Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Dylan Chicago pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know.
Speaker 4: Okay, can you really have done? Had Thin Crest Pizza
Speaker 4: and Chicago. I bet it's really good. I bet it's
Speaker 4: still really excellent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, Yeah. Who doesn't love a pizza? Bad people?
Speaker 3: Bad people don't love a pizza? hEDS and Neighbors. It's
Speaker 3: officially twenty twenty six. As you're tuning in with us,
Speaker 3: we're so excited that you're here and we are coming
Speaker 3: in hot and ready with something we first addressed on
Speaker 3: Strange News a while back. Brain drain. You guys, remember
Speaker 3: the concept brain drain does.
Speaker 4: Sound like a bit of a space alien sucking your
Speaker 4: brain goo out of your skull situation.
Speaker 2: It is like it, except with policy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does. It does conjure these images of ravenous
Speaker 3: aliens right cracking open graniums like little Pharaoh Racero's Yeah, fronation,
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go with yours. I think you might be
Speaker 4: the right one, Ben on the right side of history.
Speaker 3: There as as we'll see. Uh guys. Brain drain is
Speaker 3: a very real concern. It dates back to ancient times.
Speaker 3: It only becomes more important in the modern day. And
Speaker 3: tonight's episode we started asking ourselves ever since we talked
Speaker 3: about this on Strange News, what exactly is brain train
Speaker 3: and why, pray tell, are so many people concerned about
Speaker 3: it right now in the United States?
Speaker 4: Why? Indeed?
Speaker 2: Because science good, science good.
Speaker 4: Yeah. At the end of the episode, we got to
Speaker 4: have them scientists, and they apparently are going elsewhere.
Speaker 3: Here are the facts, all right. Not to be confused
Speaker 3: with brain.
Speaker 4: Rot six seven due use that correctly.
Speaker 3: Everybody is using it correctly, because it doesn't really mean
Speaker 3: anything cool. Brain's raining is describing this phenomena where highly
Speaker 3: educated or highly skilled individuals move from one place to
Speaker 3: another on mass It could be one geographical place, or
Speaker 3: it could be moving from one industry to another, like
Speaker 3: if you are if you are one of the top
Speaker 3: boffins in the world of what's something people don't do anymore,
Speaker 3: in the world of recreational lithium, and recreational lithium is
Speaker 3: no longer a legal thing to give to children. Then
Speaker 3: you get into some other part of pharmaceutical so well.
Speaker 4: You know, it's interesting, it's not quite the same. But
Speaker 4: I think a part a version of this that we
Speaker 4: experience here in Georgia, uh is the brain drain that
Speaker 4: is the kind of migration of the film industry, you know,
Speaker 4: out of Hollywood and out of Los Angeles and into
Speaker 4: our fair metropolis of Atlanta. And you hear people in
Speaker 4: LA talking about that all the time as something that's
Speaker 4: really wrecking their industry. Obviously it's a boon for us,
Speaker 4: but there are various reasons that this kind of brain
Speaker 4: drink can happen, and in our situation, it seems largely
Speaker 4: based around financial incentives, you know, government subsidies and things
Speaker 4: like that that places like LA just can't seem to
Speaker 4: figure out how to compete.
Speaker 3: I love that example.
Speaker 2: Though, Oh yeah, fantastic example. And in today's case, we
Speaker 2: are talking about, as we said, these highly skilled scientific minds,
Speaker 2: highly intelligent people who are very much interested in pushing
Speaker 2: the boundaries of the field that they're interested in. Right, So,
Speaker 2: for that stuff, you generally need money for research, and
Speaker 2: in many cases grants from a government or an institution
Speaker 2: that then gets money from governments. Usually, So, why in
Speaker 2: the heck are people leaving right now?
Speaker 3: Well, historically brain drain has This has been fascinating me
Speaker 3: ever since bringing up on strange news. Historically, brain drain
Speaker 3: is caused by the opposite of some of the things
Speaker 3: we just mentioned, political instability, economic hardship, war, human rights issues,
Speaker 3: or just the appeal of better opportunities, better options somewhere else.
Speaker 3: It can occur on local, regional, global levels. And this
Speaker 3: this stands out to us, folks. If you have spent
Speaker 3: a lot of time in some parts of rural America,
Speaker 3: you have likely encountered brain drain and its consequences firsthand,
Speaker 3: even if you never heard the term. You know, where,
Speaker 3: like manufacturing dries up and all the technically skilled employees
Speaker 3: who worked at that assembly line or worked at that
Speaker 3: factory have to scramble for options, and often without a
Speaker 3: lot of lead time. They may find a job in
Speaker 3: a related industry, or may even start a new career
Speaker 3: that doesn't require moving that's the ideal case.
Speaker 4: We certainly saw a lot of that around the housing crisis,
Speaker 4: the collapse you know, of the housing industry, when a
Speaker 4: lot of related fields and whole towns that you know,
Speaker 4: were built around making things products, fabrics, whatever, carpet, whatever
Speaker 4: it might be, building materials, and then when that market
Speaker 4: kind of dried up, you started to see here in
Speaker 4: Georgia a lot of communities scrambling to figure out what
Speaker 4: to do in place of that industry that had more
Speaker 4: or less disappeared. And that was when you really started
Speaker 4: seeing the kind of this situation where a lot of
Speaker 4: these private prisons were coming in and capitalizing on these
Speaker 4: sort of ghosts downs that had become that because of
Speaker 4: exactly what you're talking with.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, man, More often than not, these individuals who
Speaker 3: get the rug pulled out from beneath them have to
Speaker 3: look beyond their community for survival. So if you can
Speaker 3: afford it, you're probably gonna move your family somewhere else.
Speaker 3: This can have real serious consequences for the local economy,
Speaker 3: especially when it occurs at scale. Unfortunately, as we know,
Speaker 3: as I think a lot of people have recognized a
Speaker 3: lot of times of family cannot move due to financial
Speaker 3: concerns or medical concerns or familial concerns that can also
Speaker 3: be bad for the local economy. It's real, Kobeashi Maru,
Speaker 3: because now if you are the local economy, you don't
Speaker 3: have people moving away, but you have an influx of
Speaker 3: people who are underemployed or straight up unemployed, and that
Speaker 3: puts unprecedented strain on support services. It's tough either way
Speaker 3: you look at it. We also see brain drain in
Speaker 3: support services. Guys. We know a lot of folks throughout
Speaker 3: rural America and communities here in the United States where
Speaker 3: people are hours away from a doctor now because hospitals
Speaker 3: and medical centers close their doors and shout out to
Speaker 3: the one doctor in that small town who stay behind
Speaker 3: because they wanted to fulfill the hippocratic oath and to
Speaker 3: help people. Now, they're overworked, they're probably underpaid. They're probably
Speaker 3: considering leaving as well and finding an area with more opportunities,
Speaker 3: a more prosperous place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's tough, right, because you're talking about people
Speaker 2: with highly trained individuals with medical expertise that have to
Speaker 2: make that hard choice of continuing their career right rather
Speaker 2: than actually helping people in a place that really do
Speaker 2: need help. You can't make the money there to support
Speaker 2: yourself and your family because of you know, whatever aspirations
Speaker 2: you've got, because of the standards of the pay for
Speaker 2: you know, people in the medical industry here in the
Speaker 2: United States, the only place that has that weird private
Speaker 2: healthcare thing instituted, you know, which means doctors can make
Speaker 2: a craft ton of money if you play the game right,
Speaker 2: and only if you play the game, which requires you
Speaker 2: to be in a place that has a lot of
Speaker 2: patients and has a hospital slash medical infrastructure that.
