Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 2: Everybody here remember a Liberation Day and Trump randomly announced
Speaker 2: this whole chart of tariffs that we're going to be
Speaker 2: charged on, including some island that only had penguins on
Speaker 2: and it was the whole thing was ultimately struck down
Speaker 2: by the Supreme Court. And so now all of the
Speaker 2: companies that pay those tariffs are coming to the government
Speaker 2: at hand saying, hey, pay us back to put this
Speaker 2: up on the screen wall. Street Journal reports that tariff
Speaker 2: refunds are here and they are turbo charging earning earnings Apple, Nike,
Speaker 2: and FedEx. Are just a few companies recovering big sums
Speaker 2: relatively quickly. Some are passing at least a share on
Speaker 2: to customers. Well that's rather interesting, isn't it. So we've
Speaker 2: got billions of dollars that are changing hands here. Apple
Speaker 2: alone is getting two point two billion dollar tariff refund,
Speaker 2: Nike is getting nine hundred eighty six million FedEx, about
Speaker 2: eight hundred million, Amazon six hundred and forty million, GM
Speaker 2: five hundred million. Have you received any tariff refunds for
Speaker 2: the additional prices that you paid, because, of course, the
Speaker 2: way this worked is yes, the companies paid the tariffs,
Speaker 2: they then passed on much of them. There's been a
Speaker 2: lot of analysis of this. Much of that price Sike
Speaker 2: went straight to you, the consumer. So you do have
Speaker 2: a handful of companies that are saying that they're going
Speaker 2: to provide their customers with refunds. Most of them are
Speaker 2: not consumer facing companies. They're companies that sell to other businesses,
Speaker 2: or it'll be the businesses that get those refunds.
Speaker 4: Down the line.
Speaker 2: But meanwhile, this is really hadding quarterly earnings for these
Speaker 2: large businesses, so as if they weren't already reaching record
Speaker 2: profits in many instances, they're getting even more profitable, profitable
Speaker 2: because of this whole tariff situation.
Speaker 4: Apple said it's.
Speaker 2: Tariff refunds contributed eleven cents to per share earnings in
Speaker 2: the most recent quarter. That's about five percent of the
Speaker 2: quarter's total. Ge Healthcare Tech said tariff refunds had contributed
Speaker 2: eighteen cents of their dollar twenty four share it reported
Speaker 2: in earnings for the quarter end of June thirtieth. Companies
Speaker 2: said it had received one hundred and seven million in
Speaker 2: refunds and expected thirty eight million more. So got to
Speaker 2: love the way that just once again consumers left here
Speaker 2: holding the bag for all of this.
Speaker 3: Right, and by the way, the thing is, have you
Speaker 3: ever needed money from the government. It's right like, if
Speaker 3: you ever overpay your taxes, they.
Speaker 1: Owe you some money. I think I once waited ten months.
Speaker 3: This was rolled out in a matter of months to
Speaker 3: get as much cash from the government's hands back into
Speaker 3: the S and P five hundred fortune five hundred companies
Speaker 3: as quickly as humanly possible. It's kind of like when
Speaker 3: you pay your taxes, they take that money the day
Speaker 3: that you submit it. But if you ever need anything back,
Speaker 3: good luck to you, and it's amazing that whenever it's
Speaker 3: a big company and they need a bunch of money,
Speaker 3: they get it instantaneously. The top line is that forty
Speaker 3: s and p five hundred companies have reported nine point
Speaker 3: six billion in terra free funds over ten billion dollars.
Speaker 3: By the way, that's not even the most amount that
Speaker 3: is left to be doled out. As of now, one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty eight billion in refunds being processed and
Speaker 3: a total of one hundred and sixty six billion in
Speaker 3: tariffs have been invalidated under the IEPA Emergence International Emergency
Speaker 3: Economic Powers Act, So there's still billions more dollars that
Speaker 3: are left to flow into the economy. Almost none of
Speaker 3: that is coming back. What's even crazier is how it
Speaker 3: shows that these companies, it's all financial engineering. It's all
Speaker 3: literally based on a tari free fund that they're boosting
Speaker 3: in terms of their bottom line, and we're getting nothing
Speaker 3: from it. I mean, many of these firms, they say
Speaker 3: refunds are dwarfed by the tariffs that they still pay
Speaker 3: is what they claim in some cases. But in general,
Speaker 3: especially for a lot of these technology companies, they are
Speaker 3: not lowering their prices whatsoever. Will actually will really know
Speaker 3: when iPhone. I think iPhone comes out. The new iPhone
Speaker 3: is going to come out next month at the Worldwide
Speaker 3: Developer Conference.
Speaker 1: Let's see what the price is. Yeah, at retail, if
Speaker 1: it's still higher, bullshit? Okay, because you got your refund.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's the other thing is they raise prices to reflect
Speaker 2: the tariffs. When the tariffs go away, do they bring
Speaker 2: the prices back down?
Speaker 5: Maybe?
Speaker 2: I haven't seen any evidence of that. I would like
Speaker 2: to see some statistical analysis of whether or not that
Speaker 2: is happening. But we know when it came to inflation,
Speaker 2: especially the COVID era inflation, they would raise prices not
Speaker 2: only to deal with the inflation of their inputs, they
Speaker 2: would raise it beyond that. And then once inflation goes down,
Speaker 2: they don't lower the prices for you. The prices only
Speaker 2: go one way. And then they're getting their refunds and
Speaker 2: they're still not bringing the prices down, and they're certainly
Speaker 2: not sending, you know, a little kick back to all
Speaker 2: of their customers who help them float this thing up front.
Speaker 4: So it is very illustrative of.
Speaker 2: How our economy seems to work, and also really important
Speaker 2: now because Trump is still holding on to some there's
Speaker 2: some terror regime in place, so it continues to be
Speaker 2: relevant there. But also as we head into another period
Speaker 2: of increased inflation due to the Iran War. You know
Speaker 2: how all of these companies will operate. They will do
Speaker 2: the exact same thing. And that's why if you look
Speaker 2: at trends historical trends, corporate profits as a percent of
Speaker 2: GDP are at an old time high. That means they
Speaker 2: are eating more of the economy and there is less
Speaker 2: left for you. So this is just one more example
Speaker 2: of how even though initially they were you know, pitching
Speaker 2: fit and they're suffering, et cetera, at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, now they're getting these TERRF refund checks and
Speaker 2: they're using it to pad their earnings, and you still
Speaker 2: were able to charge you higher price.
Speaker 1: And I just checked.
Speaker 3: So for example, remember because at the time Baby Year
Speaker 3: went sky high with tariff, so I just checked, the
Speaker 3: price of the stroller that I bought is still well
Speaker 3: over one hundred and fifty dollars more today than it
Speaker 3: was at the time I bought it.
Speaker 1: This is fourteen months ago.
Speaker 3: That's so Razoicly, it's not that long ago that I
Speaker 3: bought the stroller. The car seat is also one hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty dollars more than what I bought it for,
Speaker 3: so same thing. They incorporated it in the tariff, but
Speaker 3: the teriff price they just never lowered. So I mean,
Speaker 3: and I've talked about this before, you can't buy a
Speaker 3: used car. I mean, you can if it's on secondhand
Speaker 3: market like in terms of Facebook, Marketplace or something.
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to.
Speaker 3: Buy a used car seat. It's one of the few
Speaker 3: things that you can't recycle in terms of baby gear.
