Podcasts about Luddite

On Thursday's Mark Levin Show, are you getting sick and tired of ingrates who have no connection to this country? Take Hasan Piker: born here, raised in Turkey where he was radicalized, and thanks to the Supreme Court, returned here as a citizen. Democrats might be keeping Piker at arm's length, but he is the face of the party. Democrats have embraced radical Islamism and Marxism just like they embraced slavery and segregation in the past. Islamism and Marxism are incompatible with the Judeo-Christian values of America and the Constitution. Most outrageously, Piker says, pound-for-pound, America causes more terrorism than Al-Qaeda. America is turning into Europe, which is dead and doesn't have the will to survive. Later, Bruce Blakeman calls in with an update on the NY Gubernatorial race. Blakeman says that his campaign is in a statistical dead heat, with polling showing him only 3.9% behind in a blue state. New York is facing economic decline, with population, business, and job losses, and warns that continued leadership by Kathy Hochul and Zohran Mamdani would further harm the state. Voters are increasingly recognizing the need for change and policies focused on job creation, economic growth, tax and regulation cuts, lower utility costs, and restoring law and order. Also, many members of Congress lack expertise in AI and data centers yet seek to regulate them. AI development is a competitive race that the United States must win. Any regulation would hinder innovation while allowing other countries to advance. If these doomer-Luddite politicians have their way, the new medicines and technologies resulting from AI data centers that are going to save lives, improve the quality of life, and increase the standard of living for untold numbers of people, would not happen.  They are literally trying to cripple these industries and these businesses, and they are also actively helping the Communist Chinese leapfrog our companies and our country.  Afterward, if the Democrats had their way, they would remove President Trump, Secretary of War Hegseth and Secretary of Education McMahon via impeachment. In other words, they would undertake a coup since impeachment is not intended for the purposes they intend to use it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Technology, Aaron Cline Hanbury suggests, is never a purely neutral tool. But the history of ethical thinking about technology shows that as long as there's been technology, there's been anxiety about it. Or perhaps more accurately, anxiety about what we might do with it. And increasingly, what it might do to us.A journalist, founding editor of Common Good magazine, and author of Wired for Wonder, Hanbury came of age as the internet entered the home and has spent his career reporting from the places where technology, faith, and everyday life collide. Rather than offering another list of screen-time tips, he asks a deeper question: How do we relate to the things we make?In this conversation with Evan Rosa, Hanbury wrestles with what it means to be human when the machines we've made can do more and more. He criticizes the seduction that we should embrace technology simply because it is inevitable. He explores how connection, efficiency, and unrestrained technological freedom quietly became unquestioned goods, why our powers of attention are eroding in real time, and wonders what it might take—personally, communally, and structurally—to reclaim our humanity through presence, and the rough ground of embodied life.About Aaron Cline HanburyAaron Cline Hanbury is a writer and editor whose essays and profiles have appeared in The Atlantic and elsewhere. He is the founding editor of the award-winning magazine Common Good and a past editor of RELEVANT. He writes about the places where technology, faith, and ordinary life meet. His book, Wired for Wonder: Dispatches on Technology, Culture, God, and Self, breaks open the tired binary between tech optimists and Luddites in the context of memoir, ethics, journalism, and theology.Helpful Links and ResourcesWired for Wonder: Dispatches on Technology, Culture, God, and Self, by Aaron Cline Hanbury: https://www.broadleafbooks.com/store/product/9798889833451/Wired-for-WonderAaron Cline Hanbury's website: https://aaronclinehanbury.com/Aaron Cline Hanbury's Substack: https://aaronclinehanbury.substack.comAaron Cline Hanbury on X: https://x.com/achanburyCommon Good magazine: https://commongoodmag.com/author/aaron-cline-hanbury/Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, Albert Borgmann: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo23186480.htmlThe Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt: https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/bookHannah Coulter, Wendell Berry's novel: https://www.counterpointpress.com/books/hannah-coulter/Show NotesAnxiety and technologyPatient zero for life online—coming of age as the internet entered the homeLow-church tradition, quick to adopt and ask questions laterJournalism as a front-row seat to three decades of changeEarly adopter or Luddite? Rejecting the spectrum's false endsThe device paradigm—technology as pattern, not neutral toolA hammer's telos, and why misuse cuts against a tool's designMade things have a maker—intentions baked into what we buildThe inevitability argument—get on board or get run overResistance is futile? The Borg, Cannes, and defeatismProgress as reversion—tobacco bans, ocean dumping, processed-food rollbacksFamily Guy, satire, and pulling tech ethics out of the esotericThe class and income divide the internet promised to eraseOnline radicalization vs the promise of mass educationChildren as the guinea pigs of early adoptionChromebooks, daycares, and offloading discomfort onto kidsTesting tech on the vulnerable—Jonathan Haidt on teen mental healthSocial media vs attention media—commodifying human focusThe plug-in drug—parents, screens, and pacified kidsFocused attention and the feeling of being fully aliveConnection, efficiency, freedom—goods we stopped questioningDunbar's number and the real limits of friendshipOnline ties without public accountability, and bad formationEmbodiment, particularity, and getting back to the rough groundWendell Berry's Hannah Coulter and attention that lasts: https://www.counterpointpress.com/books/hannah-coulter/Skepticism of individual fixes—structure, policy, and churchElementary-school parenting and “the bevy of required apps”#WiredForWonder #AaronClineHanbury #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #TechnologyAndFaith #AttentionMedia #DigitalMinimalism #ChristianEthics #AIandHumanity #DeviceParadigmProduction NotesThis podcast featured Aaron Cline HanburyEdited and Produced by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Noah SenthilA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Calling someone a "Luddite" is usually an insult – shorthand for someone who is behind the times. But the real Luddites weren't just afraid of change; they were a labor movement fighting to save their jobs from being replaced by machines. Today, with the rise of AI, many feel the same kind of existential threat and some are even pushing for a Luddite Renaissance. In this episode, Throughline takes on a listener's question to explore what the 19th-century Luddite rebellion can teach us about technology and human agency.Guests:Katrina Navickas, history professor at the University of Hertfordshire and author of the book Protest and the politics of space and place, 1789–1848Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show's perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

A sermon on Jeremiah 22:1-5; 13-17 for labor day

“We have deluded ourselves into thinking that we are as gods, and we are not.” — John West Back in 2006, at the height of Web 2.0 optimism, Time made YOU person of the year. The user-generated technology of the internet, Time implied, would make all of us into digital gods of memory and forgetting. Twenty years later, the script has been totally flipped. Now we know that the internet is all-too-human. And so are we. This reminder of our mortality is the heart (if that's the right word) of the new book by John West, the double Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal computational journalist. West's The Internet Will Die, and So Will You is a kind of digital memento mori. His argument is metaphysical rather than political. Offline, he writes, our lives are marked by constraint. But we mistake the internet's destruction of physical distance for limitlessness. “We have deluded ourselves into thinking that we are as gods,” he reminds us, “and we are not.” A Christian and a digital deconvert (not an uncommon combination in the technocrati), West wants us to import our mortality online. If we recognize that the internet will decay and finally die, he suggests, we will make it human. (Re)Make it, as us. I've been making a version of this argument since The Cult of the Amateur in 2007. Only West's version — by contrasting Bach, Ecclesiastes, and Mary Oliver with the infinite scroll — is more poetic and musical. Politer too. Noli timere, as the poet Seamus Heaney texted before he died. Be not afraid. Of life, of death. But beware of YOU. Be afraid. Timere. Very afraid. Five Takeaways •       We Are Not Gods. The book's thesis: offline life is marked by constraint — you cannot talk to people farther than you can shout, or hug your child while she's at school — while online we act at a distance and mistake that “foot-loosening technology” for limitlessness. “We have deluded ourselves into thinking that we are as gods, and we are not” — the AI singularity being the theological version of the same delusion, and “a recipe for disaster, both interpersonally, but also within ourselves.” The fix is not logging off but bringing our mortality online: “this is where we live,” and the Internet's magic only stays magical when tempered by limits — “in order for it to be magical, we need the flip side, which is that it can't always be magic.” Andrew's frame: in 2006, Time made YOU person of the year, promising digital gods of memory and forgetting. Twenty years on, the internet is all-too-human — and so are we.•       The Deconvert's Meditation. “No one is more strident than the convert or the deconvert.” West's digital utopianism began in a middle-school computer lab, where an unhappy kid discovered he could find friends and communities online — and it died by monkey's paw: the same mechanism that found him anime fans now routes lonely kids into pro-anorexia TikTok rabbit holes (his own Journal colleagues' reporting) and neo-Nazi forums. “That supercharging is something that I wished for.” He concedes the lineage Andrew has worked since The Cult of the Amateur (2007) and The Internet Is Not the Answer (2015) — and goes further: “I actually think largely, Plato and Postman were right.” Culture must metabolize its technological ruptures. Or, per the Freudian slip Andrew gifted back to him for the next book: its raptures. Andrew's verdict on the lineage: the same argument, more poetic and musical. Politer too.•       A Few Thousand Weeks. On the Luddite summer, West channels past guest Brian Merchant: hatred of technology is usually hatred of lost control. The backlash against AI data centers is about being “completely removed from democratic control over that technology,” and the marketing — a magic box that will take your job — has backfired predictably. His arithmetic of dignity: we get only a few thousand weeks on this earth, and “our dignity demands that we have some say over what we do with our lives.” He cites Freddie deBoer's Copernican principle — everyone believes they live at history's hinge — then breaks it honestly: “but I also think this time, it might be right,” the elder millennial awestruck at the rupture he came of age inside.•       Religious, Not Spiritual. West inverts the modern chestnut: “everyone says they're spiritual and not religious these days. I actually think it's important to be religious, and spiritual can take it or leave it” — religion being “a powerful technology” for binding people into the civic fabric. His Christianity runs to liberation theology: not storing up treasure for the glorious day, but making this world more just now. Hence Bach cantatas, Ecclesiastes, and Mary Oliver as the book's unnamed philosophies — and hence his verdict on the billionaires who struggle with finitude: it doesn't shock him that men who earn millions while sleeping believe themselves gods, since “every dollar is like a little Iago whispering poison into the ears of the Silicon Valley elite.” The advantage belongs to us mere normals, unburdened by the whispering.•       Noli Timere. The Latin on West's X page — be not afraid — was Seamus Heaney's last text message, sent by SMS before the surgery he didn't survive, then carried by the Internet to thousands who found hope in it. That, West argues, is the network at its best: “it is about how you spend your time on the Internet, not what you can do on the Internet.” On memory, his formula is to remember “not more and not less, but rather differently” — choosing what we remember (the Odyssey's oral re-membering, retold body to body) rather than having it forced on us (the red solo cup photos, the traumas that refuse processing). The great mismatch of the web: “the things that we think should be permanent are often the things that are the most impermanent online, and the things that I really wish would fade away are the ones that refuse to.” Andrew's send-off inverts Heaney: be not afraid — of life, of death. But beware of YOU, the ultimate human conceit. Timere. Very afraid. About the Guest John West is a writer and technologist. He reports the news with code at The Wall Street Journal, where his work has won multiple awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes. The Boston Globe called his first book, Lessons and Carols: A Meditation on Recovery, “lyrical and crystalline.” He holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and degrees in philosophy and music performance from Oberlin College, and lives outside Kingston, New York, with his partner, children, and unruly cat. The Internet Will Die, and So Will You (Here Below, September 10, 2026) is his digital memento mori. References: •       The Internet Will Die, and So Will You: On Learning to Live in Our Digital Age by John West (Here Below, September 10, 2026).•       Lessons and Carols: A Meditati...