Speaker 4: Is prosperous and like nothing against people trying to play
Speaker 4: the game and you know, rise in their career and
Speaker 4: make more money. But we also know, to the previous
Speaker 4: examble of the doctor sticking around, there are plenty of
Speaker 4: people that are highly specialized that it's more they're more
Speaker 4: in it to do the work, and they're more in
Speaker 4: it to help people and help communities. Like for example,
Speaker 4: maybe a lawyer who could very well become a defense attorney,
Speaker 4: but rather than do that, decides to work protecting you know,
Speaker 4: tenants from being evicted by corrupt landlords. That's not a
Speaker 4: higher paying job, but it involves the same degree, and
Speaker 4: it is a very conscious choice, and we're seeing a
Speaker 4: mix of that in this situation as well.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and don't worry, friends and neighbors, this situation gets
Speaker 3: worse because you see braid drain is bad for the
Speaker 3: source region, but it can also be damaging for the
Speaker 3: destination region. Real Grapes of Wrath with all the Oaks
Speaker 3: showing up to the Orange far right and you have
Speaker 3: you have three hundred jobs available, but you have three
Speaker 3: thousand people who want them right, and they've already moved.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the Okies.
Speaker 3: So the Okis is a term we're shouting out the
Speaker 3: book Grapes of Wrath, which examines the mass migration of
Speaker 3: people from Oklahoma who were called Oake in a pejorative
Speaker 3: way by the media of the time.
Speaker 4: They in California way, it's trying.
Speaker 3: To work right. Largely largely agrarian communities swept up by
Speaker 3: the climate disaster in the mid Midwest, lost their farms,
Speaker 3: lost pretty much everything, and desperately sought to survive by
Speaker 3: hitching up their tent stakes and as as Grapes of
Speaker 3: Wrath had it hopping on a jealoppe, which is just
Speaker 3: a fun word to say. I don't know why. It
Speaker 3: sounds like a sandwich, but it's a car, all the
Speaker 3: stuff strapped to.
Speaker 4: The roof, and you know, their whole family. And I
Speaker 4: mean a big part of that too, was it was
Speaker 4: there the corporations of the companies, the larger farms down
Speaker 4: in California, up in California were capitalizing on this, and
Speaker 4: they were advertising these jobs and this like, you know,
Speaker 4: come here, move to California and change your life, bring
Speaker 4: your family, all are welcome. And it was a lie
Speaker 4: because there was just not there weren't nearly enough jobs
Speaker 4: for the amount of people that saw those handbills or
Speaker 4: advertisements or whatever it might be and uprooted with the
Speaker 4: hope of changing their lives, only to get there and
Speaker 4: realize that not only were there not enough jobs, but
Speaker 4: the jobs that were available were often very difficult and
Speaker 4: low paying, and they were treated like chattel.
Speaker 3: Sleeps more or less. Yep. And the destination region, that
Speaker 3: is what occurs. And to add to that, these folks
Speaker 3: have gambled everything to get over there and they can't
Speaker 3: go back, So now it's a problem for the destination region.
Speaker 3: There's more on that in a moment. But we've got
Speaker 3: to point this out. I don't know about you, guys,
Speaker 3: but I was astonished to learn, folks that the phrase
Speaker 3: brain drain is pretty recent. The etymology traces back to
Speaker 3: just nineteen sixty three, but the concept is so so old.
Speaker 3: Brain drain has been around ever since empires started empiring.
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine, really, it's talking about getting the best brains right, literally,
Speaker 2: that the best humans, the best innovators, the best inventors,
Speaker 2: the people, no matter where they live, get that person
Speaker 2: to work for you. If you're let's say, an empire, right,
Speaker 2: how do we get that person to work for us?
Speaker 2: Or how do we incentivize that person to come and
Speaker 2: innovate in our land so that we can make use
Speaker 2: of those inventions and innovations. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you go back through the sort of dendo
Speaker 3: chronology of human society, you can trace the tree rings
Speaker 3: of brain train through war, disease, famine, all the hits, right,
Speaker 3: all the slow jazz. And it's because just as it
Speaker 3: was then it is today. Nobody wants to live in
Speaker 3: a war zone, no one wants to get the plague,
Speaker 3: and most people in jail federal like to have a
Speaker 3: good idea where their next meal is coming from. So
Speaker 3: this this also ties into I love that you're bringing
Speaker 3: up to this point, Matt. It ties into the fact
Speaker 3: that a certain level of economic activity has to exist
Speaker 3: to support skilled labor. So if you're an ancient tradesman,
Speaker 3: you're a metalsmith, you're an armorer, you have to flock
Speaker 3: to large towns, villages and cities to survive. And when
Speaker 3: you do that, and there's nothing wrong with you doing that,
Speaker 3: you're leaving your old stopping grounds without the town blacksmith, yep,
Speaker 3: you're taking that knowledge with you. You're also you're you're
Speaker 3: not only not there to make stuff, but you're not
Speaker 3: there to teach people to make stuff later.
Speaker 2: Oh man, exactly. We've talked about the importance of that
Speaker 2: that system of training, right master apprentice, and how how
Speaker 2: important that was to humanity for so long, and how well, yes,
Speaker 2: but how that still exists, especially in academia, right. That's
Speaker 2: that's a lot of what's happening here. You've got circular
Speaker 2: learning that occurs because you've got people in positions to
Speaker 2: teach others the thing that they've mastered, which you know,
Speaker 2: you take that master away. As you're saying, Ben put
Speaker 2: them in a different town. Now that town is going
Speaker 2: to benefit from what that person has to offer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, man. I mean history is also littered with
Speaker 3: accounts of people then as now at the tippity top
Speaker 3: of the socioeconomic pyramid, and those folks, we call them
Speaker 3: enlightened despots, would by hook or by crook, gather all
Speaker 3: the smart brains from all the planet not planets, but
Speaker 3: basically planets at that time, from all the example. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: Alexander the Great, you know, rolls through a place, Djengus
Speaker 3: rolls through a place, and they both say who here
Speaker 3: can read? All right? Kill the first like the second one. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: And this is this is a true story. And over time,
Speaker 3: funny thing is that became a net positive because some
Speaker 3: seventeenth century monarchs in Europe would gather the boffins and
Speaker 3: they would actually listen to them. They would listen to
Speaker 3: the experts and they would say, you know, oh that's
Speaker 3: a that's a good point. Maybe we should try to
Speaker 3: clean the water or do science. You know, I'm glad,
Speaker 3: I'm glad you're not the one we killed.
Speaker 4: Well, there lies the enlightened aspect of the deskmt. I mean,
Speaker 4: it is still technically someone ruling with an iron fist,
Speaker 4: but they've you know, they're open to two new ideas
Speaker 4: and potentially good and progressive ideas.
Speaker 2: And hey, guys, it's me the king.
Speaker 3: We have sort of an open door policy exactly, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, So like, keep your eyes down,
Speaker 3: no eye contact. But tell me about this heliocentric concept.
Speaker 2: Oh man, It really puts into perspective the concept of
Speaker 2: putting in place advisor around you, let's say, as a
Speaker 2: king or a president of just people that you like
Speaker 2: or want to hang out with. Are people who like
Speaker 2: you enough or say they like you enough to just
Speaker 2: you know, be copasetic when you're around everything feels good, yeah,
Speaker 2: rather than an actual you know, a group of scientific
Speaker 2: experts who can say things, well, what did you say
Speaker 2: about it? We should clean the water. That is such
Speaker 2: a perfect example, especially for our times right.
Speaker 4: Now, sycophants versus actual experts who will speak their mind
Speaker 4: and who are given the space to speak their mind.
Speaker 4: When you start to have people in high levels of
Speaker 4: power surrounding themselves with just people telling them what they
Speaker 4: want to hear, that's its own kind of brain drain,
Speaker 4: isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's definitely an emotional drain for the sycophants.
Speaker 3: I imagine. I mean, like we think about what.
Speaker 4: Happens everything, you know, It's like it's like a bosituation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, let's let's think about it this way. So
Speaker 3: a good hang is a yes.
Speaker 4: At that's right.
Speaker 3: Good science is a no, but good science is a
Speaker 3: well actually.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe a yes, but also yes. It's about diplomacy.
