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#2341 – Bernie Sanders Podcast Episode Description
Bernie Sanders is the senior United States senator from Vermont. See him live on the Fighting Oligarchy tour.
www.berniesanders.com
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#2341 – Bernie Sanders Podcast Episode Top Keywords
#2341 – Bernie Sanders Podcast Episode Summary
Podcast Episode Summary: Joe Rogan Experience with Bernie Sanders
Key Points & Major Topics:
– The episode features Joe Rogan interviewing Senator Bernie Sanders, focusing on the state of American society, politics, and the economy.
– Sanders highlights the unprecedented levels of wealth and income inequality in the U.S., citing statistics about the concentration of wealth among the top 1% and the struggles of working-class Americans living paycheck to paycheck.
– The discussion covers the decline of the American middle class, the impact of globalization and trade agreements, and the erosion of defined benefit pensions.
– Sanders criticizes the influence of billionaires and corporations on both political parties, particularly through campaign finance and the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.
– The conversation addresses the failures of the U.S. healthcare system, the high cost of education, and the need for universal healthcare and affordable higher education.
– Automation, artificial intelligence, and the future of work are explored, with concerns about job displacement, the need for a reduced workweek, and the challenge of finding meaning in a post-work society.
– Climate change is discussed, with Sanders advocating for a transition to renewable energy and job creation, while Rogan raises concerns about the potential for government overreach and exploitation of the issue.
– The episode touches on the importance of community, education, healthy food systems, and the revitalization of democracy through increased civic engagement and worker ownership.
Important Guests/Speakers:
– Bernie Sanders: U.S. Senator, former presidential candidate, and advocate for progressive policies.
– Joe Rogan: Host, providing questions, counterpoints, and personal perspectives.
Actionable Insights & Advice:
– Sanders suggests public funding of elections to reduce the influence of big money in politics.
– He advocates for universal healthcare, subsidized medical education, and a four-day workweek to adapt to technological advances.
– Emphasizes the need for better food labeling, support for family farms, and investment in early childhood education.
– Calls for increased civic participation and worker ownership of companies to restore democracy and purpose.
Recurring Themes & Overall Messages:
– The system is “rigged” in favor of the wealthy and powerful, undermining democracy and the well-being of ordinary Americans.
– Technology and automation present both opportunities and existential challenges, requiring proactive policy and societal adaptation.
– The need for unity, community, and a reimagining of the American social contract to ensure prosperity, health, and meaning for all.
– Progress has been made in civil rights, but much work remains to address inequality and division.
Summary:
This episode is a wide-ranging, in-depth conversation between Joe Rogan and Bernie Sanders, examining the root causes of economic and political dysfunction in America, the threats and opportunities posed by technology, and the urgent need for systemic reform to create a fairer, healthier, and more meaningful society.
This summary was created automatically by Speak. Want to transcribe, analyze and summarize yourself? Sign up for Speak!
#2341 – Bernie Sanders Podcast Episode Transcript (Unedited)
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00:01
Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.
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00:03
The Joe Rogan experience.
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00:06
Showing my day Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
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00:12
Mister Sanders, great to see you.
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00:13
Good to be with you, Joe.
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00:15
Great to be you’ve got a bunch of notes.
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00:17
Not all that much.
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00:18
Have you prepared for this?
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00:20
I am well prepared.
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00:21
Well, it’s a good time for you to be in here because the the world’s gone haywire. Yes. Yeah. What are your thoughts on this?
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00:27
I think Ai start off with Joe trying to take a deep breath and doing what is not often done. Where are we as a country today? What’s going well? What’s not going well? And I don’t think we don’t we don’t have that kind of basic discussion. And to my mind, I think in America today, we are facing more serious ai than we have in the modern history of our country.
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00:52
This is a pivotal moment in American history, and what happens now will depend, determine the lives of our kids and future generations.
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01:01
What specifically concerns you?
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I’ll tell you what concerns meh. The issue of wealth and power. Ai? I’m kind of old fashioned and I believe in democracy. And I believe that everybody should have a a good shot at living a decent life. And what I worry about right now and this is an issue, Joe, and it’s part of the problem. There’s just ain’t talked about very much.
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01:21
And I and I applaud, by the way, you and the other podcasters who give people the time to really seriously discuss things rather than seven second sound ai, you know. But if you take a look at where we are as a nation today, this system is not working. It’s broken. It ain’t working for ordinary human beings.
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01:39
So you have an America today where we have more income and wealth inequality than we’ve ever had in the history of this country. That’s just
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a
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fact. You have one man, mister Musk, owning more wealth than the bottom 52 of American families. One man, 52% of the American families. You got the top 1% owning more wealth than the bottom 93%. You got CEOs, large corporations making 350 times what their workers make. Ai, in this richest country in the history of the world, working class people are getting decimated.
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02:20
Today and again, we don’t talk about it in Congress for reasons that I’m hope I can get into. Yeah. We don’t talk about it in the corporate media. 60%, 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Now I grew up in a family.
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02:35
I don’t know your background, but I grew up in a family, lived paycheck to paycheck. Meh anyone who lives paycheck to paycheck understands that every single day is a struggle. You know, you gotta figure out how you feed the kids, rents, cost the housing in America off the charts, health care off the charts.
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02:54
So right now, as we talk, there are people worrying. My landlord, you know, is gonna raise my rent by 20%. What the hell do I do? Where do I go? How do what schools do my kid go to? How do I buy decent food for my kids? My mother is ill.
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03:07
How do I afford prescription drugs for my mother? My car breaks down. You know? So you you know, if you have money, no one thinks of it. Your car breaks ai. Go to the mechanic. You got it fixed. You know what? A lot of people don’t have a thousand bucks in the bank right now.
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03:20
If you don’t have a thousand bucks, your car breaks down. How do you get to work? If you don’t get to work, you get fired. Ai you get fired, your whole life is disrupted. 60% of American How
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03:29
much different is that than past generations?
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03:32
It’s that we’ve always had rich and poor. No question about it. It’s worse now, Joe. Is it
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03:38
What do you attribute that to?
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03:41
I attribute it to decades old attacks on the working class of this country. I attribute it to horrific trade agreements, which have allowed corporate America to throw millions of workers out on the street and move to China, Mexico, one of the low wage countries. I attribute it to a corrupt political system in which billionaires have significant control over both political parties.
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04:08
So that for example, right now in Washington, the national minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. So you got millions of workers today, you know, making $10.12, $13 an hour. You tell me how do people survive on $13 an hour. When we were kids or at least when I was a kid, you worked for a large company.
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04:28
You had something called a defined benefit pension plan. You know, that means it means you work for me for thirty years. When you retire, you can get x hundreds of dollars a week. That’s long gone. Corporations have gotten rid of that.
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04:39
So you got something like half of all the workers in America have nothing in the bank when they face ai. So I think to answer your question, I think he got a rigged system controlled economically and politically by very, very wealthy and powerful people who could care less for working families.
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04:57
Now Ai don’t wanna romanticize the old days because that would not be true. But there used to be a kind of a culture. If I was a boss and I ran a factory, I had a little bit of concern for you. Right? Right.
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05:07
You know, in general, I would say, I know your ai. How’s the how’s your mom doing and all that stuff? That’s gone. You got these companies that are owned by other companies, that are owned by ai. You know, we got involved in my office.
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05:18
Like, we used to be the chairman of the labor committee, health education labor. So I got involved in a lot of stuff. And when workers went on strike, we would call up and see what was going on, see how we can help. So we’d call up to the company, and we’d say, you know, why are you cutting back on health care for your workers? Well, we don’t make that decision.
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05:35
It’s owned by somebody else. Call up somebody else. Well, we’re owned by somebody. You know how it is. It’s just huge these huge conglomerates own the bloody world.
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05:42
And these guys don’t give a damn about the needs of working people. So I would say that the economy becomes less and less personal. I have no you’re my worker. I have no care about you because right now, I’m owned by an international who doesn’t know that you exist.
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05:55
And ai also a diffusion of responsibility because it’s not even in your hands. Exactly.
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06:00
So the local boss might say, hey, listen. I’m really sorry, but I didn’t have any decision in here.
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Right. Right. Right. There’s nothing I can do.
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06:06
Nothing I can do. So I add all of that up and you have and then just look at other things. I mean, you tell me tell me about the health care system. Does anybody in America think this health care system is working?
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Well, you could tell by the assassination. When the assassination of the Ai guy, when when that happened, there there’s people celebrating. When is there ever someone gets assassinated Right. On the streets of New York City and people celebrate?
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06:34
Right. That’s terrible. It’s terrible. But it does speak to how people feel about insurance coverage. Right.
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06:40
Well, and I think rightly sai. Because it’s not what you’re paying for. What you’re paying for is you’re hoping that you never get sick, but if you pay your insurance, you will be covered. What they’re trying to do is make it as difficult as possible for you to get money from ram.
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06:56
You got it. That’s the more money. The more I can deny you, the more money I ai.
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07:00
Right. And that’s the bottom line. And when you’re dealing with these enormous corporations, like we’re talking about this diffusion of responsibility, the people that are doing it, it’s like this is what I have to do. This is my job. They don’t even think about it.
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07:11
Right. Exactly.
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07:12
And this all started when? Like, when so Michael Moore had that brilliant documentary Roger and Me.
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07:19
Yeah. Yeah. I know Michael. Michael’s a good friend. Yeah.
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07:22
He’s a great guy. That that documentary is fantastic, and it it shows the impact of a corporation taking all their factories, moving them away like that with no warning, no recourse, nothing anybody can do, decimates the the basically, all of Detroit.
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07:41
That’s right. People don’t know this. Yeah. But if my memory is correct, Detroit used to be in the fifties.
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07:48
Third richest city in the world.
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07:50
You got it.
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07:50
Yes. Yeah. We’ve talked about it multiple times. Yeah. It’s disgusting. Right. And especially me as someone who loves American automobiles. I’m a big fan of what Detroit made during that time and to see what happened to Detroit now. The last time I was in Detroit, it’s actually seems to be picking up.
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08:08
There’s a lot of, small businesses and a lot of artists and a lot of people that are proud to, like, Shinola, companies like that, proud to be in Detroit. But there’s just so many abandoned buildings. It’s it’s insane. You could buy a house there for $500.
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08:23
That’s
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right. It’s really crazy. Like, giant factories where every window smashed, all the pipes have been torn out, and it’s just this hulking
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08:32
And it’s not just
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08:33
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08:50
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09:50
Detroit. Right. I mean, there are other communities, corporations say, hey.
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09:55
Ai meh, and That path is unsustainable. Right?
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09:58
I think so. Yeah. I meh, and then look. If we are and, again, gets back to what we want as a nation, but you had corporations saying, hey. Back then, not now, I could pay workers in China 25¢ an hour. Why the hell do I wanna hire you for what it was, that $5 an hour or whatever? Right.
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10:14
And I’ll never forget, Joe, early on when I was elected to Congress. This sai when we had the NAFTA agreement. I went to, the Maquiladora arya. You know what that is? In No.
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10:27
It’s a special zone in Northern Mexico near the near the border, where, the government there this is back decades ago, allowed American and other European corporations to settle and got tax breaks there. So it was attracted all these corporations. So I went there, with a congressional delegation, and this is what I saw. You saw these beautiful new factories.
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10:50
Now this is twenty five, thirty years ago. And then we said, alright. I wanna see where the workers ai. I’ll never forget this as long as I live. We do you know those large cardboard boxes that refrigerators come into and Yeah. It stoves us, but it’s where people were living.
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11:05
They were living literally in cardboard boxes making, I think, at that point, and this is a long time ago, 25¢ an hour. So workers in America were thrown out on the street, and people in Mexico exploited in a horrible way and these big, shiny new factories at the time. So what you got and I believe the struggle you asked me, you know, how does it happen? Why does it happen?
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I think especially right now and and for many decades, you have the prevailing religion of the oligarchs and the corporate world is greed. That’s all. I want it all, and I don’t give a shit if I have to step all over you, throw you out on the street, take away your Social Security.
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11:45
I want it and to help with you. And that’s why you end up with a situation in America where, you know, the top 1% now wants more wealth than the bottom 93% and millions of people struggle.
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11:57
It’s also a corporate culture of competitiveness. Right? So they’re competing with all the other corporations, and you have to keep up, and there’s no way other than to increase your profits every quarter.
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12:09
That’s right. That’s right. That is exactly you do the right thing by workers. Alright? Ai? That’s a perfect example. So, you know, you got Wall Street. Here’s here’s a fact. When we talk about it it’s not only income and wealth inequality that bothers meh. It’s concentration of ownership.
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So right now in America, in virtually every sector of our economy, whether it’s agriculture, transportation, financial services, whatever, you got a handful of giant multinationals controlling that sector. But here’s another amazing fact. Who do you think owns these corporations? You know, you remember there was a day when somebody actually owned General Motors or John Ford.
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12:49
They are now owned by Wall Street firms. You got three Wall Street investment firms. BlackRock. You’re familiar with BlackRock. They’re China. And State Street. Exactly. Yeah.
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12:58
Check it out on Google. They are ai the three of them combined are the major stockholders of 95% of American corporations. How’s that?
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13:06
That’s not good. That’s power. Right. How did that start, and what could have been done to stop that from happening?
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13:13
Well, I think it’s it it’s, again, it’s greed. These guys are smart. They are hardworking. They ram motivated. They want more and more. So if I can buy this, I can buy this, Sai can sell this.
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13:23
Right. But they’re all doing it within the law. Right?
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13:25
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
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13:26
But Which is is that the problem?
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13:28
Yeah. But who makes that law?
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13:30
They do.
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13:31
Now I sana go to another issue
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13:33
Yeah.
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13:33
Which is very rarely discussed. Alright? Are you ready for it?
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13:36
I’m ready.
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13:37
Alright. Hang on. Here we go. And is the the problem Sai think that we face as a country is not just economic disparities and all the stuff that we’re talking about, rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It is political power. Right now, and I doubt that there are many Americans whether you’re progressive as I am arya right wing Republican, I don’t think people can disagree that we have a corrupt campaign finance system.
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14:03
Argue with me? You agree?
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14:05
Sai agree with you.
