 Welcome back to Forty University. So I got some shocking news for you. A lot of powerful men have extramarital affairs. And you say, no, no, Forty, I can't believe it. That's incredible. There are powerful men with lots of access to beautiful young women who then have extramarital affairs but yes, another breaking news flash. Virtually nobody I knew in the porn industry who had the opportunity to have lots of sex with porn stars managed to stay in a marriage, managed to sustain a marriage. It's like, no, Forty, why would having access to tons of porn stars why would that threaten the stability of a marriage? But apparently it does. Men who work with models, like non porn star models, it's very rare that they're able to sustain a marriage because men who can do, all right? Most men cannot turn down opportunities for sex with beautiful young women. And I haven't got another breaking news flash. Many bosses in entertainment are abusive. And he's like, no, Forty, how could that be? Why would the Hollywood Dream Factory, why would it foster an environment of abusive bosses? For the same reason that men who have opportunities to have affairs have a lot more affairs than men who don't. So if you work in the entertainment industry, there are so many people who want to work in the entertainment industry that they are willing to put out with more abusive behavior, right? So you will receive abusive behavior in large part depending on how much you're willing to put up with. So if you really want to work in the entertainment industry, you're very likely to put out with much more abusive behavior than if you went to work at an insurance company, right? If the work is exciting and thrilling, there are going to be a ton of people who want to do that work. And so the pay is going to be lower and the working conditions in all likelihood are going to be much more demanding. So too with journalism. There are half as many working journalists today in the United States compared to 20 years ago and 20 years ago, there were fewer than 10 years before that. So it's very difficult to find a job as a journalist in the United States. Therefore, when you do get a job, it's going to be lower paid and it's much more likely to be in an abusive environment, right? So this again, this is the power of situation. So I just read a new story about someone I know a little bit and someone whose ex-husband I know a little bit and someone with whom I have tons of friends in common. And this is the lovely Sharon Waxman and The Daily Beast as an article here, Hollywood media mogul is degrading boss from hell, her staff has said. So I think our first encounter, Sharon Waxman, about 20 years ago, she was a reporter for the Washington Post and I liked her. She seems to ask if she got in trouble for using the term wetback in an online chat. And so just a teeny little bit politically incorrect. And then she got hired by the New York Times and she ruffled some feathers there. She made some mistakes and then she went out on her own and started her own media company, The Wrap. And do you know how hard it is to start a journalism company? So they build themselves as the only independent entertainment journalism company. I presume that's got some objective meaning. I can't fully detail what that objective meaning is, but here's The Daily Beast saying Hollywood media mogul, Sharon Waxman, this woman I know is a degrading boss from hell and so it's a little bit surprising because the Sharon I know is only charming. And her then husband, now ex-husband, Claude, only charming and we have all these friends in common who are all good, decent people. And so this is the power of situation. All sorts of people who are charming in certain situations you put them under enough pressure, they become unsharving. So I rarely use profanity, but you start putting me under pressure and I start swearing like a sailor. I rarely lose my temper, but you start increasing the pressure on me and I start losing my temper more often and more severely. And so when you're trying to run a business where there's very, very small sustainable business model, like the amount of pressure that then comes onto you as opposed to operating business where there's a fairly clear, obvious business model, it would just be enormous and it will take people or otherwise kind, empathic, decent, polite, courteous, warm and turn them into monsters. And none of us are exempt from this. There are situations that will turn all of us into monsters. Just like my favorite story about the famous Israeli Holocaust survivor who was bothered by nightmares about the Holocaust. And he finally in the 1960s heard about treatment from a Dutch psychiatrist. So he went to Holland and he got the treatment and it was LSD. And so he took the LSD, I believe it was LSD and he saw in his LSD inspired vision that there would be instances where he would be the concentration camp guard and those people who were his concentration camp guards, they would be people like them would be the concentration camp inmates. And so we saw under certain circumstances anybody could become the equivalent of a concentration camp guard and under other circumstances anyone could become the equivalent of a victim. Okay, restorative justice. Okay, it organizes meetings between the victim and the offender sometimes with representatives of the wider community. So I'm sure there are instances where restorative justice is a good idea. Most examples of restorative justice, I've heard are a way to water down punishment for the person who committed the crime. So restorative justice in theory seems like it has many wonderful applications. In the practice examples that I have heard, most of them I find disturbing and reducing the element of punishment