Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 1: So the one and only Cardi b main appearance on
Speaker 1: big YouTube channel podcast hot Ones where they like eat
Speaker 1: hot wings and talk about whatever they talk about, and
Speaker 1: had some very surprising comments on a favorite historical figure, FDR.
Speaker 4: Take a listen what stays in my mind for a
Speaker 4: long time. As there I went to FDR's house. Anybody
Speaker 4: loves me, know me? I love FDR. FDR yes, And
Speaker 4: I love Eleanor Roosevelt. And you know how he got
Speaker 4: us through the Great Depression.
Speaker 3: With a war.
Speaker 4: Only president, the guy like the four time while he's
Speaker 4: in a wheelchair. As I grew up reading a lot
Speaker 4: about Elinor Roosevelt, she had a very sad life, and
Speaker 4: like when I went to her her house, well, she
Speaker 4: she had different houses from her from her husband, because
Speaker 4: you know, FDR Mama, she was always around like and
Speaker 4: she ain't really liked that like Eleanor wanted her space,
Speaker 4: just like me, I want my own space all the time.
Speaker 4: I saw the room where Churchill and FDR was talking
Speaker 4: about the nuke. That is crazy to me, like like
Speaker 4: I'm really here, Like I like, I don't know why
Speaker 4: I'm obsessed with war. Yes, I'm obsessed with World War two,
Speaker 4: like I love War War one, like you know, I
Speaker 4: like reading about that, but World War Two, like I'm
Speaker 4: obsessed with just learning everything about it. So for me
Speaker 4: to be in the same room that you're too and
Speaker 4: FDR was discussing.
Speaker 3: The nuke is like.
Speaker 4: It was just such a moment for me.
Speaker 5: Like, so I already loved Cardi B.
Speaker 6: I remember, don't forget about that she endors Bernie.
Speaker 3: Yes, but she is also bitching about income tax.
Speaker 6: I remember that is true, that was these points.
Speaker 2: Range Republicans at the time. World is right, keep your money.
Speaker 1: I sides that from my mind. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: pretend that didn't happen because I love Cardi B. I'm
Speaker 1: actually I like her music. I'm just like a fan
Speaker 1: of her in general saga as a history a buff
Speaker 1: What did you make of face.
Speaker 3: Comment, Well, I hate to break everybody's bubble.
Speaker 2: That's basically regurgitating the Hyde Park tour word for word,
Speaker 2: and that's fine.
Speaker 3: It sounds like she was very struck, but.
Speaker 1: She was into the question that she was. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: question she was asked wasn't even about after. It was
Speaker 1: like her getting a cheese sandwich with Dave Letterman or whatever.
Speaker 1: And she was like, Oh, that wasn't the thing. This
Speaker 1: was the thing the thing.
Speaker 3: For those were wondering.
Speaker 2: She was talking about the Manhattan Projects, the development of
Speaker 2: the nuclear weapon.
Speaker 3: Eleanor Roosevelt. It's true.
Speaker 2: Sarah Roosevelt, who is FDR's mother, is like the quintessential
Speaker 2: helicopter mother. Because what happened is is that FDR's father
Speaker 2: was much much older than Sarah Roosevelt. I think he
Speaker 2: married her when she was like twenty or something and
Speaker 2: he was like fifty, So it was like a pretty
Speaker 2: significant difference. The issue was that she got pregnant Franklin,
Speaker 2: and then the father got sick, and so because she
Speaker 2: was so young and they were alone, they were on
Speaker 2: this vast estate, you know, by themselves, they kind of
Speaker 2: made it a game about hiding how their father was sick,
Speaker 2: and the two of them they were more like siblings
Speaker 2: than like daughter, sorry, like mothered son relationship, which is
Speaker 2: a problem because Franklin, you know, marries Eleanor Roosevelt, even
Speaker 2: though at the protest of his mother's His mother wasn't
Speaker 2: like her from the get go. She was ugly, and
Speaker 2: they were you know, fifth cousins or whatever, and there
Speaker 2: was like a rivalry there for his attention and control
Speaker 2: over his life.
Speaker 1: And Eleanor never felt like she was viewed as adequate
Speaker 1: by his.
Speaker 3: Mom and always treated her very badly.
Speaker 1: It was always tense and uncomfortable, et cetera.
Speaker 3: It's an interesting industry.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: Ellen was very devoted to him for a while, but
Speaker 2: then she find out that he was cheating on her,
Speaker 2: and then you obviously they didn't agree in divorce, and
Speaker 2: they kind of went their separate ways. By the time
Speaker 2: they had adult children, and by the time they were
Speaker 2: in the White House, they had mostly reconciled.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, I mean, and she was quite extraordinary in
Speaker 1: her own right and very like spoken in the day,
Speaker 1: and actually she was very she was kind of more
Speaker 1: of an isolationist there was some tension between them in
Speaker 1: terms of his desire to enter World War two. So
Speaker 1: she had her own views and her own like political
Speaker 1: contacts and her own political life. So I can see
Speaker 1: why Cardi b as very strong, indepenant woman. Yes, sees
Speaker 1: her as an inspiration because I think she you know,
Speaker 1: she is an inspiration. She was an inspiration to a
Speaker 1: lot of women, a lot of marriage.
Speaker 3: She was an og independent woman. Actually, she was very
Speaker 3: politically active.
Speaker 5: She had her own college.
Speaker 3: Columns that she's to right in.
Speaker 2: She actually the most influenced, probably the most influential first
Speaker 2: lady of her time, because she was massively influential in
Speaker 2: the New Deal and in getting a blanket on the name.
Speaker 2: I think it's Francis Perkins, who was the first female
Speaker 2: Labor secretary, that's right, getting her too appointed, and the
Speaker 2: two of them teamed up to do a lot of
Speaker 2: work on the National Youth Administration. They made it a
Speaker 2: big project of THEIRS during the New Deal to like
Speaker 2: save a lot of like youth who were suffering under
Speaker 2: the Great Depression.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, she was an interesting way.
Speaker 1: FTR really relied on her to be kind of his
Speaker 1: eyes and ears when he and go places he couldn't
Speaker 1: go like go into factories and see the working conditions
Speaker 1: and report back to him. And you know, she maintained
Speaker 1: a lot of contacts and like you know, the anti
Speaker 1: war movements and civil rights movements, and so she was
Speaker 1: more connected, had more of her finger on the pulse
Speaker 1: of the grassroots and the overall population. So then, yeah,
Speaker 1: she ends up being influential in terms of the crafting
Speaker 1: of the New.
Speaker 3: Deal, and not only the un She did a lot
Speaker 3: of so anyway, yeah, forever, Yeah, so anyway, I'm blank
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 2: I think it's called The Roosevelts. I think it's from Uh,
Speaker 2: it's either Ken, it's from PBS. It's like ten episodes,
Speaker 2: Darren watch it. It's tea.
Speaker 3: It's a phenomenal series, like yeah, ten hours or so.
