Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 10/7/26: 100 Aircraft Destroyed By Iran, Pope Rejects AI Consciousness, Fox Ridicules Dr Oz On Inflation

Transcript

10/7/26: 100 Aircraft Destroyed By Iran, Pope Rejects AI Consciousness, Fox Ridicules Dr Oz On Inflation · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we
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• 0:20
  Speaker 1: enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Happy Wednesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: It's good to see you, Emily. We'll do a pound here.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: What's up? We'll also do here for whichever way the
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: camera angle you want. Obviously, our hearts go out to
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: everybody this morning. No, absolutely not. In fact, I had
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: to be talked out of a few different book stunts
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: because it is October 7th and our critics would have
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: had a field day. with some of the screenshots. But
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: all of that aside, before we get to everything, we
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: do have a very special announcement. Let's put it up
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: here on the screen. A0, you guys came through in
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: a 24-hour period. I am here on the show, and
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Ryan Grimm has accepted one ticket for the Fish Show
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: in Richmond. So thank you to our premium subscribers for
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: coming through. I was not a cheapskate. He actually was
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: a homie and decided to accept the lowest cost ticket
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: because At one point in our group chat, I go, oh,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: my God, these tickets are $ 2, 000 because I said offhand.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: It's not exactly what you said.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: I think the exact quote was, holy.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: Shit, these tickets are $ 2, 000.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: So I was like, oh, man, I'm about to have
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: a very uncomfortable conversation with my wife at the budget
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: meeting this month. There's no way I could just bring
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: it up. But Ryan came through and yeah, that's right.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So thank you to all of our subscribers.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: His boys were already on the lawn.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: So that's right. His boys were already there. So he
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: was cool about it. But I did say I said, look, man,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I said I would buy it. So you pick whatever
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: ticket you want. Ryan will be on the lawn with
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: the fish boys tonight in Richmond and you're going to
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: have to put up. with the two of us. So
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: thank you again to our premium subscribers. If you want
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: to support Little Endeavors and the family that we have
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: over here, breakingpoints.com, we have our free month trial. But
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: in terms of what we got on the show today,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: we are going to talk a little bit about diesel.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: There is a new congressional services report out, which is
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: very interesting in details. The number of fixed wing aircraft
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: that have all been damaged in the Iran war, absolutely
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: shocking numbers. We're going to get also to a professor,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: a at Catholic University, and he was part of that
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: religious confab where they stormed out and begged the Catholic
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Church to declare their AI Claude models conscious. He's going
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: to tell us about what some of these people are
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: like behind the scenes because NDA finally expired. We're going
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: to talk also about the midterms. Ken Paxton, new leaked audio.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I feel like that's every show that we've done in
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the last week. And this time around, he's like, yeah,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: those gas prices, the Iran war, I don't know what
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Trump is doing. So either they're strategically leaking it to
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: get ahead of a catastrophic loss, which I know is
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: your theory, or somebody on his team really hates him.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Not mutually exclusive. Not mutually exclusive. In addition to a
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: very funny Dr. Oz moment, another crudité moment for our
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: friend Dr. Oz on the Fox News channel. We are
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: going to get to Israel today, obviously. three-year anniversary of
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: October 7th. So we're going to look a little bit
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: about how October 7th has changed Israel and also how
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: October 7th obviously has been devastating for the Palestinian people
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: in Gaza. Finally, Epstein, there's a fascinating story. Emily, you
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: are all over this. A Epstein whistleblower in the UK
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: who alleged to have information on our Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: has committed suicide. or has been said to have committed suicide.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: You are going to take us through everything that he revealed,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: some of the details, and some immediate calls for investigation
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom. And finally, we're going to be
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: joined by Rana Farooq, one of our favorite authors. She
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: has a new book out. She's a Financial Times columnist.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: She really is an incredible kind of observer of the world.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: She has a new book out actually on the Arctic.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: And specifically how the Iran war and changing ice, you know,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: like ice, what is it, ice patterns in the Arctic
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: as a result of rising global temperature are actually changing
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: the way that global sea routes work and a projection
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: of global power with China specifically creating something called a
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: new ice silk road. So absolutely fascinating to be able
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: to get to talk to her. So Thank you. We
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: already did the pitch, so I don't have to do that.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: If you're watching this on YouTube, hit subscribe to our
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  Speaker 1: YouTube channel. If you're listening to the podcast, please share
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: an episode with a friend. But let's go ahead and start,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: as we said, with that new Congressional Research Service report.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Our team did an amazing job of highlighting this. So
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: this was, I was reading through it a little bit yesterday.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Listed here in this new report are 81 fixed wing
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: or rotary wing aircraft, including uncrewed aircraft systems like drones,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: reportedly lost or damaged in U.S. operations against Iran since
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: February 28th, according to news report statements by the DOD, U.S.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Central Command, and the DOD Inspector General. So obviously, this
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: is an official now U.S. government report from the Congressional
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Research Service. Congressional Research Service is an independent research service
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: from the administration. So it reports directly to Congress. I
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: think the reason why that this is so important is
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: that they list some of the official costs of the
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: war in September 2026 of the cost of equipment losses
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: already as of just August 1st, between 1.9 and 3.3 billion,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: depending on DOD plans for replacement. So nearly Two to
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: three billion dollars in aircraft that have been or in
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: equipment that has been lost or damaged in addition to
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: 81 different aircraft that have been lost or damaged. And Emily,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: I just don't think that the American people, you know,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: we have showed them these images of the bases. And
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: we've showed various one-offs. But to actually see the full
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: number is absolutely shocking because it highlights both their being
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: able to be shot out of the sky in the
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  Speaker 1: case of many of these drone systems. I believe, you know, what, 10%
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: or something of the entire fleet has been down. You
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: also have, it appears, helicopters and others that they list
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: inside of here. And then the most high profile is
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: the shoot down of some of these aircraft. And so
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: all of those compound into really a humiliating military defeat
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: at a strategic level. And it also highlights just the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: immense cost. I mean, if you lose two to three
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: billion in just six months of war, and again, in
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: the most sophisticated aircraft systems that the United States has
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: in its possession, that is no question a massive defeat
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: at a strategic level that will be studied, Russia, China,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: and others. And it obviously also highlights the asymmetry when
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: you're using these missiles or drones, which cost a literal fraction,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: in some cases like 120th or 150th fraction of what
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: some of these things go for.
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  Speaker 3: Well, I was going to say, I think this would
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: go right over the heads of most of the public
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: if they did not believe it was a defeat, right?
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: We hear these numbers and they're so abstract, but When
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: you look at the progress of the war, the quote
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: unquote progress of the war, that's where it's going to
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: be so obviously difficult for everybody to swallow a number
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: like this because they're still being asked to pay extremely
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: high gas prices You say, for what? I mean, on
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: the political side, a lot of Republicans believe Trump has
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: committed malpractice by never asking the American people to buy
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: into the war really substantially. He gave that one speech
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: when he was updating people on the fact that the
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: war had begun. But other than that, he's basically been like,
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: it's done, it's over, we won. And so there's numbers
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: like this and information like this. Even those pictures of
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: the bases that came out, I think CBS had them, Sager,
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: a couple.
