormect then.

But don't you think that free speech is dangerous by its nature?

Why would you pick out these two people as the only one whose free speech is going to hurt somebody?

Don't you think that Sam Harris's free speech would kill people?

If you were to look at all the things that Sam Harris has promoted versus all the things that Elon and Joe Rogan have promoted on podcasts, which one do you think you could determine killed the most people?

I don't know if you can tell.

But if your if your uh problem with other people's free speech is that it might be dangerous, I don't know how you can how do you defend that?

Wouldn't you say that things I've said would be dangerous?

Right?

I mean, if you're in the podcasting business, you sooner or later you're going to say something that is dangerous because somebody's going to take your advice.

Even if you say don't take my advice.

So I talk about a lot of things and then I say but don't take my advice you know financially or medically but people will you know in the real world people going to hear me say something and then even right after I say don't take my advice they're going to go take that advice because it it feels right to them.

So will that mean that I kill some people?

Maybe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, if you want to live in a world with free speech and a dynamic podcasting environment, which we have, people are going to die.

Absolutely.

Now, I think that he may he may be a little bit overw worried about the size of the risk, but I wouldn't say that nobody will ever die because of things they heard on podcasts.

Of course, they will.

It's a big world and there'll be lots of things said and lots of crazy people who believe anything that's said and yeah of course that there will be situations in which um ordinary podcast conversations lead to people dying but what would you do instead you know it's okay if um somebody like Sam Harris is raising the alarm because I have also made the criticism that the podcast um model has a problem.

You've heard me say this before, right?

It's the it's the documentary effect.

If you put if you put somebody on a three-hour podcast, especially a high reputation one like uh Joe Rogan's people will believe whatever whatever they say when they're done.

most people because they would get three hours of one point of view and no hours of the opposing view.

Of course, it would be persuasive.

Of course, it would.

Um, so I've said that for the important topics, you know, not just the fun ones, but for the important topics, you pretty much you just got to have a fact checker there at the same time.

somebody who would disagree but fact check you as you go so that at least the at least the viewer has you know a little bit of uh safety you know I I suppose AI could do it now you you could say hey AI uh look at this uh interview with Joe Rogan and some guest and you say what's the push back what would the critics say about that podcast that would actually be very useful so so maybe you just need AI maybe you don't need a fact checker as long as you're willing to uh fact check it yourself with AI.

Although half of that would be hallucinated.

Anyway, imagine if Sam Harris had gotten his way and uh he had managed to persuade people to vote against Trump and Trump had never come into office.

Would more or fewer people die if Trump had not been president?

Oh, now we're getting into it, right?

I believe that Trump's ascendancy to the presidency, the second term especially, probably will save an immense amount of lives.

Gaza being the the obvious one, maybe Ukraine if he can get that done.

So, yeah, free speech is uh definitely kills some people.

According to Wall Street apes, I saw this on on X.

Allegedly, Go.

Fund.

Me uh created over a million NGO pages and was accepting donations without the NOS's knowing that they had a page.

A million.

A million.

So, an NGO is a non-government organization that usually exists to grift money off the government or off of rich guys.

They made a million of them.

A million and then put them up there and collected money on it without the without the organizations knowing that they had one.

Where did the money go?

Did they give it to the NGO or did they just keep it?

I don't know what they did.

Anyway, it created uh 1.4 million 501c3 organizations using public IRS data.

So, is it my imagination or is everything that's associated with Democrats a complete scam and everything's just money laundering operation?

I it's hard for me to I don't know the the news that I watch is just one Democrat organization after another being determined to have stolen millions and sometimes billions of dollars.

And are any of them Republican?

Am I in a bubble?

Am I in a bubble?

because I can't think of one example where a Republican dominated organization turned out to be a complete corrupt, you know, whatever this is.

But don't we have situation after situation after situation where it's obvious that the Democrat leaders are running just money laundering operations?

I I actually don't know.

if that's my imagination.

So, I'm looking for a real an actual fact check.

Is there a list of Republican bad behavior that matches what we've been seeing for the last several years from the Democrats or is it really all Democrats?

I can't tell because social media is only giving me one side of the story.

But at least I'm aware of it.

I'm I'm at least aware that I've got this big gap in my information.

I think unless there's nothing there.

Yeah.

So, anytime you find uh Democrats in anything that's funded, you could pretty much guarantee it's corrupt.

And what I'm wondering is, is there a way for AI to be the ultimate government auditor?

Seems to me that we're probably at a place where we need to say nobody gets any money for anything if it comes from taxpayers.

Nobody gets any money for anything unless uh there's an AI automatic audit.

Meaning the AI will monitor everything they spend and then report it in a way that you can connect the expenses to whatever the outcomes are.

Because right now there's there's there's just no control over the spending.

They just give it to some organization and it goes into a black hole and they give it to their friends and spend 10 cents on the cause and nobody even checks.

But in theory AI could be your automatic always on auditor, right?

So, somebody needs to develop some kind of a product, maybe a third party product that can automatically audit um any any funded organization.

We we got to have that because right now we're just drowning in corruption.

The corruption is so out of control that there's looks like nothing works.

I think all of our systems are broken by corruption at this point.

Well, George Santos, Republican who got sentenced to jail for wire fraud and identity theft, has been uh had his sentence commuted by President Trump.

I did not hear an argument for why.

Uh so this is one of those ones that makes you scratch your head and say, "Am I am I on the same side with this?" Let's see.

I'm on the same side with the Republicans.

I'm on the same side with MAGA usually.

I'm on the same side with Trump.

But why would I support this?

Am I Am I supposed to say that Republicans get out of jail for free?

Cuz why why does he get out of jail for free?

Now to be fair, Trump has also commuted sentences for Democrats who did real crimes but thought maybe thought the sentence was too much or something.

So there's there's some there's some noise about maybe he was being mistreated in jail but nobody gets treated well in jail.

So I don't know if the thinking here's what I wouldn't want.

I wouldn't want the thinking behind this to be he's a Republican so we're going to get him out of jail.

I hope that's not the thinking, right?

Um I do like Trump being protective of his base.

So I do like commuting all the January 6 stuff, including including some of the people who went way too far.

I'm in favor of that because that's just protecting his team and I think he has to.

But this is he protecting the team or is this just a criminal who maybe should have paid his paid his dues?

He may have been over over sentenced compared to other people.

That could be part of it.

Trump's also uh backing a primary challenger to Thomas Massie.

Uh I don't love that.

don't love that.

Um, you know, I'll reiterate my Thomas Massie opinion.

Yes, he's a gigantic pain in the ass to Republicans, but just the kind I like.

Yeah, not everything has to be smooth.

Sometimes you need that alternative voice and Massie is uh insanely brave with his alternative voice and also insanely rational and uh he's almost always on the right side of principal.

Maybe always maybe always on the right side of principle, but principal doesn't get the job done right.

We live in the real world.

Sometimes you just you're gonna have to vote with your team to get anything done, you know, because it's so close.

But I would rather keep a Massie even at the cost of losing one, you know, dependable Republican vote because I think his voice is too important and we cannot lose it.

