Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent
Speaker 2: coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about,
Speaker 2: it just means the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 2: But enough with that, Let's get to the show. Secretary
Speaker 2: of Pete buddhaj Edge. If anybody who's going to do
Speaker 2: a profile of this man, the very first question Krystal
Speaker 2: should be why are you so bad at your job?
Speaker 2: And instead Wired decided to do the opposite. Let's go
Speaker 2: and put this up there on the screen. You're not
Speaker 2: even going to believe this headline quote Pete Buddhajeedge loves God,
Speaker 2: beer and his electric Mustang. Sure, the US Secretary of
Speaker 2: transportationist thoughts on building bridges, but infrastructure occupies just a
Speaker 2: sliver of his voluminous mind. One particular segment of this
Speaker 2: is so stunning, it says, quote A Secretary buddhaj Edge
Speaker 2: and I talked in his underfurnished corner office. One afternoon,
Speaker 2: I slowly became aware his cabinet job requires only a
Speaker 2: modest portion of his cognitive powers. Other mental faculties, no kidding,
Speaker 2: are a portion to the iliad Puritan historiography NewsGuard spring,
Speaker 2: though not in the original Norwegian. Fortunately, he was able
Speaker 2: to devote yet another apse in his cathedral mind to
Speaker 2: making his ideas about three mighty themes Neoliberalism, masculinity, and
Speaker 2: Christianity intelligible to me. First of all, when you start
Speaker 2: writing that way, smack yourself in the face. Just pour
Speaker 2: a coral water on and smack yourself a couple of times.
Speaker 1: It's like deep insecurity, Like let me show people how smart,
Speaker 1: how smart is through let me throw on every big
Speaker 1: word I can think.
Speaker 3: Got me.
Speaker 2: Also, just think a little bit about this from even
Speaker 2: deeper level. Why is your whole mind not occupied on infrastructure?
Speaker 2: That's why every time I fly I get delayed? And
Speaker 2: why moms with their kids got stranded on the Southwest debacle.
Speaker 1: Or or we could talk about being involved in breaking
Speaker 1: the railroad strike. I mean, like his tenure as Secretary
Speaker 1: of Transportation has been legitimately catastrophic. It turned out that
Speaker 1: you actually needed someone who was good at doing this job.
Speaker 1: Who wasn't just good at like spinning confused reporters, doing
Speaker 1: cable news hits and hanging out with donors in a
Speaker 1: wine cave. You actually needed someone for this job, and
Speaker 1: he has dramatically failed. It's honestly amazing to me that
Speaker 1: you could find anyone who would write such an embarrassing
Speaker 1: haio hey geographic puff piece of this man at any time,
Speaker 1: let alone now, given his manifest record of repeated failures
Speaker 1: in the job that we have entrusted him with. And
Speaker 1: I just want people to understand, you didn't cherry pick quotes.
Speaker 4: In this like.
Speaker 1: Cherly gross. Let me just read you how this begins.
Speaker 1: This piece begins. It was tweeted out. Here's the tweet
Speaker 1: that went out with it. With the remarkable blend of
Speaker 1: intellect and empathy, Pete Bootagige brings a fresh perspective to
Speaker 1: the forefront of public discourse. That's what Wired tweeted out
Speaker 1: as their headline, to which a bunch of people replied
Speaker 1: like is this real or is this parody? The picture
Speaker 1: they put with it speaks volumes as well. The opening paragraph.
Speaker 1: Here's how it goes. The curious mind of Pete Bootagige
Speaker 1: holds much of its functionality in reserve, even as he
Speaker 1: discusses railroads and airlines down to the point to lit
Speaker 1: data that is his current stock in trade. The US
Speaker 1: Secretary of Transportation comes off like a mensa black card
Speaker 1: holder whom I have a secret, go have it, or
Speaker 1: a three second Rubik's cube solution, or a knack for
Speaker 1: supplying off the top of his head the day of
Speaker 1: the week for random date in fourteen oh four, along
Speaker 1: with a non condescending history of the Julian and Gregorian calendars.
Speaker 5: What I can't like?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this fawning celebrity style. Hey, geographic journal, I guess
Speaker 1: you'd call it. I like it is so disgraceful and
Speaker 1: confusing to me. I really just don't even know where
Speaker 1: these people come from.
Speaker 6: I don't even know.
Speaker 2: First of all, nobody can solve a Rubi's cube in
Speaker 2: three seconds. You're talking to a former cuber over here.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and this is check your cathedral mindside.
Speaker 2: That's part of my listen.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 2: The funny thing is about Rubik's cubing is I won't
Speaker 2: get too into it. My best time was forty five seconds,
Speaker 2: That's all I'll say. So I doubt that Pete Budaget
Speaker 2: can solve it faster than that. That's an okay time.
Speaker 2: By the way, there are real people out there who
Speaker 2: can do it much faster. My favorite thing by reading
Speaker 2: and looking at all of this is the level to
Speaker 2: which she was seduced, this woman, Jinia Heffernan, because she
Speaker 2: is also getting deeply into the weeds. She goes, what
Speaker 2: is neoliberalism? What happened to it? Always getting mugged by reality.
Speaker 2: She asked questions about the tendency of markets and about
Speaker 2: paleoliberalism versus listen, okay, these are all great discussions. Maybe
Speaker 2: for a weekend segment on this show with an intellectual horror.
Speaker 2: If I have an opportunity to ever interview Pete Buddha judge,
Speaker 2: all of my questions will be on the FA. On
Speaker 2: the Secretary of Transportation on his genuine job responsibility. I
Speaker 2: don't care what he thinks about paleoliberalism. I care about
Speaker 2: are Americans going to be able to fly on time
Speaker 2: or at least closer to on time? Why are you
Speaker 2: ever going to break a railroad strike ever? Again? His
Speaker 2: views on Christianity, gay marriage, paleoliberalism, industrial policy, the Iliad,
Speaker 2: Norwegian and all that are immaterial to his actual job responsibility.
Speaker 2: And that's actually the biggest problem with this entire thing
Speaker 2: is it's narcissistic on behalf of Buddha Jedge and narcissistic
Speaker 2: on behalf of the interviewer.
Speaker 1: I also think some of the ideology that is a
Speaker 1: spouse in this piece is just really to me disturbing
Speaker 1: and flat out wrong too. They say, she writes, not everyone,
Speaker 1: it seems, even once a rising standard of living, if
Speaker 1: it means they have to accept the greater enfranchisement of undesirables,
Speaker 1: including of course women, poor people, black people, and the
Speaker 1: usual demons and the sights of the world's Ted Cruz's
Speaker 1: and Tucker Carlson's. So to really unpack that, I think
Speaker 1: is actually quite revealing to the core of the politics
Speaker 1: of someone like Pete Boudagidje, who apparently believes that some
Speaker 1: large portion of the country is so craven that they
Speaker 1: don't even want a better life for themselves if it
Speaker 1: means that black people are also going to do well,
Speaker 1: or women are also going to do well, etc. And
Speaker 1: I mean, this is antithetical to what I view, my
Speaker 1: view of human nature, my view of the country, my
Speaker 1: view of politics.
Speaker 7: So there's a lot.
Speaker 1: There is a lot going on here, but fundamentally, this
Speaker 1: is a powerful person who is right now in a
Speaker 1: position where he could be finding airlines and holding them
Speaker 1: to account.
Speaker 3: Could be could be.
Speaker 1: Putting forward new rules to make sure that a disaster
Speaker 1: like what happened in East Palaestine that you know, he
Speaker 1: could barely attend to or notice that that never happens again.
Speaker 1: Could be trying to provide resources for people who were poisoned,
Speaker 1: probably by what happened there, and instead, like what, I
Speaker 1: don't know what even you're doing with this article.
Speaker 2: But it is I also was just thinking of faux intellectualism.
Speaker 2: I know a lot a lot of people like this
Speaker 2: who are quote unquote well educated. Yeah, but then I'm
Speaker 2: also looking at this and he's like, she's bragging about
Speaker 2: him reading the Iliad. You're really bragging about reading a
Speaker 2: high school text. I would be more impressed if he
Speaker 2: was reading like a History of Trains or something from
Speaker 2: that from eighteen hundred. To me, yeah, maybe learn the intricacies.
Speaker 3: Of his job.
Speaker 2: But instead it's all like said, in such a it's
Speaker 2: like the Big Bang theory, Big banks.
Speaker 7: Very disturbatory, is ultimately what it is.
Speaker 1: It's like intellectual masturbation, right, like, look how smart I
Speaker 1: am that I know these things that keep footage?
Speaker 2: It just so smart about correct, It's like the idea
Speaker 2: that physicists sit around like in the Big Bang. It's
Speaker 2: like a dumb person's view of what smart people would
Speaker 2: talk about. Like nobody who actually has any intelligence would
Speaker 2: think or act this way and portray themselves like this publicly.
Speaker 2: And also that the interview fell for it shows that
Speaker 2: she herself is also, as you pointed out, deeply insecure.
Speaker 2: Cathedral mind iliad Norwegian, you know all this other like
Speaker 2: Grigorian calendar. It's like, look, you know, people who are
Speaker 2: actually very very intelligent do not need to try and
Speaker 2: force in your face like this so overall disgraceful by wiring.
Speaker 7: And but there is there's an embarrassing thing.
