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Can Young People Save Democracy?: The Crisis of Political Apathy Among Young Voters · the ACT OUT podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Act Out Podcast.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Adam Tomlin.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: Today's guest is president of the Old Dominion University Democrats, Stephen Swink.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: Let's roll the tape.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, first counsel, first serving, and first of your name, uh Stephen, you are the ODU Young Democrats president, is that right?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, ODU Democrats.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Shortened that title because of the SGA's ruling with age discrimination.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, what is that now?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: So when creating a group to be recognized by campus, yeah, by the sorry, by the SGA, they have an age discrimination clause.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: So technically we can't have young Democrats only.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, okay.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why if you look at our constitution, there's basically like a dual constitution in it where you have every anybody can join and hold offices of the ODU Democrats, but to attend in young Dem stuff, they're going to need that age required.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: Now, have you been involved uh with the ODU Dems for uh all four years?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: So uh after Trump got elected is when I started getting involved with them.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: My professors remember when I got angry that he got re-elected.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I was genuinely disappointed in this c in this country because uh as someone who used to be a Republican, I I'm kind of unique, I think, in our group.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, me too.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and as someone who specifically was indifferent to Trump, and even my grandma who used to who voted for Trump twice, uh 2016, 2020, even she like stopped voted Democrat for the first time in a while, to my understanding, uh because she January 6th was the cutoff for her.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: She said, okay, no more.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, that's the part where I think that if we were in a healthy country politically, Trump wouldn't have gotten a single vote on election night.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: No, I agree.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's clearly not the that that's not clearly not the case.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And when Trump got re-elected, I'm like, I'm I'm going to my professors and I'm like, hey, do you guys have a Democrat group on campus somewhere?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, yeah, you can look them up in campus groups.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I take a couple days, try to research them, get in contact.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody answers.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's nobody to actually send a message to.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I go up to one of my professors one day, it's like, hey, I've been looking around.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: These people um haven't been, aren't on campus groups or anything.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then he and then he's he basically says, Okay, you're the president now.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Go at it, buddy.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so 2024, uh, we got re-recognized in fall of 25 during the Spanberger campaign.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And from there, it's just been a huge learning experience for me.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: I man, I can imagine so.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, went through a lot there.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: I want to start with this.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: You said that you started out as a Republican.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, how old were you in uh 2016?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: In 2016, I had just turned 11.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean, pretty much most of your like life that you can remember politics, Trump has been involved, right?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I do remember the latter half of the Obama's Obama's second term, right?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Very fondly.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, my life politically in terms of me actually voting has been dominated by Trump.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's the Trump era of politics.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh who um who was your very first uh vote for a president?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: My well, my very first vote was in 2024 for the presidency.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, okay.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So Kamala.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: Ah.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man, that's dude, that that's so much better than mine.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let that let that just sink in how young I am.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I I was trying not to.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like I was doing the math earlier because I was like, so I think uh, you know, like he's graduating uh what this year, right?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: In 26.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh yeah, December of 2026.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, December of 2026.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: If everything works out properly.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like uh I think I was like maybe uh 18 or something whenever like the year you were born.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, nope, I'm not even gonna do that math up.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: I was born in 2004, so yeah, no.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, buddy.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate that, man.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: You're making me feel very old.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: So my very first vote for president, George W.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Bush, 2004.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Ah.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I even voted Republican.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: And uh 2008 voted for McCain.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it wasn't until um like 20, probably like 2011 is when um I really started to uh kind of like shift my political views.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: And uh Obama was uh like 2012 and then straight Democratic from there.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, those uh those first few years were uh were were a little questionable.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: What uh so why were you a Republican?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I was a Republican mainly because I was just politically taking up the stances that my family at the time, my grandparents took up.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: So they were uh, you know, they they identified more with the Republicans, and thus so did I.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so where um sorry, where are you from?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: I am from uh Warsaw, Indiana.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: I was born in Fort Wayne and I was raised in Warsaw for first eleven some odd years of my life.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Okay.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: So where is that?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: That is northeast kind of central uh uh northern, north central, northeast Indiana, kind of on the Michigan border.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: So that like I I'm assuming it's a rural area.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell No, no, no, it's a city.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Warsaw's uh classified as a city.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh it is, okay.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the outskirts of it are are fairly rural.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: You have like uh, you know, cornfields, bean fields, etc.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it it it's a city.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: What is the uh like kind of it barely meets that qualification though?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's got uh uh maybe like thirty thousand people.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's it's like one it's a s on the smaller end of cities.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Ross Powell That's actually I think right around where uh I'm from, Cartersville, Georgia.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's like northwest um of Atlanta.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's like right around 30,000.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like it barely qualifies as a city.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of interesting.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: I I was assuming it was a rural area.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: So uh is the uh kind of like political demographic there?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: Is it uh does it skew more uh democratic or Republican?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's a Republican area.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean the Republican uh almost said governor.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Mayor there has been in power for a while.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it's one of those things where they vote the same people in no matter how corrupt they get.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the the mayor right now is very much corrupt, taking kickbacks.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh let's just say uh he's been kind of selectively allowing law enforcement to ignore certain things, et cetera, and so forth.