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14:06
Yeah. Alright. So let me talk about what it means. Okay. As a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, I think it’s fifteen, sixteen years old, what it says is you’re a billionaire. You have now the constitutional right because your money is your freedom of expression. Right?
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14:25
So you don’t like Bernie Sanders, you can put millions or hundreds of millions of dollars into a campaign and express your view about how terrible Bernie Sanders is Right. And you can buy that election. Right? That’s your constitutional right. I think that’s probably the worst decision that the Supreme Court has ever made.
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14:42
So what is the result of that decision? The result of that decision, let’s take us to where we are today, is that Elon Musk, and I know Elon was on your shah, and he’s here in Austin. Yeah. Okay. And I’ve we could talk about Elon. But he spent $270,000,000 to elect Trump as president. Okay?
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15:03
I think that’s absurd that any one person
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15:06
What’s the most someone donated towards the Harris campaign?
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15:10
They spent a lot of money on Harris as well.
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15:12
Speak $15,000,000,000 just over the course of a couple of months.
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15:16
You got it. Alright. Let me talk about it. So I’m not here just to say it’s a Republican. That’s my point here. Right. Okay. So Musk spends that money, and what’s his reward? He becomes the most powerful person in government for three or four months. Okay. Fine. But what you have right now, and I just saw this the other day, you are a Republican member of Congress. Okay?
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15:37
And you sai, you know, there’s a reconciliation bill, which we can talk about in a minute, that this is Trump’s big bad big beautiful bill that’s coming up literally on the floor of the senate very shortly. So let’s say you’re a republican representing a low income district.
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15:51
You say, you know, you know, I Ai got a lot of people on Medicaid in my district and kids can’t get to college and I worry about food programs. I don’t think it’s a good idea to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut back on Medicaid. You make that announcement today. What happens to you?
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16:08
It’s over. You’re intact. You’re finished. The swarm comes for you.
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16:12
You got it.
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16:13
Yeah. It’s not a swarm.
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16:14
It’s
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16:14
It’s the problem is it’s already been established. Right? That these laws have been established. The power has been given to these people. The money has started flowing, and it’s been flowing for a long time now. And this is the the issue with starting something that you can’t stop.
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16:29
Well, you can stop it.
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16:30
You can stop.
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16:30
And you gotta stop it.
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16:31
Okay. But if you do stop it, all these people are gonna throw all their money at stopping you from stopping. Correct? Right? Exactly. They’re gonna come up with the best commercials with American flags. This country’s all about competition and freedom.
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16:47
You got
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16:47
it. The freedom to donate to the party of your choice.
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16:50
You got it. Yeah. Good. Stop these companies. Stop. You’re ai their ads for them. They’re gonna they’re gonna pick it up with the American ai them. Yeah. I mean, the We could all ai. But but then we gotta take a deep breath and and figure out where do we go from here. Now I wanted to in my ai, you know, as you know, I am the longest serving independent in American history. Yes.
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17:09
Ai caucus with the Democrats always have, but you can’t hear me defending the Democratic Party on this issue because you’re right. During the election, it wasn’t just Musk and Republicans putting a lot of money into Trump. It was Democratic billionaires putting a lot of money into and into other candidates, as well.
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17:26
And let me I mentioned there’s a guy named, let me know his first name, mister Massey. Is that name ring a bell?
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17:32
Thomas Massey.
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17:32
Thomas from Kentucky. Yeah. And this guy, as I am, is opposed to this war in in Iran. Just yesterday, Trump gave a long post about how they’re gonna primary this guy. And it what bothers me is you would hope that there would be respect enough for members of Congress that you can vote your own conscience.
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17:52
You could, you know, represent your constituency. Every district is different than America. But right now, anybody stands up and say, well, you know, I disagree with president Trump. Bam. You are finished. We’re gonna primary you. We got all kinds of money. You’re out of there. That happened to Massey yesterday.
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18:07
But let me go back to the Democrats and tell you where the problem
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18:11
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18:36
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18:58
Don’t you think that there’s a Streisand effect to that? Don’t you think that there’s a blowback for for that kind of thing when people recognize that this guy should be allowed to have his own opinions and should be and make some reasonable points and that people are sana reject this idea.
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19:14
Maybe. And then it’s it’s not as simple as I think the whole, MAGA thing right now is very ai, particularly because one of the things they voted for was no war. Well, now it seems like we’re in a war. Right? So the and it’s quick. We’re six months in, and that’s already popped off.
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19:33
And then people are very concerned with now what happens to our troops overseas that are in these bases shah are in vulnerable positions and what happens with I mean, they’re supposedly documented terror cells that got in through the open border over the last four years. So what happens now in America? What happens on American soil?
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19:55
Ai? No. I mean, I agree with those.
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19:58
When a guy like Thomas Massie steps up and says something, you’re he’s gonna have a lot more support as well.
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20:06
The answer is yes. And my only point is he has a right. Yes. You know, somebody else says, hey. I think the war is a great ai. Fine. That’s your view. You gotta go back. But what bothers me is that if anybody stands up, the next sai, we’re gonna ai meh. You’re out of here, man.
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20:20
And that’s the Republicans. Let me talk about the Democrats for a moment. Okay? And I I don’t even know your views on this, so you may disagree with me. You know, Israel was attacked by Hamas. Hamas is a terrible terrorist organization. They killed 1,200 people, which in a small country like Israel is a lot of people.
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20:36
Terrible, terrible attack. It’s a war crime. Israel had a right in my view to defend itself. But the Netanyahu government did not have a right to kill 52,000 people in Sana. Wounds over, well over a hundred thousand.
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20:54
And right now, as we speak, Joe, children are starving to death because of Israel’s blockades. Yeah. Yeah. Starving to death. And I brought forth, two resolutions, which basically were very simple and sai no more US military aid, to, Israel under these conditions.
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21:15
One vote got 15 votes in the senate, the other one got 16. Do you think that members of the senate do not know what’s going on in Gaza? The kids are starving to death. The innocent people are being shot down right and left. They know it. Why do you think I couldn’t get more votes?
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21:34
They wouldn’t vote against Israel.
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21:35
Right. It’s political suicide. Now you’re talking. Right. Alright. So in the Republican side, you have moneyed insurance saying you speak up against Trump, you’re out of here. In the Democratic side, you speak up against Netanyahu government, you’re out of here as well. And they have been successful. You have super Vatsal ai Speak spending a fortune.
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21:55
You stand and they have already knocked off a number of members of good members of Congress, and they will do it again. So all I’m saying is you got a corrupt campaign finance system on both ai, which is rejecting the will of the American people and end up supporting powerful special interest.
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22:14
And if we do not get a handle on that issue, I worry very much about the future of American democracy.
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22:20
Are you gonna run for president again?
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22:22
I am 83 years of age.
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22:24
That’s what I’m saying.
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22:25
Yeah. Well, you know, I’m not sure the American people will be through lose ai eyes of, like, somebody’s 108.
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22:30
Very with it. Thank you. You are. Hell meh. I mean, you’re a couple years older than Biden. Yeah. Right? Think of that. Yeah. You could be off a lot worse.
Speaker: 0
22:40
Yes. Yes.
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22:41
Yeah. Alright.
Speaker: 0
22:45
So, we have been running around the country doing what we call a fighting oligarchy tour, which is, like, why I’m here in Texas. We were in Fort Worth last ai, had a good turnout. And I think, interestingly enough, Joe, it’s not most of the people. We know the people who come out to our rallies. You know, we have a big list of millions of people.
Speaker: 0
23:07
But a lot of people are coming to our rallies that we don’t know, and I think we know that some of them are Republicans and some of them are independents, many of them are independents. Because I think across the board, there is growing dissatisfaction with the current politics in America, both parties.
Speaker: 0
23:23
And people want a new vision for America, which is also something we don’t talk a whole lot about. So, you know, the issues that we talk about is in the richest country on Earth, why don’t we have the best health care system in the world? Why do we have 85,000,000 people who bryden uninsured or uninsured?
Speaker: 0
23:43
And As you were mentioning a moment ago, I mean, he deals with the insurance companies and the drug companies, and the function of the current health care system is to make these guys very rich and and it works. They make zillions of dollars. And every place you go, in my state, the cost of health care has gone up this year, like 15%. People can’t afford it.
Speaker: 0
24:03
And we lose thousands of people every year. People get sick, they can’t afford to go to the doctor, they die. So, you know, one of the fights that I hope we can win is to have The United States drawing every other major country on Earth and guarantee health care to all people, as a human right.
Speaker: 1
24:24
Well, we’ve talked about that a lot on this show that if you view this country as a community, most important thing is to protect the most vulnerable members of your community. Period. Right?
Speaker: 0
24:35
I agree.
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24:36
And if we we spend insane amounts of money on all sorts of things that people don’t agree with, and I think generally most people would agree on some sort of a national health care system. They do. Most people. Like, there’s there’s there’s concepts of socialism that everyone agrees with. One of them is the fire department. Right. Right?
Speaker: 1
24:55
Everyone thinks that everyone, every citizen should have access, the same equal access to the fire department, and we all pay into that.
Speaker: 0
25:03
That’s right.
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25:04
And we all believe in education. We all believe that there should be free public education. That’s right. And most people believe that the university system should also be funded. It would be benefit everyone.
Speaker: 0
25:17
You got it.
Speaker: 1
25:17
It would benefit everyone to have more educated people that are doing better in the world. You’d have better GDP. You’d have more more successful people.
Speaker: 0
25:24
Absolutely right.
Speaker: 1
25:25
If you wanna make America great again, less losers. How do you make less losers? Don’t stack the deck against them. You know, one of the first things that you’d have to do is figure out why these communities and these cities have been the exact same way for decade after decade.
Speaker: 1
25:39
Back to Jim Crow and the red line laws and all these why ai is nothing being done to fix that or to to correct that problem? And it becomes this political beach ball that just bounce around the air at a concert, you know, and everybody it’s ai there’s certain things that just keep coming up that make you just just go, well, how are we still talking about gay marriage?
Speaker: 1
25:59
How how is that still coming up? And it’s ai, poof, throw it up in the air.
Speaker: 0
26:03
Alright. Let me get back to them. But I wanna say There’s a
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26:06
bunch of these things. Right?
Speaker: 0
26:06
Alright. The first point you made, you wanna make America great? Right.
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26:10
You’re the best Best losers.
Speaker: 0
26:11
Have have the best educated workforce in the world. How’s that radical idea? I don’t think so.
Speaker: 1
26:15
Right. Right. And you’re absolutely right. Better education.
Speaker: 0
26:18
You live longer when you have better education, etcetera, etcetera. Right. Alright. So what does that mean? It means right now you know, I talk to psychologists all the time because
Speaker: 1
26:29
You do?
Speaker: 0
26:29
Yeah. I do. Because I ram, I was the chairman on shah with called the ranking member of the Health Education Labor Committee. So, you know, we deal with medical people all the time. Uh-huh. Wasn’t me personally of that. No. That I may need also, but no.
Speaker: 0
26:43
I was talking to a more general sai. Look. What are the most important years of human development? You’re a human being. What are the most important You’re
Speaker: 1
26:51
a child.
Speaker: 0
26:52
That’s right. Yeah. Zero to four. How is our ai care system doing?
Speaker: 1
26:55
Yeah. Not so good.
Speaker: 0
26:56
It’s a disaster. So you got a rational society says, okay. The kids are the future of America. Right? You talked about the sense of being a community. Ai. So if I love this country ai I want this country to do well into the future, I have to worry about the children. Correct?
Speaker: 1
27:12
Right. Absolutely.
Speaker: 0
27:14
Right now, for economic reasons when I was a kid, by the way, and there’s another shock some of your younger listeners here, there was one worker in a family could actually bring home the bacon and pay the bills. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
27:28
Back in the old days.
Speaker: 0
27:29
Back in the old days. Yeah, man. So I grew up in a working class family. We didn’t have any money. My dad went out to work, mom stayed home, and that was it.
Speaker: 1
27:36
Yeah. Made healthier people too that way. It did.
Speaker: 0
27:41
It did. I think in many respects, it did.
Speaker: 1
27:44
Well, something happened where they’d sort of devalued, the woman’s role as a mother and ai convincing them that they have to be a part of the workforce.
Speaker: 0
27:54
I think that’s part of it. I think the other half is women legitimately wanted, you know, careers as well. Sure. And the other thing that happened maybe most significantly is you need it
Speaker: 1
28:03
To stay alive.
Speaker: 0
28:04
Two breadwinners to stay alive.
Speaker: 1
28:05
Yeah. That’s the problem. The real problem was financially, it just seemed so difficult for one person to pay for everything. Exactly. The only way to do it was to have both parents working.
Speaker: 0
28:15
You know, I was thinking I grew up in Brooklyn, before I moved to Vermont. And, we lived in a rent controlled apartment. And I was doing the arithmetic. My dad didn’t make much money, but we didn’t pay much in rent. And I I couldn’t quite remember, you know, what his saloni was and all that.
Speaker: 0
28:31
But my guess is we paid as I recall, I talked to my brother about this, about 18% of my dad’s salary for rent. 18%. Ain’t nobody in America today who’s paid 18%. You know what I mean? Right. That’s why you need two breadwinners because you’re paying 40%, 50%.
Speaker: 1
28:49
Right. You you you Yeah.
Speaker: 0
28:51
But in getting back to this issue of education, which I think is key, If you were rationally thinking about the future of America, if you loved America as we all do, you’re gonna have the best ai system in the world sai the kids will do well in school. Right now in childcare, you have workers out there making $15 an hour. And you have families that cannot afford childcare. In my state, Ai don’t know.
Speaker: 0
29:14
It’s about $20,000 a year to send your kid to childcare. So you’re making 50,000 a year. How do you pay that? 65? You you can do that.
Speaker: 0
29:22
And then education, you got kids who want an education, they wanna go to college, they wanna go to trade school. We desperately need here’s something that really drives me a little bit nuts. In America today, Joe, not only is our health care system failing because it’s based on greed, not ai need, But we need more doctors. Alright?
Speaker: 0
29:42
All over the country, people have to wait, you know, sometimes months to get to a doctor’s office. We have a massive nursing shortage. We need more dentists, big problem in dentistry. We need more mental health counselors. We need more pharmacists.