So I will disagree with Trump, but I understand why he wants his people to vote for him.

Everybody understands, you know, we can understand both sides of of this situation.

Well, there's a U meeting with Trump and Putin coming up in uh in what country?

Bulgaria or someplace?

I don't know, Hungary.

One of those countries over there that I always get confused.

So, that's we don't have a specific date, I don't think.

But, uh, Trump thinks that maybe maybe we're at a point where talking to Putin could get something done.

Now, cleverly, as you know, Zalinski with two Y's.

Um, do you know why Zalinski, his name is spelled with two Y's at the end of a Zilinski?

It's because that's what that's what everybody asks when they hear him.

Zalinski, why?

Why?

Okay.

Um, anyway, so Zalinsky wants these Tomahawk missiles that only the US can supply and they would give him range to go way into Russia and bomb their energy infrastructure and whatever else.

So Trump is not eager to uh make things worse.

But he did.

Once again, Trump did his Trump thing where he created an asset out of nothing.

So the asset and of nothing is, "Oh, we might we might give Ukraine these tomahawks any minute." Yep, we might.

Any minute you want to talk?

Oh.

Oh, you'd like to talk?

So Putin wants to talk now because Trump has created this asset that didn't exist before, which is maybe maybe I'm going to give Ukraine some tomahawk missiles and you're really going to be up.

So he creates that risk and asset to trade away and then he schedules the meeting.

Pure Trump.

Do you think that Biden would have done that?

probably not because he wasn't smart enough.

He just literally wasn't smart enough.

You create the asset and then you talk and then you trade away the asset.

It's a real asset.

When I say he created the asset, I don't mean it's imaginary.

It's a real asset.

He really could and maybe even probably will give these tomahawks to Ukraine eventually.

I I feel like if if literally nothing comes out of this meeting, I think Ukraine's going to get tomahawks.

What do you think?

I think they will because Trump's not going to what what is he going to do?

Just say, "Well, we tried." I don't think so.

I think he's going to say if I if we can't get it done with this level of mutual threat, I'm going to increase the mutual threat and then we'll try again.

So, who knows what he's thinking internally, but if you're Putin, you would have to worry that the tomahawks are definitely coming if you blow this meeting.

Uh, do you think do you think uh Putin's risk management would allow him to take a chance on those tomahawks coming online?

I don't know.

That'd be pretty that'd be a pretty big risk for Putin.

I don't think he likes that kind of risk.

That that would be a little bit more than he might want to take on because the correct me if I'm wrong, but the tomahawks could just turn off the power in in Russia, right?

If you had if you had a a thousand Tomahawks all of a sudden, you don't think you could take out the entire energy infrastructure of Russia right before the winter?

I bet you could.

Logically, you would imagine that Russia could turn off Ukraine's power, too.

But would they?

They probably would if if they got attacked that hard.

Well, Malibu is looking to arrest homeless people over fire risks because I guess the homeless have started lots of 30 fires.

Um, usually not intentionally.

I guess they're just starting fires to stay warm, but things get out of control.

Some of them probably intentional.

But, uh, Malibu now is, uh, not as blue as it used to be.

Now, maybe it wants those those, uh, homeless people to not be so dangerous.

We'll see where that goes.

Um, there's something strange happening with Venezuela and the US.

So Trump says that uh Madura has quote offered everything, meaning that we're negotiating with Venezuela through some channels, I don't know, but that uh Venezuela has reportedly offered to give the US a dominant stake in Venezuela's oil and other mineral wealth.

What?

What?

How is that even a real thing?

Are you serious?

That Venezuela is trying to buy its way out of trouble by giving the US equity in its natural resources?

I didn't see that coming.

Is that even real?

Well, here's what I think won't work, which is it looks like a Here's how I interpret it.

So, this is just my interpretation.

My interpretation is Maduro knows he has no chance of survival because once he's been determined to be a cartel head as opposed to a legitimate head of state, they can just take him out.

And they know that Trump is someone who won't hesitate to take out a terrorist head or the head of the cartel.

So Maduro is probably saying, "Okay, I got, you know, I got four weeks to stay alive basically.

I'm going to have to offer whatever it takes for them not to kill me specifically, right?

Cuz I'm pretty sure that they would do a decapitation strike.

I don't think they would go in and you try to grind it out and beat the military.

That seems like a bad idea.

But they would definitely know where Maduro is and they would definitely be able to put a drone on his ass anytime they wanted.

So Maduro is probably thinking, "All right, I got to come up with something that can keep me alive for the next month cuz it's not looking good." So he may have promised Venezuela's assets to keep him in power, which is a pretty smart offer because you know that Trump would want to, you know, he'd want to claim success.

He'd want an economic bump.

Uh but it's not good enough because Maduro would still be the head of a cartel and a terrorist organization according to the United States.

So, I don't think you can bribe your way out of that situation, can you?

But it's a hell of an offer.

Uh, and Trump seems to have rejected it.

And, uh, he said, quote, using the fbomb, which Trump is so good at, he says he doesn't want to with the US.

Is that perfect?

Remember, I I I keep telling you that the Democrats, they try to copy Trump and they they do it by trying to swear like they think he swears because it seems to work when he does it.

They don't do it right.

They just throw the fbombs in podcasts.

Whereas when he throws one in, it's the perfect application.

Imagine you're you're Maduro or you're the Venezuelan leadership and you're watching the news and Trump turns right at the camera, looks at the camera and says he doesn't want to with us.

That's not just a good use of a swear term.

That that's a whole different level.

that that is making sure that you know that he means that.

And if there's one thing you're going to pay attention to, it's that everybody.

There's lots of things going on today, but here's what you're going to pay attention to.

You're going to pay attention to my fbomb.

They don't want to with us.

And that is such a clean, clear, strong message.

Perfect use of a curse word.

perfect use of a curse word.

Then you watch somebody like Newsome just sort of randomly throwing in a, you know, a blue word.

Doesn't work at all.

Doesn't work at all.

But if you do it this well, that's that's how to do it.

So, we'll see.

Maybe something will happen with Venezuela.

ABC News has an estimate for building Gaza, rebuilding Gaza, $70 billion.

I saw somebody else say 60 billion, but yeah, once you get into that range, you're just guessing.

Um, $70 billion.

Where's that going to come from?

Apparently, uh, over 80% of Gaza's city buildings have damaged and 40% are completely wiped out.

only 40%.

You know, when I see pictures of Gaza, I don't see anything that looks like it's salvageable.

Are there are there entire parts of Gaza that weren't damaged that much, but we only see the pictures of the ones that are totally flattened?

I don't know.

I'm doubting that 40% number.

It seems like it's more like 80%.

But uh 70 billion, I don't know how anybody's going to get $70 billion to invest in a place that's still going to be festering with terrorists.

70 billion.

Yeah.

Well, over in uh Great Britain, there's apparently a breakthrough in fusion energy.

Um, if you follow my podcast, you know that I always talk about the many breakthroughs in fusion, but we've been having breakthroughs in fusion for my entire life, and we don't have any fusion yet.

