Speaker 1: So we don't yet Tim the Lawyer, as he was
Speaker 1: known when he was a regular caller on the Armstrong
Speaker 1: and get A show many many years ago. We don't
Speaker 1: get Tim the Lawyer, Tim sandifor in studio as much
Speaker 1: as we used to. But since you are in studio today,
Speaker 1: Tim Sandi for yeah, I love what you've done with
Speaker 1: the place. You are still bearded. I am. You know,
Speaker 1: it's been eight years that i've been that I've had
Speaker 1: a beard, and you asked me every time, what an
Speaker 1: idiot you know? And you're not carrying a trash can size?
Speaker 1: No soda? Yeah, I used to to. I used to,
Speaker 1: and time caught up with me. I'm off carbonated beverages.
Speaker 1: I'm a yeah, I been taking blue a gasket or something.
Speaker 1: Congratulations on the beard. End de soda. Before we get
Speaker 1: into the substance of our conversation with Tim about his
Speaker 1: fabulous new tome and other constitutional issues in America, do
Speaker 1: things number one, and I think this will be good
Speaker 1: for you to hear. You know, those warnings like McDonald's pie,
Speaker 1: the hot apple pie that says content caution, content maybe hot, filing,
Speaker 1: maybe hot. And we've always asked, who are those four well,
Speaker 1: there for me for the second day in a row.
Speaker 1: I've gotten a brand new hot cup of coffee, gotten
Speaker 1: into a brief conversation with somebody, then swigged down an
Speaker 1: enormous mouthful and burnt my tongue in my mouth and
Speaker 1: and cried out in pain, fury, and humiliation. So those
Speaker 1: warnings are for me. I sympathize man. I drew blood
Speaker 1: eating shrimp twice in a row a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: It was how do you how do you manage to?
Speaker 1: I cut my hand with shrimp tails at two separate
Speaker 1: meals on two successive days, until there was blood running
Speaker 1: down my hand. How does somebody do that? I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I've never thought of prawns as a weapon. You're
Speaker 1: a lawyer. Why didn't just sue somebody? Second thing, do
Speaker 1: you agree with Jack and my interpretation of the Eighth Amendment.
Speaker 1: It's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. If something is
Speaker 1: merely cruel or merely unusual, like being berated by clowns,
Speaker 1: that would be unusual. It's permitted under the Eighth Amnut. Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: so it's gonna be unusual, right, So listen, I have
Speaker 1: intentionally and it's taken some self control not looked up
Speaker 1: the name Jacob Bronowski, Tim's latest book. And Tim is
Speaker 1: the author of a number of absolutely fabulous books about
Speaker 1: constitutional rights and property rights, and and fairly recently Frederick
Speaker 1: Douglass Self Made Man, which is just terrific about that
Speaker 1: great great American um. So when I saw your new
Speaker 1: book is the assent of Jacob Bronowski, I've never heard
Speaker 1: of this human in my life. I intentionally did not
Speaker 1: look it up. It sounds like a Coen Brothers character.
Speaker 1: Who who is this human? And why did you take
Speaker 1: your valuable time to write a boy? I was looking
Speaker 1: for a subject that absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with law,
Speaker 1: And so I'm speaking today later today at noon, I'm
Speaker 1: speaking to the Federal Society about my new book and
Speaker 1: I the assignment is to find some way to relate
Speaker 1: it to law, which is going to be very challenging.
Speaker 1: But no, so you need to sub I you considered
Speaker 1: most as lack, but you decided that well, his name
Speaker 1: is almost as exotic. Jacob Arknowski was a scientist and
Speaker 1: philosopher who lived from eight to nineteen seventy four, and
Speaker 1: those few people who remember him still today will remember
Speaker 1: him for his classic nineteen seventy three television miniseries The
Speaker 1: Ascent of Man, which aired on PBS. And it's this
Speaker 1: lavish thirteen hour documentary on the history of science. And
Speaker 1: I I watched it when I was in college, and
Speaker 1: I got interested in in Bernofsky himself. And it turned
Speaker 1: out that he was a fascinating person who knew everybody
Speaker 1: or was involved with everything interesting that happened in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. He was the head of the British mission
Speaker 1: sent to assess the effects of the atomic bombs at
Speaker 1: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was best friends with Leois Allard,
Speaker 1: who invented the atomic bomb, but also with Samuel Beckett,
Speaker 1: who was he The two of them wrote a book together.