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, as as a result of that, you have entire communities dominated by uh meth houses.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: The house next to where I used to live one night caught on fire because someone cooking meth cooked it wrong.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: So what was the kind of like income uh source there?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is there a lot of a lot of factories, like or so you you mainly had three different things I can think of.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you had your uh blue-collar services, your mechanics, uh your carpenters, your city workers.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh if I had to say that's probably the bulk of the workforce.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if you're white-collar in Warsaw, you probably live on like the outer subreal subbirds area and you work at Zimmer Biomet, which Zimmer Biomed is headquartered in Warsaw.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Which is why the only thing Warsaw, Indiana is known for being is the orthopedic surgery capital of the world.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Or the United States, I should say.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's the world, but United States for sure.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: So um, like whenever you were growing up, where uh was it like manufacturing and did like things kind of like uh slowed down in that sense, or is it always kind of been um just like this uh medical hub?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of missed the rust belt part of Warsaw, but there are some factories there that look like they haven't been updated since the 80s.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: They just kind of have that old kind of rusted-down factory feel to it.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm assuming Warsaw Chemicals is still open because that's where my dad used to work.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would I would like to think that that's still open, but for the most part, your major factories are not in that area.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: I I was wondering uh wondering why, because whenever you're talking about meth houses, uh a lot of times that's um whenever areas are hit with that, it's just because there are not a lot of uh a lot of economic prospects.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Drugs, violent crime are, to my knowledge, still common in Warsaw, and they were when I lived there.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Back when my grandparents first had that house, there were drive-bys in the neighborhood.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the you know, you uh my grandparents are gone now, but if they were still alive, they could like point to the exact like wall in their house that had bullets come through it.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so why did they stay?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they stayed because Indiana is a cheap place to live, and Warsaw in particular doesn't necessarily have the biggest demands, shall we say?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um and also just as they got older, they had already settled in that area.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're old, it's kind of hard to just move.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: My grandfather knew the farming lifestyle more than I did.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, he grew up in Kentucky.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: So he he grew up in Kentucky.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: And would did he grow up voting like straight Republican, um kind of like red, white, and blue?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: I actually can't answer that honestly, because grandpa never really shared his beliefs.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Given that he was born in 35.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, oh, okay.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was I was kind of thinking a little bit later.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Given that he was born in 1935, I would like to say that if he did vote at all, it would be like the typical blue-collar Democrat, Southern Democrat kind of thing.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Though again, I'm not going to make any absolute claims on that because we never I ne or at least I never knew of his political history.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: So what was your introduction to politics?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell My introduction to politics was um in any real sense.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when I moved here uh to live with my uncle, uh he's much more politically well, at the time he was more politically engaged than me.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think that has kind of flipped now.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: That was actually the first time I sat down and like watched part of the election results was the 2016 election.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna say were you happy?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: We had those like little coloring maps that you can get like color in how the states vote.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: So were you happy in 2016?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was indifferent.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I was a young, young, edgy kid back then, so I I I know I I I said things to be provocative.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that part of me hasn't left.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's just who I target now.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um but um You're you're kind of what was your first impression of Trump?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: My first impression is how does anyone take this man seriously?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like he is genuinely the stupidest president we've ever had.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't know anything about anything.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't know any math, he doesn't know any history, any science, not even law.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't even really know any business.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's bankrupted every business he's owned just about.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And even money laundering casinos.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: How like casinos literally print money, and yet you're trying to make this man the CEO of the government, basically, while also saying, well, a government should be run like a business, which it shouldn't.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: But even if I accept that, you'd want a competent CEO.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: I would rather not have the country become a business statistic.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think with with Trump, what was interesting is like growing up, I watched uh professional wrestling, uh, you know, like deep south and kind of a rural area.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, of course I'm gonna watch wrestling.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so part of the like gimmicks and everything is you have got to basically beat on your chest and talk about how amazing you are, you know, like I'm the best at this, I'm the best at that.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so whenever I was growing up, I kind of assumed that that was reality, and that was like how you like, if you were the best, you would have to like go up in front of a microphone, beat your chest, and be like, I'm the best, I'm the man.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: And it took me a very long time to realize that it's actually the reverse, where if you are the best or if you are the smartest or whatever, you're not gonna have to say a word.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: People are gonna realize it without you having to say it.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, I I would add on to that.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And this country at this point, with the amount of anti-intellectualism we have in it, sometimes it's uh more socially acceptable.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: I say socially acceptable because I don't care about that.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: But uh it's it's uh intelligence isn't respected in this country.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's about what people want to hear.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell Where do you think that anti-intellectualism kind of comes from?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I can say for sure it's been here since the founding.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you want to take the anti-immigrant approach, you had people, you know, the know-nothings back in the early 1800s who were very anti-immigrant, thought Catholicism would make us into Rome or whatever.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh if you want to go the anti-science route, even as the first smallpox vaccines were being distributed by you know Edward Jenner here.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the one.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um you could have said any name there be like, mm-hmm.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but even as those vaccines are being distributed, you had people who like thought it was just the government's way of controlling you, or they're trying to they didn't use microchips back then, obviously.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: But they just found it to be a systematic s uh system of oppression and a la and uh a taking away of control, if you will.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, that that rhetoric still repeats today.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Look at what RFK Jr.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: supporters say.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: But if you want to speak specifically to causes, to get back to your original question there, I think it's a combination of the lack of proper education in this country.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like and I mean public education, not necessarily higher institutions, combined with the failure of things like the healthcare system and the system of policing and how this country has been slowly but surely bought out by the rich.