“It's a dying gasp of white supremacy — and I say dying with a caveat, because that part depends on us.” — Sonali Kolhatkar Yesterday, Wendy Lesser suggested that Americans can learn much from the anti-fascist history of Berlin in the 1930s. Today, Rising Up With Sonali host Sonali Kolhatkar is even more explicit. Yes, she argues in her new book, Breaking ICE, the 2020s are eerily similar to the 1930s, especially in what she calls “state terror” and “MAGA fascism.” In 2023, Sonali Kolhatkar came on this show to talk about Rising Up, a book about the power of narrative. Three years later, her new book describes what she sees as the dying gasp of white supremacy. But to fully die, she argues, the community needs to rise up. So, like the perennial fascist threat, the ability to tell stories is a perpetual feature of politics. Thus Breaking ICE, Kolhatkar's story of stories about community defense against MAGA fascism. Five Takeaways •       Narrative Is Everything. The crackdown, Kolhatkar argues, was built on stories: immigrants “poisoning the blood of the nation” — Hitlerian language, used repeatedly — recast a population of workers and families as criminals, justifying the funding, the raids, and the denial of due process. The counternarrative is her book's project: the activists who retold the story of ICE agents as Gestapo-like masked thugs, and did it so successfully that public opinion has swung back. Trump, she argues, overplayed his hand — every day brings another story of a Trump voter whose spouse is deported at a routine check-in, protesting “this is not what we voted for.” The sequel to Rising Up thus practices what that book preached: narrative as the primary weapon of politics — a weapon, she notes via Springsteen and the protest singers, that artists have always wielded and the right has lately understood better than the left.•       A Dying Gasp — With a Caveat. Asked flatly whether this is a repeat of the 1930s, Kolhatkar answers yes — and adds that the echo is deliberate, down to “homeland,” a favorite term of the Nazis that George W. Bush domesticated. But the deeper lineage is homegrown: her interviewees Ibram X. Kendi and Robin D. G. Kelley trace American fascism through Native dispossession and mass enslavement — authoritarian, anti-democratic, racist. ICE, on this reading, is simply race-based policing restored. Hence her verdict: “a dying gasp of white supremacy,” with the caveat that the dying depends on us. No magic bullets, no finish line: “democracy is an ongoing exercise. There is no resting when it comes to freedom.” Fittingly, the episode lands the day after Wendy Lesser's Berlin hour — Kolhatkar making explicit what the cautionary mirror implied.•       The Mamdani Lesson. The hour's sharpest political analysis: flip the script on electoral politics. Politicians want elections as popularity contests — “this is who I am, who's behind me?” — when voters should be saying “this is what we want, who will back our demands?” The not-Trump ad is the losing move: it was Hillary Clinton's approach, Kamala Harris's approach, and now Xavier Becerra's in California. The winning move is Zohran Mamdani's: voters could instantly name what he was for — free buses, city-run grocery stores, rent control, universal childcare, fixed potholes. Her model is the civil rights movement, which didn't wait for a savior politician but marched and forced hands. And her defense against the radicalism charge: what the American left demands — healthcare for all — is centrist in Europe. If public schools are education for all, why not Medicare for All? And to Andrew's pushback — doesn't Abolish ICE alienate the persuadable middle? — her answer is the polling: majorities already oppose the raids, because Trump overreached.•       What State Terror Looks Like. The subtitle's claim, cashed out: downtown Los Angeles under curfew, freeways shut, armed National Guardsmen at the federal buildings — and the refrain she heard nationwide: who will save us from these masked thugs? The realization that the police belong to the same structure taught the lesson in her credo: only the people can save the people. The terror is bureaucratic as much as theatrical — green-card applicants seized at airports en route to see friends, families ripped apart, and 20,000 immigrant children stripped of legal representation in defiance of a law George W. Bush signed (“who we thought at the time was the fascist authoritarian and is now, you know, like a Democrat”). Against it, the book's nineteen voices — from Maine to Georgia to LA — deploy whistles, bullhorns, patrols, documentation, and, in a civil-rights echo, holding hands and singing to bring the temperature down. With Viet Thanh Nguyen, Kendi, Kelley, and a foreword by Roberto Lovato supplying the long view.•       Detention Centers & Data Centers. The conversation's bridge to this show's long Luddite summer: Kolhatkar sees the fight against immigrant detention centers and the fight against AI data centers as one struggle, since both, she argues, distract from and serve the same billionaire fleecing — “if we are busy blaming the day laborer at the street corner for stealing our job, we're not gonna look at what Elon Musk has done.” Even MAGA voters, she notes, don't want to live next to either. On movements that wither, her revision: Black Lives Matter didn't fizzle, it was muzzled — Musk bought Black Twitter, its biggest bullhorn — and its abolitionist platform reads as current as ever: take the first four letters away from police, and you're left with ICE. Her ask of journalism itself: solutions journalism — start with how people are fighting back, not one more story of how they're being crushed. About the Guest Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist and the founder, host, and executive producer of Rising Up With Sonali, the long-running television and radio show airing on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. A senior editor at YES! Magazine and writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, she is co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission and serves on the board of the Justice Action Center. Her books include Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice, Talking About Abolition, and Bleeding Afghanistan (as co-author). Breaking ICE: Community Defense Against State Terror and MAGA Fascism (Seven Stories Press) gathers nineteen of her conversations from the front lines, with a foreword by Roberto Lovato. References: •       Breaking ICE: Community Defense Against State Terror and MAGA Fascism by Sonali Kolhatkar (Seven Stories Press, 2026).•       Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice — the book behind her first Keen On appearance, three years ago.•       Among the book's nineteen voices: Viet Thanh Nguyen, past Keen On guest Ibram X. Kendi, Robin D. G....

Long after humanity has vanished, an automated global manufacturing system keeps grinding on — building, shipping, and consuming with no one left to use any of it. But when a single broken machine exposes a gap nobody programmed for, the system's last-resort protocol sets off a chain reaction with nothing left to stop it. J.T. Shannon delivers a darkly funny, quietly devastating post-human parable about automation, purpose, and what happens when a machine keeps doing its job long after the reason for it is gone.We love bringing you stories from listeners just like J.T. — if you've got a tale of your own itching to be told (sci-fi, horror, supernatural, or anything in between), we'd love to hear it. Submit your story at submissions.soundconceptmedia.com and you could be featured right here on Auditory Anthology.If you have a story you'd like to contribute to the series, you can visit https://submissions.soundconceptmedia.com/You can support the show by becoming a paid subscriber on Substack: https://auditoryanthology.substack.comBy becoming a paid subscriber you can listen to every episode completely ad-free!Curator: Keith Conrad linktr.ee/keithrconradNarrator: Darren Marlar https://darrenmarlar.com/Other shows hosted by Darren:Weird Darkness: https://weirddarkness.com/Paranormality Magazine: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/paranormalitymagMicro Terrors: Scary Stories for Kids: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/microterrorsRetro Radio – Old Time Radio In The Dark: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/retroradioChurch of the Undead: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/churchoftheundead Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“If we continue to build for people and not with people, we won't have a say in what this technology will look like or do in ten or twenty years.” — Salima Bhimani Finally some inventive news in our summer of Luddite discontent. Salima Bhimani spent six and a half years at Google X's moonshot factory as its first Chief Strategist for Responsible Tech. So thank her for the (responsible) magic of Alphabet's Waymo, Wing, and DeepMind. In her new book, Invent Now, Bhimani provides a map for the next wave of moonshots. No, she speculates, they probably won't come out of Silicon Valley. But, yes, they will come from somewhere. Her invention was formed long before Silicon Valley. She remembers staring at the Toronto subway from her father's magazine stall and wondering not where the trains went but “what is our relationship to this tube?” An ethnographer by training, Bhimani arrived at Google X from a world of government and nonprofits where “constraint was bread and butter.” At Alphabet, of course, she was spoilt with endless money and runway. Although that didn't always guarantee moonshot success. Moonshots fail, she explains, because they are always more than technologies. They are ecosystems, and they need the approval of regulators, communities, and consumers. Take, for example, the abortive Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet's smart-city bet in her hometown of Toronto, which failed to recognize the practical realities of utopian city-planning. So what will be the most dramatic moonshot of the twenty-first century? No, she says, it probably won't be consumer rocketships to Mars or a cure for cancer. Instead, it will be about a post-labor society. What is human purpose when it's not work? No wonder such an outrageous idea probably won't come out of work-obsessed Silicon Valley. Five Takeaways •       A Nuanced Optimist. Bhimani isn't surprised by the Luddite lurch: people feel “compressed by things they can't control,” surrounded by technology doing things they don't understand — and it's hot out. But against thirty years of Silicon Valley boosterism she offers neither cheerleading nor despair: hold the tension. Technology surveils, and drones make war; technology also lets more people solve problems that were previously unsolvable. She refuses the binary of the moment — the abundance gospel of the Andreessens versus the scarcity warnings of James Crawford — predicting instead “abundance in some areas and scarcity in others”: your spreadsheet skills may become worthless precisely as your capacity to build becomes unprecedented. The task is holding both truths with what she calls a discerning eye, treating technology as a co-partner in a relationship where the friction stays alive.•       From the Toronto Subway to the Moonshot Factory. Her father ran a magazine stall in the Toronto subway, and young Salima stared at the trains asking an ethnographer's question: not where are the people going, but “what is our relationship to this tube?” She came to Alphabet from government and nonprofits, where “constraint was bread and butter” — and met the opposite: endless money, endless runway, and audacity as the house style. As Alphabet's first Chief Strategist for Responsible Tech, she sat with the CEOs of the Other Bets asking about trade-offs: “Are you willing to take on the potential that your drone could be used in nefarious ways — and how are you gonna ensure that doesn't happen?” Now on her own — no Google badge to fly doors open — she finds leaving “opens up the aperture”: fifty-one years of experience, and both worlds, constraint and abundance, informing everything she builds.•       She Folded Her Own Moonshot. The episode's quiet bombshell: after leaving Alphabet, Bhimani co-founded a drone-detection company — and discovered what it feels like when the awkward questions are aimed at you. The full-stack solution she was building could genuinely help cities and communities; it could also be used for “all kinds of nefarious things.” Intention, she warns, is “pie in the sky when people actually are impacted”: the moment to map the worst case is now, not five years after your technology is loose in the world — because you will have to live with the choices you make. Some people can live with the range of implications; she and her co-founders decided they couldn't: “We folded our drone company because the implications are not something that any of us could have lived with.” Responsible tech, practiced on herself.•       Moonshots Are Ecosystems (Ask Sidewalk). The factory's deepest lesson: a moonshot is never just a technology. Wing isn't drones — it's regulators, safety, and whether communities want packages falling on their porches; the ecosystem must come first, not at the last mile. Sidewalk Labs — Alphabet's smart-city bet in her own Toronto — consulted widely, meant well, and died anyway on public distrust of big tech's data appetite: an early tremor, Andrew suggests, of today's earthquake against data centers, and evidence of a “massive gap” between society and technology that still hasn't closed. Google fumbling Geoffrey Hinton's generative breakthrough shows the other constraint: inside a company the size of a country, innovation must also become the next billion-dollar business. The counterexample is Waymo — sixteen years of perseverance toward John Krafcik's bigger mandate (self-driving technology, cars merely one expression) — and perhaps Demis Hassabis, whom the latest reshuffle might just free “to be Demis.”•       Step In, Not Stepped Out. AI wasn't born yesterday — it spent thirty or forty years in labs, integrated into our lives in the background — and that incubation is precisely her warning: “If we continue to build for people and not with people, we won't have a say in what this technology will look like or do in ten or twenty years.” The large language models belong to “the Googles and the Anthropics,” and most of us aren't inside those companies. Her flip: if such powerful things were built in incubated spaces, imagine what could be built in unincubated ones — collective intelligence as our superpower, moonshots born from the convergence of places, people, and contexts rather than from Silicon Valley's playbook. The century's biggest moonshot, she suspects, is labor itself: what is human purpose when it's not work? Her closing instruction, and the episode's stamp: “We gotta step in and not be stepped out.” About the Guest Salima Bhimani, PhD, was Alphabet's first Chief Strategist for Responsible Tech, Business, and Leaders, working for six and a half years with moonshot companies including Waymo, Wing, DeepMind, and Google X. An ethnographer by training who came to Silicon Valley from government and nonprofits, she is now CEO of 10X Responsible Tech and a senior fellow at AI 2030. Invent Now: The Next Leap in Moonshots (John Wiley & Sons, 2026), her first book, introduces the Third Space — a new lens for building moonshots from the convergence of technolog...

“Our language is valuable, and we've gotta hold on to that. That's the most human thing we have.” — Jeff Jarvis Last week, to celebrate episode 3,000 of the show, the New York Times' Sam Roberts articulated the art of the obituary. Borrowing from Citizen Kane, he described it as the Rosebud method. Obits are all about life (death only figuring as an afterthought), Roberts explained, so hunt for the moment which defines that life. Today's show is a kind of obituary of that type. Only it's about the life of a machine and the mass media that emerged in its wake. In Hot Type, tech historian Jeff Jarvis introduces us to the magnificent late 19th century machine that not only gave birth to industrial mass media, but also bankrupted Mark Twain. It's the history of the Linotype, the machine invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler that ended four hundred and fifty years of setting type, as Jarvis puts it, “one damn letter at a time.” It's an extraordinary story. Before the Linotype, American daily newspapers were limited to a 4,000 circulation. First installed at the New York Tribune on July 3, 1886, the Linotype scaled print, thereby enabling the age of mass circulation newspapers, magazines and books. It appeared so infinitely scalable that Mark Twain poured his entire family fortune into its doomed rival, the Paige Compositor. He lost all his money, of course, making it his Rosebud moment — Citizen Twain, so to speak. But for the rest of us, Mergenthaler's magnificent type machine was so hot that it revolutionized 20th century culture in the same way that AI is now revolutionizing 21st century reading and writing. The art of obituary. A description of life, not death. Five Takeaways •       One Damn Letter at a Time. For four hundred and fifty years after Gutenberg, virtually every word in every language was set by hand, one letter at a time — which is why the average American daily circulated just 4,000 copies, “a small Substack newsletter.” Steam-powered presses, cheap wood-pulp paper, stereotyping, and the telegraph had solved every other bottleneck; the typesetter with a composing stick was the last. More than 300 typesetting machines failed before Ottmar Mergenthaler — a Baltimore watchmaker who knew nothing about printing, prodded by James O. Clephane, once a stenographer in Lincoln's cabinet — had the eureka: stop imitating hand-setting and mold entire lines of type at once. Installed at the New York Tribune on July 3, 1886, the Linotype made type fresh for every edition, let print catch up with the telegraph, and gave birth to mass media.•       The Union That Didn't Smash the Machine. The book's great labor surprise: the typesetters didn't fight the typesetting machine. Having studied the Luddites' defeat, the International Typographical Union sent spies into the Tribune's composing room, concluded the Linotype was inevitable, and demanded to operate it — with Mergenthaler's blessing. Thirty thousand jobs disappeared, returned to full strength within five years, and grew for seventy-five more, making the ITU America's most powerful union. Then came wave two — paper tape, computers that could hyphenate and justify, cold type, PostScript — and this time the union fought: six of nine New York papers died in the strikes, Bert Powers traded automation for lifetime job guarantees (the last holder retired from the New York Times around 2012), and Murdoch's secret Wapping plant ended Fleet Street — a century, almost exactly, after machine number one. The two lessons: take charge of the technology if you can; if it will replace you outright, find something else to do.•       The Machine That Drove Twain Mad. Mark Twain wanted to be filthy rich and stop writing — so he poured his fortune, and his wife's family coal fortune, into the Paige Compositor, the Linotype's brilliant, doomed rival: only two ever built, the sole survivor sitting in the basement of Hartford's Mark Twain House looking like “a railroad with nowhere to go.” Bankruptcy followed — a far deeper shame in the nineteenth century — and Twain repaid every debtor. Jarvis reads the scars in the fiction: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court ends with technology destroying technology in an Armageddon of Camelot; the unfinished No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger conjures strange beasts endlessly duplicating pages — scale itself as nightmare. He lost all his money, of course — his Rosebud moment, as Andrew puts it, borrowing from Sam Roberts' art of the obituary on episode 3,000. The machine robbed Twain not of his humor, Jarvis concludes, but of his love of technology. The biopic pitch: Citizen Twain.•       From One Gilded Age to Another. The Linotype era bridges Twain's Gilded Age — tycoons of steam, steel, and wire — to ours, with its barons of bits and AI. Whitelaw Reid, the book's villain and the first capitalist media mogul, used the machine against his own union and predicted newspapers would never exceed eight pages (completely wrong); Frank Munsey invented the attention economy at a dime a copy — content as honey, audience as product, a model that ruled mass media and infected the Internet. Today's moguls fare no better in Jarvis's telling: Altman selling “vending machines for intelligence” that actually dispense compute, Amodei “the paragon of safety” with a skewed definition of it, all chasing the Valhalla of AGI, “pure BS.” His hope: open-weight models to check the frontier companies. His warning against banning them: guardrails are a fool's errand — the printing press was a general machine, and nobody could tell Gutenberg to keep it from Martin Luther.•       Words Matter, Damn It. The through-line from Jarvis's blog post to the book: language is the most human thing we have. His objection to Anthropic's watermark isn't Keith Teare's shame argument — it's that a scheme treating “overcast” and “gray” as interchangeable declares all language fungible, “a cultural statement damaging to our craft.” His own AI practice is disclosed down to a confessional footnote in Hot Type for a single borrowed phrase: Gemini may pull facts (“don't write for me”), but what you express must be what you want to express. The typewriter shaped Nietzsche and made Hemingway; the newsroom computer made Jarvis an editor more than a writer; Quark made everyone typesetters — “in the end, it was all still me.” Against Kirschenbaum's gray goo, he holds up Pope Leo (work brings dignity; not a Luddite) and poetry itself. Hot type revolutionized 20th century culture the way AI is now revolutionizing 21st century reading and writing. The art of obituary: a description of life, not death — and the most human thing we have is the words. About the Guest Jeff Jarvis is the Emeritus Leonard Tow Professor of Journalism Innovation at CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. The creator and founding managing editor of Entertainment Weekly, he has been TV critic for TV Guide and People, Sunday editor of the New York Daily News, and a media columnist for The Guardian. His books include What Would Google Do?, The Gutenberg Parenthesis, Magazine, and The Web We Weave; he blogs at Buzzmachine...