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  Speaker 2: Of weeks ago.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: That is painful, politically painful, and of course, morally painful
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  Speaker 3: as well, because the quote unquote progress of this war
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: is not progress.
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  Speaker 2: And that's very easy for people to see. So this
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: is not good for the administration. It's not really good
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: for anybody.
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  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And in fact, the Wall Street Journal last night
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: published some new audio of the radio communications of the U.S. blockade.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: It's very long, so we can't include all of it
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: in our show. But if you do have the time,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: I encourage you to go and take a listen because
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: you hear things like prepare to fire, and you see
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: that you've got nearly 20 different U.S. Navy vessels all
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: trying to enforce this blockade. And as we covered yesterday,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: there was now a historic uptick in the number of
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: shots that are being taken in the Strait of Hormuz,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: and many of these shots are to disable and or
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: potentially sink some of these carriers with multiple different carriers
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: even saying that they're just going to turn around and
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: abide by the IRGC policy. blockade, which has actually significantly
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: dipped the amount of oil that has moved through the
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Strait of Hormuz in the last couple of days. And
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: that's why we want to focus a lot on diesel
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and also on the overall economy this morning. Let's put
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: this next one up on the screen. Golubov, the Iranian
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: troll game continues. Wish we had our friend Ryan Grimm,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: who is at the Fish Show tonight, to explain some
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: of this. But I'll do my best. It is, Boo,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: are you ready for those of you who are listening?
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: I'm confident you can do this.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it shows a ghost, and it shows kind of,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: what is it, a curve? And so at the bottom,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: you have junk bond spreads, dated Brent, 10-year yields, diesel prices.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And then on the downside, you see consumer confidence, foreign
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: net purchases of treasury bonds, hyperscalers-free cash flow, and the
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: housing affordability index. In other words, all of the bad
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: things are going up, and all of the good things
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: are going down. I think Al Gore said something like
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: that to the effect on the 1992 campaign trail. But
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: just to show a little bit about what he's saying,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: let's go to the next one, guys, just so I
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: can explain some of this. What you see right now
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: is exactly the problem. They say oil is flowing from
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Hormuz again, but not the kind that the world needs most.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: And this is what we keep focusing on from our
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: friend Rory. is that the scramble is on right now
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: for diesel, while damaged refineries and tight fuel supplies are
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: keeping prices elevated all over the world. And so what
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: they mean specifically by that is that even though ships
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: are able to ferry a decent amount of crude oil
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: now under the US enforced blockade, And some of these corridors,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: they are barely moving any of the barrels that the
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: world actually needs most, which is diesel. The distinction is
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: paramount in American politics because of the all-time high that
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: we have reached with California recording a diesel price average
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: of $ 8. 44 a gallon. And what they see right now,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: and actually our friend Rory has explained this really well,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: we don't buy crude oil. Like nobody is buying a
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: barrel of crude. You're buying gasoline. You're buying diesel. These
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: are refined products. You are buying airplane tickets, which are
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: influenced obviously by jet fuel. Well, all of that needs
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: to be refined. And the world is in a historic
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: refinery crunch for a variety of reasons, which are gonna
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: show all of you. It's not just about the amount
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: of oil. It's also about whether you're able to take
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: that oil and refine it. In the United States, we
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: are already running these refiners at some 97% capacity. By
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: the way, I just saw the news yesterday. Ryan Hall
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: was saying that there is a potential new hurricane which
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: is moving through the Gulf of Mexico that always can
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: impact refineries all along the Gulf where the vast majority
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: of them are located. So that's our situation in the
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: United States. On the other side of the globe, we
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: also have the entire war in Ukraine. And so let's
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: put A5 up here on the screen. This is a
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: shocking video that just came out yesterday. This was a
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: massive fire that was reported in the Russian Black Sea
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: port of Sochi. And local channels have reported that a
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: ship had exploded in the port area. And we don't
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: know exactly what it was carrying, but we see that
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Russia's both refinery capacity has dramatically taken a hit. For
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the entire month of October, they have banned the export
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: of all diesel. And even in this case, they're going
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: after their ability to export oil. Let's also then turn
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: to Venezuela. Remember, in Venezuela, it has long been touted
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: by the Trump administration. Oh, well, our colonial expansion into
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: the government of Venezuela is going to make up for
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: all of the oil that we're not getting out of
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: the Strait of Hormuz and specifically some of their refined products.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: A7 guys, we can take a look here at the video.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: This just came out yesterday. This is the video of
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: their second largest oil refinery literally exploding. And so looking
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: into it, what it appears to be is some sort
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: of natural gas line explosion where the state run oil
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: company said that is evaluating the situation. The fire broke
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: out in part of the facility yesterday. for the largest complex.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: You can see, I mean, it's just literally booming. It
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: started at a gas line from the refinery's diesel hydro treater,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: forcing a complete shutdown of the entire facility, including the boilers.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: They have not yet given us a timeline as to
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: when that will be back online. So I do think
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: that this just demonstrates where disrupting the global oil market
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: for the last six months has just created this absolute
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: shortage in these refined products. It will take many months
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: even if things were to sustain at the current level
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: to get back to where they are. And I think
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the TLDR, for everybody who's listening, is basically, why does
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: this matter to me? What it matters is, is that
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the diesel price is going to stay high. That's basically it.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: Right. Diesel price is going to stay high, and then
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: it ripples into other places of the economy, as you
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: were mentioning, soccer, flight tickets, whatever else it is.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's everything. It's shipping, every good, all of
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: those things.
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: And so I think that's also partially why we haven't
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: seen Trump be super motivated to end anything, because he
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: kind of knows that if the midterms are the question...
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: on the table, he could end the war and prices
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: are not going to immediately jump back up. I feel
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: like people have kind of gone away from or misunderstood
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: what would happen if Trump were just to declare the
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: war over, which he's done, I.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Guess, several times.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: But I think everybody knows what I mean. Like, actually, finally, seriously,
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: say we're done, go home, that sort of thing. It
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: doesn't mean that prices would immediately jump back up and
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: that the midterms would immediately be less of a bloodbath.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, nobody understood that Republicans or nobody believed Republicans
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: were going to win the midterms. But it's going to
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: take months no matter what, assuming he does actually just
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: end at some point. It's going to take months no
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: matter what for prices to creep back up. And that
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: reminds me, Sagar, also, we're sort of lucky that it's
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: been a light hurricane season, I mean, for many reasons.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: But that is a great point. I hadn't even thought
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: about that.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: With this impending hurricane, we may get a taste of
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: what could have been much worse or could still get
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: much worse.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not a weather guy. The weather people say
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: something to do with El Nino corresponds with lower amounts
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: of hurricanes. I'll take it, you know, frankly, like we
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: don't need any more of that. Let's put a four
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: up here on the screen. This is another thing that
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: was being passed around in the oil circles. And it
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: was also referenced by Goluboff in his tweet. He talks
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: about something called the physical differential. Again, as I understand it,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: what it means is that the physical differential is the
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: price for a physical barrel of oil. as opposed to
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: what it is currently trading at. And the current physical
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: differential for a physical barrel of oil, which is an
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: aggregate price, is some $ 19 per barrel, which is the
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: highest all-time physical differential in terms of what you can
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: look at. If I look at the Brent crude future
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: price as of this morning, I'm looking at about $ 102
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: per barrel. Whereas if I look here, it's $ 19. So
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: you can roughly put it at around $ 125 per barrel,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: according to them for the dated Brent assessment. Apparently, again,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: why that matters is that you and I are not
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: paying the future price. We are paying the physical price
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: because we are consuming stuff in the real world, right?