• 14:18
  unknown: Yeah.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: That is that is very true, though.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: As you were like, My Democrat friends don't like me pointing that out.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: That actually is a is a very good point.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: You do kind of have that uh I did not realize that like the anti uh like anti-vaccine went back as far back as it did.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's but yeah, it's uh anti-public health has been around ever since that idea became a concept.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I I think though, like back then there was more of a justification for it because honestly, back when uh you know George Washington and all them were around, oftentimes going to the doctor could get you killed.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like because what doctors would do would bloodlet you.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, th they they killed George Washington.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: George Washington died because of Right.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: He came home with a sore throat and they like took out I can't remember how many people.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: It would recover just fine if you were like left alone.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, give them some chicken double soup or whatever, you know.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: But no, that is really interesting though, because I think that a lot of times uh intellectuals have the burden of defending institutions that are systematically attacked um, you know, by different interest groups, and uh, you know, like they are sort of saddled with whatever the results happen.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's not really us defending institutions, although it does come off to that to some extent, because we will say, oh, well, Social Security isn't the bad idea or whatever.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: But we we say that from the prospect of here's where they're going right, and hopefully here's where we can make it better.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm not I'm not gonna uh I'll sit here and tell you, like, hey, vaccines work, but some of the messaging during COVID was confusing to somebody who doesn't read the primary literature like I do.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: So unless if you're like, you know, every day looking through journals, most Americans aren't, yeah, then it just kind of comes off as a change of narrative every five seconds.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: Science changes every 10 minutes or so.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: People see that as a bad thing.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: I actually see that as a good thing.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like I want uh things to change whenever there is updated information, like, oh, we thought that like this was right.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: It uh it turns out that uh we have better data that shows that doing why is actually better.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's start doing why.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, if you understand how and why science works, you'd be glad that it is changing.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because if things weren't changing, that means we're not learning anything new.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: That that should be the like learning something new and being able to change your mind uh and add to your pool of knowledge, that should be seen as a positive thing, but instead it's seen as hypocritical or or somehow in bad faith.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: I want to go back to you changing your mind, uh, you know, and brag on you a little bit for uh for for being able to do so.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, thank you.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: You said you uh you started out uh as a Republican.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: What why what were the values that you were like, okay, I am a Republican, this means I believe XYZ.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was raised in a non-denominational Christian household.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I f I I would say that in the aspects that I was conservative, it was very much founded in religion.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: So yes.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh pro-life, I'm assuming.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Pro-life.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this is an issue, but like anti-gay marriage.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I I was as well for a bit.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And all this other stuff.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, looking back on past me, I'm just like, I'm not taking you seriously anymore.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like I mean, but if you think about uh like when you were there, uh what what information did you get?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: Did you get anything outside of a particular bubble or a particular spin?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm assuming it was very fair and balanced.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, very uh no, in all seriousness, oh, the stuff that I watched, and I say watched because I was always a hands-on kid that liked to tinker with stuff, but the stuff I did watch in terms of like media, it was whatever my grandparents were watching, which was Fox News most of the time.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that that should uh let you know where I was.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Fun fact, there's a study out there that shows that Fox News uh people watch Fox News are on average less informed than those who consume no news at all.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: And apparently it like if if the uh there there's been studies where people have been like paid to uh like watch other uh sources of information and like after six weeks will uh like not hold the same uh views that they that they did prior to the experiment.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's really interesting to me.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so what Fox does, uh the the way uh people's brains are wired is obviously very important.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: And people who tend to have conservative conservative beliefs tend to have uh larger amygdalas, uh which is kind of responsible for like fr uh fight flight.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of you know that.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, basal instincts, I should say.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, very much so.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so I they're like people who watch Fox News are constantly being bombarded with things that are supposed to make them afraid.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so it kind of becomes a cycle where they're oh, they feel afraid, they need to keep watching news, they feel more afraid, and it's just gonna like keep going back into a circle.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: But that's where you also see the opposite effect.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like people who take the anti-gay, anti-trans, you know, they'll they'll watch, you know, they'll be conservatives, and then they'll find out, oh, well, my family member is trans or my family member is gay, and then they become more open.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that's because, you know, part of the way the amygdala works is that it prioritizes the in-group over the out group.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: So if you suddenly have someone in your in-group that is now a part of a group you perceived as the out group, you have one of two options either expand your mind or, and sadly this is a common one too, ostracize them.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Kick them out.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: No, uh that is that is true.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's interesting to me, kind of the the different price.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: So my like my sister came out um as um as as gay in um like right around like 20 uh 2011 or so.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: And um so like you know, grew up in a like a very rural area.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: College, I was in Atlanta, got to meet like all different kinds of people.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so like I was already kind of slowly starting to like evolve uh from like my very socially conservative views.