Latest / DarkHorse Podcast / Breach of Promise: The 315th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

Transcript

Breach of Promise: The 315th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying · DarkHorse Podcast

• 1:00:00
  (Upbeat Music) Hey folks, welcome to the DarkHorse Podcast live stream.
• 1:00:08
  I believe it is the 315th live stream.
• 1:00:12
  Amazing.
• 1:00:12
  And through all that time, you have been Dr.
• 1:00:15
  Heather Heying and I have been Dr.
• 1:00:16
  Bret Weinstein.
• 1:00:18
  Remember when we were halfway through our degrees and we would say that collectively we had a degree?
• 1:00:22
  Yes, which I- We have one PhD.
• 1:00:25
  Now we have two.
• 1:00:26
  It is, that is cheating.
• 1:00:28
  On the other hand, the whole system is so corrupt that it's not out of keeping with the way the rest of the thing works.
• 1:00:34
  We aim to not be corrupt.
• 1:00:35
  And frankly, I think we've done a pretty good job.
• 1:00:37
  We've done a pretty darn good job.
• 1:00:39
  Right, and although many a PhD doesn't mean very much in light of what they give them out for these days, you and I both worked hard for ours and achieved cool things.
• 1:00:48
  Working hard is not sufficient, but actually did good work.
• 1:00:51
  Anyway, we're gonna talk about war and breaches of promises and manta rays today.
• 1:00:57
  Yeah, we're gonna do that.
• 1:00:58
  I think that's what we're gonna do.
• 1:01:01
  Join us on Locals, join us there right now.
• 1:01:03
  If you feel like it, there's a watch party going on as always and we pay the rent at the top of the hour with our three carefully chosen sponsors and then no more ads throughout the episode.
• 1:01:13
  So let's just do that.
• 1:01:14
  We're right here at the top of the middle of the hour.
• 1:01:18
  Yes, we are.
• 1:01:19
  Yes, we are, see?
• 1:01:21
  That's the pedant in me coming out.
• 1:01:25
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• 1:01:28
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• 1:02:28
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• 1:02:36
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• 1:02:43
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• 1:02:56
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• 1:03:01
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• 1:03:57
  And I will just say, you and I have just-- Yes, we forgot our confession.
• 1:04:01
  Yes, our confession is that you and I have just completed a three day dry fast that is no food, no water for three full days, which is also a great way to promote mitophagy, no, to promote autophagy.
• 1:04:18
  But it's quite difficult.
• 1:04:20
  Yeah, you estimated that we had both lost about 20 IQ points temporarily.
• 1:04:24
  Temporarily.
• 1:04:25
  And we resumed slowly.
• 1:04:27
  I mean, we did a whole episode on this, right?
• 1:04:29
  But you resume drinking and eating slowly.
• 1:04:32
  And so we had just a little bit of coconut water and bone broth and Bueller's broth and a couple of berries last night and just phasing into it.
• 1:04:41
  So I don't think all the IQ points are just-- They're not all back yet.
• 1:04:45
  But we're headed in the right direction and that what would under ordinary circumstances feel a little meager as a meal felt like a feast.
• 1:04:56
  It was delicious.
• 1:04:57
  I could have eaten a lot.
• 1:04:59
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• 1:05:00
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• 1:07:36
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  But I don't do any episodes without you.
• 1:07:39
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• 1:07:41
  It's not a me thing.
• 1:07:42
  If it's an either of us individually thing, it's a you thing.
• 1:07:45
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  Awesome.
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• 1:07:51
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• 1:09:17
  Yeah, there's those missing, like, still eight IQ points or so.
• 1:09:19
  Yeah.
• 1:09:19
  But I can't read carefully at this point.
• 1:09:22
  It is-- It's been that by dinner tonight, they'll be back.
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• 1:10:35
  And I will say, you came in smiling just out of your sauna today.
• 1:10:40
  I did, yeah.
• 1:10:46
  This was your idea.
• 1:11:02
  I know, I know.
• 1:11:03
  I do think something needs to be said in light of what has unfolded.
• 1:11:10
  And I will say, go ahead.
• 1:11:13
  Well, let me just say first that one of the standard responses that we're seeing that I agree with is, wasn't this administration supposed to be non-interventionist?
• 1:11:24
  Wasn't that part of what those of us who voted for him thought we were voting for?
• 1:11:29
  And we haven't seen a lot of that so far.
• 1:11:31
  So let me just name the three that are big items.
• 1:11:35
  This year alone, 2026, we had of course, President Maduro in Venezuela in January.
• 1:11:41
  And then the one that many people may have missed because it wasn't the same kind of Americans going in and getting rid of a leader of state.
• 1:11:49
  But El Mencho, which is the nickname of the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which is the largest and most violent cartel in Mexico, was in February killed by Mexican authorities.
• 1:12:02
  But they had a lot of support and pressure from US intelligence.
• 1:12:07
  Trump was enthusiastic about it having happened afterwards.
• 1:12:10
  And the cartel had been designated terrorist organization by the US in February of 2025.
• 1:12:15
  And of course now the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
• 1:12:21
  None of them were good men.
• 1:12:23
  Like no one is claiming, well, no one reasonable is claiming that these were good men or that what they were inflicting on in two of their cases, their people, or in the case of the cartel leader, the people who had to interact with what he was, what he was wreaking in Mexico was good.
• 1:12:41
  But that doesn't mean it was our place to get rid of them.
• 1:12:44
  Well, and there's a consideration which those of us who lived through the horrors of the Iraq war as adults, have become quite familiar with, which is in the case of Saddam Hussein, here you have a terrible, desperate, guilty of many serious crimes against his own people.
• 1:13:12
  On the other hand, he and the Ba'ath party were holding Iraq together.
• 1:13:19
  And the elimination of Saddam Hussein did not result in the, they will welcome us as liberators, as Dick Cheney promised us, it resulted in chaos and probably killed a million Iraqis.
• 1:13:32
  So there's the question of whether that leader would be there.
• 1:13:40
  And there's a question of, do you have a plan for what happens if you eliminate them?
• 1:13:46
  And we never do.
• 1:13:48
  And the, or we have a plan and the plan isn't about the people of Iraq or in this case, Iran.
• 1:13:56
  That's always the excuse.
• 1:13:57
  These people need to be liberated by us.
• 1:14:00
  And then we go in and liberate them for whatever reason, we do it and it has to do with power and limited resources.
• 1:14:07
  Inevitably, whether that's territory or oil or whatever it may be.
• 1:14:13
  But the basic point is, look, is what you are about to do going to improve the lives of the people whose pain you are pointing to as a justification for it.
• 1:14:26
  If it's not going to improve the lives of the people you are using to justify it, then it's not a justification.
• 1:14:31
  And it's a kind of myopia.
• 1:14:34
  It's a kind of myopia that frankly, I see so much amongst loyalists of the blue team at this moment.
• 1:14:42
  The idea is, I'm taking all kinds of ridicule from people about, okay, you were taken, you voted for Trump.
• 1:14:52
  He was the no new wars guy.
• 1:14:55
  What do you think about that now?
• 1:14:57
  And the answer is the other party didn't run a credible candidate.
• 1:15:02
  And there have been many good things under the Trump administration.
• 1:15:06
  So would I make the same vote again?
• 1:15:07
  Of course I would, it was the right vote.
• 1:15:09
  Does that mean that I'm comfortable with the fact that we have just launched a war in Iran?
• 1:15:15
  No, I voted against that.
• 1:15:18
  I definitely voted against that.
• 1:15:19
  No new wars was a key feature of the campaign.
• 1:15:23
  Now I will say, I find myself in an analogous position as I am with Venezuela, which is this was not a war we should have launched.
• 1:15:34
  And we will get into why we may have launched it here in a moment.
• 1:15:37
  I would not have launched this war.
• 1:15:39
  Even if the war works out great somehow, it still does not mean it was the right thing to do because we've taken a tremendous risk in doing it.
• 1:15:49
  And so, you know, the fact that you decide to play Russian roulette and walk away unscathed and made $50 at it, doesn't mean it was a good idea.
• 1:16:01
  It was a bad idea and it worked out okay because you got lucky or something.
• 1:16:05
  So where I am with Venezuela and Iran is I'm not at all comfortable with the fact that we did this.
• 1:16:14
  I recognize that it could possibly come out positive and we should certainly hope for that outcome and be grateful if it occurs.
• 1:16:23
  And it would be wonderful, frankly, if the Iranian people did not have to live under theocratic despots anymore.
• 1:16:31
  That would be wonderful.
• 1:16:35
  But given the history of regime change and how frequently we have failed to improve the situation for the people whose regime we have changed, I remain to be convinced that this was a reasonable thing to do.
• 1:16:52
  Now I did want to point to this clip of Marco Rubio, Secretary of State and what he said that appears to be an admission or is taken as an admission by many in the public, including me.
• 1:17:06
  Who do you want to put on Marco Rubio?
• 1:17:08
  And what, what, what, what?