“I don't feel any shame at all recruiting an army of AI agents to help me accomplish my goals. But I think society is trying to make me feel shame.” — Keith Teare Welcome to the summer of America's luddite discontent. Not only are left and right calling for an AI ban, but tech loathing has even infiltrated Silicon Valley in the form of Anthropic's decision to watermark Claude's output. That, at least, is the view of That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare, who believes that watermarking is “nuts.” In our luddite zeitgeist, Keith believes that a watermark is a scarlet stamp of implied guilt. By marking its own product, Anthropic is not only furnishing the luddite mob with a convenient surveillance tool, but also acknowledging a tacit guilt about using Claude. “You should never adjust to the market,” the Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur explains. “The market's wrong nine times out of ten.” As for Dario Amodei, Claude's dad (so to speak), Keith is even more accusatory. The Anthropic CEO is kissing ass “like a politician, not the leader of a company,” Keith hisses, repeating this week's whispers that Anthropic is becoming an “ideologically motivated cult.” If Dario were female, Keith would probably make him a witch. Or, at least, a hussy — the hysterical implication, if not the word, of the Journal's profile of Cami Clark, Dario's wife. I took Anthropic's side — somebody had to. I see watermarking as just another AI tool. It's an honest human fingerprint in an age of fakery. Live by the algorithm, die by it too. Anyway, a watermark has its uses. Rather than moral opprobrium, it feeds our curiosity about who is and isn't using AI. So, for example, I ran Keith's editorial through another AI detector and it indicated 86 percent AI-generated while mine came back as 100 percent human. And if I can elude the scarlet stamp, then even I might have to join the luddite mob. Five Takeaways •       “Watermarking Is Nuts.” Keith's editorial takes aim at Anthropic's decision to watermark Claude's output — invisible text signals identifying the machine's hand, cousin to what Google has long done with audio. His objection isn't the mark itself (“I don't care that it's watermarked. I care that Anthropic thinks it should be watermarked”): a watermark starts from suspicion, implies a problem where none exists, and tells Anthropic's own customers their use of the product needs flagging. Restream doesn't watermark this show; Adobe doesn't watermark its exports. To Keith it's pure zeitgeist capitulation — and while one Claude Max subscriber in the newsletter canceled in protest, Keith hasn't. Andrew's rebuttal: watermarking serves curiosity, and in an age of fakery an honest fingerprint is a very human addition.•       The Scarlet Watermark: On AI Shame. The deeper argument was theological. Keith — an atheist who concedes atheism is also a faith, and who believes in good and bad but not sin — feels no shame “recruiting an army of AI agents” so long as he can stand by the output; shame belongs to spam factories and fakers who publish unread. But society, he says, is trying to make him feel it: the canceled author who lost his agent last week proves there's an issue. Andrew, playing therapist, diagnosed a flicker of guilt anyway — and argued shame is precisely the point: one of the last all-too-human spaces, worth preserving in an age of machines. Both then confessed their methods on air: Pangram scored Keith's editorial 86 percent AI and Andrew's 100 percent human. “I'm a clever cheater. You're a less clever cheater.” Keith: “There's no shame in that.”•       Keith vs Dario. Keith's indictment of Anthropic's CEO was the week's harshest: Dario Amodei “kisses ass… like a politician, not the leader of a company,” keeps taking the media's bait, and is “damaging his chances over and over again” in a $2 trillion IPO year — cult whispers included. The right posture, per Keith: never adjust to the market (“wrong nine times out of ten”); do what Elon would do and call bullshit. Andrew's defense: he's a fan of Dario, certainly next to Elon and Slippery Sam — and if America really is a nation of Luddites, adjusting is what reality requires. His actual grievance is more prosaic: $100 a month and he's out of credits, as both Anthropic and OpenAI squeeze revenue for the IPO race. Keith, meanwhile, spent the week testing Grok Bot — a “far better” OpenClaw replacement at $200 a month — and declared himself, this week at least, a Grok Bot guy: “I'm for sale, actually.”•       The Luddite Summer Reading List. The Wall Street Journal declared this the summer America became a nation of Luddites — left and right, with a January 6 organizer now rallying conservatives against AI. Noah Smith diagnosed the poverty of anti-tech thought: tech's power is persuasion, not coercion, and the iPhone won its argument on day one (Andrew dissents — society never got to discuss the iPhone's impact). Martin Wolf, reviewing Daron Acemoglu's new defense of liberal democracy, concluded the ship has sailed: liberal democracy was unthinkable without industrial capitalism, and that age is vanishing. Keith's gloss is optimistic — the eroding factory life frees individuals for self-realization. Andrew's snapshot from deindustrialized Indianapolis, and Britain's twenty percent on disability, says otherwise. Keith's concession, extracted twice for the record: “You're right.”•       Unicorns, Circles — and Two IPOs. Keith listened to Andrew's Renée Jones interview and rated it good — but says she misses the why: overnight global distribution to five billion phones, freemium economics, and rational revenue multiples made unicorns inevitable; to stop them “she'd have to deglobalize the world.” (Andrew's verdict: “a nicer, smarter version of Lina Khan.” Keith's question for Democrats: where is your argument for embracing AI?) The New York Times' circularity warning — tech giants' profits propped by their own AI investments — got the Grok Bot treatment: hundreds of billions in external revenue make it a Channel Tunnel, not a closed loop, though Andrew noted Keith told the bot the answer first. Illiquid shares carry provisional, not realized, value. And the ending both agreed on: the OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs are this narrative's climax. Keith will personally buy both. About the Co-Host Keith Teare is the publisher of That Was The Week, the essential weekly tech newsletter, and founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. A serial entrepreneur — co-founder of, among others, EasyNet and RealNames — he was present at the creation of the UK internet and has spent four decades at the intersection of technology, capital, and ideas. He joins Keen On America every Sunday to make sense of the week in tech. References: •       That Was The Week — Keith's newsletter, including this week's editorial, “Why Watermark?”•  ...

Why Watermark?Claude wants everybody to know it is there. Keith Teare argues that this is exactly the wrong instinct. The issue is not whether AI touched a piece of work. The issue is whether the work is true, useful, accountable, and human-directed.Watermarking starts from suspicionA watermark assumes there is a problem to solve. Keith's objection is that Anthropic appears to be accepting the premise that AI use tarnishes the user. If Claude helped draft, structure, summarize, or edit human-origin work, why is that the fact that must be marked? The mark answers the wrong question: not whether the work is good, true, accountable, or human-directed, but whether Claude was there.Detection tools confuse use with authorshipAndrew ran Keith's editorial through an AI detector and got an 86% AI score; Keith ran Saul Klein's article through one and got 100%. Neither result proves much. Andrew also admitted he uses Claude as a draft and then rewrites it. Keith described the same process: give AI the source material, ask it to surface themes, debate the frame, then rewrite. The question is not whether AI helped. The question is who is responsible for the final work.The shame belongs in the wrong placeKeith accepts that shame has a place: spam factories, fake authorship, unreviewed AI output, fake evidence, and publishing something you cannot stand behind. He feels no shame in "recruiting an army of AI agents" to help accomplish his goals, provided he reads, changes, edits, and owns the output. Society is trying to attach shame to the tool itself. That is the mistake.AI should be cheap and everywhereThe show turns from watermarking to access. Grok Bot at $200 a month is a sign of capability, but also a sign of scarcity. Keith argues that equality in AI is about price and reach: how cheap is it, and how widespread is it? If intelligence is valuable, the goal should be to make it free or nearly free for many use cases, not to add friction that helps the Luddite argument.Abundance requires massive investmentKeith defends the scale of AI investment because demand still exceeds supply. Nvidia's half-trillion-dollar commitment, hyperscaler deals, IPOs, and AI infrastructure financing are not just market exuberance. They are the precondition for AI to reach everyone. As Keith puts it, if you want AI in the hands of an African school child, you have to build the infrastructure first. The risk is not that too much is being built. It may be that too little is being built, or that access is captured at the price and distribution layer.Bottom line: AI is good. Build enough of it for everyone. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thatwastheweek.com/subscribe