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think I had been primed at that point, but once my once once my sister came out, I was like, okay, so this is Brooke.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: She has been herself her entire life.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like she, you know, like there hasn't been any like choices made or anything.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: At that point, I was like, clearly, this is like gay is not a choice at all.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: And like I from that point, it was like very easy for me to be like, yep, okay, my my mind has been changed.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: But it did absolutely take somebody in that end group, though.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's that that's sometimes what it takes.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh for me, I ended up ditching religion altogether.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I am same.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: I am an atheist.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, same openly so.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, dude.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh that's kind of uh uh gutsy to do uh in the south.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Which has only gotten me uh, you know, a couple dirty looks every now and then.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, Christians pointing at me like I'm a you know, some sort of science experiment.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, let's find out how the atheist works.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like dissecting you on the table and whatnot.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like I like I in high school, I I've been in eight I I would I've been in.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Atheist since I would probably say 2016 is when I started to deconvert and try to deprogram.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And some of that deprogramming is still going on today.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, probably will for a long time.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: It definitely still is for me.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: But uh I I literally remember in one of my health science classes, like someone uh bringing up uh you know God.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I'm like, wait, you still believe he exists?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like kind of in a kind of a snarky way.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't mean it any deep any deep than that.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then they turn to me and they're like, and they're like, wait, you don't believe in God?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, nope.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm uh and I explained to them why.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then the fact that they couldn't formulate a response when they were trying to shows just how unusual it is for somebody to be an atheist in this country openly.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's why you'll see people identify as agnostic.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: Even though agnosticism doesn't refer to belief at all, it refers to knowledge.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Not to be Gnostic, that that word refers to knowledge.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's why when people come up to me and it's like, don't you think you should be agnostic?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm an atheist.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: I I I usually will just say I'm an agnostic atheist.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: It kind of just covers.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, those two words do go well together.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: And then I mean that's very much where I am.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't think that it's it's possible to prove the non-existence of God.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I kind of tend to be and be more agnostic.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: I I tend to be more malleable in that.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that if you were to just bring forward a general concept of a God, I could not disprove it.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you bring forth the God of the Bible or the God of Islam or the Torah or pick your pick your favorite religion, then I can start comparing what how I think, you know, taking their personality traits and what they do all together, I should be able to take what their personality traits and compare them to reality.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because if they exist, then they should have an effect on reality that matches what they're saying.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: So so in that sense, uh in terms of an absolute god concept, no, if you were to just propose a deistic God, I can't disprove that.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: But it I'm a Gnostic atheist on any gods that have been sufficiently defined by humanity.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what do you think?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I I see this a lot.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: What what do you define like the difference between a leftist versus a liberal democrat?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Scholarly, that is, leftists tend to be strict anti-capitalists, whereas liberals are not.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's a much further um there's a there's a much like wider chasm.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why social democrats, which I identify as are liberals.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: They're not leftists because we're not anti-capitalists.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: So how so how do you define like what's the difference between a uh a liberal democrat and a social democrat?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell It's more of like a dedication to liberalism.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Okay, so a social democrat is by nature a liberal democrat, but not all liberal democrats are social democrats.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those all rectangles are squares, but not all squares are rectangles.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: There are different aspects of liberalism that people lean into more.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you have your social liberals who are socially liberal, but economically they're not really for uh regulation, not sufficient regulation, shall we say, or what they deem as overbearing.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh economic liberals are pretty much the opposite.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have people that uh have all different varieties of liberalism they subscribe to.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Myself as a social democrat, I am both a uh social liberal and also uh an economic liberal.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so some of the policies I propose actually go borderline socialist.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm I'm for universal health care and free education and AI being a public utility instead of a private, private thing.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell Well, uh, if if we're gonna help pay for the cost, we should also get a little share in the profit.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that makes the most sense to me.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh so so in that sense, social democrats are slightly more pink than liberal democrats.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, the YDSA is gonna love when they say this.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, yeah, man, we we we aim to uh we aim to make some waves, so we'll see what happens.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I it seems like whenever you were growing up, like your um like political values and beliefs kind of derive from like oh my, you know, like a sort of like God.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that was that was it.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: So now where do you see like the source of your uh the source of your values?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: The source of my values come from what benefits humanity most.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: The the basic premise, I guess you could say.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: Maximize well-being.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Maximize well-being, minimize harm.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's a cost-benefit analysis.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's about the closest you could get to objective morality.
