1/13/25: TikTok Ban Imminent, Morning Joe Says Biden Would've Won, Ultrarich Stoke LA Fires, Loneliness Crisis
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All right, let's get to TikTok. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments about TikTok and its potential ban in the coming days in the United States. TikTok has appealed this all the way up to the Supreme Court, the United States government, arguing on the side of a TikTok ban and or a for sale. TikTok obviously making a case against that on First Amendment grounds. We heard a little bit from the lawyers and the Supreme Court justices themselves. Let's take a listen here to the Solicitor General of the United States on the case for banning TikTok.

Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court, the Chinese government's control of TikTok poses a grave threat to national security. No one disputes that the PRC seeks to undermine U.S. interests by amassing vast quantities of sensitive data about Americans and by engaging in covert influence operations. And no one disputes that the PRC pursues those goals by compelling companies like Bankdance to secretly turn over data and carry out PRC directives.

Those realities mean that the Chinese government could weaponize TikTok at any time to harm the United States. TikTok collects unprecedented amounts of personal data, and as Justice Sotomayor noted, it's not just about the 170 million American users, but also about their non-user contacts who might not even be engaging with the platform. That data would be incredibly valuable to the PRC.

For years, the Chinese government has sought to build detailed profiles about Americans, where we live and work, who our friends and coworkers are, what our interests are, and what our vices are. TikTok's immense data set would give the PRC a powerful tool for harassment, recruitment, and espionage.

On top of that, the Chinese government's control over TikTok gives it a potent weapon for covert influence operations. And my friends are wrong to suggest that Congress was seeking to suppress specific types of content or specific types of viewpoints. Instead, the national security harm arises from the very fact of a foreign adversary's capacity to secretly manipulate the platform to advance its geopolitical goals in whatever form that kind of covert operation might take.

So that was the voice of the U.S. Solicitor General. We did have some questioning going back and forth on this, some of which was quite skeptical of the U.S. government, some of which seemed to be amenable. Let's take a listen to that.

I guess what I would say, you began by saying that the cure for concerning speech is counter speech. Here, I dispute the premise that Congress was specifically concerned about any particular subject or any particular viewpoint. It wanted to close off the capability of a foreign government. But in any event, it's very hard to engage in counter speech when you don't know because someone is secretly manipulating the platform behind the scenes. And in particular, what the PRC has the capability to do is simply silence American voices. Wouldn't the same thing be true with a newspaper owned by a foreign company and a foreign government?

You wouldn't know when it's exercising editorial discretion about this article or that article or how it's doing it. So maybe we just need to shut down the Oxford University Press in America or you pick it. Any other foreign owned Politico, I was told today is owned by Germany.

That would all be okay on your theory so long as Congress designates that country a foreign adversary? We are not asking the court to articulate bright-line rules to govern all kinds of hypothetical situations. I understand that, but I am testing your argument. Yes, and what I want to acknowledge is that sometimes the court has recognized that a speaker-based preference might reflect a content-based preference.

And in the context of ownership of a newspaper, for example, in part because a newspaper is a one-way channel of communication and is generally understood to represent to some extent its publisher's views, maybe the court would more readily infer that a regulation targeting that is actually aiming to target content. But I don't think the court could draw the same conclusion here. I'm not talking about the compelling interest or anything. I'm talking about the tailoring.

you're saying we have no alternative but to stop this speech altogether. So that was the counter questioning by Justice Gorsuch. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen from SCOTUS blog. C2, please. They write, quote, the Supreme Court is skeptical of ban on Tic Tac, Tic Tac. I almost said Tic Tac.

attack like Dave Ramsey does. They say the Supreme Court on Friday was divided over the constitutionality of a federal law that would require social media giant TikTok to shut down unless a Chinese parent company can sell by January 19th. That's in six days. During the two hours of oral arguments, the justices raised questions about the law at the center of the case, whether it restricts TikTok's freedom of speech

as well as about what will happen if there is no sale by the deadline. So this gets back to that law that was previously passed, the Foreign Controlled Applications Act. We talked about it quite a bit at the time. It was actually attached to the Ukraine-Israel package, of course. The law identifies China and three other countries, North Korea, Russia, and Iran, as quote-unquote foreign adversaries of the United States and bars the use of these apps controlled by those countries. Now, TikTok itself says,

has resolved a question about a potential for sale, saying that they would rather shut down the app in the United States unless the ban is lifted. Let's just put that up there on the screen, C3, please, to bring this discussion. So we have got six days. We're staring down the barrel, and it seems very possible that TikTok is in fact banned the very day before Donald Trump becomes the president.

of the United States. And it is an interesting Supreme Court case. I have no idea which way they're going to rule because of people like Justice Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, who seem to be a little bit more libertarian. It also is very possible that some of the other justices, liberal justices, side with the government here. - Yeah. - Because they're talking about the Protecting Americans Act from foreign whatever controlled companies is an act

Congress, it wasn't an executive order like Donald Trump tried in the past. Their question of constitutionality would come on First Amendment grounds.

The law itself has nothing to do with speech. It's purely about the controlling interest of any of these platforms over an X amount of money that hits influence for the amount of revenue and market cap that it has in addition to the foreign tailoring and a number of other criteria. The name TikTok does not apply in the bill, by the way. It's obviously written about TikTok.

But it's about any potential app that would rise to that. So constitutionality-wise, I think they have a tough time. And TikTok itself does seem to be prepared to just shut down the app entirely. Does raise some questions about that because the Chinese government itself would have to allow the sale of TikTok. And they have said that they would literally never do so. Just so you know, it's not about TikTok's own thing. But yeah, it seems very possible. It would be a big change, I think, to American life. What is it, 100 million Americans use TikTok every single day? I think it's 100 million.