Speaker 2: There's a real strain of this. Remember whenever they were
Speaker 2: like he speaks nine languages and all this during the
Speaker 2: campaign turns out again like say hello, and I can
Speaker 2: say hello in twelve languages. So that's not even a
Speaker 2: marker of intelligence at all. It's just one of those
Speaker 2: where and also it's not qualification for president.
Speaker 1: It's just it's not qual It certainly hasn't proved to
Speaker 1: be a reasonable qualification for Secretary of Transportation, which is
Speaker 1: your job would you have failed at and nothing should
Speaker 1: make you leave sight of that.
Speaker 2: Some really interesting new news about how Americans and workers
Speaker 2: are feeling about their workplace. It's going to put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. Workers are happier than they
Speaker 2: have been in decades, mostly because of labor shortages and
Speaker 2: shifting expectations leading to improvements four millions. So the data
Speaker 2: here is absolutely fascinating. Of the survey of sixteen hundred
Speaker 2: workers was conducted in November. What they found is that
Speaker 2: unemployment remains low, and the decline in job opening suggests
Speaker 2: that workers might have fewer options and might be feeling
Speaker 2: more anxious. But what they instead found crystal is that
Speaker 2: we are at the highest level of worker job satisfaction
Speaker 2: in modern history, up to sixty two point three percent.
Speaker 2: From that data shows that that is up from sixty
Speaker 2: percent in twenty twenty one and fifty six percent in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. What they found is that the people who
Speaker 2: are the happiest are those who voluntarily switch jobs during
Speaker 2: the pandemic and in individuals working in hybrid roles with
Speaker 2: a mix of in person and remote work. Men's male
Speaker 2: satisfaction is higher in the workplace currently with every component,
Speaker 2: especially in areas such as quote, leave policies, bonus plans, promotions, communications,
Speaker 2: and organizational structures. And really what they show here is
Speaker 2: that the main thing that gives people work satisfaction is
Speaker 2: a sick day policy, a bonus plan, mental health benefits policies,
Speaker 2: communication channels, and promotion policies. Those are like the six
Speaker 2: top things of promotional policy, sorry, of a worker satisfaction policy.
Speaker 8: But really what it.
Speaker 2: Underscored to me is when you give people options optionality
Speaker 2: like hybrid work or volunteers switching jobs for higher wage
Speaker 2: people are.
Speaker 1: Happy when people try like yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: there's a couple of things right you look at Okay,
Speaker 1: what's changed to make this landscape feel better for America's workers.
Speaker 1: First of all, the lowest paide jobs are actually the
Speaker 1: ones that have seen the largest wage gains, So that's
Speaker 1: significant for low wage workers, people who are sort of
Speaker 1: in the middle of their career, they're the ones who
Speaker 1: are most likely to benefit from these hybrid work schedules.
Speaker 1: And to your point, a key component of happiness, not
Speaker 1: just in the workplace but in general, is people feeling
Speaker 1: like they have control and say over their own lives.
Speaker 1: So even the fact of being able to pick, like
Speaker 1: how many days I'm going to be in the office,
Speaker 1: how many days are going to be at home? Having
Speaker 1: that level of flexibility and optionality and control over your
Speaker 1: own life, which is something that you should be able
Speaker 1: to take for granted, but obviously many people can't. That
Speaker 1: contributes to a sense of happiness. That's one of the
Speaker 1: biggest shifts that they say the biggest year over year
Speaker 1: increase in satisfaction came from work life balance and workload,
Speaker 1: which gets to some of what we talked about with
Speaker 1: the pandemic, sort of resetting people's values in their priorities,
Speaker 1: and then with the hybrid work options, they're able to
Speaker 1: implement some of those revised priorities into their work life
Speaker 1: balance and into making things work, and so I think those.
Speaker 7: Are important pieces of this.
Speaker 1: I also think another part is during the coronavirus crisis,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people who.
Speaker 7: Were forced to switch jobs.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of people who decided to switch jobs,
Speaker 1: and of course it's always you know, nobody wants you
Speaker 1: to have to switch jobs. No one wants you to
Speaker 1: be out of a job, but when you do switch jobs.
Speaker 1: Number one, that's when you see your largest salary.
Speaker 7: Increases when you switch switch jobs.
Speaker 1: And number two, that appears to have resulted in people
Speaker 1: choose more affirmatively choosing the work that they're doing. So
Speaker 1: they're shifting maybe out of frontline service worker into warehousing
Speaker 1: roles that they're finding more fulfilling, or have larger, higher wages,
Speaker 1: or have more predictable schedule. So the fact that so
Speaker 1: many people were sort of like forced into a new
Speaker 1: situation seems to have, on the end of it, had
Speaker 1: a silver lining of improving people's quality of life.
Speaker 2: That's actually the part I found most interesting is that
Speaker 2: a huge portion of the people who got laid off
Speaker 2: in leisure and hospitality left to go work in logistics
Speaker 2: or warehouse chains like in costco where quote, the hours
Speaker 2: and the pay are better. You've got stable schedules, you
Speaker 2: can plan for childcare, transportation, not dealing with irate customers,
Speaker 2: and it's a more pleasant working environment, which leads to
Speaker 2: two things. A costco has to pay more to lure
Speaker 2: some of these people over, and b the people who
Speaker 2: do want to work in service industry are getting paid
Speaker 2: a ton more because the available pool of workers is
Speaker 2: not there. It's a lot easier to deal with an
Speaker 2: irate customer when you're getting paid let's say forty twenty
Speaker 2: thirty dollars an hour with tips and two dollars an
Speaker 2: hour with you effectively a real wage rate of like
Speaker 2: fifteen dollars per hour, so you're basically getting a double
Speaker 2: raise in that. And then you've also got a lot
Speaker 2: of white collar workers who love hybrid work. It also
Speaker 2: does kind of underscore me where the job satisfaction amongst
Speaker 2: full remote workers doesn't appear to be that high. A
Speaker 2: lot of full full remote workers appear isolated. They don't
Speaker 2: particularly like it, they don't have that connection. Hybrid to
Speaker 2: me seems to be like the best at both words.
Speaker 2: Get a little bit in person. You still have some
Speaker 2: company culture and all of that, like maybe say three
Speaker 2: days a week, but you've got enough where moms and
Speaker 2: dads can figure out who's going to pick somebody up
Speaker 2: or drop somebody off work their you know, dentist appointment,
Speaker 2: into the lunch break, et cetera, and still get the
Speaker 2: job done. I think that's probably the best of both world.
Speaker 1: I think it also depends a lot on winning large
Speaker 1: in your career, you know, because I think if you're
Speaker 1: early in your career and you're just getting into that
Speaker 1: office culture, maybe you prefer more in person. If you're
Speaker 1: you know, mid career, you may prefer more of that hybrid.
Speaker 7: Or even remote work schedule.
Speaker 1: I think it just really depends person of person, which
Speaker 1: is why having the choice and the flexibility is what really,
Speaker 1: you know, people are sort of looking for and responding
Speaker 1: to here. So I think we have to put the
Speaker 1: other like negative side of this out there, which is
Speaker 1: that the fact that there's a tight labor market, which
Speaker 1: makes it a lot less risky. If people do want
Speaker 1: to change career paths, that is something that the FED
Speaker 1: is actively looking to destroy. So this improvement in quality
Speaker 1: of life and worker happiness may be short lived if
Speaker 1: they continue down the path that they have been on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 3: Hi. I'm Matt Stoler, author of Monopoly focused Substack newsletter
Speaker 3: Big and an anti trust policy analyst. I have a
Speaker 3: good segment for you today on this Big Breakdown. It's
Speaker 3: about AI and the policy choices we're making right now
Speaker 3: to structure how this remarkable technology is deployed. So let's
Speaker 3: dive in. Okay, So there's a ton of chatter these
Speaker 3: days about artificial intelligence on Wall Street, with the government
Speaker 3: all over Silicon Valley and the media and Congress, constant hearings,
Speaker 3: constant chatter. As just one example, let's take a listen
Speaker 3: to sixty minutes last month.
Speaker 9: We may look on our time as the moment civilization
Speaker 9: was transformed as it was by fire, agriculture, and electricity.
Speaker 9: In twenty twenty three, we learned that a machine taught
Speaker 9: itself how to speak to humans like a peer, which
Speaker 9: is to say, with creativity, truth, error, and lies. The technology,
Speaker 9: known as a chatbot is only one of the recent
Speaker 9: breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, machines that can teach them themselves
Speaker 9: superhuman skills. Ah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm rolling my eyes a little bit, but
Speaker 3: I mean the technology is clearly important. It's not like
Speaker 3: fire agriculture, but it's a big deal. Okay, So what
Speaker 3: is it? What is this machine learning stuff? Why is
Speaker 3: everyone so excited?
Speaker 10: Right?
Speaker 3: AI, It's a bad name, but what it means is
Speaker 3: it's a broad method of taking large data sources and
Speaker 3: running them through an algorithm to train a powerful pattern
Speaker 3: recognition software program unlike things like crypto or self driving cars.
Speaker 3: Artificial intelligence, this big machine learning stuff, it's real. It's
Speaker 3: a real technology. It actually does stuff. AI algorithms underpin
Speaker 3: computer assisted language production, image generation, engineering and programming, a
Speaker 3: bunch of scientific endeavors, and some of the stuff that
Speaker 3: people have been able to do is pretty extraordinary. Take
Speaker 3: protein folding. Now, protein folding is one of those extremely
Speaker 3: difficult but critical problems in biology. It's useful for drug discovery,
Speaker 3: all sorts of scientific advances, and an aiprogram solved it.
