 40 here. So interesting article in the Times of London. Apparently, Gen Z is trying out hookup culture. That includes threesome. So this delightful young lady here in the Colt Lisa in 24 is a London tiktoker. And great news. She says my first threesome was very positive. All right, it's important that these be positive experiences. I didn't feel like an accessory. So there's this new app, F-E-E-L-D. Went on field looking to have a threesome. I spoke to quite a few people. There was only one couple that I really bonded with. And before we did anything, we went on two face to face dates where we spoke about our boundaries. Guys, that's so important, please. Before you get out there and start having threesome, it's really important that you go on at least two dates first. I want you to do this in an emotionally and physically safe manner. Go on at least two dates first. And please talk about your boundaries. Is there anything more exciting for a date than getting out there talking about your boundaries? Believe me, you're going to love it. Okay, back to the Times of London. All right, serious, serious publication here. We talked a lot about our sexual preferences at what we were going to do in the bedroom. Communicating in this way from the beginning made all the difference. I'd never had a threesome before. Afterward, I wanted to stay the night because I didn't want to just feel like I'd been used for sex or to be taught you can go home now. And they agreed. But actually, it's a bit awkward having a sleepover with people who are a couple, three in a bed is uncomfortable. Wow. So yeah, being used for sex. So each sex gives the other what they think the other most wants during the dating process. So men shower women that they're interested in with material resources and keep them safe and look after them and best to love them. Women give sex hoping that will lead to love. Men give love hoping it will lead to sex. Now I do sex positive content creation on TikTok. I've always been very passionate about sex education. I think TikTok is the way to spread information to young people talking about sex. So this is very, very courageous offer. So gorgeous, gorgeous girls have COVID, gorgeous, gorgeous girls have COVID powerful, gorgeous, gorgeous girls have Yeah, so much important sex information on here. Wait, maybe there's another note Nicole Gleason. All right. This is what it means when your vagina smells like fish or copper like smell. Right. So she's got a great explanatory video here. Yeast like smell from your vagina a fish like smell or a copper like smell and what it all means. Incredibly helpful. Now the the ravishing young woman who wrote this Times of London story is 23 year old Yasmin Choudhury. Right. So she got out there. She she uses uses this new app and she talks to two couples about possibly having a threesome. Now she never actually has a threesome. But brave intrepid journalist at least gets out there. This license creature and at least talks to couples about having a threesome. Where is she? Okay, here she is Yasmin Choudhury. So this is I've always wanted to do this. In shall not show anybody. I'm a weekly diary. I'm doing a weekly diary. All right. And what's happened so far. So for those of you who don't actually know Bengali, hopefully one day I might get the money to translate this. I'm Yasmin Choudhury. I'm currently in Bangladesh. I'm sorry that I've got one nail that I've painted because I was testing. But I'm currently in Afghanistan select Bangladesh. I am the Yasmin injustice for Yasmin. And I want to tell you that since the new year has started. Okay, how many Yasmin Choudhury's are there? Alright, so anyway, let's talk about what matters. I mean, Australia bowled out for just 177 runs. Like we've been looking forward to the Australia versus India test cricket series for months now finally got underway 8pm last night California time. And so I was able to find ABC radio ABC Australia radio on my phone. I just let the the live test cricket report just play all night. So I'd wake up every hour or two get the latest score. And Australia was, you know, rolling along pretty well with Steve Smith and Marcus Labouchain who's a fair dinkum Christian, right? There Australia's two best batters. And Australia was about two for 78 at lunch and things seem to be going well. And then there was just wicked falling after wicked falling all out for 177. And then India now is like one for about 70 in their response. So let's put it this way the odds of Australia winning this opening test cricket match in India about less than 5%. The odds that India will win probably about 80%. Just just absolutely devastating start. And there's a great channel if you want to understand cricket strategy, Jared Kimber is a bloke in Victoria. Some of the interesting trends and things that happened today from the game quite clearly India were on top. And it really starts, I suppose, from the moment that there wasn't an actual hat trick. But did Asia got two in two. And then later on you got Smith, which I don't know, is some kind of an emotional hat trick if nothing else. Just Steve Smith is the best baseman in the world, laser Australia waiting for Moku to catch up here. A hat trick. It's not even close to a hat trick. But from an emotional point of view, it was really minuses wicket and then Smith's wicket on the other end that really changed everything for Australia. They were the the two players who certainly looked like they were handling everything the best. This is the control percentage of all the players who were who stayed in for a period of time. You can see how it's quite noticeable that Carrie and Hanson are just a little bit lower when it comes to their control percentage. So Smith and Lava Shane, certainly from that perspective, we're batting a lot better. So for Malaysia to take those two out. Also, they're the two right handers. There's been all this talk about the left handers and everything else. But even without control percentage and even without factoring in the fact that right handers, they just looked like the best players that Australia had today. And that was the probably the period where Australia looked like. So all night, all right, all night, I'm going in and out of sleep listening to the cricket. That's a great thing about a good test cricket match. You can fall asleep for hours. You know, nothing much happens. Most likely to make a decent total. Lois Wayne Smith and Lava Shane were there and did Asia goes through them. And we can bring up the did Asia spin graphic. I think it's some ways this is kind of an ideal wicket for did Asia because not every ball actually got purchased. And so when he managed to get any spin, you know, there was a couple that just bit massively. And either and they didn't all spin sideways as well. There's a couple that bounced quite a bit. And certainly went up. I think it might have been one that hit Lava Shane in the belly. It might have been from Ashwin or or actually, I can't remember who that was. But but a lot of balls just didn't do much at all. And I think that for did Asia is almost his best situation when there's natural variation in the wicket. He's so accurate. He obviously puts No, you can watch this on ESPN plus. So I think I spent about $200 a month on subscription. So about $10 a month to ESPN plus about $10 a month to Apple News plus $190 a year for a subscription to the Financial Times about $150 a year for New York Times subscription $8 a month, I think for Wall Street Journal $100 a year for LA Times Washington Post subscriptions. All right, so yeah, 8pm tonight catch D2 Australia versus India. What is China's attention here? So what is the proper response by the United States? Did we do the right thing shooting it down? What's the next step? What are any reprisals were there be on the part of Beijing? What next for diplomacy, Neil? Does Tony Blinken need to get on a plane to go to Beijing right away or not? HR, what about the Pentagon and the White House communicating the question whether or not the military has been watching this for years and not always letting the White House know bigger what's your big takeaway here? Well, that was a little disturbed because almost all of the explanations that we got from the administration neither had to be updated or misleading. We were told first that it was not really a surveillance of satellite of any importance and then it leaked out that perhaps a slow moving balloon had some advantages at least. Then we were told that they didn't want to shoot it down because of fragments but of course it entered the illusions where there's one person per square mile and there was coastal areas where there was nobody and then five people per square mile in Montana and so we went through this entire process for a week and then I think finally the pressure of the media, popular anger, the opposition party and the state of the union coming up. I don't think you want to give the state of the union when the reply or the rebuttal will be will you let this thing go over the country and the only mystery of it is I mean there's some talk that it was the Chinese laws control it but it doesn't really matter what they say. It's just the idea that the United States allowed this device to go over its key locations strategically at least militarily and it sends a message to Australia and South Korea and Japan and Taiwan, Philippines whether inadvertent or not that I think the Chinese will say to them this is that this is your patron. This is the guy that you're under the nuclear umbrella. Some of you this is the guy that's going to protect you and then the other final thing is we know what would happen if you I mean we send there's a game where we all send satellites but if we send a balloon at 45 to 60,000 feet across the length of China we know what they would do. We know what they'd say because they did in 2001 with a plane that was in international space and EP3 that crashed after being rammed by a Chinese pilot and you know we know what the opposition I think HR knows it's a member of the Trump Administration if in say 2018 a Russian balloon went across the length of the United States and you guys didn't do anything they would say that Trump is a Russian puppet or asset or something so the asymmetry of it is glaring. There's always two interpretations to an event like this. One is a devious plans or perhaps very smart plans and the other is gross and competence. The devious plan option is you know there is an advantage to countries allowing each other to have some to be looking at each other's stuff. There was you know the Eisenhower administration proposed why don't we allow overflights of U.S. and Russia. Yeah so I side with the explanation of gross incompetence. I don't see yet any strong argument about why this is like particularly damaging for the United States to have some Chinese balloon floating over it. Yeah bad optics but is a substance. Russia so we'll both not get scared about missile gaps that aren't there. So you know what is it that we are doing to China that we kind of the game was we secretly allow them to have our balloons here and we do something else there and that got perturbed. Okay I'm trying my best and I think you need to try harder. I think Jerry Powers we shot down on you too and Eisenhower did not inspire you and etc and that caused an international problem. No no the Open Sky's agreement did not go through it. Still there is an idea that says we allow you to do some stuff you allow us to. Maybe that's what happened at Belfort. But then to HR how is it impossible that the U.S. if it's incompetent that we do not have the ability to detect a balloon. I know the balloon itself doesn't reflect radar but come on you know just all you need is people with people without people with binoculars to see it. And how do we not have the capacity to shoot down a balloon to collect a balloon intact in midair. All we've got is a F what is it which F wasn't I forgot an F something or other that can go within 20,000 feet of it and shoot an incredibly expensive missile that then blows up and then destroys the balloon. I mean in World War II there was stuff you could drag out of a C-47 to grab people. The Twitter has put a sensitivity warning on this live stream. Over a mountain. The capacity how do we not have detection and capacity to grab this thing out of the air. We do have detection. So I think it was detected. I think it really goes back to what Victor said. I think they just didn't they didn't release it until you know the information that this balloon was over over over North America. Why didn't they do it? Why didn't they do anything about it? I think because a pentagon is like the most risk-averse organization or government sometimes. I mean I think that okay the need to do something about it right depends on how significant something is right. How significant was it to have you know a Chinese balloon floating over America. Yeah looks bad. But what was the significance? All right. So what dominates the news is you know things that grab attention but that which grabs attention is usually not significant. That which is significant usually doesn't dramatically grab your attention. Part of it. You know and I mean of course we're gonna have to shoot it down. I don't think I think when something's at 60,000 feet it's kind of tough to you know to deploy a net I think to catch it down to bring it down. We don't have a net to catch