Speaker 1: He was friends with people like T. S. Eliott and
Speaker 1: Dylan Thomas. He co founded the sac Institute in Lahoya
Speaker 1: with Jonah sok. Held is a fascinating guy, he wrote.
Speaker 1: He wrote a radio play that it won the equivalent
Speaker 1: of an Emmy in nineteen fifty. He wrote an opera.
Speaker 1: He proved that Australia Epithecus afrikaanus is a human relative
Speaker 1: by using a sophisticated mathematical algorithm, because that was his
Speaker 1: that was his specialty. It was mathematics. And he revolutionized
Speaker 1: the understanding of the eighteenth century poet William Blake. So
Speaker 1: he was one of these these Renaissance men who just
Speaker 1: was a fascinating figure. And I thought nobody's ever written
Speaker 1: a biography of him, so I should. Wow. It's interesting
Speaker 1: how some people want regularly when I'm reading history and
Speaker 1: I do it at all the time, he come across
Speaker 1: a story or a person and you think, how come
Speaker 1: I've never heard this? People? Some things just get lost
Speaker 1: to history. Amazing people in amazing stories that just for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, don't make the The underdisgust and overdiscussed how
Speaker 1: much do we know about Marilyn Monroe his contemporary seriously
Speaker 1: compared compared to somebody Mickey Mantle for them, and Bernowski
Speaker 1: was a celebrity in his day. He was. He was
Speaker 1: a big enough name in Great Britain for twenty or
Speaker 1: thirty years that you know, taxi drivers would hail him
Speaker 1: on the street. He's even mentioned in a Monty Python skit,
Speaker 1: The Exploding Penguin, when one character says to another, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, why is there a penguin on the Telly
Speaker 1: and the other says, who am I blood Dr Bloody
Speaker 1: Brunowski because he was that well known. Wow, I was
Speaker 1: totally wasted on The problem was he died in August
Speaker 1: of seventy four, only months before his show aired in
Speaker 1: the United States, and so right when he was on
Speaker 1: the cusp of becoming a really famous figure in the
Speaker 1: United States, where he had lived for a decade, by
Speaker 1: that time, he was gone, and so he vanished from
Speaker 1: the scene, and everybody forgot about him. And I think
Speaker 1: that's a real shame. So I thought, I decided. I
Speaker 1: decided to try and bring more interest to what he
Speaker 1: did and analyze his philosophical writing and his literary work
Speaker 1: and stuff. The problem was, he was involved in so
Speaker 1: many things and knew so many things that it took
Speaker 1: that it took a long time for me to learn
Speaker 1: enough about those things to be able to talk intelligently
Speaker 1: about it. So I've been working on this book for
Speaker 1: twenty years since I was a senior in college, and
Speaker 1: it is finally done and finally published, and it's called
Speaker 1: The Ascent of Jacob Bronowski, and I hope you'll all buy.
Speaker 1: Speaking of getting published, was it difficult to go to
Speaker 1: somebody and say, I want to write about this person.
Speaker 1: They said, who can't you write about a founding father
Speaker 1: or something. Fortunately I found the publishers who who did
Speaker 1: remember who Bernofsky was and that that that worked out.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there was some difficulty in that. Uh. A
Speaker 1: lot of the people that he knew are gone. Now.
Speaker 1: I did have the good fortune of interviewing some of them.
Speaker 1: M The coolest one was I got to have lunch
Speaker 1: with Francis Crick, who won the Nobel Prize in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties for discovering the structure of DNA, the only
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize wenter ever to buy me lunch, And that
Speaker 1: was that was by far the coolest part of the research.
Speaker 1: And did you find the old chap to be a
Speaker 1: stimulating wonderfully? It was? This was this was while the O. J.