Speaker 3: It's been like a fifty year problem like no one
Speaker 3: could solve, and they solved it in twenty eighteen with
Speaker 3: one of these tools. Okay, so that's really good. But
Speaker 3: the thing about scientific advances is that how we deploy them.
Speaker 3: In fact, the very technology that we create is a
Speaker 3: function of law as much as engineering. So as an example,
Speaker 3: in the nineteen sixties, IBM sold a certain kind of computer,
Speaker 3: a mainframe in it dominated the industry. These computers included
Speaker 3: all software that IBM told the cosmeers they might need.
Speaker 3: It was all IBM software, and you got it for
Speaker 3: free when you bought the computer. Because of an anti
Speaker 3: trust suit IBM unbundled its software to be sold separately,
Speaker 3: thus allowing rivals to actually make and sell software for
Speaker 3: IBM machines. The software industry was born. Okay, So we
Speaker 3: didn't have a software industry before that. That case created
Speaker 3: the software industry, and had that anti trust suit not happened,
Speaker 3: we may not actually have had one. Might have just
Speaker 3: thought of compute is this thing that you buy in
Speaker 3: a bundle. In other words, there's no one path for technology.
Speaker 3: Technology developed under different legal regimes, even if the know how,
Speaker 3: the scientific knowledge is similar, actually is fundamentally different. And
Speaker 3: the thing is is the monopolists know this. Okay, So
Speaker 3: now with all that in mind, with that context, let's
Speaker 3: talk about the politics of AI. Here's former Google CEO
Speaker 3: Eric Schmidt, who is a monopolist par excellence, explaining that
Speaker 3: the industry should set its own rules.
Speaker 6: Let's take a listen. It shouldn't be a regulatory framework.
Speaker 6: It maybe shouldn't even be a sort of a democratic vote.
Speaker 6: It should be the expertise within the industry help me
Speaker 6: sort that out.
Speaker 11: The industry will first do that, because there's no way
Speaker 11: a non industry person can understand what is possible.
Speaker 8: It's just too new, too hard.
Speaker 11: There's not the expertise, there's no one in the government
Speaker 11: who can get it right. But the industry can roughly
Speaker 11: get it right, and then the government can put a
Speaker 11: regulatory structure around it.
Speaker 3: Schmid is one of the more important political figures in
Speaker 3: the way last twenty five years. He's highly influential under Obama, Trump,
Speaker 3: and Biden. Also the architect of Google's monopoly, one of
Speaker 3: these people that spans business and politics in a really
Speaker 3: savvy way. And Schmidt's commentary matters because it embeds two
Speaker 3: myths that characterize how we talk about power in America.
Speaker 3: The first is that markets exist as part of the
Speaker 3: state of nature until this external force called government comes
Speaker 3: in and regulates them. Now, that's not the way things happen.
Speaker 3: The truth is, it's not whether to regulate markets, but
Speaker 3: how markets are not natural things. They are political institutions
Speaker 3: structured by human beings. There's all sorts of different types
Speaker 3: of markets. So, for example, social media, it's a regulated industry.
Speaker 3: It's not unregulated. It's just regulated to let Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 3: decide what happens. And underpinning Zuckerberg's power is a whole
Speaker 3: host of public rules from the corporate charter itself to
Speaker 3: property rights which are mandated by government to restrictions or
Speaker 3: or abilities to use data in different ways. Now, Eric
Speaker 3: Schmid's myth, and it's a broadly held myth, is done
Speaker 3: for specific reason. They want to set up a question
Speaker 3: of whether we should regulate, as opposed to discussing how
Speaker 3: to do so. And the reason to set the question
Speaker 3: up this way is to suggest that anybody that wants
Speaker 3: some sort of public input into how we innovate, into
Speaker 3: the technologies that we develop, will bear a heavy burden
Speaker 3: because then you're asking for the government to come in
Speaker 3: and do something too. This natural myth, this natural state
Speaker 3: of the market, the state of nature. Okay, so the
Speaker 3: sec that's the first big myth. The second myth is related,
Speaker 3: and it is that technology is merely a result of
Speaker 3: scientific or engineering prowess. It's just an external force that happens.
Speaker 3: And then again government comes in to regulate technology. Again,
Speaker 3: this is to subtly set up tech barons as the
Speaker 3: legitimate arbiters of power. Now, remember they all operate through
Speaker 3: companies that are chartered by public, by public mandates. They
Speaker 3: have all their property is structured by public rules, but
Speaker 3: they want to pretend to otherwise, they develop technology, and
Speaker 3: then the idiot interlopers in the government try to take
Speaker 3: everybody wear a seatbelt, those nerds, right, But of course
Speaker 3: this is all ridiculous. How we develop technology, as I
Speaker 3: showed with the IBM example, is a function of science
Speaker 3: and law. And you can see this all over the place,
Speaker 3: from the breakup of standard oil to the breakup of
Speaker 3: AT and T in the nineteen eighties, both of which
Speaker 3: unleashed in nineteen teens, the nineteen eighties, fantastic innovation in
Speaker 3: energy and telecommunications. You see this all over. How we
Speaker 3: structure markets really has this kind of catalytic impact or
Speaker 3: withholds innovation or its structures innovation down certain certain paths. Okay,
Speaker 3: so why is Eri Schmidt putting forward these myths? Well,
Speaker 3: they came together in a very important, deceptive question designed
Speaker 3: to structure the future of AI, and that is, will
Speaker 3: AI disrupt Google's search monopoly? This is an important question, right,
Speaker 3: and it's framed in a way that embeds these two
Speaker 3: myths into the question itself. So here's that same sixty
Speaker 3: minutes program putting forward that sort of premise.
Speaker 9: Worldwide, Google runs ninety percent of Internet searches and seventy
Speaker 9: percent of smartphones.
Speaker 5: We're really excited about.
Speaker 9: It, but its dominance was attacked this past February when
Speaker 9: Microsoft linked its search engine to a chatbot.
Speaker 3: Okay, so Google's PR department presumably worked very hard to
Speaker 3: have sixty minutes set up the question that way. Why Well,
Speaker 3: because the government is threatening Google's monopoly and I'm going
Speaker 3: to get to this in a second, but in doing so,
Speaker 3: it's threatening the ability of any AI firm to monopolize
Speaker 3: the future. So in twenty twenty, the Trump Anti Trust
Speaker 3: Division accused Google of monopolization, and that antitrust case is
Speaker 3: being hurt by a judge over the course of this year.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to a then Department of Justice
Speaker 3: official in twenty twenty explaining the case.
Speaker 10: This morning, the Department of Justice and eleven States filed
Speaker 10: an antitrust civil lawsuit against Google for unlawfully maintaining a
Speaker 10: monopoly in general search services and search advertising in violation
Speaker 10: of Section two of the Sherman Act.
Speaker 3: So specifically, the argument is that Google excluded competitors from
Speaker 3: the search market by making sure that Google is the
Speaker 3: default search engine anywhere you go. So, for example, the
Speaker 3: company pays fifteen to twenty billion dollars a year to
Speaker 3: Apple to force iPhones to automatically bring up Google searches
Speaker 3: the default instead of say something like Microsoft. Being Google
Speaker 3: bought Android, which is the operating system for the majority
Speaker 3: of mobile phones globally. It puts its search engine in
Speaker 3: front of users as the default, and then it collects
Speaker 3: search data from those users. It uses that data to
Speaker 3: tweak its own products, but also prevents its rivals from
Speaker 3: getting that data to improve theirs. In essence, one way
Speaker 3: to think of it is that Google bought up all
Speaker 3: the shelf space and says, you can't put rivals on
Speaker 3: the shelf space. It's just Google Search. In all, Google
Speaker 3: pays forty five billion dollars a year for contracts, just domestically,
Speaker 3: for contracts to block out rivals signing deals with and
Speaker 3: here I am quoting directly from the DOJ filing Apple, LG, Motorola, Samsung,
Speaker 3: major US wireless carriers such as AT and TT Mobile, Verizon.
Speaker 3: Browser developers such as Mozilla Opera use web to secure
Speaker 3: default status for its general search engine, and in many
Speaker 3: cases to specifically prohibit Google's counterparties from dealing with Google's competitors. Okay,
Speaker 3: so you can see the resulting decade long search monopoly
Speaker 3: in this timeline of the search market. Now, if you
Speaker 3: look at it, the most dangerous time for Google was
Speaker 3: between twenty ten to twenty twelve for two reasons. First,
Speaker 3: the government came close to getting an anti trust suit.
Speaker 3: The government investigated, but it actually didn't bring a complaint unfortunately. Second,
Speaker 3: at the time, in two thousand and seven or so,
Speaker 3: Google had a desktop search monopoly, but the iPhone, the
Speaker 3: smartphone starting in two thousand and seven really accelerating into
Speaker 3: twenty nine, ten, eleven, twelve. It opened up a new
Speaker 3: market and opportunities for new kinds of search engines that
Speaker 3: used location data and other other things you can have
Speaker 3: on a phone, and these were potential rivals to Google.
Speaker 3: Consumer habits in desktop were had solidified, but they hadn't
Speaker 3: in mobile search the time though, and this is one
Speaker 3: of these inflection points, kind of like the inverse of
Speaker 3: what happened in the sixties with the IBM IBM anttrasuit.