• 1:17:10
  Did you tell lawmakers that there was an imminent threat?
• 1:17:11
  There absolutely was an imminent threat.
• 1:17:13
  And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us.
• 1:17:20
  And we were not gonna sit there and absorb a blow before we responded because the Department of War assessed that if we did that, if we waited for them to hit us first after they were attacked by someone else, Israel attacked them, they hit us first and we waited for them to hit us, we would suffer more casualties and more deaths.
• 1:17:37
  We went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage.
• 1:17:41
  Have we not done so?
• 1:17:42
  There would have been hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew that this was gonna happen and we didn't act preemptively to prevent more casualties and more loss of life.
• 1:17:50
  (Crowd Yelling) Okay.
• 1:17:53
  So the reason that that's such an important clip is that Rubio suggests whether he meant to or not, that the US was put in a bind by its ally Israel that forced us to attack a third party Iran.
• 1:18:11
  That had we not done it, Israel would have attacked.
• 1:18:16
  That means they would not have accepted from their ally us the requirement that they stand down and not attack this nation, even though, as Rubio says, there would have been tremendous blowback against American forces in the region of which there are many.
• 1:18:33
  So that does suggest a, first of all, a, first of all, it raises questions about our ally relationship with Israel.
• 1:18:45
  I think they're unavoidable.
• 1:18:47
  And it also raises questions about whether or not this war by any metric is in US interest.
• 1:18:58
  Now, I will say Rubio goes on later in that discussion to say that the attack had to happen regardless, that the attack was going to happen and that what he meant in that earlier quote is that the timing was forced by Israeli action.
• 1:19:20
  Even so.
• 1:19:21
  Even so.
• 1:19:21
  Even so, the idea that we are having our hands forced in a major way by another country is a remarkable admission.
• 1:19:29
  Right, a country that is dependent on US aid.
• 1:19:35
  And so I can't help but be pretty uncomfortable at the apparent admission here of what took place.
• 1:19:44
  And I have to wonder what is going on in the Trump administration.
• 1:19:49
  It seems to have lots of leverage in this case that should be available to force our ally to coordinate in a way that we are not suddenly dropping bombs on a third nation because we can't afford to wait.
• 1:20:04
  Right, that just doesn't seem like a reasonable thing.
• 1:20:07
  So I guess the question is, is there any argument at all that a regime change war is in the US's interest?
• 1:20:19
  I don't see it.
• 1:20:20
  Now, Netanyahu, who I trust even less far than I do, I can throw him.
• 1:20:27
  Frankly, this I think is one of the least trustworthy people on earth.
• 1:20:31
  This is sort of a fauci level phenomenon.
• 1:20:37
  Somebody who cannot be taken at his word is corrupt to the core and is so morally flexible as to be a major hazard in his own right.
• 1:20:49
  But maybe we can put on the Netanyahu clip.
• 1:20:52
  This is from Sean Hannity's program.
• 1:20:55
  The reason that we had to act now is because they were, after we hit their nuclear sites and their ballistic missiles program, you'd think they learned a lesson.
• 1:21:06
  But they didn't because they're unreformable.
• 1:21:08
  They're totally fanatic about this, about the goal of destroying America.
• 1:21:14
  So they started building new sites, new places, underground bunkers that would make their ballistic missile program and their atomic bomb program immune within months.
• 1:21:25
  If no action was taken now, no action could be taken in the future.
• 1:21:29
  And then they could target America.
• 1:21:31
  They could blackmail America.
• 1:21:33
  They could threaten us and threaten everyone in between.
• 1:21:37
  So action had to be taken and you needed a resolute president like Donald J.
• 1:21:41
  Trump.
• 1:21:45
  So this makes me so uncomfortable.
• 1:21:48
  For one thing in a separate quote, Netanyahu points out that he's wanted that this attack on Iran is part of a plan he's had for 40 years.
• 1:21:59
  The claim that nuclear weapon is just around the corner is an evergreen claim with respect to-- It's nuclear, it's chemical, it's some kind of horrifying weapons that we absolutely have to stop on their tracks.
• 1:22:11
  Yes, it's always, this is really a self defensive action.
• 1:22:16
  Of course that blew up in their faces, literally in many cases in Iraq when the weapons of mass destruction never materialized.
• 1:22:25
  I still wonder why, given the duplicity of the people who are manipulating our foreign policy, why they didn't fake it, I still don't know the answer to that question.
• 1:22:34
  It's a strange one for me, because they're willing to fake anything and everything.
• 1:22:38
  Yep.
• 1:22:40
  But we know that the attack on Iran was part of the clean break, neocon strategy.
• 1:22:51
  We know that it got sidelined when Iraq turned into a quagmire and-- So you're saying the attack on Iran was part of the neocon agenda back in the early aughts.
• 1:23:04
  Yes, they had a list-- Shortly after 9-11, it's like, okay, we can do Iraq first, but Iran's on the list.
• 1:23:10
  Iran's on the list, and so they had a series of Middle East states that they wanted to topple, basically.
• 1:23:19
  And if I can just remind the public or tell them for those who don't remember, there was a Gulf War before the war in Iraq that became a quagmire.
• 1:23:36
  I will say, I protested that war in the streets.
• 1:23:42
  That war-- In 91.
• 1:23:44
  In 91, we were in Santa Cruz.
• 1:23:47
  And I will just tell you, as a vignette, the University of California at Santa Cruz was obviously a very liberal place, and some activists, as the Gulf War began, put up a giant black wall.
• 1:24:03
  It was a clear allusion to the Vietnam War Memorial.
• 1:24:08
  And the idea was, as this war went the way they inevitably do, the names of American service members killed in Iraq was gonna be put on this wall.
• 1:24:18
  That didn't happen.
• 1:24:20
  For some reason, that initial attack resulted in a huge number of surrenders by Saddam Hussein's forces.
• 1:24:29
  The war ended very quickly.
• 1:24:31
  The reason I raised that war is that it changed a piece of the American psyche.
• 1:24:43
  People healed from Vietnam War syndrome.
• 1:24:45
  100%.
• 1:24:47
  Even those of us who weren't old enough to know it, we were raised with that deep specter of the Vietnam War.
• 1:24:55
  And at Santa Barbara where I was, there was a giant Vietnam War class.
• 1:24:59
  It was the thing that informed how we felt about war.
• 1:25:04
  It was a national trauma.
• 1:25:06
  And apparently successful, very short, low casualty war in 1991 did ease the pressure, for sure.
• 1:25:15
  Well, George Bush, Sr., who has a tremendously checkered past, if you all want to look into it, but George Bush, Sr. said at the time that we had broken Vietnam War syndrome.
• 1:25:33
  This was said in a celebratory way.
• 1:25:36
  And the point is we are at liberty to go back to making war.
• 1:25:39
  I didn't realize that I was paraphrasing Bush.
• 1:25:41
  I mean, I have that in my head.
• 1:25:42
  No, well, Vietnam War syndrome was something that was discussed.
• 1:25:46
  And George Bush, Sr. said, we have broken Vietnam War syndrome.
• 1:25:52
  Now, this does make me wonder about the attack on Iran, however many months ago it was.
• 1:25:59
  On Iran?
• 1:26:00
  Yes.
• 1:26:01
  So we bombed a mountain in which there was ostensibly a uranium enrichment site.
• 1:26:10
  And it caused many people, me included, to say, what the hell are we doing?
• 1:26:16
  We were promised no new wars.
• 1:26:17
  We're now attacking a large, important nation in an important region to the world.
• 1:26:25
  This is a mistake.
• 1:26:27
  And I still think it was a mistake, but because it seems to have gone well, I don't know whether it succeeded in doing to the Iranian nuclear program what we say it did.
• 1:26:41
  How would I know?
• 1:26:42
  We're talking about, I have to take on faith that we bombed inside of a mountain that I can't get access to, and it worked, right?
• 1:26:49
  So it's a matter of faith.
• 1:26:51
  But nonetheless, I wondered at the time if the reason for that very limited engagement was to break Iraq War Syndrome, where we have been re-traumatized by Iraq.
• 1:27:04
  And this-- Traumatized first by Vietnam and then by Iraq with regard to our ability to run clean, effective, and justified wars.
• 1:27:14
  Right.
• 1:27:15
  And so here we are, months later, launching a much more serious campaign, something much less surgical.
• 1:27:23
  And of course we are in an information desert with respect to what the actual implications are.
• 1:27:32
  If you try to ascertain how serious the damage is in Tel Aviv, you're basically sorting through sources that are biased in both directions.
• 1:27:44
  So in any case, I think where we are left is there's a whole group of profiteers who love the idea of war because it uses their products.
• 1:27:59
  We have a whole group of people who are ideologically committed to US wars abroad for reasons that may not have anything to do with US wellbeing.
• 1:28:11
  I don't think they're in Israel's interest either.
• 1:28:14
  I think Israel is, frankly, being led by another fanatic, somebody who has a particular view of what will make Israel stronger in the future.
• 1:28:30
  And frankly, he's willing to march the world up to the brink of World War III because he's so convinced of this.