Speaker 1: But I love to say it's cool to see, you know,
Speaker 1: a cultural icon like Cardi b obviously defying a lot
Speaker 1: of expectations for what she would want to talk about
Speaker 1: in this interview, and she's like, you know, no, I
Speaker 1: don't want to tell you about Dave Letterman's cheese sandwich.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you about this historical thing that's
Speaker 1: really captured me.
Speaker 3: ARDIV, come on the show. Let's talk about it.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, I.
Speaker 1: Would love that we can talk about taxes too.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 1: Washington Posts had a report on a really troubling epidemic
Speaker 1: that is really hurting young teenage boys. Put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen from the Washington Post. The headline here
Speaker 1: is I don't know what to do. Thousands of teen
Speaker 1: boys are being extorted in sexting scams, an unprecedented number
Speaker 1: of cases, leaving families devastated.
Speaker 5: Some of the.
Speaker 1: Numbers here just to give you the backstory and the
Speaker 1: idea the way that this usually works. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you this is something that I'm aware of happening in
Speaker 1: you know, my little small town with one of the
Speaker 1: friends of my teenage daughter is they'll start chatting with
Speaker 1: some girl, you know, cute girl online and she starts
Speaker 1: asking sending pictures, asking you to send pictures. Next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, they send something explicit and then she, which
Speaker 1: turns out not to be who she's representing herself as
Speaker 1: blackmails and says, basically, I'll release these photos if you
Speaker 1: don't pay me X amount of dollars. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you're this kid, this team will say right, they
Speaker 1: don't want their parents to know they were sending nudes online,
Speaker 1: so they're embarrassed to go to their parents, and they
Speaker 1: don't want to get in trouble, and they don't know
Speaker 1: what to do, and so it's a horrific you know,
Speaker 1: they end up in a horrific situation. The numbers here
Speaker 1: they talk to this group that serves as a clearinghouse
Speaker 1: for records of abuse, receive more than ten thousand tips
Speaker 1: of financial sextortion of miners, primarily boys in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two from the public, as well as from electronic service
Speaker 1: providers like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. By the end of
Speaker 1: July twenty twenty three, they'd already received more than twelve thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred reports routed to law enforcement, with more continuing
Speaker 1: to pour in now its possible. They say that some
Speaker 1: of these reports are duplicates, but you can see the
Speaker 1: way that the numbers are skyrocketing and the fallow up
Speaker 1: from this is horrific. You've had at least a dozen
Speaker 1: boys who died by suicide last year after being blackmailed
Speaker 1: in this fashion. So it's just another way that I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just so many horrific things happening the kids that
Speaker 1: we would never have contemplated when we were young.
Speaker 3: That's what really creeped me out of this.
Speaker 2: That's one of the reasons I thought we were because
Speaker 2: you had told me that, you know, you would this
Speaker 2: kind of thing had happened somebody that you know, and
Speaker 2: I didn't realize it was so widespread. But it actually
Speaker 2: makes sense because you know, parents, unfortunately, it doesn't seem
Speaker 2: they're just handing their kids their phone and they're not
Speaker 2: having any conversations about this. And these kids don't have
Speaker 2: enough life experience to be like, yeah, some random hot
Speaker 2: girl just message me online. They're like, wow, this is
Speaker 2: all awesome. I'm like, hey, guys, it's probably not real.
Speaker 2: Ninety nine point nine percent of the time, it's just
Speaker 2: not gonna be real. It comes with some life exceps.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's the other thing is not only they
Speaker 1: don't want to get in trouble, they're embarrassed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course it's amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah I'm probably embarrassing.
Speaker 1: And you're like, I got fooled by this person to
Speaker 1: send these photos. I thought she really liked me, you know,
Speaker 1: I thought this was like a whole thing, and now
Speaker 1: you know, I'm being blackmailed. And sometimes what they'll do too,
Speaker 1: is they'll ask for like a relatively small amount of
Speaker 1: money to start with, and it's like, ari, fin, I'll
Speaker 1: send you the twenty parts just to like have this
Speaker 1: go away and not have to deal with it.
Speaker 5: And then they just keep upping the ante up.
Speaker 2: There, like you'll go get your parents' credit card or
Speaker 2: something like that, but that's awful, or send me crypto.
Speaker 3: Probably my bad half.
Speaker 2: These guys aren't even in America because they're technically dabbling
Speaker 2: in child born too, which is like a whole other thing.
Speaker 3: Absolutely coat, it's really creepy.
Speaker 2: I just think that, you know, I honestly, schools need
Speaker 2: to take charge in this. They need to start doing
Speaker 2: sessions on this when kids are like eleven twelve years old.
Speaker 2: I don't know what age kids what age the kids
Speaker 2: get phones now, like.
Speaker 1: Ten around they're usually around middle school, Okay, so yeah,
Speaker 1: eleven twelve, that's right.
Speaker 3: You got to start It's like you know, sex said
Speaker 3: health at whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, you got to have start having like some
Speaker 2: sort of conversation about online and phone behavior if this
Speaker 2: is going to be happening, because otherwise you're just setting
Speaker 2: yourself up, like you said, for a nightmare and the
Speaker 2: really scary part, and what we wanted to highlight is
Speaker 2: that there are multiple suicides now directly linked to this.
Speaker 2: I mean, who knows how many. And we've also had
Speaker 2: so many high profile incidents. Again adults, we know the whole,
Speaker 2: like Manny Tail story and the Catfish movie, all of those.
Speaker 3: I remember them, you know, very well.
Speaker 2: But a lot of these kids they don't know, you know,
Speaker 2: and they don't have as much experience, and you know,
Speaker 2: they're developing and so like it's just they're being thrust
Speaker 2: into the wild, like on Instagram and on their phones.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately it appears with like very little supervision or at
Speaker 2: least like talking to from their parents. So we got
Speaker 2: to have we got to set new norms around technology
Speaker 2: and all this stuff, which you or I who may
Speaker 2: have grown up with this tech, you know, it seems
Speaker 2: very intuitive to us, but we got to think about
Speaker 2: a developing brain that's just immediately interacting with this tech.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, that's right.
Speaker 5: And listen, I mean sometimes the parents do talk to.
Speaker 6: The kids about you don't listen, you.
Speaker 1: Know, I mean, because sometimes you learn things the hard way.
Speaker 1: If there's anyone out there listening who's been in this situation. Like,
Speaker 1: I know, it's embarrassing. I know you don't want to
Speaker 1: get in trouble.
Speaker 6: Whatever.
Speaker 1: Your parents are human beings too, They've made mistakes as well,
Speaker 1: Like get a grown up involved and do not send
Speaker 1: the money because it will not end. It's not going
Speaker 1: to solve the problem.
Speaker 3: What are your parents, your whatever? Uncle?
Speaker 1: Contact law enforcement because like you said, I mean there's
Speaker 1: serious not only the blackmail, but also you're talking about
Speaker 1: child pornography. I mean, there's serious penalties for this and.