Speaker 3: Policymakers decided to allow Google to leverage its power in
Speaker 3: desktop search to grab mobile search. So Google bought Android
Speaker 3: and that didn't go challenge there are laws you could
Speaker 3: challenge mergers, but the government didn't bring a challenge. And
Speaker 3: then it had all these contracts with distributors that were
Speaker 3: explicitly excluding rivals, and the government didn't challenge them either.
Speaker 3: So that technological inflection point is similar to where we
Speaker 3: are now with AI. As was the case, then there
Speaker 3: are lots of potential paths for what kind of technology
Speaker 3: we develop, what kind of AI enabled web we have,
Speaker 3: And there's a there's a there's a good analogy, Like
Speaker 3: the Google story is sort of sad, but it was.
Speaker 3: There's a there's a better case where we can look
Speaker 3: at how stuff worked really well and we don't have
Speaker 3: to go back to the sixties. The Google case that
Speaker 3: the government is arguing right now is built in a
Speaker 3: similar case brought when Microsoft was busted in the nineteen
Speaker 3: nineties for doing something to a browser company called Netscape.
Speaker 3: Microsoft wanted to dominate this new thing called the Internet,
Speaker 3: so it bundled its browser, its own browser, Internet Explorer
Speaker 3: with its operating system, and paid distributors like Internet service
Speaker 3: providers such as AOL Yahoo at the time to not
Speaker 3: carry its browser rival Netscape. In short, like Google is
Speaker 3: doing now. It brought up all the shelf space and
Speaker 3: tried to deny that shelf space to rivals. The goal
Speaker 3: for Microsoft was to make sure the entire web belonged
Speaker 3: to them. There's a lot more there, but I'm not
Speaker 3: going to go into it. Fortunately, though, the Anti Trust
Speaker 3: Division brought an antitrust case, and so Microsoft didn't use
Speaker 3: its power over browsers to block the next generation of innovators.
Speaker 3: That again, the Microsoft lost the case, but the remedy
Speaker 3: was over turned on appel. Very complicated, but the basic
Speaker 3: point was brought forward in an article in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: by Charles Doduhag at The New York Times, who went
Speaker 3: back talked to a bunch of Microsoft insiders about what
Speaker 3: happened in that period from the late nineteen nineties to
Speaker 3: the mid two thousands, when a whole bunch of new
Speaker 3: companies like Google and Facebook and Amazon were growing. So
Speaker 3: here's what they told him. He said, insiders were thinking
Speaker 3: of reprogramming Microsoft's web browser, the Popular Internet Explorer, so
Speaker 3: that anytime people typed in Google, they would be redirected
Speaker 3: to MSN Search, or perhaps a warning message might pop up.
Speaker 3: Did you know Google uses your data in ways you
Speaker 3: can't control? Now? Microsoft was so powerful, and Google so
Speaker 3: knew that the young search engine could have been killed off.
Speaker 3: But quote, there was a new culture of compliance and
Speaker 3: we didn't want to get in trouble again, so nothing happened.
Speaker 3: The myth that Google humbled Microsoft on its own is wrong.
Speaker 3: The government's anti trust suit is a reason that Google
Speaker 3: was eventually able to break microsoft monopoly. If Microsoft quote
Speaker 3: if quote, if Microsoft hadn't been sued, all of technology
Speaker 3: would be different today. That was a different lawyer involved
Speaker 3: in the case. Again, There's no such thing as an
Speaker 3: unregulated market. There's no such thing as deregulation. These is
Speaker 3: bad language, bad concepts to stop us from thinking about power.
Speaker 3: We chose to regulate the browser market and operating softwares
Speaker 3: in the early two thousands to allow Google and a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of other companies to escape Microsoft's clutches, just
Speaker 3: as we chose to regulate the market in the twenty
Speaker 3: teens to allow Google to crush its rivals in search
Speaker 3: and throughout the web. And these choices led to different
Speaker 3: political and technological destinies. A lot of innovation, much more
Speaker 3: decentralized market in the two thousands, a lot of orterianism,
Speaker 3: a much more monopolized market in the twenty and teens.
Speaker 3: So let's get back to the current case against Google.
Speaker 3: The judge is a guy named Amid Meta, and he
Speaker 3: has set to decide whether to toss the case, to
Speaker 3: narrow it, or to let it go to trial. In
Speaker 3: a recent hearing, the potential competitive threat of new technologies
Speaker 3: like AI chatbots came up and the judge Meta what.
Speaker 3: He was intrigued, and he sort of bought into the
Speaker 3: myths that Eric Schmidt was peddling, but he wasn't totally sold.
Speaker 3: So now it's worth asking the question, if AI is
Speaker 3: so great, why aren't AI empowered search engines being offered
Speaker 3: to consumers right now where they actually engage in search. Now.
Speaker 3: Microsoft tried to do this in a few months ago.
Speaker 3: Microsoft's Being did actually get a slight mump in usage,
Speaker 3: but Google was still at ninety percent of the search market,
Speaker 3: and now Microsoft's Being is back to where it was.
Speaker 3: Google is still a search monopoly. It's not what they say,
Speaker 3: but that is in fact the case, and Being is
Speaker 3: not the only rival search engine to Google. They're smaller
Speaker 3: ones that like Neva and Duck Duck Go so that
Speaker 3: have different approaches to incorporating AI. Niva is personalized and
Speaker 3: ad free, duc dot Go doesn't track users, so these
Speaker 3: are differentiated products that you can use if you want.
Speaker 3: But these search engines are not being presented to users
Speaker 3: because Google Search is the default, so only really sophisticated
Speaker 3: users are actually getting to them. So unless judge meta
Speaker 3: rules against Google, then as Google rolls out its own
Speaker 3: AI programs, Google's AI programs will be the default as well.
Speaker 3: So here's a video on how Google is going to
Speaker 3: turn the whole web into its own wald garden by
Speaker 3: integrating everything that it has. That's remarkable, and they're going
Speaker 3: to keep doing things like that to make the web
Speaker 3: its own wold garden. In fact, Google using AI will
Speaker 3: probably attempt to eat the whole web. Now, so that
Speaker 3: means that at worst, Google is going to control pretty
Speaker 3: much everything that we see. It won't just control directing
Speaker 3: us to what we see. It will control what we
Speaker 3: see at best if we don't. If judge meta rules badly,
Speaker 3: AI could be an oligopoly of the well capitalized. So
Speaker 3: maybe you'll also have Microsoft or Facebook or Amazon, but
Speaker 3: that's kind of all you'll get. Well, we can already
Speaker 3: see firms preparing for different futures. One way to restructure
Speaker 3: search is to present what's called a choice screen to
Speaker 3: users instead of giving them a pay to play default
Speaker 3: search option. So that actually worked in twenty seventeen, Russia
Speaker 3: did this and it actually broke Google's monopoly. And if
Speaker 3: Judge Meta actually forced that as a remedy, the forty
Speaker 3: five billion dollars of annual payments would just go away. DUC,
Speaker 3: Ducgo and Niva could actually compete. And it's almost certain
Speaker 3: that companies like Apple would unveil search engines that they
Speaker 3: are developing. And yeah, Apple is actually developing one. They
Speaker 3: just why would they deploy it If they're getting fifteen
Speaker 3: to twenty billion dollars from Google a year. If that
Speaker 3: money goes away, they will deploy their search engine. So
Speaker 3: you'll see a lot more competition in the search market
Speaker 3: if this monopolized structure gets taken away by a judge.
Speaker 3: So an anti trust decision against Google would unleash an
Speaker 3: explosion of innovation around search, and that means AI enabled search.
Speaker 3: More importantly, the deployment of AI would be less likely
Speaker 3: to be monopolized because this decision would create a presumption
Speaker 3: against monopolization in the new business environment. OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon,
Speaker 3: or anyone else who grabs a choke hold would have
Speaker 3: to worry about a judge ruling against business methods intended
Speaker 3: to restrain others in this vibrant space. That's how the
Speaker 3: law works. It works via precedent. The stakes here are high.
Speaker 3: In the last technological inflection point, the shift from desktop
Speaker 3: to mobile, enforcers and regulators and Congress wrote rules to
Speaker 3: facilitate monopolization and allow Google, Facebook, and Apple to dominate
Speaker 3: our phones and the mobile web. That occurred by the FTC,
Speaker 3: the Felt Trade Commission closing its investigation in twenty twelve
Speaker 3: against Google with a unanimous vote, allowing Facebook to buy
Speaker 3: Instagram and WhatsApp, doing nothing about google suite of acquisitions,
Speaker 3: and Congress not actually coming in and making any laws
Speaker 3: around the use of data and various other things. Okay,
Speaker 3: but that was a different political moment. People were a
Speaker 3: lot more comfortable with monopoly at that time. They didn't
Speaker 3: think it was a big deal. But today it's different.
Speaker 3: So this is an FT of Financial Times op ed
Speaker 3: by an activist named Sarah Myers West, and it shows
Speaker 3: that we haven't made policy choices, but there is actually
Speaker 3: a genuine dialogue about consolidation in big tech AI see
Speaker 3: Move Fast and Break AI up. People know that there's
Speaker 3: a concentration problem. And it's not just that there's like
Speaker 3: a lot of chatter about it. I mean, I brought
Speaker 3: up you know, West's op ed, but there were like
Speaker 3: there was hearing their hearings in Congress, people that are
Speaker 3: talking about it all the time. And it's not just that.