Speaker 1: Simpson trial was going on, and I asked him what
Speaker 1: he thought about people ignoring DNA evidence in trials. He said,
Speaker 1: he said, well, I guess you have to knew how
Speaker 1: the American legal system works. And he had so much
Speaker 1: scorn in his voice and he said the word legal.
Speaker 1: But I didn't mention that I was in law school
Speaker 1: at the time. Um, but he was. He was a wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful gentleman. And he remember very distinctly on the way
Speaker 1: back from the restaurant him explaining to me the then
Speaker 1: newly discovered eyelis gene, which is the gene that if
Speaker 1: you knock it out, uh, the fruit fly or whatever
Speaker 1: will be born without eyes. And this is one of
Speaker 1: the oldest genes in the genome. It's called the hawks gene.
Speaker 1: It's been around since the dawn of evolutionary time. And
Speaker 1: it's the same gene that we have in our own
Speaker 1: bodies to control the development of eyes in the embryo.
Speaker 1: So years later, I was reading a book about genetics
Speaker 1: and I ran across this, the discussion of the eilis gene.
Speaker 1: I thought, wait a minute, that Francis Crick himself explained
Speaker 1: that to me. That that's a really amazing experience in
Speaker 1: my life. But Crick and Bronowski were good friends. In fact,
Speaker 1: before his death, Krick was using the same office that
Speaker 1: Bernowski had used down at the Sauk Institute in San Diego.
Speaker 1: This just flitted into my head. I'm like an eyed
Speaker 1: fruit fly in terms of our ability to pay attention.
Speaker 1: This just flitted into my head, what do you when
Speaker 1: you get up in the morning, what do you what
Speaker 1: do you check news wise, like for what's going on
Speaker 1: in the world, Like what's your first thing? Twitter? And
Speaker 1: then like, well, what how do you structure your feed?
Speaker 1: How many people do you follow? I followed quite a
Speaker 1: lot of people I don't remember, somewhere maybe a thousand
Speaker 1: something like that. What tends to be at the top
Speaker 1: of the year? Listen they news publications or people? I yeah,
Speaker 1: people primarily in fact, just uh, just this morning, I
Speaker 1: was thinking of writing a tweet about what who I
Speaker 1: would recommend for the Nobel for the Pulitzer Prize if
Speaker 1: I were in charge of the of the Pulitzer Prize.
Speaker 1: And the three names are are John Ziegler Um, Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Nolan Brown at Reason, and Robbie Save at Recent The
Speaker 1: three of them are just are the real journalists that
Speaker 1: are still working today. And of course Dan Walters. Since
Speaker 1: I'm in Sacramento, I need to mention the only remaining
Speaker 1: journalist in the state of California. Dan is legendary. He's amazing.
Speaker 1: He's one of the great clear eyed writers. I just wish,
Speaker 1: I just wish his articles would be three or four
Speaker 1: Times as long as they are. Did you read the
Speaker 1: transcript of what the editor there at the New York
Speaker 1: Times said last week to his crowd. Yes, it's it's
Speaker 1: just incredible word that that might be the most important
Speaker 1: newspaper in the world, or at least formally was, and
Speaker 1: in the direction they're willing to go, it's it's troubling
Speaker 1: and expecting a newspaper that recently ran articles such as
Speaker 1: women in the Soviet Union had better sex under communism
Speaker 1: and the Soviet space program was better for women's equality.
Speaker 1: Expecting a newspaper or even calling it a newspaper and
Speaker 1: when it runs articles like that, I think is excessive.
Speaker 1: I think The New York Times has clearly gone off
Speaker 1: the deep end into not just leftist partisanship, which you
Speaker 1: know is kind of expected in the media, but in
Speaker 1: the most extreme form of it. And the same is
Speaker 1: true of CNN. I mean, I love I love CNN,
Speaker 1: but it's like, day after day, it's just it's become partisan,
Speaker 1: uh enterprise. I can't stand of absurdity in my opinion.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just you can't even take it serious.