• 1:28:37
  And frankly, it does remind me of Fauci, the commitment that does not respond to evidence.
• 1:28:43
  I think the comparison to Fauci is apt because you say he has, Netanyahu has this commitment to his view of what will make Israel stronger.
• 1:28:53
  And I don't know, I don't know if that's true.
• 1:28:55
  I don't know what team he actually works for.
• 1:28:57
  I don't know whose side he's on.
• 1:29:00
  I don't know how to define what the sides are, but it's not at all clear to me that what he is is good for Israel.
• 1:29:06
  And maybe he believes it is, but maybe he doesn't.
• 1:29:10
  Well, let's put it this way.
• 1:29:14
  We have to, we can't know.
• 1:29:17
  We just simply can't know.
• 1:29:18
  We have to work from too little evidence and there's too much effort put into shaping our opinion on everything to be able to know.
• 1:29:26
  But it's like Fauci in that regard.
• 1:29:27
  That at least with Fauci, we could be pretty sure that he knew he was lying all along, that he was not actually speaking on behalf of the American people.
• 1:29:36
  We knew he was lying.
• 1:29:38
  We do not know for what purpose.
• 1:29:39
  Right.
• 1:29:40
  Yeah.
• 1:29:40
  And I think, I mean, can't you say just that of Netanyahu?
• 1:29:43
  Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 1:29:44
  And the one other connection, which I would point out, is that as was the case with Fauci, where Fauci came to most of our attention as he was the guy with his head in his hands next to Donald Trump, standing for the science where, anyway, we all remember that episode.
• 1:30:06
  So the point is he was the scientific and medical point man for COVID.
• 1:30:13
  But he was also the cause of COVID, right?
• 1:30:16
  And so the question is, well, in what universe do you take the moron who was dumb enough to make this happen and put him in charge of the what to do about it part?
• 1:30:27
  And I see this with Netanyahu also because there is this evidence that he argued that Hamas needed to be supported in order to divide the Palestinians.
• 1:30:39
  So the Palestinian Authority wouldn't have hegemony over Gaza and so- But in neither of their cases can we, I mean, it's fun.
• 1:30:49
  It feels good to call them morons, but in neither of their cases is the problem a lack of intelligence.
• 1:30:55
  Brilliant morons.
• 1:30:55
  Quite the opposite.
• 1:30:56
  Brilliant morons.
• 1:30:56
  Yeah.
• 1:30:58
  So anyway, but the idea that, so just so it's been said, I have to say it every time we talk about this.
• 1:31:08
  When people say, well, what would you have done?
• 1:31:10
  The very first thing I would have done after October 7th is remove Netanyahu from command and put somebody who was not compromised in the way that he was into that position.
• 1:31:24
  I don't think there's any evidence that he's a brilliant military strategist.
• 1:31:28
  If a campaign needed to happen in Gaza, and I certainly understand why it probably did, it needed to be under somebody who was not responsible for handing control of Gaza to Hamas, right?
• 1:31:42
  And I'm not saying he was entirely responsible, but the fact that he had any hand in it at all means that I don't think he was a legitimate person to be leading a military campaign in response to the backfiring of his last idea with respect to Gaza.
• 1:31:56
  So anyway, the parallel where this guy, wait, this guy was both the cause and the solution to the problem from Gaza, and this guy is both the cause and the solution to COVID.
• 1:32:10
  Anytime the same person is the go-to guy, he was the cause, and now he's the obvious person to go to, something is not right.
• 1:32:20
  So the final thing I wanna say here is I'm left in the same position that I was with Venezuela.
• 1:32:29
  I very much hope that this ends up net positive, especially for the Iranian people who we've been told we're acting in their interest.
• 1:32:43
  President Trump did say something, and now maybe it was just grandstanding, maybe it was real, but he said, look, to the Iranian people, this is your moment, take control of your country.
• 1:32:54
  And there's historical reason to believe that if they can create a government that is good for them, that this could very well be amazing for Iran.
• 1:33:06
  Yes, Iran was a modernizing state.
• 1:33:10
  Obviously, the Persian culture is a ancient culture, tremendously powerful and insightful one.
• 1:33:17
  So the possibility of eliminating the theocracy and something else much better filling the vacuum is there, but I gotta tell you, I don't believe that this group of Wheeler dealers is going to let that happen because they don't want to sit back and watch what's going to happen to the resources in Iran's possession.
• 1:33:40
  They're not gonna leave it to chance, which means they're gonna put somebody in that serves their interests, not necessarily our interests, but they're gonna put somebody in that they control or who is aligned with them.
• 1:33:53
  And I predict it's going to be another debacle, like the one that resulted in the theocracy in the first place, the toppling of Mosaddeck and the installing of the Shah caused the Iranian people to rebel against the West, which had done this to them.
• 1:34:11
  So, Well, that was late 70s, right?
• 1:34:16
  Then 50s.
• 1:34:17
  Okay, so, but some, we did something.
• 1:34:20
  I don't know my history here, but yes, the big change in Iran happened in the 50s, but then we also were doing things in Iran as Carter Reagan was transitioning.
• 1:34:33
  Yes, I mean, you had the Iranian revolution, which installed the theocracy, but it was the result.
• 1:34:39
  But Mosaddeck was the 50s.
• 1:34:41
  Yeah.
• 1:34:41
  Okay.
• 1:34:44
  So anyway, the point is, if you like the idea of regime change making things sunny, then go and look at the history of what happened in Iran, exactly the opposite happened.
• 1:34:55
  The thing that we are told we have to eliminate and we have to go right now because they're right, you know, weeks away from having a nuclear weapon and it's going to eliminate Israel and they might even be able to reach the US and all the things that we are told is the result of what we did the last time.
• 1:35:11
  Again, it's like this COVID pattern, right?
• 1:35:13
  If you don't like the way Iran was being run, and I don't think anybody should, then you have to ask yourself what role we played in creating that situation before you go blazing in and do the same thing all over again.
• 1:35:27
  And, you know, in 2070, we're having the same conversation.
• 1:35:31
  Yeah.
• 1:35:34
  Yeah, and the reason I brought up obviously Venezuela because it's very comparable in terms of a head of state being ousted, but Mexico as well, it just, it feels like blustering in with an idea that these people are evil and therefore need to be removed without having any sort of understanding of what the effects are going to be.
• 1:35:51
  And so what we saw in Mexico after this guy, whatever's El Mencho was killed was a bunch of retaliatory killings across Mexico, Americans being told to shelter in space, in place, and Mexicans being slaughtered because the cartels have exactly that kind of non-governmental power.
• 1:36:08
  And the idea that, oh, we just get rid of them.
• 1:36:11
  What kind of, you haven't actually created a vacuum.
• 1:36:14
  You've empowered people who are still alive, who are working for them.
• 1:36:20
  And obviously the non-state actor person being removed is a different kind of situation, but the cartels in Mexico are fricking serious.
• 1:36:29
  And it just seems like that episode, we didn't have any idea what we were doing.
• 1:36:33
  Well, not only are they obviously a tremendous danger, but two things.
• 1:36:40
  One, under the Biden administration, we left the border open.
• 1:36:43
  So to the extent that the cartels might fear American action, they were in a position to put things into the continental United States to extract retribution.
• 1:36:56
  We don't know that that didn't happen.
• 1:36:58
  And I would be concerned that it did.
• 1:37:00
  But also again, it has this character where it was American drug policy that caused the emergence of these cartels.
• 1:37:12
  And so the point is, again, you have our own hand and it really is this, it's the same explanation, whether we're talking about the destruction of the health of the body or the destruction of a geopolitical space.
• 1:37:31
  It's a complex system.
• 1:37:33
  If you think you know enough to intervene and make it do X, you are lying to yourself.
• 1:37:40
  And so every time we try to intervene and we think, oh, well, you know, drugs are a problem, I'm sure it would be a good idea if they were eliminated.
• 1:37:49
  It's like, well, okay, prohibition didn't work out real well, created a huge crime problem.
• 1:37:57
  So none of this is hard to spot.
• 1:37:59
  The unintended consequences are guaranteed.
• 1:38:02
  And at what point do you learn the lesson that things don't work that way?
• 1:38:10
  It's like the most basic lesson.
• 1:38:13
  So in closing, let me just say, I was not for this.
• 1:38:18
  I am still not for this.
• 1:38:20
  I am hoping for the best and I am open to the possibility of being very pleasantly surprised, but I did vote for no new wars as you did.
• 1:38:29
  And the fact that not only are we facing new wars, but that apparently our greatest ally in the region is in a position to force our hand into war is incredibly concerning.
• 1:38:44
  Agreed.
• 1:38:47
  Okay, speaking of breaches of promises.
• 1:38:49
  Yes.
• 1:38:50
  We've talked about a few that we wanna return to briefly today, but first the new one, which is, you know, simultaneously completely trivial compared to what we were just talking about.
• 1:39:00
  But actually I think really makes the point really well with regard to how both the unquestioning left and the unquestioning right are getting things so wrong.