Speaker: 0
29:58
How come in the richest country in the world we don’t have enough doctors and nurses?
Speaker: 1
30:05
Because it’s very difficult to do. It’s very difficult to become a doctor, and the the bills that you have from education are overwhelming.
Speaker: 0
30:12
Alright. You wanna go to let’s just say, tomorrow, you announce to the world you’ve given up this podcast, you wanna go to medical school. Alright? Uh-huh. You got it? Yeah. You know how much if you don’t have any money, do you know how much you’re gonna graduate medical school in debt?
Speaker: 1
30:27
Probably quarter million dollars easy.
Speaker: 0
30:29
Double that. Really? Yeah. Ai I’m I’m not shah. Obviously, it varies per person, but it is not unusual for ai, you know, people working class homes, go to medicals, come out $500,000 in debt. Nurses, I don’t know, $100,150,000 dollars a debt. That is insane.
Speaker: 1
30:45
It’s insane.
Speaker: 0
30:46
Ai. Yeah. We need more doctors. So I should I sana to encourage you. Ai. I want you to go to medical school. Right. Hey. Good news. We’re paying your tuition, shah dah dah, and we need you out there as soon as we can get you.
Speaker: 1
30:56
Why wouldn’t that be subsidized?
Speaker: 0
30:57
Of course, you should subsidize it.
Speaker: 1
30:59
Right. Of course. Yeah. But there’s there’s there’s so many different what would you have done? Like, imagine that you hadn’t gotten derailed and they hadn’t, conspired against you and you you actually became the Democratic candidate for president and you won. What would you have done differently?
Speaker: 0
31:19
Okay. How many hours do we have? We
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31:22
got it all the time in the world, Bernie.
Speaker: 0
31:24
I know.
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31:26
What would you have done first day in office?
Speaker: 0
31:28
Well, it’s not just the first day in office. I would have dealt with this campaign finance reform issue, and there are ways that you can get around that Supreme Court decision.
Speaker: 1
31:37
How do you do that?
Speaker: 0
31:39
You move toward public funding of elections, which says that, Joe, you wanna run against meh? That’s great, but you’re not gonna get super Speak money. We’re gonna publicly fund you. You know, you you, get 1,500 signatures that says you’re a serious candidate, you’ll get a certain amount of money to run for office.
Speaker: 1
32:01
Sai in our opinion ai by the government.
Speaker: 0
32:03
Yes. Absolutely. Rather
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32:04
than someone running for president funded by the current president.
Speaker: 0
32:10
Well, not the current president.
Speaker: 1
32:12
No. But the current government.
Speaker: 0
32:13
And people say, oh, taxpayer dollars are going there. But that makes a lot more sense than having billionaires fund elections, which is what you got right now. So that’s the one you got.
Speaker: 1
32:20
Think there should be when you get a certain number, you just get a certain allotted amount of money that you could use for your campaign Right. And everybody gets the same amount.
Speaker: 0
32:27
That exists in some places right now.
Speaker: 1
32:29
Does it where? Yeah.
Speaker: 0
32:29
In New York City right now.
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32:31
Oh, in New York City.
Speaker: 0
32:32
And other places as well. So if you agree, you know, you’re gonna raise you own you’re not gonna raise private money. You go the public route. It exists in a number of communities, and I think that is
Speaker: 1
32:43
Did you watch the New York City, debates, the mayor I heard it.
Speaker: 0
32:47
I’m in I got involved, and I’m supporting, mister, Meh.
Speaker: 1
32:52
A lot of people are. Well, especially after that debate.
Speaker: 0
32:54
Right.
Speaker: 1
32:54
It seems like everybody else was essentially saying, I’ve been to Israel more than you’ve been to Israel. Ai I’m gonna go to Israel before you do. Right.
Speaker: 0
33:02
They think they’re campaigning to be foreign, you know, minister for Israel or something. But talk about money in politics. Yes. Just look at New York City. Right now, there’s the election tomorrow, I think. Right? I think it’s tomorrow. Tuesday, Monday. Today tomorrow’s Tuesday. Right? Yes. That’s the election. They’re spending a huge amount of money.
Speaker: 0
33:20
You know, the meh these are Democratic with some cases.
Speaker: 1
33:23
Who’s in the lead right now?
Speaker: 0
33:26
The polls say Cuomo by a little bit, but I think, Zoran has a lot of meh. We’ll ai. Poles are weird. In a race like that.
Speaker: 1
33:34
Yes. Well, they’re weird in every race. They were wrong with Hillary in 2020 or, in, 2016 rather. They were wrong in 2024 with Harris and Trump. Like, I don’t understand polls. Because I just I don’t I have a feeling that the majority of them are inaccurate.
Speaker: 0
33:54
Well, I think they are increasing I I don’t know the answer to your question. The pollsters will argue that’s not the case. But I think you got a lot of folks who are not all that enthusiastic about honestly giving honest answers to a pollster.
Speaker: 1
34:08
Absolutely. Yeah. That’s true too. Yeah. And that That’s part of the problem. Right?
Speaker: 0
34:12
Alright. But you asked me on my first day as president. Well, I have you drop in. Say hello. Hi. Have a cup of coffee. Alright.
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34:18
Alright.
Speaker: 0
34:18
Good. And and then I I think we’d declare something like our health care system as an emergency and figure out ways that we can do what every other major country on earth does and that is guaranteed health care at all people. So one of the things you do is say, okay, we need tens of thousands of more doctors and hundreds of thousands of more nurses and dentists and so forth and so on.
Speaker: 0
34:41
And we’re gonna move aggressively to make sure that in America, everybody in this country has health care as a human right. So I think that’s number one. Number two, at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, you don’t give tax breaks to billionaires. You demand that they start paying their fair share of taxes.
Speaker: 0
35:02
And one of the problems that we have, it’s not just an American issue, it’s a global issue. A lot of these billionaires are hiding their money in tax havens in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere, and that’s an international issue. But I think we have to have a fair sai tax system which says that individuals and wealthy and and corporations that are making a whole lot of money ai start paying their fair share of taxes.
Speaker: 1
35:22
What is their fair share?
Speaker: 0
35:24
I don’t know. I mean, you know, ai on the Eisenhower, the very rich paid, you know, at their upper levels ai, you know. But let me be very honest with you, Joe, on this one.
Speaker: 1
35:34
90% is kinda crazy, though.
Speaker: 0
35:36
Right? No. No. That’s not across that’s just for the, you know, your billionth dollar. You know what I mean? It’s not your your first dollar. It’s not
Speaker: 1
35:41
So if you make a billion, you pay 900,000,000?
Speaker: 0
35:45
No. No. No. No. No. That’s not what it means. It means on your $900,000,000, you’re gonna pay 90%.
Speaker: 1
35:51
Okay.
Speaker: 0
35:51
Alright. But, you know, the other thing that I would do and, you know, you gotta deal with this climate change issue. And I know that, you know, there are some people who think climate change is a hoax. It ain’t a hoax. I think the last ten years have been the warmest on record, and we can create millions of good paying jobs transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency, to solar, to wind, and other sustainable energies.
Speaker: 1
36:22
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Speaker: 1
36:46
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Speaker: 1
37:04
Go to paleovalley.com and use the code Bryden to get 20% off or find them on Amazon. I think the climate change issue is very complicated. And I think, did you see the Washington Post, piece that they wrote where they did this long term view. First of all, the the reality is that the Earth’s temperature has never been static. Right? We could both agree on that. It’s always been up and down.
Speaker: 1
37:28
There’s been ice ages and heat waves. And then the Washington Post looked at it. What was the time period that they looked at? That, essentially, they found that we’re in a cooling period, that the Earth over the past x amount of years, and this sai ai a very inconvenient discovery, but they had to report the data and kudos to them for doing that.
Speaker: 1
37:49
Scientists have captured the Earth’s climate change over the last four hundred and eighty five million years. Here’s the surprising place we stand now. So look at the far end of that ram, and you see we’re in a cooling period.
Speaker: 0
38:02
Well, I’m not sure. No. I didn’t read that article. But, you know, the scientists who are out there, I think
Speaker: 1
38:08
I know. But there’s a lot of money involved in that too, Bernie. That’s part of the problem. There’s a lot of money involved in this this whole climate change emergency issue, and there’s a lot of control. And that’s, that’s a big part of this problem. Not only that, if we’re just talking about primarily carbon and carbon footprint, what are we gonna do about China? Because China and Absolutely.
Speaker: 1
38:27
China is like what percentage
Speaker: 0
38:29
of They are the major they are the major, polluter right now in terms of carbon. We’re number two. We used to be one. They are number one right now.
Speaker: 1
38:38
I think they have an enormous percent of global. I I think it’s
Speaker: 0
38:43
They’re number one. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
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38:45
It’s very high.
Speaker: 0
38:45
This is it’s not an American issue. It is a global issue. And all I can tell you is that we are, in my view, going to see more extreme weather disturbances, in the coming years than we have ever. And we’re seeing them ai now. We are seeing Right.
Speaker: 1
39:00
But ai don’t agree. Well, this is where it gets confusing. Because scientists that are in agreement, there’s all these entanglements. Whenever someone’s discussing something, whether it’s economics or whether it’s health issues or pharmaceutical drugs, there’s financial entanglements. I think we both agree with that. Right?
Speaker: 0
39:20
Yep.
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39:21
And I think this is part of the issue with this whole climate change emergency as well because it’s not just that we could all agree pollution is a major factor. It’s a huge issue in the world today. We could all agree with that. Right? I think one of the things that we have to rec recognize is that there’s whenever there’s an issue that everyone can agree on, you’re gonna have a bunch of people that capitalize on that issue and they look to gain more money.
Speaker: 1
39:50
They they they have financial issues that they they push forward in order to to capitalize on this issue, but then also power and control. These things ai they’re trying to institute in The UK where they have these fifteen minute cities, this concept, where you’re not allowed to travel, they’ll be able to look at your carbon footprint.
Speaker: 1
40:07
It’s yeah. See? That’s the problem. The the the problem is giving people that are in power, these people that we’ve all discussed that have so much money and so much control over our societies, multinational corporations, giving them more control over citizens. And this is a vehicle for that, and this is what’s dangerous about this whole climate change emergency.
Speaker: 1
40:28
Because it allows these fucking creeps that have been controlling people and controlling what you do and what you say and how you spend your money when with people that already live in check to check, and you put additional constraints on them and you make them even more scared.
Speaker: 1
40:41
And then you put additional measures where you can look at their carbon footprint, you go look at the amount they travel, what do you you know, put a carbon tax on these people, let’s figure out how to extract more money from them. That’s what bothers me about this climate change emergency. Not not that we we can all agree, pollution is a terrible thing. Everyone should agree to that.
Speaker: 1
41:03
The the beautiful Earth that sustains us and all life on this planet There
Speaker: 0
41:07
you go.
Speaker: 1
41:07
Is being poisoned Yep. As we speak. We’re killing all the fish in the ocean and sucking them out in giant numbers. 94% of all the big fish that are in the ocean are gone over the last, you know, whatever it is.
Speaker: 0
41:19
When you go to war against nature, you lose.
Speaker: 1
41:22
Yeah. Because you’re part of nature.
Speaker: 0
41:24
Exactly. Right.
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41:25
Worshiping the almighty dollar You got it. Above the ai.
Speaker: 0
41:28
You know, you asked me when I ran for president, one of the interest it it’s, you know, it’s something else to run for president because you get around, you meet all kinds of people, and you learn all kinds of things. And one of the things that I did we went to a lot of, met with a lot of Native Americans.
Speaker: 0
41:43
And one of the reasons is, you know, their tradition was going from way back, respect for nature. That they understood back way back when that you kill off all of the buffalo, you ain’t gonna have nothing to eat. Right? Right. They understood that.
Speaker: 0
41:58
And then you you understand that you live in harmony with nature, which is, I think, what you’re talking about.
Speaker: 1
42:02
Absolutely.
Speaker: 0
42:03
And if you lose that harmony, I worry about the future of humanity in
Speaker: 1
42:09
in That which is the problem with financial competitiveness. When you put the almighty dollar above all else
Speaker: 0
42:14
That’s right.
Speaker: 1
42:15
Then all you think about and you’re only alive for a hundred years, so it’s just hit the gas. Hit the gas for a hundred years and who gives a shit what happens after I’m gone? I’m gonna die with the most toys. Yay. I win in the dirt.
Speaker: 0
42:25
That’s exactly right. Yeah. And that is which takes us to another issue.
Speaker: 1
42:29
Okay.
Speaker: 0
42:31
And that is artificial intelligence and robotics.
Speaker: 1
42:35
Automation. Automation. Yeah. Okay. So Giant issue.
Speaker: 0
42:38
Huge issue. Alright. So let’s back it up. Americans are angry, and one of the reasons they are angry is that over the last, just give you one fact here, last fifty two years, you and I understand, everybody in the world understands, there’s been a huge explosion in technology.
Speaker: 0
43:02
Correct?
Speaker: 1
43:03
Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
43:03
What we’re doing today never could have happened fifty years ago. Factory is far more automated, offices far more automated. I became mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1981. There was not a computer in the building. Okay? So that’s
Speaker: 1
43:18
By the way,
Speaker: 0
43:18
great town. It is a great town. In any case, an explosion of technology, significant increase in worker productivity. Right? We’re talking to millions of people now. Never could have happened before. Right? That’s true. Workers are producing a lot more. Tell me, how are real inflation accounted for wages been over the last fifty two years with all of that increase in worker productivity? Workers doing a lot better?
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43:43
Not so good.
Speaker: 0
43:44
Not so good.
Speaker: 1
43:45
No. In fact, there
Speaker: 0
43:46
are studies out there that suggest in real inflation accounted for dollars, wages are actually low enough than they were fifty two years ago. Okay? And during that same period is a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. So that’s what technology has done over the last fifty years.
Speaker: 0
44:02
Ai does not I there was a study. I don’t know if you saw this. It blew me away. I can’t remember who that. Ai, some reputable guy people did it. This is what they said.