for the offender. Okay, Hollywood has to be abusive to many nations, not just individual people. Now Hollywood is coming to an end. I don't think Hollywood is coming to an end. Some good things come out of Hollywood. Yes, many good things come out of Hollywood. Okay, so where are you going with this? You bring this topic of situationism up so frequently. Well, I'm reading an article about a friend who I only know as nice and warm and adorable and friendly and kind and empathic. And a friend with whom I have many, actually she's not my friend, Sharon Waxman is not my friend, but I'm acquainted with her and I have many friends who are friends with her. And so we've been part of the same social circle. And here's a story coming out about a friend who's a monster and it just makes me think in certain situations any of us will become monsters. Like it's really easy not to be a monster when you're an employee, say with a fairly easy job and say a guaranteed job, there's not much pressure on you, easy not to be a monster. But when the pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure stacks up, it's gonna take anyone who's not very nice, anyone who is usually nice and turn them into a monster. So here's the beginning of this story. It's like a scene from a bad Hollywood movie. An employee takes off a few hours from work to bring his fiance to the oncologist for a cancer checkup, only to have the tyrannical boss call and curse him out for slacking off. All right, so what gets me about this is if you take off time from work and presumably he wasn't able to give much notice for this. Like if you're unable to do the job that you were hired for, if you're not available to your boss when your boss expects you to be available, it's only normal natural for a boss to be annoyed by that. Now, many bosses are sufficiently self-disciplined that they see in the long run, it's better to have a good relationship with an employee and to allow some flexibility for employees so that they can take care of family emergencies like this. But why would any boss be happy that you with very little notice have to take time off to go care for someone else that you're gonna put a higher priority on something else rather than doing your job? I think it's completely unreasonable to expect a boss to be happy about that. Now, the wise empathic boss who looks building a good relationship with his employees will obviously want to have some flexibility, but what gets me is the sense of entitlement that many people have, such as during the pandemic, any people who had this sense of entitlement, they should not have to pay their rent. Well, what about the owner of the building? They have to pay a mortgage. Like, why should people who pay rent suddenly be exempt from moral responsibilities? So, you make a decision that disadvantages your boss. Why would you not expect your boss to be annoyed by that? All right, let's say you owed me $5,000 and it was due today and then you had a dental emergency and you needed to use all that money to have a root canal. Why would I be happy that you can't then live up to your obligations? So, according to this former employee, Sharon Waxman bellowed at him, what are you thinking? Does she not have a mother or a brother or a family member that can do that for her? Seems like a reasonable question, all right? I know when I've been an employee, my mind easily goes to 100 reasons why I should leave work early or take a few hours off. That's just effortless. It's effortless for our mind to come up with reasons to why we should be exempt from work. Generally speaking, employees try to do as little work as possible for as much money as possible while employers try to extract as much labor as possible from employees while paying them as little as possible. So, it's just classic conflict of interest. So, apparently there's a toxic environment and a culture of fear at the wrap. Well, think about what a difficult business model they're in. This is a highly competitive environment. So, breaking a story five minutes ahead of the competition may well result in many more views and clicks and revenue and prestige for your outlet. So, you take three hours off to escort your fiance to an oncology treatment. I can understand why a boss would be annoyed by that. So, Sharon Waxman's been a foreign correspondent in New York Times columnist, a Pulitzer Prize nominee. Okay, that is meaningless, Pulitzer Prize nominee. It is meaningless. Anyone can be a Pulitzer Prize nominee. So, there's paperwork that you have to fill out to, you can nominate yourself for a Pulitzer Prize. So, I see so many people, Joshua Prager, the author Joshua Prager loves to advertise himself as a Pulitzer Prize nominee. Pulitzer Prize nominee is meaningless. Anyone can be a Pulitzer Prize nominee. And a feared Hollywood reporter before starting the wrap in 2009, and many of her staffers have left because she's ruthless apparently. Infamously ruthless like the boss in the Devil Wears Prada. So, the Devil Wears Prada is based on memoir based on someone who worked for one of the fashion magazines. And so, in a highly competitive industry where there's only a tiny path to financial survival and prosperity, you're gonna be subject to a lot more abuse and pressure and negative toxic work environment than if you choose to work in a less competitive industry. So, you think you get to work in an exciting, fun, thrilling industry, but there are gonna be no downsides to that? Of course, there are gonna be downsides. Most movies are not made in Hollywood now, Luke. Hollywood is desperate. Just look at how they cater to China. Hollywood is just like the mainstream media both died the same way. Well, Hollywood's not dead and the mainstream media is not dead. They've