• 1:39:13
  And it's what's going on in Kansas with the driver's licenses of people who have the sex that they are not on their driver's licenses completely legally being told that those licenses are no longer valid and they will need to get new licenses that have their sex assigned at birth.
• 1:39:32
  And yes, it's actually become hard to speak about this because the words have been abused.
• 1:39:38
  And so I'm gonna do my best to use actual real language and yet for clarification sometimes, I'm gonna have to say things like sex assigned at birth.
• 1:39:46
  No, of course, sex is not actually assigned at birth.
• 1:39:49
  Sex is identified at birth because it is an identification of what is already true, what was true from the moment of fertilization.
• 1:39:56
  So you have people, not a whole lot in Kansas, some, you know, thousands probably of people who are trans identified men, trans identified men walk around acting like they're women and trans identified women walk around acting like they're men.
• 1:40:15
  And these trans identified people a while back, I don't actually, I did not look into how long, were allowed by the state of Kansas to choose a different sex marker on their identification papers.
• 1:40:28
  And there's a lot of other things going on right now with this bill just passed in Kansas, but we're just gonna talk about the driver's licenses right now.
• 1:40:35
  And actually, what we should do is read from, no, this is not the thing.
• 1:40:43
  This article, can you see my screen?
• 1:40:46
  Awesome.
• 1:40:48
  I read five recent news reports, AP Reuters, and I was surprised actually that the NPR, the local NPR report did the best job.
• 1:40:57
  Like they're all hysterical, right?
• 1:41:00
  They're all deeply concerned because if you can't walk around with your ID saying what you're identifying as opposed to what you actually are, well, that's gonna put you at some sort of risk.
• 1:41:10
  Of course, as always ignoring the risk that, for instance, men being allowed to walk into women's bathrooms or rape shelters or jails is obviously causing a problem.
• 1:41:21
  But the title of this, Transgender Kansans Had Their IDs Invalidated Overnight, Causing Confusion and Panic.
• 1:41:28
  And that indeed is why this is not as clean cut as it might be, as you might expect us to feel like it was given that I am certain that we should require that people have the actual sex that they are on any ID that records sex.
• 1:41:44
  That is a position that I'm starting from.
• 1:41:47
  However, this is a picture of Matthew Newman who they described as a transgender man, that is to say a woman who is identifying as male in Larned who runs an LGBTQ plus mutual aid organization who said the law did not create a grace period for individuals or state agencies to figure out how to comply.
• 1:42:06
  And before I read this, I will also say that the governor of Kansas, who was a Democrat, apparently vetoed it.
• 1:42:13
  And the reason that she stayed for vetoing it was the bill is that it was vague.
• 1:42:19
  It didn't give enough specifics, it didn't give enough time and clarity as to how this thing would be enacted.
• 1:42:24
  And of course, if pushed, it would probably be true that she would have vetoed it either way because she's a Democrat.
• 1:42:31
  But I think in the end she vetoed it for exactly the right reason.
• 1:42:36
  Some transgender Kansans received letters urging them to request new IDs that conflict with their gender identity and presentation because their current ones are quote invalid immediately.
• 1:42:46
  It's the result of a new law that also regulates which bathrooms transgender people are allowed to use.
• 1:42:51
  Transgender Kansans who have changed the gender markers on their driver's licenses and birth certificates woke up on Thursday morning to find that those documents will be legally invalid.
• 1:42:59
  A new law, which also bars transgender people from using restrooms that align with their gender identity and presentation took effect on Thursday.
• 1:43:07
  While other states have enacted policies banning gender marker changes, Kansas' law is believed to be uniquely far reaching because it also annuls previous changes that were legally carried out.
• 1:43:17
  Matthew Newman, a transgender man, that is to say a woman, in Larned who runs an LGBTQ plus mutual aid organization, said he's concerned about getting pulled over on the way to get a new license.
• 1:43:27
  I have to drive to the neighboring town, he said.
• 1:43:30
  Hopefully my driver's license is still valid at that time.
• 1:43:33
  And then just one more quote from this article.
• 1:43:36
  ACLU attorney Harper Seldin said he was not aware of any other state law revoking gender marker changes that had already been approved.
• 1:43:43
  Quote, "It invalidated them overnight with no grace period for folks to understand what that meant or to even comply by going into the Kansas Department of, I would have expected the DMV, but I don't know what that is.
• 1:43:56
  By going into KDOR and exchanging their license," he said.
• 1:44:01
  So the idea that Kansas is overreaching by asking people, by telling people that what they were previously legally allowed to do, they cannot legally do anymore, does not seem to be an overreach at all.
• 1:44:16
  Because Kansas was in the wrong, however many years ago, they allowed for people to put on an ID that has a sex marker, including birth certificates, the wrong thing.
• 1:44:28
  That was wrong in the first place.
• 1:44:30
  But the people who took advantage of that thing that Kansas allowed them legally to do, did so legally.
• 1:44:38
  Still, Kansas has seen some light and said, "Actually, you know what?
• 1:44:43
  You can't actually change your sex.
• 1:44:45
  And sex is what matters.
• 1:44:46
  How you present is not what your driver's license, your birth certificate is proclaiming.
• 1:44:50
  It's your sex that that is proclaiming.
• 1:44:52
  And we're gonna unhook that." However, the way in which this has been rolled out is completely insane.
• 1:45:00
  It's another breach of promise.
• 1:45:02
  And there's no reason to have done it this way.
• 1:45:06
  Imagine, I mean, the concern from the ACLU attorney and the trans-identifying woman at the top of the article is real.
• 1:45:18
  This got implemented effective immediately.
• 1:45:21
  How is it that you're supposed to get to the DMV or whatever it's being called in Kansas in order to rectify the situation?
• 1:45:28
  Now, at first I thought, oh, you know, if they were trying to do this honorably, they just should have sent everyone with the letter their new IDs.
• 1:45:37
  The reason I think they didn't do that is because they insist that you turn in your old ID when you get your new ID.
• 1:45:45
  And I think that makes sense, actually, because they don't want people presenting an old ID that has no marker indicated that it is an old ID to police or wherever else they might have to present an ID.
• 1:45:56
  Yeah, especially if it doesn't have the right expiration date, because when it was issued, it was supposed to be valid for much longer.
• 1:46:02
  So if they're invalidating the old licenses, the license will say on it, good through 2030 or whatever.
• 1:46:08
  Yeah, that's the point, is that if you just get to keep your old ID, it goes through whenever it goes.
• 1:46:14
  And so, okay, so sending them new IDs with the announcement that their old IDs are invalid wasn't going to work given that there was this other thing they wanted to accomplish, which was take all of those old IDs out of circulation, but they still needed to have a grace period, a way to help people get to the DMV if their licenses are invalid immediately.
• 1:46:39
  There are a number of people for whom this is going to be either missed in the mail, it's just a piece of mail that comes looking like any other piece of mail.
• 1:46:49
  This seems unnecessarily barbaric, frankly, and punitive to people who did nothing legally wrong.
• 1:47:00
  These are people by and large who were swept up in a social contagion and were mistakenly told and believed that they could actually become something that they cannot become and enough so that they got that change on their IDs.
• 1:47:15
  I feel sorry for them.
• 1:47:17
  There are, of course, we've talked about this endlessly on this, on DarkHorse, a small proportion of the people who are identifying as trans who are doing so for completely narcissistic or even evil or criminal purposes.
• 1:47:30
  We know this is true as well, I'm not talking about them.
• 1:47:33
  I'm talking about the vast majority of people who were fed a line that wasn't true and took a then legal action to have their sex marker changed on their ID and now with no warning whatsoever are told, those IDs aren't valid, you are required to get a new one, you will have to pay for the new one and you have to somehow get yourself to the office even though the ID that is legally allowing you to drive yourself there is no longer valid.
• 1:47:58
  There's absolutely no reason to have done it this way.
• 1:48:01
  It's barbaric.
• 1:48:01
  There were a hundred reasons, a hundred ways to do this that would avoid this problem, right?
• 1:48:06
  They could have sent you a letter saying, your license is invalid as of today.
• 1:48:11
  If you have this letter with you, you have two weeks to go get your new license, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:48:17
  There's a lot of ways, it was not hard to solve and I think actually you and I have experienced some of what it is that causes this to happen where we have the landscape divided into teams.
• 1:48:31
  Everybody knows what team they're on and the idea is if we're on this team, then we're gonna take this team's positions and turn them to 11.
• 1:48:41
  And so the point is any nuance expressed, right?
• 1:48:44
  If I, and this happens to me all the time, if I express concern over people who have persistent gender dysphoria, I think a small fraction of those who are caught up in this madness, but I have compassion for these people.
• 1:49:03
  Surely they did not decide to have gender dysphoria.
• 1:49:06
  It happened to them.
• 1:49:08
  It probably is downstream of one of the many ways that we are disrupting people's physiology and psychology.
• 1:49:16
  So in other words, this is an injured person struggling with the consequences of their injury and we lose all compassion.