So, don't get too excited.

But apparently, uh, over at Oxford Shear, um, they've made some kind of major breakthrough, technical breakthrough.

They've they figured out how to stabilize the turbulent edge of a fusion plasma.

Wow.

Wow.

They can stabilize the turbulent edge of a fusion plasma, which actually is a gigantic deal.

If they if they could really do that, apparently that's gigantic.

Gets you a lot closer to fusion.

The US has also published a road map to get us to fusion.

So, the energy department appears to be doing a good job uh both in priorities and communicating.

Um, I always talk about uh what's happening with living situations and especially senior citizens.

And here's a trend which I was expecting to see.

And uh apparently uh there's some studies that show this is true.

The older people are far more likely to take on a roommate now.

So if there are seniors who own a house and they don't want to leave their house but it becomes too expensive to you know run the house by yourself.

Apparently it's a very big trend now close to a million adults are living with unrelated housemates older adults.

You know, it's not surprising if it's 20somes have roommates, but when the 70somes start getting roommates of other 70somes, then you've got a something going on here.

So, the number of people who are cohabitating with non- relatives is uh up quite a bit since 2021.

So, um, you know, I was telling you before that China seems to have adapted to the, uh, that one child thing better than we expected.

So, the one child would just stay home and would just be a an asset to the parents in a way that maybe if they had several kids, the kids would have left and gotten jobs and whatever.

So it it is a it's useful to watch how society can adjust when it just has to.

And this living the the cost of living is so high that the seniors just have to adjust.

They just won't be able to afford, you know, the the old kind of lifestyle where you could just live in a big house, I guess.

Um so yeah, you're going to see a lot of people cohabitating.

I think they'll be happier.

I think they'll be happier having a another life in the house.

All right.

Um, as I told you, soon as we're done here, Owen Gregorian will have his spaces afterparty.

So, just go to Acts and look for Owen Gregorian and you'll see that.

Uh, I think I'll give you one more reframe before we go.

Anybody up for another reframe?

All right, we got time for one reframe.

And then it's time for breakfast.

All right.

This is from my book, Reframe Your Brain.

Now, the context here, if you're new to this, is that most of the reframes might not be, you know, one that you need specifically, but they're all things that you know somebody who needs.

So, you'll be smarter and more capable of helping other people even if it's not directly for you.

All right.

Um, here's a reframe.

One of my favorites.

Uh, the usual frame is I want to do something.

Whatever the whatever the thing is, I want to do the thing.

I want to, you know, get this uh degree.

I want to get this job.

I want to accomplish this thing.

But a better reframe is I've decided to do it.

Um, this is one of my favorites.

You've heard this one before, but for those of you who haven't heard it, deciding to do something is an entirely different situation than wanting to do something.

So once you understand that distinction that there are things you want that you're probably not going to work that hard on, it's just something you want.

But if you decide, then you're going to do whatever it takes.

Uh I told you earlier about my uh situation with the PET scan and how monstrously painful that was.

Did I want to do that or did I decide to do it?

I decided cuz if I simply wanted to do it, there's no way I would have taken that much pain.

It was 20 minutes of the worst pain I've ever felt in my life just because I had to be in a certain position that was painful.

But because I had decided there was nothing that was going to stop me.

And so I managed to to hold on to literally the hardest thing I've ever done.

I' I've never experienced that much pain and and not be able to move because you can't move.

You're in the scanner.

So that's your uh reframe for the day.

Always know the difference between what you want and what you've decided because the things you've decided, you're probably going to get because you won't stop at anything to get them.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's all I got for you.

I'll say a few words privately to the locals beloved people because they're so beloved.

And the rest of you, hope to see you tomorrow.

Maybe I'll see you on the spaces with Owen.

All right, locals coming at you privately in 30 seconds.

Happy Saturday that we sometimes call

Saturday.

Does anybody see any kings? Any kings?

I think it's working. No kings here.

All right, everybody come in and grab a

beverage. Get a comfortable seat. If you

have a cat or two,

put them on your lap because this show

goes better with a cat on your lap.

Good morning everybody and welcome to

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Oh, so good. So good. Well, I gave an

update to my local subscribers, but I'll

give you a quick update. Yesterday, I

did a special kind of a medical PET scan

that is specific to test to see if you

would be a good candidate for this new

cancer drug called Plu Victto. Um, I do

not know how to read the results of my

tests, but the results do say that I

have high sensitivity to this PSMA stuff

that they put in your body, which I

believe means I'm highly qualified for

the drug because they test they test the

radioactive drug to see if it can reach

to all the right places and light them

up. And apparently, it did. So, I spend

20 minutes in a

PET scan machine,

which forced me to lay straight on my

back, which is insanely painful in my

particular situation. And despite having

really good pain meds, they made no

difference at all. It was like I didn't

have any pain meds at all. So for 20

minutes I had to endure

the worst pain of my life

and not move

or I would die. Well, let me say that

again. Since this is the only path that

I have identified that might, you know,

keep you alive for a while. If I had

moved and therefore ruined the PET scan,

probably I wouldn't have tried it again

cuz it was it wasn't just a little bit

painful. It was monstrously painful.

I c I can confidently say it was the

worst 20 minutes of my life and I doubt

it'll ever be worse.

It's the worst thing I've ever

experienced in my life. And you and you

had to not move, you know? So, I'm like

holding on to this thing trying not to

move. If I moved a little bit,

I might die because I wouldn't be able

to get the treatment.

Let let me tell you that was no fun at

all. But you know what is really good?

You know what is the good news?

It's over. Oh my god, does it feel good

when it's done? You know how when when

something's bad happens and it feels

extra good when it's done? Imagine the

worst pain you've ever felt in your life

and then when it's over.

Cuz when it's over, it's completely

over. I mean, it takes 60 seconds to get

in a position that doesn't hurt. So,

what a day. Anyway, so the good news

maybe

we'll have to see is that I should be

qualified for the drug and there's a

probably a one in three chance it'll

make a big difference. So, we'll see.

Well, I know that you like to see the

reframes from my book, Reframe Your

Brain, Changing Your Life at a Time. So,

here's one of the reframes, and I'll

just pick one here randomly.

This is one of my favorites. Uh, one of

the usual frames that people think is

that the odds of success are low.

Whatever it is you're doing, you know,

it doesn't matter what you're doing. We

we often think our odds of success are

low. But uh the reframe is maybe I'm bad

at estimating the odds

because I remember when I went to become

a tried to become a cartoonist,

I was told the odds were, you know, 1 in

10,000.

But it turns out I was bad at estimating

the odds cuz I made it. And it turns out

that it never was one in 10,000. that if

you looked at all the people who tried

to become a cartoonist, there might be

10,000 a year who try to become

professional cartoonists and fail

because it's hard. But the number of

those 10,000 who actually could draw a

comic and write a joke,

a dozen.