Darrell Castle talks about what he believes to be the worst, most difficult problem facing America. Transcription / Notes THE WORST PROBLEM WE FACE Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today's Castle Report. This is Friday the 14th day of August in the year of our Lord 2026. I will be talking about what I believe to be the worst, most difficult to solve problem facing the nation. What do you think the most difficult or dangerous problem facing the nation is. Perhaps you would say it's the Iran war. Maybe you think it is the growing menace we call AI and the fear that AI will take all the jobs from Americans leaving nothing but subsidies for them. Well, those are indeed difficult problems and I will talk a little about each of them. I read quite often from commentators coming from both the left and the right that the President is stuck in Iran and there is simply no way out, but I beg to differ. The two sides in the conflict constantly throw insults at each other and make demands. The latest demand from Iran includes a demand for compensation for the damage you Americans have done to Iran. The President's reaction to that demand was “what, we don't owe you money, you owe us money for the USS Cole and for the lives you have taken. A lot of the time when I analyze a dilemma I use a tactic I learned from Ron Paul a long time ago. That tactic is a moral position that if it is wrong for an individual to do something it is also wrong for the government to do it. It is illegal for individuals to cheat, steal, and under some circumstances to lie. It is a crime for individuals to lie to congress but it is OK and perhaps even expected for congress to lie to us. Using that analysis for the war when I hear people say it started in 1979 when the Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah so that's about 46 years. My answer to that is that no, it began in 1953 or about 73 years ago. That is when U.S. and British leaders apparently in an effort to gain control over Iranian oil overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mr. Mosaddegh and replaced him with Shah Pahlavi who was out of the country but wanted desperately to return much as his son does today. In 1967 as a continuation of the Atoms for Peace program the U.S. began giving uranium to the Shah so he could develop peaceful nuclear power for electricity, medicine, etc. or at least that's what was said about it. In 1979 the Shah was overthrown by a coalition of Islamists, leftists, and of course students. Once again, as Ron Paul pointed out they didn't come over here until we went over there. The war between the U.S./Israel and the Muslims grows almost daily and tells me quite clearly that there is a very high price to be paid for being subject to the military demands of another country. I vehemently disagree with the view that there is no way out of Iran. Just tell the Iranians that we admit that we inadvertently, hopefully, attacked a school and killed about 160 little girls. We are very sorry we did that and for that mistake we will pay compensation to their families. Other than that, we have decided to rethink our Middle East strategy and in that regard we are withdrawing and leaving the region to fight its own wars. What will we then do with the hundreds of billions previously spent on this stupid, pointless war. That will become clear when we get to what the real problem is and how a possible solution is available. The second problem that many see as fatal today is the ever-growing power of AI. I'll admit that I am no tech expert and in most tech I am barely competent but I'll also admit that much of what I read and hear about AI is terrifying. The other day I read that some of the tech people in conjunction with scientists and or doctors were using AI to invent new viruses. To me, that's about as terrifying as nuclear weapons. We read that AI is growing in intelligence on its own and the simpler or dumber if you prefer platforms are connecting with the smarter ones to learn and improve just as a child would with its parent. This is apparently being done without the parents' consent or involvement. Recently, an AI system started hacking into information sources both private and public. Could AI launch nuclear weapons and start a world nuclear war. I don't know but I do know it's terrifying. New Orleans is now using AI to answer its 911 calls and I'm sure many cities will soon follow. So, AI is becoming ever smarter and humans thanks to education and propaganda and social media are becoming ever dumber. Therefore, AI is rapidly replacing more and more human workers including those whose work is the knowledge they possess. Those who think for a living are perhaps in more danger of losing their livelihood than manual workers. Soon, many believe, AI will take over almost all human creative activities including writing of all kinds as well as movies and TV production. Human actors may soon be a thing of the past. The other day I watched a 30-minute movie made by a couple of teenagers using AI and it was just as real as any you might see in theaters but none of the actors were real. The movie was about New York City, but it had some AI tells like palm trees in Manhattan but otherwise was very realistic. So, AI is terrifying but does that mean that our terror is just Luddite reactions to progress. Ned Ludd lived in the early 1800's in England during the early stages of the industrial revolution. He led a movement against the rising fear and power of the new machines which were faster and better than simple labor. Machines were especially prevalent in the textile industry and followers of Mr. Ludd would go from town to town destroying machines in factories because they thought they could stop progress. Luddites became such a problem for the British government that factories were guarded by troops and many Luddites were killed. We can't allow ourselves to become Luddites by trying to stop the computers because it will not work. They are coming for us and our jobs so the best course of action seems to me to be learning to live and work with them and to use them for good purposes. Naïve of me, perhaps but it seems like the only way. The Iran War and AI are both serious problems but both have solutions or at least ways to lessen their damaging impact. The most intractable problem of all is barely noticed by most people and yet is going to destroy their lives relatively quickly. When Donald Trump was elected in 2024 the US empire was in serious trouble and headed for bankruptcy. The era of spend all you want and I own all the money and there is no end to it is over or rapidly dying. Without the counterfeit money machine now probably run by AI there is no empire. Trump has simply accelerated the process toward bankruptcy to warp speed which is the opposite of why people voted for him.  The federal debt is now very close to 40 trillion and half of that has been added in the last 10 years or since Trump was first elected. Since July 1st of this year U.S. debt has already increased by $450nbillion. Over the last 13 months it has gone up by $3.6 trillion. It is increasing by $7 billion per day and at that rate by 2030 it will hit $60 trillion. Who cares, the people shout just give me mine and borrow to pay interest. The problem is that very soon the interest on all that debt will be the largest item in the budget and threatening all other terms. Currently about $1trillion per year in interest and growing to destroy the standard of living of our children. The debt has reached an impossible level and that means the U.S. government and that means you and me is a debt slave for life. That's not even the worst of it folks because I'm talking about the effects of this credit based, no cash economy on Mr. and Ms. Average American. I submit to you that I am very qualified to discuss this subject because I was a bankruptcy lawyer for 46 years until I retired at the end of last year. I have literally been involved with thousands of people who got in so deep they could find no way out. I became pretty good at helping clients out of financial trouble and even wrote a book about it. Just listen to this one example to get an understanding of how debt affects our lives. Take a family with husband and wife working and they have one child but they plan others. They are doing well with good jobs so they buy a $500,000 house at 6.8% interest. The bank approves the family for the loan and simply creates the money out of thin air to pay to the original owner. The bank doesn't go in the vault and get $500,000 it creates on its computer and it has a license to do that from the Federal Reserve. The deal is typically for 30 years but the nice family doesn't care because they can afford the payments. The payment would be about $3,260 per month, not including taxes and insurance. In my city that $500,000 house would be charged about $1000 per month in tax plus insurance of maybe $250. So, over the 30 years mortgage payments alone would cost $673,000 just for interest or more than the value of the house. Real estate on that scale is to provide shelter not an investment because so many things can happen. The most common would be one of them loses a job and payments could no longer be made. They try to sell but the market is down and interest up. They are 3 months behind so foreclosure is the next step. Unlike the federal government or Federal Reserve, the nice family has to make payments with their labor which AI has probably taken from them and they cannot just create it out of thin air and take the interest from other people. I could go on and on with how this terrible problem of debt affects people but I am out of time for today. In my opinion it is the worst and most unsolvable of problems. For the government it would take a reduction of about $2 trillion per year to keep it from going higher and that would be a good place to start. Finally, folks, I think I could cut $2trillion from the budget first by cutting the $1.5 trillion defense budget by perhaps half. Other federal programs could meet the same fate. At least that's the way I see it, Until next time folks, This is Darrell Castle, Thanks for listening.

This week we dive into the Luddite uprising of the early 19th century and their subsequent mischaracterization as being anti-tech instead of anti-exploitation. A listener email explains the story of Elmer McCurdy, the mummified bandit who could. Episode Tabs:What the Luddites Really Fought Againsthttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/Listener Tabs:Elmer McCurdyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_McCurdyEmail your closed tab submissions to: 500opentabs@gmail.comSupport us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/500OpenTabs500 Open Tabs Wiki: https://500-open-tabs.fandom.com/wiki/500_Open_Tabs_Wiki500 Open Roads (Google Maps episode guide): https://maps.app.goo.gl/Tg9g2HcUaFAzXGbw7Continue the conversation by joining us on Discord! https://discord.gg/8px5RJHk7aGet 40% off an annual subscription to Nebula by going to nebula.tv/500opentabsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Swing Riots took place in eastern and southern England in the years between the Luddite uprising and the Rebecca Riots. One of the hallmarks of the riots was the destruction of threshing machines – but that’s just part of the story. Research: Caprettini, Bruno and Hans-Joachim Voth. “Rage Against the Machines: Labor-saving Technology and Unrest in England, 1830-32.” American Economic Review: Insights. Vol. 2, no. 3, September 2020. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aeri.20190385 Carl J. Griffin, “Luddism, Machine-Breaking and the Swing Riots”, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique [Online], XXX-1 | 2025, Online since 13 January 2025, connection on 14 April 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/12984 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/133dc Chiltern Open Air Museum. “What were the Swing Riots?” https://www.coam.org.uk/blogs/swing-riots Cobbett, William. “Selections from Cobbett's political works : being a complete abridgment of the 100 volumes which comprise the writings of ‘Porcupine’ and the ‘Weekly political register.’” London. Anne Cobbett. 1835. Dyck, Ian. "Cobbett, William (1763–1835), political writer and farmer." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. September 23, 2004. Oxford University Press. Date of access 22 Jul. 2026, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-5734 Griffin, Carl J. “Swing, Swing Redivivus, or Something After Swing? On the Death Throes of a Protest Movement, December 1830-December 1833.” International Review of Social History. Vol. 54, No. 3. December 2009. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44583279 Griffin, Carl J. “The Violent Captain Swing?” Past & Present, Nov. 2010. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40960936 Hampshire History. “The Swing Riots in Hampshire.” https://www.hampshire-history.com/the-swing-riots/ History Hub. “William Cobbett: a champion of the rural poor and the reform of Parliament | Documentary.” YouTube. 10/22/2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWO4wjfqJBw Jones, Peter. “Finding Captain Swing: Protest, Parish Relations, and the State of the Public Mind in 1830.” International Review of Social History. Vol. 54, No. 3. December 2009. Via JSTOR. http://www.jstor.com/stable/44583278 Kellett, Ian. “’Swing’ Rioters Smash Machinery at Pythouse near Tisbury.” Shaftesbury Gold Hill Museum. https://goldhillmuseum.org.uk/swing-rioters-smash-machinery-at-pythouse-near-tisbury/ Navickas, Katrina. “Captain Swing in the North: the Carlisle Riots of 1830.” History Workshop Journal. No. 71. Spring 2011. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41306809 Navickas, Katrina. “Rural Resistance and the Swing Riots.” Protest and the Politics of Space. http://protesthistory.org.uk/moors/rural-resistance-and-the-swing-riots Randall, Adrian. “‘The Luddism of the poor’: Captain Swing, machine breaking and popular protest.” Southern History, 32, 2010, pp. 41-61. Randall, Adrian. “Captain Swing: A Retrospect.” International Review of Social History. Vol. 54, No. 3. December 2009. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44583277 Wells, Roger. “Mr William Cobbett, Captain Swing, and King William IV.” Agricultural History Review, Volume 45 Part 1 (1997), pp. 34–48. https://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLE.html?ID=439&MOD=this See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

People are worried that AI will automate their jobs. Yet Brian Merchant has interviewed hundreds of workers disrupted by AI, and what he sees isn't a technological revolution but a centuries-old power struggle: bosses wielding new tech as leverage to deskill and destabilize workers. Merchant is a tech journalist and critic whose book, Blood in the Machine, gives a sympathetic history of the original Luddites. He joins Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked to explain what 19th century English craftsmen can tell us about AI, why he doesn't lose sleep over Chinese models, and how to have a better industrial revolution.   Host:  Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman  Guest:  Brian Merchant: https://x.com/bcmerchant

How is artificial intelligence shifting from simple data storage into a search and synthesis engine for human consciousness? In this throwback episode of the previous Edge of AI Podcast, Ron Levy sits down with Memo Akten, a multidisciplinary artist, musician, researcher, and computer scientist whose collaborators include U2, Lenny Kravitz, Depeche Mode, Richard Dawkins, Google, and Apple.Memo breaks down his journey from writing software instruments in the early 2000s to pursuing a PhD in machine learning. He shares live demonstrations of his groundbreaking interactive installations, including Learning to See and Distributed Consciousness.Discover why Memo views current AI advancements as the "final decentering of human exceptionalism," drawing parallels to the Copernican trauma and Darwinian evolution. He also tackles the future of creative labor, the historical lessons of the Luddite movement, and how decentralized blockchain technology could redefine digital authorship and IPSupport us through our Sponsors! ☕ Want to make content like ours? Sign up with Castmagic to make your creative process easy: https://bit.ly/CastmagicReferral Work smarter, grow faster. Automate your SEO, get AI insights, and manage all your clients in one place with Helm. Start today 50% off your first month at helmseo.com

We start this week with Matthew's experience of what happened when Flock came to his small town. It's a microcosm of what is happening all across the United States. After the break, Sam tells us about a bunch of no phone Luddite events. In the subscribers-only section, Jason explains why anti-Flock influencers making up BS are bad, actually. Our New FOIA Forum! 7/30, 1PM ET What Happened When Flock Came to My Town Being a Luddite Is Fun Again The Rise of Anti-Flock Influencers Who Make Things Up for Clout YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/C0Sb0HqPXBI This is a production of 404 Media, a journalist-owned tech website. Learn more and subscribe at: htttps://404media.co Listen to our weekly podcasts: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-404-media-podcast/id1703615331?ref=404media.co Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0F3oY47l2XgoBMaAmIaw29?ref=404media.co Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5hY2FzdC5jb20vcHVibGljL3Nob3dzL3RoZS00MDQtbWVkaWEtcG9kY2FzdA?ref=404media.co Become a paid subscriber for access to bonus content: https://404media.co/membership Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Simon Constable notes European energy prices are skyrocketing, with Brent crude hitting $95 and natural gas up 47% in a single month. In France, a heatwave and suspicious forest fires have added environmental stress to the economic crisis. A political movement in the U.S. is targeting data centers for their high energy consumption, which now exceeds 4% of usage. Surprisingly, the United Kingdom hosts the second-highest number of data centers globally, despite its historical association with "Luddite" skepticism. (13)DECEMBER 1931 