My daughter, Ella, she's a 16-year-old. She was like, if Trump brings back TikTok, he's going to be so popular with my generation. Well, TikTok, Trump is pro-TikTok. Yeah. Much to my own strength. I mean, Trump was the original, I mean, he was the original mover on trying to ban TikTok, took actions at the end of his administration that didn't really pan out.

Then you had a growing bipartisan consensus under the Biden administration. And I do think and, you know, it's Mitt Romney admits as much and I can read his quote here that a lot of that growing bipartisan support for TikTok actually was about speech because they did not like the pro-Palestinian advocacy that was going on there.

So you have that. Then you have Trump, not only one of his big donors is also a big TikTok investor. Yes. But in addition, Trump himself gets very popular on TikTok. Yeah, he had 15 million followers, I think. So suddenly he has a different feeling about TikTok.

both because of the money and also because of his own ego. So that's kind of where we are. But just to get back to Mitt Romney, and this is actually important, I think, for the case, because you heard there the Solicitor General multiple times being like, well, I reject that TikTok was banned because of what's being said on the platform. However, Senator Mitt Romney at a forum said, some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature.

If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts. So I'd note that's of real interest and the president will get the chance to make action in that regard. So making explicit that in his view, the reason why not just him but other of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle decided, you know what, we are on board with this TikTok ban was because of

of pro-Palestinian sentiment on the platform in the sense that like, ah, we can't control this and these kids are getting out of control. And remember the whole flap over like sharing the Osama bin Laden letter? - Yes. - That like fueled the whole conversation as well that was going on around TikTok. So that's part of why the Solicitor General is so insistent that like, no, no, no, it didn't have anything to do with that because if it is about cracking down on certain speech that the government just doesn't like,

Then you could see the court ruling in the other direction. I mean, I genuinely don't know which way this is going to go. It seems fairly evenly divided. The ideological splits are kind of unpredictable and interesting as you were laying out. And then there's also just, look, this was a bill that was passed with significant bipartisan support that was, you know, it was a project that was engaged in across the Trump and the Biden administrations and went through the legislative process. The Supreme Court is usually like relatively deferential.

to when you have significant bipartisan legislation that gets passed. So there's that weighing on it too. We'll see. And I don't think, like it's possible that TikTok and the Chinese government are effectively saying, no, we'll shut it down before we sell it, that that's kind of like a negotiating tactic and posturing. But I don't actually think it is because think of what precedent that sets, right?

Right. Then any Chinese tech company could be shut down under the same. Oh, the horror of that precedent, which they force our companies to abide by. But that's not actually true. So, I mean, they have a series. Yeah, they have a series of restrictive laws in China that if, you know, Twitter or whatever want to operate it. Yes, they have to deal with Chinese government censorship and whatever. But they didn't explicitly ban like you can't have, you know, an American app banned.

in the country. And this is a broader, would actually be a broader and more directed ban. So it's not just about China. Like, obviously, I think this is silly. I think the idea of the data, I think that's just a kind of made up concern. The data that exists on TikTok about all of us exists out there in the world for acquisition anyway. The idea of like recruiting spies on there or whatever seems extremely far-fetched to me. So in any case,

It also isn't just about China. It's really any country that the Congress takes umbrage at. They could decide effectively like no one but us gets to have a tech company that performs as a Senate in the country. Yeah, and what's wrong with that? That's not bad. That's actually – that's what the Chinese do. And by the way, Facebook is actually explicitly banned.

in China, and so is Twitter and Google. So why is that? Well, they have decided that they want total control over their internet, which they use for propagandistic and censorship purposes. It is basic market fairness. The United States has no obligation, nor should it, to allow companies who are wholly controlled by foreign companies to operate, especially here on vast scale, and assume hundreds of millions of dollars social position or market position in

addition to over 100 million Americans using this product every day. Everyone should know what I've been against and for banning TikTok now for what? Since 2018, long before any sort of Palestinian concern over it. I won't deny it certainly had an impact, but the point being that

At a basic level, we do not allow foreign companies to operate here when our companies cannot do business over there. It's a market fairness. It's the same principle of tariff and reciprocal trade. Now, the argument from TikTok is absurd, which is that they have a First Amendment right to operate in America. No, you don't. No foreign company has a First Amendment right to operate here. Americans have First Amendment rights to express their own speech.

Unfortunately, actually, in my opinion, it doesn't even apply to First Amendment grounds on our tech companies, which I think it should. I think the First Amendment should apply to any technology company operating in the U.S., but it doesn't. So it's a facile, ridiculous thing. I mean, if we think all the way back to early days, during the Cold War, would you allow a Russian KGB-operated company to achieve vast market position in the U.S.? No, never. Never.

And in Russia, they would laugh at you. Same in China. They can't even believe that they have been blessed to allow a trillion-dollar market cap company to basically grow and become one of the dominant social media platforms in the nation that they consider their greatest adversary. So, look, it should have been banned since 2018. It should never even have been allowed to operate it.