it. It is a spectacular fashion. But if it mattered we would have that net. It's not technologically that hard to grab a balloon or to shoot it down effectively. Well what are my favorite quotations from General Ernest Harmon from World War II was he said if it takes a toothpick use a baseball bat and I guess that's what we did you know. Well we waited till like to traverse the whole U.S. transmitting back whatever its information was to shine on the way. So that it just does not make any sense. No I don't know what we did. I don't know if we did anything from electronic warfare perspective either while it was transiting. I mean I you know maybe you know maybe we did interrupt signals communication from it. I hope so. Joe Biden today blamed the Pentagon. He basically said he had ordered this earlier and he got a recommendation. I suppose it was in the Joint Chiefs ubiquitous Mark Milley not to shoot it down and then finally when he was pressed he said I'll take care of it. But their lady Jean Pierre said today or yesterday that he was following the advice of his military advisor and then she kind of hinted that until Joe put his foot down. This is outrageous in the state of the Union coming up I suppose. So that I don't know why the Austin and Milley if they were the people who were advising him would not have ordered immediate destruction of it. Well here's another scenario Victor and that is that the administration. Yeah maybe they didn't order like an immediate destruction of this device because it wasn't that significant. Right. It's fun. It's interesting. It's compelling. May not be that significant. Was very keen to improve relations with China. That was the reason that Secretary of State Lincoln was going to go to Beijing and this threatened to spoil that initiative in the direction of Dayton. I think that's the most plausible explanation that I can come up with. No that doesn't work either because the Biden administration has a trajectory. It's not being a pro China trajectory. It has been more hostile to China than any other administration including Donald Trump's. Right. So we've taken all these concrete measures to you know smash technology transfer to limit China's ability to get hold of you know high powered computer chips. Right. This administration is doing everything it can to damage China. So no they're not they're not simultaneously or doubling back seeking out you know extra good relations once again. They really were wishing it wasn't happening unfortunately for them the Montana local press has people with binoculars and they blew the story. I think million. So optics are reality. Right. If enough people become upset by a Chinese balloon floating over the United States that you do have to shoot it down. But even if it doesn't have any significance. So once again the situation is the boss. So it sounds like the Biden administration and the US military did not want to shoot this balloon down. But enough people became upset about it. It started getting enough chatter dominating the news that their hand was forced. The situation was the boss. No matter who was in charge of the United States during this balloon ride. But every single administration would have eventually felt forced by public pressure to shoot the damn thing down. And presumably Lincoln too were praying the thing would would keep going and disguise would be sufficiently overcast that nobody would notice and Secretary Lincoln could go on his way. If China wanted to disguise the balloon they wouldn't have you know had it painted white. Right. It was very easy to detect. So China made zero effort to try to hide this thing. I think that's the most plausible explanation. And that asked the question. It was sort of like Anchorage, Alaska then that even though maybe if you believe the Chinese they lost control they must have known that you wouldn't if they wanted to summit with Lincoln they wouldn't have released in the general direction of the United States of the moon that could go in its territory. So they were trying to humiliate us in the way they did at Anchorage in March of 2007. No. No. Here I think the lesson of history like the Cuban Nisocrates is never underestimated in competence. It's entirely plausible that the part of China that's sending balloons up isn't communicating with the part of China that's running diplomacy and that somebody is headed to a labor farm in the middle of Tibet as a result of this. Because it's not clear that it's just the head of the Chinese meteorological weather service has already been canned. So let's assume he's headed off to. Well, that's it. And what about the Canadians? You know, when the Canadians went over their territory for a long time? Well, we don't. But all do respect for those explains that one word explains the Canadians. But it doesn't really matter what we can go in all these hypotheticals. At some point they let off a balloon in our direction. We if we're going to spy on we have certain protocols. We don't send balloons right over their territory. They knew it. And we let it go on too long. And that's in a message. I know some of our allies say, Well, you might have overreacted. But privately, they know that that's worrisome that this administration did not react right away. Now, it doesn't send a message. It doesn't damage America's credibility. America's credibility rests on having the most powerful defense force in the world. America spends more on its defense force than every other nation put together. Right. That's where America's credibility comes from. Have an incredibly powerful defense force. Combine that with the world's most powerful economy. Combine that with the world's most influential culture. Combine that with the one world currency. All right. That's where America's credibility comes from. It does not come from whether or not they decide to shoot down a balloon or whatever is the bright, shiny thing that's kind of floating through the news this week and compelling attention. Right. America's credibility doesn't depend on what it does with, you know, the next bright, shiny thing that's floating around, grabbing people's attention. Right. When America pulled out of Afghanistan and it was rough, it was awkward. Right. It was ugly. It didn't look too smooth. All right. America's credibility was not significantly effective because America's credibility depends upon nuclear weapons, massive armed forces, a very powerful series of interlocking alliances, a powerful economy, the world's dominant currency. Right. That's where America's credibility comes from. It does not come from looking tough. I'm glad we shot it down, though. So finally, I mean, I was worried about you guys know, I predicted I said, OK, we're going to shoot this thing down eventually, you know, but but it fits into a broader pattern of Chinese violation of many nations sovereign territory. Right. All the overflights that we've seen directed toward toward Japan. So what type of people, what type of individuals, you know, violate social norms or violate, you know, other people's space or sovereignty, right, people who aren't very adept, right, people who are very competent. All right. So there's tremendous news coverage right now about how Turkey, you know, lacks competency. So over 20,000 people apparently dead in Turkey and Syria. And there's a lot of criticism being directed at the Turkish government for its inept response to this massive earthquake. Well, think about this. The average Turkish worker, according to Michael Beckley in his book on China that came out about five years ago, the average Turkish worker is twice as efficient as the average Chinese worker. All right. And so if you think Turkey's response has been haphazard and chaotic, I assure you that China's response to, you know, any similar natural or artificially created or manmade disaster would be at least twice as chaotic. You can pretty much get a good read on a country by, you know, analyzing the productivity of the average worker and the average Turkish worker is twice as productive as the average Chinese worker. All right. Chinese workers aren't very productive. They only have China and he has two of the world's top 100 universities. I mean, what Chinese consumer product you're most associate with quality. All right. China tends to put out schlock. It tends to violate other people's sovereignty because it's incompetent. It's not very good at what it does. It does not portend well for the future of China. There's just another tiny example of why people like me don't think that China is going to be even be around in 10 years that instead, you know, we expect some kind of massive civil war provinces breaking up. Right. They're just not very effective. They're just not very good. They're not very skillful. Almost everybody hates China now. Right. Their allies are who maybe Pakistan and and North Korea and, you know, a few other countries they bribed. But China has almost no allies. America has all the important allies in the world that it needs. And South Korea, of course, you know, they're building islands in the South China Sea and what would be the largest land grab in history if they if they succeed in bludgeoning Indian soldiers to death on the Himalayan frontier. So it's a larger disturbing. OK, Chinese land grab right when when a nation gets bigger, it does not necessarily become more effective. Right. When the Soviet Union expanded into Afghanistan, it was the death now for the Soviet Union when the United States became deeply involved in Vietnam. It was a disaster for the United States. So if China gets into conflicts and maybe even the seas of some Himalayan territories from India doesn't make China tougher, stronger and more formidable adversary. It's probably just another example of their incompetence and shoddiness. But for H.R. McMaster, like democracy is a threat. Like China is some massive threat because they the troops fight with Indian troops and kill some of them. Pattern. And I think you mentioned already Victor, the Hainan Island. Yeah, it is a pattern. It's a pattern of incompetence. It's a pattern of stupid destructive behavior that turns other countries against China to form balancing coalitions against the rise of China. It's an incident with a P3. It was forced to land. That was an overzealous PLA Air Force pilot doing what he thought his superiors wanted him to do. So I think, you know, this jingoistic, you know, rhetoric that you hear out of the party, it's having an effect on its own armed forces and its own other departments and agencies that even maybe apparently the meteorological but it's having an impact on us too. I mean, if you compare this administration on Ukraine and China, I don't I agree with most of you that Putin is saber rattling, but he's giving a more overt nuclear threat warning to us than China is. And yet this administration, as you say, is so misdiverse that they are not reacting to an affront to their home airspace. Sovereignty. What an insane piece of analysis. This this administration is so risk-averse. This administration has dramatically increased the odds of a nuclear exchange with Russia, dramatically increased the odds of World War Three, dramatically increased the odds some major conflagration in Europe. And Victor Davis Hansen's analysis is that this administration is incredibly risk-averse. That's absolutely insane thinking. The problem is that we are marching into a major conflagration with Russia. It's not Russia versus Ukraine. It's increasingly Russia versus the United States in Central Europe. And to have the analysis that this administration is risk-averse, I think the very opposite critique is a much more important one. From the nuclear power of China, I guess, because they don't want to get into brinksmanship or something, but they're perfectly willing to discount as, you know, just rhetoric. A nuclear threat from Russia on a proxy war five thousand miles away. But they seem more concerned about the nuclear threat than they are to their own to their own homeland. I don't understand that. But this leads us to the observation. Wow. Why would people be concerned about a nuclear threat? We've antagonized Russia. We're arming its adversary right under this next door. We dramatically increase the chances of some kind of nuclear exchange with Russia. And to Victor Davis Hansen, this this administration is just way too cowardly. I mean, what a strange, weird piece of analysis. I mean, Victor Davis Hansen occasionally has some good things to say. That we're in a cold war and this is what cold wars are like. And this is why we can think immediately of the Gary Parris case in 1960, which led to the failure of a summit. I think if you're in cold war, there is this inherent tension between the need to try to get close to the other side to avoid World War Three and the fact that it's a cold war and they're not exactly going to stop spying on us any more than we're going to stop spying on them. So I think this just confirms the Cold War Hypothesis. But there's a more interesting question, Victor, that I have for you. And that relates to the Ukraine war to the attempt to improve relations with China. I think it is dawning on people in Washington that the net beneficiary, the number one net beneficiary of the war in Ukraine is in fact China, because although we thought cleverly we were bleeding Russia dry with Ukrainian manpower and Western weapons, in practice, we're running down our own stocks of