SCHEDULE FOR THE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW, 7-22-2026.1740 BATAVIA MASSACREGordon Chang and Rick Fisher examine Xi Jinping's introduction of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), designed to establish Chinese dominance in setting global AI rules. Headquartered in Shanghai, the group aims to make international partners dependent on Chinese technology while promoting anti-democratic values. Meanwhile, China's economy is struggling, with real growth potentially near zero. Despite manufacturing strengths, China remains vulnerable due to a critical lack of high-end Nvidia chips required for advanced AI development. (1)Gordon Chang and Peter Huessy discuss the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) bill to drastically reduce the U.S. nuclear triad, including cutting ICBMs from 400 to 150. Supported by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the plan effectively promotes unilateral disarmament. Critics argue this trashes the concept of nuclear deterrence just as China and Russia expand their arsenals. Furthermore, there is a widespread "miseducation" of Americans regarding the necessity of a modernized nuclear deterrent. (2)Gordon Chang and Victoria Coates report that Iran has activated the Houthis to attack the Bab el-Mandeb strait, a critical choke point for Saudi Arabian oil exports. This escalation has pushed oil prices past $95 as the Houthis use Iranian-supplied missiles and drones to harass shipping. While the House of Saud is targeted, internal frictions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE complicate a unified regional response. The conflict represents a major humanitarian and economic disaster for global commerce. (3)Gordon Chang and Victoria Coates continue: China benefits from discounted Iranian oil but views the regime's economic instability as a "bad debt." Simultaneously, Saudi Arabia is deepening its partnership with the U.S. through a landmark nuclear cooperation deal. Iraq has also signaled a shift toward Washington, signing $60 billion in energy deals with American companies like Chevron. While Russia seeks to sell extra capacity to Asia, Ukrainian strikes on refineries may hinder Putin's ability to remain a reliable energy supplier. (4)Peter Earle traces how the word "trillion" entered the economic lexicon in 1981 when the U.S. passed $1 trillion in public debt. Today, the U.S. national debt approaches $40 trillion, with annual interest payments exceeding $1 trillion. Unlike 19th-century millionaires who faced high risks, modern trillion-dollar figures are often a product of government monetary expansion. We have entered "Trillionstan," where massive quantities of money are common, yet their long-term significance is often overlooked by the public. (5)Peter Earle argues that not all trillions are equal; some represent genuine wealth creation, such as SpaceX's $2 trillion valuation based on future technological potential. However, inflation and government borrowing have also inflated nominal values, potentially leading to a fiscal reckoning. If creditors lose faith in U.S. debt, the government may be forced to print more money, further devaluing the currency. Maintaining prosperity requires ensuring that economic forces focus on creating new wealth rather than merely redistributing it. (6)Henry Sokolski warns that the Trump administration's nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia allows the kingdom to enrich uranium, a process that can easily be diverted for bomb-making. Saudi Arabia has rejected the "additional protocol" for rigorous UN inspections, raising concerns about their true intentions. This "black box" arrangement lacks sufficient safeguards to prevent a rapid diversion of nuclear materials. Critics warn that providing enrichment technology to an ally involved in regional warfare is inherently delusional and dangerous. (7)Henry Sokolski continues: the Saudi nuclear deal could trigger a proliferation race, with nations like Egypt, Turkey, and the UAE demanding similar enrichment rights. Furthermore, allies such as South Korea and Poland may reconsider their own nuclear ambitions if they view American security guarantees as insufficient. Proliferation is no longer "old news" but a growing threat as nations seek their own deterrents. The result is a destabilized global order where multiple states hover on the verge of nuclear weapon status. (8)Michael Bernstam explains how Ukrainian drone strikes have destroyed 30% of Russia's refining capacity, causing the "crack spread"—the profit margin for refining oil—to triple worldwide. While Russia exports crude, it now suffers from severe domestic shortages of gasoline and jet fuel. Consequently, Russia is forced to buy back its own refined oil from India at premium prices. Putin has been "hoist on his own petard," creating a global energy weapon that has ultimately turned against the Russian economy. (9)Michael Bernstam reports that Ukrainian drones recently destroyed major distribution hubs for Wildberries, the Russian equivalent of Amazon, causing $2 billion in damage. These strikes have devastated small businesses and middle-class consumers, fueling internal resentment against the Kremlin. Simultaneously, 18 local Russian officials signed a petition calling for Putin's resignation as economic conditions worsen. The loss of consumer infrastructure and rising fuel costs are creating a constituency for ending the war to prevent a total economic collapse. (10)Bob Zimmerman reports that SpaceX is preparing for its 13th Starship flight, a prototype featuring major upgrades for future orbital missions and in-orbit refueling. In India, the startup Skyroot achieved a landmark success with the Vikram-1 rocket, signaling the rise of a private, capitalist space sector. However, the Indian government has counterproductively restricted ISRO employees from leaving for private firms. These contrasting approaches highlight the tension between state-run agencies and the efficiency of private enterprise in the global space race. (11)Bob Zimmerman surveys new discoveries: astronomers have detected a helium atmosphere on a terrestrial exoplanet located 48 light-years away in its star's habitable zone. Closer to home, archival data from Pluto reveals massive landslides, proving the dwarf planet is geologically active rather than dormant. Meanwhile, new images of Valles Marineris on Mars illustrate the canyon's staggering scale, with depths equivalent to the height of Mount McKinley. These discoveries emphasize that planetary bodies across our solar system are dynamic and evolving. (12)Simon Constable notes European energy prices are skyrocketing, with Brent crude hitting $95 and natural gas up 47% in a single month. In France, a heatwave and suspicious forest fires have added environmental stress to the economic crisis. A political movement in the U.S. is targeting data centers for their high energy consumption, which now exceeds 4% of usage. Surprisingly, the United Kingdom hosts the second-highest number of data centers globally, despite its historical association with "Luddite" skepticism. (13)Simon Constable observes that new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham faces immediate skepticism, with polls indicating nearly half of voters feel his government lacks direction. Burnham's focus on domestic issues like capping bus prices is criticized as a "tax and spend" policy that might alienate the wealthy. While he has emphasized national security, his early days have been defined by local populist initiatives. Critics worry his leadership style mimics a "Lord Mayor" rather than a strategic global prime minister. (14)Brandy Shufutinsky details how Qatar has provided extensive grants for Arabic language and culture programs in U.S.K-12 schools. These programs often utilize textbooks that omit Israel from maps and glorify extremist ideologies. Qatar Foundation International (QFI) even funds teacher salaries and work visas, raising concerns about who these educators truly report to. This funding creates a "pipeline" from elementary school to higher education, potentially instilling foreign-influenced perspectives in future generations of American citizens. (15)Conrad Black argues that Canada's economic growth has stalled due to high corporate taxes and "climate alarmist" policies under the Trudeau government. He suggests that new leadership under Mark Carney could revitalize the nation by making it more tax-competitive with the U.S. Canada's vast resources and skilled workforce provide the potential for a rapid rebound. For Canada to succeed, it must pivot back to pro-capitalist policies and attract foreign investment to drive future growth. (16)Two spelling corrections applied: Peter Earle (5, 6 — transcribed as "Pete Earl"; the AIER economist) and Brandy Shufutinsky (15 — transcribed as "Shubatinsky"). Both added to the log unless you'd prefer otherwise.

Episode SummaryOto sits down with longtime friend DJ Mike Winner — co-founder of the decentralized network Qortal — for a deep dive into consciousness, sovereignty, and building outside the centralized internet. Mike traces his path from an early astral projection experience at 12, through a "germ theory" awakening from Dr. Bear Lando, to co-founding Qortal as a fully open-source, node-to-node alternative to the World Wide Web. He and Oto unpack the philosophy behind "sovereignty taxes," the difference between legal and possession-based ownership, and why cognitive sovereignty matters as AI use grows. Mike then walks through how Qortal actually works — minting, QDN, the CORT coin, the app ecosystem (QTube, Qmail, QShare, and more) — before showing how he used AI agents (including his own trained assistant, Merlin) to build Terrain TV, a free, AI-curated health-freedom video platform with 46,000+ videos.Chapters / Timestamps (Shifted +59s to account for the new intro at the top of the episode)00:00 – Trailer 00:59 – Intro & Catching Up with DJ Mike Winner 02:59 – The Red Pill Moment: Astral Projection & "The Creature from Jekyll Island" 05:59 – Germ Theory, Chronic Illness & the Allopathic Debt System 07:59 – From Hollywood to Alpha Vedic: Finding His Path 09:59 – The Art of Inquiry: Trusting Truth Within & Daily Meditation 11:59 – Dependency, the Sovereignty Tax & the Entrepreneur's Dilemma 13:59 – AI as an Ancient Technology & the Convergence Point 14:59 – Techno Bros, Ownership vs. the Rental Economy 17:59 – The Myth of Prometheus & Natural Law 19:59 – Crossing the Bridge: Technology as "Techne" 23:59 – Why Big Tech Isn't Censoring Like It Used To 25:59 – The Sovereign Stack: Decoupling Step by Step 28:59 – The Danger of "Purity Spiraling" & What Is a Luddite? 32:59 – Moving Into a Creator-Based Economy 33:59 – Legal Ownership vs. Possession-Based Ownership & Cognitive Sovereignty 36:59 – What Is Qortal? Reacting to Crypto Centralization 39:59 – Qortal's Time-Based Minting Consensus 42:59 – How QDN Works: Decentralized, Censorship-Proof Storage 46:59 – CORT Coin, Minting Pools & the Leveling System 49:59 – The Qortal App Ecosystem: QTube, Quitter, QShare & More 51:59 – Names, Wallets & Permissionless Identity on Qortal 53:59 – Getting Started: Hardware, Setup & Syncing Your Node 56:59 – Acquiring CORE Through P2P Trading 58:59 – Free Hosting, Qmail & Owning Your Own Data 1:00:59 – Bitcoin Storage & Where to Learn More 1:01:59 – Mesh Networking & Getting Off the ISPs 1:04:59 – Terrain TV: Building an AI-Powered Curation Platform 1:09:59 – The Terrain Philosophy Beyond Health 1:11:59 – Meet Merlin: Mike's AI Familiar Built in OpenClaw 1:13:59 – Running His Own CRM for True Data Sovereignty 1:14:59 – Can We Ever Fully Ditch Internet Providers? 1:18:59 – Final Words: Trust Yourself & Take Action 1:20:59 – Where to Find Mike: Winnr.digital & ClosingKey TakeawaysQortal (Cordal) is a fully open-source, community-run, node-to-node network — never VC-funded, never trademarked — with a blockchain spine that uses time (not competition) as its consensus and minting model.QDN (Qortal Data Network) stores content by chunking, encrypting, and spreading it across the nodes of your followers, so the more followers an account has, the faster and more redundant its content becomes — with no central server to shut it down.The app ecosystem includes QTube (YouTube alternative), Qmail (encrypted P2P email with no middleman), Quitter (Twitter-style), QShare, QShop, and more — all funded by small CORT transaction fees rather than hosting or subscription costs.Ownership on Qortal runs through a permissionless naming marketplace — names cost a few CORT, follow you across every app, and moderation happens through community blocking rather than centralized censorship.Mike built Terrain TV, a free AI-curated health-freedom platform pulling from YouTube, BitChute, Odysee, and Rumble, in about 60 days using AI coding agents — including his own trained AI assistant, "Merlin," built in OpenClaw.Mike frames the core practice as recognizing "sovereignty taxes" — the time, attention, and money we give up for convenience — and gradually walking across the bridge to open-source, self-owned alternatives (Qortal, ProtonMail, local AI) rather than abandoning existing tools all at once.Learn More / Get StartedQortal — https://qortal.org (or the community-recommended https://qortal.dev) Terrain TV — https://terraintv.com Mike Winner's site — https://winnr.digitalCONNECT WITH OTO: Instagram – https://instagram.com/otogomes Website – https://otogomes.live

We are often told that resisting technological development is impossible and ‘progress' is inevitable, but history says otherwise. Thomas Dekeyser joins Paris Marx to discuss how understanding radical resistances of the past can help us rethink our modern relationship with technology and reshape our vision of the future.Thomas Dekeyser is a lecturer in human geography at the University of Southampton, author of Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine, and co-creator of the documentary Machines in Flames.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Support the show on Patreon.Also mentioned in this episode:You can now pre-order Paris's new book Hyperscale.Shout out to friend of the pod The Luddite Club.This article by Saul Levin and Astra Taylor discusses the growing bipartisan opposition towards data centers.Support the show

Attitudes around social media are changing. A Pew Research study found that about half of teens surveyed in 2024 felt that social media had a mostly negative impact on their age group. A group advocating a more considered relationship to tech held what they called a Summer of Ludd Festival, named after the Industrial Revolution era workers movement, the Luddites. The festival in New York City featured tech-free activities ranging from meditation to a workshop on how to flirt in real life. But in 2026, is it really possible to live without the tech we've become so addicted to? Guest host Manisha Krishnan, WIRED's senior culture editor, talks to Gowanus, the spokespuppet of a local Luddite movement, about the tenets of their group - and how they plan to grow it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Carolyn Woodard covers a cultural moment that's been building quietly, resistance to AI among workers, young people, and nonprofits, and connects it to a research framework for thinking honestly about AI's real environmental costs and benefits. Both threads come back to the same core question: who benefits from AI, and on what terms?This episode also introduces a three-lens approach to help nonprofits think through the environmental impact of their own AI use, and suggests why "I'm just against AI" may be a values signal worth listening to rather than a training problem to fix.This episode covers:The Summer of Ludd, an 8-day festival in New York City, and what the original Luddite movement was actually about: skilled workers organizing against technology being used to enrich owners at workers' expense.Why some nonprofit staff, especially younger workers, are pushing back on AI, and why it's worth asking what's behind that resistance before trying to fix it.Researcher Jennifer Turliuk's net climate impact framework, and her core observation: AI harms are measurable now, but most benefits are still speculative. Including as full a picture of the cons and pros will help organizations make thoughtful AI use decisions.Three lenses for evaluating your own AI use: what you're asking AI to do, where you are, and how you will benefit from using the AI.DC Public Library's free in-person "AI & Us" series focusing on "invisible" communities and AI.Resources Mentioned:Summer of Ludd — Quartz — https://qz.com/anti-tech-movement-ai-offline-rebellionLuddite as political insult — NPR — https://www.npr.org/2026/06/19/nx-s1-5853589/luddite-meaning-history-aiBlood in the Machine — Brian Merchant — https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/ or at your library or local bookstore!Blood in the Machine Substack — Brian Merchant — https://www.bloodinthemachine.comAI & Us series — DC Public Library — https://dclibrary.libnet.info/event/16823630Responding to the Climate Impact of Generative AI — MIT Sustainability — https://sustainability.mit.edu/article/responding-climate-impact-generative-aiHarnessing the Power of AI to Accelerate Climate Solutions — MIT Sloan — https://mitsloan.mit.edu/centers-initiatives/sustainability-initiative/harnessing-power-ai-to-accelerate-climate-solutionsSustainable AI cohort — Jennifer Turliuk / Maven — 10% off discount with code NONPROFIT. Here is a direct link: https://maven.com/jennifer-turliuk/sustainableai?promoCode=NONPROFITAI Acceptable Use Policy Template — Community IT Innovators — https://communityit.com/template-acceptable-use-of-ai-tools-in-the-nonprofit-workplace/Webinar: AI Maturity Model for Nonprofits — Community IT Innovators — https://communityit.com/webinar-ai-maturity-model-for-nonprofits/New every Tuesday. _______________________________Start a conversation :)Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.comon LinkedIn on reddit/r/nonprofitITmanagementon the Community IT websiteThanks for listening. 