Speaker 3: There is actually an antitrust trial and that I talked
Speaker 3: about earlier, and it's the first of many. There's a
Speaker 3: bunch that have been brought to again Google, but this
Speaker 3: is the first it's going to trial, and it's actually
Speaker 3: being brought by a reinvigorated anti trust division. And it
Speaker 3: may be the case the judge Meta rules badly. Maybe
Speaker 3: he'll rule that he wants artificial intelligence monopolized in the
Speaker 3: hands of a few. That would, I think, in my view,
Speaker 3: be a subversion of the Sherman Anti Trust Act. But
Speaker 3: judges haven't done a particularly good job recently. It could
Speaker 3: also happen that he doesn't do that, that he Meta
Speaker 3: surprises and acts like a judge called Harold Green, who
Speaker 3: was the courageous judge in the early nineteen eighties who
Speaker 3: broke up at and T and did as much as
Speaker 3: as to bring forth an open future as any engineer
Speaker 3: in Silicon Valley. But regardless of how a meta rules,
Speaker 3: the case is sure to be appealed and Congress is
Speaker 3: going to discuss it no matter what. So whatever happens,
Speaker 3: at least this debate is going to be done publicly,
Speaker 3: with the government's anti trust enforcers on the right side,
Speaker 3: with the possibility of appeal and the possibility of congressional action,
Speaker 3: of state legislative action of action all over the world,
Speaker 3: a long way to overcome the myths that I laid
Speaker 3: out in the beginning that Eric Schmid put forward. These
Speaker 3: are very powerful myths. They are embedded in how we think.
Speaker 3: That is the false question of whether to regulate our
Speaker 3: markets versus the fact that they are just there are rules,
Speaker 3: and the debate is what kind of rules those are
Speaker 3: going to be, or pretending that technology is just this
Speaker 3: external force that kind of happens, and that the government
Speaker 3: comes into set some boundaries instead of seeing collective action
Speaker 3: as foundational to how technology is developed in one way
Speaker 3: or in another, it's always we, the people that structure
Speaker 3: the path of technology. So it's on us as a
Speaker 3: democratic society to tell our lawmakers who represent us that
Speaker 3: we don't want our scientific knowledge, our engineering prowess, our
Speaker 3: innovation controlled by the few. We must be as jealous
Speaker 3: in defending our liberties as the monopolists are to take
Speaker 3: them away. But it starts with freeing our own minds
Speaker 3: from their bad ideas. So thanks for watching this big
Speaker 3: breakdown on the Breaking Points channel. If you'd like to
Speaker 3: know more about big business and how our economy really works,
Speaker 3: you can sign up in the district in the description
Speaker 3: below for my market power focused newsletter. Big thanks and
Speaker 3: have a good one.
Speaker 12: The IRS is trying to compete with some of the
Speaker 12: e filing tax monsters that are already in the industry.
Speaker 3: Let's put this tear sheet up.
Speaker 12: You can see a headline from the Washington Post the
Speaker 12: IRS tests free east filing system that compete that could
Speaker 12: compete with tax prep giants.
Speaker 2: So they're saying that they've been.
Speaker 12: Sort of quietly constructing a system, that a software system
Speaker 12: that would allow Americans for free to file their tax
Speaker 12: returns digitally. That's according to current and former agency officials
Speaker 12: with knowledge of this, who told the Washington Post it's
Speaker 12: going to be a pilot program for just a smaller
Speaker 12: group of people actually in January, when the twenty twenty
Speaker 12: four filing season begins. According to people who know about it,
Speaker 12: it was developed actually by the IRS and the US
Speaker 12: Digital Service, which is kind of the White House's tech
Speaker 12: consulting firm Agency.
Speaker 2: Ryan.
Speaker 12: This is really interesting to me because the IRS has
Speaker 12: cooperated a lot with the e filing giants, like that's
Speaker 12: a it's almost like a public private partnership, so that
Speaker 12: they've been sort of in the shadows developing something that
Speaker 12: will compete with these businesses. I feel like they've been
Speaker 12: instrumental in propping up is quite interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, those eighty seven thousand agents are being put to
Speaker 4: some good use, although it.
Speaker 12: Was always what like seven thousand new agents, like eighty
Speaker 12: thousand new employees.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, if that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So.
Speaker 4: For the background on this, as you know, so, I've
Speaker 4: got a book coming out at the end of end
Speaker 4: of this year and I go over the TurboTax fight
Speaker 4: from twenty nineteen, so this is fresh in my mind.
Speaker 9: But if you remember.
Speaker 4: TurboTax and the other kind of free providers, we're trying
Speaker 4: to slip in to law a provision that would basically
Speaker 4: ban the irs from doing this, and they had and
Speaker 4: they got John Lewis to carry the water for them,
Speaker 4: because you just can't oppose anything that John Lewis did,
Speaker 4: Like that was the one rule in Congress. John John
Speaker 4: Lewis is for it. You have to you have to
Speaker 4: be for it.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 4: And it went through the House unopposed. Every every Democratic
Speaker 4: Republican voice vote voted for it. And I've got some
Speaker 4: details on how that happened. It's it's kind of a
Speaker 4: fun story. But uh, it was then exposed and it
Speaker 4: was blocked in the Senate. And so as a result,
Speaker 4: that allowed the I R s to go forward with
Speaker 4: this technology. And so one of the compromises that they
Speaker 4: had made with the TurboTax types was that, Okay, we
Speaker 4: will continue our cooperation with you so that you can
Speaker 4: prop up this business of helping people file their taxes
Speaker 4: online if you also develop a free product for people
Speaker 4: to use, so you can have your premium thing where
Speaker 4: you'll get more money back and you'll do your taxes accurately,
Speaker 4: but for free, you do this one. And they just
Speaker 4: kept obviously foot dragging, slow walking and never and have
Speaker 4: never developed a free product as they've cut as they've
Speaker 4: promised the government that they would do so. In the background,
Speaker 4: IRS was like, this can't be that hard, and also
Speaker 4: we have access to all the IRS back and stuff.
Speaker 3: We can do this.
Speaker 4: It's absurd, but also telling that we don't have that yet,
Speaker 4: like that we're such a privately controlled government that even
Speaker 4: our tax our revenue engine, couldn't develop a website to
Speaker 4: just let people give it money. Like you're getting trillions
Speaker 4: of dollars from the public, and you couldn't build a
Speaker 4: website for them to send it to you. But now
Speaker 4: finally they're breaking through that opposition. You know, hopefully it
Speaker 4: actually works because I think if you people can save
Speaker 4: the money that they're spending on H and R block
Speaker 4: or turbo tax filing online, I think, sorry turbo tax,
Speaker 4: but like that's that's a good thing, you know.
Speaker 12: I hope though, that this isn't a situation where in
Speaker 12: the same sense that like the IRS has less funding
Speaker 12: historically than it has had in the past right now,
Speaker 12: Like that's absolutely true, and who ends up getting squeezed
Speaker 12: when you start arming the IRS with tons and tons
Speaker 12: more researchers resources. There's like actual evidence and Soccer's talked
Speaker 12: about this a lot that you know pretty much suggests
Speaker 12: it's going to be a lot of middle class tax
Speaker 12: payers who end up having to deal with these audits,
Speaker 12: even ones that cost them a lot of money, when
Speaker 12: they haven't really done anything wrong or there's no evidence
Speaker 12: of wrongdoing. And I hope it's in a similar situation
Speaker 12: with this because as somebody who has had both Obamacare
Speaker 12: like on the DC Exchange and private insurance in recent years,
Speaker 12: the private insurance like just does talk about the infrastructure
Speaker 12: and the websites there's so much easier to use than
Speaker 12: the government ones. And we know that the Obamacare websites
Speaker 12: have had problems going back to like the literal inception
Speaker 12: of the Obamacare websites, And so I hope again that
Speaker 12: what doesn't happen is that people who you know, want
Speaker 12: to pay the the flat turbo tax fee get it
Speaker 12: over with, end up then having an inferior product. And
Speaker 12: the option is, you know, TurboTax charging like five hundred
Speaker 12: dollars for what used to cost less because they need
Speaker 12: to make up that base. So I mean, this is
Speaker 12: the This is what an industry guy is saying, he's
Speaker 12: with File Yourtaxes dot Com.
Speaker 2: He says, is there a need for.
Speaker 12: The government to come compete with in terms of functioning
Speaker 12: private sector industry.
Speaker 3: Bless you.
Speaker 12: It seems like they're saying, it's where's this one? This
Speaker 12: is the guy from into it. He says, a direct
Speaker 12: to IRS E file system is wholly redundant and is
Speaker 12: nothing more than a solution in.
Speaker 3: Search of a problem.
Speaker 12: Right, so this could disrupt what is as the post
Speaker 12: sage feels that way, right, a fourteen billion dollar e
Speaker 12: filing industry. And again, a lot of that is because
Speaker 12: you get the cooperation of the IRS to begin with.
Speaker 12: And so I'm sort of in agreement and then in
Speaker 12: disagreement with your take on this and that I think
Speaker 12: some of these private filers are actually pretty efficient and
Speaker 12: relatively easy to use. At the same time, I do
Speaker 12: think a basic function of the i r S would
Speaker 12: be having an easy to use e filing program that
Speaker 12: is free for taxpayers. Because we spend our money propping
Speaker 12: up the i r S, like, that's our money is
Speaker 12: funding you, so's it's a little bit of both. For me.