weapons. And what's China's position? It gets Russian oil at very steeply discounted prices and it can sell all kinds of things to Russia. Chinese exports to Russia are way up. As long as it stays on the right side of our sanctions line. And I think what they've realized is that this isn't working out quite as planned. And they need to rethink their overall geopolitical strategy. And one way of doing that is to try to improve relations with China. We can't know what's going on in Beijing. That's a completely closed black box. But I think we can tell a little bit better what's going on in Washington. And what I see is a realization that the grand strategy of the Biden administration has got us into a pretty hard to stop war, albeit one that we're fighting by proxy. But it's created a real vulnerability in the rest of the world. And I'm not sure it's some grand strategy on the part of the Biden administration. It seems to be much more an ad hoc response to a complicated and frequently changing world. And I don't see what exactly is the Biden doctrine. I mean, if there is a grand strategy, it is a steady move away from globalism. But then that's complicated and contradicted by our massive support for Ukraine. So when it comes to trade, we're moving away from globalism. But we are stoking the chances of World War Three in Central Europe, not only in East Asia, but also in the Middle East. And I think the administration is legitimately worried that one more crisis in one of those places is going to make the situation very difficult indeed. Well, this Ukraine crisis was voluntary on the part of the United States. There's absolutely no American vital need that undergird our massive subsidizing of Ukraine. We didn't have to do it. We did not have to fight this war. We're fighting an unnecessary war, running out of ammunition stocks, increasing the odds of nuclear conflagration or some wider conflict with Russia. And it was entirely gratuitous. This never needed to happen. So if you get another threat, like a real threat to American vital national interests, right, we may very well be in a much weaker position because of the Biden administration's unnecessary intervention into Ukraine. I think we don't understand that we're have a rendezvous with a geostrategic situation that's not necessarily favorable. And that is, as you say, we've got 1.4 billion person China and 144 million Russia now on a de facto alliance and they're drawing into the orbit, not entirely, but by this is entirely unnecessary. All right. Russia would much rather be allied with the United States against China. Right. We force Russia into an alliance with China by our gratuitous intervention in Ukraine. Inference of, you know, oil and weaponry, Turkey and India. I never thought India would be so blatant about buying Russian oil or Turkey so blatant about supplying both sides. Why would Turkey or India not act in their own national self interests? But there's no reason why Turkey and India should abstain from making money here from acting in their national interests. I would expect the leaders of Turkey and India and every other country to act in their national interest. They should forego acting in their national interests in the name of some universal morality that we need to stand up against the violation of international law. That's absurd. Right. The primary duty of a nation state is to survive. The primary duty of national leaders is to help their country to survive. That's exactly what the leaders of Turkey and India are trying to do. Or merging toward Russia. And then now Iran doesn't just have a North Korean patron. It's it's got a Chinese and Russian patron and the same as North Korea. It's got a Russian and North Korean Russian again and now North Korean and they're building some type of loose alliance that has a lot of resources. And I don't know how you to avoid it. But it's something that at some point. So I ran North Korea at China. Russia have a lot of resources like what what resources do they have. Right. China you know manufactures goods that other countries design do all the high cognitive labor. And then China just does the the low return labor. Russia has natural resources. Iran and North Korea. I mean what exactly do they have. Right. I don't see a coalition here that is particularly dangerous or you know filled with resources. Point we've got to talk about. And I know that I'm for pushing Putin completely out of Ukraine if possible and if not possible at least back to the 2014 borders. But we are incrementally getting ourselves into a certain and how is that in America's best interests. Noticing that not really talking about America's best interests. So they want to play you know the grand game. But it's so exciting to intervene overseas. And you can feel like you're on the side of the angels that you know you're remaking history. Right. Very exciting game. But how exactly is this in America's best interests. Where does America have a vital national interest at stake in Ukraine. It doesn't. Strategic situation that's not favorable to us and we don't have a strategic resolution in mind or not discussing one. And all I listen today is I just hope that the most zealous and it's not I'm not referring to people here. But I mean some of the people on the left who this has been almost a religious cause they understand that I hope when this is over they'll be prominent in voting to restore the Pentagon stocks of artillery shells and javelins and they'll be very pro defense and they'll be as adamant about the protection of Taiwan as they are Ukraine. But I don't know if that's going to be true something that's something strange that we haven't discussed or nobody's discussed about. OK. We have vital national security interests with regard to Taiwan in that if we allow China to take Taiwan many of our key alliances with Japan and India and South Korea and Australia will be threatened because we'll be seen as a toothless tiger that we won't be seen as terribly loyal to our friends and China will expand and they'll be able to dominate more and more of Northeast Asia. They'll intimidate other nations into following their lead. So we don't have the same national security interest in Ukraine. Ukraine inherently is not possessing five percent of the importance that Taiwan does for the United States. The left's fixation on Ukraine beyond just support where it's almost a crusade. And I think it has something to do with the idea that Russian disinformation didn't work. Russian collusion didn't work and they fixated on the idea. Aha. We can finally prove to all you people that Putin is evil. And but we all knew that. But when I ride a bike around power. Why risk American lives? Why risk American national interests? Like why increase the odds of World War Three and some nuclear exchange over some abstract logical theological proof that the Putin is evil. That just seems silly. Oh, I see these signs. You know, Ukraine on people's lawns or these flags on their tussles. I've never seen that before. They have really adopted this into something that's almost quasi-religious. I think it has a lot to do with when Stephen Kaka. Well, you were just talking about the need to show that Putin is evil. All right. There's only objective good and evil. If you have some kind of transcendent moral standard and you generally get transcendent moral standards from religion. So of course, it's it's a religious crusade. It was all with us. I mean, I think his equation is right. I mean, I think support for Ukraine derives from Russian atrocities right plus Ukrainian valor. Right. And so I think it's hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died gratuitously when we invaded Iraq in 2003. So now I don't think support for Ukraine is inherently about Russian atrocities and Ukrainian valor. It's primarily about the way it's been packaged, but it's not even about that. There isn't this widespread support for Ukraine. All right. You have elites supporting Ukraine, but it's not the number one issue for American citizens, just like Israel. It's not a big issue for American citizens. Ukraine is not a big issue either. It is an easy feel good to support the underdog, you know, emotional thing. But there's no, you know, grand, sweeping determination on behalf of Americans to support Ukraine. I think there's good reason for it, Victor, you know, and how about I mean, we have a million people that have been persecuted by the Uyghurs and I think as far as Taiwan. And what does that have to do with American national interests? Millions of Uyghurs are persecuted. And what does that have to do with American national interests? Like, how is that important to the average American? Why should the average American care that millions of people are treated badly in Africa? Right? Should the United States be leading military interventions in Africa? Yeah, there are a lot of neocons who believe they do, but just because people are being treated badly overseas and I'll say, yeah, even my own group, I would not expect America to sacrifice its national interests to go save members of my group. But I would only expect America to sacrifice and go to war in its own vital national interests, not to save persecuted minorities. Well, nobody believes that Russia is going to take all of Ukraine, but a lot of people believe that China will take all of Taiwan. So I don't understand why I'm not against the zeal, HR. I'm just wondering why there's not commiserate zeal to worry about losing. Because it's a feeling. It's a popular feeling. It is socially popular. It's a virtue signal and virtue signals are virtuous. I mean, I'm all on board with with many forms of virtue signalling, but they don't necessarily imply some, you know, deep commitment, a willingness to sacrifice type level of commitment. No. All of Taiwan and a million people in camps right now that have that are treated terribly that anecdote. OK, 11 million people in camps in China treated terribly has absolutely nothing to do with American national security interests, right? That's not our problem. That should not be the focus of American political leaders or cultural leaders or under tree leaders, right? That's not our problem. It's for the Chinese to work out their own affairs. It's not for America to intervene because 11 million internal Chinese citizens are not being accorded the rights that America accords its citizens. Well, China is in a very different situation than America. It can't afford to convey the same rights to its citizens. If China loosened up, right, so let's say China became 50 percent more democratic, 50 percent more liberal, 50 percent more friendly towards international norms of human rights, China would fall into some kind of massive civil war. Just like Iraq, the only reason that Iraq held together during the 70s and the 80s and the 90s is because you had a bloodthirsty dictator who was a really tough guy. If Iraqis had been permitted more freedom, they would have slaughtered each other. China will devolve into a civil war if it starts extending the American style personal freedoms to its citizens. And I don't understand for further why in 2014 this country snored when Obama basically explained in a hot mic in South Korea his quid fro quo about flexibility for Putin vis-a-vis space, i.e. for Obama. The reason we snored is because it didn't have anything to do with vital American national interests. All right. You know, abstract questions of, you know, ontological good and evil on the part of, you know, foreign leaders in foreign lands that don't have anything to do with American national interests are not a vital concern to normal people. They're they're a concern to people who live in an abstract world such as Victor Davis Hansen. How much a dismantled missile defense and he went into Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. There really wasn't any reaction by our administration by the very people right now that are giving sermons to everybody about they have to be. And why should there be a reaction? It notice he doesn't even try to make the case that this affects America. It doesn't even try to make that case. Why doesn't he try it? Because there isn't one. So he makes an abstract moral case because there is that, but there isn't a vital American interest case to be made or he'd make it. Hyperzealous and you know, it's like a surreal. You want to say, OK, I'm all for it. But we a lot of us wrote columns in 2014 that that was the time to stop him and you didn't do anything. In fact, you had a quick quote with him. Well, Victor, I want to defend people in Palo Alto with Ukrainian flags because I happen to be one of them, although I'm not I'm not a recent liberal and I don't have all the other flags that are common in Palo Alto in my front front. Possibility is they came to their senses, you know, and, you know, occasionally reality bites. There's a couple of ways in which the sort of liberal consensus is coming to its senses. Europe is starting to realize that its energy policies were insane. A lot of people in Europe are realizing their defense policies were insane and they were good liberals. They're coming to their senses. I want to add I would be a little cynical if I could interject. I think the real reason was in 2014. They did not want to lodge any criticism against his holiness of Barack Obama. And now this situation is different either. And of course, when Americans don't care that much about foreign