Speaker 3: So new stroller, new cars, a lot of new parents
Speaker 3: these days. You're getting slammed because over ninety percent of
Speaker 3: this stuff is all made in China, and all of
Speaker 3: it was hit initially by tariff. They increased the price.
Speaker 3: Now they're getting the refund. I just checked their website.
Speaker 3: There isn't shit shown up on the website of the stroller.
Speaker 3: And these are all the stroller companies from what I
Speaker 3: can see, there's a website which actually put them side
Speaker 3: by side for where they are. Many of them are
Speaker 3: either one to two to three hundred dollars more than
Speaker 3: they worry. I mean, back in the nineties, that's the
Speaker 3: entire cost of a stroller, not just surprise increase.
Speaker 2: Right, We're there, that's exactly right now, not even then,
Speaker 2: I mean it's not that long ago then maybe're right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a term for they call it taking price, and
Speaker 2: it just means like what they can get away with.
Speaker 2: And so they found they could get away with this.
Speaker 2: People accepted the prices because they had no other alternative,
Speaker 2: and so they're going to continue paying forcing you to
Speaker 2: pay those prices even though they no longer have to
Speaker 2: pay the tariff. There are a couple other economic stories that
Speaker 2: we wanted to get in here as well. So as
Speaker 2: prices go up for you and consumer budgets continue to
Speaker 2: be stretched, debt, personal debt reaches new all time high levels,
Speaker 2: let's see what our president is doing to help alleviate
Speaker 2: the burden. He's thinking about reducing capital gains tax. Of course,
Speaker 2: this would be overwhelmingly if it would go to who
Speaker 2: the rich, So he's literally this is how out of
Speaker 2: touch this guys.
Speaker 4: It really is incredible.
Speaker 2: He's seeing this as a way to boost his position
Speaker 2: in the midterms by calling for cutting the capital cutting
Speaker 2: the taxes of the rich. He thinks that is going
Speaker 2: to be a winning midterm strategy.
Speaker 1: Country club boomers around the world celebrate.
Speaker 2: Your working class billionaire at work here, guys, congratulations.
Speaker 3: Country club men across the United States celebrate this potential.
Speaker 3: So I'll explain it, because it's actually even crazier. Trump
Speaker 3: has expressed interest in indexing capital gains and exemptions for
Speaker 3: homes of sale worth two million dollars or less. So
Speaker 3: you know this is the great This would be the
Speaker 3: greatest boomer tax cut in the history of the United
Speaker 3: States to extend and increase.
Speaker 1: Cap gains up to two million for these people.
Speaker 3: Who probably bought it like a couple hundred thousand, and
Speaker 3: make them pay nothing. In addition to making it, Remember
Speaker 3: who owns the vast majority of these stocks, and who
Speaker 3: are these people doing capital gains sales up to fund
Speaker 3: their lifestyle On the it's all the retired people, rich retirees,
Speaker 3: So those are the people who it would be a
Speaker 3: dramatic cut for. Also, I think it would have a
Speaker 3: cyclical effect where some idiot, your idiot nephew who's a
Speaker 3: day trader on his way to going broke, well, I
Speaker 3: got to do it because capital gains are going down,
Speaker 3: and so he would be even more encouraged to lose
Speaker 3: all of his money. I just saw a steady yesterday
Speaker 3: that it's quote. Day trading is directly correlated with IQ
Speaker 3: and education. So if you are a modern day day
Speaker 3: trader and you do not work for Susquehanna Partners are
Speaker 3: one of these, you're probably an idiot and you should
Speaker 3: probably stop.
Speaker 2: Okay, Wait, the more likely you are to day trade,
Speaker 2: the lower your IQ is.
Speaker 1: Lower your IQ and lower your education level. So it is.
Speaker 1: It is a direct correlation of education and IQ.
Speaker 4: It makes ten because because it's quick, riginal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it is gambling, exactly.
Speaker 6: What it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so okay. The Steelman argument for the capital
Speaker 2: gains reduction for the two million dollar houses is that
Speaker 2: this would help encourage boomers to sell those homes and
Speaker 2: move and downsize and move. And I'm just thinking, like,
Speaker 2: you can't think of any other way to accomplish this
Speaker 2: goal than giving them another tax cut, than giving rich
Speaker 2: people even more money. Look at the taxes, like they
Speaker 2: have broken the progressive taxes. It does not exist, especially
Speaker 2: for the actual like ultra wealthy, it does not exist
Speaker 2: for them. But yeah, if you are homeowner, you're already
Speaker 2: getting a much sweeter deal than renters from the tax code.
Speaker 2: And so the only way you can think of to
Speaker 2: try to gently encourage people to downsize and move on
Speaker 2: to these homes is to give them yet another tax cut.
Speaker 2: Like there's got to be another way that's going to
Speaker 2: be more effective than what we're talking about.
Speaker 3: Right, And again, I might be some CPA might come
Speaker 3: after me, but I'm pretty sure that if you're married
Speaker 3: filing jointly, yeah, you're right around. So that's what you're
Speaker 3: married filing jointly, and if all of your long term
Speaker 3: gains are if you make less than let's say, withdraw
Speaker 3: ninety eight thousand dollars from the market, if you're married
Speaker 3: filing jointly and that's your income, you pay zero dollars
Speaker 3: in capital gains, you pay nothing. And then even in
Speaker 3: terms of the capital gain, I don't know if he
Speaker 3: mentioned short term and long term, because obviously that's a difference,
Speaker 3: but dropping it down to seven, I mean that would
Speaker 3: be a massive win. Like these are for people who
Speaker 3: are extraordinarily wealthy, Like we really can't comprehend how much
Speaker 3: wealth these people are sitting on. I was reading a
Speaker 3: story about the number of people with five million dollars
Speaker 3: in their vanguard accounts. Is like millions of people now,
Speaker 3: like millions of Americans are in the five and the
Speaker 3: ten million range. More power to I'm happy for you, you saved,
Speaker 3: he retired. I'm not saying we're going to take it,
Speaker 3: but it's like, fifteen percent ain't all that much to
Speaker 3: ask for whenever we're talking about a cow long term
Speaker 3: capital gain, especially when you and I are sitting here
Speaker 3: paying i don't know, after tax income rate of something
Speaker 3: like twenty thirty whatever percent just W two income. And
Speaker 3: then for average Joe, I mean, especially if you're a
Speaker 3: normal middle class guy between FIICA and but yeah, between
Speaker 3: FIKA health insurance and the progressive income tax rate and
Speaker 3: you get your paycheck, especially if you live in New
Speaker 3: York or something like that, you're looking at look sixty
Speaker 3: percent of your money. That's crazy, Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 2: And and these are the people, by and large, you know,
Speaker 2: when we're talking about older people with these multimillion dollar
Speaker 2: homes who benefit the most from the most prosperous for
Speaker 2: the middle class exactly like time period in American history,
Speaker 2: so to you know, to pay the capital gains, the
Speaker 2: launch term capital gains, tax on your multimillion dollar residence.
Speaker 2: Doesn't seem too much to ask.
Speaker 4: But don't worry.
Speaker 2: It's not only rich people that this administration is looking
Speaker 2: out for. They're also looking out for money launderers and
Speaker 2: other variety of con artists. Let's put this last piece
Speaker 2: up on the screen. This is very significant. So it
Speaker 2: sounds very technical, it's pretty straightforward. Actually, finn Sen is
Speaker 2: permanently ending beneficial ownership reporting requirement for the frame it
Speaker 2: of millions of small business owners. So previously, when you
Speaker 2: were setting up a business and LLC something of the sort,
Speaker 2: you had to report out who actually was the owner
Speaker 2: of this business. So you couldn't and this is a
Speaker 2: relatively new regulations passed by Congress bipartisan way.