So I was really only I was only

competing with maybe a dozen people in

the entire country. All the rest wanted

to be cartoonists, but it, you know,

even you could look at their work and

say, "No, no, this is this is not

close." So, here I thought I was

competing with 10,000 people in almost

impossible task. Probably it was 12. So,

here's the the reframe is that sometimes

a task is impossible.

Sometimes you're bad at estimating how

possible it is and you have to get those

clear. So that's your uh reframe for the

morning. Might have another one for you

when we're done. After our uh podcast

today, Owen Gregorian will be doing his

spaces after party. So, just look for uh

Owen's space uh after after we're done

here. Tomorrow, Sunday, toward the end

of my podcast, I'm going to have a

guest, King Randall. Uh I tried to have

King Randall on before, but I had a

little medical emergency when I was

going to. So, anyway, but I think it'll

work tomorrow if I do it as part of the

end of the show. So, it won't it won't

be its own broadcast. will just be

tackled on the end. Um, so probably

quarter to the hour or so at the end.

Um,

oh, let's look at the news. Let's see if

there's any uh science that they didn't

need to do. Oh, yeah. Did you know that

people's views on immigration

are shaped by whether they think the

immigrants will vote the same way they

do?

Are you surprised by that? Is there

anybody who didn't know that that would

be true? So apparently if you think the

immigrants are uh going to vote the same

way your political party votes, suddenly

you don't mind those immigrants nearly

as much. So do you think that that uh

something that they needed to study?

No. You didn't need to do a study to

find out that people like it when people

agree with them. People like it when

people agree with them. All things being

equal.

And guess what? Eric Dolan of Cypos is

writing yet again about psychedelic

experiences. And apparently uh

a brief experience with psychedelics can

reduce your lifetime use of cannabis.

So apparently uh one of the benefits if

you're looking to cut down on your

marijuana use is that uh psychedelics

might do that for you. Even with a

limited exposure to them, you might have

a lifetime decrease in marijuana use. Do

you think that's a surprise?

Not really. Because if if you've had

experience with both of those things,

you would totally understand why the one

would make the other less less

desirable.

Well, apparently the Xplatform is going

to have a whole new recommendation

system uh in a few weeks, Elon Musk is

telling us. So, at the moment, I have no

idea

why X shows me what it shows me. I I

just can't figure it out. It doesn't

show me anything I disagree with

anymore. So X completely stopped showing

me anything from any left-leaning

anything. Now maybe they all went to

blue sky or something, but I don't get

anything that's on the other side of uh

of my political opinions. Never. So I

don't know if that'll change. But what

they're trying to do is make sure that

uh awesome small accounts can get

recognized, which doesn't happen at the

moment. So I guess and then I guess

you'll be able to just talk to Grock and

uh just tell it what to prefer in its

algorithm and then it will just do it.

That's kind of cool.

Uh, but Grock will literally read every

post, Elon says, and watch every video,

100 million per day,

to match users with content they're most

likely to find interesting. Do you think

that'll make a difference? I don't know.

There have been a lot of changes to

algorithms that did not did not seem to

be doing that, but maybe he can pull it

off.

Speaking of Elon, um he's one of the

people who pointed out, I think JD

vanced it too, that in New England,

um there are six states that have

collectively around 40% of their

population votes Republican, 40%. So,

six states, 40% of them are Republican.

Guess how many Republican

representatives in in Congress they

have? 40% of six states, none.

They They have zero

zero Republicans,

even though 40% of six different states

are Republican and they have no

representation.

Do you feel bad about redistricting now?

I don't. I don't.

Well, uh, apparently there's a new

Leonardo DiCaprio movie,

um, that's called, uh,

one battle after another. And my

understanding is that the critics like

it and the public are saying, "What kind

of uh, Antifa propaganda garbage is

this?" Some are saying it's a pro-

Antifa

um, movie.

Apparently, it's on it's on uh it's on a

track to lose a hund00 million, but I

think Warner Brothers disputes that. So,

but the public doesn't like it nearly as

much as the as the elites.

Well, as you know, today's the No Kings

rally. The no kings organizers think

that they might get more than five

million people at 2500 cities all around

the country to march. And uh I for one

am certainly glad that they're marching

for keeping the kings away because so

far they're doing a great job.

Have there been any kings since the last

no kings march? No. No. So, if the last

one worked that well, it just makes

sense I'd keep doing it because, you

know, if something works, keep doing it.

So, no kings so far. And I think this

one's going to work, too. Um, I'm I'm

not feeling any kings emerging.

So, kind of genius. It's working. It's

funny that we even know the name of the

organizers.

you know this guy Joel Payne, he's the

chief communication officer for Move On.

It's one of the organ organizers.

So

maybe I'm wrong about this, but uh give

me a fact check on this.

If you do a protest and there's no

violence and no threat of violence, does

anything change in the real world?

Answer, I don't think so. Because why

would anybody do anything differently if

there's no risk? It's just people

marching around. Wh why would I change

what I'm doing? Because some people took

a walk. But if a protest looks like it

is violent or could be violent,

do things change

sometimes.

because that that would be a signal that

whatever they're protesting is so

important, just so amazingly important

that people are willing to get violent

over it. So the no kings thing is

aggressively nonviolent, right?

Is there any chance that will make a

difference in any way on any topic? I

think the answer is no.

There's no way it could. There's not

even there's not even an argument about

how these set of actions could have a

ripple effect that would cause something

good to happen. There's not there's not

even a case, right? It it's just

completely disconnected from anything in

the real world. There's just people

marching around and getting paid. So, I

think the organizers get paid. That's

why they organize it. some of the

protesters get paid and some of the

protesters are going to be probably, you

know, bad people trying to make bad

things happen. So, you could have fake

protesters and your fake uh completely

useless protests.

Yeah. Anyway, um I asked Grock, what

would be some of the examples of what

the Trump administration is doing that

would look like authoritarianism,

which would cause the entire country to

want to do a no kings uh kind of uh

protest? So, what exactly

are the complaints? Here are the things

that Grock said. That doesn't mean it's

right. This is just coming from one AI

firing prosecutors and inspecting

generals. Is that authoritarian?

Firing prosecutors,

doesn't it matter if the prosecutors

were doing their job that they were

asked to do?

If you fired them for no reason, maybe

that would be bad. But suppose you fired

them because you asked them to do

something and they were Democrats, so

they decided not to do it. Is that

authoritarian to fire somebody for not

doing what you asked them to do for

their job?

Doesn't feel like it. How about uh the

lawfaring of uh John Balden and Comey?

Well, as far as we can tell, those are

real crimes and at least Comey was

trying to overthrow the government

allegedly.

And uh and Bolton apparently was uh

accusing Trump

of all the same things that he was doing

at the same time he was accusing him uh

in terms of mishandling of classified

information. So, is that authoritarian

to

to uh to indict Bolton

when the crimes look really sort of

obvious like you know maybe as a defense

but what we know looks like a crime to

me and Comey's the same thing. Uh, Grock

also said that part of the authoritarian

vibe is that the hyper macho military,

the Heg Seth and Trump are making the

military hyper macho. Is that

authoritarian or is that just what a

military should be? Shouldn't a military

be hyper macho? Even if you have women

in the military, shouldn't it still be

hyper macho?