Gen Z is raging against the AI machine at a "Luddite Festival" in NYC. And yes, being anti-AI is intermingling with politics. Weirdly, a lot of the most vocal critics of AI will tell you how much they hate AI on social media platforms that use AI... Watch the podcast episodes on YouTube and all major podcast hosts including Spotify. CLOWNFISH TV is an independent, opinionated news and commentary podcast that covers Entertainment and Tech from a consumer's point of view. We talk about Gaming, Comics, Anime, TV, Movies, Animation and more. Hosted by Kneon and Geeky Sparkles. Get more news, views and reviews on Clownfish TV News - https://more.clownfishtv.com/ On YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/ClownfishTV On Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4Tu83D1NcCmh7K1zHIedvg On Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/clownfish-tv-audio-edition/id1726838629 MORE CLOWNFISH TV - Official Merch Store: http://ClownfishMinus.com Facebook - https://facebook.com/ClownfishTV X - https://x.com/ClownfishTVcom Clownfish TV subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClownfishTVOfficial/ Disclaimer: This series is produced by Clownfish Studios and WebReef Media, and is part of ClownfishTV.com. Opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of our guests, affiliates, sponsors, or advertisers. ClownfishTV.com is an unofficial news source and has no connection to any company that we may cover. This channel and website and the content made available through this site are for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. These so-called “fair uses” are permitted even if the use of the work would otherwise be infringing. #Tech #GenZ #AI #Podcast #Commentary #News #Reaction #Gaming #Comedy #Entertainment #Hollywood #PopCulture #Tech #Anime #FYP Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You can send and text and we love them.. but apparently we cant respond. Sorry!!A daily dose of good news in two minutes time... give or takeLike the podcast, you can support ithttps://www.buzzsprout.com/1818724/supportor let's have a coffee …. I mean.. or give me one https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thedavidbeachSupport the showJoin us on Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/groups/awesomenewsdailyor email me at awesomenewsdaily@gmail.com

Christina Hello, everyone, I'm Christina Darnell, the managing editor of MinistryWatch. Welcome to the MinistryWatch podcast. In today's extra episode, I talk with Warren Smith about some news items that are slightly (even significantly) outside of our normal charity and philanthropy “beat.” So, Warren, what's up first?  Warren William Bennett famously said, “The plural of anecdotes is not data.” Journalists who write about religion often forget that reality. Christina The latest example came from Carson Daly of the Today Show. He wants us to believe that young people are packing Catholic Churches, and they are leading a Catholic resurgence in this country. But you're not buying it. Warren I'm not. The data tell a different story. I turned to the 2023–24 Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study, based on nearly 37,000 randomly selected American adults, for a reality check. Among its findings: About 19 percent of U.S. adults identify as Catholic, unchanged since 2014 — but well below historical levels. Even more telling: 43 percent of Americans raised Catholic no longer identify as Catholic. Only 1.5 percent of American adults have become Catholic after being raised in another religion or with no religion. Catholics have experienced the largest net losses of any major Christian tradition through religious switching. Christina What about young people? That seemed to be the focus of the Carson Daly piece. Warren It was, but even among young people, the data don't support that conclusion. Among Americans ages 18–24, 12 percent have left Catholicism, while only 1 percent have converted into it. Pew concluded there is “no clear evidence” of a nationwide religious revival among young adults. Christina Why has this revival narrative been so persistent. We've been seeing it in the Protestant church as well. Warren Journalists want to find unusual stories. The slow secularization of religion over the past 50 years is not unusual. It's been told, and journalists are looking for a new story. As the old saying, “Dog bites man” is not a story. “Man bites dog” is a story. As for the Catholic resurgence story? Well, to torture the metaphor: “That dog won't hunt.” Carson Daly might be able to find a parish whose young adult Mass grows from 50 to 400 people, but that does not make up for the thousands of parishes experiencing gradual (and sometimes significant) decline. Christina Years ago, David Letterman had a routine that he called “Stupid Pet Tricks.” The first story we did, plus the next one, might qualify this episode of the podcast for its own “Stupid Media Tricks” segment. Warren You're right. This week saw another significant media story that caused me to wonder. In this case, veteran National Public Radio Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg wrote a story that Justice Samuel Alito had retired. Christina And, to be clear, Justice Alito has not retired. Warren That's right. But the story that he had retired made it through NPR's editing process and onto the website before someone discovered the mistake. And, of course, if it makes it to one website, the algorithms soon have it everywhere. Christina About an hour after publication, NPR retracted the story, issued a correction, and apologized. But the damage had been done. Warren To be fair, the damage was not severe – except, perhaps, to the credibility of NPR. But it does provide a lesson in how modern media work. Charlie Warzel, writing for The Atlantic, does a fascinating post-mortem on the episode, saying the error highlights several habits of modern journalism that are pathological. Among them: “That a breakneck news cycle is forcing even the best reporters and editors to move too fast, that modern beat reporting itself has become too consumed with being first to report stories.” Warzel's story is a smart look at how the journalistic sausage is made. I recommend it. You can find a link in today's show notes. Christina Our next story is also a media story, of sorts. Warren I had not thought of it that way, but I think you're right. Our friend Joseph Slife forwarded me a story that Michigan's Cornerstone University was offering a degree that could be completed “100%” on a smartphone. Christina Warren, did you check the date on that story. Are you sure it's not an April Fools Day prank? Warren I did check, because that was my first thought. Alas, it is not. According to The College Fix, “Cornerstone University, located in Grand Rapids, is offering an associate degree and bachelor's degree in strategic business management along with a master's in organizational leadership through its new program. Students pay a fixed rate of $2,400 per four-month term or $3,750 for graduate level work. The intended audience is working adults.” Christina That's pretty cheap, and – as a working adult – I couldn't imagine trying to get to a nearby college a couple of nights a week for classes. Warren I get that. 100  percent. I am not a Luddite. I use my iPhone for a lot of things – including learning. YouTube videos have helped me learn new licks on the guitar, have helped me repair my toilet, and have helped me gain new insights into the human condition. Christina But learning via iPhone is a different experience than face-to-face, in classroom learning. Warren That's exactly right. Especially from a wise and well-qualified teacher, in a community with other learners who are grappling with the same ideas — both in class, but also around the dinner table in the dining hall. Christina So what you're saying is that virtual learning is not worthless. It is just different. Warren I do not oppose colleges offering programs virtually, but to offer accredited degrees that carry all the prestige and credentialing power of an in-person degree…well…that is just bearing false witness. Christina Let's conclude today with news that the Texas State Board of Education passed a new required reading list that includes Bible passages. Warren On Friday, June 26, the Republican-controlled board voted 9-5-1 to approve a first-of-its-kind list that will affect more than 5 million public school students. Required readings for younger students include illustrated Old Testament stories such as Noah's Ark and David and Goliath. By upper elementary school, students read New Testament passages about Jesus' teachings and parables. Middle school and high school lessons pair scriptural themes with classic literature. Christina Most Christian groups are praising this decision. But you say…not so fast. Warren I will have to say that net-net I am glad they are reading the Bible in the classroom. You simply cannot understand most of Western literature – from Dante to Shakespeare to Faulkner to Eliot – without some biblical literacy. And I know that there are a lot of great public school teachers who will handle these texts with care and respect. Christina I sense a big fat…however…coming on. Warren Ha. So I'll say it.  However… I do wonder what will happen when you put scripture into the hands of militantly secularized teachers, and you give them a platform to air their grievances. They may be forced to read the bible, but what if the teacher spends the rest of the class presenting arguments for its unreliability? Christina So are you opposed to reading the Bible in classrooms? Warren Absolutely not. I'm very much in favor of it, but I do wonder how it's going to be taught. I would recommend that parents in Texas remain vigilant. Time will tell whether this was a positive innovation for the classroom, or one full of unintended consequences. Until then, though, I know that “God's word will not return void.” So, I trust that the positive impact of scripture reading will be greater than any efforts to undermine it. Christina Any final thoughts before we go? Warren If you have not discovered our YouTube channel, check it out here. We now have nearly 200 videos there, and they have attracted tens of thousands of views. Subscribe, like, and share to spread the word about our work. I am in Albuquerque next month. If you live in the Land of Enchantment, one of my favorite states, reach out to me. I would love to share a meal or a cup of coffee with you. My email is wsmith@ministrywatch.com. We'd love to have your financial support as we approach our fiscal year end. Just go to www.ministrywatch.com/donate Christina The producer for today's program is Jeff McIntosh. I'm Christina Darnell, along with Warren Smith. Until next time, may God bless you.

What happens when your relationship looks perfectly fine on paper, but something doesn't quite feel right?In this episode, we chat about the growing trend of the "Luddite boyfriend" and why having less of a social media presence is suddenly being seen as one of the biggest green flags in dating. Is being more present with your partner becoming more attractive than being permanently online?We also explore a powerful relationship analogy: Is your boat slowly sinking?Most relationships don't fall apart overnight. More often, it's the tiny leaks that go unnoticed until the damage feels overwhelming. We discuss how to spot those early warning signs and why awareness is one of the greatest gifts you can give your relationship.Finally, we answer a listener's question that's likely to resonate with many long-term couples:"Do I miss my partner… or do I just miss being in a relationship?"It's an honest conversation about comfort, security, fear of change and how to tell the difference between loving the life you've built and truly feeling connected to the person you're sharing it with.In This Episode• Why "Luddite boyfriends" are becoming the latest dating green flag• How social media can quietly become the third person in your relationship• Why relationships rarely end suddenly, and what the early warning signs often look like• A simple daily exercise to help you notice how your relationship is really feeling• The hidden cost of tolerating little frustrations for too long• How to know whether you're staying because of love or because leaving feels too frighteningQuote of the Week"Strong marriages aren't built by avoiding storms. They're built by two people who decide the boat isn't allowed to sink."Reflection QuestionIf you rated your relationship every day for the next week, what patterns would you notice, and what are you currently tolerating that deserves your attention?We'd Love to Hear From YouHave you ever caught yourself wondering whether you were holding onto the relationship or the person? Or has social media ever created tension in your relationship?Send us your thoughts or your relationship questions. We'd love to feature them in a future episode. Get in touchSara Liddle — info@inflori.co.uk | www.inflori.co.ukAnna Stratis — coachdocanna@gmail.com | www.coachdocanna.com

(Sorry we're a little late; blame producer pneumonia) We open the nightmare world folder and go through a series of stories about technology, surveillance, and policing. Cops using AI to generate “evidential material” in criminal cases, cops using Flock automated license plate readers to stalk people, cops using Flock to wrongfully arrest folks, and then a wildcard: billions of images from the Pokemon Go databases are being used to develop geospatial models for robots and drones. We then end the episode with a fun bonus interview with the creator of Machines of Bone and Blood, a new D&D book that offers a fantastical retelling of the Luddite rebellion in the necro-industrial revolution. ••• Machines of Blood and Bone https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/somanyrobots/machines-of-bone-and-blood-necroindustrial-adventures-in-5e ••• Derbyshire police officer investigated over AI-generated ‘evidential material' https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/12/police-officer-under-criminal-investigation-over-alleged-use-of-ai ••• Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock to Stalk People https://www.404media.co/cops-keep-getting-arrested-for-using-flock-to-stalk-people/?ref=weekly-roundup-newsletter ••• A Flock license plate reader linked a San Diego man to a violent crime. He was five miles away. https://timesofsandiego.com/crime/2026/06/07/a-flock-license-plate-reader-linked-a-san-diego-man-to-a-violent-crime-he-was-five-miles-away/ ••• Pokémon Go players unwittingly contributed to tech with military drone uses https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/pokemon-go-players-unwittingly-contributed-to-tech-with-military-drone-uses/ Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan's book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite ••• Subscribe to Ed's substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble ••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

In our June 2026 Community Chat, and with members of the Caribbean tech community, Innovation Strategist and Creative Economy Advocate, Bianca Welds, who is based in Jamaica, and Halle Johnson, a Systems Administrator and PhD candidate based in Antigua and Barbuda, the panel discusses:   *  Is AI reducing the job market for Caribbean school leavers?   *  Online banking in the Caribbean, why does it still have so many obstacles?   *  And the return of the Luddite classroom.   The episode, show notes and links to some of the things mentioned during the episode can be found on the ICT Pulse Podcast Page (www.ict-pulse.com/category/podcast/)       Enjoyed the episode?  Do rate the show and leave us a review!       Also, connect with us on: Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/ICTPulse/   Instagram –  https://www.instagram.com/ictpulse/   Twitter –  https://twitter.com/ICTPulse   LinkedIn –  https://www.linkedin.com/company/3745954/admin/   Join our mailing list: http://eepurl.com/qnUtj    Music credit: The Last Word (Oui Ma Chérie), by Andy Narrell Podcast editing support:  Mayra Bonilla Lopez   ---------------

Peter Thiel and JD Vance are building a future that doesn't need God — and Pope Leo XIV is the one man with the standing to call it what it is. In this episode of the Culture, Faith, and Politics Podcast, Pat Kahnke sits down with Mark Ramm to unpack the collision between Silicon Valley's most powerful MAGA billionaire and the Vatican's vision of what it means to be human. Peter Thiel has openly framed anyone who wants to restrain technology — including the Pope — as a "Luddite," and in his own lectures, a force of the Antichrist. When a New York Times interviewer asked Thiel whether the human race should even survive, he hesitated. That pause tells you everything about the worldview now funding the MAGA movement through his protégé, Vice President JD Vance.