Speaker 4: They wanted more transparency here.
Speaker 2: Why because LLCs tend to be used extensively for money
Speaker 2: laundering and financial fraud. So you would have all of
Speaker 2: these series of shell companies of various LLCs that would
Speaker 2: hide the true owner, which would end up being some
Speaker 2: like Russian mobster or something of that nature. Okay, So
Speaker 2: they put this in place to try to crack down
Speaker 2: on that, and by all accounts, it was somewhat successful,
Speaker 2: and there was a whole registry of who are the
Speaker 2: actual beneficial owners of these companies, so who actually owns them,
Speaker 2: who's actually benefiting them. It also comes into play in
Speaker 2: terms of real estate transactions and major cities that become
Speaker 2: the playgrounds not only for global elite, but ways of
Speaker 2: them laundering money from illicit crimes they're committing around the world. So, anyway,
Speaker 2: Trump decided we're not doing that anymore, at least not
Speaker 2: for domestic businesses.
Speaker 4: Foreign businesses still have to do it.
Speaker 2: And not only are we not doing that anymore, we
Speaker 2: are going to delete the entire previous registry that existed,
Speaker 2: so that all of the information that was already collected
Speaker 2: is now going to be disappeared and impossible for law enforcement,
Speaker 2: for example, to use to try to crack down on
Speaker 2: various money laundering and other fraud schemes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and look, small business guys, I get it. You
Speaker 3: and I had to fill this out. It took me
Speaker 3: an hour.
Speaker 1: It was a pain in the ass.
Speaker 2: It's an hour, all right, It's not that big a deal.
Speaker 2: Let's be honest.
Speaker 1: It's still annoying. It was annoying. You know, why why
Speaker 1: do they need all this information for me?
Speaker 6: I get it.
Speaker 3: I hear you, I'm with you, the paperwork, all the taxtics,
Speaker 3: it's super annoying. That said, that said, we should consider
Speaker 3: that as small business people, that it's actually us who
Speaker 3: are the most screwed by this type of system because
Speaker 3: predominantly we're mostly the people who actually comply, whereas a
Speaker 3: lot of these loopholes are being used by the old
Speaker 3: rich or shady vehicles to hide around and to move
Speaker 3: money for beneficial ownership status, specifically to evade the taxes
Speaker 3: which again most of us law abiding small.
Speaker 1: As most people actually pay.
Speaker 3: And so in the long run, it's actually to our benefit,
Speaker 3: you know, the more of the the more that I
Speaker 3: looked into it, because you're like, well, by not capturing that,
Speaker 3: you know, you're actually giving them much more.
Speaker 1: You're basically giving them the.
Speaker 3: Free pass while you go through all the regulatory compliance,
Speaker 3: which most of us do. And I think that's why
Speaker 3: it really pissed me off, is because looking into it,
Speaker 3: this was quote sold as a victory for common sense
Speaker 3: and for American small business. Like they said, this CTA
Speaker 3: was to unmask domestic shell companies. The problem, though, is
Speaker 3: that the shell company problem was very real. Part of
Speaker 3: the reason why Congress passed this law in the first place. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: it is ridiculous. And I know that this has been
Speaker 3: a bugaboo for the ultra rich in particular and some
Speaker 3: small business guys who just don't want to fill out
Speaker 3: any paperwork, but just generally like the cap gains thing.
Speaker 3: And this to me, I was just like, how you've
Speaker 3: got even the Ken Paxton is out there being like
Speaker 3: twenty five thousand dollars tax deduction for health insurance. You know,
Speaker 3: all these crazy doubling the child tax crit and Trump
Speaker 3: is like, let's have the cap gains rate for boomers.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and last thing on the fraud part, right, this
Speaker 2: is administration that talks a lot about fraud when it's
Speaker 2: convenient for them, when the targets are convenient for them.
Speaker 2: For example, in Minneapolis, right, Jade Vance is the czar
Speaker 2: of rooting out fraud or whatever DOGE was supposed to
Speaker 2: be about rooting out fraud. They found literally there were
Speaker 2: no prosecutions that came out of their gutting the federal government.
Speaker 2: It's supposedly to try to root out this kind of fraud.
Speaker 2: The reality is number one, Trump has gone on a
Speaker 2: pardon spree. Of many high level fraudsters who have ripped
Speaker 2: off Americans to the tune of millions of dollars. And
Speaker 2: not only are they're not having to serve their prison time,
Speaker 2: they're not having to pay back.
Speaker 4: The people that they defraud.
Speaker 2: It is just reading a story about a guy who
Speaker 2: was ripped off by some pyramid scheme. That fraudster was pardon,
Speaker 2: No longer is he going to get that restitution.
Speaker 4: And this is a guy who voted for Trump. Was like,
Speaker 4: what the hell?
Speaker 2: Federal white collar prosecutions are at a forty year low,
Speaker 2: So if you're a white collar criminal you can just
Speaker 2: basically get away with it at this point, especially if
Speaker 2: you know, slip some money to Magar, to the Trump
Speaker 2: campaign or the ballroom or whatever particular thing he's raising
Speaker 2: money for now and now you have this action which
Speaker 2: blatantly makes it easier to commit fraud and financial crimes.
Speaker 2: So this is not just this isn't a standalone action.
Speaker 2: This is very consistent with a widespread pattern of enabling
Speaker 2: and encouraging frankly white collar crime from this administration.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, let's get to big bend. Sorry, we
Speaker 3: film out of order.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Isaac standing.
Speaker 3: By he definitely didn't just record it. Very excited now
Speaker 3: to be joined by friend of the show. Isaac's all.
Speaker 3: He's the founder of tangle News. Great friend of the show.
Speaker 3: Good to see you man, Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thanks for having me. Always glad to be here, Siger.
Speaker 3: So, Isaac, you I've been at the forefront of highlighting
Speaker 3: the construction of a border wall, or at least that's
Speaker 3: what they're saying that it is that's going down in
Speaker 3: Big Bend National Park. Let's go and put this up
Speaker 3: here on the screen, some of the video of the
Speaker 3: destruction in the national Park. This is particularly drawn scrutiny because,
Speaker 3: as you have pointed out, this is a very low
Speaker 3: traffic area, significant amount of destruction to the park is happening.
Speaker 3: In addition, it appears that some Trump contractors are involved.
Speaker 3: So before we get to the Trump administration pausing construction,
Speaker 3: it appears at the request of the governor of Texas,
Speaker 3: give us the background about what led to this national outcry.
Speaker 7: Yeah sure, so, I mean, as you probably know in
Speaker 7: your audience find knows, President Trump has promised to build
Speaker 7: a contiguous wall across the southwestern border, and they have
Speaker 7: made some prime rest in California and Arizona and parts
Speaker 7: of Texas, and now they're moving down into southwest Texas,
Speaker 7: which is the Big Bend region. So there are plans
Speaker 7: right now for these thirty foot steel ballard walls actually
Speaker 7: outside the National Park.
Speaker 6: In some of the counties that run into the National
Speaker 6: Park and are.