• 1:49:22
  But if I say something like that, I get pushback after pushback.
• 1:49:28
  If I refer to somebody who is trans identifying and compellingly looks like the other sex, if I refer to them by the sex that they look like, then I'm presumed to be committing some crime against decency.
• 1:49:48
  And my point would be, look, actually there's no good answer.
• 1:49:51
  If I refer to somebody who looks like a woman as a man, this is confusing.
• 1:49:55
  It breaks the ability of language to function.
• 1:49:58
  If I do what Franklin Peterson advocated for a million years ago, if I simply out of courtesy respond to them the way they present, that means I'm not gonna refer to a guy with a beard as a woman, but you know, Blair White, I think she is in common parlance, the better term.
• 1:50:19
  But whatever, we all have to navigate this.
• 1:50:23
  There isn't a good solution that covers all of the problems, but if you express any nuance, you get slammed.
• 1:50:28
  And so in whatever it is that motives are, whatever it is that motivated this change in law is presumably about a constituency that is, I think, rightly upset by all that has happened under the Trans activism banner.
• 1:50:45
  That said, it is not good if the people who made this change felt so boxed in that they couldn't make the change in a way that adheres to common decency or reason.
• 1:50:57
  That respects the humanity of the people involved.
• 1:50:59
  Right, exactly.
• 1:51:00
  So anyway, we've gotta stop doing that.
• 1:51:03
  If somebody is making the move that we want made, give them the leeway to make it in a reasonable way that does the least harm.
• 1:51:11
  Don't force the change itself to be vindictive.
• 1:51:15
  That's a preposterous thing.
• 1:51:19
  And that's not to say either that someone who, I think almost certainly, it's possible that there were chemical, endocrinological, prenatal effects, but the people I have known who have identified as trans and whom I have been compelled by really felt that it was their best option went through developmental hell.
• 1:51:49
  They had excruciating developmental environments, and maybe there were also chemical or endocrinological things going on, I don't know.
• 1:51:56
  In utero or in early childhood.
• 1:51:59
  But they had excruciating developmental environments.
• 1:52:02
  And pretending to be the sex that you're not is still pretend.
• 1:52:08
  It's still fantasy.
• 1:52:10
  But I was compelled in a couple of cases that it looked like it was the best way for them to live.
• 1:52:18
  And I was running study abroad in Ecuador with a couple of trans identified students, where we would have to go through a check point, a military checkpoint in the middle of the Amazon, moving between a boat and a truck or a truck and a boat.
• 1:52:36
  There was a full day's event to get from Koka on the eastern side of the Andes, all the way down to the field station we were at.
• 1:52:51
  And there's a military checkpoint, and there's a military checkpoint because there was a lot of drilling in the area and a lot of activity that the Ecuadorian government felt was at risk.
• 1:53:00
  And these are macho guys, well armed, bored out of their skulls at some river checkpoint, when a bunch of gringos do and study abroad come through.
• 1:53:13
  And I talked to my trans identified students at the time about whether or not their appearance matched the sex on their passports.
• 1:53:24
  And if not, told them what I intended to do and act like and what I would say, and that I didn't expect there to be trouble, but that it isn't a non-issue, right?
• 1:53:36
  That if you are presenting as the sex that you're not, and you need to go through something, a checkpoint of some sort, TSA, whatever it is, you might get looked at as scants.
• 1:53:48
  And frankly, the experience that I had there with my students is probably by far the most serious kind of situation that most people who are trans identifying will ever go through, because most of it they don't travel to adventurous places very much.
• 1:54:02
  So not a non-issue, however, reality prevails.
• 1:54:08
  Reality prevails and what sex you actually are, should be, must be the marker that is on those pieces of identification that identify your sex.
• 1:54:19
  It's a tatology when you say it that way.
• 1:54:21
  It's just so obvious.
• 1:54:22
  You know, you could ask, I don't think it's fruitful or useful to ask, but you could ask whether or not a driver's license should have sex on it.
• 1:54:31
  I think it obviously should, because the binary nature of sex is one of the obvious markers that we use to identify people.
• 1:54:38
  And this is, of course, identities at the heart of this, but there is an underlying truth, an underlying reality that no amount of wishing is gonna change.
• 1:54:49
  Yeah, I mean, if you think about, it wasn't even that long ago, 2017 or 2016 is when Jordan Peterson got in so much trouble, even though he said, look, I will call you what you present as.
• 1:55:04
  He wasn't even drawing a line and saying, I'm gonna call you whatever your birth sex was.
• 1:55:08
  I think it was a little earlier than that.
• 1:55:10
  I would've said 2015, not sure.
• 1:55:13
  Yeah, it was somewhere in there.
• 1:55:15
  I think it was gonna be 2016, but doesn't matter.
• 1:55:19
  Okay, so we're 10 years down the road.
• 1:55:23
  We are now at the point where we are fighting over whether or not your driver's license can be mandated to reflect this.
• 1:55:34
  I mean, the driver's license-- Can be mandated to reflect reality.
• 1:55:39
  Reality, right, simple reality, which frankly, you can argue that there shouldn't be driver's licenses.
• 1:55:45
  There might be some radical libertarians who feel that way, but if you agree that there should be driver's licenses and you agree that there is a reason that the driver's licenses have your picture on them, have a description of your eye color, your height, your weight, they have those things so you can be identified.
• 1:56:05
  If they miss, if you are allowed to miss, can I identify as a six foot three guy and have them put six foot three on my driver's license?
• 1:56:13
  No, presumably not.
• 1:56:15
  So why is there this category, the most basic and binary of them in which you get the right to choose your own adventure?
• 1:56:25
  It just doesn't make any sense.
• 1:56:28
  It actually does cost the rest of us.
• 1:56:31
  Yes.
• 1:56:32
  That freedom of yours that you feel is a right is not, and it does have cost to the rest of us because being able to identify people in the case of accident or crime is important.
• 1:56:46
  Now, this does raise a question.
• 1:56:50
  These documents have a purpose.
• 1:56:53
  The purpose is to identify you.
• 1:56:56
  Obviously, they cannot be in conflict with reality.
• 1:57:00
  That's baseline.
• 1:57:03
  However, is it, I think it's likely that if you are a female presenting male, that for your driver's license to say your male causes the same problem as having the wrong sex on your driver's license does.
• 1:57:27
  If this document is meant to identify you and you are going to show up presenting as the opposite sex, should it note trans identifying female?
• 1:57:39
  No.
• 1:57:39
  No.
• 1:57:40
  No, I don't think so.
• 1:57:42
  You know, we could add lots and lots of flourishes.
• 1:57:45
  We could add-- It's not a flourish.
• 1:57:45
  It is a flourish because A, people detransition.
• 1:57:49
  B, people do, I mean, this is cosplay for many people.
• 1:57:52
  Of course.
• 1:57:53
  And you know, obviously women, because traditional female dress is so stupid that most women are walking around in pants now because it just makes a lot more sense.
• 1:58:03
  Does that mean, am I a trans identifying female?
• 1:58:06
  No, I am not.
• 1:58:08
  So there's just all this nuance and there's all of this, like, well, you are, you aren't.
• 1:58:14
  Like, I don't want more indicators.
• 1:58:17
  Like you, I think you got it.
• 1:58:18
  It's like eye color, height, weight, sex.
• 1:58:21
  I think those are the standard for indicators on a driver's license.
• 1:58:25
  And obviously weight can change.
• 1:58:27
  Weight changes a little bit over time.
• 1:58:29
  I think you're missing my point.
• 1:58:29
  But sex is the immutable.
• 1:58:31
  And so having a bit about like, oh, and how are you feeling today?
• 1:58:35
  Like what, this decade, did you, last decade, did you think you were female, even though you, like everyone knows you weren't?
• 1:58:41
  I get the nuance.
• 1:58:43
  I'm talking about what if you have to put out an all points bullet in looking for somebody?
• 1:58:47
  And they're-- Oh, I mean, we talked about this with regard to the killer in Canada, right?
• 1:58:53
  There, I mean, there was a clean way to do it.
• 1:58:56
  Like you can talk about a man who is identifying as a, or just a man wearing a dress.
• 1:59:02
  So that's what I'm asking.
• 1:59:04
  But that shouldn't be on a driver's license because what people choose to wear and how they choose to identify, that's all in their heads and what they're choosing to do in a moment.
• 1:59:11
  And you cannot change your sex.
• 1:59:12
  Yeah, you can't.
• 1:59:13
  But if you said, you know, sex, male, presenting as female, it doesn't negate the maleness, but it does give you more information about what you're looking for.
• 1:59:24
  This is true, but I guess, I don't know why that needs to be on legal documents.
• 1:59:33
  Because the all points bullet.
• 1:59:37
  This feels slippery to me because there are so many things that you could add.
• 1:59:44
  Yep, and you know, I don't know what the rules are.
• 1:59:46
  If you go into the DMV, get your driver's license, and then, you know, drive straight to CVS and get hair dye and change your hair color, presumably that, you know, your hair color now does not match your driver's license.