Host Dirk Knemeyer, a veteran in user experience (UX) design, is joined by co-host David Heron, a long-time game industry professional known for his work across major console evolutions and mobile free-to-play titles. In this episode, they dive deep into the rapidly evolving landscape of AI in game development, sparked by listener questions from their Discord community. The discussion explores the technical hurdles of AI memory and "drift," the ethical debates surrounding AI-generated art versus code, and the historical parallels between current AI fears and past technological shifts like the Luddite movement. Whether you're a developer or a curious player, this conversation offers a blunt, expert look at how AI might either disrupt or democratize the craft of making games

(5) Jim McTague reports on Lancaster County's economy, noting record-breaking gasoline sales at Costco despite rainy weather, the rise of retirement-driven healthcare, and local "Luddite" opposition to a proposed data center in Columbia.KEYSTONE

SCHEDULE THE JBS, 5-29-26.457 THE AMBROSIAN ILIAD.(1) Jeff Bliss discusses the Los Angeles mayoral race between incumbent Karen Bass, who faces criticism over homelessness and crime, and unconventional candidate Spencer Pratt, who utilizes social media and "guerrilla campaigning" to gain traction.(2) Jeff Bliss highlights Las Vegas's pursuit of an NBA team to complete its status as a global sports capital, while the Fertitta family acquires Caesar's Palace, consolidating power among the city's casino billionaires.(3) Professor Richard Epstein analyzes the legal history of birthright citizenship and Donald Trump's executive order, arguing that the 14th Amendment has been misinterpreted and that the child's status should depend on the parent's.(4) Professor Richard Epstein describes the Trump administration's $1.776 billion "slush fund" as a fraudulent private agreement, noting that despite its likely illegality, legal standing requirements make it difficult for anyone to successfully challenge.(5) Jim McTague reports on Lancaster County's economy, noting record-breaking gasoline sales at Costco despite rainy weather, the rise of retirement-driven healthcare, and local "Luddite" opposition to a proposed data center in Columbia.(6) Veronique de Rugy discusses a proposed California tax on billionaires, warning it will drive high earners away and reduce state revenue, while a competing initiative seeks to protect regular citizens' savings from taxation.(7) Bob Zimmerman examines a massive Blue Origin rocket explosion that has grounded the New Glenn program and delayed NASA's Artemis missions, leaving SpaceX as the only viable private partner for immediate lunar goals.(8) Bob Zimmerman discusses mysterious subsurface changes in the sun and conflicting data regarding water ice at the lunar South Pole, while highlighting Mars' "brain terrain" as evidence of significant near-surface ice deposits.(9) Francis Rose details the Department of Veterans Affairs' ambitious rollout of a new electronic health record system in Michigan, aiming for a seamless "enlistment to grave" digital history for every member of the military.(10) Francis Rose explores the security risks of electronic health records, explaining how nation-states like China seek bulk data for espionage and how the government utilizes "zero trust" technology to deter sophisticated machine-speed hacks.(11) Gene Marks reports from Nashville that mid-market companies are aggressively adopting AI to supplement labor shortages rather than replace workers, while also navigating the complexities of receiving refunds for previously paid tariffs.(12) Gene Marks questions surveys claiming 93% small business growth and dismisses claims that AI will eliminate white-collar jobs soon, asserting that human workers will naturally adapt to new technology as they have historically.(13) Henry Sokolski argues that no inherent "right to enrichment" exists under the NPT, warning that Iran's nuclear ambitions and regional power plants create dangerous targets and risk a "hot spot" of nuclear-armed nations.(14) Henry Sokolski discusses Russia's "gray warfare" tactics against NATO, including drone provocations and sabotage of European infrastructure, warning that the United States is not taking these threats seriously enough compared to Europe.(15) Conrad Black discusses Alberta's threat to secede from Canada if the federal government blocks oil pipelines, detailing the political maneuvering between Premier Danielle Smith, indigenous groups, and Prime Minister candidate Mark Carney.(16) Lorenzo Fiori reports on a record-breaking Italian heat wave and the poor market reception of Ferrari's new electric vehicle, while noting that affordable Chinese EVs are rapidly becoming the top-selling cars in Italy.

Today we look at fresh blow-out enthusiasm for a major tech name reporting strong earnings that blasted its stock into the stratosphere after hours yesterday. We also note the bevy of interesting tech names reporting next week, run through some macro and FX observations, note the key technical hold in gold, the shifting forward curve in crude oil and more. Regarding today's episode title, consider Saxo's outrageous prediction for this year regarding the SpaceX IPO and one of the main things - or perhaps the main thing - Elon Musk hopes to achieve in going to Mars (link below). Today's pod hosted by Saxo Global Head of Macro Strategy John J. Hardy. Links We took a stab at predicting the scale of the SpaceX IPO  (undershooting badly!) and some of the true reasons for Elon Musk's passion for going to Mars in the Saxo Outrageous Predictions for 2026 released late last year. The Register discussed Salesforce' "waving bye-bye" to its User Interface as it opens up its data to a trillion API calls from other platforms, including increasingly Anthropic  via its Headless 360, a programmable agent platform. The constantly shade-throwing Futurism (ironically a bit Luddite at times) with an article questioning whether CEO's are suffering from AI psychosis as they are out of touch with the struggle for AI to get traction at ground level in their organisations. Is AI making some people feel and act dangerously over-competent and what are the risks if so? (HT FTAlphaville) About twice per week (in normal times, hopefully soon to resume), you will find links discussed on the podcast and a chart-of-the-day over at the John J. Hardy substack. Read daily in-depth market updates from the Saxo Market Call and the Saxo Strategy Team here. Please reach out to us at marketcall@saxobank.com for feedback and questions. Click here to open an account with Saxo. Intro music by AShamaluevMusic DISCLAIMER This content is marketing material. Trading financial instruments carries risks. Always ensure that you understand these risks before trading. This material does not contain investment advice or an encouragement to invest in a particular manner. Historic performance is not a guarantee of future results. The instrument(s) referenced in this content may be issued by a partner, from whom Saxo Bank A/S receives promotional fees, payment or retrocessions. While Saxo may receive compensation from these partnerships, all content is created with the aim of providing clients with valuable information and options.  

It's a high-concept show with an old-school message: who needs all this new-fangled technology! From photography to phone sex, Andrew and Vieves are doing it the old fashioned way. Plus, the Ad Council is for sure turning into their parents. Here are links to the ads we talked about in this week's show: VSCO - Photography Never Mattered More https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ8Spf3ydH8 IKEA Catalogue: BookBook https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0 Timex - Analog Life: Make Time Yours https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvmf8H_bxl0 Anti-Cable TV Ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIgZHZpiq1U Sunrise Flour Mill https://www.ispot.tv/ad/f3Pt/sunrise-flour-mill-sometimes-the-old-ways-are-best Balderson Cheese https://vimeo.com/625732382 Esalen https://www.ispot.tv/ad/dQ1u/visit-california-california-dreamer-esalen-is-an-analog-oasis-in-a-digital-world 1-800 -PHONE-SEXY - The Old Fashioned Way https://www.ispot.tv/ad/Z5Az/1-800-phone-sexy-the-old-fashioned-way Progressive: Gameday Shopping https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbdEJfx8-Yk Progressive: Getting Involved https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-mRJKFT_88

Polymarket and Kalshi are everywhere. But what are they doing to society? Jathan Sadowski joins Paris Marx to discuss the rise of prediction markets and their negative social effects as they push the global economy closer toward the financialization of everything. Jathan Sadowski is an Associate Professor at Monash University. He is the author of The Mechanic and the Luddite and co-hosts This Machine Kills. Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon. The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Also mentioned in this episode: Jathan wrote about Kalshi trying to bring about the financialization of everything in Fast Company. The NYT reported on the use of classified information by a US soldier to place a bet on the capture of Maduro. Wired just reported on how the US is using AI to spot insider trading. Polymarket users sent death threats to a reporter.

Polymarket and Kalshi are everywhere. But what are they doing to society? Jathan Sadowski joins Paris Marx to discuss the rise of prediction markets and their negative social effects as they push the global economy closer toward the financialization of everything.Jathan Sadowski is an Associate Professor at Monash University. He is the author of The Mechanic and the Luddite and co-hosts This Machine Kills.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Last summer, the Vatican hosted a big meeting of what it called “digital missionaries and Catholic influencers.” Host Mike Jordan Laskey admits he felt a little queasy when he saw this advertised. It's not that he's a Luddite and totally against the internet; we come to you via the internet every week. But there was something about the institutional church gathering and promoting influencers that just didn't sit well with Mike. To unpack this overall dis-ease with faith-based influencer culture, Mike called up a scholar who studies this exact topic. Dr. Kristin Peterson is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at Boston College, where she teaches courses related to the intersections of media and religion. She's also the author of a 2022 book titled “Unruly Souls: The Digital Activism of Muslim and Christian Feminists.” Mike asked her about the phenomenon of social media influencers in general and how religious folks have tapped into that trend. They also talked about some of the reasons behind the rise of influencers and what advice she might give to Pope Leo about the dangers and opportunities of encouraging Catholics to take their faith online. Kristin Peterson, Ph.D.: https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/morrissey/departments/communication/people/faculty-directory/kristin-peterson.html AMDG is a production of the Jesuit Media Lab, which is a project of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. www.jesuits.org/ www.beajesuit.org/ twitter.com/jesuitnews facebook.com/Jesuits instagram.com/wearethejesuits youtube.com/societyofjesus www.jesuitmedialab.org/

The AI uprising has begun. But what kind of uprising will it be? Will it be a Butlerian Jihad? A neo-Luddite movement? Or something else entirely? Let's find out…

Sometimes, digging into the origins of a word can help with real insights into a contemporary issue. Take the meaning of the word person. The ancient Greeks used the word for face – prosopon – to mean a person, while in Latin, the word persona, from which we get the English person, owes its origins to sonare, which means to sound. So ideas about a person in these ancient languages focused on what can be seen and heard – the face and the voice. They're integral to how people connect with one another. This importance of the person came to mind when I read reports this week that the revamped NHS app, sold to the public as providing patients with a doctor in their pocket by digitising services, has had a distressing unforeseen drawback. Some patients, according to these reports, discovered test results for serious illnesses, such as cancer, by them being uploaded on the app. The NHS has said it has reissued guidance to stop this happening, confirming the importance of the soothing voice of a doctor breaking bad news. As one patient who says this happened to them, put it: “Seeing someone face to face is so important”. Technology can speed life up and be super-efficient, but there are clearly alienating, impersonal drawbacks too. When Pope Leo was elected a year ago, he said he was going to make artificial intelligence a key priority of his work. He's about to release his first encyclical, or teaching document on AI, focusing on the importance of human dignity as the world undergoes such profound technological change. He's also released a message on AI for the Catholic Church's annual World Communications Day, being marked this Sunday. It warns AI can erode people's ability to think analytically and creatively. Not that Pope Leo is a Luddite opposed to change. He's comfortable with technology. One of his brothers told a reporter that when he got locked out of his computer recently, he phoned the Pope who quickly told him what to do to get back in. But Leo's concern is that if AI takes over areas of life where human interaction used to be essential, it damages the deepest levels of human communication. People of faith, like Pope Leo, believe that faces and voices are sacred because God created humanity in his image and likeness. Back in the fourth century, St Gregory of Nyssa said that preserving human faces and voices means preserving an indelible reflection of divine love. It's as true today as it was then. For a patient facing bad news, a gentle voice and a consoling look can mean the difference between what you can bear and what you cannot.

Imagine you have a disease that is consuming your mobility...your speech. All of the tools you're accustomed to using to communicate with others are taken from you. Perhaps only months ago you were known as a compelling storyteller...a charismatic figure who could light up the room with charming wit. Now a disease has reduced you to blinking once for yes and twice for no. It's a horrible thought, but for some it's an unstoppable reality.​​A.I. is changing this. It's on the verge of freeing many people from this isolation, and that is AMAZING!​​This week, Sean and I catch up on life in the coffee biz, discuss the importance of honesty and transparency, and highlight some of the former science fiction that AI is making possible.​​Incredible things are happening right now. Things that this nerdy kid who was raised on Star Trek never thought he'd live to see...but here we are. In the business world, AI is empowering entrepreneurs to achieve feats that traditionally require teams of high-dollar experts. Not anymore. The playing field is more level than it has ever been in modern times. It's not too late to be one of the "early adopters" who skyrockets to success by mastering a few tools. Don't get sucked into the Luddite, fear-mongering click bait. Focus on the positive impacts this new technology is making and learn how to use it to improve your life and the lives of others. FYI: That is exactly what the AI Accelerator Summit is all about - Successful entrepreneurs showing you how their businesses have been propelled by a few tools that are available to all of us. This is a FREE live event, not to be missed. You don't have to buy a seat, but you do need to claim your free ticket: Click Here to grab a spot. Key Insights An update on Sean's business Stuff you probably didn't know about coffee Flavor descriptions…real or marketing? Spiritual Foundations: Do not lie! White lies are still lies Try to not tell a single lie for an entire week Whatever you achieve by lying, you can only keep by lying Can you be honest without being brutal? Be honest with your customers even if it costs you the sale The "digital me" we're using in marketing (and disclosing that fact) If you're using AI, be up front! The "Cynicism Tax" Consumer fears of AI deception What AI is making possible for those of us with physical challenges Neuralink - Incredible new AI-powered technology gives ALS patient his voice back The AI Accelerator Summit - Free, 3-day event where you will learn from 14 incredible entrepreneurs how they are using AI to accelerate their business Links The AI Accelerator Summit - April 15th-17th Incredible Neuralink Technology allows ALS patient to speak again AI Accelerator Summit Trailer featuring my Digital Clone How You Can Help Subscribe to the show in Apple Podcasts or on Spotify, and give us a rating and review. Make sure you put your real name and website in the text of the review itself. We will definitely mention you on this show. Questions or comments?Connect with Ray on Facebook, Twitter, and InstagramVisit Ray's community on Facebook – This is a friendly group of writers, entrepreneurs, and coaches who share ideas and helpful advice.

If you're truly a Luddite, you're probably not listening to this podcast anyway.  But if you love your tech, but still like to hold a paper book in your hand, or you're a wiz with GPS, but have a glove compartment full of maps you actually know how to use, this episode might just be for you.   This week, Art and Jay talk about their favorite analog tools, sprinkled with a dose of when they like to use tech vs when wireless living is preferred.  From journals to ink pens, maps to books, and even a legal pad, all their top tips on what to use when the battery runs out - and even when it doesn't - are covered here.  In Geeks of the Week, Art talks a potential sequel for a long pass and the end of class for a streaming series, plus a musical obit.  Jay updates the public on fancy popcorn buckets and reports on the new trailer for the boy who lives through the movies and now gets a long-term TV deal to boot.   Get out your Flair pen and your Leuchtturm1917 journal and take some notes!