And actually, I think if you go and you look at my original monologues, one of the things I warned about is this thing is gonna get so popular that banning it will become politically untenable. So we should do it now, well before it takes off and becomes its own thing. But listen, sorry teens and other phone addicts out there. I hope it gets banned. I've been wanting it for quite some time, long before Trump sold out because Jeff Yass, his billionaire mega-donor, decided who owns a large position in ByteDance

a Chinese company, I think he's worth like 25 billion, something like that. Huge portion of his net worth is in ByteDance. Convinced Trump to do a total 180 on it. By the way, this is the other thing I don't get. Instagram Reels is fine, what's so wrong with that? And spinning off fine, making its own company, I'm totally fine with that. Why TikTok, like the algorithm itself has been totally replicated across a variety of other social platforms. Why does it have to be on TikTok? It's not like all that unique of a technology. No one can ever answer that question either.

What's wrong with Reels? What's wrong with any of these that you can mindlessly scroll? YouTube Shorts or any of these others. It's what developed, right? So it's where everybody is. Yeah, it's just first mover advantage. Yeah, it's where everybody is. It's the platform they're used to, et cetera. So in any case, I mean, listen, I reject the new Cold War framing and I think the Nationals

security concerns are silly and overblown. I don't think that's why they passed it. I think they passed it because of, like, you know, not wanting to show Israeli atrocities, which is a crackdown on speech in the sense of, like, oh, we don't get to be the ones that control it. The data concerns, I think, are overblown. But in any case, in terms of what's going to happen here, I really genuinely don't know how the Supreme Court is going to rule. And then, um,

I expect that probably even if the shutdown does go into effect, that Trump is going to find a way to try to make a deal to bring it back is what I expect, because obviously he did a 180 on this important to one of his major donors, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, I don't know.

He likes TikTok because he, you know, the genocide is basically complete. So that worry is now over. Don't worry. No one's coming to save the Palestinians. So that worry is dispatched. And Trump is super popular on TikTok. So I don't think he would want to let that platform go away in terms of its political benefit to him personally. So I think he's probably going to figure out a way to keep it alive.

The only way it would work, though, is that he would have to convince China to allow them for a forced sale. I just don't see that. No, I mean, they could pass new legislation. Right, but you'd have to pass a brand new act of Congress. I mean, maybe. That seems difficult.

uh, to get through on this one. It passed with 79 yay votes, including Democrats and Republicans. It was overwhelmingly popular in the House of Representatives. So I'm not saying it's, I mean, actually, I think that is a veto-proof, uh, majority of people who did. Would a number of people really switch just based on what Trump told them to do? Yeah, it's possible. I think a lot of them would. And like I said, they're like, Mitt Romney is admitting that for many of them, the, uh,

Israeli genocide was like the impetus and that's gone. So that concern is lessened. And you got the dear leader saying, I want you to do X, Y, and Z, can give them some fig leaf of like, oh, we implemented some sort of whatever restriction, blah, blah, blah, that alleviates your concerns. So I think he will make a push in that direction. I guess there's no guarantee. Very possible. All right, let's get to MSNBC.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus...

Does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's...

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What's up, everybody? Adnan Burke here to tell you about a new podcast from iHeart Podcast and the National Hockey League. It's NHL Unscripted with Burke and Demers. Hey, I'm Jason Demers, former 700-game NHL defenseman turned NHL network analyst. And boy, oh boy, does daddy have a lot to say. I love you, by the way, on NHL Network.

We're looking forward to getting together each week to chat and chirp about the sport and all the other things surrounding it that we love, right? Yeah, I just met you today, but we're going to have a ton of guests from the colliding worlds of hockey, entertainment, and pop.

Pop culture. And you know what? Tons of back and forth on all things NHL. Yeah, you're going to find that we're not just hockey talk. We're into all kinds of random stuff on this podcast. Movies, television, food, wrestling, even the stuff that you wear on NHL Now. You wish you could pull off my short shorts, Berkey. That's sure to cause a ruckus. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Berk and Demers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Remarkable moment over on MSNBC's program Morning Joe, where Mika Brzezinski still is holding on to the idea that Joe Biden would have beaten Trump this time around. Take a listen to how she makes the case. You give your theory that you think he could have won. Look, everyone knows how I feel. I made it very clear after the debate that I thought he should continue.

But that was not what most people wanted. So but Joe Biden is the kind of person who pulls himself up from rock bottom. And I think he could have stumbled into it. I really do. People responded very badly when he beat Trump during that campaign.

to Trump bullying him or going after his remaining son, people stood up for Joe Biden because they knew who he was. They know who he is. And I think an aging Joe Biden is very self-aware about that. And so is his team around him. And he's still 10 times more qualified than what we've got.

And he's qualified to manage the world stage. I think after that disastrous debate, he did a news conference. Remind me, Lamir, was it the NATO summit? A couple of weeks later, NATO summit was watched. At eight at night. And yep, he got names wrong. Yep. He had to correct himself a few times. But his knowledge of world affairs was excellent.

in-depth and clear and generated exactly what was the reality that this guy could manage the many different hotspots around the world.

Probably the most incredible part of that to me, Sagar, is that she's still holding onto the idea that that NATO press conference was a masterful gambit. I do not remember that press conference being that way. Right. Just to remind people, this is a press conference where he not only introduced Zelensky as Putin...

but also introduced his own vice president as Trump. Yes. This is the press conference. Oh, it was at eight o'clock at night. Oh, bravo, sir. Wow. Incredible performance. That's the press conference she's pointing to. And they did at the time. It was the most gaslighting thing ever. The media at the time. And I think, wasn't it Joe specifically who was like, no, he doesn't have a PhD in foreign policy. He's just that good. He's just that good. And that's also what his press staff said.