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: And as, you know, things get colder, temperature drops, heating,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: fuel oil, all of these other buys that many households
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: across the country You are going to see an overall
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: increase in what that costs, not to mention what's happening
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: in the rest of the world where all of those
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: countries in the G7 were just forced by the Trump
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: administration to release their emergency stockpiles of diesel and of
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: their strategic petroleum reserve to keep the price even lower
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: than where it is right now. And reminder, even with
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: that release, you still see things trading higher. at around
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: $ 100 per barrel. And so that's just going to keep
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: the price of diesel likely from escalating even further, but
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: it is not going to drop the price overall. And
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: I think that's why it matters. And we have a
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: few minutes, so I want to go through. We're talking
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: about the strategic defeat at the top. The world is
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: changing dramatically. And I was reading some recent history about
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: how the oil shock of the 1970s, it actually dramatically
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: changed US consumer culture and was a huge catalyst because
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: people woke up after the gas lines and they're like,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: we cannot live like this. And so the entire automotive industry,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: the strategic petroleum reserve, really the way that people thought
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: about gas and oil, which previously just kind of been
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: on tap, never really been at the forefront, it just changed.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: And it changed the efficiency of cars. It changed the
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: way the consumers, the government and others all thought about
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: this because it was such a horrible and a shocking event.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: The world is now going through something very similar. Let's
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: put A6 up here on the screen just to show you.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: In Britain, just literally last month, the best-selling vehicle was
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: actually a Chinese car. So the Wall Street Journal writes
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: how Britain learned to love Chinese cars, especially a look-alike
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Range Rover. And they specifically point to this new car.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: I apologize if I mispronounce it. It's Chery's JQ7. And
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: the JQ7 is a really interesting car. It has both
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: a gas variant and a plug-in hybrid variant. And it's
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: very fuel efficient. It's roughly the retail price, it appears,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: around $ 50, 000, which is half of the price of a
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: visually similar Range Rover model. And from a plug-in standard, basically,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: you have it so that it's, like I was looking here, Many,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: like the JQ7, are the conventional combustion engine or hybrid,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: and it's not the EV that China is best known for.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: But it's a lower price, and it has the plug-in option,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: and that's what has made it, both from a price
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: and its efficiency standpoint, to just be very attractive. And
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: I do think you've seen now this rise of the
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, obviously China dramatic adoption as a result.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: of this crisis, where consumers who previously, even though they
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: already loved those cars, they may not have upgraded or
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: moved to EV. The government, they have heavy incentives. You
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: have EV sales. It appears to explode really across the globe,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: BYD and others. It's the developed world, remember, that always
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: had much higher gas prices than the United States. And
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: so I'm just looking at this. I'm like, wow, like,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: you know, we're not going back to a world, I think,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: where people are going to be looking at gas guzzlers,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: or at the very least in the rest of the world,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: they're going to be a lot more fuel conscious, cost
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: conscious about what's happening. And China's automotive industry is poised
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: to fill that gap. The big question right now between
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: the United States and China, and in fact, Trump has
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: even said this, is he's being pressured by Michigan and
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: all of the other auto states. They're like, do not
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: let any of these Chinese companies in the United States.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: And he's considering it because they're offering, they're saying, look,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: we'll take the Japan deal. We'll build it all here
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: and be able to sell our cars. So I just
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: look at that and I wanted to end, I think
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: on it just because it is a very important thing
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: to see. that the world can change dramatically as a
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: result of these shocks. And maybe we just won't go back,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: or at least the rest of the world.
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: Won't go back.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: I think everyone here will keep selling or will keep
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: buying Ford F-150s. That doesn't mean, though, that everyone else will.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, obviously, it doesn't get people entirely off the
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: grid unless we're fully on renewables to have plugins. But
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: BYD does have like 70% of the Mexican EV market.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: BYD increasingly popular in Mexico. I was in a BYD
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: when I was in Brazil earlier this year.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: They're slick.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: You can see why people like them, especially at the
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: prices that they're offered. So I think your argument that
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: we're at maybe the dawn of a total shift in
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: the way people at least in the rest of the world,
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: see vehicles is probably a correct one that maybe we
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: look back. And I hadn't thought about this yet, but
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: maybe we look back on the beginning of the Iran
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: war is the time where that shift was really, really
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: accelerated or catalyzed because the trends are all pointing in
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: that direction worldwide, especially in some of like Canada and Mexico.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Very good example, Sagar.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. All right. We got our guests standing by.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: So why don't we get to them?
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: We're joined now by Charles Camosi. He's a professor of
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: bioethics at Catholic University of America. Charles, thank you so
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: much for being here today.
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: It's great to be on Breaking Points. Thanks for having me.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we appreciate it.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: So we covered this New York Times article on last
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: Friday's show, and it was a big article. It caused
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: a lot of stir in AI circles, and the headline was,
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: Religious Scholars Met with Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them. Well, Charles,
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: I read it, I recognized your name, and you were
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: one of the religious scholars quoted in this article.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: So I have a lot of questions for you.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: I know Sagar does as well, but just to catch
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: folks up to speed, the New York Times reported, and
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: you've written about this as well, we can toss beat
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: three up on the screen. You've written about some of
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: your experiences corresponding with these tech companies, going back and
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: forth with them as they try to bring religious scholars
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: into their circles. Now, people may remember that New York
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: Times article specifically talked about them considering whether or not
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: Claude should be doing communion, doing confession, participating in the
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: sacraments for Catholics. And the New York Times wrote that
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: you attracted the attention of Mr. Ola, he works at Anthropic,
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: he's one of the co-founders, his friends for your nuanced
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: ideas about moral status and care for animals. You guys
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: met up, They say this marked the beginning of a
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: year-long quest with Ola to engage religious thinkers on some
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: of the thorniest questions facing humanity at the dawn of AI.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: Mr.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Kamosi, the New York Times writes, and Mr. Ola began
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: an extensive email dialogue going back and forth on how
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: to understand Claude's moral status. Initially, the Times reports, you
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: were deeply skeptical that Claude might be conscious. They talked
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: about your work on what you see as the parallels
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: between artificial neural networks and biological ones.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Tell us a bit about.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: Your initial thoughts your initial impressions of what Ola and
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: Anthropic was trying to do and whether or not your
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: mind changed and also if you were under NDA, because
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: that's what a lot of the buzz has been and
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: the NDA has now been lifted. So big question there,
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: but were you under NDA and what were your initial
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: impressions and did.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Your mind change?