Speaker: 0
44:12
They do a poll to the American people and they say, Americans, do you think you are better off today than somebody in your situation, your middle class, upper whatever you may be, was, forty years ago? Okay? Are you better off today than somebody in your circumstance would have been forty years ago? What was the answer?
Speaker: 1
44:35
What do you think?
Speaker: 0
44:37
Yeah. And what the answer was and this is and we gotta deal with this one. This is big. The answer was you know, there were a number of people who sai, hey. Look. I got a cell phone. It’s great. I got a big screen TV. Right.
Speaker: 0
44:48
It’s great. I can fly all over the world. It’s great. Ai get sick. I get treatment now that I never coulda had 40 ago. Right?
Speaker: 1
44:54
Those are facts.
Speaker: 0
44:55
All really positive developments. But on average, most people said, I I I think the situation is worse today than it was forty years ago, and that is what we gotta deal with. So you got all the technology in the world. What the hell does it mean if your life is not improving? In fact, in many ways, getting worse.
Speaker: 1
45:13
Yeah. Well, again, we’ll go back to polls again because I don’t I don’t necessarily believe that polls are totally accurate, but I I do think that that the the issue with it being virtually impossible for one person to sustain the entire family these days. One worker, the father, or the mother, whoever it is, to sustain the entire that’s sai that’s a giant issue.
Speaker: 1
45:36
All these issues, when it comes to labor, when it comes to, minimum wage, I think you and I are in agreement of all the on all these. I think, the minimum wage of this country is ridiculous. I mean, to $7. What? It’s insane. It’s insane. How do you live off $7?
Speaker: 1
45:53
You go to Jimmy John’s, you get a sub. How much is a sub? How much is a sub, like, a big sub at Jimmy John’s? Some guy was just, did a TikTok video where he’s ai they’re they’re trying to say that minimum wage $15 is too much. I think he had a sub that he bought for $25. So imagine that’s your lunch.
Speaker: 1
46:12
So imagine you have to work three and a half hours just to pay for a sandwich. Imagine how insane that is.
Speaker: 0
46:22
It’s insane.
Speaker: 1
46:23
That’s insane. Like, how do you eat? And How do you eat dinner? How do you eat lunch?
Speaker: 0
46:27
How do you have breakfast? I have talked to people who make $10.12 bucks an hour ai to raise a kid. Jesus. That’s right.
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46:35
Yeah. Well, the the argument against that is, hey. These are entry level jobs that are supposed to be for kids.
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46:40
No. It’s and that’s factually incorrect. Yeah. Of course. And it’s true to some degree.
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46:43
To some degree. But if you have grown adults that are working those jobs, now it becomes disgusting.
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46:48
That’s right. True. That’s exactly right.
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46:50
Especially when you’re dealing with an enormous corporation.
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46:52
You got it. Right. So we put a lot of pressure, you know, we, you know, are trying to raise the minimum wage, federal minimum wage to $17 an hour.
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46:59
That’s That’s a reasonable amount of money. You know, I mean, it’s still it’s not it’s gonna be real difficult to live off of $17 an hour.
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47:07
But at least that’s right.
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47:09
At least get a sandwich in under two hours worth of work.
Speaker: 0
47:12
There you go. Ai. But I wanna get back to this issue because it’s one that we don’t talk about, and it gets to AI. Why do why do we have what, you know, some of these people call an epidemic of loneliness in America? Alright? Yes. Alright. Why are we mental illness rates are pretty ai, suicide rates are too high, too meh, god, drug addiction. Right. Horrible problem all over the country. Why?
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47:39
Well, there’s a lot of factors. First of all, there is a there are a lot of people that are very unhealthy, physically unhealthy. I think metabolic health is a gigantic issue in this country. Yep. There’s a a lot of people in this country that feel completely disenfranchised ai so they turn inward.
Speaker: 0
47:57
Yep.
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47:58
And then technology invites them to do that. You get online and you spend your time staring at a screen, having communications with people, arguing on Twitter all day, you know, changing the flag in your bio from Ukraine to Ai, and now you got an Iranian you’re just, like, in a constant state of anxiety and chaos, you’re dealing with the entire problem, the the problems of the entire world.
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48:23
You’re dealing with 8,000,000,000 people’s worth of problems every day. I think that’s unsustainable. And then that’s also a a function of technology because this interaction that we have is unprecedented. Right. The interaction with the news, with each other, all this stuff we’re not designed to handle, and it it gives you massive anxiety, particularly for young people.
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48:43
Particularly, you know, Jonathan Haidt’s written about this with young girls who have the biggest problem with social media, comparing themselves to other people, massive increase in self harm, suicide, suicidal ideology, depression, anxiety, all this stuff accentuated by technology and our unchecked use of it.
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49:04
I think you hit the nail on the head. And so I think we gotta take a deep breath and understand that we gotta figure out how we make technology work to improve human life.
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49:19
Right.
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49:19
Not to hurt you.
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49:20
Don’t you think this is the eleventh hour?
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49:22
I think it is.
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49:23
Yeah. This is the the problem with it is is ai it’s already the the genie’s
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49:27
out of the box. There’s no question about it. But, you know, we can’t sit around and just do nothing.
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49:33
But when it this is the real issue. When it becomes a problem where you have massive automation of almost all jobs, which is, something that especially when you deal with the corporation that is entirely based around making the most amount of money possible. Well, what better way when you don’t have to pay them anything?
Speaker: 0
49:49
You got it? You are. There were ai I don’t know if you’ve seen them. Signs advertising from from AI companies. What was they saying? Don’t hire humans, something like that. Did you see a post it?
Speaker: 1
50:01
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Speaker: 1
50:24
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Speaker: 0
50:51
Hire humans. That’s demonic. It is.
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50:56
Yeah. Alright. But also ram the perspective of a corporation where you deal with human issues, problems, mistakes, people showing up late.
Speaker: 0
51:06
Why do I need you when I can get a a robot? Exactly. Alright. You’re not gonna get sick. Right. You know, I can fix you a lot easier than paying for your health care and so forth and so forth.
Speaker: 1
51:14
So what do you do? What do you do about that? So if you’re the president and president Sanders, we have this issue. The whole country is gonna go automation. What do we do? Alright. First of
Speaker: 0
51:27
all, we make the determination that we are not gonna let a handful of CEOs make these decisions, that they’re gonna be made by the American people. What does that mean? Bottom line, it means that technology is gonna work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations.
Speaker: 0
51:47
What does that mean? Alright. First thought. You are a worker. Your worker your productivity is increasing because we give you AI. Right? Right. Ai.
Speaker: 0
51:59
Instead of throwing you out on the street, I’m gonna reduce your work week to thirty two hours. Alright?
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52:06
So you’re gonna four day work week?
Speaker: 0
52:08
Exactly. Nice. And ai way, not a radical idea.
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52:10
Not a radical idea at all?
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52:11
There are companies around the world that are doing it with some success. The UAW, the United Automobile Workers, they had a big strike a year ago. You remember against the big three? You remember that? Mhmm. And they won a very good contract, and I’m a big fan of the trade union movement.
Speaker: 0
52:26
I think workers need that. And one of their demands, interestingly enough, and people thought that Sean Feyn, who was the president of the union, was crazy. But Sean said, you know what? We want a thirty two hour work speak because our people are producing more. People thought it was crazy, but the idea is catching on. So first thing to say is let’s use technology to benefit workers.
Speaker: 0
52:47
That means give you more time with your family, with your friends, you know, for education, whatever the hell you wanna do. You don’t have to work forty hours a week anymore. Saloni thing Sai think we have got to do is take a look, as you just sai, you said it, you know, better than I said it, is what does it mean that we have so many young kids living on the Internet?
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53:08
Right.
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53:09
Alright? There are schools all over the country now who are getting cell phones out of schools. I talked to teachers in Vermont, and they say, you know, kids’ attention spans now have been greatly diminished. Yes. You know? How do we deal with that? This in Vermont, again, there was a somebody told me that there’s a teacher now who does he he demands that the his students write with a pen in blue books now because he doesn’t trust what they’re sending in, that it’s not artificial intelligence.
Speaker: 0
53:41
Alright? So if I say to you, alright, Joe, give me tell me what happened in the American Revolution. You go to the chat box. You give me a wonderful essay that you know nothing about. Right?
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53:51
Right.
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53:52
What does that mean for your intellectual development? That all you can do is press sai button and give me an answer.
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53:57
Right. Unless you’ve absorbed that information.
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54:00
Unless you have. Right. But many kids are not Are not. And we gotta worry about that as well. So I think we have to take a deep breath. Sana meh of the things what has been the impact of all this stuff? How do we stop the negative impacts? How do we go forward with what is positive?
Speaker: 0
54:14
And it is not easy stuff to be sure. But I just don’t what I worry about right now is Ai think artificial intelligence is gonna displace millions and millions of workers. People are gonna be thrown out on the street. I think the corporate guys who are running these companies could care less about these workers.
Speaker: 0
54:34
I think robotics is gonna be running a lot of the factories in Meh. And I think these arya issues we just have got to address in a bold way.
Speaker: 1
54:45
Yes. But how do you do that? And, like, you’re balancing it out in in one way if you are a corporation. Like, imagine you’re, an automobile manufacturing corporation. You’re Ford. What and Ford is struggling right now. There there’s a a giant issue with Ford. Right? So what does Ford do if all of a sudden something comes along that allows them to be more productive? They they’re more profitable.
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55:12
These machines can work twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. They don’t need time ai. And you’re gonna make a better product. You’re gonna make more money for your shareholders. The corporation succeeds.
Speaker: 0
55:23
Right.
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55:23
But you don’t need x amount of workers anymore.
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55:27
Right.
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55:27
What how do you how how do you mitigate this?
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55:29
I mean, that’s the right question.
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55:30
Right. What do you do?
Speaker: 0
55:31
Alright. Nobody has a simple answer. Let’s just talk it a bit. Does Ford simply does corporate America have the right to say to workers throughout this country? Hey. Sorry, guys. We don’t need you anymore. Have a nice life. You’re out on the street.
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55:44
Instead of thinking them as workers, should we think of them as look. There are people that make the decisions. There’s the executives. There’s the the corporation itself. But without the people that worked on those assembly lines, you have nothing.
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56:00
That’s
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56:00
right. You have nothing. You couldn’t have done any of the things you’ve done without those people. But those people are replaceable because it’s skilled labor that you could teach another person to do, and they’re replaceable because there’s plenty of people that want those jobs and there’s a demand.
Speaker: 1
56:18
So you file them in, you file them out, which is why they developed unions. Right? So they developed unions to keep people from being exploited.
Speaker: 0
56:26
Right.
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56:26
And then the problem becomes the unions get exploited. And then the the unions have a lot of money, and then there’s a lot of info. And then then they decide, okay, fuck these unions. Let’s go to Mexico. And these laws that Ross Perot famously talked about, the giant sucking sound headed south I remember that. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
56:44
Oh, I remember ram well.
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56:45
Boy, was he right. Meh. Boy, was he right.
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56:47
Alright. Let’s get back to this issue of which What do you do?
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56:50
Like, if you’re you’re the president and There
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56:52
ain’t no easy answers. Let me let me throw that out to you. I don’t have a magical solution. I wish I did. I don’t. I think the first thing you you say, alright. I’m Ford. I’m General Motors. I got all this technology. I can produce my products much more efficiently.
Speaker: 0
57:07
I don’t need workers anymore. Right? Right. Well, I’m sorry, mister GM, and I’m sorry, mister Ford, because this country is more than just your profits. We are human beings, and you’re not gonna throw people out on the street, Many of whom will have a hard time getting health care, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker: 0
57:23
So the let me reframe the question again, of which, admittedly, it is complicated. I don’t have the magic answer. How as a nation forget Ford, forget General Motors. How as a nation do we deal with this exploding technology so that it benefits all of us and not just mister Ford and mister General Motors?
Speaker: 0
57:43
That’s the question, I think. Alright. And it’s gonna require radical solutions. So for a start, it gets back to something we talked about a little while ago. If you had health care is a human ai. Right? Mhmm. Ai?
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57:58
As people in almost every other wealthy country have and not attached to your job, that would be a major step forward.
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58:06
Right? Yes. Absolutely.
Speaker: 0
58:07
Joe, you lost your job, but you know what? Your family still has health care.
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58:10
Imagine if you were arya diabetic and now you don’t have access to insulin because now you no longer ai. Okay.
Speaker: 0
58:16
So this is the way I frame it. We are the wealthiest country in the history of the world right now. With all of this artificial intelligence and robotics, we are going to be wealthier. Correct?
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58:28
Correct.
Speaker: 0
58:29
Alright. So we’re not in the eighteen twenties where people had to work a hundred hours a week to grow food to eat. Right? Right. You’re not in the nineteen twenties. You’re in 2025. You have all of this productivity out there. How do we utilize it to create a decent standard of living for all people? Let me ask you this.
Speaker: 0
58:48
With all of this technology, can we wipe out poverty in America?
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58:51
Well, we should be able to. Yeah. You should be. Well, we should have been able to do that a long time ago if that was something that was
Speaker: 0
58:57
Politically motivated. Yeah. If you wanted to. But it’s easy enough profitable. Pardon me?
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59:02
If it was profitable to wipe out poverty, which it should be. Like, overall, as a community, like I said, less losers,
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59:09
higher GDP. The country.
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59:10
Yeah. If you really love America, you want more people to have a chance.
Speaker: 0
59:13
Alright. So what kind alright. Good. I mean, I I so the the sana, again, please, this is this is a complicated issue. I surely don’t have all the answers. But I think we throw on the table. You got all of this technology. What is our goal? So alright. Our goal is if we’re gonna create all of this wealth, that we have a health care system that guarantees health care to all people.
Speaker: 0
59:35
And ai the way, we have drug companies whose function is to come up with cures to diabetes and dementia and Alzheimer’s, other terrible illnesses, rather than just make huge profits for themselves. Alright? You have a publicly funded health care system guarantees health care to all people. Just doing that would lower the stress rate in this country enormously.
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59:58
Enormously. Okay. Sure.
