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What Happened to Empathy? · Boomer Has It!

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: And welcome to Boomer Has It.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm JB Miller in London.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Jim Jelamis in Brooklyn, New York.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: This week we're going to talk about a human quality that's been vilified lately as weak and counterproductive by the right.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's essential for democracy and good governing and basic human understanding.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about empathy and the assaults on it lately.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Why did this come to mind for you?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Why is it that all of a sudden you said, Eureka, we need to examine empathy?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like such an important quality to me as a parent, and I'm sure you feel this way as well.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most important things I think a parent can do is to raise a child with empathy.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so at this point, we should define what we mean by this.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: I see.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: So it it it triggered your dad vibes, your dad antenna.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it did.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think it did because what I what I was truly shocked to, and we'll get into this more uh during the during the the episode, but I was truly shocked to hear people like uh Elon Musk and Stephen Miller, I mean the villains of our age, Stephen Miller especially, um assault the whole just the concept of empathy as some kind of left-wing you know weakness, um, some kind of democratic hoax, you know, to give political leverage to certain segments of the population.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: It just seemed such a cynical assault on such an important human, basic human quality, and that is to put yourself in other people's shoes.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how would you define empathy as simply as I I think a lot of people don't make the distinction between sympathy and empathy, right?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: If if your hamster died and I had a hamster that died, I'd say, uh wow, I I can sympathize with you, uh, my hamster died.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: But empathy is one you have to use your imagination, you have to imagine what it'd be like to share someone else's feelings.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: And uh our our intrepid researcher said, the definition definition I learned in school, the ability to place yourself in another person's shoes and know exactly what that other person is feeling.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Nathaniel.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh okay, that's I mean, that's good.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and and why anybody would object to that, I mean, I think it might be because um if you're a billionaire, you know, behind every uh fortune is a crime.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, if you're a billionaire, um, you're this big unwieldy thing, and when you move around, you can easily hurt people.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you don't have empathy, or you know, it may and probably helps not to have empathy if you want to amass a great fortune, depending upon how you how you amass it.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, if you the lack of empathy, I think, is diagnosable as something called sociopathy.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: But please continue.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: I know this is not only important as a parent, but as part of your school, your dating schoolboy.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it just I mean, it's just so key that if you know, and and and we we are approaching this from extremely privileged, you know, people, lucky, and I certainly in my own case, very lucky, privileged person.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And there's white privilege and there's middle class privilege privilege, and I went to a lot certain as I went to some private schools, you know.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: I I I've I've really lucked out in in my life, um, in you know, countless ways.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I would hope I haven't lost, you know, and I and I can certainly be a better person, but I I would hope I haven't lost sight of people who are you know suffering and in a much worse um you know much worse off than you know either of us are.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: But we have this is this is a key issue now, and it it shouldn't have to be, but we have the most the most powerful man in the world, our esteemed leader, Trump has no empathy, and that is so dangerous for someone in that position, for all of us, for that someone in that key position is lacking empathy.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think anything Trump has ever done in his entire life that I have seen, and I've been following Trump in one way or another for 40 years as a New Yorker.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we were more aware of Trump before a lot of other people were.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, in all the time I've I've sort of been aware of Trump, I've never seen him um uh uh engaged in a single action that displayed any empathy whatsoever.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is worse than his corruption, although it's probably part of it.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the idea that um you know he can so easily uh wipe out you know USAID, which will cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of uh people around the world and probably in the US as well, um, you know, that it's a completely abstract notion to him because he can't he can't put himself in anyone else's uh anyone else's shoes.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's literally trying to put his cabinet in his shoes, uh, but anyway, that's another thing.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: They're empathetic.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: But why why do you think how would you so you how would you define empathy and then why do you think it's important, Jim?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, like I said, empathy is is a you know, it it's a skill to project how someone might be feeling.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we we say in modern parlance, read the room, right?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And um, that's so it's a it's a kind of a skill.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm aware that it's also under attack, it's been codified.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I want to make a distinction, and why don't you share something with me?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: When you when you were a schoolboy, you saw an inscription somewhere in your school by a certain someone.