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: Lots there. I have a lot to say about all
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: of it. I'll try to be brief. So Chris and I,
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: it's almost exactly a year since he first reached out
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: to me and actually I sort of became frenemies with
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: Peter Singer during my time at Fordham, and I was
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: debating him regularly on the moral status of the fetus
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: at Princeton. And one of his TAs heard me talk,
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: and that TA was best friends with Chris Ola. And
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: Chris Ola said, which Catholic should I talk to about
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: this stuff? He says, I don't know many Catholics. Maybe
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: you should talk to Charlie. So Chris Ola emails me.
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: I have really no idea who he is. I had
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: to reach out to people in my circles who know
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: who he is. Like, Chris Ola reached out to you?
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: Come on. You got to get on this. This is
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: the guy you got to be talking with the most
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: important figures to be talking to on this. And the
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: email conversation we had is private, but I can say
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: in a very general way, we had just an amazing conversation.
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: I learned so much. I came in, as you mentioned,
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: very skeptical. I leave the conversation very skeptical. Actually, I
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: leave more certain actually now that Claude does not have
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: a significant moral status than when I went in because
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: I understand it and thought about it a lot more
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: soberly and carefully. There's been a lot of talk, frankly,
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: about anthropic trying to manipulate people or trying to, you know,
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: get religious people on their side or something. Well, religious
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: people like to try to convert people to their perspectives too,
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: because they think they're right. And a lot of people
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: at Anthropic also think they're right. And they want to
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: try to reach out with their ideas. And I received
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: nothing but a genuine attempt to exchange about ideas. And frankly,
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: I think it's something else that they were interested in
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: a Catholic moral theologian and other religious thinkers to engage
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: on this question, uh, speaking frankly, we don't often get
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: these kinds of invitations from powerful people in the discourse.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: But I'll just say it was a really illuminating set
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: of exchanges.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Charles, so one of the headlines that really came
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: out of the article was like this confrontation where they
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: kind of demanded the acknowledgement of the personhood or I
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: guess of the humanity of the model, which sparked then
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the Pope to put out, I believe, his most viewed
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: post of all time. Let's put B1 up here on
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the screen. He says, in this era of artificial intelligence,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: through statistical calculation. Based on millions of images created by others,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: institutions to safeguard our humanity in addition to kind of
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: highlighting the humanity and the lack, I guess, of personhood
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: that could be ascribed to AI. So could you talk
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: to us a little bit about that for people who
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: are not, let's say, Catholic, why he felt like it
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: was very important to highlight this, and particularly why you
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: think that your interlocutors— are really kind of obsessed with
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: this idea of personhood, of consciousness, and I guess of well-being,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: if you will.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, great question. When I last saw that tweet or
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: that post, I guess we're supposed to say now, it
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: had well over 24 million impressions in the English version,
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: and even the Latin version had well over 2 million impressions.
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: So it went mega viral. And I think one reason
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: it went mega viral is because A lot of people
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: have their heads spinning on these questions. And even if
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: you interact, inverted commas, with a large language model, you
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: can sort of be gobsmacked. I know I first was
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: when I first interacted with Claude. And it can sort
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: of take you for a ride and throw you for
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: a loop. But I think in light of all that
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: head spinning and confusion, the kind of message, clear message
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: the Pope had about the spark of humanity and the
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: ontological difference between a large language model using millions of
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: images of cats to produce an image of a cat
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: versus an artist drawing or taking a picture of a cat, right?
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: Those are two ontologically different things. And that's a very
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: simple message, and it's something the church has been speaking
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: out about with regard to AI for years now, but
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: it's hitting home at a time right now. With regard
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: to your second part of your question about what's going
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: on with Anthropic, first of all, Anthropic is a big place.
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: The tech community is a big place. They don't all
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: share the same views about these questions. But I will say,
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: and it's been public for some time now, that disproportionate
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: numbers of people in anthropic want to take those questions seriously.
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: When Chris Ola was on the dais with the Holy Father,
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: when the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas was released, he said it
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: out on the dais with him. He said, you know,
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: I got to say, I don't necessarily agree with the
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: encyclical's claim that tries to shut the door on these questions.
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: We see other data in the artificial neural networks, which
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: suggest things that we don't quite understand and maybe point
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: towards some kind of significant moral status. And the Holy
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: Father actually responded saying, yeah, we disagree with you about that,
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: but we still want to work with you on all
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: the other major issues of the day regarding AI, which
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: this show so carefully covers, which I really appreciate. And
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: so that's one thing I want to drive home in
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: today's discussion is despite the disagreements over the moral status
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: of Claude, we have to find a way to work together.
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: The Catholic Church has already positioned itself as a major
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: force through Pope Leo and through its global institutions to
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: to try to rein in and try to humanize the
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: prospects of AI, the AI revolution, just as we did
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: with Catholic social teaching and the response to the previous
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: industrial technical revolution of the late 19th century, early 20th century.
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: So we have to, this is a disagreement. It's a
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: sexy disagreement. It's a fun disagreement. It's a complex disagreement,
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: but we have so much we agree on that we
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: have to move on together. We shouldn't let this disagreement
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: derail us.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: It's interesting that you can answer this.
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: Oh, go ahead, sorry.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Can I just, one follow-up question to that is, you know,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: the disagreement appears to stem from this encyclical, which again,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: it's very long and people can go and read it
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: kind of if they wish, but it does kind of
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: come back to these principles, which you just outlined. What
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I am just kind of, what I am interested in
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: is why the emotion from their like core belief, at
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: least in your discussion, that there is a genuine consciousness
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: to these models. Obviously, they're much closer to these than
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: we are. We only have the consumer version, which is released.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: They have a much closer, you know, the research stuff
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: and the cutting edge, which we can't see. It seems
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: to be a genuine core conviction. So first of all,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: why do they think it? And then on your side,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: why is it something that you and the Pope and
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: other Catholic scholars don't really ever feel could be in
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: the discussion?
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: So, let me say this. I think there are two
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: levels at which this is happening with the people I've
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: engaged with. This is just my sense of things from engaging. So,
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: take it as one person speaking. point of view. There's
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: a level of actual argument on the basis of evidence.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: And with presuppositions to interpret the evidence. One of those
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: presuppositions is the artificial neural networks that make up these
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: large language models mirror in some sense, and there's a
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: disagreement about just how dramatic, The mirroring is an organic
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: neural networks, the neural networks in our brains. And so
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: if one starts with two assumptions there, that this mirrors
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: our neural networks and our neural networks are sort of
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: like machines. We've been talking about ourselves as machines and
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: our brains as machines for a very long time now.
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: I think that's a terrible mistake and a big anthropological mistake.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: And we need to really interrogate that. That's actually one
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: of the good things about the AI revolution is is
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: these sorts of anthropological mistakes are being foregrounded in ways
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: we can actually revisit them and talk about them. Like
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: maybe it was a mistake to think of ourselves as
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: machines because this is leading good hearted. I think good
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: faith people to interpret what's going on with Claude is
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: sort of like what's going on with us. And one
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: could be forgiven for me for having that mistake. This
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: is making that mistake. Given the second part of what
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: I want to say, another level on which this is happening,
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: which is just on the level of emotion. I think when,
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: when one is engaging with the large language model, which
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: imitates human interactions so very well, it's just perfectly natural
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: that one would be emotionally attached. We see this all
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: the time with children and even adults who get emotionally
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: attached to their chatbots, fall in love with them, right?