certainly got their share of problems. So, have I seen the Holston series? How about my main man Tyson Fury? All right. What a decisive win last night. Now, I haven't watched the Holston series about a fashion designer. I did watch The Devil Wears Prada. I found that movie great fun, but in general, I didn't have much interest in the fashion industry, but this is a good series. I'm very disappointed by American Crime Story, the latest installation, because the first installation was so good on the O.J. Simpson trial. I learned so much by watching that series and provided all sorts of unexpected perspectives and anecdotes and insights that I wasn't aware of and inspired me to then go read the Jeffrey Turbin book upon which it was based. Then season two was an absolute disaster on some fashion designer. I heard it was terrible, so I didn't even bother to watch. And then, okay. So, Holston has similar themes, ultra competitive industry. Yeah. Also, I would assume with fashion, you can set the trend or catch a trend, catch the wave, one moment, and then have a whole bunch of strikeouts. It's like Kurt Bellinger. He was an MVP, I think. Yeah, that was a great fight. So, in the third round, it looked like Tyson Fury was going to knock out Wilder and knocked him down, and Wilder looked like he was on his last feet. And then, in the fourth round, Deontay Wilder comes back and knocks Fury down twice. I mean, I did not see that coming. It looked like Fury was on the ropes. It looked like Wilder was about to win. So, in the third round, look clearly like Fury was going to win, looked like he was going to win in the third round. And then, in the fourth round, Deontay Wilder knocks Fury down twice, and Fury looks like he's on his last legs, and he's essentially saved by the bell. And then Fury comes out, and by I think round six, Fury looks the fresher, more aggressive, more in control fighter. And then Fury just beat him down from there. So, terrific fight. So, yeah, Kurt Bellinger, MVP, I think, was it two, three years ago? And then, just one of the worst hitters in baseball right now. But he's been coming through big in the playoffs. So he only hit 165 in the regular season, but now batting well. And Julio Urias, that guy, that guy seems like the epitome of Marcho, right? Didn't he get into a little bit of trouble for knocking around his old lady? But that guy seems to have so much confidence. He's so cocky. As a Dodger fan, it gives me a great feeling to see this guy taking the mound. Like, I just love his demeanor of confidence. Big win for the Dodgers last night, nine to two. Big win for the UCLA Bruins. We're now four and two on the season. And let me get back to the subject here. Okay, talks about the environment at the wrap. It was demoralizing and degrading. Well, how much are you willing to take? If you stay in a demoralizing and degrading relationship or environment, that's on you. Right, the first examples of demoralizing and degrading behavior, that's not on you. But if you allow someone to repeatedly degrade you, that's 100% on you, right? You stick around, you don't stand up for yourself. You permit degrading behavior, that's on you. I would have to emotionally shut down and smile and not. No, you didn't have to do anything. You could have stood up for yourself or you could have left. So apparently Sharon Waxman had screaming outbursts at employees. So I rarely scream, but you put me under enough pressure. I start screaming. I think there are very few people who'd be exempt from screaming under certain circumstances. She engaged in demeaning behavior. Guess what? When I've had girlfriends who permitted me to demean them, I demean them. When I have girlfriends who did not permit me to demean them, I did not demean them. So we have this profound effect on other people. Berated employees for dealing with family emergencies during work hours. Well, that's probably a bad strategy. It's a self-destructive strategy for a boss. But I can understand why a boss would be annoyed when an employee can't do the job that they have contracted to do. Like why would a boss be thrilled if you don't show up to work because of quote unquote family emergency? And how often are employees abusing family emergency? You can always get time off by saying you've got back pain. There's no like empirical test that shows you don't have back pain. So just as often as employers perhaps to mean or berate employees for family emergencies, I think probably more often than that, employees take advantage of quote unquote family emergencies to screw the boss. Threat one staffer for working from home to care for their injured child. Well, if your boss needs you to be in the office and you can't be in the office, if you can't do the job that you agreed to do, then why would a boss not be annoyed? Okay, one former rap writer says, I've been around CEOs and politicians and powerful people and Sharon Waxman is the scariest person I've ever met. Okay, that may be true. And I think all this does reflect on some self-destructive and unfortunate tendencies by Sharon Waxman, but I think this probably says a lot about this human being that maybe Sharon Waxman, I know with women particularly, I know many women girlfriends have very troubled relationships with their mothers and then they take these troubled relationships into the workplace and then they report their boss, female boss to HR for abusive and demeaning and degrading behavior and then they tell me, oh, all my friends said, you're so brave for reporting your boss to HR. And my reaction would be, I didn't know. I didn't know if you were brave, if you did the right thing, the wrong thing. I didn't know, but I just noticed many women that I've known well perpetuate their relationships with