Speaker 2: It should be Yeah, it's a good thing you can
Speaker 2: actually get them in trouble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope law enforcement is like up to date
Speaker 1: on these types of crimes, because I know in the
Speaker 1: past there's been it's been difficult to get police to
Speaker 1: take these sorts of things seriously, Like this is a
Speaker 1: real crime because it was just so like such a
Speaker 1: new landscape and something they didn't know how to navigate either.
Speaker 5: So makes sense anyway.
Speaker 2: Stave Vigeland a very good friend of mine, Jason Willock,
Speaker 2: he now works over at the Washington Post. He's a columnist,
Speaker 2: wrote a column which intrigued both of us. Is going
Speaker 2: to put it up there on the screen really highlights
Speaker 2: something We've been talking a lot here on the show,
Speaker 2: quote how the diploma divide came to dominate American politics,
Speaker 2: and he highlights specifically a University of Pennsylvania, a political
Speaker 2: scientist who has account of the recent political shift, the
Speaker 2: greatest shift really in all of our lifetimes, the diploma divide,
Speaker 2: college educated voters dramatically going towards the Democratic Party, working
Speaker 2: class voters, with some exceptions, martally going to the Republican Party,
Speaker 2: especially when we're talking about whites. He says that within
Speaker 2: this that quote, whites with college degrees and not only
Speaker 2: white working class have driven the polarization process predominantly.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 2: From at least the early nineteen eighties to mid two thousands,
Speaker 2: there was essentially no difference in average attitudes on economic
Speaker 2: policy between college and non college educated voters. Beginning in
Speaker 2: two thousand and four, however, college educated white voters have
Speaker 2: moved steadily left on economic issues relative to the working class,
Speaker 2: so much so that the education gap on economics is
Speaker 2: half as large as magnitude as the party gap.
Speaker 3: Was in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: But even more interesting, Crystal, and this is what really
Speaker 2: got us in this is that it used to be
Speaker 2: that college educated voters predominantly were the real culture war voters.
Speaker 2: Those are the people most motivated by cultural concerns. But
Speaker 2: with the stripping away really of economics and reality that
Speaker 2: things probably aren't going to change increasingly now the divide
Speaker 2: is around culture, and that's part of why our politics
Speaker 2: are exactly the way they are today, and economics in
Speaker 2: some cases flows downstream from those two. It also just
Speaker 2: makes sense for anybody to come up in the college
Speaker 2: educated system in the last decade. Culture is all basically
Speaker 2: the obsession of not only the elite but the professors
Speaker 2: in terms of what's dominating campus life and what's there,
Speaker 2: Whereas let's say, in the nineteen sixties, there are very
Speaker 2: different conversations that were happen.
Speaker 3: Maybe sixties is a good example.
Speaker 1: I want to say it's pretty politicized then.
Speaker 3: Too, Yeah, but it was different.
Speaker 2: It was about Vietnam and even the culture quote unquote
Speaker 2: there it was about civil rights. I mean, it's just
Speaker 2: don't think it's funny even fundamentally the same as opposed
Speaker 2: to like what we're facing right now.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so it's fascinating to me. It makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense that it would be college educative voters
Speaker 1: who tend to be more economically secure themselves, who then
Speaker 1: would prioritize cultural issues. Right, It's like, I've got mine,
Speaker 1: I'm good. I don't really care about unions anymore. I'm
Speaker 1: animum wage I'm way above that. Not to be I
Speaker 1: don't want to be glib or like, you know, but
Speaker 1: just in terms of people looking out for their interest.
Speaker 1: So now I have the bandwidth to care about these
Speaker 1: other social cultural issues. So that's what the model used
Speaker 1: to be, which is kind of what people still may
Speaker 1: intuitively think is going on. What we've seen shift is
Speaker 1: now basically everybody is a culture war voter.
Speaker 5: And I mean I'm a little bit I'm a little.
Speaker 1: Bit skeptical of this, but I think part of why
Speaker 1: it makes some sense is because in.
Speaker 6: That earlier period.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties, certainly in the nineteen seventies, you
Speaker 1: had more of an active conversation about what the model of.
Speaker 6: The economy was going to be.
Speaker 1: Yes, you're right, once you get past Bill Clinton adopting,
Speaker 1: you know, a market radicalism very similar to Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 1: will both of the parties agree on some of the
Speaker 1: like major contours of the economic landscape, and so they
Speaker 1: seek to differentiate themselves by culture. By the way, culture
Speaker 1: is also a lot easier to deliver on and very
Speaker 1: comfortable for donors. You know, cultural issues don't threaten the
Speaker 1: donor class really whatsoever. So it's much more convenient for
Speaker 1: parties to focus on those as being like the litmus
Speaker 1: test and the core of their identity. As we've had
Speaker 1: this big partisan sorting, it then makes sense that you know,
Speaker 1: if you're on the Democratic side, and this is like
Speaker 1: the set of issues both culturally and economically, that you
Speaker 1: just start adopting those no matter where you are on
Speaker 1: the economic spectrum.
Speaker 5: If you're on the conservative side.
Speaker 1: Like these are the people who are signaling they're on
Speaker 1: your team culturally, and so you take put more credence
Speaker 1: in the economic philosophy that they are preaching as well.
Speaker 1: One thing that I would note though, is in spite
Speaker 1: of that, and in spite of them arguing that working
Speaker 1: class conservative voters have tended to adopt more conservative ideology,
Speaker 1: we do see that there are a lot of economic
Speaker 1: issues where there's a huge commonality across the American people
Speaker 1: that's not reflected by elites really in either party. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have this huge support for unions, right now, huge
Speaker 1: support for labor right now, huge support for upping the
Speaker 1: minimum wage right now, huge support for making healthcare better,
Speaker 1: expanding healthcare, negotiating Medicare drug prices, lowering prescription drug prices.
Speaker 1: I don't want people to get the impression that there
Speaker 1: is no commonality in terms of an economic vision across
Speaker 1: the two parties, because I do still think that there's
Speaker 1: a big split just by the numbers, between what elites
Speaker 1: and the parties want and what the overall base of
Speaker 1: the party would like to see in reality.
Speaker 7: You're right.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, there's two ways to look at it.
Speaker 2: We're more divided than ever.
Speaker 3: True. We are also more united than ever. Also true.
Speaker 2: Two of those things can be true at the same time.
Speaker 2: It just depends on which conversation want to have. You
Speaker 2: we're talking about guns, Okay, we're more divided than ever
Speaker 2: you want to talk about you know, on some issues
Speaker 2: we're more divided than ever. But even within cultures, like
Speaker 2: what if we're talking about gay marriage, Well, actually we're
Speaker 2: more united than a vast majority of people of the
Speaker 2: country support gay marriage. So it all depends on the
Speaker 2: conversation that you want to have. You can have a
Speaker 2: productive one or you can have a non productive one,
Speaker 2: and I think we know which one most of the
Speaker 2: elites prefer. But unfortunately, as I've said, I don't like
Speaker 2: this trend. Before your college degree is still the best,
Speaker 2: this single best indicator we have in this country of
Speaker 2: how you voted.