Andrew Bates used to often say that. He'd be like, he's just that fucking good. Biden apparently is so delusional, he also believes it. He recently said it at a press conference. Let's take a listen. I think I would have beaten Trump, could have beaten Trump, and I think that Kamala could have beaten Trump, would have beaten Trump. It wasn't about, I thought it was important to unify the party. And when the party was worried about whether or not I was going to be able to move, I

I thought even though I thought I could win again, I thought it was better to unify the party. And it was the greatest honor in my life to be president of the United States, but I didn't want to be one who caused a party that wasn't unified to lose an election. And that's why I stepped aside, but I was confident she could win. There you go. He still thinks he could have won. What does he mean by Kamala could have won? Kamala could have won. She lost, so...

Anyone want to explain that one to me? How's that work? I know, that was a weird one. Who the hell knows what is going on in this man's mind? What world are these people living in? I just don't understand. I mean, at a certain point for Mika and Joe, you know, one comforting thing to me is I always wonder, I'm like, do they really believe this shit? And now I'm like, well, clearly they must believe

You think? How else could you still take to the airwaves today and say that he could have won the election and that the NATO press conference and all that was so mad? Like, what are we talking about? You know, people have seen through this and laughed. I don't know. I don't know. I was reading and, like, she still wants to be friends with whoever his, you know, him and his family and his inner circle. Well, Biden ain't going to be around that long, okay? So I wouldn't be worried about being friends with him.

I don't know. That's how I was reading it. What, you want to be friends with Hunter? Maybe you're right. Maybe she really didn't think that. I think she just believes it. Incredible. I mean, it's just, like, the man did not give a single newspaper interview his entire life.

term in office outside of this one that we just covered. Right. That was it today. Yeah. The US press conferences ever. We're all supposed to be amazed that he could even stand up and speak at a, you know, event that's at 8 p.m. at night. He's been I mean, it's like we don't even have a president. It's like we haven't had a president for even Joe Biden himself said, I'm not sure I could have made it another four years.

But you still think the American people were like, yeah, let's roll that dice. Sure. Why not? I don't know. Totally insane. Totally delusional. You if you were holding on to any idea that you should listen to anything that these people say, like, just please, please get rid of that notion. Because if you are so politically stupid that you genuinely still think that Joe Biden might have been able to win this election, I just I can't help you. Yep. I totally agree. And

And maybe you should take it to heart, boomers and other liberals out there who look to these people for affirmation and for advice. And just keep that in mind next time they tell you. I think they are. I mean, maybe. I think they are, to be honest with you. There has been some, you know, there's been a reckoning. There has been some. I still see Morning Joe on my dog walk, 6.30 a.m. or whatever. I still see two or three televisions that are playing Morning Joe. Who was watching Morning Joe at that hour?

I want to knock on that door and just like tell me about yourself. Who are you? But that's such a DC phenomenon too. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. All right. We've got, oh, Crystal. What are you taking a look at? Well.

I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together on the really no really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus is

Does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's...

It's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up everybody, Adnan Virk here to tell you about a new podcast from iHeart Podcast and the National Hockey League. It's NHL Unscripted with Virk and Demers. Hey, I'm Jason Demers, former 700 game NHL defenseman turned NHL network analyst and boy oh boy does daddy have a lot to say. I love you by the way on NHL Network. We're looking forward to getting together each week to chat and chirp about the sport and all the other things surrounding it that we love, right?

Yeah, I just met you today, but we're going to have a ton of guests from the colliding worlds of hockey, entertainment, and pop.

Pop culture. And you know what? Tons of back and forth on all things NHL. Yeah, you're going to find that we're not just hockey talk. We have all kinds of random stuff on this podcast. Movies, television, food, wrestling, even the stuff that you wear in NHL now. You wish you could pull off my short shorts, Berkey. That's sure to cause a ruckus. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Berk and Demers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Joe and Mika may have gotten a little more than they bargained for recently with a guest appearance by Professor Scott Galloway, who unloaded on the ultra-rich and warned that the current oligarchic path risked revolution. Once you get above a certain level of wealth, you get no incremental happiness. So why on earth would

Would you not go back to a tax policy of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, where say above, pick a big number, 10 million, you actually pay more than 10%, maybe more than 20%, maybe more than 50%? Because the difference between $30,000 a year for a household and $50,000 is enormous to the well-being of that household. Kids in low-income households have higher resting blood pressure. But the difference between making $10 million a year and $15 million a year offers you no happiness.

But these individuals have weaponized government, and we risk revolution, whether it's CEOs being murdered in the street,

Whether it's a Me Too movement that had righteous components of it or Black Lives Matter, what are these movements? They are targeting the wealthy. We are in the midst of a series of small revolutions to correct income inequality. And the reason we put an insurrectionist and a rapist in office is because for the first time in our nation's history, a 30-year-old man or woman isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at 30. Why? Because the majority of households

are having the oxygen sucked out of the room such that a small number of individuals and a small number of companies can be worth more than nation states. Income inequality is out of control. Our tax policy has gone full oligarch.

Full oligarch. Galloway here lays out some pretty undeniable truths that are seldom heard on mainstream airwaves. The results of unchecked capitalism colliding with unlimited money in politics are playing out in front of our eyes every single day. And the outcome? It's nothing less than annihilating catastrophe. We've rushed headlong into an era of full-on zero-sum dog-eat-dog politics, both between individuals and between nation-states.