their mothers into the workplace and sometimes their relationships with their fathers. So I've known this one, like beautiful, smart woman who had everything going for her she filed a sexual harassment complaint in her workplace and her life just spiraled down here where she lost the complaint, she lost the job and she just looked like an absolute wreck. So she went from this beautiful, intelligent woman who seemed to have everything going for her to an absolute wreck five years later after losing her case. Okay, situation at the whack, the rap has been made more frustrating because Sharon Waxman's ex-husband Claude so this is the rap's human resource at department. Okay, that's weird. Have your ex-husband serve as HR, right? That's weird, that's pathological. Like, that's a terrible decision by Sharon Waxman and like she deserves to be rigged over the calls for that. Okay, Sharon Waxman after the beast reached out to interview her, she gathered staff as for a meeting in which she promised to do better and she gave everybody a day off. So the rap has established itself as one of Hollywood's most influential and widely read trade publications. So do you think that the rap, this independent journalism startup that needs to establish itself as one of Hollywood's most influential and widely read trade publications by not being super competitive, which will involve some tension and some likely some berating, degrading and demeaning behavior, right? The more tension you work in, the more likely people are to engage in these kinds of behaviors. So the outlet has won numerous journalism awards, it's had numerous scoops. Well, how do you get scoops by working hard? That's how you succeed in a highly, highly, highly competitive industry where there's only a very narrow path through prosperity. You have to work much harder than in a non-competitive industry. Okay, she's the only female sole owner of a trade publication in Hollywood. She runs it with an iron fist. Well, probably if she ran it with a less iron fist, it may not be as successful. Okay, one staffer says, terrified to make a mistake because you get publicly shamed or privately shamed. Okay, so when a boss publicly or privately shames you, that's going to generally have a bad effect on morale. So sometimes it can be appropriate, but yeah, it can definitely be abusive, but you only get the amount of shaming that you put up with. So Waxman's verbal tirades were a gross abuse of power. Yeah, probably. But again, note the situation. So you're saying people should leave Australia to stop their abuse. Australians were not abused by being in a lockdown. Australians had about one fiftieth the COVID death rate per capita as United States of America. Most Australians supported government policies of lockdown and vaccination. So American right wing media has tried to whip up hysteria about how awful it is in Australia, but most Australians don't feel that way. Every government policy comes with benefits and losses. So most Australians believe the benefits of government policies with regard to COVID more than outweigh the losses of personal freedom. So I'm not an expert in public health policy. Seems to me though, a country like Australia with about one fiftieth the per capita death rate of the United States has probably done some things right. Australia will not let people leave the nation. Yeah, they restrict people coming or leaving the country because social distance, it's a form of social distancing and it's an effective policy it would seem to reduce COVID infections. So sometimes you have to restrict people's freedoms to accomplish some other aim. So George W. Bush for example, he thought that like everybody just longs for freedom. That freedom is God's gift to humanity. Everybody longs for freedom. Well, there are often values that people put higher than freedom, such as survival, such as their friends, family acquaintances or just fellow citizens not dying of COVID. A lot of people are willing to sacrifice some personal freedom to reduce the COVID death rate. So I've just read the best book I've read on the 2003 Iraq war came out in 2020. Terrific book to start a war how the Bush administration took America into Iraq. It's by Robert Draper. And he talks very sharp character analysis in this book. So he talks about George W. Bush and it noted that the information he received was not always as important as how he received it because he would filter like almost all of us through the narrow mesh filters of his experience. So beginning with his first campaign for Congress in 1978, the abiding through line to all of George W. Bush's politics has been his embrace of individual liberty. So he repeatedly cited freedom as God's gift to all humanity. Well, how about life? Sometimes life is a conflicting value with freedom. Sometimes to preserve life, you have to restrict freedom such as seatbelt laws. I think seatbelt laws are probably a good idea. Seat belts, generally speaking, save lives. Seatbelt laws are a restriction on freedom to save lives. Mandating that motorcyclists wear a helmet. Restriction on freedom probably saves lives. Drunk driving laws, restrictions on freedom that saves lives, jaywalking laws. So California Governor Gavin Newsom is not entirely out to lunch. He vetoed a bill passed by the state legislature that would eliminate all jaywalking fines. Because if you don't find people for jaywalking, you're making driving that much more hazardous and challenging and difficult and annoying and time consuming because people just walk out into traffic. So jaywalking fines and laws against jaywalking are a reduction of freedom. Come with a payoff increase in efficiency and in death rate. Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve to live an upside down Australia. So are you opposed to all restrictions on freedom for security? So you want no restrictions, say, on who can fly an airplane or get into an airplane. You want no speed limits, no drunk driving laws, no jaywalking laws. I only regret is that I have only one life to give on the freeway. I wonder how many years they will need to be saved? Well, Australia is a prosperous country. Probably the best country in the world to be an average bloke. And Australians feel generally speaking that their government is working on their behalf. And they have good reason for that. So you fly in the United States and you experience the government essentially treating you as the enemy or a potential enemy. That's the experience of flying in the United States. You fly into Australia, particularly if you're an Australian citizen and you're treated like family, right? So in America, Americans put much more value on freedom, Australians put much more value on fairness. So the relationship between the citizen and government in America is much more antagonistic and skeptical than it is in Australia. So in much publicized campaign speech at the Reagan Presidential Library in November, 1919, then Governor Bush mentioned the word freedom or free 27 times. He dared his audience to imagine a free China, a free Russia. He ticked off the intoxicating effects of free markets, free trade, free elections, freedom to worship. And of whole regions one day, giddy with a contagion of freedom. And it was with those beliefs that he went to war in Iraq in 2003. So Bush had this idea that the terrorist primary objective was to destroy America's freedom, which is nonsense. America's freedom had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda's attack on America. Al-Qaeda's attack on America 9-11 was for three primary reasons. One, the presence of American troops on Saudi soil for the First Gulf War. And two, was American disproportionate support for Israel. So the 9-11 attacks were based on American policies and absolutely nothing to do with Americans' love of freedom, right? But many conservatives, George Bush, had the idea that 9-11 terrorists, their primary objective was to destroy America's freedom. And Saddam hates America. Therefore, Saddam hates freedom. Therefore, Saddam is a terrorist bent on destroying America and its freedom. Now, Saddam is saying it was not genocidal. Like he would kill people who threatened his power, but he never embarked on widespread genocide. So Iraq, whose citizens are often referred to as the most bloodthirsty and cruel in the world, probably needs a very strong leader to keep their country together. Why is freedom black or white all or nothing? I hope they find some gray. They gave up a lot of gun rights. Yes, they did. They gave up a lot of gun rights about 20 years ago. So of course there's gray in freedom. I don't think you need to really worry about Australia. The relationship between Australia and its government is far more harmonious than what Americans have. There's far more social cohesion and social trust in Australia than there is in the United States. Now, I'm not saying Australia is a superior country to the United States, but yeah, there are areas where they have something superior to what we have in the United States. Just like Americans with a veneration of freedom are afforded some liberties that Australians don't have. So we have about the freest press in the world. So I love this book to start a war how the Bush administration took America into Iraq. So it talks very keen character analysis leading of Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, talked about how his desire for dominance would hinder his desire for information. But around President Bush, he became a model of self-restraint. So this builds on my topic earlier. So all sorts of people under certain conditions will be models of self-restraint. You change those situations and they become tyrannical. That's like Donald Rumsfeld. He was like a model of self-restraint to the president, but for everyone who is below him, he was a tyrant. He was horrible. So that should not be surprising. There is no such thing as moral character because our moral character changes depending on the situation that we're in. Who we are changes depending on the situation that we're in. Who I am talking to now is a little bit different when I'm talking to friend A or friend B or when I'm in synagogue or when I'm in a 12-step meeting or when I'm at work or when I'm at the beach. The situation will determine in large part my character. So President Bush was at a loss to find, figure out why anyone would find fault with his very genius secretary of defense. But that's because Donald Rumsfeld showed a completely different side of himself to President Bush than he showed to everybody else. So there are many things that would tick off Donald Rumsfeld, but there are only a few that were absolutely guaranteed. And so one was to assume that alliances was something never to be tampered with. So Rumsfeld's rule was the mission determines the coalition. Don't let the coalition determine the mission. Well, sometimes the mission should determine the coalition and sometimes the coalition should determine the mission. Depends on circumstance. And then another grave mistake with Donald Rumsfeld was to assume that some small decision would be unworthy of his time. This was almost never the case. Any decision of even the slightest significance needed to be decided, the secretary of defense wanted to know about it and early so that he could shape it. So he had to approve daily Department of Defense minutia which destroyed morale, right? I had a boss who would watch over me when I'd replace paper in the copy machine. Like a micromanaging