• 27:08
  unknown: Yep.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Are you a uh Sam Harris guy?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, my specific brand uh of atheism has been inspired by Aaron Ra.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Secular activist on the Texas Board for American Atheists.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm I'm um directors for American Atheists in Texas, I should say.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: I uh I for like had only read his name for a long time, and I thought it was Aaron Ra.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: And uh whenever like I started watching his videos, I was like, oh wow, no, I was way off.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: I did not realize the connection to the like deity or anything.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: But he is freakishly intelligent.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like the like his the facts that he can just like sp uh like spit out of like regarding like I think it like especially in evolutionary science, it is amazing to me.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like as someone like growing up, um, you know, I told you it was uh public education, so I did not get a lot of like science training.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so science is something that was like very e even now, it's kind of like very intimidating to me.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Most Americans don't know that a theory is the highest uh amount of knowledge you could have in science.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: That gets me every time like evolution's just a theory.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: But like So was gravity.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: A theory yes, and so is atomic theory, but we still know they're atoms.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's because theories provide the how and why of things work, whereas laws are the observations you make.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think there is this misconception that's like if a theory just behaves really, really well and like minds its P's and Q's, it'll like grow up one day to be a real law.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like I think that's kind of like the way people see it.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, what so what's uh what's a law then?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a law is observation.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you know, if you were to drop that uh uh canteen on the ground, you are observing gravity in effect.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: You are observing something being pulled to the ground.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's all it really is.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: That that's by and large, you're explaining observations that you make.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Theories are like all the kind of in-depth, geeky, mathy, science-y stuff that you get to learn about at school.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: As you're talking, you you're kind of showing why um like intellectuals will have a difficult time and like debates and stuff, because everything there is so much nuance.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it is very easy to come in and turn nuance into a black and white issue.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: And just people kind of tend to, if they can, they're gonna go towards that black and white as opposed to the nuance.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: Whenever you're um kind of talking to uh folks on campus, uh um, what are some objections that you're kind of running into now?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of apathy.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like I found this a lot when just registering voters, but just getting in the register, you know, I'm not trying to get them to join or you know, protest or anything.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Just trying to get them to register to vote.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: I had people come up to me and say, I don't care about politics, I don't know about politics, and I don't care to know about politics.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, well, that's kind of disheartening.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then in my mind, and then uh in my mind, though I'll say it out loud here, I'm like, and that's how this country gets exploited.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: They depend on people not wanting to do anything.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: I I was gonna ask you what your retort is, but that is that's the best one you can give.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you you want to know why the rich are buying out every part of this government?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's because the people do not actually civically participate any anymore.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Go to Latin America.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Seriously, Latin America for all the corruption and all the uh top-down societies that they have, actively engaged society, civically engaged society.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: President, uh, the president of Argentina, Malay, passed labor reforms down there recently, and there's been nonstop 24-hour structs to protest that law.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna get that here.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: What why is why do you think that is?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like what what what is it about like because we had the one of the largest protests in American history uh uh a couple of weeks ago.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: The No Kings, yeah.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, the No Kings.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but you know, that's not it's not like starting the revolution, so to speak.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh right, right.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're not, you know, we're not uh, you know, having Maximilian Rose Pierre talk about how it's to the guillotine.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: But uh Okay, so let's take the first part.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a normalcy bias, is why people tend to, you know, stick at home.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think that uh we've had it relatively good in this country, not saying it's perfect, but relatively good for so long that people have said, okay, nothing's ever going to change, so why even take the time out of the day to engage?
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I have to thank President Trump.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because he's coming in and he is so utterly destroying everything this country used to brag about from our economy to our national identity to our uh freedoms that we claim on paper to have.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: All that is being destroyed.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: And now that people are seeing that, they're starting to get more civically engaged.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's slow, it's a slow product.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: But it's happening.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think that uh Trump has given Democrats a very, very big opportunity um in rebranding.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm I'm gonna do what I can to like make sure they make sure they do.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: But so whenever whenever I was growing up, um as a as a Republican, if uh reflexively, if anything that we're talking about, like a democratic priority of a democratic politician, we automatically equated Democrats with socialism, communism, because they they're the they were the same thing to me.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: And um I guess a better way of saying it is guaranteed results.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like if if uh if if you have a democratic uh politician or democratic policies, they guarantee results, uh, and that is like the antithesis of America.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: You're supposed to only have the opportunity.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um but now with the way that uh Trump has kind of gone very uh like all in with government and it being the like party of results now, I think Democrats have an opportunity to be like, no, we're actually the party of opportunity.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: We can uh these policies that we have can actually help give you a better life.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I I think that if if Democrats can use that kind of messaging, that could be more palatable than uh the intellectual know-it-alls who are trying to tell us what to do.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: The uh the cause the causational factors of why we're here have always been present in American politics.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: Trump is just simply taking the mask off.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's you know, we always uh could uh hide behind a mask of uh civility, you know, gentleman politics, uh except for all the duels we have.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um but um now Trump is taking that mask off.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing the ugly side of what this country really is.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's the real golden opportunity.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think that by recognizing what this country really is, we can then craft a better country out of it.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I think I'm just recognizing the reality of the situation.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope that the American Empire is burning, you know, it's gone away, it's gone away.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but perhaps out of that a real republic can be reborn.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, how how do we do that?