policy, Australians don't care that much about foreign policy. Finns don't care that much about what's going on on the other side of the world. The Japanese don't care that much about what's going on the other side of the world. All right. People care primarily about their own family and their extended family, which the largest possible extension of meaning to extended family means your nation. Right. That's what people care about. They don't care about what's going on on the other side of the world. Nor is there a rational reason for them to do so. You know, the administration, whatever people say about Trump, that is a hiatus between two bookends, 2014 and 2022 vis-a-vis Ukraine. And nobody mentions that at all. Well, there's been a lot of lines in the sand that we gave up on in 2014. It's a shameful one. But I also want to say, you know, the reason I don't know if you ever had a relationship with a woman, have you ever had an important relationship to you and have you found that you're unable to maintain a line in the sand? The reason people are often unable to maintain a line in the sand is because they're often, you know, a lot of other factors at bay that are more important than trying to, you know, enhance your own credibility. Right. So standing behind a line in the sand would have meant, you know, a massive potential for disaster. The United States, you know, invented, invested itself into the Syrian civil war just to try to protect some red line that Barack Obama said, right, compared to on the one hand, you know, standing behind a particular type of rhetoric. On the other hand, living in reality, where there are all sorts of different factors at bay, where there are all sorts of different competing interests, right, being intellectually consistent is not usually priority number one, either for individuals or for nation states. What you try to do is respond the best you can to the situation that you're in. And situations change. And so what you said in one situation is not necessarily going to hold over as you move into a different situation. Right. Think about how confident you are when you're at work and jobs are easy to get as opposed to how confident you feel when you're at work and you know that getting a similar job would be very, very difficult to complete the different situations that call upon you to act and speak differently. And I think that people have changed their mind is it's not just about the level of atrocities. It's not just recognition of the tremendous valor of the Ukrainians. But is the Thucydides trap realistic or emotional? So Thucydides trap is that the real reason for the war between Athens and Sparta was that the Athenians were on top, but Sparta was on a trajectory to overtake. But did I get did I get that wrong? No, I think that's right. Athens was on top, but Sparta was on a trajectory to overtake or maybe use the other way around. And so that's the Thucydides trap. You see that your rivals on trajectory to overcome you in absolute power. So you try to take your rival down while you're still on top. And the Thucydides trap is absolutely realistic. So for example, if Germany had gone to war in 1905, instead of 1914, it would have won. But because it waited too long, end up losing the First World War. I think they've woken up to this fundamental question is what world do you want to live in? And is it do you want to live in a world where we're back to armed invasions grabbing territory in parts of Europe in your own backyard? And really that the reason it Ukraine matters and it matters to us is that we don't want to live in a world where we have our new invasions going on. That's why it has to be, you know, pushback. We've lived in a world like that since 1945. We remember. No, I mean, think about it. We didn't do anything for years. And you could. OK, I got the city's trap wrong. All right, it was. OK, Sparta feared the growth of Athenian power. So Sparta was on top. Sparta had the most powerful military in the world at that time. But it saw that Athens was on a trajectory to become more powerful than it. So it thought it might as well try to take Athens down while Sparta was still the most powerful. Right. That is the real meaning of the city's trap. The Slavia, more importantly, we just sat there while the Hungarians were wiped out in 68. We sat there with the Czechs because we said we don't dare get into a land war with the Soviet Union because it has 7000 newts. Now we've said we dare to get into a war with Russia even though they have 7000. And I think Gulf War One was was a good example of the right precedent and the opposite instinct. No, this shall not stand. We go back to. But I think that's the reason, you know, Uighurs. Well, I think there's a whole way. So Victor Davids Hansen thought that the U.S. should intervene militarily on the side of the Czechs or. How did he say it? That was absolutely insane in 68. We sat there with the Czechs because we said we don't dare get into a land. Yeah, why would America risk nuclear war and some major conflagration? Right? On behalf of, you know, some some other nation in the middle of Europe. There are no vital national American interests at stake. That's why you don't risk your nation's well-being for things that are gratuitous to your nation's well-being. And war with the Soviet Union because it has 7000 nukes. Now we've said we dare to get into a war with Russia, even though they have 7000. And I think Gulf War One was was a good example of the right precedent and the opposite instinct. No, this shall not stand. We go back. So for people who thought that, you know, we should have intervened in 1956 and 1968 vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. I mean, these are the same type of people think, oh, you should still speak to your speak your mind and not speak any differently to people who carry guns as opposed to people who don't carry guns. Right? You disrespect the police. Right? You disrespect people who are carrying guns. Right? You're putting your life unnecessarily in danger. Right? The wise man that treats different situations to different people differently. Right? People with guns, people with power to hurt you, you need to treat them very carefully. But I think that's the reason, you know, Uighurs. Well, I think there's a whole lot of atrocities going on in the world. The North Koreans are suffering horribly. The Somalis are suffering horribly. That's inside the country's border. That's not an armed takeover of another country. So I'm not justifying any of it. I just do think it's not just as craven as you paint it. Now that will come to the test. Do we take you're exactly right? Are we going to take that same feeling seriously about Taiwan? And do we have them? Are we going to spend the money and have the means of the will to take that seriously about Taiwan? I don't know. But at least don't the coming of their senses about. So Taiwan does not seem terribly strongly invested in their own defense. And so that's a complicating factor. We can't guarantee for security for Taiwan so that they will then be reduced in incentive to look after themselves. Right. That's a problem with Taiwan. Taiwan is incredibly lazy. They have not devoted great deal of resources to ensuring their own defense. Therefore, it's hard for the US to guarantee their own defense when Taiwan doesn't show much evidence of giving a damn about its own defense. Ukraine, I think, is a little less awful that you made. I'll offer the insight that the Western liberal public, especially in the English-speaking world, has spent about 200 years, if not longer falling for other people's nationalism. And it's very inconsistent. You never quite know who's going to pull on our heartstrings. Garibaldi was good at it. Actually, the Greeks were good at it. Nobody knows that better than you Victor. But we have this tendency to fall in love with other people's national struggles. And sometimes we really offer meaningful support. And other times we do just put the flags in the yard. I think this is part of it quite well. So why? Why? Why? Why are Americans so invested in other people's nationalism as opposed to their own? Does it have anything to do with nationalism being so stigmatized in America? Does it have anything to do with how we're less and less a coherent, cohesive, high social trust society when you don't feel much in common with your fellow citizens? For example, I live in Los Angeles where half the residents don't speak English and are capable of speaking English. Right. I don't feel like I have much in common with many people in Los Angeles. So it's hard for me to invest in them or to want to volunteer or engage in like civic organizations because there's just almost nothing we have in common as opposed to when I walk around Sydney and I feel comfortable and at ease with most people that I encounter. So as America's become less coherent and cohesive. All right. It's harder to evoke a sentiment of sacrifice for the greater good, a sentiment of, you know, national identity, national sacrifice. We're all in it together. Like how are you going to feel like we're all in it together if you can't even speak the same language with, you know, many of the people around you? Well, established pattern that goes back to the early 19th century. But I think there is a more interesting and important question to address here and that is a good one for you, Victor. You've written one of the great books on World War Two. World War Two has this strange way of starting. It starts with sort of overtures of what look like small discreet conflicts and it's only gradually that they roll up together to be a world war. I've been feeling very queasy about the world situation for the better part of a year. I realized back in January of last year that Putin was going to invade. And I keep asking myself, what's next up? Because if you get a crisis simultaneously in, let's say Iran, suppose there's a fighting over Iran's nuclear program, it's conceivable in the next 12 or 24 months and the Chinese make a move against Taiwan. And suddenly you've got three simultaneous conflicts. As a scholar of World War Two, Victor, do you sense that we might be on the edge of something much scarier than Cold War Two? Well, one of these conflicts is completely unnecessary. Gratuitous. We shouldn't be in it. The Ukraine conflict, right? America has vital national interests with regard to Taiwan. And we have moderate interests with regard to the Middle East. We don't have any interest with regard to Ukraine. To, namely, World War Three? Yeah, I've been worried about and I wrote up something about that somewhere between June 22nd of 1941 and December 7th. The word Great War disappeared from the Western vocabulary suddenly for the first time called World War One. And you're right. But up until 41 in June 22nd, there was the Polish War. There was the fall of France. There was the Greek. But there wasn't World War Two in common currency. And then everybody put it all together and said, oh, my God, this was all connected, especially after Pearl Harbor. And I think right now there's a lot of juggling under the radar of our enemies and they're trying to game this and see at what point they see an opening our advantage. And obviously in Israel in June and I talked to a lot of people in the government and they were very worried. They had historical problems with Ukraine, as you know, from World War Two. But they were worried that they had certain protocols with the Russians and HR knows them better than anybody about their ability to stop his volau by going into Russia control air spaces. Yeah, why didn't Israel go all in with support for the brave, plucky Ukrainian people because Israel had vital national security interests that would have been compromised by going all in on behalf of Ukraine. All right. Israel needs good relations with with Russia. And so it didn't join this trendy pro-Ukrainian chorus. Syria and even the gesture that they were in league with the West overtly supporting Ukraine would change that dynamic quite quickly. And then they were also worried that they had felt that Putin was not whole hog behind the Russian enrichment. I mean, the Iranian enrichment. And now he might not just be behind Iranian Iranian enrichment, but hypersonic missile delivery systems that could go into Israel. And so I think that's true. Right. If we we don't want Iran to get nuclear weapons, then maintaining good relations with Russia would help. Right. Putin would be reluctant to help Iran get nuclear weapons until we backed Putin into a corner. Of all these things, China, as you mentioned, north of here. And we were not. I'm not saying you can prevent it. But the quicker this thing is over, the better for everybody. And if Russia keeps saying and they're mobilizing 300,000 more people that they consider this, I think the other day Putin said there's never I don't know if he's telling the truth. I can cite examples that make him a liar. But he said there's never been a large conventional war against a nuclear power that he lost on a border that there will. Is Putin just a liar? So John Mirshama wrote the book, the most important book about lying in politics. And he makes the point that national leaders rarely try to lie to other nations because there's no point in it because there's no inherent reason to expect people outside your shores, outside your borders to believe you. Therefore, it's a very little point to try