Speaker 3: I would really love.
Speaker 2: To get away from that. I don't like that it
Speaker 2: is that way. I think there's a lot of social
Speaker 2: ills that come as a result of that. That also
Speaker 2: whitewashes most conversations that I think people could be having
Speaker 2: around real issues. But also, as you're highlighting, that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that those can't happen, because people still vastly agree
Speaker 2: on all that whether you went to college or not,
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of wages or the way healthcare whatever, and.
Speaker 1: Perhaps more than ever post pandemic. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: do think that there was a real shift in the
Speaker 1: pandemic that we've seen play out in terms of, you know,
Speaker 1: people's attitude towards the economy and attitude towards the boss
Speaker 1: class and workers and what workers deserve.
Speaker 6: Et cetera.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, it's it's complex, it's very complex.
Speaker 1: I guess the last thing, and I'll say is given
Speaker 1: that for quite a while, you haven't really had either
Speaker 1: party delivering on the economic pieces of their promises. It
Speaker 1: makes sense that people would be like, all right, well
Speaker 1: then culture, like they can signal to me culturally and
Speaker 1: like be on my team. And I guess that's the
Speaker 1: best that I can hope for. Like, that makes sense,
Speaker 1: And it's going to take a shift in our political
Speaker 1: outcomes in order to, you know, to change people, convince
Speaker 1: people that no, I should like, I actually should care
Speaker 1: about these economic pieces because I have a reasonable hope
Speaker 1: that they may actually come to fruition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 8: Well erstwhile Jets quarterback er, I should say, recovering Jets
Speaker 8: quarterback Aaron Rodgers may be physically injured, but he seems
Speaker 8: mentally pretty sure. During his weekly appearance on The Great
Speaker 8: Pac McAfee Show on ESPN, Aaron Rodgers called Travis Kelcey quote,
Speaker 8: mister Pfizer, take a watch.
Speaker 9: I didn't have a crazy game, and you know, mister Pfiser,
Speaker 9: we kind of shut him down a little bit, and
Speaker 9: you know, he's like crazy impact game. He had, you know,
Speaker 9: some yards and stuff. But I felt like, for the
Speaker 9: most part, you know, we played really tough on defense
Speaker 9: such the last three quarters.
Speaker 8: All right, right, so Jets lose to the Chiefs. Rogers
Speaker 8: calls Travis Kelse on ESPN, which cannot have been happy
Speaker 8: with that, Mister Pfizer, because Travis Kelce, I think has
Speaker 8: done ads. He's actually partnered with Pfizer. This is actually
Speaker 8: from Fox need quote. Kelsey recently partnered with the pharmaceutical
Speaker 8: giant to promote its COVID nineteen and flu vaccines in commercials.
Speaker 8: Rogers had a conversation with with Travis Kelce after the game.
Speaker 8: He said he's going to leave at private, but he said, quote,
Speaker 8: I've known Travis Kelce for a long time and we
Speaker 8: had a great chat. Got to have a quick chat
Speaker 8: with Mahomes about how every time we're supposed to play
Speaker 8: each other, it doesn't happen. Aj Hawk was his former player,
Speaker 8: his former teammate A J. Hawk when they were at
Speaker 8: the Great Green Bay. Packers was on air as well,
Speaker 8: and both of as people just saw McAfee and AJ
Speaker 8: Hawk's reactions were pretty priceless. Mister Pfizer, you know Aaron Rodgers,
Speaker 8: Rogers has you know, even appearances on Rogan Show and
Speaker 8: McAfee's show basically come out as a vaccine skeptic. He's
Speaker 8: kind of railed against woke culture. What did you make
Speaker 8: of this clip?
Speaker 10: Ryan just clout chasing Travis now that Travis is like
Speaker 10: the second most famous person in the world, right, I mean,
Speaker 10: that's what this is at this point.
Speaker 3: Do you think he wants Taylor Swift?
Speaker 10: I mean I think he wants some of the attention probably,
Speaker 10: Like It's funny how like the NFL thought it was
Speaker 10: a big deal and then Travis Kelsey started dating Taylor
Speaker 10: Swift and they realized what an actual big deal it's
Speaker 10: like because Travis Kelsey, you know, maybe the best tight
Speaker 10: end in like football history. And but to the Swift,
Speaker 10: he's like, who is this? Who's this nobody taking taking
Speaker 10: our tailor?
Speaker 9: There was an.
Speaker 8: Amazing post from somebody at a Chief's tailgate who was
Speaker 8: wearing a Travis Kelcey jersey. It was like a girl
Speaker 8: and it was spelled Kelsey, like the name the girl's
Speaker 8: name Kelsey Jersey was on the back. Because clearly they've
Speaker 8: never heard of Travis Kelcey, don't know much about the guy,
Speaker 8: but they love him.
Speaker 10: The only thing I really have to add to this
Speaker 10: conversation is that if people haven't seen it. They should
Speaker 10: google his younger brother, Jason Kelsey's his Super Bowl speech
Speaker 10: that he gave in Philadelpia. Oh that's eighteen.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 10: Jason Kelsey, by the way, possibly the greatest center in
Speaker 10: football history.
Speaker 3: Did you watch the HBO documentary? No, you'd really like it.
Speaker 8: There's a lot of good Philly stuff too.
Speaker 3: I forget that you're an Eagles fan. So you guys
Speaker 3: really like Jason Kelce.
Speaker 10: Oh yeah, and it's it's an incredible it's an incredible speech.
Speaker 10: You would like just go google Jason Kelce like speech
Speaker 10: and like that all that'll send you. If it sends
Speaker 10: you down to Jason Kels here at Kelsey Brothers rabbit hole,
Speaker 10: it'll be time better spent than some of the other
Speaker 10: Ann Rodgers rabbit holes that you could probably end up
Speaker 10: going down.
Speaker 8: So Aaron Rodgers is a really interesting figure because when
Speaker 8: he was Brett Favre's backup and far was clearly on
Speaker 8: the way out and actually ended up in a really
Speaker 8: similar situation to Aaron Rodgers towards the end of his
Speaker 8: career with the Packers. Rogers is somebody who's always taken
Speaker 8: himself so seriously. He was famously kind of jilted in
Speaker 8: the draft, wanted to play for the Niners and you
Speaker 8: didn't get drafted, and that spot ended up falling in
Speaker 8: the draft. Becomes this wonderful, fantastic quarterback, but he always
Speaker 8: has taken himself so seriously, except for maybe like the
Speaker 8: smoke and JA memes. Do you remember that with Jay
Speaker 8: Cutler back in the day. Those were pretty good and
Speaker 8: was really sort of well liked. And then towards the
Speaker 8: end of his career with the Packers starts getting what
Speaker 8: I think a lot of fansy is an attitude, and
Speaker 8: that is working at the same time as he starts
Speaker 8: like also railing against wote culture, not taking himself that seriously,
Speaker 8: going on McAfee show and going on Rogan and all
Speaker 8: this other stuff. And it is just fascinating to me
Speaker 8: how he's kind of We've talked about this the hippie
Speaker 8: to QAnon pipeline, and I'm not saying that Aaron Rodgers'
Speaker 8: just QAnon and I'm not saying there's nothing about that,
Speaker 8: But there is the like the crunchy type of people,
Speaker 8: surfer type of guy who is now like actually aligning
Speaker 8: with the right. And then you have some of these
Speaker 8: more soccer moms who are aligning more with the surfer
Speaker 8: type hippies on this question of like medical freedom and
Speaker 8: vaccines and listen, people have very legitimate questions. That's not
Speaker 8: but we're not winging in on vaccines here. It's just
Speaker 8: an interesting confluence.