Speaker 7: On both sides of the park, they had plans for
Speaker 7: thirty foot steel ballared walls inside the park. There was
Speaker 7: such an outcry when those plans were released that they
Speaker 7: sort of updated their maps to say, no, actually, we're
Speaker 7: just doing vehicle barriers, which are these four to six
Speaker 7: foot tall walls and roads, and we're going to put
Speaker 7: some fencing in and some new technology, but we're not
Speaker 7: going to put in these thirty foot steel ballard walls.
Speaker 7: Then there was a bunch of outcry and rage about that, because,
Speaker 7: as you mentioned, there are basically no migrants who cross
Speaker 7: through the National Park. There's about one hundred to two
Speaker 7: hundred a year we're found inside the park. And just
Speaker 7: for context, in a single month in October fiscal year
Speaker 7: twenty twenty five, in the Swanton border sector, there were
Speaker 7: about a thousand migrants who are apprehended. The Swaton border
Speaker 7: sector is the border sector with Canada. It's Vermont and
Speaker 7: New Hampshire and parts of Massachusetts. So that's one thousand
Speaker 7: migrants there in Big Ben National Park. In the entire
Speaker 7: last fiscal year there were one hundred to two hundred
Speaker 7: migrants who were found in the national parks. So, you
Speaker 7: know people who are outdoorsmen, Republican sheriffs, hunters, local businesses.
Speaker 7: You know, my family lives on the border ive property there.
Speaker 7: My cousins have a river guiding business. They're about to
Speaker 7: be blocked off from the Rio Grand. They won't be
Speaker 7: able to do tours down the river because there's going
Speaker 7: to be border wall outside the park and fencing in
Speaker 7: vehicle thereas inside the park, cutting off their access.
Speaker 6: So there's been a huge bipartisan outcry.
Speaker 7: And finally yesterday the CBP commissioner said that he was
Speaker 7: pausing construction and heading down to the park to put
Speaker 7: boots on the ground, which I'm grateful for you you
Speaker 7: would think he would have done that before the construction start,
Speaker 7: but I'm glad at least for now there's a pause.
Speaker 4: Let's put D two up on the screen.
Speaker 2: There's a Trump donor that was awarded some of these
Speaker 2: construction contracts within the park.
Speaker 4: What can you tell us about this?
Speaker 7: Yeah, so this is a big part of the story
Speaker 7: and something a lot of people are focusing on, which
Speaker 7: is this construction company, Barnard Construction, is owned and operated
Speaker 7: by a guy who gave over a million dollars to
Speaker 7: the Trump campaign in twenty twenty four and then got
Speaker 7: awarded this one point seven billion dollar contract to bring
Speaker 7: construction of the border wall down to the Big ben region.
Speaker 7: And obviously, for anybody who's paying attention, this looks like
Speaker 7: somebody who just bought a billion dollar grant from the
Speaker 7: President for a border wall that's unnecessary and unwanted in
Speaker 7: this part of the country. So one of the big
Speaker 7: things that we're trying to figure out now is what
Speaker 7: they're going to do.
Speaker 6: With all that money.
Speaker 7: This CVP says, you know, we're not putting this border wall,
Speaker 7: this thirty foot tall border wall up in the park,
Speaker 7: but the roads and the pathways that they're constructing in
Speaker 7: the National Park follow the exact same line on the
Speaker 7: original map that they release showing where the thirty foot
Speaker 7: steel bollered walls were going to be. So I want
Speaker 7: to take the government at its word, but a lot
Speaker 7: of people down in this area are obviously skeptical that
Speaker 7: this is just going to be a road or just
Speaker 7: going to be some four to six foot tall vehicle barriers.
Speaker 7: A lot of people think they're going to clear this
Speaker 7: land and then eventually this wall is going to come in,
Speaker 7: and you know, it just looks like a cash grab
Speaker 7: by these contractors who are just taking a bunch of
Speaker 7: federal money, our tax dollars, to go destroy a national
Speaker 7: park and then destroy this region outside the park, which
Speaker 7: it should be said, in the lower forty eight is
Speaker 7: the most pristine, untouched part of the United States. It
Speaker 7: is literally the wild West. Four to five hours from
Speaker 7: the closest airport. You can drive on roads for two
Speaker 7: hours without seeing a single person. It is a treasure
Speaker 7: of you know, America's pastime and especially of Texas, and
Speaker 7: it's why so many tourists go there every year.
Speaker 6: It's just kind of escape and go off the grid.
Speaker 7: And now it's that risk of becoming part of the
Speaker 7: big security state.
Speaker 3: Right, and I want to underscore this is not, you know,
Speaker 3: some liberal outcry. The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, gave
Speaker 3: a press conference yesterday saying there will be no border
Speaker 3: barrier built on Big Ben National Park. It appears like
Speaker 3: what you're talking about. Family members West Texas ranchers and others,
Speaker 3: hardcore Republicans in R plus forty districts are the people
Speaker 3: who are pushing heavily against this. We do have a
Speaker 3: video of the CBP commissioner talking about the pause.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and take a listen, guys, we'll get
Speaker 1: your reaction.
Speaker 6: Isaac, I just.
Speaker 5: Landed in Texas headed to Big Ben National Park last night.
Speaker 5: I put a pause on all activity in.
Speaker 8: That park as far as construction goes, until I.
Speaker 5: Can get down there and do a personal evaluation, talk
Speaker 5: to some stakeholders, talk to local law enforcement in that area,
Speaker 5: and more to follow this.
Speaker 3: So the pause, obviously, this was you know, from I
Speaker 3: don't know. You tell me, what do you think that
Speaker 3: the eventual outcome was. It seems to me that the
Speaker 3: governor and much of the tech at Texas Agriculture Commissioner,
Speaker 3: many of these other officials seemed to be the ones
Speaker 3: who really pressured the Trump administration on this.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Governor added is taking credit for Rodney Scott, the
Speaker 7: CBP Commissioner, heading down to Big Ben and pause and construction.
Speaker 6: He said, that he had a conversation with.
Speaker 7: Him over the weekend and that he believes this is
Speaker 7: a direct consequence of that conversation. He said that publicly,
Speaker 7: so I have no reason to doubt that story. I mean,
Speaker 7: the interesting parts of that video are a the CDP
Speaker 7: commissioner conceding that construction is happening in Big Ben.
Speaker 6: We all know this because, as you showed, there's.
Speaker 7: Videos and photos of bulldozers and backos, you know, running
Speaker 7: across the Big Ben National Park ground.
Speaker 6: But it's worth saying the CDP for the last couple.
Speaker 7: Of weeks has denied in court and in their public
Speaker 7: statements that any construction was underway. They were saying that
Speaker 7: they were surveying and assessing the land and hadn't actually
Speaker 7: broken ground yet, you know, despite the videos going viral online.
Speaker 7: So I think it's notable that he acknowledged the construction
Speaker 7: was real and that he's pausing it. The other thing
Speaker 7: I'll just say is there is a process for all
Speaker 7: of this, for this kind of thing, you know, in
Speaker 7: national parks and outside national parks, which is, you know,
Speaker 7: as much as I sometimes loathe government regulation, there are
Speaker 7: things like environmental reviews, there are stakeholders who have meetings.
Speaker 6: They get to meet with the CBP.
Speaker 7: Business owners say look, we need this access point on
Speaker 7: the river, or this piece of private property has.
Speaker 6: This value to so and so economy. They didn't do
Speaker 6: any of that.
