Latest / Trend Watch / Episode 30: Generative AI, Enriched Uranium, and the Libertarian Vote

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Episode 30: Generative AI, Enriched Uranium, and the Libertarian Vote · Trend Watch

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Ready to take a deeper look at where history, politics, and economics all intersect?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then you've come to the right place.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Each week,
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: here's where we pull back the headlines and focus on the big trends,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: the stuff that actually shapes our future.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Through the noise, we focus on the signal.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Neil Howe, and this is TrendWatch.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Today is May 29th, 2024, and this is Trend Watch.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back, everybody.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: As always, I have on my fellow analyst, Christian Ford.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, Christian, how was your week?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was pretty good, Neil.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: had a nice long weekend,
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: and I went to a Washington Spirit game for the first time,
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: which is DC women's soccer team,
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: and it was a lot of fun.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they crushed their opponent, and they're actually ranked third in the league, so it was...
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Nice to see a winning D.C.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: team.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, that alone is quite something.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: It used to be hockey.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: It was all we had left until a few years ago.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Not even that.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we were close to the World Series about four or five years ago.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: But that's great.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's always great to watch a winning team.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And women's sports is bigger now.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you have some reasons for that.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Watching the game, Neil, it's just as competitive as men's sports.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot of fun to watch.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think the crowd was honestly a little more diverse,
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: as you might expect gender wise.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I, you know, I think people are waking up to that.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's just as fun to watch.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you like sports, there's no real difference, you know, and especially in D.C.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: because they're so much better than the men's soccer team.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think that also brings in a large crowd.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Winning always helps.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I do know that,
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: given often the experience of watching,
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: football and basketball in D.C.,
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: people are sometimes turned off by the foul talk and unruly fans.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I can just imagine this audience being a little partly because it's more female,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: just being a bit more mannerly.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there you go.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that that is great.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to move into our farewells.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: We had a couple of interesting departures this past week.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: I want to mention two of them,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: one from the silent generation,
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Christian,
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: the other generation X.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And as we see both of these very much paradigmatic,
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: as we might see of their generation,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: the first is Paul Parkman.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Paul Parkman was the earnest physician who turned medical researcher and led the
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: team that developed the rubella vaccine in 1969 and who thus saved subsequent
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: generations of Americans from hundreds of thousands of infant deaths and congenital deformities.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: He died last week at age 91.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Parkman was born and raised in upstate New York.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: He was 15 years old when World War II ended.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: He got his bachelor's from St.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Lawrence University.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: He got married at age 23 while just getting started in medical school,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: where he went again in upstate New York state schools.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: He did his pediatric residency in New York state.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it was while working at one of those schools,
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: he said later,
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: that he first treated a mom who gave birth to a stillborn baby with a rash.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: The mom, it turned out, had been sick with rubella early in her pregnancy.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: In 1960, he joined the Army Medical Corps as a captain.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that was very common for anyone who was training to be a physician back then.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: You had to serve a stint in the military.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he worked at Walter Reed Army Institute where he became interested in virology.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And there he joined a team that succeeded in isolating the rubella virus.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the Army wasn't interested.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, what does the rubella virus have to do with young men, right?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: But when Parkman then switched employers and joined the NIH, the scientists there were interested.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: He started clinical trials on a vaccine in 1965,
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: and he commercially licensed a successful rubella vaccine in 1969.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: he made no attempt to monetize the patents for this vaccine.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: just consider today of all the,
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: any university in particular,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: right,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: where there would be all over this thing,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And this rubella vaccine has been in use ever since.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and since 1971,
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: by the way,
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: has been packaged together with the measles and mumps vaccine into what many
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: parents are familiar with.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is the MMR, the measles, mumps and rubella package.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's actually now you can get an MMRV, which is with varicella or chicken pox added.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Though the cost benefit of adding chicken pox is debatable,