Speaker 10: And yes, I think people that self identify as free thinkers,
Speaker 10: and I think it's important to understand that that phrasing
Speaker 10: and that framing used to position themselves on the left,
Speaker 10: and today, yes, people who self identify as free thinkers
Speaker 10: position themselves or find themselves positioned on the right now.
Speaker 10: I also think that people who self identify as free
Speaker 10: thinker as often are not are a little bit obnoxious
Speaker 10: and not as free thinking as they think they are.
Speaker 10: People overrate their own intellectual agency and ought to have
Speaker 10: some more humility about how free thinking they actually are,
Speaker 10: because if you call yourself a freethinker that, but then
Speaker 10: you agree with a particular person on everything, should ask
Speaker 10: yourself freely, how freely did you arrive at that conclusion?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 10: So, yes, the hippie to QAnon pipeline is a real thing,
Speaker 10: like we've seen it. We've seen it move, but I
Speaker 10: don't think it's as simple as people want to make
Speaker 10: it out to be. And I would encourage people to
Speaker 10: think more freely about that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And I don't think it's like it's not specific
Speaker 8: to vaccines, and the hippie to QAnon pipeline isn't specific
Speaker 8: to Aaron Rodgers obviously, But what we're talking about basically
Speaker 8: is the kind of vendiagram between like conservative soccer moms
Speaker 8: and hippies where there's this middle ground now where you have,
Speaker 8: you know, maybe like people like Aaron Rodgers coming down
Speaker 8: on the same side on particular questions like woke culture
Speaker 8: and vaccines, and that's where like RFK Junior launching what
Speaker 8: appears to be a third party bid on Monday, I
Speaker 8: bet Aaron Rodgers supports r of K Junior.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no question. Yeah, Like this is.
Speaker 8: A real u there's a real constituency for this, And
Speaker 8: that doesn't mean everyone's going to do it responsibly, But
Speaker 8: I do think there are some responsible conversations that can
Speaker 8: be had because when you again relegate people to the
Speaker 8: fringes of society who are otherwise like intelligent normal people,
Speaker 8: you make those you let you allow bad ideas to
Speaker 8: kind of metastasize in the shadows instead of just like
Speaker 8: like ESPN should be happy, like seriously, because you should
Speaker 8: be able to have these questions in broad daylight, which
Speaker 8: is how we used to do so that people can
Speaker 8: then smack it down. Jenny McCarthy stops start saying weird
Speaker 8: stuff on the view great like the American public and
Speaker 8: everyone else will weigh in and be like, yeah, no,
Speaker 8: this is all right.
Speaker 10: And before people think I'm being too critical of self
Speaker 10: identified freethinkers, self identified people who quote unquote follow the
Speaker 10: science are also obnoxious and are also very rarely following
Speaker 10: the science. So I just want to be equal opportunity here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 8: Criticizing the self identified freethinkers from a hardcore fish fan
Speaker 8: is a real.
Speaker 10: Bold move right, and everyone at the Fish Show thinks
Speaker 10: they're like, you know, breaking from the monoculture, and they
Speaker 10: all look the same there. So let's just be humble
Speaker 10: about it, That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 3: There, you go, all right, Well, we'll see you guys later.
Speaker 1: So for some time we've been tracking what is a
Speaker 1: completely insane situation that's been unfolding in Arizona. The backstory
Speaker 1: here is that companies owned by Saudi Arabia effectively have
Speaker 1: been putting in place alfelfa farms in the desert in Arizona,
Speaker 1: soaking up massive amounts of water, using it to feed
Speaker 1: then this alfalfa to cows in Saudi Arabia. Now, in
Speaker 1: the country of Saudi Arabia themself itself, you were not
Speaker 1: allowed to grow water rich, water requiring whatever the word is.
Speaker 6: Crops like alfalfa.
Speaker 1: So they exploited some local water usage laws in Arizona
Speaker 1: to be able to grow these crops use them to
Speaker 1: feed the cows in Saudi Arabian. And this of course
Speaker 1: comes at a time when Arizona's facing massive drought, huge
Speaker 1: heat waves, all of these issues that have created a
Speaker 1: lot of water usage challenges for Phoenix and for WURL
Speaker 1: users alike. So put this up on the screen. We
Speaker 1: actually have some good news. The governor there, Katie Hobbs,
Speaker 1: shuts down corrupt deal with Saudi Arabia for Arizona water.
Speaker 1: Huge wind for water rights for Americans in the drought
Speaker 1: plagued Southwest. So the backstory here is that not only
Speaker 1: did the company exploit these long standing water usage laws
Speaker 1: where basically once they got these leases, they could pump
Speaker 1: as much water as they wanted out of the groundwater
Speaker 1: supply with zero accountability, without even having to track how
Speaker 1: much water they're even using. So they exploited those laws
Speaker 1: and they made sure that they kept this deal in
Speaker 1: place by effectively buying off the legislators in what for
Speaker 1: a long time was a Republican dominated state. They had
Speaker 1: lobbied the legislature and the previous governor. They hired key
Speaker 1: people with high level connections. One of their top lobbyists
Speaker 1: had actually served as finance chair for the Arizona Republican Party.
Speaker 1: They put a former Republican member of Congress on their
Speaker 1: payroll too, And because for so long it was a
Speaker 1: Republican dominated state, paying off these key Republican figures worked
Speaker 1: Now because there's been a lot of press scrutiny and
Speaker 1: because the situation has become so dire, you've really had
Speaker 1: a shift. And Katie Hobbs has come in and said
Speaker 1: she was going to look at it. She put in
Speaker 1: place a plan and now she's not canceling all of
Speaker 1: their leases, but she's canceling some of their leases in
Speaker 1: the hardest hit, most drought stricken parts of the state.
Speaker 1: And Sager, yeah, I did a monologue on this.
Speaker 6: A while ago.
Speaker 1: And part of what you find out too is this
Speaker 1: is already having a huge impact. Some of the workers
Speaker 1: who tend the alfalfa fields, they don't even have like
Speaker 1: drinking water and wells that they can themselves use because
Speaker 1: the sources have been so depleted. They have to like
Speaker 1: cart buckets of water for their own personal use.
Speaker 6: So this has already had a huge effect.