to lie to outsiders. It just doesn't go on that much. Generally speaking, national leaders do not lie on the international stage. And if Victor David Sensen read a little John Mirshama, he wouldn't be this stupid. We're going to lose. And we're not going to lose this war. But if you take him out his word, the only way Ukraine can get every Russian hour is they've defined. Why would you not take him at his word? Like, why would you think he's incentivized to lie to you? It's just not something that international leaders do to outsiders. Back to the 2013 border is a. Politicians will lie to their own people because they feel like they can get away with it. But politicians don't generally try to lie to outsiders because they don't expect to be able to get away with it. And we talked about this last time. Is a level of material support and a death count could be up to 200,000. Plus it died. It could be up to 400,000. It could be $500 billion they need. And if we're going to do this, we should right now have sort of a. A war production board and we should be producing shells and javelins and missiles like we've never produced them. It's going to take five years to replenish the javelin arsenal. And we're not going to any of that. I don't think it'll take years. Victor, but it'll take long. I mean, we we went through six years of production. Yeah, we were we were sleeping through this. Those are you feel like we're kind of sleeping through. Well, I think that there's been some moving in the right direction, but not enough, right? It's been inadequate. So the National Defense Authorization Act does have money specifically set aside for expanding the industrial base. And there needs to be not only an increase in the defense budget to make up for the backlog of ammunition, but also a huge value of deferred modernization over over, you know, since the Obama administration really. And then finally, you know, what's what is required is multi-year budgeting to give the defense industry more predictability because you're right now. OK, so whenever you do something, you have to give up something else. So when I became more deeply invested in 12 step programs, other things had to give, right? I somewhat reduced some of my religious commitments to free up more time for me to invest in my 12 step programs. If we up the military budget, that may well come at the expense of our economic well-being, which then provides the basis for future military investment. So when England was preparing for World War Two, they didn't just go all in on military spending. They had to try to navigate a fine line so that they didn't go bankrupt, right? America would not be put in a position of advantage if it goes effectively bankrupt, you know, creating more javelins or dramatically increasing the military budget, right? These things have to be weighed against all sorts of other considerations. They can't open up additional production lines and know that that demand is going to be sustained over multiple years. So there are a number of reforms that are absolutely necessary, not only as you mentioned, Victor, to make up, you know, for, you know, for what's been expended already and provided to the Ukrainians, but to prepare for future contingencies, maybe involving China. But of course, what we need is a strong defense to deter war. Yeah, I got an email the other day from an Israeli and said, those 300,000 shells you're taking out of Israel were kind of for us too. And I don't know what he meant by that, but we're trying to, we're draining stocks all over the world. It seems to me that from the news reports and we're not talking about how we're going to replace them if they go into Taiwan to Chinese. Yeah, we're draining stocks all over the world. And how is that in America's best interests? And how is that in our national security interests? Like what's in it for us, Americans to do this? To drain our military stocks for Ukraine, place where we have no vital interests. What I'm getting at is, if you juxtapose a lot of people on the left, they're rhetoric about in their zeal for getting every Russian out of Ukraine. And their pronouncements that I've heard, I won't mention names. We know some of them that Ukraine is on the cusp of victory any minute. I mean, they're going to win. And you juxtapose out with their lack of advocacy for massive war production mobilization and a very radical change in our deterrence to meet this ambitious agenda that they're advancing. It's striking because they're kind of sleepwalking. Well, it's just going to be sort of like... Well, a lot of people on the left have dramatically changed. I mean, Germany's green party is being willing to put a lot of climate change activism on hold to help Germany and to help Europe survive this cutoff of Russian energy supplies. So yeah, the left has been adapting to reality contrary to what Victor Hansen is saying. Like bombing Milosevic and it'll be over and we won't... It's not. This is going to be the largest conventional war we've seen since in Vietnam and maybe Korea. And nobody's talking about getting ready for it. There's two things I don't get here in HR. Maybe you can help me. Five years to start up a production line to do artillery shells. December 7th, 1941. Let's count five years from that. Oh yeah, we'll get some tanks to you five years from now. I agree, John. I agree with you. I mean, I remember I'm on the side of being an American, not an American. We could do this. And the guy said, sure, he signed a contract to make... Yeah, American, but American in America's interest. America can do all sorts of things Russia against America's interest. So when it comes to a choice between being an American who acts against America's interests and being an American can't, right? Who doesn't therefore act against America's interests. I much prefer the American can't, right? Sometimes it's better to do nothing than to do something that is destructive of a national interest. Liberty ships. And 19 days later, he had made a port, made the production facility and sailed the first ship. None of this five years for one round of ammunition. I think I have the answer for that, John. When I was 15, my grandfather said, we're going to irrigate every morning. And I said, oh, do I have to get up at 7 a.m. And he said, I've been up since 4 a.m. That generation. Oh yeah. That generation is very different than our time. This is about getting. Yeah, my dad got into the habit of getting up at 4 a.m. when he was working on his first PhD thesis. And he didn't break that habit until he got into his 60s. So that was a lifelong habit. Now, it also crushed our family's social life or his social life in particular, because he would need to be in bed by about 8 p.m. every night. Permanence in the contract. It's not about, I still believe Americans can get up at 4 in the morning if they want to. The thing is, for each person that says. Right, but if you get up at 4 a.m. in the morning, you can't be part of the regular world after about 7 p.m. Right, everything you do comes with a price. And I often get up at 3 a.m. or a.m. It means that I'm absolutely dead on my feet by 7 p.m., 8 p.m. So today I slept in until 4.30. That's 4.30 a.m. That's why I'm going so strong now. Because we're going to win at no cost. Then why don't they have an ancillary plan to do it? And that plan would have to be a rabbit, but almost total war. I mean, to defeat this guy. Well, here's something just a quick point here. I know we're lamenting the shortages that we have and we need to make up for them. We are going to make up for them. I just saw commercial contracts for production for artillery shells for the first time rather than doing it exclusively through U.S. arsenals. So some adjustments are being made right now. But you know who's got a much tougher problem? Hey, Russia does. And you know who else does? China does, because China depends on a lot of Russian weapons systems. So does India. I mean, I'll tell you, I think Russian, the Russian military industry is dead. I mean, and all of their clients are now probably wishing they had diversified their weapon stocks. So I think, you know, I think we, you know, it's obviously important for us to be self-critical and understand the difficult situation we're in. But I think the Russians are in a much worse shape. So don't we need to win this this year? If this turns into a multi-multi-year slog, it's a pretty bad situation. And I don't understand how even giving them 14 tanks, I sort of remember my World War II histories. You know, Kursk wasn't fought with 14 tanks. Russia's actually starting there with their offensive. They seem to be moving forwards. I don't see the plan to how this is over this year. Well, this goes to, I think Victor was making this point. I mean, it's incrementalism, right? I mean, enough with the incrementalism. Hey, we'll give you this weapon, but not that weapon. We'll give you, you know, 31 tanks. But if you're not going to be incremental, you have to change your mentality and the people. Well, if you're not going to be incremental, you also dramatically increase the risk of nuclear war and, you know, a wider war. So why would you not be incremental and incredibly careful when you're dealing with a nuclear power like Russia? Well, who are the strongest supporters of this? Biden keeps bragging about all the things he's done. And we forget that he said, well, I wouldn't object if it was a minor incursion or he offered a ride to Zelensky to get out of town the first week, but forget all that. He, he, they keep bragging about, you know, Aviator Joe and we're going to get really tough, but they're, if he really won't believe it, he'd get a top or Millie would. Millie would say, you know, this is what I advise. We've got to do this and we've got to, we've got to galvanize. And he'd say, you know what? We're short on recruitment. Yeah. Sometimes a really tough thing is to abstain from getting into a needless fight, right? Sometimes you need to be really tough on reining in your own ego on your own, you know, sense of entitled righteousness and how you know better for how every other nation should conduct itself. Sometimes, you know, the toughest thing is simply to hold yourself back from getting involved in unnecessary fights. Here's what I'm going to do to make sure that and be public about it. I'm sure he's doing it privately, but it's, it's a very weird or well in situation. I gave a talk in Newport about some military affairs and I had four people say, I'm not sending my kid, by the way, the same old stuff. My grandfather fought in Vietnam, my dad fought and go for, I'm not sending my kid to that kind of guy, no way. And what the subtext was is that- Right, why would people, you know, join the military now if there's, there's a good chance that their lives could be sacrificed in some pointless conflict in, in Chad, in, you know, the middle of Africa somewhere or in the middle of Europe somewhere like Ukraine, right? When you do gratuitously stupid things by getting into unnecessary conflicts that cost American lives, you damage morale and you damage the incentives of rational, you know, patriotic, nationalistic Americans to join your armed forces. Millie and the Pentagon have offended an entire working class constituency that, as I said, kind of troubled you guys last time, has died at twice the numbers of the population. And that's just one element of this. That's the manpower element. But you've got to get those people to- Well, getting involved into a stupid war in Ukraine that costs thousands of American lives, I think that would be even more damaging than some of the military flirtations with war culture. Come back into the military, you've got to get ramp up military production, you've got to get some leaders in there that, you know, don't let a balloon go across the United States and they can send a less to that. Putin was watching that. And then there was a report, HR last two weeks ago that Putin is talking with the Taliban because of the 60,000 vehicles, including jeeps, trucks, Humvees, and I saw a figure of 500,000 automatic weapons and machine guns, 500,000. So one thing you're not hearing here is much concern for the well-being of Americans, right? All these big, exciting games with the Taliban, with Ukraine, with Russia, right? There's just a breathtaking lack of concern here for the best interests of Americans. The same time that report came out, there was a report that the Russians were complaining that they had first generation AK-47s that didn't work and bold action, World War II rifle. And they were not getting their wounded out of the battle zones because they didn't have transport. The next article said from an American official, we just don't, and a Pentagon, we just don't think the Taliban would dare do that. They just wouldn't want to sell that stuff to Russia and break up this new relationship we have. And I thought to myself, are these people crazy? You're trying to tell me that Putin could not use 60,000 vehicles and 500,000 automatic weapons for his. So let's say the Taliban send Putin, sell to Putin, 60,000 vehicles and 500,000 automatic weapons. So what? Yeah, that helps Russia, but it does absolutely nothing against America's best interests unless we choose to get involved in a pointless conflict. Depleted stocks and that you, a Russian would know how to drive an American Jeep or use an M4. This is crazy. And the Taliban who's done all sorts