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: Put me in power, then so in all in all seriousness.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: Don't you what about no kings, man?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, hey, we this country wanted a king, so I thought I'd just make it an intelligent one.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: But no, no, no, no, in all seriousness.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think we need to have a complete sit-down after this is all said and done, and and Trump is six feet under and we kick out the MAGA coalition or whatever.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: There needs to be a serious discussion about how do we want to structure our government.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the check uh we're seeing now checks and balances are failing.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: Congress is refusing to do their job.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: The courts are actually doing what they can assertively.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh especially the lower courts, not necessarily the supreme one.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think that we need to redefine exactly what Congress or sorry, what powers are allocated to the president versus Congress versus the courts.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: Very much so.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a good argument there that we should go back to semi-traditionalism and how the government works in that way.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: So what is that?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: So that's not the technical term, but uh that that should be like the executive branch executes the laws and has the agencies to do so.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: The legislative actually passes the law, uh, et cetera, and so forth.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: Courts interpret.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because what we've seen over the years is that Congress has slowly but surely and uh allocated a lot of its power to the executive.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: So Trump isn't actually I mean, he's breaking the law, let's not let that go.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: But he's only exploiting a system that has been built up decades.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Decades ago is when this started going on.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have a Congress that refuses to take up its power and actually check the president, that's not how Congress was intended to be used.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: Congress was political parties in general, while recognized as a necessary evil, the founders never thought it would get to the point where people would put party over country.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's why checks and balances exist in the first place.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: They thought at the very least people would check each other in the brand in various branches of government because they were jealous of each other's power.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, though, the even though like Washington wasn't theoretically in a political party, uh in his farewell address, he warns of the dangers of political parties.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: I they had already existed, like in a in a large way.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um it was the way it was done was so underhanded.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's like you would have like Thomas Jefferson had his own newspapers, John Adams had his, and uh the the way it was done, I I think the system is running exactly how it was designed to, uh with the exception of Congress delegating all of its powers to the presidency.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean you can you can make the argument that we are here and it like it was inevitable from the beginning.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a flaw in that thinking, and uh I I'm not so agree to disagree, good sir.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no, no, I'm I just say it's too absolutist.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: I uh I don't like saying that something was inevitable.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I think uh there are a set of factors that have built up over the years that have led to our specific outcome.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of it does come down to the two-party system.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: I always look at the parliaments of Europe, how they have proportional voting, and you know, people have certain representatives from each party, so you have the Greens and you have the socialists and you know the liberals in the middle and all that other stuff.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think that breeds a unique environment that that puts a bigger check on power than a two-party system.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell That is true.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: And like most of the time you're gonna have to form coalitions to do like any kind of governing, like you know.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: The United States technically does have a multi-party system.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: We have libertarians and greens, socialists, even the communist party, you say.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the problem is that the systems that be lock these people out of power.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's true.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: So with this case, the Democrat the Democratic Party and the Republican Party kind of work together to maintain their monopoly over Well, yeah.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's why you'll see if you look at the lobbyists who bought out the government, you'll see Republicans and Democrats bought out many of the same lobbying firms.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell There has been a long history of Congress kind of delegating its powers.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think we can get back to a system that has more uh congressional uh checks in it?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm gonna go ahead and just state here it's gonna require a lot of work, a lot of effort.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to require some harsh truths and some harsh treatment.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, kind of force the medicine go down people's throats kind of thing, you know?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's what do you mean by that?
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: So first of all, we have to find a way to keep the MAGA people from taking power again.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like the the abuse of power that has stemmed from this coalition, we can't just say, oh, in four years we can just elect someone better.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because in four years we might not have that shot.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to find a way to crack the coalition apart, and Trump's doing most of the work for us on that, yeah on that end.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um like in his first term, he had I uh obviously I didn't I didn't like it.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: I thought that a lot of his things were kind of like blind luck and he looked like he was just eating chess pieces.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: But he kind of had he had some political acumen to him in a certain sense.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like he knew how to exploit something.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: He was always able to change the narrative when it when the narrative didn't suit him.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he do you think he's lost his step?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like what's he's lost that step at this point.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, he's been trying to get off the Epstein file since that started popping up in the news, and it hasn't worked.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: He tried to kidna he kidnapped a president from another country to try to change the narrative.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, him him and his ilk have tried to justify the current conflict in Iran.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: And oh, well, we're doing this for you, and this all the it's like it's not working.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, there's an anti-war movement in this country that might be the biggest since the Iraq war.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like this war is unpopular.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: Trump is in his twenties in approval right now.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there are not many Republicans that are like happy that they'll have to defend this guy on the campaign trail.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that this goes back to something that you had said at the beginning that like you thought after January 6th that uh Trump was like done.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: That should have been the deal breaker for most Americans.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: What really irritates me is that the entire 2024 campaign, people are saying, look, Trump is the one that is going to get us into wars.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like, if if you vote for him, we will get in wars.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, like, no lib tards.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's not right.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like we're gonna we're gonna own y'all.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I mean white people, we've owned enough other people as it is.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: We should stop that.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: I do I do love kind of coming back, and this is the snarking person in me.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, hey, I warned you about this.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like people like me tried to sit here and tell you he was doing all these things, and you don't get to act surprised now.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like you don't, you don't get to say, Well, I didn't know this was going to happen.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: Most of it he said he was gonna do.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: That that is very true.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, I don't think they've heard that though.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: This man endorsed Project 2025 until he figured out it was unpopular, and then he tried to pretend he didn't know who it was.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: All the meanwhile, he has hired people who authored the thing into his government to into his administration, most notably Russell Watt.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like you guys didn't see this coming?
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how how blind do you have to be to not see this coming?
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I I kind of have a uh I I have like a hard time because I know that um that there are that there were a lot of people that were duped by an algorithm, you know, like that quite literally we're we're saying all these things.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: They saw none of that, you know, they they they saw none of that information.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so I the right-wing media space has dominated for quite some time.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't well see we didn't lose in twenty twenty four.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: We lost in twenty fifteen.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that someone like Trump went from being someone not taken seriously in the primary to being the now twice elected president.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: And you know how it got started?