Speaker 1: And you're talking about parts of Arizona that are you know,
Speaker 1: have a lot of high level of poverty. They don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of a lot of local wealth, and
Speaker 1: so they'd also do things like oh, they buy some
Speaker 1: little nice thing for the football team or whatever to
Speaker 1: try to buy off the locals on the cheap. So
Speaker 1: it's good to see that there's actually progress in the
Speaker 1: right direction.
Speaker 2: Ye should cancel all their leases, not just some of them,
Speaker 2: especially because it's it's already we have issues with private
Speaker 2: especially in the West water use and land use up there.
Speaker 3: It's wild because it varies state by state.
Speaker 2: There's that whole project by the Sam Walton family in
Speaker 2: order to try and privatize water like oh my god, Tanna, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's all like a whole other story. But at least
Speaker 2: those people are our sat We could deal with that
Speaker 2: here with our laws. This is just straight up exploiting
Speaker 2: the ability to bribe their way into the US. So
Speaker 2: they don't want to waste their money, I'll go ahead
Speaker 2: and waste hours in a very similar climate, I would add,
Speaker 2: in order to feed their cows and their populations. Like, okay,
Speaker 2: well you can buy it just like any other person.
Speaker 2: But instead what they do is they buy up their
Speaker 2: access to the towns, the farms and all that.
Speaker 3: So it's very basic little things. I am happy.
Speaker 2: I've been seeing a lot of democratic energy around this
Speaker 2: in recent times. So Katie Hobbs just canceled this. I
Speaker 2: got to give the man credit. Fetterman gave a very eloquent,
Speaker 2: a good speech in Congress about Chinese farmland buying in
Speaker 2: the state of Pennsylvania specifically, like critical farmland, which was
Speaker 2: previously owned by American citizens, is a very similar thing.
Speaker 3: Is a huge problem, actually.
Speaker 5: A big problem.
Speaker 2: It's a big problem in Iowa that relates very much
Speaker 2: to seeds and a lot of industrial espionage stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Because they don't they're a net importer of a lot
Speaker 2: of their food, umlike us. So anyway, it connects to
Speaker 2: a lot of bigger stuff, and I'm happy to see it,
Speaker 2: and it just should be a message like no, you
Speaker 2: can't just buy your way in here when you're government.
Speaker 1: And just to give you a sense, for a long time,
Speaker 1: we had no idea how much water they were using,
Speaker 1: and then the first step forward was like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're going to force you to track it. And they
Speaker 1: found out they were using in a single year the
Speaker 1: amount of water that would supply a city of fifty
Speaker 1: thousand people this one farm just to feed cows in
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia alfalfa wild situation. So it's good to see
Speaker 1: that there's been I really think a lot of the
Speaker 1: public security and the public outrage, which was bipartisan, forced
Speaker 1: this governor to make some changes that are in positive direction.
Speaker 1: Apparently they have leases in California as well, So this
Speaker 1: isn't this isn't the only problem, but good to see
Speaker 1: progress in this direction.
Speaker 3: Looking at you, Gavin Knew.
Speaker 2: Some very interesting details coming out about Bob Menendez's wife,
Speaker 2: who has been directly implicated in that alleged bribery scheme,
Speaker 2: getting her hands on a nice brand new Mercedes and
Speaker 2: allegedly texting the guy who allegedly bought it for her.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not about all that alleged, because there's text.
Speaker 2: For this beautiful new Mercedes GLC car sounds nice. Well,
Speaker 2: it turns out one of the reasons that she needed
Speaker 2: a new car. Let's go and put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen. Apparently, while she was Menendez's girlfriend, she
Speaker 2: hit and killed a man while driving on Bogata's main
Speaker 2: street in twenty eighteen. There is apparently this happened in Bogaton,
Speaker 2: New Jersey. I didn't know there was such a thing
Speaker 2: as Bogaton, New Jersey, but there it is. And it's
Speaker 2: only a month after the crash. According to that indictment
Speaker 2: bought by the US attorney, that she was texting with
Speaker 2: this Egyptian businessman about the lack of a car, who
Speaker 2: he then provided her with a twenty nineteen Mercedes Bend
Speaker 2: C three hundred convertible, a very nice car of which
Speaker 2: she then purchased, of which she then thanked him for it.
Speaker 2: Now the details of the crash, it was ruled that
Speaker 2: she didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 3: Here's what they said.
Speaker 2: They responded to a call of pedestrian hit by a
Speaker 2: car at seven thirty five pm. The crash occurred on
Speaker 2: Main Street after a man was fatally injured in front
Speaker 2: of his home. The police department ruled that she was
Speaker 2: not at fault with the crash. Mister Coop was jaywalking.
Speaker 2: He did not crash the street at an intersection or
Speaker 2: in a marked crosswalks. So this isn't like a tawdry
Speaker 2: report here about how she was allegedly at fault and
Speaker 2: there was a cover up or anything like that. It's
Speaker 2: that the reason she needed a new car, Crystal, was
Speaker 2: because she was involved in his crash, and it seemed
Speaker 2: that she seemed very comfortable after losing her car in
Speaker 2: this crash to then be going to this gentleman allegedly
Speaker 2: again for the lawyers to be asking for a new car.
Speaker 1: But there are some eyebrow raising details about the circumstances here.
Speaker 1: She was not She was not taken in for questioning
Speaker 1: at the time of the of you know, this fatal
Speaker 1: accident where a pedestrian ends up being tragically killed.
Speaker 5: She was not tested for drugs or alcohol.
Speaker 3: Ask yourself that if.
Speaker 1: You were in this situation, do you think they would
Speaker 1: bring you in. Do you think they would do a
Speaker 1: field sobriety test?
Speaker 2: At least you or I hit somebody and fatally killed them,
Speaker 2: no matter what the details are. Of course, our asses
Speaker 2: are getting pulled on at night too, just so we're
Speaker 2: all now you think we're not getting in immediately to
Speaker 2: blow through whatever hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And apparently some retired nearby police officer ends up on
Speaker 1: the scene because he says, oh, his wife is a
Speaker 1: friend of Nadine's. The family very much thinks that there
Speaker 1: was some sort of special deal, cover up, et cetera.
Speaker 1: They do not feel that justice was done here, and
Speaker 1: so anyway, there are I think the fact that she
Speaker 1: there was no field sobriety test done, she wasn't taken
Speaker 1: in for questioning any of that, I think is very
Speaker 1: eyebrow raising and does suggest some special treatment that ordinary
Speaker 1: citizens would not likely receive. And there was no there
Speaker 1: were no news reports of this at the time.
Speaker 3: Well that's crazy.
Speaker 1: This is the first time that we're learning about it
Speaker 1: because it was sort of like alluded to in this indictment,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of local journalists and national press were like, wait, what,
Speaker 1: let's look into the details of it. And like I said,
Speaker 1: there are some very eyebrow raising details contained here.
Speaker 2: Because she was only his girlfriend at the time, I guess,
Speaker 2: not his wife, and it was only afterwards that it
Speaker 2: would have I guess at the time that would have happened.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't know the details on it.