Speaker 4: I mean, you want to play it, you want to
Speaker 4: read the room, but it should ultimately result in a
Speaker 4: butt this.
Speaker 2: Thing, right, My favorite is a yes, but ah.
Speaker 3: Oh, here's we'll put you on some game here, right, Yes,
Speaker 3: because you avoid the social danger of a no, but
Speaker 3: or well actually, and you just sort of make it
Speaker 3: sound like the leader's idea. Right, yes, because the water
Speaker 3: should be clean, like oh, this guy's great.
Speaker 4: Do the dance a little bit, right.
Speaker 3: Little parkour now? And then, I mean, this is the
Speaker 3: other side of the the other side of the cerebellum
Speaker 3: or the butt cheeks. People in communities who get left behind,
Speaker 3: the folks who are not highly skilled or don't have
Speaker 3: a resource or knowledge base to sell, or the folks
Speaker 3: who just get afford to move. It's like your town
Speaker 3: got bypassed by the new train line. History rolls on
Speaker 3: and you are not on the ride. It's scary.
Speaker 2: You're still out there digging up rud of vegas.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes you are, and your problem. That's a very
Speaker 4: respectable way of earning it.
Speaker 3: And you're probably using an older shovel. So the better
Speaker 3: shovel got invented in the.
Speaker 2: Big big city, the auto shovel.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, they called it the John Henry with no
Speaker 3: trace of irony, and yeah, exactly, And thanks Illumination Global Unlimited,
Speaker 3: our first and primary sponsor every war. We talked about
Speaker 3: this too in the past. Guys. Every war in human
Speaker 3: history brings this mass transfer of knowledge. And sometimes it
Speaker 3: happens organically, but in other cases, like in post World
Speaker 3: War two, countries purposely headhunt the best and brightest from
Speaker 3: the losing side and then leverage that desperate situation to
Speaker 3: their advantage. Operation paper clip.
Speaker 4: Is that Varoner von Braun?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so many other let's really hit
Speaker 2: that home. The United States has NASA, no matter how
Speaker 2: you feel about that, right, the folks that in innovated
Speaker 2: space travel and space exploration because of World War Two,
Speaker 2: because of brain drain, because of Nazis.
Speaker 3: Because of Yes, brain draine Nazi scientists, it definitely happened.
Speaker 3: History is not original, Okay, that's what we're saying. It's
Speaker 3: important to remember that as we record Monday, December twenty second,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, history is closer than it looks in
Speaker 3: the rear view mirror. In fact, in the course of
Speaker 3: our investigation for this, we found that tons of experts
Speaker 3: have examined facets of this over the past centuries and
Speaker 3: sometimes Okay, technology modifies a few plot points, but the
Speaker 3: story at its core, if we're writing a screenplay about
Speaker 3: brain drain, it is always the same. It's the same thing,
Speaker 3: beat for beat, and that means research is solid. But
Speaker 3: it also means we can make some disturbing predictions about
Speaker 3: the future. Yeah, real pyrrhic victory. Nice when you guys,
Speaker 3: kind of an own goal on our part.
Speaker 2: Uh, it's really messed up as we're about to get
Speaker 2: into here. When you look at this a survey, right,
Speaker 2: how do you trust surveys nowadays? When you can, you know,
Speaker 2: open up Google and it'll just serve you surveys and
Speaker 2: you'll get like zero point two cents if you fill
Speaker 2: out the survey or whatever. But anyway, one of the
Speaker 2: main things we're talking about today is based on a
Speaker 2: survey just of how people are feeling, which is this concept. Right,
Speaker 2: we can look to the past and then we can
Speaker 2: feel this way, some particular way about what's coming right,
Speaker 2: and that feeling ends up being the thing. Just the
Speaker 2: way it moves markets. It can also move researchers and academics.
Speaker 3: And science, and we do have some quantitative data as well.
Speaker 3: These are not just articles of faith. We're talking about
Speaker 3: the future of brain drain. I mean, okay. Something that
Speaker 3: is good for the average person is that today's world
Speaker 3: is cartoonishly more connected than it was in the past.
Speaker 3: It is now easier at this point in history than
Speaker 3: ever before to gather information to learn how much your
Speaker 3: same job pays in another town and another part of
Speaker 3: the world. It's also easier to travel, and it's also
Speaker 3: easier for powerful people, the new enlightened despots, to find
Speaker 3: you if they want your skills. This ties into immigration. Sure,
Speaker 3: you know, let's play along at home. If you've got
Speaker 3: your second screen up, if you're on your phone and
Speaker 3: you're watching this on a different device, figure out your
Speaker 3: dream country. Just name a country, check their immigration policy,
Speaker 3: and you were going to see a wish list of
Speaker 3: dream employees from that country, right, the country, you know,
Speaker 3: Canada says well, we don't want everybody, but are you
Speaker 3: a doctor? How much do you know about semiconductors.
Speaker 4: As intense as the immigration rhetoric's been out of our country,
Speaker 4: it does seem like they're certainly willing to make exceptions
Speaker 4: kind of after the fact, after a lot of this
Speaker 4: like Saber readily nasty talk about not wanting immigrants, but
Speaker 4: yet we do want these particular type of immigrants that
Speaker 4: are going to benefit us, which just I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 4: not trying to be politically or but does seem inherently
Speaker 4: hypocritical to have like the two sides of that coin,
Speaker 4: and like we want you, but not you, but the
Speaker 4: you that we want, but then the other ones that
Speaker 4: are not benefiting our bottom line, we you know, get
Speaker 4: out of here.
Speaker 3: Wait, we're letting the Nazis in. Yeah, but just like
Speaker 3: the rocket.
Speaker 2: Nazis, Yeah, yeah, yeah, the medical Nazis.
Speaker 3: Well all right, guys, we're we can't have everybody on
Speaker 3: the list, though, But see.
Speaker 2: That's also a really tough thing because just because someone, uh,
Speaker 2: some scientists, some research, or some academic who is living
Speaker 2: in a country where there is an oppressive regime like
Speaker 2: the Nazis. Operator doesn't make them Nazis. Right, of course,
Speaker 2: you've got to we have to keep that in mind.
Speaker 2: But there's also that thing where when you're in a
Speaker 2: country like that that is going through some oppressive regime,
Speaker 2: perhaps your your the thing you're good at, your research,
Speaker 2: your your innovations, inventions are being used by that crew.
Speaker 4: You're against your will sometimes though you're not like getting
Speaker 4: to choose which exactly they are pulling you in, and
Speaker 4: then you are being installed in a position that uses
Speaker 4: your skills, that benefits the regime.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, even before any oppressive regime takes action,
Speaker 2: let's say invades Poland or you know, invades Venezuela or whatever.
Speaker 2: Just given some examples here, maybe you see that coming
Speaker 2: and see it happening as one of these academics or innovators,
Speaker 2: and you choose before that occurs to get out right, Well,
Speaker 2: you've got a post and a pre brained drain that occurs,
Speaker 2: and there's even a during like let's say wartime brain
Speaker 2: drain that occurs. It just we're just trying to make
Speaker 2: a point that it happens in stages on both sides
Speaker 2: of some big change.
Speaker 3: Yes, cyclically predictive, and it happens proactively and reactively. One
Speaker 3: historical precedent that I think would be a great case
Speaker 3: would be a scientist of Jewish heritage who saw what
Speaker 3: was on the horizon and felt what was in the
Speaker 3: wind right and escaped before the Nazis committed their genocide.
Speaker 3: And for a lot of modern history, from post World
Speaker 3: War two to recent years, the United States was often
Speaker 3: considered the place to be the last man standing. In
Speaker 3: the wake of a horrific global war. Uncle Sam begins
Speaker 3: exporting all sorts of things, and one of the most
Speaker 3: successful products the country ever exported was the idea of
Speaker 3: what we call the American dream.
Speaker 4: You know, you can be a new man, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean it's like the United States has historically had
Speaker 4: this image of we are innovation first. Innovation for that
Speaker 4: is what we care about. Come here, we will support you.