I don't know. And then there's the issue

of the National Guard cities um because

they would be, let's say, walking on or

ignoring the local government's

preferences.

But correct me if I'm wrong, the

National Guard is only guarding federal

federal assets. And if the local people

say no, no, we don't need help, then

they don't do it. Right? I don't know of

any case where the National Guard is

doing what the locals said don't do

except protecting federal assets as far

as I know.

Then there's the uh the law fairing with

the DOJ which uh I'm totally in favor of

as long as they're lawfairing the

lawfarers and the insurrectionists

which they are.

Um, Grock says that Trump is punishing

critics. Is he?

Well, a lot of people getting fired, but

that feels like what happens on both

sides. You know, don't don't the

Democrats fire Republicans when they

take power? Sort of ordinary.

And uh, let's see. Grock says the

authoritarianism included CIA ops in

Venezuela.

Well, really?

I mean, don't we have CIA ops in other

countries, especially South America,

like all the time, like with every

government? Is that is that some new

thing?

Then there's the rhetoric. The rhetoric

is macho according to Grock. And uh

and uh Grock also thinks that the

administration is uh let's say

misbehaving or disobeying the courts but

is doing it by foot dragging and

workarounds and you know nothing illegal

but but that it's not kind of

coordinating and and uh obeying the

courts as much as it could. Now which

one of those things seems real?

Do any of those feel real to you?

They don't feel real to me. It It just

feels like list persuasion. You know,

I've told you about list persuasion. If

you don't have a good reason,

put a bunch of bad reasons in a list and

people will get the impression, well,

you know, I I don't know about anyone

any one of those reasons, but there's so

many. I mean, it's a list, so there must

be something to it because it's a whole

list. Doesn't work that way. List

persuasion is persuasive, even if

everything on the list is BS. And I

don't know, I I can see how they can

cobble together a vibe,

but no, this doesn't look like anybody's

becoming a king to me.

Now compare this to what Democrats

believed let's say even a year ago were

their most important issues. Okay. So so

a year ago most important issues uh

whatever is happening in Israel and Gaza

but now they just are sort of ignoring

that. So I guess that's not important

now. Uh climate change. There was a uh

I'll tell you there's an article in Wall

Street Journal saying that the Democrats

have backed off from climate change. So

it was an existential threat last year

and for 20 years before that but

suddenly

not going to pay much attention to it

now from existential threat biggest

threat in the world to

let's deemphasize this. Then there was

the uh the big issue of uh anybody

questioning our elections

was insurrectionist just just even

questioning the but now it's uh even you

know Kathy Griffin and um some other

prominent Democrats are questioning

whether the elections are rigged or not.

So they went from you cannot even

question to questioning complete

reversal from there's no way that these

elections are rigged to hey you

Republicans are going to rig these

elections.

Then there was the open borders which

were terribly important to keep open but

now they're closed and don't hear a lot

about it. There were the COVID shots

that were just the everybody had to get

them but now not so much. And then there

was the everything has to be trans and

now not so much.

So,

so they got rid of all the things that

they were worried about. All the big

things. All the big things. And I guess

you could throw in tariffs.

Wasn't that long ago that tariffs were

like the big big problem and uh Elon

Musk being in Doge was the big big

problem.

both of them just went away.

So Elon started working on Tesla again

and uh

they just sort of let go. Those things

that they were trying to sell us as the

most important problems in the world

were never problems. So what did they

do? They have to come up with a whole

new imaginary thing to about. And

it's this whole authoritarian king

thing.

Everything they do is imaginary.

Everything that Trump does is

measurable.

Is Is there still a war in Ukraine? Yes,

we can measure that. You know, how's the

economy doing? We can measure that. So,

everything Trump does is measurable.

Everything that the uh Democrats are

jabbering about seems like conceptual

because they don't really have anything

they don't have anything real.

Anyway,

um Antifa is apparently or did you know

that Antifa is a real organization? Not

what the Democrats say. They say Antifa

is imaginary.

So they think that the real stuff is

imaginary and the imaginary stuff is

real. Uh but Antifa, the parts that are

not imaginary,

uh are asking for Antifa people to embed

with the no kings thing to make it a

little bit more, let's say, less safe

because they want to they want to

reinforce the fact that Antifa is not a

not a safe organization, even if the No

Kings people are mostly about

nonviolence.

So, we're going to have this weird

situation where you're going to have

fake protesters

because they're paid protesters. They're

going to be um possibly,

this is pretty funny, so the protesters

themselves will be mostly fakes because

a lot of them are just paid protesters,

but Antifa is going to maybe penetrate

the fake protesters

with fake protesters.

So, the fake protesters might be uh

penetrated with other fake protesters.

And then on top of that, some of you are

going to imagine that the FBI is going

to send some fake protesters, too. I

don't think so, but maybe.

So, you have a fake issue

that somebody's worried about a king.

Completely artificial fake issue. You

got your fake protesters. And then on

top of that, there might be some fakes

pretending to be the fakes.

Yeah. If you ever wanted a stronger

indication that we've entered the golden

age, this is it.

Can you imagine anything better than

waking up and your biggest problem

is that Democrats think they're fighting

an imaginary king and and that all their

protesters are fake?

It's the best. It's the best you can

imagine because it means we don't have

any real problems that we're not dealing

with in some creative way. I feel like

Trump with with the exception I'm gonna

say health care health care stands out

as something that's not dealt with by

either side but if you take health care

off the table and maybe you shouldn't

but everything else looks like it's sort

of getting handled

as best it can you know even the war in

Ukraine it's not over but obviously

we're putting the the right kind of

attention on it so It's like

everything's being handled except

healthcare. That's it. That's all they

have.

So, John Bolton has been indicted as you

know. So, now it's official. Apparently,

what he was doing is he was taking notes

from meetings and then including them on

his AOL account.

Would you like me to make a joke about

AOL and John Bolton using AOL?

Are you ready for this?

You've got jail.

How was that?

Instead of you've got mail, you've got

jail. All right. Maybe not. We'll see.

But um

a lot of people are saying that the

Bolton situation is just like Trump. So,

why did Trump get away with having those

classified things when uh Bolton might

not get away with it? And the answer is,

don't be an analogy thinker. It's not a

good analogy.

Bolton was not the president of the

United States. He had no authority

ever to have classified stuff at his

house or his office. Trump was the

president of the United States and was

the ultimate decider of what was

classified and what was not. Trump, now

this is, you know, I'm saying this is

his defense. I wasn't there, but his

defense is that if he says it's

unclassified or even acts like it is,

it's unclassified because when he was

president, which I agree with actually.

So, no, these are not these are not

equivalent. one had the authority to

declassify and one never had that

authority.

So I was telling you about uh oh was

actually Politico not not the Wall

Street Journal. So Deborah Khan writing

in Politico that uh Trump's victory

taught Democrats about climate change

and that climate change is out as a

topic and energy affordability is in. In

other words, the Democrats just found

out that everything Republicans have

been saying forever is the right

approach that you want energy

affordability

and ultimately that will get you, you

know, better climate and everything

else. So, yes, affordability.