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Could you tell us about that inscription?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that certain someone, please?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on the edge of my seat, mother of God.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: This was the um, this was the not the slogan, what do you call it?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: This was the the um motto.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, thank you.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: This was the motto of the prep school, the the prep school I went to in London as a kid, and I've never forgotten it.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the uh the slogan was the motto was sorry, the motto was a child's mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was actually um attributed, now I realize or discovered attributed to Plutarch.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but how does that affect how does that relate to to empathy?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's two there's two schools of thought.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Get as much knowledge as you can, get as much accumulate as much wealth as you can before you die.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um the other is is your is your brain something that's just a funnel for knowledge, or is it is it a is it a uh you know a processing unit?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a kind of you know, just does knowledge fuel something creative?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's maybe the difference.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And weren't you telling me about Jeremy Bentham too?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so Jeremy, Jeremy Bentham is is an interesting uh figure.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was a British uh, I guess, philosopher in the um early 19th century.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: He died in 1832.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was a jurist and social reformer, and he's regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he defined this as fundamental, the fundamental axiom of his philosophy was the principle that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right or wrong.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a how do we interpret that?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't even think it's necessarily about empathy, but it's certainly a response to the opposite of empathy, which is an uncaring detachment, indifference source of cruelty.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think what he was saying, and it's a it's a very um, yeah, it's a very sort of utilitarian uh concept that um it's the for the greatest good, um the it we should it we should be enacting a policy of governing for the greatest good, for the greatest number of people.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean, I guess some people could interpret that as socialism or communism, um, or other people could interpret that as um just you know doing unto others as you would do to yourself.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's also the uh the idea of the commonwealth, commonwealth being groups that come together that share wealth and prosperity, not just for the present, but for the future.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's also the uh the you know the the maxim uh all uh all tides raise all boats.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: What is it?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: High tides raise all boats.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so it's you know, yeah, yeah, inherent inherently there's a this idea of sharing, but again, there there's um you know, tell us how it's coming under attack, JB.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're a sensitive soul.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what's that?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many things discussed here because that were as you were saying that I was thinking how that, you know, that I think Jeremy Bentham uh was also could also be talking about um democracy, because in a democracy we all have a chance to vote as a people on what we uh on the way we think our country should be governed.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so we currently have that's that's for the common, the greatest common good, right?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I would say.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um maybe being being naive in that.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: But there are forces now in government who are trying to you know skirt that and and not worry about elections and say that they know what is best for everyone.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: But their concept of everyone is a very narrow, is a more narrow group than I would consider everyone.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, gosh, we I don't want to go down too many rabbit holes, but the idea that if you only really you only really care about say white people or heritage Americans are all these terrible terms that uh you know are we hearing these days, um it's just a real lack of empathy.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: The idea that you can round up uh people who have lived in the US for you know years, sometimes decades, who've built lives, uh families, um, and just tear them apart for this abstract you know notion.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think that I think that I think that uh displays an absolute lack of any any empathy.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Am I being naive or am I being superficial about this?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Stephen Miller would probably say that.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it that's why I think empathy is important because it it applies to so many aspects of our lives.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's and so if you're missing it and you're in a key government position, or you're the most powerful man in the world, um, you don't care about um you know bombing uh another country or you know the people who are killed in the middle of the year.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or letting people starve or letting epidemics, letting epidemics run out of control.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, fully preventable, fully preventable.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well in Africa there's uh what an outbreak of um uh what's it called?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: E.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Ebola without it's a strain, it's a species of Ebola that has no vaccine.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Ebola epidemic.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think uh probably would have they'd be better at containing it if the USAID hadn't been cut as much as it had.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um anyway, that's another rabbit hole.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I just think to me, it's just such a such a basic human condition or emotion.