of things to us wouldn't be willing to make a couple of billion dollars selling this stuff off. But we're in a state, I'm trying to get to the point, I'm trying to convey the idea we're in. Why not get into a state where the Taliban and Russia do a deal and it doesn't affect vital American national interests. You just don't care. You just abstain from moralizing or getting worked up over it. So let me just switch gears and just provide more of an explanation of how I approach things. I was just rereading this terrific 2011 book, redirect the surprising new science of psychological change. And so it talks about these police officers seeing a man like burned to death in front of them. And their bosses were very sympathetic. They wanted to help. So they did what many police departments and fire departments and government bureaucracies do. They scheduled a critical incident stress debriefing for these officers. So the trauma response, they brought out the therapist to have people talk about it. So there's this whole industry of rapid response therapists to debrief people after a trauma. But when you debrief people immediately after a traumatic event, you make their memories of that event all the more concrete. You do far more harm than good. All right? So the sessions typically last three to four hours and the participants are asked to describe the traumatic event from their own perspective to express their thoughts and feelings to relate any physical or psychological symptoms they're experiencing. And then the facilitator says it's normal to have these stressful reactions and they get stress management advice. And this just makes post-traumatic stress disorder and all sorts of other dysfunctions even worse. So we've got this whole industry of crisis counseling and it does empirically, it's evident, it's clear. It does far more harm than good. So in 2003 Harvard psychologist Richard McNally and his colleagues, they reviewed all tests of the effectiveness of this kind of psychological debriefing. And they recommended that for scientific and ethical reasons, professionals should cease compulsory debriefing of trauma-exposed people. And the trauma that this Hoover Institute show is trying to inflict on Americans like, oh my God, the Taliban might sell automatic weapons and vehicles to Putin, right? It doesn't do any good. You know what does do good with regard to traumatic events and a traumatic event may be the election of some politician you don't like, may be immigration policy, it may be social cultural demographic changes going around you that you have no control over, right? So what does do good when it comes to things like this is to take a distanced perspective, try to get the 10,000 foot perspective and rather than reliving the trauma about how it's so awful that there's this social, cultural, political, religious development in the United States that goes completely against everything you believe in rather than living in that trauma, instead take the 10,000 foot perspective and then try to understand why do people act the way they do, right? If you do that, you will be happier and you'll be more effective. If instead you get together with your friends and you talk about how awful it is that Joe Biden is in office and how awful it is that the Democrats are doing this or that, right, you just deepen the trauma of whatever it is that you're objecting as opposed to seeing things from the 10,000 foot level and just trying to understand why left-wing people behave the way they do, why centrists behave the way they do, why conservatives behave the way they do. So an optimistic outlook on life, right? Thinking that you, you know, able to maneuver in the world and have some effect on your own fate. Yeah, this frequently evolves exaggeration and spin, but consistently makes people happier and it motivates them to try harder when they encounter obstacles. So the way we interpret the world is extremely important. So I noticed with pretty much everyone on the distant ride who does a live stream, they interpret the world through a, it's all hopeless lens. And this goes back to early childhood experiences, their own failures with early relationships and they then impose all of the news and you know, all of their information that they're getting about the world, you know, through the prism of these failed early relationships. So how we understand reality is rooted in narratives that we construct about ourselves and our world. And these narratives in particular are profoundly shaped by our early relationships with our caregivers. So there are perspectives that make us happier and more effective, right? So looking for meaning, looking for hope, looking for purpose, right? These are ways of being more effective in the world. So if a traumatic event happens to you, you see someone burn up in front of you or you know, Barack Obama's re-elected or Joe Biden wins the 2020 election or you know, America has, you know, seemingly lost control of its borders, right? You got a traumatic event. Yeah, write about it, think about it, but do it from the 10,000 foot level and try to understand why various characters act the way they do, right? That gives you closure, allows you to move on. It gives you clarity into confusing, upsetting, traumatic episodes in your life. So you need two conditions, right? You need distance from an event and then a focus on analyzing why the event occurred, right? This works for trauma in your personal life. It works for dealing with trauma in the political, cultural, religious life. So instead of immersing yourself in the original experience of, oh, how bad was it when Barack Obama got elected and then re-elected and Joe Biden got elected in 2020, you take a step back, you watch things unfold from a perspective of a neutral observer and then focus on, oh, why is it that I feel the way I do rather than focusing on the feelings themselves? So if you take like four experimental groups, those who immerse and focus on their feelings, those who immerse and think about their reasons, those who distance themselves and focus on feelings, then those who distance themselves and think about reasons why they feel the way they do, only one group benefits from this exercise, those who distance themselves from the trauma and think about why they felt the way they do. So when you are able to adopt a dispassionate approach, you're able to reframe events and find new meaning, you're able to reconstruct and reconstruct events, you experience fewer negative emotions, you're less likely to engage in repetitious rumination, you're more likely to maintain a steady blood pressure. So our natural inclination is to immerse ourselves in our past and present grievances and upsetting events, gauge in, he said, she said, internal dialogue that makes us feel all over again. So take a step back from the events of the day or the events of the past, analyze things from a distance, think dispassionately about why they occurred. So don't just recount events, take a step back, reconstruct and explain what happened. Now, what about with regard to pleasant events? Should we adopt the same distancing strategy, trying best to understand why something good happened to us? But there's a paradox here. So just as understanding and explaining negative events tends to blunt their impact, so too does understanding and explaining positive events. So when positive things are going on in your life that you're passionate about, such as like, I love sports, right? I understand that's irrational, but if I tried to get distance from all the things that I love in my life, that would just reduce the pleasure. People want to understand the good things in life so they can experience them again, but if you do that, it reduces the pleasure that you get from these good things. So keeping a gratitude journal, write about all the things in your life which you're thankful, it doesn't tend to work. Instead, write about something you're grateful for and then write about all the ways that that good thing might not have occurred. Be like George Bailey in the, it's a wonderful life movie. So here's another great exercise from this book. Think about your life in the future, write for 20 minutes on four consecutive days about how everything has gone as well as it possibly could and your life dreams have come true. So by imagining how well things will turn out in the future, we focus on ways of achieving those goals. Think about what we need to do to get there. So people who focus on the process of achieving a desired outcome, much more likely to achieve it than those who simply think about the outcome itself. And it's state of collective denial. I think Neil was right about that, about the geo-strategic consequences and the wherewithal to complete this ambitious agenda. I think where we agree, Victor, is that the kind of enthusiasm for Ukraine that swept liberal America, replacing Black Lives Matter signs with Ukrainian flags, has had a certain strategic naivety, might one put it that way. Putin actually has the faintest idea how to stop this war, including the people in Washington whose job it is. The problem is that both sides think that time is on their side, they both can't be right. But it means that neither Zelensky nor Putin is remotely open to the idea of negotiations, even although we've clearly suggested that to both sides. So we've got this open-ended. Well, I think Putin and Zelensky are both open to negotiations, but by our massive reinforcing of Ukraine, we've made both sides less likely and less incentivized to negotiate. We keep having to increase the firepower that we make available to the Ukrainians because we really can't have them lose now, we've backed them and that means they can't lose. So that much has already been established. But what it takes to win is not clear and Putin's nuclear threats clearly do intimidate President Biden who worries a good deal that he could inadvertently start World War III. So we have a very familiar pattern which brings to mind Lyndon Johnson's plight where you escalate in a rather far off war without wanting to escalate too much because of course there are all kinds of potential downsides to doing so. You mind the domestic politics, but you end up in the worst of all possible strategic outcomes. I think that the decision to escalate in Vietnam is probably the worst strategic decision the United States has made in its history. But what's amazing to me is the ways in which... Yeah, well, if we escalate in Ukraine leading to a nuclear exchange, that will make Vietnam seem like a minor blunder. And how about the invasion of Iraq in 2003? That was a pretty big blunder too. This could have similar disastrous consequences and it's very hard to get anybody to talk about that. Let me put another question to you, Victor. It seems... It's very hard to get people to talk about the disastrous consequences of our intervention in Ukraine. Really, is it that hard to get people to talk about it? It's to me that we use the term axis too casually in the wake of 9-11 and there never really was an axis of evil of the sort that was famously referenced by George W. Bush in a speech, I think, David Fromroad. But there is now a real axis. China... Yeah, there's a real axis because the US created the conditions and incentivized the creation of this very real axis. But the United States is essentially responsible for this new axis. Russia and Iran are working closely together, maybe with North Korean involvement too. This is a proper axis and it's increasingly acting in concert. The axis, of course, in World War II didn't act in perfect concert. If it had, heaven knows, the outcome might have been different. But I wonder how far the term axis is now appropriate and how far we should be thinking not narrowly of what's happening in Bakhmut, what's happening today in Ukraine, but broadly, what's happening globally? Let me ask you a question. Did you read Bob Kagan's Challenging the US is a historic mistake? I thought that piece was really wrong. I think right now, Challenging the US is a huge historic opportunity and the axis of Russia, China and Iran is planning to do just that. Yeah, I think what I agree with you when I read that essay, I think that he thinks he looks at all of our assets and he thinks we can do almost anything. But the fact that we have these assets and we can't do anything, not that we can do anything, that we can do nothing, in a sense it earns us a greater contempt. When you mentioned these spinoffs, I think before Ukraine, to give one example, and Erdogan would not say as he did two weeks ago, the Athenians are gonna wake up, the residents of Athens one night and they're gonna have one of our missiles come into Athens. And then he said something like the Dodecanese islands have always been Turkish, they haven't. And he's still bothering people in the Aegean about natural gas and he's much more likely to do something than he was say in 2020. And the same is true, I think of Iran and the same I think is true of North Korea. And their view is that we are now tied down psychologically and materially in Ukraine and we're in a period of left wing governance that is pacifistic, that won't fund the necessary wherewithal to conduct that war and to maintain deterrence. Wait, wait, wait, so his argument is the US is tied down in Ukraine by a pacifistic government? All right, we're substantially militarily intervening or subsidizing Ukraine, then that's not very