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: Berthras.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like that would he he telegraphed this from the very
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: He's not an American.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: I want to see the birth certificate.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, I I took him as a joke.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: Because of this, because of that.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: And even back in my ignorant political mind when I was in middle school, I'm like, okay, buddy, that's not that's not real.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: Come on.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: That was I I didn't think anybody would take him seriously after that.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and so it just every single time he does something, I'm like, well, there it is.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_02: It is absolutely over.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then he somehow like crawls out of the wreckage like a damn cockroach and is like surviving with like some radioactive stuff, and he's got three heads now.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's amazing how he can withstand just about anything.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think Trump is smart, but I do think he's cunning.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a I think there's a distinct difference there.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: He he like when he manipulates people, he knows what he's doing.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, very much so.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: I yeah, I I I feel I I feel that.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, I can't read his mind, but I I feel that that's the case.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that a lot of his little freakouts on true social and you know, in the press, they're being so mean to me, is in part because he feels his control slipping on his base.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: He he sees the he won't admit this, but he sees the approval polling.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: He knows he's the most unpopular president since Herbert Hoover.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: Big accomplishment there.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: He knows he's screwed.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: He knows he's losing the House by at least 25 seats, upwards of 40.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: And now the Senate is compromised due to resignations, popular candidates actually getting on the candidate for the Democrats.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the right the writing's on the wall.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he sees it, everybody's administration sees it, and that's why you see the freakouts.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's a desperation move.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why it's already uh attacking voting right now.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh the this Trump does it every time.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean he's like he's he's laying the groundwork for saying that the election was rigged from the like right now.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, you know, we can't trust it.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: We can't trust.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: The thing is poll workers are woke.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: I I've heard which is crazy because I volunteered to be a poll worker once.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: So were you asleep?
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: So you were woke.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't call my I see, I I don't I I don't call myself woke, and that's just because I don't know.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: I I I don't like the social media terms and you know the the I don't really care much about the culture war terms because they don't actually mean anything anymore.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's just some people point out to discredit you now.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, I'm uh like the extent of my social beliefs are that I believe human beings should be treated like human beings.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's like it's not it got it's as literally as simple as that.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I I think that we are all equal, and I we should all be treated equal.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's just how I see it.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it it's one of those things where most of the whole the culture war is just one big distraction.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's a distraction.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it's and it's worked pretty well.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think you had said this uh the other night whenever I'd met you, but it was kind of like the um the the thing where it's like, hey, that that immigrant over there is uh is is taking some of your money.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's the it's the Facebook meme of like the the rich guy with all the cookies, and then you have the blue-collar worker with like one cookie, and then the immigrant with like half a cookie or whatever, and then you know the point at the immigrant being like, hey, that that immigrant's taking your half cookie away from you.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, but at the same time, it is like whenever I look back, it is unreal the amount of work I did advocating for billionaires and like and their their interests.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but like I thought that unions were the worst thing in the world.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: I like what workers' rights?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: What are you kidding me?
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's just gonna be a job killer.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds like communism.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: A minimum wage.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think so, Karl Marx.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like it's it was very much like that.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, your workplace safety regulations?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: Little Timmy needs to get his fingers cut off.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: How is little Timmy gonna learn not to put his hands in that sewing machine?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Teach him to be a man.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: We gotta have somebody clumped down the chimney.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's gotta be small.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: Why we we he can't he can't afford to eat, and it's good for the job.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like this is a win-win for him.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and all this ultimately hurts the poor in this country.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: And yet you have millions of poor voters, poor white people especially.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: They line up and vote for this.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like they genuinely go and cast their ballots for people who could not give a damn.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, um towards the um towards like the end of his uh end of his life, Martin Luther King uh began to advocate more for uh people in poverty as opposed to making uh as opposed to just uh helping out like black Americans.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um and he he he realized that from the beginning that like what was going to what what was going to happen was um the you know like the the the rural white farmer was gonna get left behind and uh people in power were going to exploit that hardship by saying that hey, you don't have what you have because of that, because of that brown person there.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and that's why I always emphasize, and you know, people further to the left than me or even on the same part of the scale as me, I always prioritize economics.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think that um uh if if you solve the economic issues, the civil rights issues will follow naturally.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's hard to say that trans person is the problem or that immigrant person is the problem.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry about my mannerisms, by the way.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: But uh uh but it's hard to say that you know insert group of people here are the problem if there is no problem.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: But if everybody had a a nice paying job that allowed them to, you know, move up the economic ladder, had uh, you know, I don't know, maybe a savings account.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe something to not have to take out a loan to pay for a surgery.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh if we weren't living in a country where over half the population is living paycheck to paycheck.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: And just one medical event away from bankruptcy.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: Then uh there would this culture war stuff would disappear because the ultimate ammo of it is economics.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_02: I I think that there's there's a little bit more um with like prejudices.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but yeah.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean fo but yes, they they do uh like uh the cultural war issues do tend to recede whenever there is a uh a better economy.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell Right, right, right.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: I I suppose I should clarify.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not denying that people are prejudiced in this country.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but I think that if you take like the the true prejudice believers, right, the white nationalists, the kooks, you know, that kind of thing.