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: Want to, quote, marry them, travel all over the country
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: to be with them. And so I think those are
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: those two levels. Quickly, to say why we would disagree
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: with this, it is... just a metaphysical claim about what
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: consciousness is. Consciousness isn't from our neural networks. We've been
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: looking for consciousness in the brain for 50, 60 years now.
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: Most people agree that consciousness doesn't exist in the brain.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: In fact, philosophers of mind like Daniel Dennett, who just
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: passed away, said he thought consciousness must be an illusion
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: because we can't find it in the brain, which is
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: kind of a bizarre claim. So from our perspective, Consciousness
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: is a product of the union of body and soul,
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: holistically considered, and it doesn't come from neural networks, whether
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: they're organic or silicon.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that gets to this kind of significant divide
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: or question about what's happening in Silicon Valley right now
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: as to whether they are fundamentally materialists or whether some
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: of them are being kind of seduced into an almost
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: pagan relationship with these chatbots. One of the questions that
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: I had is interesting that you characterized Chris Ola's efforts, again,
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: he's the Anthropic co-founder, as good faith, because I think
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: a lot of people on the outside, Christians on the outside,
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: myself included, look at this and have really cynical concerns.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: It sounds like they're trying to potentially capture different thinkers,
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: bring them into the orbit, convince them that it's good faith,
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: and then, of course, start even talking about things like
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: organic neural networks versus what we would always consider just
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: neural networks, organic consciousness versus machine consciousness, those sorts of things,
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: even the kind of language implies that there's, I mean,
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: I don't totally have a problem with language, but you
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: can see people can make the semantic argument that it
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: cheapens the kind of human nature of consciousness or neural
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: networks or those sorts of things. Anyway, sort of beside
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: the point, I'm curious what your response would be to
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: people who look at this cynically and wonder, you know,
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: is it really good faith? And how do you think
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: about engaging with these folks in a way that also
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: doesn't necessarily enable, allow for, or rubber stamp, not that
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: it does, but I know that's probably a complicated thought process.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: And if you could walk us through it, that would
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: be great.
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: It is.
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: Thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about it.
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: Those of us who attended, some people thought, well, this
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: is a no-brainer. How can you not want to engage?
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: How can you not want to learn? How can you
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: not want to evangelize? One of the things that some
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: of us who attended who are in the Catholic Academy joked,
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: is we did a lot more praying at the anthropic
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: meetings than we do at the Society for Christian Ethics
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: annual meeting or something like this. But I think in
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: terms of the sort of us getting rolled and getting
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: sort of manipulated into things, plenty of us came away
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: very interested in the ideas, but plenty of people came
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: away just like me, interested, engaged, wanting to pursue common goals.
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: But not at all on board with the, in fact,
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: I would say, I can't speak for everyone there, I
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: would say a clear majority of people came away with
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: something other than the view that Claude is a person
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: like us or something like this. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah,
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: so I think maybe this actually gets to something that
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: people may have a bias about with regard to religious folks,
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: sort of like we're rubes or we're not really seriously
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: intellectual or we can get rolled easily by people with
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: lots of money or give us fancy dinners or something
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: like this. This simply is not going to happen. In fact,
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: one of the frustrations that many of us had is
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: we didn't get a chance to talk as much as
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: we wanted to from our perspective. We heard a lot
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: from Anthropic, and it didn't exactly go back the other way.
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: And as I was discussing with you over email earlier
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: before this, there are plenty of other companies in the
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: frontier who invite us to talk to them. I'm leaving
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: tomorrow to visit OpenAI in San Francisco, and they want
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: to hear on our terms, on my terms, on the
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: Catholic terms, on Magnificat Humanitas terms, Two weeks ago, I
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: gave a talk to Google DeepMind on the encyclical. So
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: it's actually something that's breaking through in a way where
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: we get to be heard on our own terms. And
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: it's not– I think the narrative that somehow the big,
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: bad tech companies are ruling the core religious rubes just
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: doesn't work. It's not real.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, actually, it kind of seems like you guys are
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: the ones who are standing up and being like, hold
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: on a second. We're going to use this as an
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: opportunity to kind of educate people really on our view
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: of consciousness. I'm curious actually– because you are a person,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: you wrote this book about throwaway culture, an idea I
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: totally agree with, which really gets to this root. And
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: I believe it's rooted in a phrase that was previously
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: used by Pope Francis. And I wonder how you think
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: about meeting with the frontier technology, when I would say
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: the technology itself has enabled and created the consumer, or
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: at least at the very least, it has exacerbated so
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: much of the consumerism, the throwaway culture, the optimization, the productivity.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: We had a big discussion yesterday about AI agents and
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: the use cases are like, oh, it can check in
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: for a flight for you or book a dinner reservation.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm sorry, this is not a problem in
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: my life. And to the extent that it is, it
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: is extremely minor compared to how I think about the
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: relationship between my daughter and technology. Like that's something I
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: want to spend a lot of time thinking about and
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: not just outsourcing, let's say thinking, or even for her
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: building a theory of mind. So, you know, I big
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: loaded question, but you know, when you're meeting with them,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: do you worry in some sense about legitimizing, like, like
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: you're being very respectful to them. And I, I haven't
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: met any of these people face to face, but my
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: default really is, is like, you're building something which is
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: quote useful, but may just be very, very, very bad.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: And I'm not so sure that useful is itself is
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: actually a very good metric at all when looking at
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: human flourishing.
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree with that. And one of the things
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: at least that I've tried to make my career about
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: engaging with people like Peter Singer and others with whom
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: I disagree strongly on the level of ideas is to
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: try to keep a culture of encounter present, which is
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: the opposite of throwaway culture. So you're right, Pope Francis
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: came up with this idea of seeing things through the
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: lens of a throwaway culture, a culture of seeing even
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: people who are less than useful as discardable like trash.
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: The opposite of that, the counterculture to that is a
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: culture of encounter and hospitality, which is the culture of
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: the gospel, actually, and the culture of Jesus, who of
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: course went to the marginalized, who went even to the
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: very sinful, like the tax collectors who weren't very good folks,
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: who weren't doing very good things, right, with the structures
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: and systems of the day. So I think what it
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: actually does is through those encounters, through those relationships, through
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: the spirit of mutual hospitality, we actually get to have conversations.
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: I'm so looking forward to my conversations at OpenAI tomorrow
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: and Friday. I just can't, I literally can't wait. But
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: in some ways, the ground has already been prepared in
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: a way where there's an expectation of listening to each other,
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: of engaging with each other. And of course, there will
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: be critiques. Like, I don't think Sam Altman has made
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: every good decision in the world in putting his company together, right?
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: And I will, where there's mistakes, I will speak my
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: mind and I'm sure they won't agree with everything I
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: have to say either. But if we're going to get
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: through the next year or so, which it's very critical
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: the next year to try to shape AI in various ways,
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: we have to find a way to listen to each other.