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's an emotion, right?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're right, that you have to imagine it involves imagination.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be able to imagine um the feelings and the suffering of other of other people, and and um it's also, I mean, I I abstractly you might even say that empathy is a form of giving, right?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: You're giving someone your attention, your imagination to understand their feelings that are not your own.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, those of us in long-term relationships need to learn empathy every day, but that's for another podcast.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: But that's a good point because it's every day.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that you you you display that you use.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is an emotion that you use every day, or at the keeping using the word emotion.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's not quite what I'm looking at.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's not quite the right word, but it's a it's a um it's just it's something that it you use every day in your everyday life.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and I and I'm just shocked that it's under assault.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and um, and you looked into this, and our our researcher looked into it.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And um one of the key figures who is assaulting it is now the richest man in the world.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, before before we get to him, uh there is someone else.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think it's helpful to say, you know, how do we how can we say that empathy is under assault?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: And uh before this famous rich man, there was someone named Ben Shapiro.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he's a prominent American conservative, he's one of these sort of quick change artists, rapid-fire debaters like like the late Charlie Kirk.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: He's he has founded the news organization, a highly biased right-wing news organization called the Daily Wire.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And he was famous for saying facts don't care about your feelings, but that got spun off and misinterpreted uh into a bumper stipper.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Skipped, sorry, how do you say that?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Bumper sticker.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Bumper sticker.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Rubber baby bunker stipple.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, you'll see you'll see bumper stickers on highways in America that say nobody cares about your feelings.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: So this is absolutely this attack on attack on empathy's actually absolutely been codified.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: But to get back to your earlier point, yes, there was a famous, there is a famous man on a famous podcast who said a famous thing.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Take it away, JB.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Monami, Senor Miller.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, what did you what was that bumper sticker?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody cares about your feelings.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody cares about your feelings.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's a frequent, it frequently appears on bumper stickers.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen interstate?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen it.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: I see it quite a lot as we take, you know, we're there's a big country.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we can we drive to Ohio, but when we drive to Ohio, you you know, you end up in Amsterdam.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh right, yes, right.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Although I've never driven to Amsterdam.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: But but I mean it that's a bumper sticker I've not seen in England or in France.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: I guess it would be in French.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not quite sure what the French would be.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: But there are fewer bumper stickers here anyway.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is more of an American politicizing your car.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's an American concept.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I'm sorry, when he said that, I'm still getting my head around that.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: No one cares about your field.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it almost sounds like a a four-year-old ranting, you know.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it doesn't sound like a grown-up or even a teen, you know.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, anyway.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I mean, that's an interesting supposition because what if it what if there's a backlash?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Or what it, what if the person who says nobody cares about your feelings all of a sudden has a moment of crisis and realizes nobody cares about his or her feelings who have that bumper sticker.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's a supposition, a supposition here that we might consider uh when we talk about people like John Osoff, um, either today or in another another podcast.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: But um, let's just get back to the the most famous anti-empathy.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, here we go.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: So Elon Musk, now the most uh the wealthiest guy in the world, he stated the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy and the empathy exploit.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: He described empathy as a bug, a bug being weaponized to make people act against their own or society's best interest.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: That is what he considers is his own or society's best interest.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was an interesting term using the word bug, that it's a bug, not a feature.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because that the word bug is now most often associated with errant software.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it was, it's he was in a way just Elon Musk was in a way describing the human condition as a computer.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I probably he probably thinks thinks in those terms.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: So uh that just floored me.