• 2:00:03
  I assume that's not okay, but I'm not sure that there's a law against it.
• 2:00:07
  On the other hand, you know, I'm-- We understand what, the issue is that we know the things that can be changed and what can be changed is changing, right?
• 2:00:18
  Like people can put on differently colored contacts now that they couldn't do 40 years ago, right?
• 2:00:23
  And effectively change the eye color, but there's still contacts.
• 2:00:25
  You could still reach in there and pull them out.
• 2:00:28
  Yep.
• 2:00:29
  And you could be really, like Blair White might be very compelling, but still a dude.
• 2:00:36
  I'm not arguing anything against that, just that the resolution on who you're looking for, I mean, there isn't a perfect solution because for one thing, a lot of trans folks, including the guy pictured in that, in that NPR report, you know, to have his driver's license say that he presents as female doesn't provide you better information on who you're looking for.
• 2:01:04
  Right, exactly.
• 2:01:06
  So, you know, yeah, we have confused the landscape sufficiently that no solution actually covers it.
• 2:01:14
  All right, well-- So you-- Yeah.
• 2:01:18
  When I mentioned the story to you, you said, and I was sort of framing it as, as a breach of promise, and you said, oh, this reminds me of other breaches of promises that have happened, and you know, obviously, this is a state of Kansas thing.
• 2:01:31
  This is not the Trump administration.
• 2:01:33
  Right.
• 2:01:34
  But we have talked, let me go to the one that I have talked most about first.
• 2:01:39
  We have talked extensively about the Doge reversal of grants that had already been awarded and promised, and through a lot of people, including a good friend of mine, completely into a state of not knowing even how to pay their mortgage, right?
• 2:01:54
  You know, these were promises made, these were contracts signed, and it's quite one thing to say, you know what?
• 2:02:00
  That program that you've been getting grants from for 30 years or whatever, because a lot of people do just keep on getting the same grants over and over again, we're terminating that effective immediately, meaning, effective immediately, meaning, you won't be applying for any more of those, but obviously, you keep the, you know, you have the grant until the end of its term, but no, they didn't.
• 2:02:17
  So that was a giant breach of promise that Doge enacted on many people.
• 2:02:22
  Right, and so I think it reflects a larger pattern, and it actually, it goes to what we were talking about a few minutes ago, the larger pattern of the sort of rash actions that do not aspire to maintain the underlying system.
• 2:02:44
  You make a change because something was wrong, and now you're moving it in the direction of right.
• 2:02:49
  You don't have to create carnage along the way.
• 2:02:51
  You don't have to upend an entire system of people who are in the middle of a project, and suddenly the money that they had already been awarded evaporates.
• 2:03:00
  Yep.
• 2:03:00
  You don't have to invalidate a driver's license overnight so that somebody doesn't have an option to legally go get a new one and fix the problem.
• 2:03:08
  And I was also reminded, in the same vein, you got Doge, you've got this driver's license issue, but I was also reminded of Joe Ellis, the female identifying, born male helicopter pilot who I talked to on DarkHorse, who I must tell you, I took a lot of crap for that interview, for calling her she, for all sorts of things.
• 2:03:34
  Lots of people are simply having none of it.
• 2:03:36
  Anything in this quadrant, they're not willing to, there's no room for nuance.
• 2:03:41
  But I still feel compassion for this person, and I feel compassion, especially in light of the fact that they appear to be a highly competent patriot doing an important job for the country.
• 2:03:56
  This is a person, if I remember correctly, not only is she a highly competent blackhawk pilot, but also a helicopter mechanic.
• 2:04:04
  And this is somebody who just simply wants to serve her country.
• 2:04:08
  Now, I-- And has that been taken away?
• 2:04:10
  Yes.
• 2:04:12
  Last I checked, it had.
• 2:04:13
  And so if that was taken away based on new rules, but Joe became a helicopter pilot and a mechanic under rules legitimately, then it's a breach of promise.
• 2:04:28
  It's a breach of-- When you first brought this up, I said to you, it's different because there's no knowing what cross-sex hormones are going to do to a person's efficacy as a pilot.
• 2:04:43
  Just to take the one example right off the top of my head.
• 2:04:47
  However, is this a breach of promise?
• 2:04:49
  Yes, absolutely.
• 2:04:51
  Well, let me just say, it's very clear where I draw the line here.
• 2:04:55
  I don't want any leeway or, this should be strictly on merit.
• 2:05:02
  But my feeling is, as Joe Ellis tells it, the military made a change, allowed trans people to serve honorably in the open.
• 2:05:18
  Under those rules, he served.
• 2:05:21
  And then the rules were changed where there was no grandfather clause.
• 2:05:26
  And that's one of the things that people are talking about with regard to the Kansas driver's licenses.
• 2:05:31
  I don't agree that with regard to the Kansas driver's licenses, there should be a grandfather clause.
• 2:05:36
  Absolutely not.
• 2:05:37
  They should have done it a very different way.
• 2:05:39
  They should have rolled this change out in a very different way that was actually humane.
• 2:05:44
  But the idea, what Joe Ellis has gone through feels different with regard to the possibility of a grandfather clause.
• 2:05:52
  Yeah, I mean, and again, I don't want any budging of the reality.
• 2:05:59
  My sense though is this is a highly competent pilot.
• 2:06:02
  This is a patriotic person.
• 2:06:03
  This is somebody who has served honorably and with distinction.
• 2:06:08
  And the answer is not only are such people not so easy to come by, and we've invested a lot in training this person, it's not cheap to train somebody to fly one of these things.
• 2:06:19
  So, obviously in that case, somebody who, on the basis of merit is perfectly well equipped to do this job, should be able to continue to do the job.
• 2:06:29
  And if it is true that the cross sex hormones disrupt the ability to do the job, then on merit, this person should no longer be able to do it.
• 2:06:37
  But I don't think there is any evidence of that in this case.
• 2:06:40
  I would say merit is merit.
• 2:06:42
  And if this person merits it, a grandfather exception would have been perfectly reasonable.
• 2:06:48
  Yeah, presumably there are knowing nothing about this, but presumably there are regular checks for competency for such an important job.
• 2:06:54
  And so, is it possible that someone who was trans identified and were grandfathered in here should experience those competency checks more often than someone who wasn't trans?
• 2:07:06
  Maybe, I don't know, but certainly the competency checks exist.
• 2:07:10
  And there should be no leeway given, if for anyone, including someone who is trans identified.
• 2:07:17
  Yeah, yeah, I agree.
• 2:07:18
  Now I will say that the whole story, Jo Alice's situation came to my attention because she was wrongly identified as the pilot of the Black Hawk that crashed into the civilian jetliner.
• 2:07:31
  Over the Potomac.
• 2:07:32
  Yeah, outside of Washington, I think just after the inauguration.
• 2:07:35
  Something like that, yeah.
• 2:07:37
  And so, anyway, when you look into the story of the pilot who did crash, this person was a woman who was only marginally capable of flying such a helicopter.
• 2:07:52
  And in no way trans, she was just a woman who wasn't competent to be doing the job.
• 2:07:56
  Right.
• 2:07:56
  And that incompetence, presumably, has nothing to do with her having been a woman.
• 2:08:00
  She was just incompetent.
• 2:08:02
  Right, but it may have had to do with whether or not-- She got appropriate pushback in her policy.
• 2:08:06
  Yeah, the standards were applied evenly.
• 2:08:09
  But anyway, the point is, I don't think the competency checks are apparently all that great, but I would like to see excellent competency checks, and I would like, in the case of people like Jo Alice, if she passes those checks, in light of the fact that she didn't break any rules, didn't do anything in secret, she should be allowed to continue to fly.
• 2:08:29
  I think that's right.
• 2:08:33
  You wanna talk briefly about Manta Rays?
• 2:08:35
  Yeah, let's talk about Manta Rays.
• 2:08:38
  Yeah, so we were off last week because we were on the Big Island of Hawaii, and we talked about Manta Rays in episode 299 in October of last year because I had just been researching them and for the book that I am writing.
• 2:08:58
  And so I want you to say whatever you wanna say, and then I will introduce, I'm gonna just read a little section from this book that's still, I recently turned my first full draft into my publisher, so it's still in transition.
• 2:09:10
  It's still in flux.
• 2:09:11
  Why do we have words taken away from this?
• 2:09:14
  It's not right.
• 2:09:15
  It's not right.
• 2:09:16
  It's not right.
• 2:09:16
  It's making life difficult.
• 2:09:18
  And you know what, I'm almost ready to cede feminism, but I'm not giving up science.
• 2:09:24
  They're like, they will, from my dead cold hands.
• 2:09:26
  Cold dead fingers, yeah.
• 2:09:29
  Cold dead fingers.
• 2:09:30
  In that case, it doesn't sound as wrong in the other direction.
• 2:09:33
  It's not as wrong.
• 2:09:34
  As wrong, no, there is this, I wrote about this, the Royal Order of Adjectives, that's what it's called, and you say you present adjectives in the wrong order and it just throws an error.