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: and I don't think that's ever required that you get the MMRV,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: but certainly the MMR.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Parkman later became NIH's chief of virology,
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: and still later he worked on the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research,
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: where he served as director until his retirement in 1990.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: After retiring,
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: he worked with big pharma companies and the WHO as a consultant,
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: and his home after retiring was back up in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: where he grew up.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Christian, Paul Parkman really epitomizes the life story of the silent generation, right?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Early marriage,
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: orientation around credentialed achievement,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: the military service,
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: the Army Medical Corps.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: There was universal conscription at the time.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, young men had to do something.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: And their trust in national institutions and the white-coated doctor.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: you go on Google and you look at pictures of Paul Parkman and they always show him
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: in the white coat.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: That was the late 50s, 60s.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: That was how they were always pictured.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And indeed, there he is.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, the retirement and the gold watch after a life of government service, right?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: What was his achievement?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what did it really mean?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: And really here we need to get into rubella.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's also called German measles because it was first diagnosed as a separate
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: disease from measles by German physicians way back in 1814.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: The disease is spread through aerosols, just like measles and COVID.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Ordinarily, rubella results in only a mild illness.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually asymptomatic in 50% of all cases.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: When contracted by a pregnant mom in the first trimester of her pregnancy,
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: however,
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: rubella turns vicious.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Eighty to ninety percent of these pregnancies are either miscarried or stillborn,
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: and of the live births,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: a large share have severe problems,
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: including blindness,
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: deafness,
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: serious disorders of the heart,
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: brain,
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: and other vital organs.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Before the mid-1960s, America had a wave of rubella every seven or eight years, and during each wave,
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: 20,000 infants were born with birth defects and a much larger number, of course, miscarried.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Today,
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: rubella is virtually unknown in America,
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: thanks to near universal vaccination,
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: though as more people opt out of vaccination,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: the number is rising,
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Particularly, these would be Americans who travel abroad and get it and bring it back.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, this is all thanks to through the efforts of Paul Parkman.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I would just say for comparison,
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: looking at countries where often there is no vaccination in most of the rest of the world,
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: an estimated 100,000 infants every year are born with congenital rubella syndrome,
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: meaning these congenital malformities every year.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that's quite an achievement.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Along with,
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: smallpox and measles and so many of these things which used to kill and deform so
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: many people.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is one of the great, you know, positive stories of the 20th century.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'll close with the conclusion to an article that Parkman himself wrote in 2002.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I quote here.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: With the exception of safe drinking water,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: vaccines have been the most successful medical interventions of the 20th century,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: unquote.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes,
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Christian,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: big and trusted institutions dedicated to the betterment of humanity,
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: and even when staffed by the white-coated doctor,
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: do indeed make our world a much better place.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now let me move on to another departed, Morgan Spurlock.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: The adversarial independent filmmaker whose hugely watched documentary Super Size
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Me made America think differently about fast food.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: He died last week at age 53.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Spurlock was born in 1970 in West Virginia,
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: where he was raised by a father who owned an auto repair shop and a mom who was an
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: English teacher and a guidance counselor.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: He idolized Monty Python as a kid.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: And after high school, he set his sights on going to the big cities to study film and culture.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: He went to NYU's Tisch School of Art, where he got his BFA or Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1993.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Over the next decade,
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: he wrote plays and tried producing his own videos,
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: especially early versions of that Gen X style reality show,
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: which would soon catch on everywhere.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: One of his shows was called I Bet You Will,
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: consisting of five minute segments in which people were dared into doing something
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: disgusting or humiliating,
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: like eat a warm burrito in return for,
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: a fistful of cash.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: MTV actually ended up buying the program.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: But Spurlock's huge rise to fame came in 2004 when he filmed the self-narrated
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: reality show Super Size Me.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: After hearing a McDonald's spokesman insist on TV that no one could link their food
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: to obesity,