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that just uh I didn't uh so the right wing has been labeling empathy as a kind of virtue signaling.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And how would you describe virtue signaling?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and there are people there there is maybe a pernicious aspect to virtue signaling, um, but but uh but to label empathy as virtue signaling is uh true.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well it's also it isn't it the attack on empathy is is really originates with people who are empirical thinkers, right?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: They they look at everything as a form of logic, nothing's wrong with logic, rationality, um, basic building blocks of arithmetic, but you know, they're they they miss what's between the lines, the nuances and the subtlety, unable to read the room, really.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's fair to say.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's fair to say.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that this the I couldn't help thinking, and and and uh maybe this is a leap that uh I haven't uh expressed clearly enough, but I mean I can't help thinking that if you if you really um uh consider empathy a kind of virtue signaling and a and a and an abstract concept that has you know no no place in in your in your society, then that's a pretty short walk to to eugenics and and putting um people who are physically challenged or mentally challenged, you know, out of you know, actually killing them, you know, like the Nazis did.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean to me that's that I mean is that is that going too far?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't think that stretches the imagination.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: You might also throw in that you know there's an authoritarian streak.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: I know better than you do because you're you're soft and sensitive.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I need a trillion dollars, so clearly I know what's best for everyone, and I can make that happen.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh and and I think so I think we could talk about him as a poster child, as someone who doesn't believe in empathy and advocates against it.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's worth talking about who he is, and to me, um a huge disappointment.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, before he went all MAGA, he was many, many people admired Elon Musk because not only did he sort of create a battery-charged car company, which I've heard is actually a mediocre car company, but it's still the innovation is still dazzling.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he has something called the Boring Project, uh the Boring Project, which is still underway.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: He wants to go to space, which I find less less impressive.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: The SpaceX IPO is all the rage right now, and Wall Street is at it like hogs at the trough.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: And if you listen to someone like Scott Galloway, what did uh Scott Scott Galloway say Scott Galloway points out that um with some cooperation with the SEC and the the exchanges, they they waived some rules um that are very technical um but meaningful, which sort of sort of uh moves the goalpost for this IPO.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um but that's again that's that goes we can go down in the weeds on that, but we won't.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Rabbit hole.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, let's just do a profile of who he is.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: He's fathered 14 children with four wives.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um where does he come from?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: He's South African originally.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: His mother was a fashion model, his father uh was a businessman, but famously uh a white supremacist and um uh admitted racist.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: There are there are many videos where you can hear him talking about the superiority.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Of the white race.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: But interestingly, and I have to get give credit to the great historian Jill Lapore, before Musk and Doge, and before Musk and MAGA, she created a very interesting podcast all about Musk.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: And in it, she revealed how he was influenced by his grandfather, who was Canadian.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And he was part of a technocracy movement, technocracy movement.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: His name was Josh, Joshua Haldeman.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he argued that liberal democracy had failed, and society should instead be managed by scientists and engineers.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, could you imagine what scientists and engineers would do for our culture?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: I just music would be all music would be like the music of Boston, and maybe the artwork would be Norman Rockwell.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I like Norman Rockwell, or it would be whatever.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, he was an authoritarian tech-driven political and economic ideology.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he he was fascinated by the letter X, and he believed that um he thought people should have alphanumeric codes over traditional names.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: So he inherited this fascination with X from his grandfather.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so I thought, in the interest of maybe looking at the future, we might think about, we might overlay the life of Elon Musk with that of Ebenezer Scrooge and think about the ghost of Christmas present, the ghost of Christmas past, and the ghost of Christmas future.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would say Musk himself um is on some pretty shaky ground at the moment.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's extremely wealthy, appears to have a drug addiction, and again, uh an emotional midget, he's worth 1.4 trillion, probably, which is 1.6 percent of GDP.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: By contrast, by contrast, there's Andrew Carnegie.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh in constant dollars, Andrew Carnegie was worth 460 billion, 1.4 percent of GDP.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And but at some point, Andrew Carnegie um he began to understand that greed, like Scrooge, was ruining not only relationships but society, and he was a huge philanthropic force in the United States.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, interject, please.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, all right.