The apocalyptic LA fires and the response to those fires are a perfect case in point. So first, let's start with the basics here. Whatever legitimate criticisms there are of the political response from Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass,

The primary driver of this LA catastrophe was extreme weather fueled by climate change, something that no state, even one as large as California, can possibly fight on their own. In fact, the data from last year just dropped at the same time as the wildfires, confirming 2024 was once again the hottest year on record. That it was the first year to breach a 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degree Fahrenheit increase from pre-industrial times was

What's more, the last 10 years were all the hottest 10 years on record, lest you think that this jump was an anomaly. Wildfires are but one of the catastrophes which have increased in frequency and severity thanks to human-fueled climate change.

Researchers have taken a look at these specific wildfires in LA and found that man-made impacts are the predominant cause of this catastrophe. In other words, the Santa Ana winds, they aren't the anomaly. The hotter air and drought conditions driven by climate change are what really made this horror. Climate change and its attendant catastrophes are best understood as a consequence of oligarchy, both in terms of the emissions, which have led us to this era of routine catastrophe, and in terms of the lack of sufficient response.

Remember, oil and gas executives at Exxon? They knew that carbon-based fuels were the primary driver of climate change nearly 50 years ago, back in 1977. Instead, though, of acknowledging an unprofitable truth, they engaged in a web of lies and deceit. A massive cover-up to keep the public from understanding the consequences of carbon emissions. They even enlisted in this cover-up some of the very same consultants that the tobacco industry used to lie about the link between their product and cancer.

While it is no longer tenable to out and out deny climate change, this cover-up and obfuscation continues to this day, but with more sophisticated strategies. A couple years back, a lobbyist who thought he was being interviewed for a job was caught on a secret recording by Greenpeace UK explaining ExxonMobil's tactics for blocking action. Like, for example, backing solutions they understand to be politically infeasible, like an across-the-board carbon tax. He also explained the way that they buy politicians and use those politicians as their pawns.

A man boasting at a job interview? Or a never seen before look at how big oil tries to manipulate big power? Or both? First, the targets. Congressmen are fish. Exxon is the fisherman.

When you have an opportunity to talk to a member of Congress, you know, I liken it to fishing, right? You know, you have bait. You throw that bait out. You know, it's all these opportunities that you use. And to use the fishing analogy again, just to kind of reel them in, because they're a captive audience. They know they need you and I need them. Senators pressed to do Exxon's bidding behind closed doors.

You want to be able to go to the chief. And so the chief knows you, that you can go to the chief and say, look, we've got this issue. We need Congressman so-and-so to be able to introduce this bill. We need him to make a floor statement. We need him to send a letter. You name it. We've asked for everything. But it's not just the fossil fuel executives who have an interest in the status quo. The new tech oligarchs are equally interested in downplaying the climate crisis.

This even applies to Elon Musk, who of course founded an electric vehicle company. First of all, implementing an adequate climate response would require upfront federal government spending and a strong federal government, two things the ultra-wealthy absolutely hate because they want to keep their taxes low, and the government too weak to interfere in their business crimes and monopolies.

oligarchs have another massive business interest. Essentially, every large tech company that you've heard of and plenty that you haven't are engaged in an arms race to rapidly develop AI and push towards AGI or artificial general intelligence. The amount of carbon emissions this race is fueling is quite vast. Few companies offer transparency about the energy required to train and run their tools, but research suggests it's extraordinarily energy intensive.

In fact, Google blamed a 48% increase in emissions on its AI development. Microsoft had a similar explanation for its 29% increase in emissions. As NPR writes, quote, Goldman Sachs has researched the expected growth of data centers in the U.S. and estimates they'll be using 8%.

of total power in the country by 2030 that's up from 3% in 2022. Company analysts say, quote, "...the proliferation of AI technology in the data centers necessary to feed it will drive a surge in power demand, the likes of which has not been seen in a generation."

But the oligarch's grip on our government doesn't only block efforts to deal with climate change. As the ultra-wealthy's taxes drop near zero and a weak government allows their monopolies to flourish, fueling massive inequality, the need to forcibly keep the peasants from finding their pitchforks also increases.

That imperative, more than anything else, is what has driven an ever-expanding surveillance and police state. That's why even as our politicians insist we can't afford to deal with climate or to provide healthcare or affordable childcare or free college or world-class infrastructure, there is a never-ending spigot of money for any agency filled with people with guns used to discipline the population. That includes, of course, the military, FBI, CIA, Border Patrol, and, of course, local police forces.

So returning to our Hollywood horror, L.A. spent $1.73 billion on the police department in the last fiscal year, and Mayor Karen Bass upped that funding to $1.99 billion in the current fiscal year for a roughly $130 million increase. Once state and federal monies are included in that overall department budget, it is well over $3 billion. Meanwhile, the fire department budget was cut.

something that turns out to be rather crucial in this moment. But never you mind, since state prison inmates are being pressed into service as firefighters, risking their lives for $10 per day to save homes for billionaires who largely view them as animals.

And while the police that predominantly criminalize the poor are kitted up with military gear and fat budgets in Democrat and Republican cities alike, the kind of police which could curb oligarch financial crimes, they are under constant attack. It is no accident that both Mark Zuckerberg and Andreessen went on Rogan's podcast to trash the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has been inconvenient for both of their bottom lines.

Musk and others have also taken aim at the Securities Exchange Commission, which has dared to regulate crypto, and to investigate Musk for market manipulation. Now, Musk, the oligarch king himself, has been given a direct commission to shape and slash the government in areas where it might theoretically check his power. You can bet any agencies involved in suppression of what Galloway described as mini-revolutions will continue to be well-funded, even as other agencies like the EPA and the National Labor Relations Board, which Musk believes is unconstitutional, are starved.