Speaker 1: And it's as bad for the left as it is
Speaker 1: for the right. Absolutely absolutely. Over time, of course it
Speaker 1: is going to be. And it's just it's it's surprising
Speaker 1: to me that people of that caliber. I assume you
Speaker 1: have to have, uh, you know, some pretty good credentials
Speaker 1: to end up being in the newsroom at the New
Speaker 1: York Times. I would hope, but I don't know. And
Speaker 1: and you're willing to abandon journalistic principles because you hate
Speaker 1: Trump so much. It's so cheap and and and easy
Speaker 1: to do to make everything be about Donald Trump. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm everybody who follows me on Twitter knows my
Speaker 1: views on the president. But the it's so easy to
Speaker 1: just make it a series of not even often not
Speaker 1: even accurate slams on the president, day after day after day,
Speaker 1: instead of the kind of sophisticated, in depth research and
Speaker 1: reporting that takes a lot of work and and is
Speaker 1: a is sometimes very frustrating when you're doing it, because
Speaker 1: you have to fact check everything twice in three times.
Speaker 1: And when you see people who do it well, like
Speaker 1: the people I've mentioned Elizabeth Brown and Robbie Suave and
Speaker 1: John Ziegler, it's it's a testament to the continuing art form.
Speaker 1: There's no market for that eggs. Well, it does relate.
Speaker 1: It relates to Bronowski in the sense that I I
Speaker 1: think there's I think there are people out there who
Speaker 1: have a hunger for the kind of sophisticated, intelligent discussion.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be eggheaded craziness, but but something
Speaker 1: that has some degree of smarts to it, is really
Speaker 1: good at not idiotic start. There is that too much
Speaker 1: to ask? Well, you believe in a self government? Do
Speaker 1: you think we've reached a point where we can't govern
Speaker 1: ourselves because there's not a hunger for people who take
Speaker 1: the time to figure out what's real, whether it fits
Speaker 1: with what you want it to be or not. Are
Speaker 1: you talking about California or the nation? Okay, well, then
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think we've I don't think we've
Speaker 1: reached bottom there California. I don't know. I I honestly,
Speaker 1: I'm really impessimistic about the possibility of any kind of
Speaker 1: reform in California. I think California has gone so far
Speaker 1: in the direction of taking the easy, emotionalistic, sound good
Speaker 1: answer over hard realities and is so unwilling to face
Speaker 1: reality that I think it's going to be a long,
Speaker 1: hard struggle before California is able to right itself. But
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a pessimistic person. Maybe I'm wrong. I
Speaker 1: mean you you you talked to Tom McClintock, and he'll
Speaker 1: always say, oh, California, there's no reason the world, the world,
Speaker 1: why California couldn't change tomorrow and become a you know,
Speaker 1: a livabole thriving economies. But I don't buy it. Why
Speaker 1: don't we? Why don't we? Talking about a couple of
Speaker 1: the big stories in the news today with Tim Sander
Speaker 1: for Vice President for Litigation the Goldwater Institute. Is new
Speaker 1: book which sounds fascinating is The Ascent of Jacob Bronowski.
Speaker 1: More to come stay with us the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 1: You think we have something other than the law and
Speaker 1: owner family lawyers on we can do? Tim Sander first
Speaker 1: with us, Tim the Lawyer, Vice President for Litigation the
Speaker 1: Goldwater Institute. His new book is The Ascent of Jacob
Speaker 1: Bronowski somebody had had heard of but hadn't realized I'd
Speaker 1: heard of because I was familiar with these sentiment. It
Speaker 1: sounds like absolutely a fascinating read about a fascinating guy. Um.