So, let me ask you this.

If the Democrats thought that was their

existential problem, climate change, and

they've all seemingly decided to

deemphasize it,

does that mean it was ever real? And did

they ever believe it was real? Because

how in the world do you go from this is

the biggest problem civilization has

ever faced, climate change, to why don't

we stop talking about it? Let's let's

deemphasize this and work on energy

prices.

Doesn't that tell you they never

believed it or does it tell you they did

believe it but they don't anymore

because the the data has not performed

according to their models? Which is it?

But it does seem terribly important to

understand the world that it went from

the biggest problem in the world to

maybe maybe we just, you know, shouldn't

mention it. Let's Let's just down down

downplay this a little bit.

My goodness. All right. Well, Mark Ben

off, CEO of uh and founder of

Salesforce, apparently he's apologized

for agreeing with Trump temporarily for

just like a minute. He had to apologize.

What he agreed on was uh in some

conversation somebody asked him if he'd

ever be in favor of the National Guard

helping San Francisco with their crime

and he made the mistake let's say a

Democrat mistake of uh acting like that

might be a good idea under the right

circumstance now under the right

circumstance. So of course it's not just

yes it's you know there might be there

might be a situation where that makes

sense. Now that is the most reasonable

thing that any leader could ever say.

Totally reasonable. Yes, if crime is out

of control, I can imagine a situation in

which you would want to get it under

control temporarily with but he got so

much push back. He said, quote, "Having

listened closely to my fellow San

Franciscans and our local officials," he

said, "I do not

um I do not believe uh that I want

that." All right.

So, he got beaten back to his his uh his

side. Sam Harris has emerged again, and

he's being provocative. So Sam thinks

that uh the Joe Rogan style of

conversation in podcasts and especially

when he talks to Elon Musk in podcasts

has done in social media uh is amplified

misinformation and conspiracy thinking

and then Sam goes further and he said

and is frankly getting people killed.

Do you believe that things that Joe

Rogan and Elon Musk have said on the

podcast

uh are in fact getting people killed?

Not just risking, not not just putting

people at risk, but are getting people

killed.

Do you think that's fair to say?

It might be slightly fair because they

do talk about important, you know,

health and lifestyle related things and

probably there's somebody who made a bad

decision because of something they

heard. I don't know what. It wouldn't

have been Ivormect then. But don't you

think that free speech is dangerous by

its nature?

Why would you pick out these two people

as the only one whose free speech is

going to hurt somebody? Don't you think

that Sam Harris's free speech would kill

people?

If you were to look at all the things

that Sam Harris has promoted versus all

the things that Elon and Joe Rogan have

promoted on podcasts, which one do you

think you could determine killed the

most people?

I don't know if you can tell.

But if your

if your uh problem with other people's

free speech is that it might be

dangerous,

I don't know how you can how do you

defend that?

Wouldn't you say that things I've said

would be dangerous?

Right? I mean, if you're in the

podcasting business, you sooner or later

you're going to say something that is

dangerous because somebody's going to

take your advice. Even if you say don't

take my advice. So I talk about a lot of

things and then I say but don't take my

advice you know financially or medically

but people will you know in the real

world people going to hear me say

something and then even right after I

say don't take my advice they're going

to go take that advice because it it

feels right to them. So will that mean

that I kill some people?

Maybe.

Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, if you want

to live in a world with free speech and

a dynamic podcasting environment, which

we have, people are going to die.

Absolutely. Now, I think that he may he

may be a little bit overw worried about

the size of the risk,

but I wouldn't say that nobody will ever

die because of things they heard on

podcasts. Of course, they will. It's a

big world and there'll be lots of things

said and lots of crazy people who

believe anything that's said and yeah of

course that there will be situations in

which um ordinary podcast conversations

lead to people dying

but what would you do instead

you know it's okay if um somebody like

Sam Harris is raising the alarm

because I have also made the criticism

that the podcast

um model has a problem. You've heard me

say this before, right? It's the it's

the documentary effect. If you put if

you put somebody on a three-hour

podcast, especially a high reputation

one like uh Joe Rogan's people will

believe whatever whatever they say when

they're done. most people because they

would get three hours of one point of

view and no hours of the opposing view.

Of course, it would be persuasive. Of

course, it would. Um, so I've said that

for the important topics, you know, not

just the fun ones, but for the important

topics, you pretty much you just got to

have a fact checker there at the same

time. somebody who would disagree but

fact check you as you go so that at

least the at least the viewer has you

know a little bit of uh safety you know

I I suppose AI could do it now you you

could say hey AI uh look at this uh

interview with Joe Rogan and some guest

and you say what's the push back what

would the critics say about that podcast

that would actually be very useful so so

maybe you just need AI maybe you don't

need a fact checker as long as you're

willing to uh fact check it yourself

with AI. Although half of that would be

hallucinated.

Anyway, imagine if Sam Harris had gotten

his way and uh he had managed to

persuade people to vote against Trump

and Trump had never come into office.

Would more or fewer people die if Trump

had not been president?

Oh, now we're getting into it, right? I

believe that Trump's ascendancy to the

presidency, the second term especially,

probably will save an immense amount of

lives.

Gaza being the the obvious one, maybe

Ukraine if he can get that done. So,

yeah, free speech is uh definitely kills

some people.

According to Wall Street apes, I saw

this on on X.

Allegedly, GoFundMe

uh created over a million NGO pages and

was accepting donations without the

NOS's knowing that they had a page.

A million.

A million.

So, an NGO is a non-government

organization that usually exists to

grift money off the government or off of

rich guys. They made a million of them.

A million

and then put them up there and collected

money on it without the without the

organizations knowing that they had one.

Where did the money go? Did they give it

to the NGO or did they just keep it? I

don't know what they did. Anyway,

it created uh 1.4 million 501c3

organizations using public IRS data.

So, is it my imagination or is

everything that's associated with

Democrats

a complete scam and everything's just

money laundering operation?

I it's hard for me to I don't know the

the news that I watch is just one

Democrat organization after another

being determined to have stolen millions

and sometimes billions of dollars. And

are any of them Republican?

Am I in a bubble?

Am I in a bubble? because I can't think

of one example where a Republican

dominated organization turned out to be

a complete corrupt, you know, whatever

this is.

But don't we have situation after

situation after situation where it's

obvious that the Democrat leaders are

running just money laundering

operations?

I I actually don't know.

if that's my imagination.

So, I'm looking for a real an actual

fact check.

Is there a list of Republican bad

behavior that matches what we've been

seeing for the last several years from

the Democrats or is it really all

Democrats?

I can't tell because social media is

only giving me one side of the story.

But at least I'm aware of it. I'm I'm at

least aware that I've got this big gap

in my information. I think unless

there's nothing there.

Yeah. So, anytime you find uh Democrats

in anything that's funded, you could

pretty much guarantee it's corrupt. And

what I'm wondering is, is there a way

for AI to be the ultimate government

auditor?