Elon is one of the Pentagon's top contractors, so you're a fool if you think that budget is going to face any real cuts under him. Instead, his wealth and those of the other favored oligarchs will continue to escalate, reaching new heights never before seen in human history. AI will revolutionize wealth extraction and consolidate even more wealth and power at the very top. And that's to say nothing of the giant tax cut Trump has already promised these billionaires.

And as these billionaires become increasingly untouchable, even by nation stage, each one individually too big to fail, they will go to greater and greater lengths to insulate themselves from the consequences of the globe being run exclusively for their benefit. This, too, we see playing out in LA. Hamilton Nolan wrote an excellent piece on this dynamic titled, quote, "Lifeboat capitalism: some burn, some drown, and some make money either way."

In the piece, he writes that we have a choice to either confront the impacts from climate change together or separately. Together as a nation, helping each other in as egalitarian a way as possible, or in a Darwinian dog-eat-dog scramble for resources where the rich and the well-connected always come out on top of the pile. Of the latter option, he says, quote,

We know what that will look like, don't we? It will look like rich people paying any price for private firefighters to save their mansions as all around them burn. It will look like rich people wrangling government bailouts for their washed-away beach houses as poor people inland languish in the muck. It looks like large swaths of America becoming uninsurable and then being left to only the very rich who are willing to take the risk and the very poor who can't afford to do anything else.

It looks like climate refugees crowding our streets, refugees from poorer countries and then also refugees from our own country. Looks like wealthier people building walls around their safe land and then writing checks to politicians who will tell the panicked middle class people that the poor people are coming to take their place. We can either work to build more lifeboats and to make humane rules about who gets on them, or we can just let the strong people toss the weaker people into the water and sail away. Either by action or by inaction, our government is going to effectively choose one or the other.

I don't have to tell you which choice is being made in the current political dynamic. Look around. Billionaires building bunkers, learning to fight, buying properties in New Zealand, building literal spaceships in case they need to flee this doomed civilization altogether. Buying entire social media platforms to spread a warped version of reality which always happens to align with their own interests. They've decided to roll the dice. That they'll be able to personally escape the consequences of the world that they themselves set up using their wealth and power as a shield.

To return briefly to Scott Galloway, whose video we started this monologue with, while he can apparently see these dynamics pretty clearly when it comes to the U.S. context, he is completely blind when it comes to the same dog-eat-dog dynamics which are presently ascending on the global stage. He celebrated Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza. Their unrestrained barbarity, backed by the global superpower, has helped to cement a global order that mirrors the zero-sum Darwinian scramble that increasingly characterizes our domestic life.

Might makes right, the strong will brazenly and brutally gobble up whatever resources they possibly can, with military budget ever expanding to try to make sure that no other nations might get to have a say. These wars for resources are frequently also driven by the insatiable appetites and needs of the oligarch class whose children are never the ones sent to fight and die.

In other words, oligarchy is the issue that connects all other issues, war, climate, poverty, censorship, democracy. It's no accident that as the ultra-wealthy have pulled away into a superclass of global masters, we become unable to solve a single problem that really requires collective action. Instead, we'll have to watch the fires burn and pray our loved ones are not in the disaster zone this time. And, Sagar, this is a more...

And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together on the really no really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus is

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What's up everybody, Adnan Virk here to tell you about a new podcast from iHeart Podcast and the National Hockey League. It's NHL Unscripted with Virk and Demers. Hey, I'm Jason Demers, former 700 game NHL defenseman turned NHL network analyst and boy oh boy does daddy have a lot to say. I love you by the way on NHL Network. We're looking forward to getting together each week to chat and chirp about the sport and all the other things surrounding it that we love, right?

Yeah, I just met you today, but we're going to have a ton of guests from the colliding worlds of hockey, entertainment, and pop.

Pop culture. And you know what? Tons of back and forth on all things NHL. Yeah, you're going to find that we're not just hockey talk. We have all kinds of random stuff on this podcast. Movies, television, food, wrestling, even the stuff that you wear in NHL now. You wish you could pull off my short shorts, Berkey. That's sure to cause a ruckus. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Berk and Demers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Joining us now is Derek Thompson. He is a writer at The Atlantic, host of the Plain English podcast, and friend of the show. It's good to see you, sir. Thank you for joining us. Great to be here. Thank you so much. So Derek, you put together a cover story for The Atlantic, which has really hit home for a lot of people. Let's put this up there on the screen. And it is called The Antisocial Century. And in it, you really weigh the costs of a lot of decisions during COVID. But I think more importantly, you just lay out a really a lot of important details

data, which highlights how much time Americans are spending by themselves and specifically just alone and what the social ramifications are of that. So why don't you just highlight some of this for the audience and give them a top line overview of what you discussed?

The top line overview is that we have records going back at least the 1960s that ask Americans, how much time do you spend face-to-face socializing? How much time do you spend alone? And Americans have never, on record, spent more time alone and less time in face-to-face socializing. You know, a lot of people are going to hear this and say, oh, this is mostly about COVID. No.

Socializing declined in the back half of the 20th century between the 1960s and 1990s. Robert Putnam wrote a famous book called "Bowling Alone" where he said, "Look, Americans are joining clubs less, they're joining associations less, they're bowling together less, they are bowling alone." A lot of people in 2000 when that book came out said, "Robert Putnam is full of crap. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Americans are hanging out. They're going to hang out more than ever." But in fact,

Alone time just increased between 2000 and COVID. Of course, it shot up during the lockdowns. But according to one study by the Federal Reserve, we spent more time alone in 2023 than we did in 2021, the year that all those people got vaccinated

left their house, resumed life as normal. - Wow, wow. - So this is a 60-year problem. This is not a pandemic issue. This is a century-long issue that was briefly accelerated by the pandemic. - You know, it's funny, Sagar and I of course talked at length about the Vivek Ramaswamy indictment of American culture and how he was like, "Fewer sleepovers, more math tutoring, fewer mall hangouts." And I was like, "Mall hangouts?"