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: We have to find a way to engage with each other.
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: There's really no other option. other than, I think, maybe
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: some sort of catastrophic event that maybe could unite us.
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: But let's not let it get to that point. We
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: have to find a way to say, hey, this is
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: where we're coming from. And I got to say, the
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: people who are on the frontiers feel a little trapped.
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: They feel like if they stop, it's not going to
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: really stop anything. Their competitors in China are simply going
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: to go on. And so they feel like they have
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: to win in order to have the good guys win,
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: as it were. And they're scared by this prospect. They're
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: frightened by this prospect. In fact, I've seen... People like
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: Chris over the last year, almost their countenance changed. You
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: could see it on his face and in his mannerisms,
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: the kind of weight and stress that this brings with it.
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: And they need help and we need to be there
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: to engage and to help them with our ideas and
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: with our support, but also with criticism when it's appropriate.
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: I'm sort of worried that they're not the good guys.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: That's kind of my big concern, Charles. I mean, you
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: don't have to jump in on this, but so many
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: of them seem.
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: Creepy and transhumanist. And I don't know if that's been
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: your experience with it. I'm not asking about anybody in particular,
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: but you wrote this great article recently, and before we
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: can put it up on the screen for the Washington Examiner,
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: about the human purpose of medicine and how AI could
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: totally change the way we see medicine, that maybe it'll
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: be helpful with efficiency. But this is really like your
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: bread and butter. Charles is writing about how humans are
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: not just, and creation is not just about efficiency, obviously,
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: that there are important ends to things like medicine. And
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: I guess I wonder, I mean, I think it's good,
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: like you're persuading me in this argument that it's good
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: to be in open conversation with them, that some of
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: them probably are genuinely curious about all of this. But
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: is there, I guess, fundamentally, a concern that you still have?
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: They are pushing us in a direction that is actually
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: could be just as bad as what Chinese AI would do.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: I'm not talking about how it would be implemented on
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: a policy level by the governments, that sort of thing,
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: but even just on a basic conceptual level that there's
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: maybe a transhumanist characteristic to this and an anti-human characteristic
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: to all of this that is still what they agree with,
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: that they want to hear your different ideas, but they
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: are still really wedded to and attached to this idea
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: that transhumanism is not necessarily.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: A bad thing.
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely that strain of things. And
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: I didn't meet with every single person at Anthropic, not
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: even close, right? And I'm not meeting with every single
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: person at OpenAI, I'm sure. I'm not meeting with every,
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: I didn't meet with every single person, not every single
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: person at Google, DeepMind came to my talk. There are important,
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: I just want to emphasize this, there are deeply, profoundly
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: bad things on the horizon if we keep on the
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: path that many of these companies have set us on.
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: including with healthcare. So if I can just briefly say
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: some things about what's the path we're on with healthcare
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: right now. For some time, actually before AI, we've been
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: governed by the efficiency mongers and the profit margin seekers.
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: And we've been getting more and more humanity out of
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: the system and more and more, again, efficiency and profit
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: making into the system. And AI is going to already,
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: it's supercharging that. And you can already see the bean
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: counters look and say, hey, we can save a lot
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: of money. We can increase our profit margins if we
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: have no phlebotomists. The FDA just produced a machine that
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: can take blood without any human in the process at all,
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: a patient's blood without any. Just also this week, I
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: think maybe yesterday, the day before, a company in Utah
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: said that they are now going to have an AI, quote,
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: doctor without any human in the loop be able to
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: take a picture of your face. and prescribe you acne medication, right?
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: They're touting it as the first AI doctor without any
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: human in the loop. You can just get your acne
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: medication without ever engaging with a person at all. About
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: two months ago, Ezekiel Emanuel, architect of Obamacare, wrote an
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: article in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, saying,
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: hey guys, if we keep on the trends we're on now,
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: and he thinks it's a good thing, We're gonna have
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: workflows in healthcare, massive workflows in healthcare without any, it's
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: not gonna just be take a picture of your face
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: and get the medicine. It's gonna be massive workflows in
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: hospitals and clinics all over the world done by AI
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: without any humans in the loop. So what the path
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: we're on right now with healthcare is to undermine the
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: very nature of healthcare itself, to turn it into something
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: that frankly isn't care, right? A machine cannot care for someone.
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: But that's the path we're on. And so we have
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: to decide this. We have agency here. Again, we responded
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: to the Industrial Revolution with the labor movement and the
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: minimum wage and environmental protections and all sorts of things
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: that mitigated that revolution in favor of human beings, in
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: favor of work, in favor of labor, in favor of
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: the dignity of work, in favor of the dignity of
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: work that's human, that engages with others. We have to
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: revisit that. And that's exactly what Leo did by taking
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: the name Leo XIV. He connected himself to Leo XIII.
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: the Pope that wrote Rerum Novarum that responded to the
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: first industrial revolution. And I have a lot of hope
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: that we can do it again. Maybe it's Pollyannish. Maybe
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: I need to be a little more cynical. But I
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: at least want to try. I want to give it
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: a good old college try.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Well, it's cool to have people like you out there
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: who are meeting with these people because I don't think
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: it would go as well if they met with me.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much, sir. We appreciate your time.
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: Thanks very much.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: Turning now to the midterms, we have another piece of
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: leaked audio from Ken Paxton, the Senate candidate, as a
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: slew of polls show him continuing to fail in that election.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Here he is in another piece of leaked audio saying
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: that the Iran war is driving up gas prices and
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: he doesn't know what Trump is doing over there. Let's
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: take a listen.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: So what are the.
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: Issues that are dragging on you?
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, do.
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: People, where do people.
• 44:53
  Speaker 6: What are people thinking about tariffs? Do they see that
• 44:56
  Speaker 6: in any connection?
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: What are they thinking?
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: It's war.
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: The war, it's gas prices, it's diesel. When it's over.
• 45:07
  Speaker 6: $ 6 a gallon for diesel, I mean, it's putting money,
• 45:11
  Speaker 6: we have a lot of trucks that are diesel.
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: We're feeling that tension. So I'd say.
• 45:17
  Speaker 6: That's probably the biggest problem in that push drive, the
• 45:19
  Speaker 6: food prices and everything else. Everything comes up. Something was falling.
• 45:24
  Speaker 6: So that's by far our biggest problem. And I think
• 45:28
  Speaker 6: that's why we're having a hard time with the numbers.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: Ken Paxson, very eloquent there as always, right, Emily? Where
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: you can always decipher exactly what he's saying. If you
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: couldn't exactly, it was, I don't know what's behind some
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: of those decisions. It's the war. It's gas prices. Emily,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: you have a theory that his team is just leaking
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: all of this just so they can get ahead of
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: a potentially humiliating loss. I don't think it's necessarily mutually
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: exclusive from a lot of people just don't like him.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: And a lot of his donors are also upset because
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: from what I hear, he doesn't work very hard and
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: they're mad. At least some of the people down in Texas,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: they're like, look, this is a potentially winnable race. If
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: you put your pedal to the metal, Tallarico is blasting
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: everything and blanketing the state. He's doing all these different events.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: We could barely get you to do some of the
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: same stuff. But what do you think of all this?