Speaker 4: We will you know, patronize your research and the things
Speaker 4: that you're passionate about, whether it be the arts, whether
Speaker 4: it be science, whether it be any number of these
Speaker 4: types of skilled and very specific professions. That was the
Speaker 4: reputation that we I believe have had, and I think
Speaker 4: with good reason, especially given the state of higher education
Speaker 4: here in the United States. People want to come here
Speaker 4: for that as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, come forth, you huddled masses. We yelled, we're fair here.
Speaker 3: We got no kings, we got no ingrained classism. Where
Speaker 3: the world's best meritocracy. You work hard, that you pay
Speaker 3: your dues, the future is yours double plus good thumbs up.
Speaker 3: This turned out not to be entirely true.
Speaker 2: It was at least partly true in ways for a
Speaker 2: while exactly right. Parts of all of those were kind
Speaker 2: of true.
Speaker 3: It was true in that we all thought it was
Speaker 3: a good idea when we wrote it down in the
Speaker 3: writer's room. Everybody was the writer's room of the founding fathers.
Speaker 3: Everyone said, this is a banger, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: They were like, played really well at the table reading.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were like, this is the new Seinfeld. And
Speaker 3: someone said, what Seinfeld spoilers. So fast forward, folks, it's
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, Fellow conspiracy realist. As you hear this
Speaker 3: and experts fear, America, once the dream destination for billions,
Speaker 3: is turning into one of Earth's worst cases of brain
Speaker 3: drained storms on the horizon of fell wind blows and
Speaker 3: what does this fell wind mean? Well, it's going to
Speaker 3: be tough to figure out if we don't have scientists
Speaker 3: to do the research.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're just gonna have to make our best guess.
Speaker 2: The Mozart of math will be in Australia going oh, well,
Speaker 2: I can do it over here.
Speaker 4: I'll do the method.
Speaker 3: Right, and we're gonna pause for an ad break. We'll
Speaker 3: ti back in. Okay, okay, everybody, let's pump our brakes,
Speaker 3: cool our jets and thanks to the people who invented
Speaker 3: breaks and jets. We don't want to be alarmist or hyperbolic,
Speaker 3: but there is a problem. There is a problem because
Speaker 3: historically the United States led the modern world and scientific breakthroughs.
Speaker 3: And oddly enough this might surprise a lot of our
Speaker 3: fellow residents of the US. Oddly enough, for decades and decades,
Speaker 3: funding for research and design and all sorts of stuff
Speaker 3: was stable. Investment in basic science was a given. It
Speaker 3: was largely backed by the big dog political parties and
Speaker 3: the fringe parties. But now Uncle Sam has closed the
Speaker 3: wallet on tons of research. And no, you know, I
Speaker 3: always respect it when you say, when we take pains
Speaker 3: to say, hey, we're not here to be politicos or whatever,
Speaker 3: but we do have to acknowledge it's because of the
Speaker 3: recent presidential administration. This changed the game in May of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, because of something called the Big Beautiful
Speaker 3: Bill or the Fiscal twenty twenty six budget proposal. And
Speaker 3: we've got some stats we want to kick which are
Speaker 3: pretty sobering for sure.
Speaker 4: I mean, also just to add that there was a time,
Speaker 4: it would seem where the time you were describing then,
Speaker 4: where science wasn't really a partisan thing. You know, both sides,
Speaker 4: even the and his parties were like science good, like
Speaker 4: what Matt was saying. So here are some of these
Speaker 4: stats and a lot of this Big Beautiful Bill stuff,
Speaker 4: which is a mouthful. It does seem that even though
Speaker 4: they claimed it wasn't the direction, they were going to
Speaker 4: be things that support that whole Project twenty twenty five initiative,
Speaker 4: which is this dismantling of a lot of these government
Speaker 4: agencies and installing let's just say secafants, yes, yes, people
Speaker 4: in order to push political agendas in place of science.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And for the record, that Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 3: stuff is heavily plagiarized from the Foundations of geopolitics by
Speaker 3: Alexander Dugan. So the what did we call him, Russia's
Speaker 3: new respute.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, for sure, a bit of a shadowy figure.
Speaker 4: So here's some of the stats we're talking about. The
Speaker 4: White House released these details surrounding fiscal year twenty twenty
Speaker 4: six in a budget proposal that called for reducing the
Speaker 4: Nowtional Science Foundation's budget by fifty seven percent, the National
Speaker 4: Institute of Health's budget by roughly forty percent, and NASA's
Speaker 4: the aforementioned NASA's science budget by forty seven percent. These
Speaker 4: are some slicy dicey cuts here. The Department of Energies
Speaker 4: Office of Science faces a fourteen percent cut, while the
Speaker 4: National Institute of Standards and Technology would see a twenty
Speaker 4: eight percent reduction in their budget. We also have cuts
Speaker 4: to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the weather One NOAH,
Speaker 4: and also the Environmental Protection Agency. These are government agencies,
Speaker 4: but they have historically had some autonomy, and they're the
Speaker 4: ones that are supposed to be doing the science and
Speaker 4: then recommending to the government the things that we need
Speaker 4: to do to maybe not like blow ourselves up or completely,
Speaker 4: you know, deplete the resources that our planet has to off.
Speaker 3: And these are not propagadendistic numbers. These are actually coming
Speaker 3: to us from the American Physical Society and Olivia Newton
Speaker 3: John fan Club. They're they're super into physics and that
Speaker 3: kind of science, but they probably also rock some Olivia
Speaker 3: you know, and doesn't have a good time.
Speaker 4: Oh no, no, Olivia is the best. Xana do is
Speaker 4: what I think of also grease. But let's also just
Speaker 4: not act like we are completely wearing rose colored glasses
Speaker 4: and thinking that these organizations have not in the past
Speaker 4: also played politics, no question about. Is not like a
Speaker 4: cut and dried situation that we're talking here. I just
Speaker 4: think that we're seeing a much more slippery slide into
Speaker 4: a much more divisive use of these types of organizations.
Speaker 3: Oh you made it sound so fun man. I miss
Speaker 3: slip and slides.
Speaker 4: They're dangerous.
Speaker 3: Though they are dangerous. They are dangerous, but it's way
Speaker 3: better than the non consensual slip and slides I've had
Speaker 3: the past, you know what I mean. It's it's funny
Speaker 3: because I broke my toe earlier this year, but we
Speaker 3: record from the waist up.
Speaker 2: Right, you know, it would be good to help out
Speaker 2: with that. Guys, I just thought about this, and I
Speaker 2: thought about it this whole episode.
Speaker 4: DARPA.
Speaker 2: We haven't talked about DARPA yet, cause there's that's one
Speaker 2: one area of science funding that seems to be going gangbusters.
Speaker 3: Interesting, Yeah, because DARPA has a different wallet source it does.
Speaker 2: It's the Pentagon thing in the what is it the
Speaker 2: Defense spending bill that just went through pretty recently here
Speaker 2: in the US, and I think they're allocated around four
Speaker 2: point three four point four billion dollars just for DARPA.
Speaker 3: All right, Yeah, let's all be cool because we want
Speaker 3: the grand Yeah. Please check out some of our earlier
Speaker 3: episodes on DARPA. We've called them in the past the
Speaker 3: mad scientist branch of the Pentagon, which is not inaccurate,
Speaker 3: but maybe a little bit clickbaiting. It's a little bit
Speaker 3: of a fun way to say to say what they do,
Speaker 3: which is providing funding and grants. They like the enlightened
Speaker 3: despots of old. They identify skill sets and research that
Speaker 3: they dig and in most cases they will propose a
Speaker 3: problem or question and you pitch them shark tank style
Speaker 3: an answer, and they might throw a little a little
Speaker 3: bit of scratch your way to explore the idea further.
Speaker 3: But then in other cases, on the other side of
Speaker 3: the spectrum, if you already have an idea and they
Speaker 3: think it's a threat to national security mine, yeah, secrecy Act, but.