That doesn't happen anymore. And it was better when it did because it may have been a sort of like shallow consumerist culture, but at least there was some form of community there and some people being together in real life. But as you track, this isn't just about young people. This isn't just about men or just about women. This is truly across all ages and demographics.

So is the source of the problem, so to speak, the smartphone? Is that what we're dealing with here is just like the fallout from these things right here? You said something so important, which is that this isn't a phenomenon about rich or poor. It's not men versus women. It's not black versus white. For literally every single demographic, the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the American Time News Survey, which is run by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Studies, for every single demographic,

face-to-face socializing declined and alone time increased. And if you want to know my answer for why this is happening, look, you can point to any number of phenomena that have happened over the last 60 years. You know, Robert Putnam talks a lot about moral revolutions that happened in America. It's a worthy topic of conversation. I would look at

three technologies. I think the car allowed us to privatize our lives. I think the television allowed us to privatize our leisure. And I think the smartphone allows us to privatize our attention. So that now, even when we're in a crowd, we can be alone. And also somewhat ironically, when we're alone, we feel like we're a part of a crowd. So I actually think that people are having a hard time recharging alone, which is one reason why they're selecting to not

hang out with friends so often. But I would look at this fundamentally as a universal story that relates to universal technologies. And it's hard to think of three technologies more universal than cars, televisions, and smartphones. And I want to emphasize, I'm not so much saying everyone give up your car, everyone give up your television, no one watch Netflix anymore. I'm saying that we need to account for the negative externalities, the accidental side effects of our day-to-day choices.

If we choose over and over again to order food in rather than go out with friends, and we choose over and over again to watch a movie on Netflix rather than go out to dinner with friends, those choices scale over our lives and those choices scale across the country. And that's why everybody seems to be spending more and more time by themselves. So then provocative question here. Why is this bad? You just mentioned negative externalities. What are the negative externalities of being alone?

I would put it in two buckets. First off, we have a lot of really interesting research that shows that people are simply less happy when they're by themselves. Their life satisfaction is much lower. Not when they spend one night alone, you know, one night at a hotel bar, one night I'm a father of a young child. Sometimes I think like, my God, a night alone is a blessing from God, okay?

Sometimes spending some time alone is really lovely, but people who spend more time alone are by and large less happy with their lives. That's the first thing. The second thing is that I think our alone time interacts with society in some strange ways. You know, I talked, for example, to Arlie Hochschild, who's a sociologist at Berkeley, and she mentioned that there's lots of communities, say in rural Kentucky, where Republicans were incredibly vexed

next about the fact that there were all of these illegal immigrants in America. And look, illegal immigrants caused a lot of problems in a lot of different cities. But she pointed out that in rural Kentucky, which has a lot of economic problems, you have almost no immigrants whatsoever. And so one thing that happens, I think, with politics when people spend more time alone is that the issues of their villages weigh less.

and the issues of the country way more. And there used to be the saying of all politics is local. This didn't make it into the piece, but now I feel like all politics is focal. All politics is about what national news tells you to focus on, even if that story has nothing to do with your community. And I think that's a strange and alienating place for our politics to go. So I'd look at both the personal for the cost and the national.

That's an interesting point.

in which every election feels like an existential quest to vanquish an intramural enemy. And you imagine two people who live in a community together who may have, you know, polar opposite views. They're tasked with working together to collaborate on some, like, diversity statement for the school. And because they're forced to deal with each other face to face,

they're actually able to realize like, okay, this isn't some cartoon character villain, this isn't my enemy, this is just Susie, she lives down the street, she thinks about this stuff a little different than I, but we can actually come up with something that we can all agree on. This is also why I've always thought the Union Hall was very important, 'cause this is one of the only places where this type of politics still really occurs in America.

And when you lose that, all you're left with is this very tribal, very one-dimensional sort of existential battle that's playing out in these almost imagined spaces online.

It's really well said. You know, sometimes people ask, you know, what's the difference between talking to someone in the real world, so-called physical world, and talking to them on your phone? Well, there's this researcher at NYU named Jay Van Bavel who looks at how exactly online conversation is different than offline conversation. And he's found that it's more extreme, it's more negative, and there's a ton more out-group hatred. So if you're at a dinner party with people who you might disagree with a little bit,

it. You tend not to be incredibly extreme in your views or incredibly hateful of their views or, you know, throwing the butter at them or something and telling them that their entire worldview sucks. You're drinking the same bottle of wine. You're eating the same chicken. You're passing the same salt. And so in a way, the simple need to coexist with them in a space leads to a kind of sharing of values. But we don't have anything like that on the Internet. And so our conversations go berserk. You know,

to blow a little bit of smoke up for you guys. I think this show does a wonderful job of talking to people that you disagree with and that you agree with, and modeling how to have conversations with people that you disagree with in a way that doesn't simply hate on them for the fact of their disagreement. You disagree? Okay, we're people. We disagree about stuff. That's what living in a democracy is. Now let's have a conversation.