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, Andrew Carnegie, he's known for um Carnegie Hall, and uh and he built famously built museum, uh he built libraries around the country because he had access to a free library, I think, when he was a boy in Scotland, and that uh contributed to his education.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: What he wasn't was good to his employees, and he could have taken some of his fortune like Jeff Bezos could, and just treat his employees better.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: That seemed to be an abstract notion to him.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's far better than Elon Musk, and he, yes, he had a flat, he died a poor man.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's yeah, I don't think he had any um children, and so he won he gave away his fortune, but he didn't give much of it to the people who helped create his fortune with the people who worked for him.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, in fact, um in the steel mill riots, the steel riots, the when the river ran blood and uh ran red in in um the the Allegheny Valley Pittsburgh area, uh he famously went fly fishing in Scotland while Henry Clay Frick oversaw the rioters.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: He told Frick to deal with it.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't want to, he wanted he sort of washed, he wanted to keep his hands clean.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: And um yeah, that's right.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: But but um yeah, but but he it certainly looks favorable, he's a it's a favorable comparison to Elon Musk, I think.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: So by the way, a little a little regional trivia.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you're from if you're from the Pittsburgh area, uh you say Carnegie.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: If you're from New York and you're going to listen to the symphony, you say Carnegie, Carnegie Hall, which sounds weird to a Pittsburger.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose Carnegie, is that a I didn't even know that's a Scottish name.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know where his ancestors were from, but he was from Scotland.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's an interesting comparison um to uh between Musk and Carnegie.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to hear about the ghost of Christmas future for Elon Musk?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, please.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is someone who was worth$55 billion in constant dollars, less than 0.2 percent of GDP for all of those people who are sticklers for numbers.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you recall from a Christmas Carol, he's visited by a uh silent, terrifying, hooded figure that resembles the Grim Reaper, and it shows Scrooge the lonely reality of what will happen to him if he refuses to change his miserly ways.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that that ghost, I think we would say, is Howard Hughes.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: And like Musk, he was uh Hughes was a polymath entrepreneur, he had his hands in Hollywood, aeronautics, industrial tools, he was a property developer, he was also a drug addict.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: He died on a plane in 1976 due to a codeine overdose.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and he was also malnourished.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: He he died almost maybe of a malnutrition, but um also you know a tragic, terrifying, scary figure in American society.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, one of our maybe most ignoble industrialists ever.
• 28:06
  unknown: Yeah.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: But you tell a little bit more about his his Hollywood career, don't you?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he well, he lived in Las Vegas, I think.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that there's a character based on him in um here's more trivia, in the James Bond film Um Diamonds Are Forever.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's a whole section in Las Vegas for the Howard Hughes type figure.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: He by the way, Howard Hughes is responsible really for developing Las Vegas as a property developer and investor.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: There, without Howard Hughes, we it would be a much different place.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: But please continue.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Howard Hughes is an interesting figure, should be an interesting figure to us because he he was comparable to the tech tech billionaires, the tech bros, because he was the sort of the tech guy of his time with aerodynamics.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: He could fly, he knew how to fly planes himself and he could uh could build things.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: He bought bought the RKO film studio, which was famous in the 1930s for the Fred Esther Ginger Rogers movies and Bringing Up Baby and King Kong.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was a major studio.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was um well the second rank of the major studios.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: He bought it and essentially gutted it and destroyed it.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it was uh picked up for probably a song by Lucille Ball after she'd made a fortune with her I Love Lucy sitcom.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And she owned RKO in the 1950s.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a big studio it had, but she owned what what was left of it, and then she sold it by the late 50s.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's the Hollywood.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: And and and when when when he gutted RKO, what did what did the public lose?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think of RKO, I think of turning on some movie, the five o'clock movie, when I was in grade school, and at the beginning seeing a title, a title card or title animation of a plane badly animated circling the globe.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, that was universal.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um no, RKO was the was the um was the radio tower.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Dee deep deep deep deep deep deep.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you're right.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: That was RKO.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean he destroyed the studio.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: All the other studios have survived uh or survived in two recent years, you know, Paramount and Columbia, it became Sony and MGM.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, MGM kind of got destroyed.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: But um no, how Jews that didn't really understand uh Hollywood.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think he may have bought the studio partly to meet Starlets.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I guess that was worth it for him.