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you were to take those people and eliminate the economic ammunition, they would be a fringe of American society.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because their ideas are not popular, they've been normalized.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the key difference here.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: That is actually a very big difference between being normalized and being popularized.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I mean we're watching this in real time right now with turning point.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really care if Mussolini does all these horrible things.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: He makes the trains run on time.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think uh at one point you were telling me that you would uh that there's a turning point USA chapter uh on your campus.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_02: Look, turning point is everywhere.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: They have a campaign to get in every high school country, which you know, I'm gonna tick off the Democrats, but I actually support the reason why is because I I have way too much faith in humanity.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd like to think there and that in every crowd and every school, there's someone like me who is willing to mock these people and show them to be the ridiculous people that they are yes.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um what I what I worry about with that um are uh like the folks that are in the like really, really small towns, and you know, there's like only one person.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's very hard to uh to stand up in in that kind of environment.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, of course.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: I you know that's just kind of like my idealism coming through.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like that that's not that's not a tree turning point, USA.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: There are people to be taken seriously.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like these aren't serious people.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're not serious ideas.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Charlie Kirk.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: They're serious, they're seriously dangerous, yeah, but they're not serious.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_02: No, I Charlie Kirk became famous by losing debates to 18-year-olds.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that is that's what he did.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the reason why he tackled unprepared college students is because they don't haven't developed their ideas as well as other people.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you see this with like debates that Kirk has had with people who know what they're talking about.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's it's literally a wash because the person who knows what they're talking about is going to win.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like on the issue of abortion, I forget who it was, but I watched like a video of you know someone debating him on abortion, and he got he actually exposed Charlie Kirk not knowing how embryology works or how that stuff works by getting him to say that a dolphin embryo should not be terminated because it is a human being.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: In Charlie's defense, they look nearly identical because all mammals look like that in that period of gestation.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the point.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: The point was to have supposed that he didn't know what he was talking about.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he immediately stumbled back after that.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: And like it's one of those things where I'm like looking at this and I'm like, didn't get my chance.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because I would have proudly exposed him in front of the campus.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: You had a debate uh with uh some turn point uh folks sitting here.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that was early March, I think.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because like it was the socialists, myself, turning point had their own party or you know, like their own people.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then we had uh, you know, the Republicans who sent their president.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: So smoking Republican president seems like a chill guy.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: They s they made me like stop using facts and just start mocking them.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like it went from like on the whole like terror on like the whole tariffs thing, because that's the part I remember most clearly of all, they actually tried to say that oh, uh tariffs are making American farmers prosper.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I grew up hey, I know a little bit about farming being from Indiana and my grandfather was a farmer.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just correct this real quick.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: So the thing about the tariffs is that they're causing farmer bankruptcies to skyrocket.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: I also believe the uh suicide rate among farmers is a 50-year high for the bankruptcy rate.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: But and the reason why they're doing that is because the tariffs are starting a trade war with China, and that is making our crops not competitive in the international market.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: Being a farmer is hard enough.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: You you don't need uh to not be able to sell your crops internationally at a fair price.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then on top of that, the USAID is shut down still a little bit, like farmers aren't getting their subsidies for from that.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: Medicaid uh uh is being cut.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's why rural hospitals are shutting down.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: This party, MAGA turning point, they thrive on being grifters.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: They don't uh I don't think any of them actually believe what they're saying.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think they say it because it makes them money.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh now you got farmers wondering, well, why aren't my why are my paychecks shortening up or not coming at all?
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, because you decided to vote for that, you decided to vote for high tariffs that ruin your compatibility.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: The end of USAI USAID, because as it turns out, all that money in terms of crops going overseas, that was paying farmers.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's where it was.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's what it was doing.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you're so the crops that we grew to go feed starving children made sure our farmers here got paid.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: But Trump got off on calling it wasteful spending.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think what what are uh like the Republicans in the turning point chapters at ODU?
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh are they do they have more uh members than than y'all?
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: As for turning point, I am about 50% sure that most of their members are Republicans as well.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: So they kind of share members in that month.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'd be willing to bet my bottom dollar, they have a lot of resources thrown behind them, though.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the day, you don't really need to be popular.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: You just need to have the resources to spread your propaganda.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell What do you uh how do you define the pursuit of happiness?
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_02: A myth I mean Yeah.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_02: Right now it is.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I mean you're you're chasing the thought in your own head.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever makes you happy in life and fulfilled in life, chase it.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, I guess unless if you're like harming others, then maybe don't.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm very fulfilled in my life as a drug dealer.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, please don't.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, yeah, I mean I'm I'm sure Ted Bundy felt very fulfilled after.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very I'm very sure.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Jeff Jeffrey Dahmer felt very fulfilled.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: And filled at the same time, yeah.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: But uh but whatever barring harm done to others, I I think that whatever uh makes someone happy is something that should be open to them to pursuing and encouraged.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I I d I just hope that you know when I I I leave this world better when I'm dead and gone than when what it was when I came in.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that is uh if I if I manage to do that, if I manage to succeed in that, I will have done my job.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_02: I like that, man.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_02: Steven, this has been a lot of fun, but I I really appreciate it, man.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for acting out with me.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.