Speaker 1: But to talk about some of the things that are
Speaker 1: in the news right now again, though we are nationwide
Speaker 1: these days and happy to be Uh. Cal Unicornia continues
Speaker 1: to make news, including the idea of letting children vote,
Speaker 1: beginning with seventeen year olds. Now, I know my way
Speaker 1: around a sentence. I know some pretty words, but your
Speaker 1: way better than me. What do you think of extending
Speaker 1: the vote to teenagers? Well, I a part of me says,
Speaker 1: let him, because the teenagers aren't gonna vote. I mean
Speaker 1: every year, it's the same thing. Every election is the
Speaker 1: same thing. It's rock the vote and get the get
Speaker 1: the young vote out, and they would go registered to
Speaker 1: vote and everything and and and especially the Democrats get
Speaker 1: very excited about all of this, and then then they
Speaker 1: don't show up to vote because they've got an other
Speaker 1: things they're worried about. Um. But as you've said, and
Speaker 1: I think it's totally true, is that the effort to
Speaker 1: to round up people who are too young to know
Speaker 1: how the world works and get them to vote is
Speaker 1: very indicative of the worldview of those who are who
Speaker 1: are behind that effort. It's precisely because leftist political philosophy
Speaker 1: is so emotionally appealing, but is in fact, Uh, both unworkable,
Speaker 1: and in the last analysis, immoral that the there's an
Speaker 1: effort to recruit people who have not had enough experience
Speaker 1: or education in the world to understand its shortcomings, because
Speaker 1: they'll inevitably vote for that, for that goal, that which
Speaker 1: makes them feel good. We got on the topic of
Speaker 1: being a pessimistic and I wonder how you're not pessimistic
Speaker 1: with a lot of what's going on. But you said
Speaker 1: your your own book, uh touches on that. Yeah. Well.
Speaker 1: Ronofsky was living at a time during the rise of
Speaker 1: the hippie movement. He was very worried about the rise
Speaker 1: of the hippie movement because he thought it was a reactionary,
Speaker 1: anti technology, anti progress ideology that really threatened to undermine
Speaker 1: the future of the West. Bernovski himself was actually a socialist,
Speaker 1: but he was one of those old fashioned, technologically technical,
Speaker 1: progressive kind of socialists, not not like a throwback anti
Speaker 1: technology type. And he was very worried about about this,
Speaker 1: and in fact he talked about it in in the
Speaker 1: last episode of The Ascent of Man. If you haven't
Speaker 1: seen this documentary, you really mut I think it's the
Speaker 1: best documentary everybody. It's It's available on DVD and you
Speaker 1: can find yeah very much. So the costumes are litt
Speaker 1: funny because his envy three. But yeah, but absolutely And
Speaker 1: in the last episode, I mean almost the entire episode
Speaker 1: was filmed as a spontaneous one hour monologue by Bernofski
Speaker 1: because he was such a good speaker that he he
Speaker 1: could just talk to the camera and they would write
Speaker 1: down what he said. And that was the book version
Speaker 1: of the documentary because he was so interesting thing and
Speaker 1: he talks about this in the last episode and he says,
Speaker 1: he says, I have it here. He says, I feel
Speaker 1: I am infinitely saddened to find myself suddenly surrounded in
Speaker 1: the West by a sense of a terrible loss of
Speaker 1: nerve and a retreat from knowledge into into what into
Speaker 1: zen Buddhism, into falsely profound questions about are we not
Speaker 1: just really animals at bottom, into extrasensory perception and mystery
Speaker 1: that do not lie along the line of what we
Speaker 1: are able to know if we devote ourselves to an
Speaker 1: understanding of man. Roski is really worried about this, this
Speaker 1: backlash against science and reason that he saw beginning in
Speaker 1: the late sixties and that have taken over large parts
Speaker 1: of our society. Wow, that is that is great. So
Speaker 1: you can get a book version of the which is
Speaker 1: basically a transcript of the documentary. We want people to
Speaker 1: read your book. Yes, The Ascent of Jacob Bronowski available
Speaker 1: where fine books are traded. Tim the Lawyer Tim Santavor,
Speaker 1: Vice President for Litigation the Goldwater Institute, a fan and
Speaker 1: co host favorite for many many moons, along with his
Speaker 1: delightful and brilliant bride. Good to talk to you, Tom,
Speaker 1: and I'll be talking about the book today in Sacramento, California.
Speaker 1: If you happen to be in town. Go to Tim
Speaker 1: the Lawyer dot com to find information about absolutely fantastic
Speaker 1: Big On Marshall's News Next, a couple of different polls
Speaker 1: have come out today. We ought to take a look at,
Speaker 1: among other things, on The Armstrong and Getty Show.