Speaker 7: They waived all the environmental laws, they waved all the
Speaker 7: processes that are normal in this situation, and they just
Speaker 7: started building. And that's why the outcry has been so crazy.
Speaker 7: I mean, people on the border want border security, they
Speaker 7: just want it to be done in a way that's smart.
Speaker 7: And as you mentioned, we have MAGA Sheriff Statius Cleveland,
Speaker 7: who I mean his Twitter feed is literally him posting
Speaker 7: pictures of migrants he's capturing in the desert and he's
Speaker 7: on CNN, he's going on National News, he's posting on
Speaker 7: Twitter about how stupid the border wall in the Big
Speaker 7: ben region is because you don't need it. What you
Speaker 7: need is technology to be notified that somebody has crossed
Speaker 7: the border, a movement, heat sensors, those sorts of things. Yeah,
Speaker 7: if you bring border wall stuff out there, you're just
Speaker 7: going to destroy the landscape and build a bunch of
Speaker 7: roads by the way that the cartel and migrants can
Speaker 7: then use to escape into the United States, which is
Speaker 7: one of the crazy ironies of this whole story.
Speaker 4: Just put up some flot cameras.
Speaker 1: Y No pointed at us, pointed that way on iron.
Speaker 4: Well, last question for you.
Speaker 2: I saw something about US seating hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 2: acres to Mexico as part of this project.
Speaker 4: What is going on there?
Speaker 7: Yeah, So the story there is pretty simple. All across
Speaker 7: the Rio grand which is the most precious water stores
Speaker 7: in West Texas, there are private properties that all bunt
Speaker 7: the river that are cattle ranchers. They're river guides like
Speaker 7: my family. They're outfitters who take people on these you know,
Speaker 7: off road journeys or horseback riding or whatever. The map
Speaker 7: of the wall is right now lace you know oftentimes
Speaker 7: hundreds of yards, if not quarter half a mile in
Speaker 7: from the river on the Texas side. So you can't
Speaker 7: just put a wall in the middle of the Rio
Speaker 7: Grande River. It floods the construction being possible. So they
Speaker 7: have to put the wall on the American side. And
Speaker 7: what that means effectively is that they're cutting Americans off
Speaker 7: from this critical water source. They're cutting Texans off from
Speaker 7: this critical water source, and they're putting a bunch of
Speaker 7: American texting land on the other side of the border wall.
Speaker 7: And so what I did through an assessment of the
Speaker 7: map and putting it into Claude. One of the very
Speaker 7: few positive use cases I found with AI, by the way,
Speaker 7: is figuring out how many acres of land is actually
Speaker 7: going to end up on the other side of the
Speaker 7: thirty foot steel bollered wall according to the DHS maps,
Speaker 7: and it's about two hundred and eighty thousand acres of
Speaker 7: Texas land that's going to be on the opposite side
Speaker 7: of that wall. And once the walls are built, the
Speaker 7: access points are controlled entirely by the federal government by
Speaker 7: DHS there. You know, we've had stories in the past
Speaker 7: the people who get key codes to get into the river,
Speaker 7: you know, to get through the wall there's like a
Speaker 7: gate there, and then they become a target not just
Speaker 7: of the cartel but of locals because they're the person
Speaker 7: with the key code and the access creates all these
Speaker 7: crazy dynamics and scary things for these people who own
Speaker 7: this land privately that are facing eminent domain threats to
Speaker 7: have their land taken from the federal government. So you know,
Speaker 7: it's not a sovereignty we're still going to control the
Speaker 7: two hundred and eighty thousand acres of land on the
Speaker 7: other side of the border wall, but private US citizens
Speaker 7: are going to lose access to it.
Speaker 6: And for me, that is just an insane thing to.
Speaker 7: Do in this moment, is to give away three hundred
Speaker 7: thousand acres of precious American land to Mexico, which I
Speaker 7: think is what the administration is doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Isaac, you've been at the forefront.
Speaker 1: Matthew McConaughey, where are you, man? You know you're all
Speaker 1: in Texas.
Speaker 3: You got nothing to say.
Speaker 6: I got to say.
Speaker 7: There's a lot of ride or die Texas brand people who.
Speaker 6: Have not spoken.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, you know, we've got our eyes on you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no doubt you're sipping beers with Shane Gillis in
Speaker 3: some bullshit soccer game.
Speaker 1: You don't have ship to say about Big Ben. Get
Speaker 1: the fuck out of here, man. You know I don't
Speaker 1: want to see you down.
Speaker 3: I don't want to see you when Longhorns gear come
Speaker 3: college football season unless you.
Speaker 1: Guys speak up for the Texas silent No, Crystal, this
Speaker 1: is a this is a big deal down in Texas,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the stars at night, Thank you very much, Isaac.
Speaker 3: We appreciate you man, thanks for having me man. Very
Speaker 3: excited now to be joined by Jared Cooney Horvath. He
Speaker 3: is the author of The Digital Delusion, a tremendously influential
Speaker 3: book how classroom technology harms our kids learning and how
Speaker 3: to help them thrive again. He is a neuro scientist
Speaker 3: and has extensively studied this issue, and I'm excited to
Speaker 3: talk to him. Jared, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 8: Appreciate it, Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 3: So Jared, you have been again one of the leaders
Speaker 3: in this movement to move technology from the classroom. We
Speaker 3: have seen examples of this purveyed both from K through
Speaker 3: twelve all the way up to college. F two guys,
Speaker 3: just the latest example of something we're seeing. College kids
Speaker 3: are using AI agents to take entire online classes for them,
Speaker 3: logging themselves directly into course management software so they get
Speaker 3: the grade, but they're not actually doing the work. We
Speaker 3: see cascading in different types of these effects as technology
Speaker 3: has entered the classroom. So big picture, why'd you decide
Speaker 3: to write this book?
Speaker 1: What data?
Speaker 8: What is spared?
Speaker 6: You? Yeah?
Speaker 8: My background is just in human learning. How do humans learn?
Speaker 9: So I've worked with schools for fifteen years on just
Speaker 9: if this is what learning is, what does that mean
Speaker 9: for teaching? What does that mean for students studying and parents?
Speaker 9: And it was really around COVID. We've known for a
Speaker 9: long time that digital tech wasn't great for learning, but it.
Speaker 1: Was always somewhat peripheral.
Speaker 9: Until COVID hit, everyone went digital rightly, so you had
Speaker 9: to do something. But when COVID ended, no one ripped
Speaker 9: that band aid off. Everyone stayed heavy digital and kept
Speaker 9: pushing forward. And all we've seen is literacy numeracy scores
Speaker 9: really just continue to drop lower and lower. So that's
Speaker 9: why I figure now is the time to just put
Speaker 9: the data out there and say, look, we know that
Speaker 9: tech isn't great for learning, we know why tech isn't
Speaker 9: good for learning.
Speaker 8: Maybe we make different decisions in schools now.
Speaker 4: So let's put F three up on the screen.
Speaker 2: This is some of the latest data about the way
Speaker 2: US test scores in most states in the Union have
Speaker 2: been declining. Why US test scores are any generation long decline?
Speaker 2: And there's only a handful of states, It's like Mississippi, Hawaii,
Speaker 2: maybe one more that have bucked this trend. Over the
Speaker 2: past decade and a half. You're pointing to the advent
Speaker 2: of ed tech in the classroom. How do you separate that, though,
Speaker 2: from there's a lot that's happened over that time period.
Speaker 2: We had a reduction in the No Child Left Behind standards.