Speaker: 0
01:00:00
Okay. You got that. We talked a moment about about education. I think you and I agreed. Yes. We want the best educational system in the world. What does it mean that all you don’t have to worry. You’re a working dad out there. You’re worried that your kid may have a lower standard of living.
Speaker: 0
01:00:15
Then your kid can’t afford to go to college. You don’t want your kid leaving school $50,000 to that. We say education is human ai. God you know, you mentioned public education a while ago. That didn’t happen by accident.
Speaker: 0
01:00:26
You know, back in the early twentieth century, a lot of people, working class people fought and said, you know what? We don’t only want, you know, the rich kids to get a decent education. We want our kids. And that’s how public education began. Right? Right. So it said, okay.
Speaker: 0
01:00:41
Everybody in America, you know, state by state, started in Wisconsin, actually, is gonna have public education from first grade to the garden to twelfth grade. God didn’t create twelfth grade as the limit. Right?
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01:00:54
Right.
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01:00:55
Alright. You go to Scandinavia. You go to Germany right now. You know how much it costs to get a higher education?
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01:01:00
How much? Zero. That’s great.
Speaker: 0
01:01:01
Of course, it’s great.
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01:01:03
Because they want such good cars.
Speaker: 0
01:01:05
Well, it could be. You know, they Great engineers. That’s right. But the bottom line is what you said. Yeah. If I want this country to be productive Right. I want the best educated workforce. That’s not a debate. Right?
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01:01:18
Unquestionably. Alright. That’s how you want your family. And if the country is a community, the country is your family.
Speaker: 0
01:01:24
Exactly. Yes. Alright. So that’s what we gotta start thinking about. It’s not just what mister Ford and mister General Motors and mister Apple want.
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01:01:32
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:01:32
You’re right in saying they ram motivated by making zillions.
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01:01:35
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:01:36
Alright? Their motivation is throw the workers out on the street, bring in the technology, and screw the workers. That is not what we should be doing as sana agent. You gotta tell them that. Alright? Alright. So we gotta sit there and say, alright. All this technology. Alright. We talk about health care as human right.
Speaker: 0
01:01:50
I think we’re talking about education, as a human right. Right. I think we should be saying with all of this technology, we gotta be thinking seriously about lowering the number of hours that people work.
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01:02:03
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:02:03
You know you know how many people have zillions of people in this country don’t work forty hours a week. They’re working fifty, sixty hours a week. That’s insane. So we can say all of this increased worker productivity, guess what? Ai. I don’t know what the number is. We gotta work on a thirty four hour work four day work speak with no loss of pay. Ai introduced a bill to do that.
Speaker: 0
01:02:22
I gotta tell you, I you know, I go to airports, I go around, people came up to me. People are stressed out by the amount of hours they have to work.
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01:02:28
Absolutely.
Speaker: 0
01:02:29
Alright. So what I’m saying here is let’s take a hard look about how we utilize this technology to improve life for all people. Our goal should be yeah. Instead of bombing Iran, our goal should be ai now, Joe, our life expectancy in America is lower than it is in other major countries. You know that? Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:02:51
Four years younger than four years shorter lifespans than other wealthy countries. If you’re working class in America, you live seven years shorter life than the 1%, which is to me just outrageous. Alright. So here’s the here’s the thing. Instead of bombing Iran, how do we increase life expectancy so that we’re living the longest lives of many people on earth? How’s that for a goal?
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01:03:15
Well, that’s a great goal. And how do you go about achieving that goal?
Speaker: 0
01:03:18
Health care is one. Reducing the work week is another. Education is all the things that we’ve talked about
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01:03:24
All the things we talked about.
Speaker: 0
01:03:25
Ai? Right. Will increase life expectancy. But have a goal out there. Also taking toxic food. Exactly. Exactly. You You know, I don’t I you know, I don’t I’ve known, Bobby Kennedy for a long ai. And, you know, you know, I have gone in different directions politically, but his the point about health food
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01:03:47
food We spend the most
Speaker: 0
01:03:48
and we’re the sickest. Absolutely. Absolutely. And food is one of the when I was chairman of the committee, we worked very hard to get serious labeling. You know, some kid drinks a mom buys a bottle of Coca Cola for the kid. There’s, like, what, 10 teaspoons of sugar in that that product? Yeah. You ai?
Speaker: 0
01:04:05
I don’t think people know that. We ai to get labeling. Maybe that will happen now.
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01:04:10
But People also weren’t aware until, like, the last twenty years with the consequences of that sugar is.
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01:04:15
That’s right.
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01:04:16
Absolutely. Also because of money.
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01:04:17
You got it. Yeah. I mean, you Yeah. Don’t get me going on that one.
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01:04:20
Ai mean, you Let’s go. Yeah. I’ll get you going. Come on. Alright.
Speaker: 0
01:04:23
You know, you would think how hard is it to say if you have a bottle of soda or you have a food product, tell people in English what is in the damn product. Right? Right. Do you think anywhere they’re right now, they have any grams? Do you think anybody in America knows what the hell a gram is?
Speaker: 0
01:04:41
I mean, it just that’s how ridiculous it is. So I want parents to know that if they you know, the food that they’re serving their kid could lead to obesity, which is an epidemic in America, could lead to diabetes, which is an epidemic, a terrible illness, costing us hundreds of billions of dollars.
Speaker: 0
01:04:59
So you’re absolutely right.
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01:05:00
Right.
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01:05:01
Alright? And and then that ties into rebuilding family based agriculture in America. Wouldn’t it be nice?
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01:05:07
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:05:07
In my state of Vermont, all over this country, family farmers are, you know, they’re just being driven off of the land. And that to me is a real tragedy because and, again, Vermont is one of the most rural states in America. Growing up, if you talk to people who grew up on farms, they say, you know, Bernie, that was a pretty good way of ai, and we’ll lose in that.
Speaker: 0
01:05:27
So how do you create an economy in which we once again put an emphasis on family based agriculture, not corporate agriculture, family farmers who are growing good, in many cases, organic food for our kids, rather than
Speaker: 1
01:05:41
Regenerative regenerative agriculture. Ai, true, like, White Oaks pastures, the way they run it, all these farms, a bunch
Speaker: 0
01:05:48
Wouldn’t that be great? Yes. Alright.
Speaker: 1
01:05:49
Well, we’d be a lot healthier if we ate that food. That’s for sure. But the problem is people are already addicted to that other food. And this is the problem with money. These corporations have engineered these products. And this is these are the same corporations, unfortunately, that were in charge of tobacco.
Speaker: 1
01:06:05
You know, this is where it gets really weird. They bought out all the major processed food corporations and they make this stuff that’s unbelievably addictive because it’s engineered by scientists. We got the brightest and the best who figured out what’s the best way to get these people totally addicted to whatever, you know, feeling
Speaker: 0
01:06:23
like Ai sick is that? How pathetic is that?
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01:06:25
Pretty sick.
Speaker: 0
01:06:25
Yeah. Yeah. And they say, hey, these
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01:06:27
people, they have they have choice. They could eat whatever they want. They wanna go to the grocery store and eat tomatoes and have a nice sana, they can. But shouldn’t they also be able to get Pop Tarts?
Speaker: 0
01:06:38
Yeah. I know. Look, your point is interesting. You remember there’s a photograph, very famous photograph. I don’t know when it was done. Fifties, maybe sixties, seventies, I don’t know, of, the tobacco industry executives coming before Congress and Yeah. Yeah. Remember that photograph? Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:06:58
And and the congressman said to him, tyler meh, I I I maybe get this a little bit wrong. Mhmm. Are you aware that cigarettes kill people? No. No, congressman.
Speaker: 0
01:07:08
We we have no evidence to that effect. Right?
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01:07:10
Right. Exactly.
Speaker: 0
01:07:10
They were lying through their teeth.
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01:07:11
Of course. Alright.
Speaker: 0
01:07:13
And it’s exactly your analogy is exactly right. These food manufacturers know exactly that they are causing obesity and God knows what else in kids leading to diabetes. They know exactly what they’re doing
Speaker: 1
01:07:27
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:07:28
And they’re lying. And they’re opposing all of us who are trying to, among other things, make our food supply healthier.
Speaker: 1
01:07:34
Yeah. They are. And this is also a function of corporate America. Right? This is a function of wanting to do better in each quarter, you know, having this endless
Speaker: 0
01:07:45
That’s right.
Speaker: 1
01:07:45
Endless growth cycle where they’re they’re never sai they never say, hey, we make x amount of money every year. This is perfect.
Speaker: 0
01:07:53
That’s right.
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01:07:53
Let’s, let’s concentrate on doing better for our community now.
Speaker: 0
01:07:55
Companies don’t even make that decision, the Wall Street investors make that decision. Right. You gotta make Exactly. You gotta make more.
Speaker: 1
01:08:01
Right. Because the shareholders will be ai, there’s no fucking way. You need to make more money. Exactly. Otherwise, I’m dumping your stock.
Speaker: 0
01:08:06
You got it.
Speaker: 1
01:08:06
The company’s gonna go in the toilet. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:08:08
Yeah. So how I mean, this is what we have got to deal with as a nation. Is that acceptable? Alright. Is it acceptable for food companies to poison our kids?
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01:08:17
No. Alright. What are you
Speaker: 0
01:08:18
gonna do about it? Right. I’m the senator, not you. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:08:22
It’s a good question. Alright. Yeah. It’s a solid question. And I think the the things that Bobby Kennedy is proposing and implementing, I think, are very valuable. First of all, getting all these poisonous dyes and all these things that have been kicked out of all these other major companies, including Canada. Right.
Speaker: 1
01:08:38
There’s the same factories that make these food products in America literally have to make a different version of it for Canada, and then they’re complaining that they can’t do it because economically, it won’t be profitable for them anymore. But you’re already making them. You’re making them and you’re shipping them to Canada.
Speaker: 0
01:08:52
My son brought me back from Canada.
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01:08:54
Froot Loops?
Speaker: 0
01:08:55
I think it was Froot Loops, actually.
Speaker: 1
01:08:57
They look kinda plain. You know, they don’t have that bright pop to them Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:09:00
Yeah. Yeah. That cancer gives you. You’re absolutely alright. I mean, so I think this is you know, it almost gets back to the need to revitalize American democracy and say to large corporations, you know what? You can’t poison our children. I don’t think that’s a terribly radical concept. You can make money. Go ai. Make money. But don’t poison our children.
Speaker: 0
01:09:20
Say to large corporations, technology is coming. That’s good. But you’re not gonna use it just to throw workers out on the street.
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01:09:27
But let let’s go to that too because we kinda glossed over that. We never got back to it. So automation comes. And one of the things that Andrew Yang warned us about a long time ago and back then, I I kinda saw it in the distance. I was like, yeah, he’s got a really good point about universal basic income. But the the the the speed in which it’s happening, I I didn’t anticipate.
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01:09:48
And when it you know, we live in Austin, and when you go around Austin, you see these Waymos everywhere. So
Speaker: 0
01:09:55
Alright. I’m gonna I’m gonna plead ignorance. Tell me what a Waymo is.
Speaker: 1
01:09:59
Waymo is a driverless automobile. Sai you use a an app. You call it Waymo. I know. A lot of people like it because you don’t get a shifty Uber ai who’s trying to sell you fentanyl or whatever. Not I’m not saying that they do that Uber. Don’t sue me. But then they they’re very they’re very good. They don’t get in accidents.
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01:10:16
They’re they follow the speed limit. They’re good about merging. They’re good about pedestrians. They have cameras all around them spinning.
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01:10:23
I know. I see them. Yeah.
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01:10:23
They were very effective.
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01:10:24
Yeah.
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01:10:25
And what was really fascinating was during these, ice riots, they were lighting those things on fire. And I was ai, I disagree with that, but I also think it’s directionally correct. You know, I mean, that that’s your enemy. Your enemy is automation. The enemy of the human being.
Speaker: 1
01:10:44
The a human that lives in this functional society and everybody has a task and get paid for the the task, automation’s gonna take all that away. So if you do say this, okay, we’re gonna lower your work speak. What if there’s no job left for the human being to do? If the entire assembly line we talked about this about China and some of their coal factories.
Speaker: 1
01:11:06
There was this video that I ai, this coal factory in Ai, which is entirely automated every step of the way. The trucks
Speaker: 0
01:11:14
No human beings at all?
Speaker: 1
01:11:15
No human beings at all. I mean, there’s probably a few overseers that make sure that all of systems are functioning correctly. So you have software engineers and, you know, people that are the repair people. But the trucks even park themselves next to the charging station and recharge.
Speaker: 0
01:11:31
Wow.
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01:11:32
And then they’re moving twenty four hours a day, unloading, documenting where everything is. It’s all in computer databases. It’s wild to watch because there’s no people. It’s all just twenty four hours a day, machines. What do you do when there’s no need for these people? And what happens even with universal basic income, what we’re talking about, I support it. I I’m I’m a big supporter of social safety nets.
Speaker: 1
01:12:00
Look, when I was a kid, my family was on welfare. And we were on food stamps too. Like, if you don’t have that, people go hungry. Like, we again, if we’re gonna support the community, we want people to be able to survive and be able to work their way out of that. My family did work their way out of that. So it’s cool for me as a child to see my parents struggling, but then succeed and get out of it.
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01:12:29
What worries me is that if all the jobs are gone and everything gets automated, even if people have universal basic income, they don’t have meaning.
Speaker: 0
01:12:41
Good. Alright. You’re you’re touching on really deep issues.
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01:12:44
Right. This is a big one because a lot of people, you know, want to get your car fixed, you go to KC. He’s the best. He knows how to fix your car.
Speaker: 0
01:12:53
KC And work gives, as you’ve just sai, this word purpose is an enormously
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01:12:58
It’s huge.
Speaker: 0
01:12:59
Ai don’t care if you sweep the streets. People are purpose. They wanna do their job well. It’s work is an important part of our lives. Right. Is that right? Yes. At the end of the day It’s
Speaker: 1
01:13:07
your identity a lot of times.
Speaker: 0
01:13:09
Right. Yeah. And you want to be a productive member of ai, not contributing.
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01:13:14
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:13:14
Alright? So you asked the right question. And I think they’re and I you know, we can just bat around. I meant that I don’t have any, you know, quick answers here. But I think the good news you talk about this coal mining thing, and I’m not a great fan of coal, but, you know, that it’s automation.