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Spurlock came up with an idea.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Why not try to see what an all-McDonald's diet would do to him personally?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure our listeners know the rest of the story.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Christian, you've seen it, right?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Super Size Me?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think Super Size Me was a required movie in every health class for millennial middle schoolers.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we would all be shocked when he's throwing up in the parking lot.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I remember that scene, too.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then you'll be interested in the rest of the story.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway,
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Spurlock vowed,
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: as you know,
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: at the beginning of the film that he would only eat at McDonald's for a month and
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: he would eat the supersized meal if McDonald's ever offered it to him.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: By the end of the month,
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: he revealed that he had gained 25 pounds,
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: grown depressed and puffy-faced,
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: and even alarmed his personal physician with indicators of serious liver dysfunction.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: This show ended up grossing over $11 million worldwide,
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: making it the seventh highest-grossing documentary of all time and winning a whole
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: slew of film awards and invitations to play at schools like yours,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: What a new emerging millennial generation would know from their boomer and exer
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: elders about proper diet.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Spurlock later went on to do more over-the-top, in-your-face, Michael Moore-style documentaries.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: He did a movie version of Freakonomics,
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: a documentary called The Greatest Movie Ever Sold about product placement,
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: and a show called Mansome about male grooming habits.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, handsome, mansome.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, anyway, none of them ever came close to the success of Super Size Me.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: What was more troubling as the years went on is that people began to question the
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: veracity of the documentary Super Size Me.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Other health experts ran the same experiment and no one seemed to experience the
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: same degree of ill health effects that Spurlock reported.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Indeed,
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: some found that if you control your servings and your calories,
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: you can easily lose weight on an all McDonald's diet.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Researchers also complained that Spurlock kept no records of his daily food intake
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: during his month,
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: unlike later researchers who did keep careful records,
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: But the biggest bombshell came in 2017 when Spurlock wrote a long blog post in the
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: midst of the Me Too movement.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: admitting that he too had a long history of mistreating women.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: He related stories about how he regularly harassed women,
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: cheated on girlfriends and former wives,
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: and even admitted that a rape accusation made against him may have had some validity.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Needless to say,
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: all these admissions were more than enough to persuade most producers to stop doing
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: business with him.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: But there was one more significant confession in the blog post that was harmful in a different way.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: At one point,
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: he says,
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: and I'll quote him here from the blog post,
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've consistently been drinking since the age of 13.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: And, and I'll quote him again, I haven't been sober for more than a week and 30 years, unquote.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: all of a sudden it occurred to many researchers that maybe this explains the
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: adverse liver function results after his supersizomy month.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: He might have had other significant problems going on, right?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: That could affect some of these indicators.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Spurlock died young from cancer.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know anything more about his cause of death.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: But if you read his confessional blog post carefully,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: the one that made him suffer career death in 2017,
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: according to the Washington Post,
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: you sense something else,
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: something very poignant and tragic about his life,
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: along with his early alcoholism.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: He also says he was sexually abused as a child and suffered long periods of depression.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now we understand something about his adversarial on-screen persona and even about
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: his early love of Monty Python that we didn't know before.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Here was a lone Gen Xer.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: surviving a throwaway childhood who distracted himself with jokes and hijinks until
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: understanding at last that the buck stopped with him.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Here is what he wrote near the end of his post after admitting all his faults.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: The only individual I have control over is me.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: So starting today, I'm going to be more honest with you and myself.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Morgan Spurlock, gone at age 53.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: As always,
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: let me remind you,
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: if you like this podcast,
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: please go ahead and share it with your friends and family.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Repost it on social media.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: From now on, only some episodes and some parts of episodes will remain free.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Christian,
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think we should take a moment to,
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: again,
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: remind our listeners that this podcast isn't all we do on Substack,
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: but we also put out lots of other written content under the name of Demography Unplugged.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where we break down demographic, economic, and generational trends.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's right, Neil.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I always like to take this part to plug something we've written recently.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we just put out a new By the Numbers where we walk down some new breaking