pacifistic. Then these peripheral theaters and they're going to take advantage of it but they're waiting for the best opportune moment. And that's why it's very dangerous for something that's symbolic like this balloon. Anything that gives the wrong impression that we're weak, because we're not weak, but anything that gives impression to these players and these diverse landscapes, it could be catastrophic, especially for our allies. Let me put a question to the group here. So access of evil popped up in a George W. Boych state of the Union speech. The president speaks on Tuesday night to the nation, to the world, his speech he's been working on for days, if not weeks, it's his game, his rules here. Granted, these speeches are a spectacle. I'm a recovering speech writer, so I enjoyed them, but that tells you what priorities I have. We've been talking about these world problems and here's the president's chance to say something cleanly to the country and to the world, Victor, what should he say? What can he say? What should he say? What should he say? Two different questions. No, I think you know what he will say. What should he say? What he should say is that we're living in an increasingly dangerous world and with great reluctance, we have to face that our ends and our means are incompatible. As of now, we have to ramp up the defense budget and produce enough deterrents so that we can live in a safer world. He's going to have... Okay, I can't take any more. Let's get back to Casey. Anti-tradition and authority, a survey of ponderables. People, to all people, to certain people, to animals, you know, and so on. How do we... Here's a hugely important question. The whole category of epistemology, how do we know about God? You have to have... You have to have... It's... Is it a hugely important question we don't know about God? All right? God's unknowable and, you know, the existence of God is in a non-empirical realm. So given that the question Casey poses is unanswerable, right, questions that are not answerable are not terribly important. Flawless knowledge of philosophical tradition in epistemology, or again, you'll be impeached as someone who shouldn't be talking on these topics, you know? So, you know, that includes everything. I don't think anyone would strongly make an argument. You shouldn't be talking on these topics. People might object if you portray yourself as having, you know, a degree of expertise that you may not have and you may rub people the wrong way if you're putting, you know, disproportionate importance on things that cannot be answered, that cannot be ascertained and therefore are not, you know, nearly so important. The thing from, like, I don't know if Heraclitus and Parmenides quite get into this, but certainly Plato and forward, right? So this part could easily become just unmanageable for, like, almost effectively anyone and anyone who is qualified to answer this subsection test also isn't an expert in the thing that we're trying to address, which is this question of, like, tradition, you know, script, like reading Mark VII or whatever. And by the way, I mean, whenever you go, like, Mark VII, there's always the objection, which is, like... And Reasonable Responsible is back in the chat. He says, cannot accept the categorical assertion, unanswerable questions are not terribly important. Well, you know what is important in life? Family, right? If you have a family, you have average or above-arriage relations with your family, then you don't really need to be terribly concerned by the questions that Casey is building up here, right? You should be able to find most of your meaning in your family. If you can't find it in your family, then you should be able to find it in your family and your friends and your community and possibly your work, your hobbies, your interests, your education, right? Your career, your volunteer opportunities, that's where you can make a concrete difference in the world, right? You're not gonna make a concrete difference in the world pondering these questions, these unanswerable questions, right? You're not gonna do any good for anyone in all likelihood. Well, why are we reading Mark VII? That's just like one little verse. It's not the whole, you know, a New Testament. Why do you say it's such an important theme? Who are you to decide that? It's just your interpretation. Why don't we ask the priests? You see the problem. Okay, then there's the question of like, again, about the knowledge of God, personal revelation. Like what is that? How does it happen? We say we believe the prophets receive revelation. So I feel like I get, you know, fairly undiluted experience of God in a lot of 12-step programs. You know, I see the concrete difference in a dramatic life-or-death fashion that, you know, connection to a higher power, connection to God, you know, makes for people who are on a trajectory towards death. So that's where a concrete experience of God is something that is, you know, vital to my life, something that I get renewed in through 12-step programs. And it's making a concrete dramatic difference, a life-and-death difference in the lives of people around me and in my own life. Like, what is that? How does that work? Why weren't they listened to all the way through the Old Testament? Like, why did it kill Jeremiah and Isaiah and, you know, Ezekiel and whoever else? Why are they always neglected in the present and then recognized 400, 700 years later? What, why does that happen, right? And could it still happen? That is, are we so sure that there aren't living prophets today that we just, you know, show up in their YouTube comments and go like, oh, I'm so sure. Like you're implying you're a prophet, like get out of here. You don't even have, you know, you don't even read Greek or Aramaic or whatever, right? How does one distinguish then? Yeah, a little clarity on these questions is good, all right? That which is significant is, you know, rarely compelling or popular. That which, you know, gets one's famous is really significant. And there's a terrific example of this in the Wall Street Journal about the hero of Midway, right? This guy was the hero of Midway and he got very little, if any, this worldly recognition and reward for the great thing he did. A hero of Midway finally got his due. Rochefort sussed out the Japanese plans but had a hard time convincing the brass by Faye Vincent. February 9th, 2023, 1.48 p.m. Eastern Time. Though he played a vital role in the U.S. victory over Japan in World War II, Navy Captain Joseph Rochefort and his heroics long went unrecognized. Rochefort, who died in 1976, was a mid-level intelligence officer whose small unit in Hawaii provided the analysis that led to the U.S. naval victory in the Battle of Midway, the turning point of the Pacific War. Aspects of Rochefort's story are notable even 60 years after Midway. In 19... Right, so I could do a show where I talked about personalities like Nick Fuentes, Baked Alaska, Bidsen, Beardley, all right, and I could get 10, 20, 30 times my viewership, right? So there are things that you can do to get more recognition, more fame, more money. On the other hand, you have to sacrifice significance and perhaps having a positive effect on a small number of people. So are you willing to be toxic but get more fame and money and influence possibly a little bit of power for yourself or do you want to do work that is significant and if it has any effect on people, generally speaking, it's more likely to have a positive effect than a negative effect. We all have to answer questions like this every day. So this guy was a hero of Midway. He got virtually no this world reward. In 29, the Navy sent three young officers, including Rochefort, to Japan to spend three years becoming fluent in the Japanese language and culture. The foresight of the Navy to plan decades ahead for conflict with Japan is remarkable and Rochefort's immersion in the Japanese way of thinking was the foundation of his later success at Midway. In 1941, Rochefort was sent to station Hypo at Pearl Harbor to lead a team of code breakers. By May 1942, Rochefort believed he had sufficient evidence from intercepted Japanese radio traffic to convince Admiral Chester Nimitz that two Japanese fleets of carriers and battleships led by Admiral Isaroku Yamamoto were at sea on their way to attack Midway Island. Yeah, he was a code breaker. He was a hero. He was absolutely right. And what was his reward? They're pretty much zip zero zooch in this world. Between true and false prophecy or prophets or revelations if you're the prophet, you know what I mean? Like how, like, so say you hear a voice or you feel a feeling that's very pressing, you know, is it schizophrenia or is it, you know, is it revelation? Like, let's have that conversation, right? The psychiatrist came. Yeah, that's why we need to reason together, reason socially, not just try to figure things out on our own, but if you've got some blinding insights, yeah, share them socially like you're doing right now, get some feedback, right? That's a good way to become more immersed and more effective in the real world as opposed to just what's going on in our head. Can't contribute, right? They live in the world of secular materialist reality. It's all fake and it's all schizophrenia, basically. That's not us, right? We're the believers. Can there be... So people who live in a world of material reality, you've just got nothing to learn from, I don't agree with that. I think you can learn from pretty much everyone in this area or that area. Like can God be known? First of all, can God be known secondhand? And that implies the earlier question, I guess, can God be given in the... Okay, this is just a question of faith, right? There's no empirical way to verify it and it's pointless to argue over it. Correctly. That is, can the prophet who knows God give that knowledge to someone else and it's the same thing? Like the example I often use is, if you go to a Taylor Swift concert and then come home and tell your dorm roommate university about the concert, well, that's not exactly the same thing, is it? Like you have the experience of having been at the Taylor Swift concert, they... Yes, certain mysteries are only available to those in the dance. Really just heard someone in a dorm room on a couch summarize a Taylor Swift concert and those are basically unrelated experiences. Can there be a standard method then for the validation of revelatory knowledge or is it different? Like each prophet sort of gets it differently. Maybe there's even different like manners of revelation. You know, is it as simple as just God literally like speaking slowly enough? So when I was listening to this Casey video, I thought, anything profound, one rabbi used to preach this, any profound thought has been expressed in a pop song. And I think this heartfelt earnest video by Casey is pretty much summed up in a song by Jefferson Starship called Miracles. If only you believe, like I believe baby, we'd get by. If only you believed in miracles, so would I. So yeah, if only everyone else believed like the way I did, then everything would be okay. Well, that's just no path forward in life. You're talking about non-empirical matters of faith. You're never going to get other people to change their minds against their will. But if you distance yourself, you get out from this agony that Casey appears to be in in this video, distance yourself, get to that 10,000 foot level and just try to understand, okay, why do Jews believe the way they do? Why do Orthodox Jews believe the way they do? Why do Satmar Jews believe the way they do? Why do Roman Catholics believe the way they do? Why do secular humanists believe the way they do? Why do evangelical Christians believe the way they do? All right, you'll be happier. You'll be more positive. You will be more resilient. You'll get along better with other people, right? But you have to get some distance on these traumatic complex and switch from a mode of judgment to a mode of just trying to understand why the world works the way it does. That Ezekiel can write down his prophecies like that, or is it more of a, almost like Muse-inspired creative kind of thing where we recognize that what they said was true years later and therefore we designate them a prophet or a saint or something like that. So there's not a single sentiment in any of this video that has not been expressed 10,000 times before. So that is an awareness that someone comes from a tradition, be it either the Catholic or the Jewish tradition or any tradition, right? You have an awareness that people much smarter than you have trod this ground before you. And so that should bring with it a certain amount of humility. And it also kind of eases a lot of burdens off your back and off your soul, enables you to get back into reality, get along better with other people, recognize that you're part of something much larger and it's not like you're breaking ground with these questions, right? All these questions here have been asked by 10,000 evangelical Christians before Casey, let alone hundreds of thousands of Catholics, many thousands of Jews, right? So just kind of recognize your place in the stream of life, makes you happier, more relaxed, more at ease, helps you get along better with other people, you become more effective. Here's an interesting question I have to think about. Is every revelation total and complete which seems interesting or