Speaker 2: Arly talk about it, Yes you cannot. But generally, you
Speaker 2: know north of Grumming or your Boeing's or company works.
Speaker 2: They raise their hand, they say, we'll take that one actually,
Speaker 2: and then now their their private company has a lot
Speaker 2: to do for the next couple of years.
Speaker 3: You will heed the law, they say, right back. He
Speaker 3: jokes were to get trouble.
Speaker 4: And all this comes, you know, on the heels of
Speaker 4: a ton of other cuts and slices, a lot of
Speaker 4: which took place under Elon Musk's relatively short lived DOGE initiative.
Speaker 3: Please could dodge the Dude Governmental efficiency, it was called.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right. And of course there were a lot
Speaker 4: of questions surrounding how.
Speaker 3: Politically motivated those cuts were, whether they.
Speaker 4: Were in fact going after waste and fraud, even some
Speaker 4: of the effectiveness of the cuts that were made, or
Speaker 4: what cuts actually were made, because the lists of them
Speaker 4: kept being revised as they were posted, and there was
Speaker 4: this whole sense of we're going to be completely transparent
Speaker 4: about this, but a lot of that information seemed very
Speaker 4: tricksy in terms of the math. They were talking about
Speaker 4: having cut grants that I think expired like years and
Speaker 4: years ago, and things that had already been built they
Speaker 4: were saying they saved money on. So there was just
Speaker 4: a whole lot of real tricky cocktail napkin math going
Speaker 4: on with that whole situation.
Speaker 3: Call it it now, doje episode in the future.
Speaker 4: I think that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yet's do it. And we know that these these
Speaker 3: cuts were describing were controversial and resulted in thousands and
Speaker 3: thousands of federal employees, including a lot of scientists, getting
Speaker 3: fired but then rehired after a court order. And well
Speaker 3: there are some whoops too.
Speaker 4: There was some we didn't mean to get rid of
Speaker 4: USA now people, Oh my gosh. But let's let's put
Speaker 4: it back.
Speaker 3: We fired the tires on our road trip. Whoops. That's
Speaker 3: what happened, was big whoopsie. And we know some people
Speaker 3: who had to go through that emotional roller coaster, which.
Speaker 4: Absolute very research universities, for example, even just like in
Speaker 4: the maintenance or it departments. You know, like I have
Speaker 4: a friend. We both have a friend of the show,
Speaker 4: Matt Riddle, who works maintaining MRI machines for a very
Speaker 4: prestigious research university involving and these machines are used for research,
Speaker 4: And when those grants were potentially pulled, there was a
Speaker 4: lot of questions around, am I gonna even have a job?
Speaker 4: Am I gonna have MRI machines to maintain? Not to
Speaker 4: mention the a lot of the hot button things that
Speaker 4: were sort of being discussed were like, we don't want
Speaker 4: research on transgender mice or something like that. There were
Speaker 4: a lot of these very hyperbolic, sort of manipulating ways
Speaker 4: of describing research that when you actually dug down into
Speaker 4: the details of the real realities of them, were not
Speaker 4: quite accurate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, political theater, that's one way to put it. In
Speaker 3: our Doge episode, which I'm instantly super excited about too,
Speaker 3: we've got several conspiracies involved regarding the motivation of what
Speaker 3: was targeted to be cut. We also know we've got
Speaker 3: close friends at the CDC, which I hate that that
Speaker 3: sounds sketchy now, but here in the Atlanta area and
Speaker 3: our fair metropolis, we have the Center for Disease Control
Speaker 3: and those folks are rightly asking, why are you cutting
Speaker 3: us from the game. You know, these budget cuts. This
Speaker 3: is the point. These budget cuts are not hitting playing
Speaker 3: all abstract science. Nobody is fruitlessly trying to reinvent the
Speaker 3: number nine. Instead, these cuts are directly impacting programs that
Speaker 3: result in better training in scientific breakthroughs, innovations, jobs. We
Speaker 3: saw a twenty twenty three survey by Research America that
Speaker 3: proves the public supports this. More than three and four Americans,
Speaker 3: more than seventy five percent of three hundred plus million
Speaker 3: people who ordinarily do not get along, they agree that
Speaker 3: investing in research creates jobs in the United States. And
Speaker 3: then there was a related question on that survey than
Speaker 3: eight and ten, so more than eighty percent of Americans say, yeah,
Speaker 3: the federal government should help out with research. It's not controversialist.
Speaker 4: No, it shouldn't be for sure. And just to clarify
Speaker 4: the thing I was mentioning that kind of here's the headline.
Speaker 4: You know, NIH money is being used to fund research
Speaker 4: on transgender mice, on you know, gender affirming care for mice.
Speaker 4: But that was just a tiny fraction one point four
Speaker 4: million of an eight million dollar funding grant, and the
Speaker 4: rest of it was actually used for Alzheimer's breakthroughs PTSD
Speaker 4: and clinical depression, like the kinds of stuff that could
Speaker 4: benefit not just members of the trans community, but anybody
Speaker 4: you know and people you know, your grandma, you know,
Speaker 4: your mother who's dealing with a slide into dementia, things
Speaker 4: like that. So there's this a lot of this demonization
Speaker 4: that's going on and pulling out just the thing that's
Speaker 4: easy to kind of weaponize and throw around and make
Speaker 4: people think that there's all this like super whatever liberal
Speaker 4: research going on and it's just not the case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's easy to make a breathless, misleading claim when
Speaker 3: you have three minutes, right, and the people who are
Speaker 3: on the receiving end of that propaganda typically are not
Speaker 3: going to take additional time to delve into this. This
Speaker 3: is why, like, all right, here's the thing, folks. Good
Speaker 3: research is good for everyone. Solid research, even if you're saying, hey,
Speaker 3: Alzheimer's doesn't run in my family, that solid research will
Speaker 3: make the world a better place. It is important. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like it's similar to the way the Hope
Speaker 3: Scholarship here in this in our fair home of Georgia
Speaker 3: helped improve society by allowing more kids to go to college.
Speaker 4: Would you also say that that was a way of
Speaker 4: preventing brain drain here in Georgia by giving you know, locals,
Speaker 4: people that grew up born and raised here an opportunity
Speaker 4: to stay in state.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great point. It also it also shows
Speaker 3: measurable reductions in certain types of crime, because now if
Speaker 3: you're able to go to college or pursuing a career,
Speaker 3: that's one less radio stolen off of pods.
Speaker 4: I know, yeah, I remember when people to take their
Speaker 4: CD players face the car.
Speaker 3: Yeah I remember that. Yeah, Ed and economists are making
Speaker 3: frightening predictions right now. I was looking at these studies
Speaker 3: that indicate a twenty five percent cut in research funding
Speaker 3: will reduce the United States GDP gross domestic product by
Speaker 3: three point eight percent over the next several decades. Sounds
Speaker 3: like a small number, but it's four percent of a
Speaker 3: very big pie. A fifty percent cut just to spend
Speaker 3: this out further will reduce GDP by seven point six
Speaker 3: percent across the same timeline. That would be a drop
Speaker 3: bigger than anything since the Great Depression, which again is
Speaker 3: a terrible name.
Speaker 4: It wasn't yeah, because it was great.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about what all of that like, this is
Speaker 2: just this is knowledge that we've researched, y'all that you
Speaker 2: can go out and find. Right now, I'm imagining what
Speaker 2: this is doing to the morale of highly intelligent people,
Speaker 2: people that are far smarter than I am. But people
Speaker 2: who are out there, let's say, going for a PhD,
Speaker 2: Like they want to become a PhD student, and they're
Speaker 2: looking I feel like people and maybe I'm wrong, but
Speaker 2: I feel as though people who are at that level
Speaker 2: make five year plans, ten year plans, concepts of where
Speaker 2: they will be in the future, and they plan out
Speaker 2: there are steps I need to take in order to
Speaker 2: get to end goal X, right, and then why we'll
Speaker 2: be on the other side of that one. When you
Speaker 2: when it feels like you just can't see yourself on
Speaker 2: any kind of pathway forward, why in the heck would
Speaker 2: you try to make it work in a place that
Speaker 2: is putting up those roadblocks for you.