Speaker 2: We've had the introduction of personal smartphone use outside of
Speaker 2: the classrooms, so kids are on their screens in an
Speaker 2: unstructured way outside of school. So how do you look
Speaker 2: at all You of course had COVID and you pointed
Speaker 2: to the more significant learning loss that occurred during that
Speaker 2: time period. So how do you look at all of
Speaker 2: those things that happen and pinpoint in classroom ed tech
Speaker 2: as the single most significant factor here?
Speaker 9: Well, this is, to be fair, everything you've just said
Speaker 9: completely matters for emotional development, for social development when we
Speaker 9: just focus on cognition. I think an important thing to
Speaker 9: remember is we're not stuck in the US. We've got
Speaker 9: data from over ninety countries now over the last about
Speaker 9: twenty five years from international exams from their own countries
Speaker 9: testing regimes, and what you can see is in each country,
Speaker 9: as digital technology moves from a peripheral to a central
Speaker 9: feature in education, that's when their scores will start to
Speaker 9: go down, so it's not tacked to any one year.
Speaker 9: It's unique to win schools and in the US as well,
Speaker 9: when those states adopt digital technology, we can.
Speaker 8: Also then go back.
Speaker 9: Since nineteen sixty two, we've been doing academic research which
Speaker 9: is causative, directly linking digital tech and LFE learning and
Speaker 9: showing that when a screen enters learning learning compared to
Speaker 9: say analog methods, tends to go down.
Speaker 8: And then you can also with COVID, you.
Speaker 9: Can start to see do what we call regression analyzes
Speaker 9: where you can take the hit of COVID, remove that
Speaker 9: from data sets and say is there anything left remaining?
Speaker 9: Take sees out of the equation, take non classroom tech.
Speaker 9: Use be very specific about where you're using UTH statistics,
Speaker 9: and we still find the same thing. But I always say, look,
Speaker 9: the data is one thing, and that's very much in
Speaker 9: our favor, but it's the mechanisms. Once you get down
Speaker 9: to biology, we have better explanations for why tech doesn't
Speaker 9: work than anyone else does, and that seems to be
Speaker 9: the kind of the ceiling factors. We can kind of
Speaker 9: explain why it's happening, and no one else can really
Speaker 9: do that as well as we can.
Speaker 1: Can you go into that?
Speaker 3: So, like I think, I in particular, so I'm thirty four,
Speaker 3: so when I was coming through K through twelve, that
Speaker 3: was really the height of every student gets a laptop,
Speaker 3: the interactive PowerPoint. This was seen as a boon to
Speaker 3: the teacher in the classroom. I was telling you before
Speaker 3: the segment, my own mother's first professor of early childhood education,
Speaker 3: a big proponent of educational technology, has some challenging questions.
Speaker 1: She wants me to ask you, but.
Speaker 3: Just generally, what's wrong with that mechanism that you just
Speaker 3: talked about about technology itself as a medium for learning.
Speaker 3: Why isn't it the hope that we thought, let's say,
Speaker 3: twenty years ago.
Speaker 9: So there's going to be dozens of different mechanisms, but
Speaker 9: let's just stick with kind of the reading one. A
Speaker 9: big aspect of human memory is spatial location. Where in
Speaker 9: space does something occur, becomes a massive aspect of our
Speaker 9: memory for that thing, and ultimately determines how we can
Speaker 9: access that information later. Now, think of a book until
Speaker 9: this book here burns into dust. Every word has a clear, rigid, unchanging,
Speaker 9: three dimensional location till this book disappears. The word saddle
Speaker 9: will be ten percent of the way through left page, top,
Speaker 9: left hand side, It ain't going nowhere. That will become
Speaker 9: part of the memory I form and will ultimately determine
Speaker 9: what I learned from it. So this is why if
Speaker 9: you're an avid reader of books, you know, when you
Speaker 9: finish a book, you might not know verbatim everything you read,
Speaker 9: but you will know where in the book everything occurred.
Speaker 9: Like there's a quote you're looking for, you can almost
Speaker 9: flip right to it. Now take that same thing to
Speaker 9: a screen. All of a sudden, the words saddle is
Speaker 9: going to start at the bottom.
Speaker 8: Of the screen, pull through the middle, disappear out the top.
Speaker 9: There is no three dimensional location, so an entire aspect
Speaker 9: of human memory gets dumped. So this is why when
Speaker 9: people read from a screen, at about the four or
Speaker 9: five minute mark, the brain will send you a signal
Speaker 9: saying I'm not getting this, like I don't know where
Speaker 9: any of this belongs, and we just start skimming rather
Speaker 9: than actually reading.
Speaker 8: We just start looking for keywords. Off we go.
Speaker 9: So this is one of those easy mechanisms where we
Speaker 9: can say, if you have the exact same thing on
Speaker 9: a piece of paper versus a screen, people will remember
Speaker 9: more comprehend better from the piece of paper than the screen,
Speaker 9: just by the way biology and memory works.
Speaker 6: It's super interesting.
Speaker 2: So let me get you to respond to what are
Speaker 2: the critiques?
Speaker 4: I read?
Speaker 2: This is from chalkbe we can put this up on
Speaker 2: the screen. So they were talking about the way you
Speaker 2: analyzed the impact of ed tech specifically, and the writer
Speaker 2: says that the overall impact of ed tech in the
Speaker 2: studies that you cite is actually positive. Horvat says the
Speaker 2: effect is too small to justify the use of tech
Speaker 2: because it's smaller than the effect of typical classroom instruction.
Speaker 2: Taking that into account turns the ed tech results negative.
Speaker 2: He says, this is a key methodological decision on which
Speaker 2: your conclusion rusts. But according to Elizabeth Tipton, who's a
Speaker 2: Northwestern University statistician counts herself as an ed tech skeptic,
Speaker 2: she says this is not the right approach. Your benchmark,
Speaker 2: she says, is wildly unrealistic and carefully designed studies in
Speaker 2: which two groups are both receiving some sort of instruction,
Speaker 2: most effects are quite small. In that context, an effect
Speaker 2: above zero would be encouraging. So my understanding of this
Speaker 2: critique is basically, when you just look at the impact
Speaker 2: of ed TECH without comparing it to what would be
Speaker 2: happening if you weren't using the ed tech, the impact
Speaker 2: is either negative or somewhat positive. And so it's your
Speaker 2: choice to say, okay, but instead of the aed tech,
Speaker 2: if we were doing this other instructional method, that the
Speaker 2: learning gains would be more. That leads to the result.
Speaker 2: And again this statistician is saying that this is not
Speaker 2: the right approach to do the study. So what is
Speaker 2: your response to that critique.
Speaker 9: There are multiple ways to run statistics, and I hear everyone,
Speaker 9: but the point we're trying to make is every educational study.
Speaker 9: Oh so, there's a man named John Hattie down in
Speaker 9: Australia who's looked at over three hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 9: studies in education. Over ninety five percent of them have
Speaker 9: a positive effect. Basically, his argument is everything works and
Speaker 9: this is why, because learning is biological. If you change
Speaker 9: your hat, a kid will learn. If you sing a song,
Speaker 9: a kid will learn. If you put a kid in
Speaker 9: a closet for a day, take them out, they will
Speaker 9: come out cognitively more developed than when they went in.