Speaker 12: Bottom line is it's way too complicated to do taxes
Speaker 12: in the United States, and a lot of that is
Speaker 12: because of a tax code that has been completely constructed
Speaker 12: by special interests and lobbyists and does not serve the
Speaker 12: average American but serve special interests and serves wealthy Americans.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and I guess we'll see.
Speaker 4: So so far, IRS dot gov is actually pretty pretty good.
Speaker 4: I've used it for like you know, there's there's some
Speaker 4: few basic things that you can do on and then
Speaker 4: it actually functions.
Speaker 9: I was I was impressed by that.
Speaker 4: So we'll see, like if they can. And it would
Speaker 4: be nice for the government government to be able to
Speaker 4: demonstrate that it can do things again, So we'll see
Speaker 4: if it can, because it is up against all of
Speaker 4: these forces that are in opposition to it being able
Speaker 4: to do things like into It spoke to Rick Heinemann,
Speaker 4: who and credit to the wash It Post the very
Speaker 4: next paragraph they write into It spent one million dollars
Speaker 4: between January and March lobbying both House and Senate lawmakers
Speaker 4: on issues including tax system integrity and intellectual property protections,
Speaker 4: according to disclosures.
Speaker 12: Wish they do that in like Pentagon coverage.
Speaker 4: But yes, yes, now clearly you found a populist issue
Speaker 4: when even like the Washington Post reporters are like throwing
Speaker 4: shade at the end it quote that they're including in
Speaker 4: their own and saying, you know what, I'm checking the
Speaker 4: disclosure filings into it.
Speaker 3: See what they spent on lobbying Boom million dollars.
Speaker 4: You can spend a million bucks lobbing for three months,
Speaker 4: and then you're giving us a quote that says the
Speaker 4: solution will unnecessarily cost taxpayers. You just spent a million
Speaker 4: dollars of money that people paid you to develop this software.
Speaker 4: You gave it to lawmakers and lobbyists in order to
Speaker 4: prevent them from building a competitor to you. So don't
Speaker 4: tell us about waste unnecessarily costing taxpayers money.
Speaker 12: And on a high note, I guess we can all
Speaker 12: agree that both our government and private sector is a mess.
Speaker 7: Right now, there you go.
Speaker 4: So come on, irs, show us you can do it.
Speaker 8: We'll be watching.
Speaker 1: So we're joined now by Jordan Sheridan of status Q News.
Speaker 1: He's been on the ground in Kalamazoo doing some really
Speaker 1: important reporting about a toxic paper mill there which seems
Speaker 1: to be having some local impacts. That Jordan first set
Speaker 1: up for us and for our audience as a reminder
Speaker 1: what you found on the ground and then tell us
Speaker 1: what the reaction has been.
Speaker 13: Politically Yeah, Graphic Packaging International, it's a multi billion dollar
Speaker 13: packaging company. It's plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan is a cardboard
Speaker 13: recycling plant. It's been there for a long time, and
Speaker 13: for a long time residents have been complaining of horrible
Speaker 13: smells coming from that plant, predominantly in the poor black
Speaker 13: part of Kalamazoo. High rates of asthma, COPD, heart disease,
Speaker 13: cancers in this neighborhood. But basically nothing happened. And there
Speaker 13: was a health study initiated in twenty twenty by a resident,
Speaker 13: not the government, but a resident who just was really
Speaker 13: aggressive and paid out of pocket for a toxicologist to
Speaker 13: look at some of the gas data.
Speaker 5: This is what drove the Health department to do.
Speaker 13: A gas study, to do a study on the dozens
Speaker 13: of volatile gases coming out of this plant right into
Speaker 13: the black community. Frankly, the Health department dragged their feet
Speaker 13: for three years on this health study that could have
Speaker 13: been out probably in a year. And when I went
Speaker 13: down there, you know, we reported right next to the plant.
Speaker 13: I got sick just being next to that plant. Trying
Speaker 13: to speak coherently. You get a headache, sore, throat burning
Speaker 13: eyes as far as the five to six miles down
Speaker 13: the road. The smell and gases are now going into
Speaker 13: the West Side, predominantly white neighborhood because the plant expanded
Speaker 13: two years ago with the help of Governor Whitmere's administration.
Speaker 13: So essentially, you've had a plant emitting far, far more
Speaker 13: than is regulatory allowable for years, but because of big
Speaker 13: business and its financial importance to Kalamazoo City officials basically
Speaker 13: ignored it. Thankfully, our report got traction also thanks to
Speaker 13: Breaking Point for publishing a report from us on the ground,
Speaker 13: and this seemed to kind of force the Health Department
Speaker 13: to finally release the health study. And that health study
Speaker 13: found that they're releasing at least one guess hydrogen sulfide
Speaker 13: at nineteen times higher the allowable limit.
Speaker 1: So the article we put up a moment ago has
Speaker 1: some of those details. They say that the data that
Speaker 1: has now for the first time been publicly released over
Speaker 1: the past four days has shown hydrogen sulfide, which you
Speaker 1: just mentioned, concentrations near the factory as high as four
Speaker 1: parts per billion. It's a foul smelling gas that can
Speaker 1: cause health issues when humans are exposed to it. Federal
Speaker 1: government says levels should not exceed one point four parts
Speaker 1: per billion for long term exposure of a year or more.
Speaker 1: And of course this plant has been in the community
Speaker 1: four years, so these residents are having to deal with,
Speaker 1: you know, not only the quality of life of having
Speaker 1: to live next to this like smelly, horrible, gaseous thing,
Speaker 1: but also real health impacts that they are feeling day
Speaker 1: to day. Tell us a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: residents you spoke with and what they had to say
Speaker 1: about how this has impacted their lives.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I just want to note that health study, although
Speaker 13: finally it's good that there is a health study lacking.
Speaker 5: For example, there was in twenty twenty.
Speaker 13: They found it at nineteen parts per billion, which is
Speaker 13: ten times higher, so they kind of cherry pook picked
Speaker 13: their findings. But anyway, that's the Michigan Health Department. People
Speaker 13: in Flint know that. Yeah, the residence, it really is stunning.
Speaker 13: I mean, just being a block away from that plant.
Speaker 13: Doing an interview, I was interviewing the resident, Dianne Winfield.
Speaker 5: She's got horrible asthma.
Speaker 13: Her seventeen year old daughter had a minor case of
Speaker 13: asthma before they moved blocks away from that plant.
Speaker 5: The asthma got way worse.
Speaker 13: Living next to that plant. She died of a severe
Speaker 13: asthma attack. Her or thirty two year old son didn't
Speaker 13: really have asthma growing up.
Speaker 5: They moved near that plant.
Speaker 13: He's now on twenty four to seven oxygen and has
Speaker 13: had a lot of close calls life or death. I've
Speaker 13: spoken with residents to live in that community. They can't
Speaker 13: really have guests over because the smell is so bad
Speaker 13: over the summer, they can't open their windows. I interviewed
Speaker 13: residents that you look at a playground on the block
Speaker 13: is empty most of the time because parents don't let
Speaker 13: their kids come out. There's a daycare right near, like
Speaker 13: three hundred feet near that plant. The kids are not
Speaker 13: allowed outside. There's elementary schools nearby. Kids don't go out
Speaker 13: for recess, and they're really I mean, I'm not shocked
Speaker 13: because this is America. But the really horrible thing is
Speaker 13: the city has known about this for years, The state
Speaker 13: has known about this for years, and they basically blew
Speaker 13: off the residents who were begging for health studies, data.
Speaker 5: Something to be done.
Speaker 13: Because this plant employs six hundred and fifty people.
Speaker 5: You know, donates to.
Speaker 13: The colleges, the nonprofits. I mean, you know, this is neoliberalism.
Speaker 13: And most of our factory jobs have been sent to
Speaker 13: other countries. So a lot of these cities are starving
Speaker 13: for employers and basically let these employers in many ways
Speaker 13: poison the community.
Speaker 5: But it's severely high.
Speaker 13: Rates of asthma, COPD, cancer And also in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 13: there was one nine hundred fifty black infants under the
Speaker 13: age of one who died in this neighborhood. And then
Speaker 13: mysteriously they took the data off the website, so we
Speaker 13: don't know what the data is since then. That was
Speaker 13: five That was five times higher for black infant death
Speaker 13: than white infants in Kalamazoo.
Speaker 1: Wow, unbelievable, and you can bat if something like this
Speaker 1: was placed. I mean, it just wouldn't even happen that
Speaker 1: it was placed in a predominantly white, affluent, suburban neighborhood.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no way that they would let, you know,
Speaker 1: people who are considered worthy by the state be and
Speaker 1: have more political power be poisoned year after year in
Speaker 1: this way.
Speaker 7: I mean, one thing I was wondering. You know, the
Speaker 7: area I grew up.
Speaker 1: In, there was a paper mill that we would drive
Speaker 1: by sometimes it always smelled bad. Actually, Kyle and I
Speaker 1: on our honeymoon drove by one and I immediately like
Speaker 1: recognize the smell as like that must be a paper mill.
Speaker 1: Sure enough, it was like, is this just what happens
Speaker 1: when paper mills are set up? Is this plant particularly egregious?
Speaker 7: Is it?