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: No, I think that's right.
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: I don't think these are necessarily mutually exclusive things because
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: what could be happening, these are coming from donor conversations
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: is my understanding. So he's at like donor events and
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: that means anybody could be recording and then leaking to media.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: So it could just be broadly somebody in the Paxton camp,
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: like a donor friend of his or an ally of
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: his in the state. I mean, state politics are so
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: messy and dramatic and crazy that you can kind of
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: see where just an aggrieved person person in the Paxton
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: camp wouldn't necessarily be acting in concert with the campaign.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: Maybe they're texting Paxton themselves, but it's not really conspiratorial.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: It's just the idea that he may realize that it's
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: almost nihilistic to try at this point, which is not true.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, he may think that.
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: Even if he's about to lose, he could probably at
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: least lose less embarrassingly, or maybe he can even try
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: to win.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: But his point might.
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: Be in leaking this stuff, and I don't know who's
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: leaking it, of course, but His point might be in
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: leaking this stuff that the president is what's making it difficult.
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: So it could be to start trying to run away
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: from the president. Obviously, Mike Rogers, Michelle Tafoya have both
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: started running away from the president on Iran, which is
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: especially surprising in the case of Mike Rogers. But it
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: could be him trying to lay the groundwork to run
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: away from Trump, to distance himself from Trump or to
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: soften the blow, to frame what would be a historic loss,
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: because now you'll already have, it would actually be a
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: pretty smart thing to do, you would already have all
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: of these leaks to the media of Paxson sort of
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: accidentally admitting that the real problem all along was Donald Trump.
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: And the media, as you and I both know, the
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: day after election, November 4th, is going to look at
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: all of that and say Paxson was consistently frustrated with
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: the president's.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: A drag on the ticket. And there you have it.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: It's been framed.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: So I don't know where it's coming from, but I
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: wouldn't be one bit surprised if these are actually coming
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: from people who support Paxton and are frustrated at and
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: pissed with Trump, who basically called him dumb and ugly
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: both nights at their little convention. So it doesn't seem
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: like a guarantee to me that this is coming from
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: anti-Paxton world.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: He could be mad about Trump's lies, but when he's
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: telling the truth, I mean, come on. Take it for
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: what it is. He was right. I mean, he's empirically correct.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: All right, let's turn. This is originally what we wanted
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: to start with. Dr. Oz of Crudite fame, one of
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: our probably all time favorite clips ever in Breaking Point's history.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Longtime viewers will know that we did it several times
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: at the live show, too, back in the day. So
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: here he is with another one on the price of butter.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: where even Laura Ingham goes, come on, man. What are
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: you talking about?
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: We should also tease, if you're listening to this, he
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: brought props to the five teams.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he brought it. Right, exactly. All right, let's take
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: a listen.
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: So you have no idea what things are going to cost.
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: I brought you something as an example. We went grocery shopping,
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: stick of butter, bag of peanuts. Butter in America, that's
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: about a buck for a stick like this. If I
• 49:07
  Speaker 5: charge you $ 10.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: Or are you shopping?
• 49:09
  Speaker 5: It's not a buck, it's like four. I just bought this,
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: so it's close to that.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: Maybe I got it.
• 49:13
  Speaker 5: Maybe it's going bad.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: So even, even Laura Ingram's like, what are you talking about? Well,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: where are you shopping? Where's the butter a dollar? So
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: I just looked it up. Uh, the national average retail
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: price of August of 2026 is $ 4 a pound. I
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: guess he's trying to narrow it by saying I bought
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: the stick I don't even know.
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: But he did buy the whole pack. Is that a
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: pound of butter? I was going to say, I don't
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: know what the unit measurement is exactly. Or for one
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: of those things, the point just remains is he keeps
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: trying to minimize things, right? He picks peanuts and butter,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: which first of all, is that the, is that in
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: the CPI index? Is that exactly what people are upset about?
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: When we talk about groceries, people are mad about the
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: aggregate pies and specifically the increase in eggs and in
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: meat and meat, especially where you've seen the highest price
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: increase and you have seen no downturn. whatsoever as a
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: result of whatever this cheat meet the Trump administration let in.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, I just thought it was so
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: ridiculous where even Fox and Laura Ingraham is like, what
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: are we doing here, man? What exactly are you trying
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: to say? You're the CMS director. This is not even
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: in your purview. And you can't even make something up,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: which is clever whenever you're trying to fight back against
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: this inflation argument. You should just lie and say it's
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden's fault. That's honestly less insulting. than what this is.
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: So I went and looked at the Aldi by my
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: parents in Wisconsin. The cheapest butter, I think, was like
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: three bucks, maybe a little bit more than that.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: Wow. He's not even close.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: So the fact that he got the prop and brought
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: it to Fox News tells you there was intentionality in
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: making this insane political error, and it does hearken to
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: the Crudite bit, because once again, there was intentionality in
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: making his point about Crudite, which I know we pulled,
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: but just a complete level of insanity to bring what
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: he said was a stick of butter, it's a pack
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: of butter, I don't think anywhere that's going for anywhere
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: close to a dollar, it's probably three times as much
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: just about anywhere that you can get a pack of butter. And, Sagar,
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: this is not out of character for Dr. Oz because,
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: of course, I believe you would love to revisit the
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: beautiful moment from that election.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: Let's do it all together. Let's listen.
• 51:28
  Speaker 5: I thought I'd do some grocery shopping. I'm at Wagner's,
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: and my wife wants some vegetables for crudite, right? So
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: here's a broccoli. That's two bucks, not a ton of
• 51:38
  Speaker 5: broccoli there.
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: There's some asparagus.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: That's $ 4.
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: Yep.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: Carrots.
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: That's $ 4 more.
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: That's $ 10 of vegetables there. And then we need some guacamole.
• 51:50
  Speaker 5: That's $ 4 more.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: And she loves salsa.
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, salsa there. $ 6. Must be a shortage of salsa.
• 51:58
  Speaker 5: Guys, that's $ 20 for crudités.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: This doesn't include the tequila.
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: I mean, that's outrageous.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: We got Joe Biden to.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: Thank for this.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: So first of all, the crudités. There was so much there,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: if you recall. So first of all, there is no
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: such thing as Wegners. I think it's Wegmans and there's
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: another store. I forget exactly. It's like Redners, something like that.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: So he confused the two and he called it Wegners.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Then he said, I'm shopping for some of my wife's crudités.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: And I think we also even brought this up, which was, dude,
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: don't people just buy those pre-prepared platters? Because that would
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: probably be cheaper. But the entire thing obviously made him
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: look ridiculously out of touch. And he ended up losing
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: in what should have easily been I think it was
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: a winnable election. He lost by five points, especially when
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: you consider... It was 22. Yeah, so it's 2022. Yeah,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: I guess a little bit better for the Democrats. But
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: if I recall, they had it either tied or Oz
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: by plus two or plus three going into that. And
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: so he threw away, again, a pretty winnable election.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: To John Fetterman, we should add.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, to John Fetterman, the ogre.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: Who had a clear... conspicuous brain damage at that point
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: in time.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so ridiculous. All right, let's then take a look
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: at how all of this is kind of cascading through
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: the midterms as we get closer and closer, less than
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: a month now, to Election Day. Here we have Trump, where,
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: as we've seen now, remember, Paxson, in one of his
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: previous leaked audios, had said, yeah, actually, Trump coming to
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: Texas kind of screwed me. My poll numbers went down.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: Here's Trump saying the opposite in a midterm rally. Let's
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: take a listen. By the way, I'm going around doing rallies.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: The Republican Party is starting to go right through the roof.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: Somebody said today, I wonder why.