Speaker 9: Because biologically you can't stop it. So the argument from
Speaker 9: that side of the equation is always we cannot use
Speaker 9: as a baseline and education, otherwise everything goes. So you
Speaker 9: have to have some sort of different baseline in our
Speaker 9: field to figure out what's better than average. And in
Speaker 9: his argument, and if you look at any statistician, that
Speaker 9: value is going to sit somewhere between point four and
Speaker 9: point five. Now that number doesn't have to mean anything
Speaker 9: to anyone, just know that ed tech really undershoots that value.
Speaker 9: Whereas things like reading from a book, having a discussion
Speaker 9: with a teacher, doing a pair and share with your peers,
Speaker 9: those have values way above that. So you get start
Speaker 9: to see when we compare different strategies, yeao, some are
Speaker 9: going to be far better than others. But if you
Speaker 9: can go down to a study where you are comparing
Speaker 9: one tool to something without that tool in an equivalent condition,
Speaker 9: you hit what's called a randomized control trial. Now those
Speaker 9: are really really easy to do, not easy, but doable
Speaker 9: in fields like medicine, in fields like physics. They are
Speaker 9: almost impossible to do in social level fields like school.
Speaker 9: So imagine you give one school group a bunch of
Speaker 9: laptops and you don't give another school a bunch of laptops,
Speaker 9: then you can say laptops were better or worse than
Speaker 9: no laptops. Right, wrong, Because now we've got to worry
Speaker 9: about what were the pedagogies each school was using. Were
Speaker 9: these teachers asking kids to recall and these weren't. Were
Speaker 9: these teachers giving homework and these weren't. There are so
Speaker 9: many competing variables that when you want to look at
Speaker 9: the social level, you have to use these higher level
Speaker 9: values and use more averaging because we just can't drill
Speaker 9: down far enough to the specific random control trial mechanism.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 8: So I it sounds like like I'm skirting the issue,
Speaker 8: but it's not.
Speaker 9: It's just a different form of analysis, and social sciences
Speaker 9: require one more so than the other.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: And one of the challenges I saw Jared is he
Speaker 3: right across the west IQ scores and began to fall
Speaker 3: even as time spent in school kept rising. The answer
Speaker 3: lies in the meteorize rise of educational technology. But kind
Speaker 3: of to come back to Crystal's original point, which is
Speaker 3: really impossible to ignore. How do we separate out the
Speaker 3: technology from the digital milieu that we swim in as
Speaker 3: in these children, especially twenty twelve onward are inundated with
Speaker 3: screen time at home, either from television on the iPhone,
Speaker 3: and then you add educational technology onto that. Why is
Speaker 3: that not a modest effect and a significant effect, Because
Speaker 3: to my eye, what's happening in the home and in
Speaker 3: the rest of the world and all of that general
Speaker 3: screen time, which we know reduces general IQ, should actually
Speaker 3: be more of a significant factor. Or please challenge my
Speaker 3: general line of questioning.
Speaker 8: No, and it absolutely is.
Speaker 9: For general level IQ, it's going to be very difficult
Speaker 9: to parse things out. But we're lucky in school we
Speaker 9: can do these specific measures where we can flat out
Speaker 9: ask kids how often do you use tech at home?
Speaker 9: How often do you use tech for these purposes at home?
Speaker 9: And we can also ask them how often do you
Speaker 9: use tech in schools? How often do you use tech
Speaker 9: for these purposes in schools? So in a lot of
Speaker 9: our data sets are international ones. Anyway we can differentiate
Speaker 9: between those two modes again, account for one on and
Speaker 9: say what's left. And probably the biggest example of that
Speaker 9: would be East Asian countries. Is everyone knows East Aging
Speaker 9: countries are highly technological, their economies are based on technology,
Speaker 9: their kids are spending more time on tech for gaming
Speaker 9: purposes than anywhere else. Believe it or not, those are
Speaker 9: or pre COVID were the least tech using countries in
Speaker 9: the world when it came to school Singapore, Japan, China, Korea.
Speaker 9: These people were not using tech in schools. They said,
Speaker 9: use tech outside of the classroom. But when you're in
Speaker 9: a classroom, we're going with analog methods that we know work.
Speaker 9: And it's no surprise that up until COVID they had
Speaker 9: always peaked out on literacy, numeracy, science scores. They were
Speaker 9: always beating everyone else, even though their kids used more
Speaker 9: tech in the real world than kids, say in the US,
Speaker 9: they used less tech in school, and they still saw
Speaker 9: better cognitive growth than we did.
Speaker 2: HOWD do Where I get hung up on some of
Speaker 2: this as a parent in particular, is understandably we tend
Speaker 2: to talk about just tech as a broad bucket or
Speaker 2: just screen time as a broad bucket, where obviously, like
Speaker 2: when my kid is just mindlessly scrolling YouTube shorts, that
Speaker 2: is a really terrible brain rotting thing. Whereas to be honest,
Speaker 2: I think there's an argument that some of the video
Speaker 2: games that they play that require a lot of like
Speaker 2: language and social interaction and problem solving, et cetera, which
Speaker 2: is what a lot of the East Asian screen time
Speaker 2: you know, is centered around. I'm not sure that that's
Speaker 2: bad for them in terms of brain development, at least
Speaker 2: in some level of reasonable moderation.
Speaker 4: So how do you think.
Speaker 2: About, like you know, the quality of screen to do
Speaker 2: you have a hierarchy of which times, which types of
Speaker 2: device time are better or worse for kids developing minds?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 9: So again, I won't focus on out of school. So
Speaker 9: anytime you use a screen for entertainment letter rip, go
Speaker 9: for it. I'm just talking about straight learning. So in
Speaker 9: our context, when we're talking about digital technology and learning,
Speaker 9: it's any internet connected student facing device that is going
Speaker 9: to lead them down a path of non learning. But
Speaker 9: if you twisted my arm on the other stuff, you're right.
Speaker 9: I mean something like video game where you can hear
Speaker 9: another person's voice. And I didn't know this till recently,
Speaker 9: but that's what kids are doing. They have headsets on them,
Speaker 9: they're actually talking to other human beings. If you can
Speaker 9: hear another person's voice and you're actually communicating with them,
Speaker 9: that's fine. I mean it's not great, but I mean
Speaker 9: go to town with it.
Speaker 8: It's versus like texting.
Speaker 9: So we can do this kind of hierarchy right where
Speaker 9: if a group of human beings are hanging out together,
Speaker 9: we can measure the type of chemicals that are being
Speaker 9: released to demonstrate what kind of social bonding they're showing.
Speaker 9: And as you'd expect, when they're hanging out together, you
Speaker 9: get a lot of these social bonding chemicals. When kids
Speaker 9: are interacting via text, you get none of those social
Speaker 9: bonding chemicals, which is a good sign that text based
Speaker 9: communication isn't recognized as actual social interaction biologically. It's more
Speaker 9: recognized as isolating and threatening, which is one of the
Speaker 9: reasons why kids who use a lot of texting based
Speaker 9: tech like social media and stuff usually have lower scores
Speaker 9: on sense of belonging those things. But if you can
Speaker 9: hear someone's voice, so like when we were growing up,
Speaker 9: we used to call each other all the time. You
Speaker 9: have that long chord on the phone, you'd go sneak
Speaker 9: into the pantry. We didn't know it, But when you
Speaker 9: hear somebody's voice, you can get the same type of
Speaker 9: chemicals you get from social interaction. They're not as strong,
Speaker 9: but they're definitely there. They're not absent like texting. So
Speaker 9: I'd say, if you had to do a hierarchy'd say, look,
Speaker 9: if you're going to play video games, sit on the
Speaker 9: couch next to the person like we used to do
Speaker 9: n sixty four. You're going to get the best benefit
Speaker 9: next to that. As long as you can hear people
Speaker 9: in your talk new them, that's going to be next
Speaker 9: down the line. And then if you're just gaming by
Speaker 9: yourself quietly, that might be third.