Speaker 1: You know, the level of constant that goes beyond just
Speaker 1: an odor and creates obviously health complications As you're tracking here,
Speaker 1: give us some sense of that piece.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I mean the Devil's advocate will say, Jordan, there's
Speaker 13: paper mills all over the country and all of them smell.
Speaker 13: That is true, because a lot of what they're releasing
Speaker 13: are smelly odors. Just because its smells doesn't necessarily equal
Speaker 13: health hazard. Problem with this the problem with this plant
Speaker 13: in particular, By the way, the net worth of graphic
Speaker 13: packaging is seven point eight billion dollars. They're not using
Speaker 13: carbon filters, I've learned at this plant, which is stunning.
Speaker 13: They're releasing over thirty types of volatile organic compounds, and
Speaker 13: they expanded in twenty twenty two with the help of
Speaker 13: Governor Whitmer, who knew and her administration knew of the
Speaker 13: complaints and the data, so they are releasing way more
Speaker 13: of these gases as of the last two three years,
Speaker 13: so it's gotten a lot worse.
Speaker 1: So they could admit gate the health impacts, but they
Speaker 1: choose not to correct.
Speaker 5: And by the way, I mean the state health department.
Speaker 13: The environmental departments say they have, you know, air sensors up,
Speaker 13: which is similar to what we're told by the Epaight
Speaker 13: East Palestine. But I talked to residents and they say
Speaker 13: those air sensors that are supposed to be around the plant,
Speaker 13: half the time they're malfunctioning or taken down. So it's
Speaker 13: really questionable how thorough the testing has been.
Speaker 5: This health study that.
Speaker 13: Came out, it's good that finally we know at least
Speaker 13: the hydrogen sulfide levels, but it did not test for
Speaker 13: other volatile organic compounds that independent testing from a toxicologist
Speaker 13: had found, including carbon disulfide, carbon carbonyl sulfide, methylene chloride,
Speaker 13: a whole batch of potentially hazardous volatile organic compounds. So
Speaker 13: this plant in particular is basically just skating regulations because
Speaker 13: the state is allowing it to because it's more expensive,
Speaker 13: you know, to follow regulations. You have to spend more
Speaker 13: money to mitigate the release. And yeah, I mean you
Speaker 13: said it right. Most of these, most of these kind
Speaker 13: of plants, whether it's a paper mill, when you have mining, fracking,
Speaker 13: auto there are chemical plants. They're usually dumped in predominantly
Speaker 13: poor black, brown, now poor white communities. Obviously Native American
Speaker 13: reservations with this. Now that the white part of town,
Speaker 13: since the plant expanded and is emitting more gases, now
Speaker 13: the white part of town is complaining. So it'll be
Speaker 13: interesting to see if more affluent white people start complaining, maybe.
Speaker 5: Something will be done.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate the way that you stay on top
Speaker 1: of these stories. I mean, you've been dogged and continuing
Speaker 1: to focus on, you know, the poisoning of Flint and
Speaker 1: you know, the lack of any accountability there and the
Speaker 1: lack of really even fixing the problem in Flint, you know,
Speaker 1: on the ground and East Palestine. You've you've really put
Speaker 1: a spotlight on these issues. And I think it's so
Speaker 1: vital because it shows you really the shocking treatment of
Speaker 1: you know, people who are considered less worthy. The American
Speaker 1: you know, underclass is considered by elitesa here in DC
Speaker 1: and around the country. So Jordan, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for your work and thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 13: Thank you and please subscribe to status kop on YouTube
Speaker 13: if you can.
Speaker 8: Modern medicine helping us live longer and healthier, we go.
Speaker 12: Be helped us lose weight and keep it off.
Speaker 8: Or is there maybe a darker, more sinister jim, perhaps
Speaker 8: a longer but sicker life. Big pharma, big food, the
Speaker 8: mainstream media, medical different the government.
Speaker 9: Across the United States.
Speaker 8: I think that just about covers all the main culprits. Yes,
Speaker 8: is big pharma, big food, the mainstream media, medical professionals,
Speaker 8: and the government acting in concert dispute propaganda in an
Speaker 8: effort to make us all sick. Let's go back to
Speaker 8: January first. It's typically the day where many people, at
Speaker 8: least for a few days, muster up the strength to
Speaker 8: hit the gym, make a meal plan, get better sleep,
Speaker 8: to say that this is the year I'm finally going
Speaker 8: to get healthy.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 8: Curiously, that same evening, CBS sixty Minutes airs a segment
Speaker 8: about the obesity epidemic ravaging the United States.
Speaker 14: Doctor Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity doctor at mass General Hospital,
Speaker 14: an associate professor at Harvard Medical School says common beliefs
Speaker 14: about obesity are all wrong.
Speaker 7: It's a brain disease.
Speaker 15: It is.
Speaker 7: It's a brain disease.
Speaker 15: The number one cause of obesity is genetics. That means
Speaker 15: if you are born to parents that have obesity, you
Speaker 15: have a fifty to eighty five percent likelihood of having
Speaker 15: the disease yourself, even with optimal diet, exercise, sleep management,
Speaker 15: stress management.
Speaker 8: Okay, this face Leslie Stall's face? Is that not the
Speaker 8: look of I don't know about that man. But regardless,
Speaker 8: if obesity is in fact a genetic disease and nothing
Speaker 8: we do eating, riot, exercising, sleeping while does anything to help,
Speaker 8: the only logical conclusion we can draw is that the
Speaker 8: solution can only be medication.
Speaker 14: The drug WGOVI that you inject yourself once a week
Speaker 14: with something like an EpiPen.
Speaker 8: What the medication does.
Speaker 14: It's part of a new generation of medications that brings
Speaker 14: about an impressive average loss of fifteen to twenty two
Speaker 14: percent of a person's weight, and it helps keep it off.
Speaker 8: So the message from the mainstream media is pretty simple.
Speaker 8: Obesity is a disease. Take a drug, But is that
Speaker 8: the whole story. Let's start by taking a look at
Speaker 8: this chart data from the CDC showing the obesity rates
Speaker 8: of American adults, which was virtually nonexistent in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 8: is now projected to hit fifty percent by twenty thirty.
Speaker 8: Get that half of Americans who will be obese in
Speaker 8: just a few years time. Now, You and I, we
Speaker 8: may not be a wealth credential doctor like doctor Fatima
Speaker 8: Cody Stanford of CBS Fame. I don't work at General Mass,
Speaker 8: I don't teach at Harvard Med. But it's odd, though,
Speaker 8: because unless the human race experienced some kind of quantum
Speaker 8: leap in genetics, there must be something else we're doing
Speaker 8: that is destroying our metabolic health. Kelly Means is a
Speaker 8: former pharma consultant and co founder of a company that
Speaker 8: promotes food as medicine. Recently, he spoke to our very
Speaker 8: own Crystal Ball and Sager and Jetty, and he offered
Speaker 8: this perspective.
Speaker 16: I believe our food system is rigged, and our healthcare
Speaker 16: system stands by iprofits from that.
Speaker 8: Yes, let's first start by examining our food system. The
Speaker 8: average child is eating one hundred times more sugar than
Speaker 8: they did one hundred years ago. Researchers say sugar is
Speaker 8: basically as addictive or even more addictive than cocaine. Sugar
Speaker 8: activates the opiate receptors in our brain and affects the
Speaker 8: reward center. Every time we eat sweets, we are reinforcing
Speaker 8: those nearer pathways, causing the brain to become increasingly hardwired
Speaker 8: to crave sugar, building up atolane like any other drug. Now,
Speaker 8: some of you out there are probably saying, I have
Speaker 8: really good self control. I don't drink soda, I don't
Speaker 8: eat candy, airgo, I don't have a sugar problem. But
Speaker 8: oh yes, you just might. Are you a fan of barbecue?
Speaker 8: A quarter cup of barbecue sauce has on average sixteen
Speaker 8: to twenty grams of added sugar. What about salad? That's healthy? Right? Well,
Speaker 8: oftentimes light salad dressings replace fat with sugar. For example,
Speaker 8: two tablespoons of this light honey wrench dressing has eleven
Speaker 8: grams of added sugar. You think you're getting your day
Speaker 8: started off right with multi grain cereal. Although it may
Speaker 8: not have bright colors, chocolates or marshmallows, many popular brands
Speaker 8: of multi grain cereal have between six to fourteen grams
Speaker 8: of added sugar per cup. Think about it. If you
Speaker 8: are a food industry executive, bonus is on the line
Speaker 8: shareholders demanding astronomical growth quarter after quarter. What do you
Speaker 8: do to get a leg up on your competitor. Well,
Speaker 8: you add sugar to your products to make them more addictive,
Speaker 8: so people buy yours and not your competitors, and then
Speaker 8: they try to one up you, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 8: sugar is everywhere. But it's not just sugar.
Speaker 16: You know the foundation of our diet. And it's really
Speaker 16: taking me a while to even understand this. We know
Speaker 16: our diets bad, but the foundation is added sugar. It's
Speaker 16: processed grains, and processed grains didn't exist until a hundred
Speaker 16: years ago. The processing totally changes. It takes the fiber
Speaker 16: off fiber.