Speaker 3: It's demoralizing. Yeah. Shout out to the postgrads, Shout out
Speaker 3: to the grad student. Shout out to the best and
Speaker 3: brightest minds who are pursuing internships or in high school
Speaker 3: and saying I want to be a physicist. But should
Speaker 3: I institutions have reacted swiftly to these cuts. Hiring freezes
Speaker 3: went into effect, grant request got stonewalled, research got mothballed,
Speaker 3: some really good tasted research too, and scientists across the
Speaker 3: country had to face some serious, like Dark Knight of
Speaker 3: the Sole questions about the future. This all poses two
Speaker 3: big problems. First, the United States has this obsession with itself.
Speaker 3: It kind of suffers from main character syndrome like people
Speaker 3: who are not good at asking other people questions. The
Speaker 3: United States is a very self centered enterprise. But the
Speaker 3: research is global. Research will continue with or without Uncle Sam.
Speaker 3: The train rolls on, and there are other countries that
Speaker 3: are eager to capitalize on this misstep. And that's the
Speaker 3: first problem. Second problem, people doing that research, just like
Speaker 3: in the days of ancient empires, they are going to
Speaker 3: look for somewhere else to go. They put too much
Speaker 3: time in. They're not gonna shrug their shoulders and say, oh,
Speaker 3: my career is over. I guess the world will never
Speaker 3: learn about zero point energy. They want to get this
Speaker 3: stuff across the finish line. And that's why one of
Speaker 3: the things that informed our Strange News conversation later informed.
Speaker 3: This episode was when the journal Nature asked something like
Speaker 3: one thousand, six hundred and eight American scientists if they
Speaker 3: were considering leaving the country due to these harsh budget cuts.
Speaker 3: Three fourths of those responders said, yeah, I'm thinking about
Speaker 3: skip and town, dude, And they were across scientific disciplines. Again,
Speaker 3: this is like three fourths bla blah. So it's like
Speaker 3: round one thousand, two hundred of the scientists. So again,
Speaker 3: seventy The breathless headline, right, the three second headline is
Speaker 3: seventy five percent of scientists are going to leave the
Speaker 3: United States. That's not quite the case, but it's still very,
Speaker 3: very bad for us because there are a lot of
Speaker 3: other countries that can't wait to have some science refugees.
Speaker 3: How is that a term? How did we get to
Speaker 3: this point where science refugee is a term? I want
Speaker 3: to be a science refugee.
Speaker 2: What kind of science you got work in? Bowling? Hey, hey,
Speaker 2: tell us more information. We'll figure out if it's worth
Speaker 2: our time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I just need a passport. I need a lifetime
Speaker 3: Dave and Buster's card. Do you guys have Dave and Busters?
Speaker 3: Because if not, I'm going to talk to the next
Speaker 3: country over.
Speaker 2: Yes, sorry, we don't do that here. We're strictly and
Speaker 2: in this.
Speaker 3: Place, right, okay, all right, it's a dilemma. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: this introduces us to the concept of a new project
Speaker 3: paper clip, and we've returned. So not for nothing did
Speaker 3: we mention paper clip. There are several new things that
Speaker 3: are kind of like a less agro version of paper
Speaker 3: clip that are happening right now. We talked about this earlier.
Speaker 3: There are several outfits in France that in March and
Speaker 3: April of twenty twelve five said, hey, we have created
Speaker 3: something called a Safe Place for Science program. We create
Speaker 3: a safe and stimulating environment for scientists wishing to pursue
Speaker 3: their research in complete freedom.
Speaker 4: Uh oh, real opportunity for some other parts of the world.
Speaker 4: What's happening here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, If I'm a scientist, I'm saying, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So but here's the thing, Yeah, these are this is
Speaker 2: an incredible opportunity for you know, someone to become a
Speaker 2: science refugee from another country, let's say the United States,
Speaker 2: or or a lot of other places, even places like Venezuela, Cuba.
Speaker 2: I mean, just think about places that are that you
Speaker 2: could have a scientific mind in that in that country
Speaker 2: that is going to have a really hard time in
Speaker 2: that country, here's an opportunity. The only thing is, it's
Speaker 2: almost like it's like any time you're giving out grants, right,
Speaker 2: as a research institute, you can only give out so many.
Speaker 3: Right, there's a limited number of seats on the train.
Speaker 3: And the issue then becomes one of it's a real
Speaker 3: sticky wicket. It's a real bag of badgers, folks. Because
Speaker 3: if you were the person approving the grants, then you
Speaker 3: have a couple of things. First, are you saving someone's life?
Speaker 3: Is their life in danger because of their research still
Speaker 3: happens today? Secondly, is there and actually probably flip those
Speaker 3: The next one is how does our nation state prioritize
Speaker 3: this research?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: If we know somebody is going to die because they're
Speaker 3: doing research on hormone therapy and their country hates it,
Speaker 3: do we save them or do we prioritize someone who's
Speaker 3: doing some really cool stuff with semiconductors over in Massachusetts?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? What choice we make? And
Speaker 3: how do we phrase it as the greater good? In
Speaker 3: just like one month after putting out the Safe Place
Speaker 3: for Space applications, this university in France received some ballpark
Speaker 3: three hundred applications from scientists. The vast majority We're American,
Speaker 3: and they were seeking refugee status America's best and brightest.
Speaker 3: We're officially in a world where science refugee has become
Speaker 3: a thing.
Speaker 2: I can't believe American science refugees.
Speaker 3: You sounds like an album name.
Speaker 2: You know, you may be finding us for the first
Speaker 2: time right now, But if you go back in the
Speaker 2: old archives and all the places you can find stuff
Speaker 2: they don't want you to know, you'll find many an
Speaker 2: episode about similar topics. One of those is the time
Speaker 2: we covered Iranian scientists specializing in fissile materials. If you
Speaker 2: get our meaning there, who kept dying And when you
Speaker 2: imagine when we're talking about the stakes that are potentially
Speaker 2: at play here for specific types of science work that's
Speaker 2: being done, you could take your mind back to that,
Speaker 2: because that's a real thing. You can look that up
Speaker 2: if you want and go listen to our episode if
Speaker 2: you want. There are there can be real stakes for
Speaker 2: an individual attempting to escape a country.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah, that's another part about brain draining, because sometimes
Speaker 3: depending on the point in history or the regime you're
Speaker 3: talking about, sometimes you can't leave. They won't let you go, right,
Speaker 3: or they will let you go like aq con Folks
Speaker 3: who was sent from check out the episode. You know,
Speaker 3: write to us if you want, if you want full
Speaker 3: sources examination of that. But yeah, a lot of scientists
Speaker 3: are being treated as casualties in a greater war. Other
Speaker 3: countries have similar programs for American science refugees, or they
Speaker 3: play and to implement them. A guy named Epo Bruns
Speaker 3: perfect name, sir, is the Minister of Education, Culture and
Speaker 3: Science for the Netherlands, and he's been making a pretty
Speaker 3: successful pitch to start the Netherlands version of the refugee
Speaker 3: program right, and the Netherlands is pretty great if you've
Speaker 3: ever been there. Can you imagine your sweating grants? One day,
Speaker 3: you've got a hiring freeze, your advisor tells you your
Speaker 3: work is amazing, but the government's not going to help you.
Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden, some folks in Amsterdam
Speaker 3: are like, hey, you want to hang out.
Speaker 2: We think you're the best.
Speaker 3: Actually, I think you're cool. Will also give you money.
Speaker 3: Have you ever considered living on a canal? Yes?
Speaker 4: And we haven't really mentioned the h one B visa situation.