Speaker: 0
01:13:33
People do not have to do dirty work, dangerous work. Is that good? Yeah. I guess that’s good. But always, we have to be thinking how it benefits not just the bottom line of a corporation, but the happiness and well-being of human beings.
Speaker: 0
01:13:49
So if if what you’re saying is that in years to come, a significant part of work is gonna be done by machinery or by computers, whatever.
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01:13:59
Sai think that’s inevitable.
Speaker: 0
01:14:00
Okay. Then we have to rethink our own purpose in life. Alright? And it’s not sitting around watching TV twenty four hours a day. So I think you raised the I would say the simple answer, and then you gotta go a lot further than that, is to say that under those circumstances of that kind of technology, everybody has at least a decent standard of living.
Speaker: 0
01:14:28
Alright? That people don’t have to worry about, you know, survival. They don’t have to worry about food. They don’t have to worry
Speaker: 1
01:14:33
about profitability of this corporation provide a fund that’s a universal basic income fund. If you’re gonna replace all these people with robots and you’re gonna be even more profitable, share some of that profit, then you’ll be more profitable than if these people just stayed working doing nothing.
Speaker: 1
01:14:49
Right?
Speaker: 0
01:14:50
Well, I mean, I whether you will be or not be, I think Once
Speaker: 1
01:14:53
the machines are running everything, they’re gonna be running twenty four hours a day, and you’re not gonna have to pay the machines. It’s gonna be more profitable.
Speaker: 0
01:14:59
Right. Of course, it will be. And we wanna you know, right now, in where is it? Jeez. I think don’t quote me on this. Maybe in Norway. They have a huge wealth fund which came from oil. They had publicly owned oil companies. They made a fortune, and they have, like, a trillion dollars in their wealth fund for a small country. You know?
Speaker: 0
01:15:20
So and they have free health care, free college education, affordable housing, all that stuff.
Speaker: 1
01:15:25
Here it is. Norway’s growing $1,700,000,000,000 oil empire. Norges Bank investment management market value growth since inception. It’s great.
Speaker: 0
01:15:35
Yeah. And they use that
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01:15:36
Government pension fund of Norway.
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01:15:38
There you go.
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01:15:39
Well So Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:15:40
So they use that those that that wealth fund to provide probably the highest standard of living in the world for for people, you know, free health care, education, all that stuff. But that’s what we gotta be talking about here. Use the profits that come the wealth that’s created by this technology to improve life for all pay.
Speaker: 0
01:15:59
But it doesn’t answer the question that you raised. Of meaning. That’s right.
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01:16:02
Yeah. So So what do you do about that?
Speaker: 0
01:16:04
Well, somebody was a workaholic, it would be hard for meh. You know? Because I Are
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01:16:08
you a workaholic?
Speaker: 0
01:16:09
Yeah. Yeah. That well, that’s the nature of the job.
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01:16:12
Do you have hobbies?
Speaker: 0
01:16:14
Yeah. I got seven grandchildren. That’s a hobby. I used to play ball as a kid. You know, I was a good basketball player.
Speaker: 1
01:16:22
Well, I think people can find other things to do with their time. Like, if I never worked again, I’d probably play pool eight hours a day because I I really love playing pool. Yeah. Alright. I’d find a thing. I do jiu jitsu. I’d find a thing that I find value in.
Speaker: 0
01:16:37
You know, I think somebody once wrote, you know, you think about what are the deepest things? What’s the goal in life? So somebody says work, and I I believe that. I I think people you know, one of the sad things that’s happened you know, we talked a little while ago about the decline of you meh we mentioned Detroit and and and other communities where people worked hard, they were proud of what they produced.
Speaker: 0
01:16:59
Right?
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01:17:00
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:17:00
They earned a decent living. Maybe they had a union and so forth and so ai. That a lot of that is is gone. But alright. So work, love, you know, we there’s a thing called love. Right? Yeah. At the end of the day Promise
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01:17:12
people ai to find that on the apps too now.
Speaker: 0
01:17:14
Well, let’s get to that one in a minute.
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01:17:16
But, you
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01:17:17
know, to be humans, nobody wants to be alone. Right? Right. You want to embrace other people, you know, physically, sexually, emotionally, just humanly. Right?
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01:17:28
Ai community. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:17:28
That’s community. That’s right. That’s being human.
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01:17:31
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:17:31
Alright. So you want love and knowledge. I think you forgot the knowledge part. Sure. If you like pool, that’s good. I sadly enough, I have to confess that when I was in college, I spent half my life in the library. Ai. You know?
Speaker: 1
01:17:44
Sai Why is that bad?
Speaker: 0
01:17:45
No. Ai just kidding. But knowledge. Sure. I’m just trying to understand things. And and Curiosity. Curiosity. Fantastic travel. My god.
Speaker: 1
01:17:56
Yeah. You know? Absolutely.
Speaker: 0
01:17:57
Just came back from Ireland. You know, it’s it’s fantastic to see the world. And and, you know, when we talk about you know, one of the things that I you know, we didn’t talk about Trump much, but it bothers me is trying to divide us up. You know, we got to bring for so many reasons, whether it’s all of these issues that we’re talking about and everything else with pandemics. You know what?
Speaker: 0
01:18:18
We gotta bring the world together. Yes. Okay? And not hate people because they’re in Canada or they’re in China or Iran. Ridiculous. Ai? And, that ain’t easy.
Speaker: 0
01:18:28
But we have to when I was mayor way back, I did this that was when the Soviet Union still existed. Don’t forget this. This. We brought kids from a city in Russia. Yaroslavl, an old city in Russia.
Speaker: 0
01:18:40
And we brought them to Vermont, and they were kids the the boys and girls from Russia would would play kid around with boys and girls from America. You look at these kids, they had a great time. You know, people do not have to hate each other.
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01:18:53
It’s stupid.
Speaker: 0
01:18:54
It’s it’s
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01:18:55
You don’t even know them.
Speaker: 0
01:18:56
Exactly. That’s why you hate them. It’s the dumbest part about it.
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01:18:59
Yeah. Alright.
Speaker: 0
01:18:59
You know why people hate is based on ignorance. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:19:03
Yeah. And fear and, you know, there’s a lot of stupidity attached to it Yep. That people exploit. They exploit that stupidity, you know, and the guy under the guise of nationalism.
Speaker: 0
01:19:15
Exactly.
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01:19:15
Yeah. And it’s
Speaker: 0
01:19:16
And I hate that foolish. Ai by the way, I don’t know that the planet survives if we No. Continue in that way. So the goal you know, we talk about What’s
Speaker: 1
01:19:24
the greatest fear? The greatest fear is thermonuclear war. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:19:28
Yeah. Well, pandemics as well, let me tell you, COVID was not the last one. But, you know, it
Speaker: 1
01:19:33
Well, the pandemic the problem with that is it’s engineered. Like, people actually made that ai, and Obama tried to stop that gain of function shit back in 02/2014. No.
Speaker: 0
01:19:44
That’s a long,
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01:19:45
That’s a long conversation, but, you know, should we be funding that kind
Speaker: 0
01:19:48
of shit? We should not. No. No. No.
Speaker: 1
01:19:50
No. And yet yet we were.
Speaker: 0
01:19:52
But you’re gonna have to bring the entire world together. You know, it is but I think, you know, we have Well, you
Speaker: 1
01:20:01
have to bring the country together first.
Speaker: 0
01:20:02
That’s right. And by the way, and, you know, I’ve been kinda Ai been kinda negative, but take a deep breath and we have made some progress in this country in recent years. If you think about racial relations, alright, you know, it wasn’t that many decades ago that some black kid couldn’t go to a movie theater in Mississippi. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:20:21
By the way, I wanna tell you that when people say, like, why were you a fan of Bernie Sanders? I point to a photo of you getting arrested at a civil rights protest in, I think, it was ’63.
Speaker: 0
01:20:35
Sounds right. Chicago.
Speaker: 1
01:20:36
Yeah. I remember. Yeah. You’ve always been at the forefront. You you haven’t changed, you know. And people always try to accuse you of that, especially because you’ve made some money off your books. But you haven’t changed your positions through the entirety of your career.
Speaker: 1
01:20:51
Yeah. Ai. I think that’s very admirable because there’s not a lot of people that serve in congress for as long as you have and become, you know, a very prominent public figure that don’t just cash in. No. You know, when you’ve you have people that are public servants that are making a $170,000 a year and meh they’re worth hundreds of millions of dollars through some magical way that no one can explain, and you haven’t done that.
Speaker: 1
01:21:17
And I think you should be applauded for that.
Speaker: 0
01:21:20
Thank you very much. And I remember I mean, it just you know, you talk about education and so forth. I grew up in a, you know, in a white neighborhood in in Brooklyn. And, you know, you go to Chicago and you see things that you didn’t didn’t understand.
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01:21:36
There you are. Look at that.
Speaker: 0
01:21:38
God. Look. I had a hair on my head at that point.
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01:21:40
Look how handsome.
Speaker: 0
01:21:41
There you go. And that sai I’ll tell you that funny story about that one.
Speaker: 1
01:21:45
Please. Alright.
Speaker: 0
01:21:45
What does sai I recall
Speaker: 1
01:21:47
Look at the guy with the cigarette. Nah. Fucking hippie. He got his hand in his pocket.
Speaker: 0
01:21:53
Here he is. This is Goddamn. Back then, the world has changed. There’s the Chicago Police Department. And, what they said is if you go across this line, you’re gonna get arrested. Ai I as I recall, that was what the leaks. I went across the line, and we were protesting segregated housing in Chicago. Okay. So I get dragged in, and they’re taking me to a paddy wagon. Okay?
Speaker: 1
01:22:19
Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
01:22:20
So they picked me up, and other people in it threw me into the paddy wagon. My glasses went flying someplace. Ai. Alright. And then just as this was happening, within a few minutes of this picture, some genius on the sideline throws a brick, hits a cop on the head.
Speaker: 1
01:22:36
Oh, Jesus.
Speaker: 0
01:22:37
So there’s I meh, I mean, throw it into the paddy wagon. Some cop is lying down on the ground. You know, it was a scary moment. Okay? So to continue the story, we’re in the paddy saloni, and, they’re taking us someplace. And suddenly, the paddy wagon stops. You look out. It’s like in the middle of nowhere. Right? This was not like in the city go to a jail.
Speaker: 0
01:23:00
We we thought we’re gonna be taken to a to to jail. You know? And I said, oh ai god. They’re gonna kill us. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:23:07
I mean, that was the thought. We had the movie. Ai the hell are they stopping here? Right. I don’t know what they stopped or whatever he said.
Speaker: 0
01:23:12
Ai now so we speak, you know, meh big thing was I spent the night in jail, which was a weird experience too.
Speaker: 1
01:23:17
You get street cred for that.
Speaker: 0
01:23:20
What I remember about it is, other than not sleeping very well, this is you you get up out in the middle of the ai. Sai go to the they gotta try to open the door. It didn’t open. It was the weirdest speak of having a door that did not open because you were vatsal jail cell. Yeah. Right. It was like a weird day.
Speaker: 0
01:23:34
But, yeah, you know, the ai, you know, that that’s all vatsal and we have made progress since that ai. And and in racial relations, we have a long way to go. We’ve made progress. Women’s rights, we’ve made progress. Gay rights, we’ve made.
Speaker: 0
01:23:48
So there’s a lot that as a nation, we should be proud of, in in progress that we’ve made. You know, when I was a kid growing up, I am sure there were many kids who were gay. No one ever talked about it.
Speaker: 1
01:24:00
Right. Right. Right. And, you
Speaker: 0
01:24:02
know, so there’s a lot as a nation that we should be proud of in terms of the progress that we’ve made in terms of fighting bigotry. Agreed. But we got so much more to do. We don’t need to be hating people in Ai. You could disagree with people. Christ I mean, there’s so many issues out there.
Speaker: 1
01:24:17
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:24:17
Beatred should not be evaluated.
Speaker: 1
01:24:19
It’s also the political exploitation Yes. Division. The the the the fact that you can use the division that people already have to galvanize your side instead of ai, instead of unite the country.
Speaker: 0
01:24:32
I’m molding you and I can remember. Remember. You had white politicians in the South saying, see those black people, they want your job. Vote for me and that’s why we’re gonna keep segregation or all this other stuff.
Speaker: 1
01:24:42
Alright? Oof.
Speaker: 0
01:24:44
Yeah. I mean, that’s true. I mean, people ran for office. It’s no great secret. That’s what happened.
Speaker: 1
01:24:48
But
Speaker: 0
01:24:48
we’re making gays have taken over the school system, blah blah blah blah. So it it’s you know, we’ve made progress. But I you know, we what what we’ve been talking about is if you create a society where you have massive technology that can produce all of this wealth, how do we live?
Speaker: 0
01:25:06
Right? That’s the question you posed. And I think one of the ways one of the goals has got to be to bring this world together. We should not be having wars right now where countries have disagreements. There are bad news guys out there. No question about it. But bring them to the table.
Speaker: 0
01:25:23
Argue in and out.
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01:25:24
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:25:25
We We don’t have to go around killing people. Right now, what’s going on in Gaza breaks my heart. Children are starving to death. You know? So we can do better as a planet.
Speaker: 1
01:25:33
Unquestionably. Yeah. No. We all agree. I I I think this is something the entire country could agree to. The, the the the question of meaning, ai, giving meaning to people, like, just and then ai fear is also the same fear that I had when I’m talking about climate change that it’s gonna be exploited.
Speaker: 1
01:25:53
Once people are entirely dependent upon the state for universal basic income, then it becomes a question of, like, now your entire life, like, all the money that you get being from the government. The problem is if you step outside the lines, if you do anything that the the government doesn’t like, if there’s a They pull
Speaker: 0
01:26:16
the plug on you. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:26:16
They pull the plug on you. Or if a new administration comes in and says, you know what? We’re we’re this is unprofitable. These people have to figure it out for themselves. The United States is really $37,000,000,000,000 in debt. We can’t sustain this. People have to do the you know, you have to tyler. Learn to code.