Seems to me that we're probably at a

place where we need to say nobody gets

any money for anything if it comes from

taxpayers. Nobody gets any money for

anything unless

uh there's an AI automatic audit.

Meaning the AI will monitor everything

they spend and then report it in a way

that you can connect the expenses to

whatever the outcomes are. Because right

now there's there's there's just no

control over the spending. They just

give it to some organization and it goes

into a black hole and they give it to

their friends and spend 10 cents on the

cause and nobody even checks. But in

theory

AI could be your automatic always on

auditor, right? So, somebody needs to

develop some kind of a product, maybe a

third party product that can

automatically audit um any any funded

organization.

We we got to have that because right now

we're just drowning in corruption. The

corruption is so out of control that

there's looks like nothing works. I

think all of our systems are broken by

corruption at this point.

Well, George Santos,

Republican who got sentenced to jail for

wire fraud and identity theft, has been

uh had his sentence commuted by

President Trump. I did not hear an

argument for why.

Uh so this is one of those ones that

makes you scratch your head and say, "Am

I am I on the same side with this?"

Let's see. I'm on the same side with the

Republicans.

I'm on the same side with MAGA usually.

I'm on the same side with Trump.

But why would I support this? Am I Am I

supposed to say that Republicans get out

of jail for free? Cuz why why does he

get out of jail for free? Now to be

fair, Trump has also commuted sentences

for Democrats who did real crimes

but thought maybe thought the sentence

was too much or something. So there's

there's some there's some noise about

maybe he was being mistreated in jail

but nobody gets treated well in jail. So

I don't know if the thinking here's what

I wouldn't want. I wouldn't want the

thinking behind this to be he's a

Republican so we're going to get him out

of jail. I hope that's not the thinking,

right? Um I do like Trump being

protective of his base. So I do like

commuting all the January 6 stuff,

including including some of the people

who went way too far. I'm in favor of

that because that's just protecting his

team and I think he has to. But this is

he protecting the team or is this just a

criminal

who maybe should have paid his paid his

dues? He may have been over over

sentenced compared to other people. That

could be part of it.

Trump's also uh backing a primary

challenger to Thomas Massie. Uh I don't

love that.

don't love that. Um, you know, I'll

reiterate my Thomas Massie opinion. Yes,

he's a gigantic pain in the ass to

Republicans, but just the kind I like.

Yeah, not everything has to be smooth.

Sometimes you need that alternative

voice and Massie is uh insanely brave

with his alternative voice and also

insanely rational

and uh he's almost always on the right

side of principal.

Maybe always maybe always on the right

side of principle, but principal doesn't

get the job done right. We live in the

real world. Sometimes you just you're

gonna have to vote with your team to get

anything done, you know, because it's so

close. But I would rather keep a Massie

even at the cost of losing one, you

know, dependable Republican vote because

I think his voice is too important and

we cannot lose it. So I will disagree

with Trump, but I understand why he

wants his people to vote for him.

Everybody understands, you know, we can

understand both sides of of this

situation.

Well, there's a U meeting with Trump and

Putin coming up in uh in what country?

Bulgaria or someplace? I don't know,

Hungary. One of those countries over

there that I always get confused. So,

that's we don't have a specific date, I

don't think. But, uh, Trump thinks that

maybe maybe we're at a point where

talking to Putin could get something

done. Now, cleverly, as you know,

Zalinski with two Y's.

Um, do you know why Zalinski, his name

is spelled with two Y's at the end of a

Zilinski?

It's because that's what that's what

everybody asks when they hear him.

Zalinski,

why? Why?

Okay. Um,

anyway, so Zalinsky wants these Tomahawk

missiles that only the US can supply and

they would give him range to go way into

Russia and bomb their energy

infrastructure and whatever else. So

Trump is not eager to uh make things

worse.

But he did. Once again, Trump did his

Trump thing where he created an asset

out of nothing. So the asset and of

nothing is, "Oh, we might we might give

Ukraine these tomahawks any minute."

Yep, we might. Any minute you want to

talk? Oh. Oh, you'd like to talk? So

Putin wants to talk now because Trump

has created this asset that didn't exist

before, which is maybe maybe I'm going

to give Ukraine some tomahawk missiles

and you're really going to be up.

So he creates that risk and asset to

trade away and then he schedules the

meeting.

Pure Trump. Do you think that Biden

would have done that? probably not

because he wasn't smart enough. He just

literally wasn't smart enough. You

create the asset and then you talk and

then you trade away the asset. It's a

real asset. When I say he created the

asset, I don't mean it's imaginary. It's

a real asset. He really could and maybe

even probably will give these tomahawks

to Ukraine eventually. I I feel like if

if literally nothing comes out of this

meeting, I think Ukraine's going to get

tomahawks. What do you think?

I think they will because Trump's not

going to what what is he going to do?

Just say, "Well, we tried."

I don't think so. I think he's going to

say if I if we can't get it done with

this level of mutual threat, I'm going

to increase the mutual threat and then

we'll try again.

So, who knows what he's thinking

internally, but if you're Putin, you

would have to worry that the tomahawks

are definitely coming if you blow this

meeting.

Uh, do you think do you think uh Putin's

risk management would allow him to take

a chance on those tomahawks coming

online?

I don't know. That'd be pretty that'd be

a pretty big risk for Putin. I don't

think he likes that kind of risk. That

that would be a little bit more than he

might want to take on because the

correct me if I'm wrong, but the

tomahawks could just turn off the power

in in Russia, right? If you had if you

had a a thousand Tomahawks all of a

sudden, you don't think you could take

out the entire energy infrastructure of

Russia right before the winter? I bet

you could.

Logically, you would imagine that Russia

could turn off Ukraine's power, too. But

would they?

They probably would if if they got

attacked that hard.

Well, Malibu is looking to arrest

homeless people over fire risks because

I guess the homeless have started lots

of 30 fires. Um, usually not

intentionally. I guess they're just

starting fires to stay warm, but things

get out of control. Some of them

probably intentional. But, uh, Malibu

now is, uh, not as blue as it used to

be. Now, maybe it wants those those, uh,

homeless people to not be so dangerous.

We'll see where that goes. Um, there's

something strange happening with

Venezuela

and the US. So Trump says that uh Madura

has quote offered everything, meaning

that we're negotiating with Venezuela

through some channels, I don't know, but

that uh Venezuela has reportedly offered

to give the US a dominant stake in

Venezuela's oil and other mineral

wealth.

What?

What?

How is that even a real thing? Are you

serious? That Venezuela is trying to buy

its way out of trouble by giving the US

equity in its natural resources?

I didn't see that coming.

Is that even real?