Speaker 4: Of it all. I just thought maybe we could briefly
Speaker 4: touch on that, because we were talking a lot about
Speaker 4: science and health care and that kind of research that
Speaker 4: you know, really could help people in terms of quality
Speaker 4: of life and things like that. But we of course
Speaker 4: also have these giant tech corporations like Apple and Google
Speaker 4: that rely a lot on skilled workers from abroad to
Speaker 4: staff these positions. And with various changes in H one
Speaker 4: B visas, which are of course worker visas that the
Speaker 4: Trump administration has been putting forth, we're seeing folks from
Speaker 4: these companies, leadership from these companies telling their workers that
Speaker 4: they shouldn't leave the US. Well, things are in such
Speaker 4: a sketchy sort of you know, tenuous position. We're talking
Speaker 4: about them encouraging people who are in this country on
Speaker 4: H one B visas not to go home and visit
Speaker 4: by families lest they be rejected upon re entry, which.
Speaker 3: Is a very real concern, you know, so much so
Speaker 3: that there were folks who were traveling to India recently
Speaker 3: earlier this year who got the news about the visa
Speaker 3: controversy and then demanded that their play not leave with
Speaker 3: them on it and said, look, I'm going to stay
Speaker 3: in the United States. This is a frightening thing. H
Speaker 3: one B visas essentially are for specialty, special career roles
Speaker 3: that require a bachelor's degree or above, and there's an
Speaker 3: annual cap of sixty five thousand. But then you can,
Speaker 3: I mean, you can play with it a little bit
Speaker 3: and get an additional twenty thousand. We're talking about a
Speaker 3: lot of people who are doing good work, and I'll
Speaker 3: say it, often underpaid, and now, through no fault of
Speaker 3: their own, their lives are in danger. You know, this
Speaker 3: is something that other countries. I can't say that it's
Speaker 3: actually altruistic, folks, but this is something that other countries
Speaker 3: have clocked and they're moving quickly to leverage it. They
Speaker 3: are Chinese universities right now that are I don't want
Speaker 3: to say targeting, but aggressively recruiting Chinese undergrads in other
Speaker 3: countries and saying, hey, all right, you don't want to
Speaker 3: do the game, you don't want to have to do
Speaker 3: the whole dog and pony show and publish or parish
Speaker 3: and all that crap. Come back home or just come
Speaker 3: to China and we will enroll you directly in some
Speaker 3: of our most prestigious PhD programs. Also, what is your
Speaker 3: take on robotics. And I loved your paper about semiconductors.
Speaker 2: Oh god, Chaus, let's let's talk about this thing. Because
Speaker 2: even that all of that you're describing there, Ben, and
Speaker 2: we talked about it before. The change in what is
Speaker 2: it if you cut funding now? The change in like
Speaker 2: the result of the future. While so a lot of
Speaker 2: these large scale research studies and research experiments and projects
Speaker 2: that go into effect, right, you get funding not just
Speaker 2: for one semester or one year. You get you'll get
Speaker 2: a large scale funding for you know, several years, for
Speaker 2: a decade if depending on the types of projects, especially
Speaker 2: if you're looking at things like climate that take a
Speaker 2: long time to study, right or or large scale term yes, yes, okay.
Speaker 2: Gen Xer is a great example. Funding that type of
Speaker 2: research is such a future focused action, right, because you're
Speaker 2: not you're not taking steps now to make profits, short
Speaker 2: term profits even long term profits. Necessarily, you're taking steps
Speaker 2: to to innovate and invent and change things. I guess
Speaker 2: as as a future investment, right, but it is. It's
Speaker 2: in order to in order to focus on the future
Speaker 2: and imagine where you could go. That's why you put
Speaker 2: funding in in the now. Yeah, and it just feels
Speaker 2: to me like it feels to me like there there
Speaker 2: are some people who are really looking at the short
Speaker 2: term as the the only thing that's necessary to focus on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the issue is the issue is well known throughout history.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of the old quotation that I think
Speaker 3: we should all hear paraphrase. It is that civilization exists
Speaker 3: when one generation plants a tree and they know that
Speaker 3: they'll never sit under the shade, right, It's for the
Speaker 3: next generation, you know. And that is something that is
Speaker 3: increasingly forgotten right or glided over in our current instant gratification,
Speaker 3: instant answer economy of attention. I mean also, in all
Speaker 3: of these cases we have described so far, the reason
Speaker 3: we're calling it like a paper clip light is because
Speaker 3: the movement the great brain drain is technically consensual thing.
Speaker 3: Most of these scientists are not being kidnapped by some
Speaker 3: greater good nuclear non proliferation thing. In most cases, the
Speaker 3: United States is not quote unquote kicking them out just yet.
Speaker 3: These folks are choosing to move sort of, but they
Speaker 3: feel their hands are tied because moving to a different country.
Speaker 3: I know a lot of us watching or listening tonight,
Speaker 3: I know, a lot of us have experienced this, so
Speaker 3: you can confirm moving to a different country is pretty difficult,
Speaker 3: even if you already speak the language. Right. Shout out
Speaker 3: to a lot of people who said they were going
Speaker 3: to move to Canada from the United States because of
Speaker 3: some political stuff and then found out how difficult it
Speaker 3: is to legally immigrate to Canada.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. We just want to do the whole
Speaker 2: winter festival thing. Remember we talked about that. There's a
Speaker 2: big snowman guy up there and Quebec. We just want that.
Speaker 4: I want to go to I'm gonna go to Montreal
Speaker 4: for the first time real soon. I hope they let
Speaker 4: me back in. I wanted to just dovetailor, like maybe
Speaker 4: put a little bow on the thing I was saying
Speaker 4: about H one B visas and a comment that I
Speaker 4: made up top about how there's this sense of we
Speaker 4: don't want these immigrants, but we do want these There
Speaker 4: is some complexity in the President's perspective on H one
Speaker 4: b's and on skilled workers in situations where it affects
Speaker 4: commerce directly, you know, like chip manufacturers, for example. He
Speaker 4: says that there's an article from Politico. I'm just going
Speaker 4: to quote from He pointed to the multi billion dollar
Speaker 4: expansion of chip production in Arizona, saying the company Taiwan
Speaker 4: Semiconductor Manufacturing Company will bring in thousands of workers that
Speaker 4: he will welcome those people. I love my conservative friends,
Speaker 4: I love MAGA, but those people are going to teach
Speaker 4: our people how to make computer chips, and in a
Speaker 4: short period of time, our people are going to be
Speaker 4: doing great. So I'm a little confused as to what
Speaker 4: the real hard line is here, because it seems like
Speaker 4: he was saying these things in a way where he
Speaker 4: kind of had to hedge it a little because he
Speaker 4: knows it's not a popular thing. But it does seem
Speaker 4: like he's thinking about the bottom line of it all,
Speaker 4: even though the bigger discussion is about this brain drain
Speaker 4: and about these people turn and tail and going out
Speaker 4: somewhere where they're more welcome or they have more opportunity.
Speaker 4: Yet there does seem to be some discussion within the
Speaker 4: Trump administration. But how can we attract skilled workers from
Speaker 4: other countries?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the question that all these countries have been
Speaker 3: asking historically, even before modern nation states were a thing,
Speaker 3: and earlier we said moving to a different country is
Speaker 3: easier now than it has ever been at any point
Speaker 3: in history. That is true, but it's still pretty difficult.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at Australia, by the way, so any advice
Speaker 3: is welcome. Folks, hit us up. You are even in
Speaker 3: the best case of international movement, you are losing a community.