Speaker 2: I mean, the police had said that he was jaywalking,
Speaker 2: you know, not in a crosswalk. I'm not saying the
Speaker 2: man deserved to die, of course not. It's a tragic situation,
Speaker 2: so what I had read the details, But the blood
Speaker 2: alcohol thing is.
Speaker 3: Very very suspicious.
Speaker 2: The fact they're not branding, and then of course anytime
Speaker 2: some like retired person is showing up quota as a friend.
Speaker 2: I mean, once again, anybody here has ever been involved
Speaker 2: in a fender. But it's a terrible experience. You know,
Speaker 2: everyone's stressed and people are mad at each other. It's like,
Speaker 2: it must be nice to have somebody be able to
Speaker 2: show up who's connected on your behalf.
Speaker 3: So who knows, actually that's true.
Speaker 2: Really, who knows whether she didn't receive a lot of
Speaker 2: special treatment because she was the girlfriend of a sitting
Speaker 2: US senator and then literally getting stuff on his behalf,
Speaker 2: allegedly as.
Speaker 3: Laid out in the indictment.
Speaker 2: Just gross, gross that they there's a totally different standard
Speaker 2: for these people whenever they do anything.
Speaker 1: Absolutely it said. She initially agreed to let officers search
Speaker 1: your phone, then.
Speaker 6: She took it back.
Speaker 1: Shortly thereafter, she was allowed to to get personal effects
Speaker 1: out of the vehicle. This retired cop shows up to
Speaker 1: help shepherd her through the whole process.
Speaker 6: Anyway, Yeah, that's me off there, are right.
Speaker 3: We'll see you guys later.
Speaker 7: The avocado you're looking at is about thirty days old,
Speaker 7: yet it still looks about as ripe as the day
Speaker 7: it was picked. The source of the magic. It has
Speaker 7: been treated with a new tasteless, edible coating called Appeal,
Speaker 7: an invisible shield promising to double the lifespan of your fruits.
Speaker 7: But is there a catch?
Speaker 11: Appeal Sciences you may remember that it takes left behind
Speaker 11: plant materials like leaves or peels and blends. They bake
Speaker 11: them into a kind of shield that you spray it
Speaker 11: on fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 5: It keeps them from going bad.
Speaker 7: Founded in twenty twelve, Appeal is a family of plant
Speaker 7: derived coating that is applied to keep produce fresher for longer.
Speaker 7: The company's Food Gone Good mission aims to tackle global
Speaker 7: hunger and help me to gate climate change by saving water,
Speaker 7: increasing the shelf life of produce, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 7: In the past few years, the company's valuation has skyrocketed,
Speaker 7: and produce coated with Appeal can now be found in
Speaker 7: grocery stores nationwide as well as internationally.
Speaker 12: Monks figured out in the Middle Ages that you could
Speaker 12: put beeswax on an apple and it lasts a little
Speaker 12: bit longer. But if you go into a store today
Speaker 12: and you get an organic apple, it's still got beeswax.
Speaker 12: And so Peel comes in and says, you know what,
Speaker 12: Let's use food to solve this problem in a way
Speaker 12: that dramatically reduces ways.
Speaker 7: Using food to reduce food wet sounds like quite the
Speaker 7: scientific innovation, but some in the healthy eating community are
Speaker 7: beginning to ask questions and voice concerns that I think
Speaker 7: warrant our collective attention.
Speaker 13: Did you ever think that your produce would have an
Speaker 13: ingredient list?
Speaker 7: Kristen Dornic is a cookbook author and founder of Kristen's Kitchen,
Speaker 7: a food blog that promotes eating real food. I recently
Speaker 7: spoke with her to better understand the controversy surrounding Appeals
Speaker 7: and new innovative so.
Speaker 13: Appeal is a plant based coating and it's used on
Speaker 13: produce to keep it fresher for longer, But there's a
Speaker 13: lot of there's a lot of questions about what it's
Speaker 13: made of.
Speaker 7: Based on the company's website, Appeal is made of mono
Speaker 7: and diglycerides, which they say are naturally occurring in all
Speaker 7: fruits and vegetables, and that this ingredient has a long
Speaker 7: history of safe conception and has been verified by regulatory
Speaker 7: authorities around the world. But once you dig a little deeper,
Speaker 7: I found the answer to be a bit more opaque
Speaker 7: and a bit more complicated. First off, mono and diglycerides,
Speaker 7: sometimes referred to as monoacloglycerides, are plant based in the
Speaker 7: sense that it is extracted from grape seeds through heavy
Speaker 7: industrial processing at high temperatures, somewhat analogous to the process
Speaker 7: to extrude seed oils commonly found in ultra processed foods,
Speaker 7: which serve as emulsifiers or preservatives to enhance texture, stability,
Speaker 7: and shelf life of food products. Such substances are considered
Speaker 7: by the FDA to be generally recognized as safe or gross.
Speaker 7: What most people don't know, maybe, is that grass certified
Speaker 7: ingredients means that the companies themselves are self certifying the
Speaker 7: safety of the substances through their own hired experts in
Speaker 7: their own trials and submitting a grass notification to the FDA,
Speaker 7: and ninety nine percent of the time the company's claims
Speaker 7: are not independently verified by the FDA. It's what's known
Speaker 7: as a loophole. And if we look closely at appeals
Speaker 7: gross notice submission to the FDA, the industrial process they
Speaker 7: use to extract monoacloglycerides from grape seed leaves residue of
Speaker 7: processing aid residuals such as ethyl acetate and hebtaine, along
Speaker 7: with heavy metals like palladium, arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury.
Speaker 7: A recent European Food Safety Authority review of monoacoglycerides E
Speaker 7: four seven to one concluded that while there is no
Speaker 7: reason for a safety concern, they also warned that the
Speaker 7: potential exposure to toxic elements resulting from the consumption of
Speaker 7: E four seventy one could be substantial and the need
Speaker 7: to lower the current maximum limits for arsenic, lead, cadmium,
Speaker 7: and mercury. It does sound like a lot of scarymicals
Speaker 7: that we probably don't want in our food.
Speaker 13: No, this is something that is eventually going to be
Speaker 13: put on all produce. You're not just getting exposed to
Speaker 13: a little bit here and there. You're getting exposed to
Speaker 13: a lot. You know, it's on organic produce too.
Speaker 7: In a now deleted Instagram post, Appeal co founder Jenny
Speaker 7: Due defended her company's use of chemicals.
Speaker 6: Everything around us is chemicals.
Speaker 3: You and I are all made of chemicals.
Speaker 8: In fact, even more amazingly, we are all made of
Speaker 8: star stue.
Speaker 7: Cool. The star stuff that she's referring to, once again,
Speaker 7: based on her own company's registration with the EPA, is
Speaker 7: classified as a pesticide. That's right, organ Appeal, which is
Speaker 7: appeals organic formulation that the company uses to quote organic produce,
Speaker 7: comes with a massive warning label and considered to be
Speaker 7: a hazard to humans and domestic animals.