Speaker 8: What is fiber, Well, it's a type of carbohydrate that
Speaker 8: is found in plant based foods such as fruits, vegetables,
Speaker 8: whole grains, nuts, and seeds. According to the Male Clinic,
Speaker 8: eating a high fiber diet helps you maintain a healthy
Speaker 8: weight and lowers your risk of diabetes, heart disease, and
Speaker 8: even some types of cancer. But for some reason, fiber
Speaker 8: has almost completely disappeared in a lot of our most
Speaker 8: popular food products. Products you might buy thinking it's full
Speaker 8: of fiber, cream of wheat, cereal, it's got the image
Speaker 8: of a wheat stalk right across the top, but if
Speaker 8: you go to the nutrition label, it's got almost no fiber.
Speaker 8: Uncle Ben's whole grain brown rice. Somehow it's got whole grains,
Speaker 8: but if you go to the nutrition label, little to
Speaker 8: no fiber. Nature's harvests white made with whole grain. Once again,
Speaker 8: whole grain all over the packaging, but little to no fiber.
Speaker 8: So while many of us have been told over and
Speaker 8: over again about the benefits of eating fiber, sometimes known
Speaker 8: as nature superfood, almost nobody is getting their daily dose
Speaker 8: of dietary fiber. According to the NIH, only five percent
Speaker 8: of people in the US meet the Institute of Medicines
Speaker 8: recommended daily target of twenty five grams for women and
Speaker 8: thirty eight grams for men. Why because the food industry
Speaker 8: isn't incentivized to make food healthy, it's incentivized to make
Speaker 8: food addictive. Many of these ultra processed foods are almost
Speaker 8: pre chewed for us. They melt in your mouth immediately.
Speaker 8: There's no protein, there's no water, there's no fiber. Slowing
Speaker 8: them down. It's going to hit your taste buds and
Speaker 8: light up your reward and motivation centers of the brain immediately.
Speaker 8: Then there's a secondary hit of dopamine when it gets
Speaker 8: absorbed into the body. My goodness. Over the last half century,
Speaker 8: the R and D divisions in these food companies have
Speaker 8: morphed into narcotics laboratories. They've found a way to hack
Speaker 8: our brains and make a killing, both figuratively and literally.
Speaker 8: I mean, because of all the food that we've been eating,
Speaker 8: some of it criminally missmas marketed. Half of the country
Speaker 8: is now sick and guess who gets to play hero.
Speaker 5: Com Inside effects are nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, constipation, stomach pain, headache, tiredness, upset,
Speaker 5: stomach dizziness, feeling bloated, belching, gas, stomach flu and heartbreak.
Speaker 8: That's right. The healthcare system that includes healthcare services, pharma services, payers, manufacturers,
Speaker 8: and providers. According to market research done by Mackenzie and Company,
Speaker 8: profits across the entire healthcare industry are projected to skyrocket
Speaker 8: from five hundred and fifty eight billion dollars a year
Speaker 8: in twenty twenty one to almost seven hundred billion by
Speaker 8: twenty twenty five. Now, that's a lot of money, but
Speaker 8: according to Cali means it's not the money that's necessarily
Speaker 8: the problem. It's the incentive structure.
Speaker 16: The problem with healthcare is that ninety five percent of
Speaker 16: costs are interventions on people that are sick. That's how healthcare.
Speaker 5: Works right now.
Speaker 16: Every single institution is incentivized for more Americans to be
Speaker 16: sircar for a longer periods of time. I don't think
Speaker 16: there are that many evil people in the system, but
Speaker 16: that's exactly what's happening. It's in if speak, it's larger
Speaker 16: than any one person, so.
Speaker 8: Not any different than the military industrial complex's willingness to
Speaker 8: trade human lives for profit. The seven hundred billion dollar
Speaker 8: healthcare industry is wholly predicated on large swaths of the
Speaker 8: population being sick. Remember the CBS sixty minute segment on obesity,
Speaker 8: where doctor Stanford claimed on national television that obesity is
Speaker 8: a genetic brain disease. Turns out, in the thirteen minute
Speaker 8: segment on weight loss drug Wigov, the only medical experts
Speaker 8: interviewed by CBS were doctors who had received thousands of
Speaker 8: dollars in consulting fees in onaria from Novo Nordis, the
Speaker 8: maker of Wigov and Ozempic, and the sponsor of that broadcast.
Speaker 8: Doctor Cody Stanford herself received over fifteen thousand dollars from
Speaker 8: Novo Nordisk in twenty twenty one, the most recent year
Speaker 8: for which data is available. So it's not an accident
Speaker 8: that not one medical professional in the sixty minute Segum
Speaker 8: mentioned the concerning finding that for Ozepic and Wagov patients
Speaker 8: a third of weight loss came from muscle, bone, mass,
Speaker 8: and lean tissue. It's also not an accident that not
Speaker 8: one nutritionist was interviewed about food, and no one questioned
Speaker 8: the impact of the plethora of food products that are marketed,
Speaker 8: sold and eaten by consumers in the US but banned
Speaker 8: in most other modern industrialized nations. It's not an accident
Speaker 8: that the program never disclosed that Novo Nordisk, together with
Speaker 8: Eli Lilly, have at least twelve more obesity medications in development,
Speaker 8: and that the two companies are spending roughly ten million
Speaker 8: dollars annually on lobbying. A primary focus of that lobbying
Speaker 8: is the proposed Treat and Reduce Obesity Act, which has
Speaker 8: been introduced in congressional sessions annually since twenty twelve, and
Speaker 8: would require Medicare to cover, among other treatments, chronic weight
Speaker 8: management drugs. It is a perfectly executed game of forty chess.
Speaker 8: Let me explain. The food industry makes billions of dollars
Speaker 8: selling food that's known to be toxic and poisonous, making
Speaker 8: millions of Americans sick in the process. The health care industry,
Speaker 8: in this case, gets to play hero while also pocketing
Speaker 8: billions of dollars selling a supposed miracle drug to millions
Speaker 8: of adults and children. Both of these industries have worked
Speaker 8: out a little deal with the federal government Congress with
Speaker 8: lobbing money with funding for the FDA so that they
Speaker 8: can rewrite science and continue to sell food that is
Speaker 8: known to be toxic and poisonous. The Nutrition Coalition found
Speaker 8: that conflicts of interest on the twenty twenty Dietary Guideline
Speaker 8: Advisory Committee were pervasive. Ninety five percent of committee members
Speaker 8: had at least one conflict with the food or pharmaceutical industries.
Speaker 8: The most frequent and durable corporate connections were with Kellogg, Abbot, Craft, Mead, Johnson,
Speaker 8: General Mills, and Danit that sounds like quite the racket
Speaker 8: to me. But how is such a racket allowed to continue?
Speaker 16: There's a three part playbook. We went directly to the
Speaker 16: NAACP and the Hispanic Federation, very respected civil rights groups,
Speaker 16: and it was a quid pro qull Coke paid ten
Speaker 16: millions of dollars and they labeled the opponent's racist and
Speaker 16: that shuts down debate.
Speaker 8: And according to means the same playbook is being used
Speaker 8: again today. Novo Nordis is paying the NAACP to lobby
Speaker 8: on their behalf to say opponents of lifetime OBEs the
Speaker 8: injections such as ozempic and wagov are racist. The implication
Speaker 8: is that the lack of access to a drug such
Speaker 8: as ozembic is an example of quote unquote systemic racism
Speaker 8: and oppression. In addition, Novo Nordis has also funded articles
Speaker 8: in leading research journals advocating for the government to subsidize
Speaker 8: their drugs to address racism. That is quite the playbook.
Speaker 8: But is there a solution to all of this? Because
Speaker 8: I think it would be irresponsible to simply point out
Speaker 8: all of these problems without offering a solution.
Speaker 16: Now, there's a couple things that I think are absolute
Speaker 16: No brainers, and I think that the biparson issue of
Speaker 16: our time.
Speaker 8: The first solution, he said, would be for the FDA
Speaker 8: to revise the recommended added sugar for kids to zero.
Speaker 8: Right now, the FDA actually recommends up to fifty grams
Speaker 8: of added sugar per day based on a two thousand
Speaker 8: calorie diet means a second suggestion, the federal government should
Speaker 8: eliminate subsidies for unhealthy foods. Right now, more than half
Speaker 8: of SNAP benefits are taken by retailers for meat, sweetened beverages,
Speaker 8: prepared foods and desserts, cheese, salty snacks, candy, and sugar.
Speaker 8: Just twenty three point nine percent go for fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, beans, seeds,
Speaker 8: and spices.
Speaker 16: Let's reform food stamps again. That's a program that fifteen
Speaker 16: percent of Americans depend on for nutrition. Ten percent of
Speaker 16: it goes to sugar water. I don't think we should
Speaker 16: be paying tens of billions of dollar dollars to subsidize
Speaker 16: them for kids.
Speaker 8: But a last we all know the old adage you
Speaker 8: could lead a horse to water, but you can't make
Speaker 8: it drink. And what I mean by that is I'm
Speaker 8: only here to ask questions in form and connect the dock.
Speaker 8: So ask yourself this, all the technological advancements and public
Speaker 8: policy decisions of the last half century, have they contributed
Speaker 8: to promoting a longer and healthier life or a longer
Speaker 8: and sicker life. Thank you for watching the first installment
Speaker 8: of Breaking Points Beyond the Headlines. I hope you enjoyed it,
Speaker 8: discussion questions, feedback, Have at it in the comments section below.
Speaker 8: For more of me, please take a second to check
Speaker 8: out my YouTube channel fifty one forty nine with James Lee.
Speaker 8: The link will be in the description below. Thank you
Speaker 8: so much for watching, and thank you for supporting Breaking Points.