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: He did have an affair in the mid-30s with um Catherine Hepburn.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um but anyway, quantify that.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: We're rational thinkers here.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Quantify, show us proof.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Proof doesn't care about your feelings.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot quantify it.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um anyway, he's um uh I he was a when I was a kid, he was a big figure.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: I guess he must have been sort of the Elon Musk of his of his time, in a way.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: A mysterious figure who lived, a recluse who lived, you know, on the top floor of some uh casino in Las Vegas.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: He was a bizarre, he was one of these bizarre people who lived, who had a huge fortune and didn't live very well.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I guess when you become a drug addict, um it um compromises your your quality of life.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's utterly tragic.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember as a boy reading one of the one of the big weeklies, Newsweek or Time or both, and we saw photos of him right before his death.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: He had long unwashed hair, he walked around in a robe, he didn't had some phobia about his shoes and wore empty Kleenex boxes, and then there is a shocking photo of his an X-ray of his arm.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh god, yeah, with all the all of the um the uh the syringe needles stuck in his arm.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what you mean?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the one.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I forgot to add the trigger warning.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but let's give him let's give a movie recommendation while we're on Howard Hughes.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Melvin and Howard, do you remember that movie?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Jason Robards very aptly plays uh the mysterious Mr.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hughes, and he meets uh Melvin, this guy, this kind of loser guy.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's based on a real story, supposedly.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: This guy, Melvin, who picked up this hobo by the side of the road outside Vegas, gave him a ride, and had a nice conversation with him, and later was left like you know,$30 million narrowed Hughes' will.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: He buys a yacht.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is in Vegas, about a thousand miles away from the ocean.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: He buys a yacht and uh which he parks in his driveway, and even money never arrives.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's a fabulous film.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Melvin and Henry and his uh, do you remember his who his uh love interest was?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Who played the love interest?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yes, the actress uh married to Ted Danson.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what's her name?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's an early role of Mary Steenberg and as a as an entertainer at the local lounge.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: Let's live at the top waitress stripper topless, yes.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, terrific movie, very uh uh unnoticed and under praised, I believe.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think this rather dour podcast episode needs some comedy, some comedy film uh recommendations.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um I actually think that I think the film could have done better if it had a better title.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Melvin and Howard?
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds a little like uh after school special or something.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: It had a cult following, but it's the people have forgotten about it.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: So there.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Another boomer has it film recommendation on the fall following up on our last uh our last pod.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, okay.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: So so how how do we how do we combat combat?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Is that the word?
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um how do we respond to this attack on empathy?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: How can we because I think I don't know if people are aware of this this attack or even quite aware of what empathy?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: When empathy is attacked, when you see a bumper sticker, like I don't care, nobody cares about your feelings.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um does that reg what's what is what is that bumper sticker expect as a as a response to that?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: What is the person driving that car?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: What what when people see that, what do you think they feel?
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I think it could only mean superiority, that they're superior, that they their their feelings, um people's feelings are trivial and they know better, and they're in a better place.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a it's a pretty uh it's a pretty vain concept.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think I mean he's not saying my feelings are important, but no one gives a crap about yours.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's the superiority because everybody has feelings.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's why I think maybe this um this strategy has has run its course, because as as the US experiences inflation, as Americans have a hard time filling the tank, as they have a hard time filling the fridge in the pantry because inflation is 4.3 percent, we're all feeling it.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there are we're going to have some negative feelings.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: And if no one cares about them, they're not going to get votes.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: And there was an interesting profile in the New York Times by Michelle Goldberg, I think it's a video profile, about the uh Georgia Senator John Ossoff.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really, she repurposes it as a way as an answer against authoritarian authoritarianism, and how John Ossoff uh and um Peter Magyar, wait, is Peter Magyar?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: Who's the Hungarian the new Hungarian leader?