• 53:44
  Speaker 5: Well, I started, I had to get out.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: I had to do it. We had to explain what
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: we're doing. The Press Well, the ads, the ads were
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: really good.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: They were promotion for the country.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: Done by many presidents.
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: Before, so we'll decide.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: So there he is. He's saying his rallies are actually
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: saving the country. Let's put C3 up there on the screen.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: He tweeted it as well. My rallies are saving the
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: Republican Party again. Just to show you how much they're saving,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: let's put C5 up here. They say exactly from Cook
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Political Report, which is actually one of the much more
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: conservative organizations that forecasts elections. They say that they have
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: moved Kansas from lean Republican to toss up. North Carolina
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: from lean D to likely D. New Hampshire from toss-up
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: to lean D. So nothing really breaking Republicans' way. And Emily,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: you and I talked a lot with Logan yesterday about
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: some of these outlier elections like Kansas and South Carolina.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: We're learning a little bit more about South Carolina. I'm
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: really curious for what you think. Let's put it up here.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: The next one, this is C6, is that the current fundamentals,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: they say, this is from a local South Carolina reporter,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: still seem in Darlene Graham's favor. Trump carried it by
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: 18 points. But multiple pollsters here tell me the GOP
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: lead in generic is just about five to six points
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: and that the word is that her fundraising is abysmal. So,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you have only five or six and
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: then you underperform, Emily, across from where the rest of
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: the GOP generic ballot is, that actually could put things
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: in dangerous direction for her. And it explains why Senator
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: $ 5 million, which we covered yesterday, And Trump is out
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: there attacking the opponent, trying to gin up some of
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: the Republicans who are actually in the state to come
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: out and vote. So what do you think overall?
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, they're obviously freaked out.
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: And that's what Mark Halperin and others have been saying.
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: And Steve Deese, the conservative radio host, said that he
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: was seeing this. And he's not even a reporter like Halperin.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: He was just saying he saw this on the ground
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: in Iowa. So people are worried about the safe seats,
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: because if you end up, and Sagar, you and I
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: have seen this many times, if you end up, well,
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: not many times, I mean, it's fairly rare, but it
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: does happen where the polls undercount because of an enthusiasm
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: gap or because, you know, in states like, we talked
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: about this with Logan yesterday, too, a place like North Carolina,
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: where you had a lot of people moving post-COVID who
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: aren't traditional, like, North Carolina voters, they're new to the state.
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: And that's harder for pollsters and demographers to fully wrap
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: their heads around. And then you pair that with an
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: enthusiasm gap that maybe undercounted Dem enthusiasm and overcounted Republican
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: enthusiasm to actually get out there and vote on Election Day.
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: And was also perhaps, I mean, this was another focus
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: group result that I think was on MSNOW just in
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: the last couple of days with Trump voters in Texas
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: who regretted voting for Trump.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: If that's not something polls are.
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: Picking up on, what you can end up with in
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: a situation like South Carolina is a Democrat eking out
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: a win because Republicans didn't put a lot of money
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: behind the candidate, because Darlene Graham didn't debate, because Darlene
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: Graham ran from the cameras. And so they're having to
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: rethink their entire strategies in places like Kansas, where their
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: Senate leadership fund is now.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: Steering $ 14.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: Million to Roger Marshall, who they thought would be perfectly
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: fine and perfectly safe. So I think what they're worried about, Sagar,
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: is that possibility that you look at an electorate that
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: is different. It is just composed of different voters. It's
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: not being picked up on by polls. They're seeing some
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: of this in their internals. And that's why they think
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: even if something is showing up in the polls within
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: a few points, that might actually mean the Republican is losing.
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: So they're trying to overcompensate for that possibility. Whether they
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: can actually overcompensate in a way that helps is a
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: different question, of course.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: This is where Trump, too, is actually just screwing them
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: like Tripoli, both from tariffs and from the war. But
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: the insistence on rallying because he these candidates, sometimes they
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: don't have a choice.
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: He just comes through. He's like, look, I'm coming to
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: your state.
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do this for you. And so he comes,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: jets in. They're basically forced to make a choice of
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: pissing off the president. When he's actually a huge drag
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: on them, at least in terms of what we see
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: right now. Look, I can say this, you know, to
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: always give the other side of the case. Everybody said
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: this similarly in 2016. Obviously, Trump wins a shock upset election.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: It would be, I mean, what, one of the biggest
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: polling misses of all time. And I have covered two
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: out of the three polling misses, the biggest polling misses
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: literally of all time. in modern American history, I think
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: in just the course of doing this show or in
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: my career over the last 12 years. So it's not
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: like it can't happen. And we should always kind of
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: caveat that this would be an extraordinary situation. And of course,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: the blue wall fell apart in 2016. A lot of
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: people didn't think that it would. Maybe Kansas lean D
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: or toss up, you know, is a ludicrous fashion and
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: some things can tighten during election day. The thing that
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Logan did say, though, yesterday was traditionally, in September through October,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: you would actually start to see that rally effect around
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: the GOP. And you've instead seen the opposite of bleeding,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: which is almost certainly ascribed to Trump and the continuing
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: pressure from the Iran war. So the lack of motivation,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: the lack of enthusiasm behind a lot of these Republicans,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: at the very least, what we can come back to, Emily,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: is let's put all the polls aside. Ken Pax, and
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: the candidates themselves, they seem to believe repeatedly behind the scenes,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: off the record, in secret audio and in the money.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: They are telling you we have a problem. Nobody spends
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: money in Kansas unless they think they have a problem.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: These people have hundreds of millions of dollars, secret polling,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: things that they think that they can shore up They
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: know a little bit more than you or I do.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: They don't know everything. But at the very least, they
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: are behaving as if they think that they're going to
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: lose a big and they're trying to mitigate losses instead
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: of actually make these things competitive.
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: And just a reminder with Beto and Ted Cruz, that race.
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: Ted Cruz led Beto O'Rourke in the RCP average every
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: step of the way in that race. It ended up
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: being within about two points. James Tallarico has never, ever
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: been behind in the RCP average.
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: It's the complete opposite.
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: Whereas Beto never led in the RCP average, Tallarico has
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: never been behind in the RCP average this time around.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: He has always been the lead overall.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: In the last couple of months in the real-care politics average.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: So Paxton is the underdog at this point in Texas.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: There's no other way to look at it.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: He is the underdog. He is behind. He is losing
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: this campaign.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: So it would not be a surprise at this point
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: if James Tallarico is the senator from Texas, and that
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: should be causing Republicans to have absolute panic.