unlikely maybe? So if you're coming from a tradition, you have to say, oh, as Aquinas said or as Aristotle said, or as this particular church father said, or as Martin Luther or John Calvin or Maimonides or Nachmonides, that's what living life in a tradition means, right? You become aware of your tradition and you recognize that you're not inventing the wheel. Or does each mystic receive only a partial vision which means that we have to kind of collect and compile individual revelations into a picture of God or truth or morality or whatever. Are there techniques and methods that can be used for causing revelation? That is, can you pray a certain prayer, perform certain rituals that will bring it about in you that will give it to you? So I was reading yesterday about like Jonathan Edwards and the first great awakening and how his sermons really seemed to provoke something in a lot of people in New England in the 1730s. You could say, oh, those were demonic possessions or fake revelations or fake born-again experiences or whatever, I don't know. So Casey's video here reminds me of an article in New York magazine, documentary filmmakers reckon with the industry's murky ethics. So if an ethical code is to have meaning and like if what Casey's talking about is to have like real world significance, right? You need to bring it into reality. And an ethics code has meaning when you place it in the context of ethical obligations to whom. So a code of ethics for journalists doesn't really mean much because to whom is the ethical obligation? Is it to the people you interview? Is it to the people you write about? Is it to your readers? Is it to your peers? Is it to your employer, right? There are so many conflicts of interest there that an ethical code for journalists doesn't really have much significance. Now an ethical code for accountants or for doctors has significance because the ethical code is directed towards the relationship between the accountant or the doctor and his client, right? The ethical code for a doctor is not to his institution, it's not to his profession, it's entirely focused on the doctor's ethical obligations to the patient. So that's an ethical code that has significance and meaning. But listen to this a little bit from documentary filmmakers reckon with the industry's murky ethics, but it doesn't grapple with where are the ethical obligations? And if you have all sorts of conflicting ethical obligations, then the ethical code doesn't have nearly the same significance as if the ethical code is directed just towards one party, such as the patient. So think about the ethical responsibilities of documentary filmmakers. Their primary ethical responsibilities towards the viewer, right? You can make a very strong argument that the primary ethical obligations of documentary filmmaker are towards the viewer or are they towards the people who are interviewed in the film? Or are the primary ethical obligations of the documentary filmmaker to people who are portrayed in a film? Or are their primary ethical obligations to their profession? Or are they to the people who are funding them? But there's so many contradictory ethical obligations that the concept of an ethical standard doesn't have the same significance as it does for doctors. So documentary filmmakers. In television documentaries has sparked a reckoning among filmmakers and subjects who worry there are no industry wide ethical standards for how to make one. Written by Reeves Weidemann for New York Magazine, narrated by Pesh Vada. So this is talking about ethical obligations towards the subjects of documentary filmmakers, meaning not the objects of documentary films but to the people who are interviewed and participate. But you could just as easily make the case that a documentary filmmaker's primary obligation is to their audience or to the subjects. But this article just takes a narrow view that the primary ethical obligation is to the people that documentary filmmakers interview. Please be advised, this article contains adult language. When Dan Kogan co-founded Impact Partners in 2007 with the goal of making good documentaries that also did good for the world, it was the beginning of what he and others now look back on as the golden age of the form. After decades of relegation to art houses and public television, films like An Inconvenient Truth, Super Size Me and Anything by Michael Moore were suddenly finding an audience and making money. The returns were modest by Hollywood standards. Fahrenheit 9-11 is the highest-grossing documentary of all time and only the 589th highest-grossing movie. But so were the costs. James Cameron blew through more $6 million budget in five minutes of Avatar the Way of Water. When streaming began as Hollywood takeover in the 2010s, documentaries presented themselves as a low-cost way to burnish a reputation. Netflix won its first three Oscars for documentaries including Icarus, a 2017 investigation into the Russian sports doping scheme, which was produced by Kogan. But as Netflix and other streamers battled for market share, documentaries themselves began to change. The streamers had enough data to know what people liked, murders, celebrities, episodes that end with a cliffhanger. And by 2020, when Netflix was releasing a new documentary or docu-series every week, the streamers were competing less for awards than for the next true crime hit. Between 2018 and 2021, the demand for documentaries on streaming services more than doubled and films that... So this seems to be the ethical obligations are to some abstract notion of what is a good documentary. Making a documentary commercial and attractive to an audience by using certain tricks. That seems to be the ethical concern here. Your streamers told me he was recently prevented from interviewing the family of a murder victim for a series because he was told they had signed exclusive agreements to tell their story to a competing production that promised to pay them more than $200,000. So they're also competing ethical dimensions here. What's best for the people who are going to be interviewed? What's best for the audience? What's best for the profession? What's best for the funder of these documentaries? When you have all sorts of competing ethical obligations, you don't get to have a strong, coherent, ethical standard that stands up. All of this had warped the relationship among sources, filmmakers, subjects, and the streamers paying the bills. A breakout character in a documentary could be... So, yeah, the real world is complicated. It'd be nice if there were just some simple perspective that we could take that just automatically means that we're just going to be doing good. But reality doesn't work that way. A marketable star in their own right. Carol Baskin, Joe Exotic's bet noir from Tiger King, has made more than $100,000 Hawking videos on cameo. Jackie Segal from Queen of Versailles, which told her story as a parable for the foibles of the incredibly wealthy heading into the Great Recession, spun off her appearance in that documentary into a just released home renovation show in which she tries to build a Benihana inside her Florida mansion. It is now available on HBO Max. Getting the right people to talk for a documentary was now such an important part of the Hollywood ecosystem that the major agencies were sometimes getting involved as if they were securing A-list stars. In 2017, Lindsey Trobe, then working on the film development team at Buzzfeed, was talking to potential sources for a documentary base on the sites reporting about R. Kelly's sex crimes when she received a phone call from a major agency. The agent was representing a production company pursuing a documentary on the topic. I hear you're talking to our talent, the agent said. You need to back off. Trobe was incensed by talent. Do you mean the families of the women R. Kelly is holding captive in a sex cult? She asked. The agent paused then said, semantics. One Saturday afternoon last fall, 150 people from the documentary world gathered in a chapel in Maine to express concern about, well, all of this. The event towards value-based filmmaking, a document. No, no. They weren't expressing concern about all of it. They were expressing concern about themselves, the people who are interviewed in documentary films. Notice this very narrow ethical lens here. Three-town hall was part of the Camden International Film Festival, a small but influential stop on the festival circuit. And it was being held in conjunction with the screening of a new doc called Subject. The film follows people from five famous documentaries, Hoop Dreams, Capturing the Freedmen's, The Staircase, The Square, and The Wolfpack, as they discuss the fraught process of making entertainment out of real life, their lives, and how unprepared they were for the fame that came after. Margie Ratliff, who was in college when her father's trial for his wife's death was documented in the staircase, said she had agreed to appear in the film only because her dad asked her to. The staircase had a limited initial run on television in the aughts before Netflix bought the rights in 2018. It was now available to 230 million subscribers worldwide and had come to haunt Ratliff's life. She once walked up to a water cooler at work to find her colleagues talking about it. HBO Max adapted the documentary into a fictionalized series with Ratliff played by Sophie Turner. So what about these women who are publishing articles and TikTok videos about having threesomes? Do you think that will damage their life? I mean, that's incredibly damaging. Or people who play tackle football, right? That tends to have incredibly damaging after effect. So, yeah, you become famous by choosing to participate in a documentary. Well, yeah, that fame is going to come at a price. It'll be stripped from the staircase, Ratliff says. Subjects co-director Jennifer Tashara and Camilla Hall were pitching the film as Super Size Me for Documentaries. Each of the five subjects, they prefer the term participants because it makes them feel like less of a science experiment were present at the event in Maine and seated in the middle of the room. Arthur Agee from Hoop Dreams said it was a nice surprise to be included on the festival tour. He hadn't been invited to the Oscars the year the film was nominated. Tashara, Hall, and the five participants had been traveling to festivals on a campaign to talk about whether the kind of collaboration Harry and Meghan had received should in fact be extended to many more people who agreed to appear in documentaries. All the participants in Subject would receive a portion of the proceeds from the film's sale and served as co-producers with final approval over their segment. So, when I make money with these YouTube shows, I share them with the guests. So, I've consistently shared Super Chat revenue with key guests, generally speaking at a ratio of between 50 to 70% going to the guests and between 30 and 50% going to me. For instance, had the filmmakers remove crime scene photos of her mother's death? The town hall was hosted by Dr. Camilo Rashad a psychologist the Subject directors had hired to support the participants. Rashad wore a necklace that read dog which was short for Documentary Accountability Working Group an organization that had just spent a year and a half developing guidelines to help ethically minded filmmakers navigate a world suddenly awash in money. Is another way? Is another world? Is another relationship possible? Rashad asked the crowd. The guidelines covered everything from how to decide if you were the right person to tell a story to how to integrate anti-oppression practices into your work to ensuring the filmmaking... So, notice that their concern is entirely about getting money for themselves. The subjects, the interviewees on a documentary doesn't seem like a terribly broad ethical lens here. ...was healing, empowering and ultimately fulfilling for the people taking part in it. The conversation went on for two hours at the end of which a festival organizer grabbed the mic and said, there I say, I think there's a new paradigm emerging from this space a revolution even. Six weeks later when I met up with Tushara and several of the participants in Los Angeles subjects still had not found a buyer. Most of the people I spoke to in the documentary world had heard about the film but almost no one had seen it. We're going into meetings with the top streamers and they're all talking about it and actually changing policies around it but they won't buy it, Tushara said. It was possible to chalk this up to reticence from the streamers. Okay, let's deal with some questions from the chat. When I'm splitting Super Chat revenue, do I try to estimate the contributions of guests? Yes, I do. And if they're guests, so I know we're gonna bring on a lot of Super Chat revenue then I let them know in advance. And I've been a little taken aback that I've participated in a lot of shows that have made thousands of dollars for the hosts and it never occurred to them. They never offered to share any with me. There was one time when I said, hey, I wouldn't mind if you shared some of the Super Chats that degenerated when I come on your show and it's like, oh no, I can't do that. No, absolutely can't do that. Now the question, what do you have you debated that infrared bloke on communism? I've never heard of some infrared bloke on communism. Okay, I'm getting to end it there. Take care.