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the the a name certainly that's the either the name or something close to it.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Who how they follow the same playbook.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that playbook is to accuse the people in charge of not caring, of being crooks and greedy.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think the term they're saying is coin-operated government here in the United States.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the term Mar-a-Lago mafia.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, yeah, uh uh John Osoff just um uh we just found out, I think today, that he's gonna be running against not Trump's preferred candidate, but a self-financed um billionaire, which I think sets up that race pretty nicely for Osoff in the sense that um he's running against someone that's uh exactly what he's sort of talking about, um, in a lot of ways.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, the guy's corrupt, I'm not saying that, but um this idea that um you know they uh we're looking out for that for the little guy.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um but that's it'll be interesting to see the the rhetorical volume that that that happen in in uh the peach state.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and but by the way, I just found a quote I was looking for, and um it might speak to that uh my question about the response to the uh that that bumper sticker that no one cares about your your feelings, and it's from Mel Brooks, and you've probably heard this.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: He said, tragedy is when I cut my finger.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Comedy is when I well, this is what I find online.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Comedy is when I uh tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die and break your neck.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that's sort of what the uh what that's what that bumper sticker is saying, essentially.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's the great mail books, Brooks, bringing it all together for us.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, yeah.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, okay.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: So so what is uh what's that obvious response um on a practical level to this assault on what are the what can the kids at home do to help combat this assault on on empathy?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if I if I really did my homework, I would have done a little research on the bib biblical quote, love thy neighbor, do unto others as you would do unto yourself.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, the golden rule, I believe, is how we say that.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Golden rule, all right.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Is that too simplistic?
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a starting, it's a starting position.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: I I would say so.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it right, right.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean the the point of this podcast is I think really to you know to ask, is is empathy important?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: Is it or is it really under attack?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: And if so, why?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: Who are the main players?
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: And what's what's the what's the consequence?
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and the consequence is pretty clear.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: Loss of USAID is caught wreaking havoc in other societies around the world.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we've lost uh US citizens um and non-US citizens to their deaths uh because of ICE, uh mismanagement, incompetence, and brutality.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um thousands of Iranians are dead.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, there's death, human pestilence.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's that's um a result of people not caring who are in charge.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: I rest my case.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the case rests.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Should we um wrap it up there and go on to um uh uh headquakes, or do you have anything else you want to add?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think one little thing I think I would add about Musk is that through his Starlink, he had he really exerted control over the Ukraine war.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: And because he wouldn't get paid, he suspended the Starlink system, which put Ukrainian fighters at an extreme disadvantage because it's this kind of empirical thinking.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't get paid, I don't I don't provide a service, and that's who we're going to endow with 1.4 or you know a trillion dollars in the near future.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that's just my final thought before we go to headquakes.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: And could we remind our audience what a headquake is?
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, uh well, it's essentially um it's like um the political gap fest cocktail chatter.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: We just stole the uh the concept outright.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: No, we can do better than that.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: I always forget how to describe it.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Something that sticks in your head, like an earworm, something stuck in your craw that makes you uncomfortable or fascinated, or um, that you just desperately want to share.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna hand it over to you for your for your headcrape.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: My headcrape this week is a very boomer one.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is of all people, uh Billy Joel.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: And as Billy Joel was was um a huge figure when I was a teenager, although I never had a Billy Joel album when I was uh growing up in Massachusetts.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've sort of listened to more a little bit when I was in my 20s.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason he I became aware, I was thinking about him recently, was there was do you remember a few weeks ago the New York Times um had this article uh about the 30 greatest living American songwriters?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: And um That's a tricky, that's a tricky list.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean 30, why not 50?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Why not five?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Why not a hundred?