boss just would drive me crazy. It's horrible for morale. So Rumsfeld wanted to make every single decision. You work for someone like that, it is soul destroying. So every mission throughout the world would grind to a halt as Donald Rumsfeld would squint at it and make a decision. So CIA director George Tannard, he was appointed by Bill Clinton but he got along really well with George Bush because George Tannard had good people skills. So this is an example of something that I think we all have in daily life. The CIA and its director George Tannard wanted to maintain good relationships with the White House. So in part that meant telling the White House what it wanted to hear. So that's a large part of the reason why the United States went to war against Iraq in 2003 based on such 40 intelligence because Tannard was very motivated to give the White House what it wanted to hear. So there was that saying, remember Bush lied, people died and then conservatives like Dennis Prager would push back and say, no, to lie means that you are saying something that you deliberately know is not true. And George Bush deliberately, genuinely believe there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But we can create situations where other people are afraid to tell us the truth because it's simply not worth it. So if someone knows that Luke will get angry if I point out that his fly is down and people are not going to point out to me that my fly is down. And so the Bush administration created an atmosphere that discouraged truth telling by the intelligence agencies. So the intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA were given the same task over and over again to find the connection between Iraq and the 9-11 attacks. Now there was no connection between Saddam Hussein, Iraq and the 9-11 attacks. But the CIA and other intelligence agencies were given this task over and over and over again, right? And people wanting to put their hours into thwarting the next terror attack, but they're being distracted by the Bush administration, insisting that they find connections that simply aren't there. So intelligence agencies are wasting time with all these pointless inquiries to find connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda. And it's just wore people down. So the CIA was founded in 1947 implicitly to avert another pole harbor. And you can say the agency failed in this mission on 9-11, but the CIA had issued repeated warnings the new administration about bin Laden's fatwa against America about the system blinking red. And the bin Laden was planning to attack United States of America. This was in the President Bush's daily brief in August of 2001. But the Bush administration, and as Henry Kissinger said, when he admonished the CIA in 1973 after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, yeah, you warned me, but you did not persuade me. So somehow it was the CIA's fault that they did not persuade President Bush about the seriousness of bin Laden and Al Qaeda's plans to attack the United States. Well, is that primarily a fault of the CIA or is that primarily a fault of the Bush administration that did not want to hear what it did not want to hear? And I think that's true for all of us. We all have people who are trying to tell us things or would like to tell us things, but they know if they tell us these things they'll just set us off. And so they don't bother sharing with us hard truths that we need to hear. So for example, if someone had persuaded me to start eating meat in my teens or offered me ways of eating meat such as put a little bit frozen certain types of meat into a strawberry smoothie so I won't taste it. Now, it could have saved me a life of health problems, but I don't think I would have listened. So the Bush administration underprepared for 9-11, right? They were given repeated warnings that Al Qaeda wanted to take America. They did not take these warnings seriously. They underprepared for 9-11. And then after that, they went to the opposite extreme spending all this time and resources imagining potential threats that weren't actually there. So underreaction to 9-11 leads to overreaction following 9-11. So the thing about intelligence is you can always find what you want somewhere on the spectrum. And so too with regard to vaccines or whatever your pet theories are, you can always find some evidence for any pet theory that you have somewhere on the spectrum. But the full spectrum of intelligence data began to lose its primacy after 9-11 because policymakers fell prey to allowing their imagination to serve as a substitute for information. They preferred the fantastical over the factual. And in the face of inconclusive evidence, they took license in promiscuous speculation. They institutionalized thinking outside of the book, which is just another way of saying more imagination. So for Secretary of State Colin Powell and his crew, George W. Bush tried to make up for in principle what he lacked in knowledge. And again, I think this is common in everyday life. Other people are lazy. Like George W. Bush was fundamentally lazy, but he tried to make up for his lack of work ethic by being very strong in his principles. Well, principles won't always make up for a lack of work and a lack of knowledge. Sometimes principles are more important than knowledge, but sometimes knowledge is more important than principles. So when Bush would say things, either with us or you're with the terrorists, he didn't think through the implications of what he was saying. And he didn't want to hear anyone explain to him the implications of what he was saying. He just wanted to stand on principle, but it led to disastrous policy. Colin Powell told his staff that George W. Bush tended to make a