And as you both know, you're active on social media. It's very difficult to have those conversations on Twitter because it's so easy to just quote tweet something that Crystal says and say, oh, let me take this out of context and show you how absolutely absurd this point of view is. Harder to do that at a dinner table. Harder to do that in any kind of conversation because the other person can respond and say, I share your values, but I disagree. So I do think

The migration of our political conversations from the physical world, where all politics is local, to the digital world, where all politics is focal, absolutely changes the nature of our politics. I totally agree with you, Derek. Whenever... So in it, you note a few...

actually good trends. Independent bookstores are booming. Board game cafes are becoming a thing. But, you know, it's a Band-Aid, I think, to a much bigger problem. What are some solutions? Is it just to be aware of the problem? Is it to actively seek things out? What are researchers looking at for activities that seem to at least address these negative externalities? What I would say in the big picture is that, um,

Science and technology tend to move linearly, and culture moves in a cycle. So medicine tends to just get better and better and better, and computers just tend to get faster and faster and faster. That's a story that exists along a line. Culture tends to go back and forth and back and forth. What's the style of jeans these days? Skinny? Roomies? Who knows? Right.

Culture can change. It does change. That's what makes it culture. In the first half of the 20th century, we had an enormously social century. Union rates were up. Marriage went up. Fertility went up. The number of people who joined all kinds of associations went up. There was a kind of moral revolution in togetherness.

And it changed the 1960s and 1970s for a variety of reasons, including perhaps just the rise of a certain kind of American individualism or the resurgence of a certain kind of American individualism. But culture can change. And one thing that I want to do with this piece is just to hold up a mirror to America.

and say, "This is what we've done to ourselves." A handful of decisions that bit by bit, you know, one night at home, one night at home, have collectively created a world where everybody is spending a record amount of time alone. Do you want that? Do you like the reflection in the mirror? And I'm hoping that people say, "No, I don't."

And so they become a little more likely to hang out on Thursday. And that makes their friends a little more likely to invite them out the next Thursday for dinner. And that makes the friend of the friend a little bit more likely to start a book club because they see more people leaving their house, right? Little actions create norms and norms cascading create behaviors and behaviors cascading create movements. And my hope is that the piece is the beginning of just that. Yeah. And you also suggest, though, an overt sort of policy direction, which is if you invest

in areas where there would be a communal experience, whether it's like amazing, I've been to some of these like amazing sports centers or you've got all kinds of leagues and kids playing and adults playing or, you know, beautiful libraries, whatever it is that might capture people's interest that would help to get people out of their homes, off their phones and into these communal spaces. And unfortunately, what we've really seen is a lot of budget cuts for that type of community investment. Derek, I have one more question for you on the political piece because I thought this was an

Interesting insight and different than what the post-Trump re-elect conversation has been. You describe Trump's style as a triumph of this all-tribe, no-village form of confrontation politics.

A lot of the Democratic lessons have been more like, and maybe this is like, you know, a positive direction to go in, but not really responsive to the moment we live in, has been more like, we need to do more outreach. We need to be nicer to people that disagree. When actually, I mean, Trump isn't nice to people who disagree with him. He calls them the enemy. He says he's going to, you know, sick the national security state off, send out the military against

them. He uses every name in the book to describe his enemies. And we're not just talking about elites. We're talking about anyone who disagrees with him and his movement. And you say, you know, actually, that form of politics was very successful, successful enough to put him back in the White House, successful enough to really sort of like, you know, touch on the moment culturally that we're living in. So, you know, what does that mean for Democrats in terms of how they should respond to this moment?

It's a really good question, and I don't have the answer. Not every story is the same story, right? I mean, I wrote this 8,000, 9,000-word piece about the phenomenon that Americans spend an historic amount of time alone, and I think it's making them sadder individually and our society sicker because of it.

I don't want to represent this article as being a kind of Rosetta Stone for the future of Democratic Party politics or Democratic Party messaging. It might be the case that a meaner style of politics in the 2020s and maybe even going forward in the age of the Internet might be more successful because people spend more time alone. And if my job were to be a political consultant, I would say meet people where they are. They're alone.

They're angry. They're spending all of their time on the internet where they feel extreme and an enormous amount of outgroup animosity. Meet them where they are and feed that outgroup animosity. That might be a totally reasonable strategy for winning that election. But there's a lovely concept of the difference between infinite and finite games. And finite games are made to be won and infinite games are made to keep playing.

An election is a finite game. One side wins and one side loses. But life is a kind of infinite game. You want to keep living, you want to keep winning. And it's conceivable that the best strategies for being happy in the world might not be the best strategies for how to win political contests in the next midterm.

Not every story is the same story. And so you want to be sure you know what question you're asking. Is the question how to win in rural Pennsylvania? Or is the question how to live the happiest life in the next few years, right? This piece is focused squarely on the second question. But the first question is, it's damn important. And we need answers there too. That's a really, I love that response. I really do. So we encourage everybody to go read it. Listen to your podcast as well. Derek, thank you so much for joining us, man. We appreciate it. Great to see you, Derek. Thank you.

Thanks to both of you. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate you. The show is going to be late today. Sorry. We talked too much. We had technical difficulties, et cetera. It is what it is. And we will see you all tomorrow.

What's up, everybody? Adnan Virk here to tell you about a new podcast. It's NHL Unscripted with Virk and Demers. Jason Demers here, and after playing 700 NHL games, I got a lot of dirty laundry to air out. Hey, I got a lot to say here, too, okay? Each week, we'll get together and chat about the sport that we love. Tons of guests are going to join in, too, but we're not just going to be talking hockey, folks. We're talking movies. We're talking TV, food, and Adnan's favorite, wrestling. It's all on Le Table. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Virk and Demers on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.