Well, here's what I think won't work,

which is it looks like a Here's how I

interpret it. So, this is just my

interpretation. My interpretation is

Maduro knows he has no chance of

survival

because once he's been determined to be

a cartel head as opposed to a legitimate

head of state,

they can just take him out. And they

know that Trump is someone who won't

hesitate to take out a terrorist head or

the head of the cartel. So Maduro is

probably saying, "Okay, I got, you know,

I got four weeks to stay alive

basically. I'm going to have to offer

whatever it takes

for them not to kill me specifically,

right? Cuz I'm pretty sure that they

would do a decapitation strike. I don't

think they would go in and you try to

grind it out and beat the military. That

seems like a bad idea. But they would

definitely know where Maduro is and they

would definitely be able to put a drone

on his ass anytime they wanted. So

Maduro is probably thinking, "All right,

I got to come up with something that can

keep me alive for the next month cuz

it's not looking good." So he may have

promised Venezuela's assets to keep him

in power,

which is a pretty smart offer because

you know that Trump would want to, you

know, he'd want to claim success. He'd

want an economic bump. Uh but it's not

good enough

because Maduro would still be the head

of a cartel and a terrorist organization

according to the United States. So, I

don't think you can bribe your way out

of that situation, can you? But it's a

hell of an offer. Uh, and Trump seems to

have rejected it. And, uh, he said,

quote, using the fbomb, which Trump is

so good at, he says he doesn't want to

with the US.

Is that perfect? Remember, I I I keep

telling you that the Democrats, they try

to copy Trump and they they do it by

trying to swear like they think he

swears because it seems to work when he

does it.

They don't do it right.

They just throw the fbombs in podcasts.

Whereas when he throws one in, it's the

perfect application.

Imagine you're you're Maduro or you're

the Venezuelan leadership and you're

watching the news and Trump turns right

at the camera, looks at the camera and

says he doesn't want to with us.

That's not just a good use of a swear

term. That that's a whole different

level. that that is making sure that you

know that he means that. And if there's

one thing you're going to pay attention

to, it's that everybody. There's lots of

things going on today, but here's what

you're going to pay attention to. You're

going to pay attention to my fbomb. They

don't want to with us. And that is

such a clean, clear,

strong message.

Perfect use of a curse word. perfect use

of a curse word. Then you watch somebody

like Newsome just sort of randomly

throwing in a, you know, a blue word.

Doesn't work at all. Doesn't work at

all. But if you do it this well, that's

that's how to do it.

So, we'll see. Maybe something will

happen with Venezuela.

ABC News has an estimate for building

Gaza, rebuilding Gaza, $70 billion. I

saw somebody else say 60 billion, but

yeah, once you get into that range,

you're just guessing. Um,

$70 billion. Where's that going to come

from?

Apparently, uh,

over 80% of Gaza's city buildings have

damaged and 40% are completely wiped

out.

only 40%.

You know, when I see pictures of Gaza, I

don't see anything that looks like it's

salvageable. Are there are there entire

parts of Gaza that weren't damaged that

much, but we only see the pictures of

the ones that are totally flattened? I

don't know. I'm doubting that 40%

number. It seems like it's more like

80%.

But uh 70 billion, I don't know how

anybody's going to get $70 billion to

invest in a place that's still going to

be festering with terrorists.

70 billion. Yeah.

Well, over in uh Great Britain, there's

apparently a breakthrough in fusion

energy. Um, if you follow my podcast,

you know that I always talk about the

many breakthroughs in fusion, but we've

been having breakthroughs in fusion for

my entire life, and we don't have any

fusion yet. So, don't get too excited.

But apparently, uh, over at Oxford

Shear,

um, they've made some kind of major

breakthrough, technical breakthrough.

They've they figured out how to

stabilize the turbulent edge of a fusion

plasma. Wow. Wow. They can stabilize the

turbulent edge of a fusion plasma,

which actually is a gigantic deal. If

they if they could really do that,

apparently that's gigantic. Gets you a

lot closer to fusion.

The US has also published a road map to

get us to fusion. So, the energy

department appears to be doing a good

job uh both in priorities and

communicating.

Um,

I always talk about uh what's happening

with living situations and especially

senior citizens. And here's a trend

which I was expecting to see. And uh

apparently uh there's some studies that

show this is true. The older people are

far more likely to take on a roommate

now. So if there are seniors who own a

house and they don't want to leave their

house but it becomes too expensive to

you know run the house by yourself.

Apparently it's a very big trend now

close to a million adults are living

with unrelated housemates older adults.

You know, it's not surprising if it's

20somes have roommates, but when the

70somes

start getting roommates of other

70somes, then you've got a something

going on here. So, the number of people

who are cohabitating with non- relatives

is uh up quite a bit since 2021.

So,

um, you know, I was telling you before

that China seems to have adapted to the,

uh, that one child thing better than we

expected.

So, the one child would just stay home

and would just be a an asset to the

parents in a way that maybe if they had

several kids, the kids would have left

and gotten jobs and whatever. So

it it is a it's useful to watch how

society can adjust when it just has to.

And this living the the cost of living

is so high that the seniors just have to

adjust. They just won't be able to

afford, you know, the the old kind of

lifestyle where you could just live in a

big house, I guess. Um so yeah, you're

going to see a lot of people

cohabitating. I think they'll be

happier. I think they'll be happier

having a another life in the house.

All right. Um, as I told you, soon as

we're done here, Owen Gregorian will

have his spaces afterparty. So, just go

to Acts and look for Owen Gregorian and

you'll see that. Uh, I think I'll give

you one more reframe

before we go. Anybody up for another

reframe?

All right, we got time for one reframe.

And then it's time for breakfast.

All right. This is from my book, Reframe

Your Brain. Now, the context here, if

you're new to this, is that most of the

reframes might not be, you know, one

that you need specifically, but they're

all things that you know somebody who

needs. So, you'll be smarter and more

capable of helping other people even if

it's not directly for you. All right.

Um, here's a reframe.

One of my favorites. Uh, the usual frame

is I want to do something. Whatever the

whatever the thing is, I want to do the

thing. I want to,

you know, get this uh degree. I want to

get this job. I want to accomplish this

thing. But a better reframe is I've

decided to do it. Um, this is one of my

favorites. You've heard this one before,

but for those of you who haven't heard

it, deciding to do something is an

entirely different situation than

wanting to do something. So once you

understand that distinction

that there are things you want that

you're probably not going to work that

hard on, it's just something you want.

But if you decide,

then you're going to do whatever it

takes. Uh I told you earlier about my uh

situation with the PET scan and how

monstrously painful that was. Did I want

to do that or did I decide to do it? I

decided cuz if I simply wanted to do it,

there's no way I would have taken that

much pain. It was 20 minutes of the

worst pain I've ever felt in my life

just because I had to be in a certain

position that was painful. But because I

had decided

there was nothing that was going to stop

me. And so I managed to to hold on to

literally the hardest thing I've ever

done. I' I've never experienced that

much pain and and not be able to move

because you can't move. You're in the

scanner. So that's your uh reframe for

the day. Always know the difference

between what you want

and what you've decided because the

things you've decided,

you're probably going to get because you

won't stop at anything to get them. All

right, ladies and gentlemen, that's all

I got for you. I'll say a few words

privately to the locals beloved people

because they're so beloved. And the rest

of you, hope to see you tomorrow. Maybe

I'll see you on the spaces with Owen.

All right, locals coming at you

privately in 30 seconds.