• 2:09:44
  A green, big car.
• 2:09:45
  You just can barely understand what is being meant by it, but cold dead hands, dead cold hands.
• 2:09:50
  It's not as serious an error in that case.
• 2:09:53
  Yeah, but cold dead fingers, it has that, you know, that Carol and Heston cadence, but so does dead cold, sort of.
• 2:10:02
  Not really, it's halting.
• 2:10:03
  They're pangies.
• 2:10:04
  You know, it's like you don't really mean it.
• 2:10:06
  I do.
• 2:10:07
  Okay, but we're going with cold dead fingers on this one.
• 2:10:10
  Yeah, they will take the word science from us when they pry it from our cold dead fingers, which is not how words work, but we'll roll with it anyway.
• 2:10:20
  All right, so on the subject of manta rays.
• 2:10:22
  Yes, indeed, yes.
• 2:10:23
  I wanted to say a couple things.
• 2:10:25
  One, first of all, this was my first time in Hawaii ever, and we'll say more about that some other time, but anyway.
• 2:10:33
  Next time, I think we'll be back on Saturday.
• 2:10:34
  We'll talk a little bit more.
• 2:10:35
  Yeah, we had a great time, and it was a brief trip, but it was just jam-packed with cool stuff.
• 2:10:42
  Hey, that's us.
• 2:10:43
  That is us.
• 2:10:44
  On the screen there, right at the launching point of the kayaks, which we used to access the manta rays.
• 2:10:51
  We're not gonna say too much about exactly where this is, but let us say we were on the Kona side of the big island of Hawaii at the point that we went looking for manta rays, and we had excellent guidance from some local folks who knew all about it.
• 2:11:10
  They steered us away from what we would have ended up being dragged into and would have resented every bit of.
• 2:11:16
  We're not, I had already.
• 2:11:17
  You'd already figured out that we weren't doing that.
• 2:11:20
  So there are tour operators who feed manta rays and take you out in a big boat and put the lights on under, you get to swim with them and don't do that.
• 2:11:28
  It's not good for the manta rays.
• 2:11:31
  It's not a healthy experience, but it is possible.
• 2:11:34
  In fact, in our discussion in whatever episode that was.
• 2:11:37
  299. 299, we specifically discussed this amazing phenomenon.
• 2:11:42
  Which I will be reading about.
• 2:11:44
  Which you'll be reading about these cleaning stations where the manta rays go to get cleaned.
• 2:11:50
  And we just so happened to be near one, and that meant they're not perfectly reliable, but they're apparently nocturnal.
• 2:12:00
  And during the day they spend time around these cleaning stations where these little fish purge them of parasites.
• 2:12:08
  Well, and they clean them from wounds.
• 2:12:09
  Well, I'll share this a little bit.
• 2:12:12
  So, do you wanna?
• 2:12:15
  So I just wanna say that this short piece that I'm gonna read while we show some of the footage that you've got of the manta rays is from the beginning of the beauty chapter in my new book.
• 2:12:27
  It's a book with many, many chapters, 30 or 31 I ended up with, and a section on manifestation, a larger section that explores the body and the senses and risk and pain and fear and beauty, and how all of these things are realities in our experience.
• 2:12:46
  And we use them to better understand the world, the book being a plea to everyone to find your inner scientist.
• 2:12:55
  And for me, one of the pillars of science is wonder.
• 2:13:01
  And so this is from the beginning of the chapter on beauty as it currently stands in a book that is still in the creation stages.
• 2:13:09
  So, manta rays.
• 2:13:11
  With fins like wings, they soar through water as if they are flying.
• 2:13:15
  They look delicate and graceful, but are in fact powerful and robust.
• 2:13:18
  Grace is often found with strength.
• 2:13:20
  Weakness falters while grace is steady.
• 2:13:23
  Manta rays are prehistoric animals, close relatives of sharks, but so very smart.
• 2:13:28
  The brains of manta rays are huge, and yet they are no predators.
• 2:13:31
  They eat passively, opening their massive jaws and using their cephalic fins to steer plankton into their mouths smoothly with ease.
• 2:13:39
  They are in no rush, not now.
• 2:13:42
  Unlike many of their relatives, mantis have no barbs, no ability to sting.
• 2:13:46
  Manta rays often tussle with sharks though and have the scars and wounds to show for it.
• 2:13:50
  And so manta rays spend much of their time, truly a lot of their time, up to eight hours every day in some places, at the spa, getting themselves cleaned up.
• 2:13:58
  These cleaning stations, or spas if you prefer as I do, are staffed by little fish.
• 2:14:03
  The little fish nip and bite at the mantis, removing parasites and dead tissue, cleaning up wounds.
• 2:14:08
  When they are not at the spa, being tended to by little fish, the manta rays may be considered themselves.
• 2:14:13
  Really, self-awareness in a fish, not just a fish, but a primitive one, one that doesn't even have any bones.
• 2:14:19
  This is surprising.
• 2:14:20
  What are the odds and how would we know?
• 2:14:23
  One test of self-awareness that has been much used is the mirror self-recognition test.
• 2:14:28
  Chimps who have become familiar with mirrors, who then develop a mark that cannot be detected without the mirror, a red stain on one ear or above the brow ridge, will, when once again provided with a mirror, study themselves and their marks very carefully.
• 2:14:40
  Thus, we conclude that they know that they are looking at themselves in the mirror and not someone else.
• 2:14:45
  All of the great apes respond to mirrors this way.
• 2:14:47
  So do Asian elephants, bottlenose dolphins, and over in the bird world, magpies too.
• 2:14:52
  One might wonder why we imagine that other life forms will reveal their intelligence in the same way that we do, that recognizing yourself in a mirror is a good test of self-awareness.
• 2:15:01
  It is true that much intelligence will be missed with a mirror self-recognition test, but any organism who pauses in front of a mirror, who responds to it in a way suggesting recognition, that is a sign that there is something familiar and deep going on inside of that animal's being.
• 2:15:16
  When manta rays are provided mirrors, they spend considerable time in front of them, much more than they spend elsewhere in their tanks.
• 2:15:23
  They do not change color rapidly or intensely as manta rays generally do when they encounter another member of their own species.
• 2:15:28
  What they do while hanging out in front of those mirrors is circle and swim, fast and slow, changing speed often, and open and close their cephalic fins all at much higher rates than they do when they are not in front of the mirrors.
• 2:15:40
  It seems to the researchers studying these manta rays that the rays are engaged in contingency checking.
• 2:15:45
  If I do this, will the guy in front of me do the same thing?
• 2:15:48
  How about this?
• 2:15:49
  Ah yes, he does the same thing at exactly the same time, just in reverse.
• 2:15:53
  Contingency checking.
• 2:15:55
  One of the greatest comedy scenes of all time relies on contingency checking.
• 2:16:01
  In "Duck Soup," the 1933 Marx Brothers film, Harpo's character is dressed identically to Groucho's character, trying to evade him when they come face to face in an empty space where a mirror existed just moments earlier.
• 2:16:13
  Groucho tests his reflection, or is it, with an ever more elaborate and silly set of actions, walking, nodding, shaking his butt, nodding, hopping, spinning, all of which his reflection mimics perfectly, or at least well enough, for a while.
• 2:16:25
  This, from a very different evolutionary lineage, is what the manta rays appear to be doing in front of mirrors.
• 2:16:31
  Manta rays stay clean and healthy by spending time with the spa in the company of other manta rays, and they seem to recognize themselves in the mirror.
• 2:16:39
  Do these truths about manta rays make them less beautiful to you?
• 2:16:43
  Have I stolen wonder from you by telling you some of what we know?
• 2:16:46
  Or rather, have I provided you even more basis on which to find more wonder, seek more beauty in the world?
• 2:16:52
  I hope that the latter is true.
• 2:16:57
  We have been in the company of manta rays before, in Galapagos, but we weren't that close, and neither of us knew any of this about them.
• 2:17:07
  They were just another remarkable sea creature in the amazing living zoo that is the Galapagos.
• 2:17:16
  So I did this research before we had spent any real time with manta rays, and I wrote that before we'd spent any real time with manta rays.
• 2:17:23
  I could not get enough.
• 2:17:25
  I could not get enough of them.
• 2:17:27
  I wanted to just be, you know, I don't tend to dive much, and I was very happy to, I mean, go down.
• 2:17:36
  Like we were snorkeling, but I didn't tend to go down to them much.
• 2:17:40
  Watching them from the surface, and we saw three of them at a time some days, was so extraordinary.
• 2:17:48
  I just, I felt, I felt that I knew that I was in the presence of something deep.
• 2:17:55
  I hoped that I would have felt that way had I not just did this deep dive into them.
• 2:18:00
  Yeah, there was something particularly marvelous about, through the help of our local friends, the ability to find one of these spa places where the animal is actually engaged in, you know, this daily ritual, which makes it predictable in space to find that you're able to actually watch it interact with the cleaner fish.