decision based on the last person left in the room with him. And Colin Powell was not willing to engage with George W. Bush on a frat boy level. So he was rarely the last person left in the room with George W. Bush. Condi Rice, George W. Bush had a very close relationship. She would see the president many, many times a day. They were both big football fans. French president Jacques Chirac was very skeptical of claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. So Colin Powell made this speech before the UN in 2003, quoting like British intelligence and American intelligence. Jacques Chirac was quite dismissive. He said, intelligence agencies tend to intoxicate each other with worst case scenarios. I think that's a profound insight and it's also true to our daily life. We tend to intoxicate each other. I'm 55 years of age. When I think back over my life, I'd see all these times when I was just filled with enthusiasm. And so many of my enthusiasm was simply based on delusion. Like I was really enthused about running marathons. And I was never going to be a great marathon runner due to the shape of my feet and the shape of my structure. So generally speaking, the bigger the brain, the slower the runner. Right, so God gave me a good brain. He did not give me the ability to run very fast because the bigger the brain, the wider the hips needed to support the brain which leads to a less efficient running stride. The smaller the brain, the lighter the head, the narrower the hips, the more efficient the running stride. So I've started reading the new Jonathan Franzen novel, Crossroads. And I love this little bit about God. So it talks about the high IQ son, Perry. So one boring summer afternoon, he'd gone through one of his father's religious magazine. So his father was an associate pastor with a ballpoint pen and he replaced every reference to God with Steve. Aren't they genius athletes? Yes, they're a genius athletes. Generally speaking, the bigger the brain, the slower the runner. Are there exceptions to that? Yes. So he would replace every reference to God with Steve. So who was Steve? Why were otherwise sane people going on and on about Steve? But the youth director had an idea so elegant that Perry wondered if there might just be something to it. His idea was God is to be found in relationships, not in liturgy and ritual. And the way to worship God and to approach God was to emulate Christ in his relationships with his disciples by exercising honesty, confrontation and unconditional love. Isn't that what we're doing here? I mean, isn't this dialogue that we have here, this relationship that we have here, isn't it like the epitome of Christ likeness? I mean, isn't this just like Jesus with his disciples? Now here we've got 40 with his disciples. I mean, is not our relationship filled with honesty, confrontation and unconditional love? So Perry devised a theory about how all religion works. Along comes a leader who is uninhibited enough to use everyday words in a new and strong and counterintuitive way, which emboldens the people around him to use this rhetoric themselves. And this very act of using it creates sensations unlike anything they used to in everyday life. So they find they know who Steve is. Like that description of religion. Finally, an explanation of my slow running time. I was thinking it was my stubby legs where you've got stubby legs and wide hips to support that big brain of yours. So you may not be the world's fastest runner, but wow, think about that cognitive ability that you flash. The new climate rule on YouTube, they walked it back. Oh, JS says it's enough to chill discussion. I joined Bitshoot, but it's loaded with low view screaming videos. Luke, are Ms. Info rules, money and ban threats the way to shape thought? If so, selling certain medical treatment and climate lockdowns is the plan of 2022? No, I think there are many ways to understand YouTube's restrictions. I think the best way to understand YouTube's restrictions is that YouTube is a business and they want to maximize revenue and profit and the way they do that is to try to create a certain atmosphere on the site that is conducive to people who want to advertise. So I don't think YouTube's restrictions are primarily ideological. I think they're primarily based on business considerations. Just like if a business mandates diversity training, I don't think that's primarily based on ideology. It's primarily based on bureaucratic rules that government bureaucracies will be less likely to investigate you for discrimination and the like and for civil rights violations if you mandate diversity training. So for the overwhelming number of businesses who mandate critical race theory and diversity training, they're doing it to reduce their legal liability. Just the same reasons why colleges and universities are contact tracing students and trying to reduce student freedoms to socialize, to reduce the spread of COVID. It's not as Michael Tracy alleges because big universities, big colleges just want to control students' lives. They're just trying to reduce their legal liability. I'm assuming that most people who are watching this are not running businesses with a lot of employees. The bigger your business, the more legal liabilities you have if you don't follow civil rights law. And so the way to reduce your chances of being prosecuted for violations of civil rights law are to mandate things like diversity training. Another way to reduce your legal liability if your business is to mandate things like vaccination. So I don't think businesses are mandating vaccinations because they're just so inherently pro-vax. They simply want to reduce their legal liabilities. So if you really want to make change to this, you have to change the