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: demographic news of the last couple weeks.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we look at U.S.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: mortality, population growth in cities, fertility trends in Turkey and Ireland.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I would just recommend our listeners to,
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: check out some of this written work if you are unfamiliar with it.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're always doing something new there.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, let me get into today's podcast.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: As always, there's plenty going on in the world.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: And first, we got market news, the stories we have coming up.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Closing arguments are over for Trump's hush money trial, which means the jury is now deliberating.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: The Libertarian Party's national convention met over the weekend, and both Donald Trump and RFK Jr.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: attended to give their pitch to be the Libertarian nominee.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Google's new AI-owned overviews after debuting two weeks ago in response to routine
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: web searches,
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: you type in a Google research and there you get your AI overview.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: has been met with decidedly mixed reactions.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to get to that.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And internationally,
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: a leaked UN report shows that Iran is continuing to increase its stockpile of 60%
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: pure uranium,
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: which is now large enough to fuel at least three nuclear warheads.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Israel continues its invasion of the city of Rafah,
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: undeterred by overseas condemnation of collateral damage to civilians.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: And today, South Africa is voting in national elections.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: And for the first time since the regime's founding in 1994,
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: it is uncertain whether the ANC will get more than 50% of the national vote.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where we're going to get to.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And on to you, Christian, for Market News.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Neil, the S&P 500 closed down today 0.74% and over the last five market days is down 0.75%.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: As for the global Dow, that actually looked a lot worse.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: It closed down today 1.51% and over the last five market days is down 1.67%.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: As for the VIX, that closed at 14.12, which is above what we have been seeing over the last week.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And as for the 10-year Treasury, that is at 4.62%, up 19 basis points over the last five days.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just generally the same, you know.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: long rates up is,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: stock market down or you could just say,
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: a sort of positive correlation between equity prices and bond prices.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: But right.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's a pattern we've seen for a while.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: What what else is do we have any economic reports?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: We only have two indicators with the long weekend and when our last podcast was.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not many new ones have come out, but we have two from the U.S.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: We have May's conference board consumer confidence rose from 97 to 102.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: This was significantly above expectations and is the first increase we have seen in three months.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Our last indicator we have is the May Dallas Manufacturing Index reading,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: which fell from negative 14.5 to negative 19.4.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: That marks a four-month low.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's funny that the Conference Board Index,
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: which has been going down for so many weeks,
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: and the Michigan going up.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: The Michigan finally went way down, and now the Conference Board goes up.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're looking for a kind of a unanimous song,
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: we're all all members of the choir singing the same note.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly, you don't have it in this case, do you?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: OK, how about around the world?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Anything new?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, there's really nothing international.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think next week we'll get many of the final PMIs from China and probably Europe.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: I see.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: We'll go beyond the flash and we'll get the final.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Let's then head right into it.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Neil.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Closing arguments have finished for Trump's hush money trial.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: The jury is now in deliberation,
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: must decide if the former president is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'll talk here about both sides of what they said in their closing arguments, Neil.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: As for the defense...
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: They argued that the prosecution star witness Michael Cohen,
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: who claimed Trump ordered him to make the hush money payments,
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: was a liar and had an ax to grind against the former president.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: They argued that Cohen wanted revenge for not getting a job in the White House and
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: for already pleading guilty to federal charges.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: The defense ultimately argued that Trump's payments to Cohen were for his general
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: legal services as Trump's personal lawyer and had nothing to do with the hush money payments.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: The prosecution, they said that they needed to establish three facts.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: First, false business records were created.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Second, the falsification was intended to help Trump's 2016 campaign.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And third, Trump was involved with the conspiracy and wanted to defraud the voting public.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately,
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Neil,
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: the prosecution weaved this long story of many different witnesses,
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: which showed that Trump had previously worked with the National Enquirer to kill
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: unflattering stories during the election,
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: and they argued that the Trump campaign was in chaos during the infamous Access
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hollywood tape,
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: and that he ultimately ordered Michael Cohen to pay Stormy Daniels off to protect
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: the campaign from further controversy.