• 2:18:28
  And the animals are clearly aware of you as well.
• 2:18:32
  And I did dive down several times, and, you know, I don't know whether the connection one feels, but you look into the eyes of this animal, it's clearly aware of you, clearly not frightened.
• 2:18:45
  And anyway, it was a special experience, especially great because we were able to kayak out to it.
• 2:18:52
  There's something very nice about not motoring out to some nature spot, but being able to actually just pull your way across the water and go see them.
• 2:19:03
  But yeah, I don't know, you know, I was struck by them when we saw them in Galapagos, but I assumed because we're talking about a ray, you know, a cartilaginous fish, that there's not much going on upstairs.
• 2:19:18
  But I will say that the exceptions to these rules are some of the most interesting creatures.
• 2:19:25
  Yeah, cephalopods.
• 2:19:27
  Not even all cephalopods.
• 2:19:29
  Octopus particularly appear to have this high quality intelligence and probable consciousness, even though they violate what I would say is the most basic rule of the evolution of those things, which is sociality.
• 2:19:44
  And, you know, here you have these somewhat social rays and passing the media.
• 2:19:52
  They're eating plankton.
• 2:19:53
  Yeah, right.
• 2:19:55
  And so usually often, I don't know if I'm the vegetarians, but often between species, diet is a gross level indicator of intelligence because it doesn't take as much to find something that doesn't hide from you when you're trying to find it.
• 2:20:13
  So herbivores tend not to be as smart at the species level as carnivores tend to be.
• 2:20:20
  And so here we've got something that all it has to do is open its mouth and maybe like help push stuff into it with its cephalic fins.
• 2:20:26
  It's not having to work hard to eat it, to feed itself.
• 2:20:30
  And yet incredibly brainy.
• 2:20:33
  Yeah, I've wondered about octopuses, which I know is a proper way to refer to them, about why they have developed something akin to consciousness and wondered if it actually has to do with understanding, you know, they're masters of camouflage.
• 2:20:52
  And understanding what another creature will see well enough to hide yourself in that context, it seems to me a pretty complicated problem and something that might drive a rapid evolution of something like that.
• 2:21:09
  I do wanna say, that footage is all right, but it was only gettable because I feel so dumb about this.
• 2:21:24
  You know, I'm one of these guys who bought a GoPro because it seems like there's so many things you'd use it for.
• 2:21:30
  And I never do use it except in one circumstance, which is I do take it snorkeling and it's great for that.
• 2:21:36
  And I completely forgot to bring it.
• 2:21:38
  Left it on the bed.
• 2:21:39
  Just didn't even, just didn't even occur to me.
• 2:21:42
  It wasn't even in the bed.
• 2:21:43
  Yeah, I had.
• 2:21:44
  I've never been, it lives in.
• 2:21:44
  I don't know how I missed it.
• 2:21:46
  And so I was kicking myself about that.
• 2:21:47
  The whole time we were snorkeling, cause we saw so many great things.
• 2:21:51
  You found this stunning, like in my whole history of snorkeling, I've never seen anything this amazing in some ways, but this, a flat fish, a halibut that lives on the coral and lava surfaces.
• 2:22:08
  So it swims over the reef and then it drops onto a rock and absolutely disappears.
• 2:22:16
  And I was, so it took me a while to, while I was tracking it to try to find you.
• 2:22:21
  I was tracking it for a while.
• 2:22:22
  I was sort of chasing it.
• 2:22:23
  I didn't mean to chase it, but it kept finding this perfectly concealed spot.
• 2:22:27
  And then I think it looked up and you're like, God, she's still there.
• 2:22:30
  And so it would come up again and do this thing again.
• 2:22:32
  But it was great.
• 2:22:33
  I can't believe after seeing such a thing, probably would never see such a thing again, that we don't have footage.
• 2:22:39
  In this case, I forced you to go to Kona with me to get one of these stupid little bags that you put your phone in.
• 2:22:46
  Yep, yep, we forced us into big box stores, which are otherwise so free from living on this island that we live on.
• 2:22:52
  Yeah, and I will say I'm grateful to have the footage that we have of the Manta rays.
• 2:22:57
  You know, the bag works well enough to do that, although it's a complete nightmare because, you know, you have to put the thing up above the water, put it into the right mode, pull it under the water.
• 2:23:08
  Then you have no control over it.
• 2:23:09
  It goes into some other mode you have to surface.
• 2:23:12
  So total nightmare, but anyway, I'm glad we came away with something and they're marvelous creatures.
• 2:23:19
  If you go to see Manta rays, don't take the tour, find Manta rays in the wild, talk to the locals, and don't forget your GoPro.
• 2:23:29
  Or don't try to photograph them at all and just have the experience.
• 2:23:35
  That's another way to do it.
• 2:23:36
  That is another way.
• 2:23:38
  Which you were mostly happily doing for all, but the last day that we were there.
• 2:23:42
  All I knew we would end up talking about them.
• 2:23:44
  I didn't want to not have footage.
• 2:23:46
  Yeah.
• 2:23:48
  Speaking of things we talk about, I just want to mention at some point I will go through and actually read some excerpts from many of these, but the COVID era stories project, which I announced, gosh, must be like seven weeks ago, six weeks ago now, something like that, has been remarkable.
• 2:24:06
  So I invited people to submit pieces to natural selections.
• 2:24:12
  My sub-stack.
• 2:24:13
  The response has been so incredible that we're actually halting submissions for a while, because I've got so many that I have not yet even begun to look at and many, many more.
• 2:24:24
  Or we've got them queued up through May already.
• 2:24:29
  They are, we just ran, I just ran the fifth one yesterday.
• 2:24:32
  And all of these stories are unique, personal, true.
• 2:24:38
  We vet them.
• 2:24:42
  And by turns, you know, heartbreaking, hopeful.
• 2:24:47
  I think in a good way, they will help trigger your memory and make it more difficult for these kinds of things to happen again.
• 2:24:56
  Because even those of us who were waking up to the authoritarian horrors that were going on during COVID, have begun to forget, have begun to forget, have begun to forget, because that's what memory is.
• 2:25:08
  And that's the only way to stay sane.
• 2:25:11
  And so for me, you know, I've read, I guess, 25 submissions, something like that so far.
• 2:25:17
  And it's extraordinary.
• 2:25:20
  I mean, I'm also seeing, we've had several from Australia, Sri Lanka, I just read, Barcelona.
• 2:25:29
  And so seeing how people in different places in the world were experiencing what was going on, where we could only hear about it on the news and who knows what, if what we were hearing was true.
• 2:25:41
  I encourage you to go and check those out.
• 2:25:45
  So we'll put that link in the show notes.
• 2:25:49
  Yeah, I'm so glad you're doing this project.
• 2:25:52
  As somebody who has focused tremendously on COVID and the tyranny, there is an aspect of this that's slipping through our fingers as it recedes into the past and preserving a snapshot of what happened to people, to actual people is vitally important work.
• 2:26:16
  So I'm really glad you're doing it.
• 2:26:17
  Narrative is a critical piece of being human.
• 2:26:21
  And we know that it's the rare person who is compelled by data.
• 2:26:27
  And it is every person who, whether or not they want to be, can hear a story and be moved.
• 2:26:34
  And so these stories will move you and they will remind you.
• 2:26:36
  And perhaps they will remind you of things, of your own experience that you were forgetting, hopefully not all of them negative.
• 2:26:42
  I'm compelled by data, not as much as Mr.
• 2:26:45
  Spock, but he's a good character.
• 2:26:51
  I think my best move when you do something like that is just to look at you.
• 2:26:55
  Yes, that does seem to be effective.
• 2:26:59
  (Both Laughing) Okay, we'll be back on Saturday because we will not be back next Wednesday due to a bit more travel.
• 2:27:09
  But check out locals, check out past Q and A's there and the watch parties that go on.
• 2:27:16
  This Saturday, I believe you have your next Patreon call.
• 2:27:19
  So join Bret on his Patreon call.
• 2:27:21
  Do you feel like doing that?
• 2:27:24
  What's the Saturday one?
• 2:27:25
  Coalition of the Reasonable.
• 2:27:27
  Coalition of the Reasonable.
• 2:27:28
  And do you find it mostly coalescing around reasonableness?
• 2:27:31
  The amount of reasonableness is tremendous.
• 2:27:34
  Great group of people, we always have some new folks and we talk about the state of the world or state of the country or whatever it strikes us to talk about, but there's always plenty.
• 2:27:48
  And you don't need to have been there for previous conversations with the conversations that stand on their own.
• 2:27:56
  And you'll be doing that right before our livestream Saturday, which I know is not your favorite thing to do.
• 2:28:00
  That's rough, but.
• 2:28:02
  But there it is.
• 2:28:03
  I will do it.
• 2:28:03
  Yeah.
• 2:28:04
  So join us on Saturday at one or both of those places.
• 2:28:07
  And until you see us next time, be good to the ones you love, eat good food and get outside.
• 2:28:13
  Be well everyone.
• 2:28:16
  (Upbeat Music)