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: They picked 30 for whatever reason, and number one was Bob Dylan, and there were Bruce Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: About half of them were people I wasn't familiar with.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: But not on that list was Billy Joel.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't even aware of this, and I was reading Brad Meldow's Substack, and I'm a big Brad Meldow fan.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Meldow is a brilliant uh jazz improvisational uh pianist.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's got a trio, I've got all of so many of his CDs, and uh he's quite a progressive jazz figure.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when he came to Billy Joel's defense, I sat up and took notice.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, well, this is interesting.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I I wouldn't necessarily have assumed someone like Meldow would would um would uh you know take uh Billy Joel really seriously.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: But he does, and he did, and he said, Billy Joel should, it's it's it's ridiculous that Joel will be left off the list of 30 greatest living American songwriters because he has such a uh great uh range of genres and that he writes music in and records and he's got a very good voice too.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I I reacquainted my uh my familiarity with Billy Joel, got um the Billy Joel Ultimate Collection of two CD set, and that's why I've been listening to Billy Joel.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think um that may have been a cynical um uh gesture in the New York Times listing their 30 top songwriters because there were so many complaints about that list, it became sort of clickbait, and I thought, oh, all right, that's what they were doing.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was so many angry responses of all the people that have been left out, including people you know Jackson Brown.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, really?
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jackson Brown?
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's one do you even remember Jackson Brown?
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Why isn't he on this list?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, one album, The Pretender in 1975?
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: Who knows?
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, they were fueling the internet outrage machine.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it yes, reaching a lot of boomers.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of boomers.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: But so now I think of I think of Billy Joel.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: I I I really I'm you know I'm sort of one of these people who likes the first two or three albums.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think of uh Piano Man, I think, and and Turnstyles with some really great songs on it.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: But the most famous being Piano Man, which which almost which almost sounds like a you know a a Broadway show tune in a way.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: The way it the way he sings it.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: There was a Broadway or so there was a West End musical that was uh uh that was made up of all the the all the Billy Joel uh songbook but he wrote some songs that were very sort of Bob Dylan influenced and he wrote a lot of you know do-wop stuff that was music that he'd grown up with in the late 50s um and yes he he wrote a song um the New York State of Mind and then he wrote at least one song that Frank Sinatra did a cover of um which I think you probably wrote for him in a way um he's he's a good songwriter he should have been on that list what's your headquake Mr.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: Gilamas my headquake is a three letter acronym AEO and it kind of shook me to the core when I when I discovered it but I think the only way I can explain it is to contrast it with something called SEO and if you say the words you'll be disgusted because it has one of the stupidest words ever made up in the English language it's the word optimization.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: SEO stands for search engine optimization it means that you when you create a website or you you do anything on the web you your goal is to make it linkable so that the monopolistic organization known as Google which has 95% of searches globally the next runner up would be Bing which has you know it's divided between that and DuckDuckGo I think they share 5% uh that's that gets your page at the top of the list so if you have a recipe for borscht you optimize your website so that yours shows up first when JB Miller wants to make borscht for the family is JB Miller going to cycle through pages and pages of search results just so he can find the right recipe no he's gonna get the first two or three look at the pictures and make his borscht aren't you Mr.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: Miller yes admit it yes all right so now what is AEO answer engine optimization it optimized your content for AI and voice assistance like ChatGPT which is by the way sharing sharing the uh the field with Claude and Gemini and Siri especially Claude has a huge commercial um uh subscribership compared to the others anyway uh so the idea is they synthesize and deliver a direct conversational answer from you from you so your your your website your online effort becomes part of an answer it's a single synthesized answer answer and what you're going for instead of SEO we're trying to get clicks and traffic you're trying to get a brand mention as a source citation so if um you know I I know you're an expert in fly fishing JB and if someone wants to really know how to how to tie a woolly booger uh if you play your cards right online your instructions will show up first in a chat GPT or Gemini reply and the citation will take you direct directly to your fly fishing website which how's that going by the way it's going very well um okay um the uh I and I that's uh interesting I don't quite um uh follow the technological uh details of these things as much as you do but I do want to point out that there's also something called the ELO which stands for the electric light orchestra no it's electric light optimization they missed a trick there in 1975 okay great well thank you keeping us all on our technological toes thanks to our our research assistant Nathaniel Rowe okay great this has been Jim Jelamis in Williamsburg Brooklyn JB Miller in London England see you next time