Speaker 3: If you have kids, you're definitely throwing a plot twist
Speaker 3: to your kid's childhood. You could also compromise your spouse
Speaker 3: or your partner's career in the process. The good thing
Speaker 3: is the scientific community is international. Right. If you are
Speaker 3: one of twelve or twenty people who understand a thing,
Speaker 3: guess what you know? The other eleven you know the
Speaker 3: other nineteen people. They're the only ones who like get
Speaker 3: you man. And so the scientific community has a lot
Speaker 3: of brain drain folks aiming toward countries and institutions where
Speaker 3: they already have friends, they already have colleagues, they already
Speaker 3: have a previous worker publishing history. So this is not
Speaker 3: the end of the world, but it is alarming. I
Speaker 3: want to go back to a point we raised or
Speaker 3: briefly touched on here. There are some bulwarks for the
Speaker 3: great US brain drain. The United States in particular has
Speaker 3: some of the best higher education on the planet. So
Speaker 3: the presence of outfits like Harvard Mit at all, they
Speaker 3: can stem the bleed a little bit. And we are
Speaker 3: still you know, I get it, we're talking about a
Speaker 3: relatively small slice of the country's population. But when these
Speaker 3: folks move, just like in empires of old folks, they're
Speaker 3: not just taking themselves and their families. They're taking the
Speaker 3: knowledge that leads to new stuff like medicine, breakthroughs in astrophysics,
Speaker 3: the next leg of the space race. I mean, heck,
Speaker 3: even we might be losing new snack technology and I
Speaker 3: take that personally flavor science man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we love it.
Speaker 2: Well, we were also losing research studies that have been
Speaker 2: going on for years, and you know, you take the
Speaker 2: individuals out of there and that research is gone and
Speaker 2: they're potentially taking it with them to some other place,
Speaker 2: or it's just it's not usable anymore. It's it's over.
Speaker 4: Talking about longitudinal studies that like involve the same people,
Speaker 4: like for a very very long generation, yes, period of time.
Speaker 2: Yes, and from places like UCLA. If you can head
Speaker 2: over to PBS News Hour and read a whole story
Speaker 2: about this guy, UCLA professor Terrence Tao and how he
Speaker 2: is really considering going back to Australia and he's having
Speaker 2: to consider that because funding is drying up for all
Speaker 2: the things that he's attempting to do, not just for him,
Speaker 2: but also for students that he's attempting to teach.
Speaker 3: Yeah, gave that out a little bit further, folks, also
Speaker 3: past the students for everyone on the planet.
Speaker 2: Yes, because it is more of a philosophical thing at
Speaker 2: stake here, a public good thing that is at stake here.
Speaker 2: And it's not about profits, It's not about any of
Speaker 2: the short term stuff. It's about how do we increase
Speaker 2: humanity's experience here for the good, Like how do we
Speaker 2: make things better for everybody, not just for people that
Speaker 2: are invested in some weapons manufacturer.
Speaker 4: And maybe just to remind everyone too. So then we
Speaker 4: mentioned at the top that this is not a big picture.
Speaker 4: The research will continue somewhere, you know, these contributions to
Speaker 4: the greater good, hopefully in theory, will continue and will
Speaker 4: still happen, and humanity will still benefit from them. They
Speaker 4: just might not be happening here.
Speaker 3: Right, And then I would argue that a lot of
Speaker 3: the technology or research post brain drain will make it
Speaker 3: back to the United States. But there's an important point
Speaker 3: to remember. It will arrive as a stranger. It will
Speaker 3: be in the form of an import and Uncle Sam
Speaker 3: to explore our capitalism. Think here, Uncle Sam, who once
Speaker 3: ran the general store, now becomes the customer. And at
Speaker 3: this level of trade and interaction and transmission of research
Speaker 3: and ideas, the customer is not always right. Instead, the
Speaker 3: customer is beholden now to the whims of foreign countries
Speaker 3: and foreign corporations.
Speaker 2: Including their tariffs.
Speaker 3: It is a bad look, and I guess this leads
Speaker 3: us to a different place. There's so much further that
Speaker 3: we could go with this conversation, but one of the
Speaker 3: best questions is why is this happening? What prompted these cuts?
Speaker 3: For critics of the current a minute stration, this is
Speaker 3: political theater. As we said, it's a cynical grift and
Speaker 3: it just happens to have unfortunately real consequences. Supporters, to
Speaker 3: be fair, argue it's a necessary move against government bloat.
Speaker 3: They're saying we've been handed out free money with little
Speaker 3: in the way of results. That last part is pretty
Speaker 3: easy to disprove. Actually, in about five minutes, you can
Speaker 3: go to your platform of choice and you can verify
Speaker 3: that this funding has, indeed, as we've been saying, made
Speaker 3: the world and the United States a better place. But
Speaker 3: the long tail effects of the great US brain drain,
Speaker 3: they're not going to be apparent to the average American
Speaker 3: until a lot of time has passed. You know, it's worrisome,
Speaker 3: there are conspiratorial thoughts of play, but it's happening. It
Speaker 3: is definitely happening. I think I mentioned to you guys,
Speaker 3: I got a little bit of a headhunt for research
Speaker 3: position I passed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got head hunted.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean it's it's not It's not unheard
Speaker 4: of for that to happen from time to time for
Speaker 4: any any of us in the company, or folks that
Speaker 4: are part of an industry that have been you know,
Speaker 4: around for a long time and that have that legacy expertise,
Speaker 4: because there are other companies and other countries that want
Speaker 4: to capitalize on that and benefit from that and potentially
Speaker 4: gain a leg up from their competition by you know,
Speaker 4: pulling those experts in those individuals away from that competition,
Speaker 4: whether that competition be another company or another country.
Speaker 3: I'm just a humble Farber.
Speaker 2: Congratulations been that's awesome. We would I'd love for you
Speaker 2: to hang around us if we can still do that,
Speaker 2: that'd be cool.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, no, we passed. It was sketchy. It
Speaker 3: was it was a we're not going to talk about
Speaker 3: it out.
Speaker 2: Are well, let's let's let's continue down the sketchy path
Speaker 2: a little bit because something that just happened here in
Speaker 2: the US, and it happened with very little fanfare. There
Speaker 2: was a lot of others stuff happening in the news.
Speaker 2: The Jeffrey Epstein files kind of a little bit got
Speaker 2: trickled out. Yeah, kind of the means.
Speaker 4: Of priceless black black pages, just like what is that
Speaker 4: pantone color. It's fantastic.
Speaker 2: There's a lot more to cover there, and you will
Speaker 2: certainly see us on here talking about that very soon.
Speaker 2: But this thing, NDAA twenty six passed and it just occurred,
Speaker 2: and it was to the tune of nine hundred and
Speaker 2: one billion dollars for defense slash war spending here in
Speaker 2: the United States. And when you think about that in
Speaker 2: compared to the money that is being saved by research
Speaker 2: dollars going away and a lot of that funding, you
Speaker 2: can really see kind of the future, or at least
Speaker 2: the way the United States is posturing itself for the future,
Speaker 2: and you can see why. Just as we talked about
Speaker 2: the top of this episode, about Operation paper Clip and
Speaker 2: all these things where scientists are choosing to get out,
Speaker 2: there's writing that's already on the wall, right and that's
Speaker 2: sitting there and anybody who's paying attention can see it.
Speaker 2: So it is really it's important that we know this.
Speaker 2: We think about this, and I don't know is there
Speaker 2: anything any of us can do as we're just sitting
Speaker 2: here and imagining this if we're not a PhD student
Speaker 2: or a professor or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, love to hear your answers on this, folks. Again,
Speaker 3: the big question. Okay, it's definitely happening. The brain drain
Speaker 3: is definitely occurring and probably will continue. But why and
Speaker 3: what happens next? What is the role the average person
Speaker 3: could do to mitigate this. We'd love to hear, especially
Speaker 3: from our friends in academia or in research positions. How
Speaker 3: has this affected you? What do you see next? And
Speaker 3: again I keep going back to this, why why do
Speaker 3: these cuts in the first place? That for now is
Speaker 3: the stuff they don't want you to know. Let's continue
Speaker 3: the conversation, folks. We'd love to hear from you. You
Speaker 3: can give us a phone call. You can always please
Speaker 3: send us an email with anything you want ed. You
Speaker 3: can find us on the lines and sip those social medis.
Speaker 4: That's right. You can find this on most of the
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