Speaker 4: Down theap line right ectly.
Speaker 8: You're right, it's it's kind of how we're using them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's also just like a modern reality of
Speaker 2: some of my son's in middle school and you know,
Speaker 2: he's a gamer, and this is what he and his
Speaker 2: friends do. You know, if I was to tell him,
Speaker 2: like no video games, that would cut him off from
Speaker 2: a lot of his social life that he has now,
Speaker 2: because this is just sort of the reality of the
Speaker 2: world that we live in.
Speaker 4: So reflect on that.
Speaker 2: But also, you know, how do you and I know
Speaker 2: you focus more on tech deployment in school specifically, but
Speaker 2: you've also spoken in thought some about how parents should
Speaker 2: approach technology in their home as well. How do you
Speaker 2: approach that conversation without putting the entire burden on parents
Speaker 2: and shaming them at a time when look, everybody's doing
Speaker 2: their best and we're up against these like multi billion
Speaker 2: dollar companies that spend a lot of money trying to
Speaker 2: make their tech addictive and make sure that your kids
Speaker 2: are glued to the screen.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and that's it's one of the hardest things we
Speaker 9: have to face is it's the cigarette problem all again.
Speaker 9: We're giving something to our kids that we know is dangerous.
Speaker 9: I don't think there's a parent out there that's thinking,
Speaker 9: you know what, my kid needs more tech. We all
Speaker 9: kind of know that as soon as they're done with tech,
Speaker 9: we're going to have this half hour window where they're
Speaker 9: just crazy. They're going to have to get off of that.
Speaker 9: But you're right, it's how they built their social life.
Speaker 9: We basically lost that battle. So what I tend to
Speaker 9: say with two families when it comes to learning, anything
Speaker 9: that has to do with learning, if it's homework, if
Speaker 9: it's a reading, if your kid has to do a worksheet,
Speaker 9: print it out, buy a printer, do everything learning based analog.
Speaker 9: The first thing we have to do is separate the
Speaker 9: screen from learning. Kids view the screen as an entertainment
Speaker 9: medium and rightly.
Speaker 8: So that is what they do.
Speaker 9: They spend over two thy five hundred hours every single
Speaker 9: year using this machine to rapidly switch between media content.
Speaker 9: When we now say now use the same exact tool
Speaker 9: to learn, which requires sustained focus, they can't do it.
Speaker 9: Most of them only make it about six minutes before
Speaker 9: they go right back to Well, I'm just going to
Speaker 9: open this tab. I'll check this out. So anytime it
Speaker 9: comes to learning in your house, make it analog by
Speaker 9: a printer, get it out.
Speaker 4: Beyond that, print it out is a very strategy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I would say beyond that too.
Speaker 9: Just start with a tech audit and totally non judgmental
Speaker 9: for all the entertainment based tech. Just spend one or
Speaker 9: two weeks with you and your kid. They do it,
Speaker 9: you do it? How often do you use it? What
Speaker 9: are you using it for? And as a parent, does
Speaker 9: my kids see me use it? What message is that sending.
Speaker 9: Just get a sense of the lay of the land,
Speaker 9: see what's going on, and then make small changes as
Speaker 9: you see fit. If you try and change everything at once,
Speaker 9: it's always going to bomb. It's like trying to change
Speaker 9: your workout regime in one minute. Doesn't work, right, Just
Speaker 9: change one thing. Say maybe next week, let's see if
Speaker 9: we can't shoot for an evening where the family watches
Speaker 9: a movie together instead of does text something like that,
Speaker 9: and then you just build your own values.
Speaker 1: That's my last question, Jared.
Speaker 3: One of the things I love about America, if you
Speaker 3: live in a locality, you can actually have immense impact
Speaker 3: in your school system. Like Crystal was telling you, they
Speaker 3: parents band it together. They're like, hey, we want our
Speaker 3: kids off machines. School board actually did it. So my
Speaker 3: daughter's going to be in school in a few years.
Speaker 3: I'm going to start going on to the school board meetings.
Speaker 3: What should I start demanding of my school board around
Speaker 3: this conversation about technology? What kind of guidelines if you
Speaker 3: were to design it from scratch, what should I push for?
Speaker 9: Go in first, get a coalition. One parent talking is
Speaker 9: always going to be viewed as a nuisance. Ten parents talking.
Speaker 9: Now we're going to start paying attention at schools. That
Speaker 9: just seems to be how it is. Don't go on
Speaker 9: the attack. Go with a level of curiosity. If you
Speaker 9: go there saying you're doing it wrong, they're going to
Speaker 9: push back.
Speaker 8: Nothing happens.
Speaker 9: Say look, do you guys know how much and what
Speaker 9: type of tech is being used in schools, And what
Speaker 9: you'll find is ninety percent of the time the answer
Speaker 9: is no, No one tracks this data.
Speaker 8: So say, cool, let's just do a tech audit for
Speaker 8: the next month.
Speaker 9: Can you just track what programs are kids using at
Speaker 9: what year level and for how long? And maybe we
Speaker 9: can even just if they have their own iPads that
Speaker 9: they've been given, we can just plug in a program
Speaker 9: that'll do that for us. Then we can say, okay,
Speaker 9: where's the data. So once we know where kids are
Speaker 9: using it and they say maybe they use this program
Speaker 9: but not that one, we can say, okay, do we
Speaker 9: have data that that is an effective way of learning?
Speaker 9: And what you'll see is ninety nine percent of ed
Speaker 9: tech tools have no data with them. Ed tech was
Speaker 9: the one field that was never regulated at any level.
Speaker 9: Your toaster has gone through more clearances than the pros
Speaker 9: we put in front of our kids tomorrow at school.
Speaker 9: So we can just say, cool, what's the data, and
Speaker 9: then we can make it clear that Okay, if there
Speaker 9: is no data, then either we've got to collect it,
Speaker 9: in which case, don't give it to every kid, do
Speaker 9: a small experiment, or b we wait till they collect
Speaker 9: the data improve it to us. If the focus of
Speaker 9: school is learning, then at the end of the day,
Speaker 9: every decision we make has to hinge on does this
Speaker 9: improve learning? And if there is no evidence that it
Speaker 9: is doing that, and if there is evidence that it's
Speaker 9: harming on the other side, then by all means we're
Speaker 9: in a good spot to say maybe we pull that back,
Speaker 9: divest a bit until we have better data to say
Speaker 9: this is something for our kids.
Speaker 3: I think it's a very smart approach that you just
Speaker 3: laid out. I hope everybody goes and buys the book,
Speaker 3: engages with the work.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Jar. We really appreciate your time.
Speaker 8: Thank you Jared, Oh, thank you both.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you
Speaker 3: enjoyed it. AI Block, it just went too long. Today
Speaker 3: we're talking with Jared quite a bit, so Crystal and
Speaker 3: Emily will be doing that tomorrow, so you get a
Speaker 3: special trade then and we're about to do the AMA
Speaker 3: so we'll see you on a bit.
Speaker 5: Spot. People to British