legal system. My preference would be we get rid of all civil rights law. Yeah, maybe college administrators are just crazy authoritarians, but I don't think there's that, they have that track record. I mean, they've allowed co-ed dorms for five decades now. That's not a crazy authoritarian thing to do. People want to reduce their legal liability in a litigious society like the United States of America. If you want to change this business behavior, then you have to change the incentive structure within the legal system. So much of what we think is evil is other people acting in their self-interest. And we're too lazy to invest a little bit of empathy on what are the incentive structures that these other people are facing that these bosses and businesses and colleges are facing? What are their incentive structures? And how do the incentive structures that they work under, how do they account for their otherwise unfathomable decisions? Tesla is moving headquarters to Austin. Is this a response to California's workness and outrageous legal judgments? I think it's a response to incentives. So I would assume that, well, I know Texas has much lower taxation rates and is generally a friendlier, less regulated environment for business. But California is not a dystopia. It's just got a different model from Texas with different strengths and different weaknesses. Different states have different gifts. Okay, here's a story that I don't know how to react to. Britain's distasteful soccer sell-out. So many of Britain's top soccer clubs have been bought by Arab countries with poor human rights records. So how horrible is that? If you're a fan, you're probably gonna be thrilled that your team is now gonna have more money. The critique is that these Arab nations are buying these soccer clubs, not just in England, but also in Australia and around the world, to try to launder their reputation. And there's much hand-wringing about these Arab nations, buying English Premier League soccer clubs to launder their reputation. But does it really launder Saudi Arabia or United Arab Emirates or any of these Arab countries? Does it really launder their reputations? I don't think it does. So I'm not sure that this is a bad thing. If a despotic country wants to invest billions of dollars in your community, should you say no? Now, when it comes to gambling, my instinct is yes, say no, because there are so many harms from gambling, financial harms, family harms, psychological harms, health harms, social harms. So yeah, I would say no to gambling. I don't like casinos. I don't like the expansion of legalized gambling. I don't like all the gambling ads in sports now because I think gambling is so overwhelmingly destructive. So I've heard that people who take up alcohol 10% become alcoholics, but people who take up gambling about a third become gambling addicts. There are two types of people in this world, those that want to control other people and those that want to control their environment. Everybody wants to control other people. If you believe in something, you want to support it and push it. It's just that your desire to control people may be in certain areas and other people's desire to control people will be in different areas, but everybody wants to control people. Situationism strikes again. Yes, a response to incentives is situationism. So I'm going to bring this full circle and you can say 40, you brought up so many amazing insights today. How on earth can you tie it all together? Well, the daily beast got a response from the rap and the daily beast is owned by Penske Media, which is substantially funded by Saudi Arabia. Okay, so the organization doing this investigative piece on Sharon Waxman and the rap and its alleged abusive toxic environment is largely funded by Saudi Arabia, a government that murders journalists. So I'm going to bring this full circle of government that murders journalists. So this is what Sharon Waxman's deputy said, I'd be curious to know how many of the people you've spoken to have complained about Sharon Waxman at now working for J. Penske or Penske Media, which is funded in large part by Saudi Arabia. We're one of the last independent trades and the only one that isn't funded by a Saudi government that murders journalists. Okay, that's a pretty good response. So the outfit that's investigating this toxic work environment is funded substantially by a Saudi Arabian government that dismembers journalists like Adan Khashoggi. Then another interesting story. So today, two thirds of China lacks sufficient energy to have a normal life and normal industry. I mean, two thirds of China, I mean, that's enormous. So an energy crisis is gripping the world. United States is on net and energy producer more than energy consumer. So this is probably more good than bad for the United States. Energy is so hard to come by right now. Some provinces in China are rationing electricity. Or two thirds of China is rationing electricity. So India is rationing power. So the United States is gonna be fine because we're a net energy producer. Russia is gonna be fine. It's gonna be good for the oil rich Arab states and for people who produce liquid natural gas. It's very bad for China, very bad for India and Japan will have to pay higher prices for energy. But can you imagine two thirds of China does not have sufficient energy to have normal industry and a normal life, right? Curbs on power consumption have been implemented across two thirds of China interrupting factory production in daily lives. So China just cascading problems. I mentioned my prediction that I didn't believe China would still be an entity in 10 years. So China falling apart. And it seems like every day there's more horrible news coming out of China. Bye-bye.