Speaker 3: On top of that, the EPA.
Speaker 7: Registration raises even more questions about the ingredient lists, as
Speaker 7: it lists the active ingredient as citric acid ato point
Speaker 7: sixty six percent and other ingredients at ninety nine point
Speaker 7: three four percent. But putting aside ingredients and chemicals for
Speaker 7: a second, are there other health implications if All of
Speaker 7: our produce is coded with appeal.
Speaker 3: How do you know when that apple was picked?
Speaker 13: Was it picked three days ago or was it picked
Speaker 13: thirty days ago?
Speaker 3: You can't tell.
Speaker 13: Because the outside it looks it still looks pretty good
Speaker 13: because of that coding.
Speaker 7: Because appeals barrier coating halts the visual decay of fruits
Speaker 7: and vegetables. The next question consumers have been asking is
Speaker 7: does it lock in the nutrients too? It has been
Speaker 7: well documented that most produce loses thirty percent of nutrients
Speaker 7: three days after harvest. In fact, University of California studies
Speaker 7: show that vegetables can lose fifteen to fifty five percent
Speaker 7: of vitamin C, for instance, within a week. Now, I know,
Speaker 7: we've just covered a whole lot of claims about appeal
Speaker 7: from chemicals to nutrients, which beyond mainstream fact checkers like
Speaker 7: those from the Associated Press reiterating that the FDA considers
Speaker 7: appeals coding to be safe for human consumption and correcting
Speaker 7: a post that erroneously confused appeals code with a cleaning
Speaker 7: solution with the same name. Appeal themselves have not really
Speaker 7: publicly addressed much in terms of these claims and concerns.
Speaker 7: Until now, I had the opportunity to sit down with
Speaker 7: Appeals co founder Jenny Doo and the company's VP of Marketing,
Speaker 7: Lauren Sweeney to try to get to the bottom of
Speaker 7: some of these concerns. We've just covered the mystery ingredients
Speaker 7: of appeals organic formulation, the ninety nine point three four
Speaker 7: percent other they say is just purified mono and diglycerides,
Speaker 7: which is the same ingredient in their non organic formulation,
Speaker 7: along with food grade sodium bicarbonate. In regards to the
Speaker 7: publicly available grass submission and other patent submissions that we've
Speaker 7: referenced in this piece, the company states that they quote
Speaker 7: do not represent our current manufacturing processes. Neither heptane nor
Speaker 7: ethyl acetate are used in our manufacturing process and heavy
Speaker 7: metals are also not intentionally added to the product. In
Speaker 7: a follow up email, miss Sweeney reiterated that quote. With
Speaker 7: almost a century of safety use as a food additive,
Speaker 7: rigorous purity and safety standards, and low levels of exposure consumption,
Speaker 7: it is very unlikely that there would be any long
Speaker 7: term health hazard related to the consumption of our product
Speaker 7: on produce. They also revealed that in order to comply
Speaker 7: with the new EU standards, reflective of the notes in
Speaker 7: the SS study that we reference earlier. The company has
Speaker 7: quote already conducted testing on finished formulations that show we
Speaker 7: are already conforming to those forthcoming revised specifications. Misdew and
Speaker 7: miss Sweeney also shared that in addition to protecting produce
Speaker 7: against visual decay, Appeal also locks in nutrients better than
Speaker 7: produce without their coding. When comparing, for example, appeals protected
Speaker 7: blueberries with unprotected blueberries, all of which were harvested at
Speaker 7: the same time and from the same lot, appeal protected
Speaker 7: blueberries maintain higher vitamin C levels and over a longer
Speaker 7: period of time. And there you have it. I obviously
Speaker 7: can't tell you who to believe, but I do want
Speaker 7: to say that I'm very grateful that Appeals senior leadership
Speaker 7: has made the decision to actively participate in this discourse,
Speaker 7: and I hope they continue to do so going forward. Now,
Speaker 7: moving away from the science for a second, let's talk money,
Speaker 7: because I don't think we can ignore Appeal's appeal.
Speaker 3: I think Appeal's got a break future to one today.
Speaker 9: Were able to raise twitter and fifty million.
Speaker 11: Last month at a billion plus valuation.
Speaker 7: That's right. Appeal has attracted a number of high profile investors,
Speaker 7: including celebrities Katy Perry and Oprah Winfrey. Other investors listed
Speaker 7: on the company's website include the Who's Who, a venture capital,
Speaker 7: as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the
Speaker 7: latter of which has been on a spending pair tens
Speaker 7: of billions of dollars over the past decade in what
Speaker 7: some would describe as a coordinated plan to consolidate control
Speaker 7: over the world's food supply. Now, how does Appeal fit
Speaker 7: into this equation or does it fit at all? Just
Speaker 7: something to think about. Appeal has also been recognized as
Speaker 7: a World Economic Form technology pioneer and is a part
Speaker 7: of the World Economic Form Global Innovator's community. The company's
Speaker 7: CEO and co founder, James Rogers, is also a World
Speaker 7: Economic Form Young Global Leader conspiratorial insinuations aside, it is
Speaker 7: at the very least I think concerning that direction of
Speaker 7: where our food system is going, which is, I think
Speaker 7: in a direction that seemingly favors a shift from localized,
Speaker 7: community level farming to top down globalized industrial farming, where
Speaker 7: the food supply necessarily becomes more centrally controlled and further
Speaker 7: removed from the communities that consume it. This is just
Speaker 7: my personal opinion, but without an active mission to empower
Speaker 7: local farmers and dismantle a food system that has been
Speaker 7: financialized to the degree that we as consumers have no
Speaker 7: idea or almost no idea, where our food is coming
Speaker 7: from or what's in it, it would be difficult to
Speaker 7: see how Appeal and its current incarnation would be able
Speaker 7: to do much more than co opt what I think
Speaker 7: are legitimate concerns like climate change and food insecurity as
Speaker 7: a means to make its investors a little bit richer,
Speaker 7: but a last Regardless of where your personal thoughts lie,
Speaker 7: whether you think a product like Appeal is a positive
Speaker 7: game changer, a part of a noble effort to end
Speaker 7: global hunger or battle climate chain, or if it encapsulates
Speaker 7: everything that's gone wrong with our food system in the
Speaker 7: last half century. I hope this segment brings about more
Speaker 7: discussion and more discourse and the importance of food and
Speaker 7: the need to advocate first food system that is truly
Speaker 7: designed for the people. That's it for me this week.
Speaker 7: Please comment below share your thoughts about Appeal and about
Speaker 7: our food system. If you found this segment to be helpful,
Speaker 7: you can support my work by going over and subscribing
Speaker 7: to my YouTube channel fifty one to forty nine with
Speaker 7: James Lee. The link will be in the description below.
Speaker 7: Your support would mean a lot to me, of course,
Speaker 7: keep on tuning into breaking points and thank you so
Speaker 7: much for your time today