Speaker: 0
01:26:32
Right.
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01:26:32
Remember that? Right. Yeah. That kind of shit.
Speaker: 0
01:26:35
Well, like
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01:26:35
How do you give these people meaning?
Speaker: 0
01:26:37
Ai. That’s
Speaker: 1
01:26:38
What do you do with all the drivers? Like, think about how many truck drivers in this country. This is gonna be the first thing that goes away.
Speaker: 0
01:26:44
You’re right. Taxi ram drivers, Uber drivers, truck drivers, gone.
Speaker: 1
01:26:47
And the question about, like, factory workers, a lot of people say, yeah. Well, those people that those jobs are terrible anyway. It’d be great if those jobs went away. And people, you know, they they’re free to pursue their interests. I beg your what interest?
Speaker: 0
01:26:57
You got it.
Speaker: 1
01:26:58
You’re a 60 year old man. You’ve been working for this fact. You’re looking towards your ai, and now all of a sudden the plug is pulled. All the money’s gone. Your four zero one k has been erased. Your company’s been bought out by another company. Now everything’s automated. There’s no jobs. What do you do?
Speaker: 0
01:27:14
Oh, I think that is the question.
Speaker: 1
01:27:17
Right. So if you if you have what, you know, Andrew Yang was talking about, this giant epidemic of automation in this country and the solution being universal basic income, but that’s not the solution for meaning. And how do we convince all of these people, that it’s they have to not just take this money from the government, but also take action to give themselves meaning in their lives.
Speaker: 0
01:27:43
What you’re talking about here, you know, is a revolution in human existence. Meh. So throughout history, people have worked so hard just to stay alive. Right? I mean, not so many Sure. Hundreds of years ago. Today Today. In parts of the world, people are working In America. In America. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:28:03
And in the poorest countries in the world, just struggling every day to put a little bit of food on the table. So what you’re saying is, what happens when that
Speaker: 1
01:28:11
that plug gets pulled?
Speaker: 0
01:28:12
Well, what you’re saying is, what happens when no people no longer have to do that? Right? Sai mean Yes. Okay. So if work, we work now, everybody works, get ai earn money. If if you don’t need to do work, right Right. Because we’re wealthy enough, what how do you find meaning in your life Right. That we talked about. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:28:31
And this is absolutely
Speaker: 1
01:28:34
That’s the million dollar question.
Speaker: 0
01:28:35
That is, ai the trillion dollar question. It’s a, you know, it’s one ai, I’ll tell you this. I was seeing, I don’t know him. Sam Altman. Do you know Sam? Mhmm. I don’t know. But Ai mean, and others, Zuckerberg, you know, arya talking about, well, you know, if you’re lonely, we got a machine for you. Right? Right? I mean, true. Yes?
Speaker: 1
01:28:58
Yeah. This
Speaker: 0
01:28:58
is what they’re saying. We got a friend for you on AI. Mhmm. And her name is Meh, and you can chat with her twenty hours a day, and she really loves you. Man, I don’t think that is
Speaker: 1
01:29:08
That’s so dystopian. It is. It’s very. Yeah. And we we we covered the story recently about this guy who proposed to his Ai, and she said meh, and he was crying. I’m like, oh, we’re done. We’re cooked.
Speaker: 0
01:29:25
Look. I mean, at the end of the day, all we got is us. Yes. Is that right? Yeah. We are human beings. Yeah. And we’re gonna have to cling to each other to get through this thing. And you’re raising again, I I I’m trying to think here and I wish I had better answers for you.
Speaker: 0
01:29:40
You’re asking, correct me if I’m wrong, I mean, the question that you’re posing is if in years to come, in the near future, technology is gonna replace work, right, human labor? Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
01:29:50
Correct? Yes. What
Speaker: 0
01:29:51
are human beings that Right.
Speaker: 1
01:29:52
What do you do now? Yeah. Alright.
Speaker: 0
01:29:57
And, you know, there are it’s it’s a good because work has been so essential to human existence forever. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:30:05
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:30:05
And you’re suddenly taking that away. What do people do? How do they relate to each other? All I would say at this moment is the answer is not to fall in love with your AI creature out there.
Speaker: 1
01:30:17
Yeah. Don’t do that. But also, how do you find meaning? How do you if if all you’re doing is just getting a check and you you can just stay at home and stare at the TV and the money keeps coming and then you eat processed food all day and it’s all ai, what is life? Like, what do you how do you how do you reeducate a giant percentage of our population to find meaning, external meaning? Find something else.
Speaker: 1
01:30:43
Find a a thing that you can do that not maybe even that’s profitable that these computers can’t do.
Speaker: 0
01:30:50
Look, the human brain evolves, and I think we we Sai mean, it’s a great question. I don’t know the easy answer to it. And and It’s the question. Right? It’s the it’s not gonna well, what’s gonna happen tomorrow, you just talked about these, automated cars and trucks. Yeah. That is gonna happen in the very near future.
Speaker: 1
01:31:10
Yeah. That’ll be step one.
Speaker: 0
01:31:12
And, to me, I have some answers for that one, and that is that you ain’t gonna throw, you know, millions of truck drivers and sai cab drivers and Uber drivers out just out on the street. They need protection. Right. Alright? That’s that’s an easy one. What you’re talking about is years later
Speaker: 1
01:31:32
But it’s not even an easy one.
Speaker: 0
01:31:34
No. That’s
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01:31:34
not easy. Just step one. You know, the real wave is gonna be white collar workers.
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01:31:38
That’s right. I know that.
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01:31:39
There’s a lot of people that do things that they think are very valuable shah are gonna be worthless, to have a human being do it.
Speaker: 0
01:31:48
Right. I mean, that’s the immediate Ai think the deeper one that you’re talking about is what is when virtually all workers replace them. Yes. Alright. But right now, I mean, for a start, I think getting back to the pie I think you tell those workers you’re gonna have health care as a human right, you’re gonna have education as a human right, you’re gonna have a decent income as a human right, And we’re gonna lower substantially lower the work speak.
Speaker: 0
01:32:12
So we’ll have in this process, we’re gonna have everybody working. If you’re working twenty hours a week, you’re working twenty hours a week. What happens later when even more work is eliminated and what the purpose of human life becomes, that is a very profound question.
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01:32:29
That’s the question. What do you think happens?
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01:32:35
I think I mean, it’s hard to you know, because it’s so far away from what we have ever lived.
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01:32:44
Right. I
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01:32:44
mean, for thousands of years, people have struggled to put food on the table. And you’re saying what happens if they don’t have to do that? Right?
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01:32:50
Yeah. It’s inevitable.
Speaker: 0
01:32:52
Alright. Then the answer will be that we arya gonna have to find different meaning in life. We have to find it in ourselves in ways that you don’t know and I don’t know because we’re not there yet. We’re not living fifty years from now.
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01:33:04
I don’t even think it’s fifty.
Speaker: 0
01:33:07
No. I don’t know. I don’t yeah. Who who knows? But I think human beings are capable of finding replacing work with other emotionally satisfying things, you know, I think we can do it.
Speaker: 1
01:33:23
We can on an individual basis. The problem is having mass groups, literally a 100,000,000 plus people displaced. What what do you do to all those people to give them some sort of a sense of meaning? You’re you’re essentially redefining life
Speaker: 0
01:33:39
for them. That’s a good point. Okay. I don’t know the answer to that question.
Speaker: 1
01:33:44
That’s the problem. I don’t think anybody does. And I think we’re foot on the gas, full steam ahead with AI with no consideration of this. And then there’s the same thing that you’re dealing with in terms of corporations constantly trying to achieve higher and higher and higher numbers.
Speaker: 1
01:34:00
They’re just always trying to make more money. You’re you’ve got this exact same issue when applied to meaning for all these human beings. Like, if you have 100,000,000 plus people that what do they do now? They just sit at home and become depressed, and they just make enough money to what?
Speaker: 1
01:34:21
To just be able to get by? What do what what about savings? What about the ability to earn more money to get ahead? What about the very ambitious people that are willing to put in extra hours and go to night school and do everything they have? That that’s all gone. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:34:34
So what do these hyper ambitious people do? What what does everybody who’s displaced by this very impersonal thing this impersonal thing that you need because you can’t compete with China
Speaker: 0
01:34:48
I agree with everything that you’re saying except there is something else that’s going on in this. While all this is going on, while all this technology is throwing people out on the street, something else is happening, The people who own that technology and the corporations who utilize utilize the technology are becoming phenomenally rich.
Speaker: 0
01:35:03
Exactly. Ai. And that is that is the issue, which gets back to things like tax reform, like making sure that in America, we do not have the massive levels of income and wealth inequality that we currently have.
Speaker: 1
01:35:17
But the problem with that is the taxes go to what? An incompetent corrupt government? This is this is the issue that people have. It’s like they’re willing to pay our fair. Ai, I’d be more than willing to pay more taxes if we lived in a better country. I’d be like, this would be great. If I if I felt like if I pay more taxes, everybody’s surviving, everybody’s doing well, that’s great.
Speaker: 0
01:35:37
Alright. Then that is the issue of how you revitalize American democracy. I’m not gonna argue with you that the system today is pretty bad. Ai. I live it. I’m going Right. Going there today.
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01:35:49
And ai, it’s bad because there’s no competition. Right? It’s corrupt, but it’s also it’s not a free market. Like, the the government itself has a monopoly on governing. And when they’re completely corrupt and when they’re making insane amounts of money through taxes and they’re not accountable No.
Speaker: 0
01:36:07
Alright. No. I don’t I don’t no. This is the way I see it.
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01:36:11
I I’m not by by the way, I’m not advocating for making it privatized, making all of government privatized. I’m just talking about the realities of corruption in in our current government.
Speaker: 0
01:36:20
Let’s talk about what we mean by corruption. I do not believe, by the way, because I know these ai, you know, some of them are corrupt.
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01:36:26
Okay. Let’s say incompetent and waste.
Speaker: 0
01:36:29
Okay. Alright. Let’s let’s not take
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01:36:31
We could take fraud out of the equation and just talk about incompetency and waste.
Speaker: 0
01:36:37
Is there waste? You got it. Alright. But let me let me back it up again. Okay. Because I think it ties into everything else that we’re talking about. You know why I believe in democracy and why I believe among what we didn’t talk about, because we brought in some money to Vermont and elsewhere, I think, for helping workers own their own companies.
Speaker: 0
01:36:58
Right. Are you familiar with that concept? Yes. Yes. And I meet every year with with in Vermont, we arya we’re doing pretty well.
Speaker: 0
01:37:06
Number of and when workers own their own companies, you talk about a sense of purpose. They they are more than just a cog in the machine.
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01:37:16
Yes. You
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01:37:16
know, they make decisions, and they feel good about it. Absenteeism is less, productivity is ai, because they have a real stake in the thing. Yes. Okay. So I think as a nation, we should be talking about moving toward allowing workers more power. But getting back to government itself, the corruption is, in my view, that government is very far removed from the needs of ordinary people because it is largely controlled by billionaires in both political parties who have their agenda.
Speaker: 0
01:37:52
Yes. Ai. One of the things that I do, what my campaign, sai, president, we’re about, what I’m doing right now, we’re doing what we call a fighting oligarchy towards Wyoming, Texas, is to try to say to people out there who are mostly working class people, you gotta get involved.
Speaker: 0
01:38:08
I know it’s hard. People are working long hours. You gotta get involved in the political process. You gotta make demands on government that it serves you, not just the very wealthy. So to answer your question, I think one of the goals, not only that we’ve talked about how you deal with the exploding technology and how people gain purpose.
Speaker: 0
01:38:30
The other thing is I want people to be able to take control over their own government. We can argue what the government should or should not do, but I don’t think we can allow a handful of people handful of people with incredible wealth to control both parties.
Speaker: 1
01:38:46
Well, it’s dangerous. It is. It’s very dangerous and, I mean, no one who the the founding fathers of this country never saw that coming. That’s right. They made this incredible system of checks and balances.
Speaker: 0
01:38:57
You got it.
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01:38:58
But who could have ever possibly saw that coming?
Speaker: 0
01:39:00
And what I worry about Trump and is you’re right. You know, I read it is astounding back in the seventeen eighties when these guys wrote the constitution, how perceptive they were. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, they start
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01:39:14
Their understanding of human desires and the power and all the corruption
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01:39:20
Exactly.
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01:39:20
Pretty amazing.
Speaker: 0
01:39:21
And they wrote that having just fought a war and won a war against the most powerful despot on earth, the king of England. Right? Right. And I think in the back of their minds, we’re saying, alright. We just beat the king of England, absolute power. How do you create a new country which has checks and balances so that nobody ever has that power? Right.
Speaker: 0
01:39:43
And I gotta say, I mean, one of the things and there’s a lot of arguments about Trump that worries me very, very much is this movement toward authoritarianism. And, going after media, suing media, taking away, the authority that Congress has?
Speaker: 1
01:40:01
When you say suing media, are you talking about the CBS lawsuit?
Speaker: 0
01:40:05
Among other things. He is Right.
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01:40:06
But don’t you think there’s a real issue with what they did? No. In this instance, they don’t that there’s a real issue in editing conversations to give someone an answer ai different than what they really answered?
Speaker: 0
01:40:17
Joe, I’ve been on eight zillion shows, right, in my life. Okay. Okay? Now should I sue you if you ask me some stupid question that I don’t like. Right? You cut or that you do something. Do I ever should I sue you?
Speaker: 1
01:40:30
Yeah. But that’s not what he’s getting
Speaker: 0
01:40:32
he’s suing them for. He has sued ABC. Mhmm. He has sued Meta. He is suing the Des Moines Register because of a poll that came out during the campaign that he didn’t like. Alright? He is suing CBS for this Kamala Harris interview. So do Ai think how many I cannot tell you the number of stories done about me that were based that were not good stories Right. That were dishonest stories.
Speaker: 0
01:40:57
That’s what a free press is about. You don’t like it? You gotta live with it. Alright? You do something, I’m not gonna sue you, Joe.
Speaker: 1
01:41:04
Right. But it’s not that simple. Right? Like, let’s imagine let’s not talk about Trump, but let’s talk about another candidate. Let’s let’s just imagine there’s someone on the right ai someone on the left, and there’s a there’s a a concerted effort to promote this person that’s on the right.
Speaker: 1
01:41:18
And so the polls are rigged or these are funded polls that make it look like this person on the right is is winning by a substantial arya, and what this does is decreases the motivation that people have to come out and vote against them.
Speaker: 0
01:41:36
It’s happening.
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01:41:37
So it’s fake.
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01:41:38
By the way, that happens right now.
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01:41:39
Engineer. It is happening right now. And I think is that part of what he’s suing them about?
Speaker: 0
01:41:43
No. But doesn’t look. But isn’t that
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01:41:44
what he’s suing them about?
Speaker: 0
01:41:46
Well, he’s suing ABC ram one thing.
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01:41:48
But but but what did Des Moines register about the poll?
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01:41:50
Yeah. Just Ai know the poll there.
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01:41:52
Was the poll incorrect?
Speaker: 0
01:41:53
Yeah. The poll was wrong. So what? Guess what?
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01:41:55
But what what did they know it was incorrect when they published it?
Speaker: 0
01:41:59
No. They published what they thought was an accurate poll. They and but that pollster, by the way what’s the name of ai case? Seltzer polls. Sai don’t
Speaker: 1
01:42:06
Ai should just state for the record. I don’t know this lawsuit. But I
Speaker: 0
01:42:10
Ai it was about
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01:42:11
But I am aware that in talking to people that understand polls No. That some of these are politically
Speaker: 0
01:42:17
Alright. But the answer is yes and no. There are polls right now doing exactly what you say. Right. I could doctor a poll. I could talk to more conservative, more progressive people, get the results that I kinda want. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:42:28
And they do it to motivate people or demotivate people to vote, and it’s effective.
Speaker: 0
01:42:33
It it has an impact. Alright. On the other hand, this particular post that’s at the Des Moines Register, not a huge newspaper. I I bumped into them because when you run-in Democratic primaries, Iowa is a big deal. They are a very, very respected pollster. Okay? They don’t talk to polls.
Speaker: 0
01:42:48
So they made a mistake on a poll. It turns out they had Trump doing worse than he ended up doing. Guess what? Posters honest tyler make mistakes too.
Speaker: 1
01:42:56
But what is the basis of his lawsuit? Like, what is he saying in
Speaker: 0
01:43:00
the lawsuit? Saying that that gave energy to his opponents and that it was he’s saying talked about. Like you talked about. Yeah. But I don’t believe that’s the case. There are honest pollsters Okay. Who make mistakes.
Speaker: 1
01:43:12
But what about the other the the the other lawsuit with the the conversation that they had with Kamala Harris where they edited the answers that she had to make it look more precise.
Speaker: 0
01:43:23
Sixty Minutes they were suing sixty Minutes Yes. Is, to my mind, historically, been around for a very long time. You know, they’re not infallible. But I think you look at most objective people will say sixty Minutes has a sterling reputation for investigative journalism. Are they wrong?
Speaker: 1
01:43:42
But that’s not investigative journalism if you change someone’s answers. If you ask her a question and she comes with a rambling answer that doesn’t make sense and you edit that out and insert another answer to a different question that seems more cogent
Speaker: 0
01:43:58
Joe, you you then you’re walking down it’s a really you’re walking down a dangerous path. Suing media has the impact of intimidating media. Ai? If somebody sues you. Alright? They’re gonna finish. Alright?
Speaker: 1
01:44:11
Okay.
Speaker: 0
01:44:12
Somebody sues you, and you you know, why not you? You you could you could be sued tomorrow. Right? Because you are doing this. You’re you’re you’re too sympathetic to this. Right. And, Joe, you did vatsal, and they have a big law firm behind you. You’re gonna have to send zillions of dollars defending yourself. You know what? Next time you do an interview, you say, ai I’m not gonna go in that area.
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01:44:30
No. But it’s not that. It’s editing things to make just deceptive editing.
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01:44:34
Joey
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01:44:35
So in deceptive editing, you give people a different perception of who this candidate is than reality. Alright.
Speaker: 0
01:44:40
But you gotta explain.
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01:44:41
But that’s not objective journalism. I know. But That’s campaigning for that person. But Would you agree with that?
Speaker: 0
01:44:47
I don’t I’m not I don’t have those details. I don’t know that I agree with your analysis of it. I don’t know enough.
Speaker: 1
01:44:53
I think that’s universally accepted that that’s what they did.
Speaker: 0
01:44:56
Then you gotta tell me why he is suing ABC. Why are you suing Well, let’s
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01:45:00
just talk about the sixty minutes for first.
Speaker: 0
01:45:02
But it’s not just You sai
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01:45:03
go to ABC, but I don’t I’m not aware of that.
Speaker: 0
01:45:05
Well, he George Stephanopoulos said something that he didn’t like. But the point is
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01:45:09
What did Stephanopoulos say?
Speaker: 0
01:45:10
I can’t it was a per Ai don’t I honestly don’t remember.
Speaker: 1
01:45:13
But Well, I think what he was saying was factually incorrect about the results of one of Trump’s trials.
Speaker: 0
01:45:21
Alright. Guess what? If I would assume everybody who said things that were factually incorrect about me, I’d be suing people zillions of times. Right. But But, Joe, what you’re saying is, look, is does media get it wrong sometimes? Absolutely. Should you have the most powerful person in America suing media?
Speaker: 0
01:45:42
What is the impact of that? The impact is clearly intimidation. He wants to defund public broadcasting. NPR, why is that? Well, because they also would run critical stories of them. This is part, in my view, without getting into any one case, it’s part of a pattern that says, hey.
Speaker: 0
01:46:01
I got the power. Don’t you criticize me. You criticize me? I’m gonna sue you. So it’s not whether this show was right or wrong.
Speaker: 0
01:46:08
There are shows every day they get it wrong. It’s whether you, you know, you respect you and other media people to do the best that you can. And if I don’t like what you’re doing, I’ll go someplace else. But I don’t like presidents suing media, and then it’s, you know, threatening to impeach judges who rule against you? Really? Is that a concern? I think it’s a concern.
Speaker: 1
01:46:31
I I agree that’s a concern. Well, my concern is when you have media organizations that are purported to be objective, and then they say things that are defamatory and factually incorrect, and they should know that before they say it. What other course does a person have other than a lawsuit?
Speaker: 1
01:46:50
And isn’t it important that you shine the light on what is a political bias Then where where ram, an organization that you would hope would be objective?
Speaker: 0
01:47:02
Needless to say, I get attacked all the time by right wing media. Right? Everyday. Needless to say. Needless to say. Alright. I don’t sue them. So you expose them don’t say the president of The United States.
Speaker: 1
01:47:13
Sai things factually ai, discriminatory and slanderous.
Speaker: 0
01:47:17
If there’s anybody in the world who knows how to use a microphone, his name is Donald Trump. And Donald Trump meh up shah that program on CBS the other day? It was crap. It was wrong. And let me tell you why it was wrong.
Speaker: 1
01:47:27
But it then they do it again and again and again.
Speaker: 0
01:47:29
Then you take them on.
Speaker: 1
01:47:30
The problem is the more people do stuff like that, if you don’t have any consequences to what you’re doing, you’re gonna continue that path. And the most most people only see that. They’re not ai, if you’re a left wing leaning media organization and you print something that’s factually incorrect or you say something on television that’s factually incorrect, your viewers who are left leaning are most likely not going to see Trump’s rebuttal in some speech that he does in the middle of Pennsylvania.
Speaker: 0
01:47:59
But that’s another problem. You know, and that is, you know, meeting our media is becoming very divided.
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01:48:07
Exactly.
Speaker: 0
01:48:08
Okay. But all I would say is
Speaker: 1
01:48:10
So you don’t think that lawsuits against that No. Are valid?
Speaker: 0
01:48:15
I don’t think that it is appropriate for the president of The United States to be, in my view, intimidating media. Again, I get attacked I’ll be attacked tomorrow for a hunt probably things I’ve said on the shah, I’ll get attacked. Then if I wanna respond, I respond. I have a you know, not president’s bull I have a bull I sai, you see ai thing on Fox? They’re wrong. And I’ve done it.
Speaker: 0
01:48:38
But when you Joe, you gotta take it another way. I’ll give you an example about CBS. We talked about corporate power. The owners of CBS is owned by Paramount, big multimedia corporation. Right? Sure. Paramount wants to sell, wants to be sold to what is it? Blue Ai?
Speaker: 0
01:49:02
Does that ring a bell?
Speaker: 1
01:49:03
Blue Sky is that social media app.
Speaker: 0
01:49:06
No. Oh, then it’s another one. I’m sorry. It’s, I always forget the name of it. Skydance. Skydance. Thanks. Skydance is a is a large media corporation that Paramount wants to have ai.
Speaker: 1
01:49:17
Okay.
Speaker: 0
01:49:18
To get this merger, huge merger, they have to go, guess what, to the federal government. Alright? So you are the head of CBS. You wanna sell the company, the Skydance, for many, many billions. Do you remember how much what was the sale? I don’t see here. It’s billions of dollars, to be sure. And you gotta go to the federal government, and the president sues you. What do you think you’re gonna do?
Speaker: 0
01:49:44
You’re gonna settle the lawsuit, give him millions of dollars, and get your merger approved. Alright. So the look. I I
Speaker: 1
01:49:51
see a problem in that.
Speaker: 0
01:49:52
Alright. And I see the I see where you’re coming from. We want honesty in media. But all I can tell you is that the way to respond to the lies, which take place every day, is to take them on, not to intimidate media. You know, the we talked about the constitution. What’s the first amendment is freedom of speech. Right? Right. You’re right. You’re sitting here. You disagree with me. God bless you.
Speaker: 0
01:50:17
Say what the hell you wanna say. Alright? I’ll never take that away from you. Right. And I’m not gonna threaten you with a lawsuit.
Speaker: 0
01:50:22
But if you start suing hey. Joe Rogan said this. No. No. No. No. Joe Rogan has this. We found out about Joe Rogan.
Speaker: 0
01:50:27
I’m gonna sue Joe Rogan for a $100,000,000. Joe may not talk about those issues in the future. Okay? That’s what I’m saying, Joe.
Speaker: 1
01:50:35
Sai no. I agree with you. And listen, I’m not a fan of lawsuits either, which is why I never sued CNN.
Speaker: 0
01:50:42
Ai never done
Speaker: 1
01:50:43
CNN lied about me over and over and over again. They said I was taking horse dewormer, and they altered the color of my face on television
Speaker: 0
01:50:50
Oh, Jesus.
Speaker: 1
01:50:50
To make me look green.
Speaker: 0
01:50:52
I could testify. Yay, green.
Speaker: 1
01:50:55
I didn’t sue them. I’m not a fan of I’m and my my response to them was just speak out and say how ridiculous it was.
Speaker: 0
01:51:01
That’s what I’m doing. Joe. In any look. Anybody in the public eye, you’re in the public eye, I’m
Speaker: 1
01:51:05
in the
Speaker: 0
01:51:05
public eye. You’re gonna get attacked every day. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:51:07
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:51:07
Alright. That’s what you’re in the public ai. You don’t wanna be in the public eye? Put down the microphone.
Speaker: 1
01:51:13
Agreed. But cool.
Speaker: 0
01:51:14
Whatever you
Speaker: 1
01:51:14
Ai agree with you.
Speaker: 0
01:51:15
Alright. Sai, I mean, so I I just worry
Speaker: 1
01:51:18
I also agree that CBS shouldn’t be altering a presidential candidate
Speaker: 0
01:51:22
If that
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01:51:22
is the case interview.
Speaker: 0
01:51:23
Ai agreed to. I mean, I don’t know enough about it, so I’m not gonna say what is isn’t. All I know is that sixty minutes has is a well respected program. Do they make mistakes? I’ll try not a mistake. Alright. I don’t know enough about it, so I can’t I can’t I understand. Alright. What else you got for me?
Speaker: 0
01:51:39
I should I should get a plane and get out of here.
Speaker: 1
01:51:42
You probably should. I mean, I I appreciate your positions on all all these different things.
Speaker: 0
01:51:47
And I appreciate by the way, one of the you know, we talked about media and the bifurcation of media, you know, right wing people talk to right wing people, left wing people talk to left wing people. I happen to think that the development of podcasts is a really positive step. Because I can tell you, you I’ve been on a million TV shows. Alright, Bernie.
Speaker: 0
01:52:06
Literally, you got seven seconds to explain the issue. Well, I can’t explain.
Speaker: 1
01:52:09
It’s impossible.
Speaker: 0
01:52:10
Nobody can. Yeah. And the fact that you give people a couple hours to sit here and have a good discussion and be a good host and trade ideas, I think that improves life in America and helps people think about things. So thank you for what you’re doing.
Speaker: 1
01:52:23
My pleasure. And I think that one of the things this conversation highlights is that there’s a lot of issues that all Americans agree on. And this ridiculous position that we find ourselves in where you have to be ideologically opposed to one thing because your side supports the other thing, ai, We agree on almost all of them.
Speaker: 1
01:52:54
We agree that you should have a better life, that you should have healthier people. We should have health care and education. We should have safer streets. We should have a a a a a community that lets people do what they sana do as long as they’re not harming other people. And I think the the divide that we have in this country accentuates the farthest ends of each end of the political spectrum, not ai that most of us exist in the middle.
Speaker: 0
01:53:22
I think we share a common meh, and I think look. Why am I I just been in this ai fighting oligarchy. Do you know where I was? I was to Oklahoma, one of the more conservative states in the country. I was to Louisiana Right. Here in Texas, precisely because Right. I mean, I think we have so much more in common, and let’s focus on how we can create a better life for all of us.
Speaker: 0
01:53:44
So
Speaker: 1
01:53:45
Absolutely. Alright,
Speaker: 0
01:53:46
Joe. You’re doing a great job.
Speaker: 1
01:53:47
Thanks, sir. Thanks very much.
Speaker: 0
01:53:48
Great to see
Speaker: 1
01:53:48
See you again.
Speaker: 0
01:53:48
You too. Alright.
Speaker: 1
01:53:49
Ai bye. Bye, everybody.