Our fav Buzzkill babes Lizz and Moji are coming at ya this week with incredible topics and incredible guests! First off- We truly owe them a debt of gratitude — they took one for the feminist team, and watched the Netflix Inside the Manosphere documentary so we don't have to. Warning: after listening, be prepared for the overwhelming urge to jump in the shower and scrub the misogyny off for the next 12 hours. We've Got THE Guests To Balance Out The Misogynistic Malarkey! The perfect antidote to the Manosphere? The MENOSPHERE! Joining the Buzzkills this week are Alicia J. Rose, host and creator of the Menopunks Podcast, and menopause specialist, Dr. Aoife O'Sullivan to talk all things menopause. From entirely-too-moist night sweats to your entirely-too-dry ‘gina, Moji and Lizz have the perfect guests to talk about all the downs and dirties of the ‘pause trifecta: peri, meno, and post-meno. PLUS: Sometimes you just have to choose to laugh about it (when you're done raging your way through a hot flash), and our fav pre-perimenopausal comedian and star of the hysterical comedy special, I Don't Wanna Work Anymore, Phoebe Robinson, is going to crack you tf up! If you can't laugh about it, what the hell else are you gonna do?  Tune in for the menopause minutiae, stay for the comedy!  Times are heavy, but knowledge is power, y'all. We gotchu.    OPERATION SAVE ABORTION: You can still join the 10,000+ womb warriors fighting the patriarchy by clicking HERE for past Operation Save Abortion trainings, your toolkit, marching orders, and more.   HOSTS: Lizz Winstead IG: @LizzWinstead Bluesky: @LizzWinstead.bsky.social Moji Alawode-El IG: @Mojilocks Bluesky: @Mojilocks.bsky.social SPECIAL GUESTS: Phoebe Robinson IG: @dopequeenpheebs Alicia J. Rose IG: @menopunks / @ajrhq Dr. Aoife O'Sullivan IG: @portlandmenopausedoc / @thedustymuffins / @m.powercollective   GUEST LINKS: TICKETS: Phoebe's Tour Dates Phoebe's Linktree Tiny Reparations Books WATCH: Phoebe's Special “I Don't Wanna Work Anymore” SUBSCRIBE: Phoebe's Substack Alicia's Website MENOPUNKS Website MENOPUNKS Youtube Alicia's Vimeo Dr. Aofie's Linktree The Dusty Muffins Youtube M Power Collective Website   NEWS DUMP: Missouri Senator Josh Hawley Introduces Bill To Ban Abortion Pill Police Charge Woman With Murder for Allegedly Taking Abortion Pill, Even Though State Law Says They Can't Could a Registry of Doctors Who Refuse Abortions Improve Access in Spain?   EPISODE LINKS: Call Your Reps to Stop the Comstock Act! ADOPT-A-CLINIC: Blue Mountain Clinic in Missoula, MT Operation Save Abortion Expose Fake Clinics BUY AAF MERCH! EMAIL your abobo questions to The Feminist Buzzkills AAF's Abortion-Themed Rage Playlist   FOLLOW US: Listen to us ~ FBK Podcast  Instagram ~ @AbortionFront Bluesky ~ @AbortionFront TikTok ~ @AbortionFront Facebook ~ @AbortionFront YouTube ~ @AbortionAccessFront TALK TO THE CHARLEY BOT FOR ABOBO OPTIONS & RESOURCES HERE! PATREON HERE! Support our work, get exclusive merch and more!  DONATE TO AAF HERE! ACTIVIST CALENDAR HERE! VOLUNTEER WITH US HERE! ADOPT-A-CLINIC HERE! GET ABOBO PILLS FROM PLAN C PILLS HERE! When BS is poppin', we pop off! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It was late – the moon had been up for hours - Ned Ludd and his friends felt deep hungry pains As they walked slowly through the town where they grew up – the town they loved. And quietly snuck into the factory – where they used to work Then, they smashed the NEW – ALIEN - machines… that stole their jobs… Don't let this happen to you.

Questions? Comments?AI hype is colliding with financial reality. Don and Tom examine Elon Musk's suggestion that artificial intelligence could create such abundance that retirement savings might become unnecessary. They unpack the economics behind universal basic income, including the staggering cost—even a modest payment would require trillions in new revenue—and explain why most Americans aren't betting their futures on Silicon Valley promises. The episode also answers listener questions about confusing target-date fund holdings, what to do with an overfunded 529 plan, and how to reduce taxable investment distributions by placing assets in the right accounts. Along the way they revisit lessons from past technological revolutions, discuss the importance of work beyond income, and continue their campaign against the scourge of gas-powered leaf blowers.0:04 AI panic and Elon Musk's claim that AI could make retirement savings unnecessary.1:52 Musk's vision of AI-driven abundance and universal income replacing traditional retirement planning.3:36 The practical question: who actually pays for universal income checks?5:30 Historical tax rates in the 1960s vs. today's marginal tax structure.6:21 Survey shows 94% of readers still plan to save despite AI predictions.7:17 Boston College researchers warn Musk's comments send a dangerous retirement message.8:23 Why universal basic income would require major government policy and taxes.8:45 Past technology revolutions didn't distribute wealth evenly.9:27 Why humans need work for purpose, not just income.10:33 The math problem: even $1,000/month UBI would require about $3.1 trillion annually.11:54 Historical comparison to the Luddite era and displaced workers.13:18 Listener question: What “short-term debt and net other assets” mean in a Fidelity target-date fund.17:38 Listener question: Overfunding a 529 plan and potential Roth rollover strategies.20:45 Listener question: Using Vanguard Tax-Managed Balanced Fund to reduce taxable distributions.23:28 Asset location strategy: placing bonds in IRAs and stocks in taxable accounts.24:49 Where to easily find mutual fund returns using Morningstar.25:46 Tom's Scottsdale advisory meetings announcement.26:45 The crusade against gas-powered leaf blowers.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI hype is colliding with financial reality. Don and Tom examine Elon Musk's suggestion that artificial intelligence could create such abundance that retirement savings might become unnecessary. They unpack the economics behind universal basic income, including the staggering cost—even a modest payment would require trillions in new revenue—and explain why most Americans aren't betting their futures on Silicon Valley promises. The episode also answers listener questions about confusing target-date fund holdings, what to do with an overfunded 529 plan, and how to reduce taxable investment distributions by placing assets in the right accounts. Along the way they revisit lessons from past technological revolutions, discuss the importance of work beyond income, and continue their campaign against the scourge of gas-powered leaf blowers. 0:04 AI panic and Elon Musk's claim that AI could make retirement savings unnecessary. 1:52 Musk's vision of AI-driven abundance and universal income replacing traditional retirement planning. 3:36 The practical question: who actually pays for universal income checks? 5:30 Historical tax rates in the 1960s vs. today's marginal tax structure. 6:21 Survey shows 94% of readers still plan to save despite AI predictions. 7:17 Boston College researchers warn Musk's comments send a dangerous retirement message. 8:23 Why universal basic income would require major government policy and taxes. 8:45 Past technology revolutions didn't distribute wealth evenly. 9:27 Why humans need work for purpose, not just income. 10:33 The math problem: even $1,000/month UBI would require about $3.1 trillion annually. 11:54 Historical comparison to the Luddite era and displaced workers. 13:18 Listener question: What “short-term debt and net other assets” mean in a Fidelity target-date fund. 17:38 Listener question: Overfunding a 529 plan and potential Roth rollover strategies. 20:45 Listener question: Using Vanguard Tax-Managed Balanced Fund to reduce taxable distributions. 23:28 Asset location strategy: placing bonds in IRAs and stocks in taxable accounts. 24:49 Where to easily find mutual fund returns using Morningstar. 25:46 Tom's Scottsdale advisory meetings announcement. 26:45 The crusade against gas-powered leaf blowers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paris Marx is joined by Amanda Hanna-McLeer and Lucy Jackson to discuss the story of The Luddite Club, from its beginnings as a high school organization to its pivot into a non-profit and growth into an international movement. Amanda Hanna-McLeer is a writer, educator, and director of The Luddite Club documentary. Lucy Jackson is an early member of the Luddite Club. Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon. The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Also mentioned in this episode: The original New York Times article featuring the club Amanda shouts out Brian Merchant's book The One Device and Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing The film discussed was John Carpenter's 1988 sci-fi horror film They Live

Paris Marx is joined by Amanda Hanna-McLeer and Lucy Jackson to discuss the story of The Luddite Club, from its beginnings as a high school organization to its pivot into a non-profit and growth into an international movement.Amanda Hanna-McLeer is a writer, educator, and director of The Luddite Club documentary. Lucy Jackson is an early member of the Luddite Club.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Mike Solana joins Bridget for a fascinating conversation about America's shifting political fault lines, why critiquing tech is critiquing power, and the coming Luddite backlash. They discuss Mamdani's Marxist housing advisor calling for the seizure of private homes (especially from the white middle class), and then crying about it when confronted with questions, the social justice ideas that escaped academia, why Solana thinks that "real leftism" is coming, and why social media is probably net negative. They cover his journey from 23-year-old anarchist to Peter Thiel protégé, to Chief Marketing Officer of Founder's Fund, to founder of Pirate Wires, how the whole geopolitical landscape is shifting so fast that we're all struggling to keep up, looksmaxxing Incels, why we need to focus on integration and not immigration, and how we forget how dumb the average person really is. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsor Links: - Try Qualia Stem for up to 50% off at qualialife.com/BRIDGET and use the code BRIDGET for an additional 15% off your order - https://bit.ly/WiW-Qualia - Quest offers 100+ lab tests to empower you to have more control over your health journey. Choose from a variety of test types that best suit your needs, use code WALKINS25 to get 25% off - https://www.questhealth.com - If you love Walk-Ins Welcome become a supporter at https://phetasy.com--------------------------------------------------------------------- Walk-Ins Welcome with Bridget Phetasy - Podcast Bridget Phetasy admires grit and authenticity. On Walk-Ins Welcome, she talks about the beautiful failures and frightening successes of her own life and the lives of her guests. She doesn't conduct interviews—she has conversations. Conversations with real people about the real struggle and will remind you that we can laugh in pain and cry in joy but there's no greater mistake than hiding from it all. By embracing it all, and celebrating it with the stories she'll bring listeners, she believes that our lowest moments can be the building blocks for our eventual fulfillment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PHETASY IS a movement disguised as a company. We just want to make you laugh while the world burns. https://www.phetasy.com/ Buy PHETASY MERCH here: https://www.bridgetphetasy.com/ For more content, including the unedited version of Dumpster Fire, BTS content, writing, photos, livestreams and a kick-ass community, subscribe at https://phetasy.com/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/BridgetPhetasy Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bridgetphetasy/ Podcast - Walk-Ins Welcome with Bridget Phetasy https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/walk-ins-welcome/id1437447846 https://open.spotify.com/show/7jbRU0qOjbxZJf9d49AHEh https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/I3gqggwe23u6mnsdgqynu447wvaSupport the show

The Wealth Formula Podcast is one of the longest-running personal finance podcasts still standing. For more than a decade, I've shown up every single week to talk about investing, markets, and the forces shaping the economy. What's interesting is how much my own thinking has evolved over that time. Early on, I was more rigid. I was—and still am—a real estate guy. But back then, I didn't give much thought to ideas outside that lane. I was dogmatic, and I didn't always challenge my own beliefs. Time has a way of doing that for you. I've now lived through multiple market cycles. I've watched the stock market melt up to valuations that felt absurd—and then keep going. I've seen gold go from flat for a decade to parabolic over a year. I've seen interest rates sit near zero for a decade and then snap higher at the fastest pace in modern history. And I've learned, sometimes the hard way, that diversification is about survival and that every asset class has its day. One lesson I learned that I am thinking a lot about these days is: ignore major technological shifts at your own peril. Back in 2014, I first started hearing people talk seriously about Bitcoin. At the time, I dismissed it. I listened to the critics, was convinced it was a scam, and didn't take the time to truly understand it. That was a mistake—not because everyone should have bought Bitcoin, but because I ignored a structural change happening right in front of me. Bitcoin went from a cypherpunk expression of freedom to the largest ETF owned by BlackRock. Today, the dominant story is artificial intelligence. And whether you love stocks, hate stocks, prefer real estate, or focus exclusively on cash flow, you cannot afford to ignore AI. This isn't a fad. It's a general-purpose technology—on the scale of electricity, the internet, or the industrial revolution itself. That doesn't mean it's easy to invest in. It's hard to look at headline names trading at massive valuations and feel good about buying them today. But investing in AI isn't about chasing a single company. It's about understanding second- and third-order effects: energy demand, data centers, productivity gains, labor displacement, capital flows, and how blockchain and decentralized systems intersect with all of it. What experience has taught me is this: you don't need to be first to invest—but you do need to be early in understanding. If you wait until something feels obvious, most of the opportunity is already gone. This week's episode of the Wealth Formula Podcast is focused squarely on AI and blockchain—what's real, what's noise, and where the long-term implications may lie. Listen to this episode. You'll come away smarter. And years from now, you may look back and realize this was one of those moments where paying attention really mattered. Transcript Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI and may not be 100% accurate. If you notice any errors or corrections, please email us at phil@wealthformula.com.  Welcome everybody. This is Buck Joffrey with the Wealth Formula Podcast. Coming to you from Montecito, California. Today we wanna start with a reminder. We are in a new year and we are already doing deals, uh, through the Wealth Formula Accredit Investor Club. You can go and sign up for that for free. Uh, wealth formula.com just hit investor club and you just get on there and, and you’ll get onboarded. And from there, all you gotta do is wait for deal flow and webinars coming to your inbox. And, um, you know, if nothing else, you learn something. So go check it out. Uh, go to. Wealth formula.com and sign up for Investor Club now onto today’s show. Uh, the, it is interesting. I don’t know if you are aware it’s a listener, but we are, wealth Formula is, uh, probably I would say one of the, certainly in the one of the top longest running personal finance podcasts still. Standing. Uh, I’ve been around, well, I think the first episode was on like 2014, so it was a long time, but in earnest, you know, at least for over a decade. And, you know, during that time, I’ve shown up every week, every single week. Don’t Ms. Weeks, but none, none. Isn’t that incredible? I’ve shown up, uh, talked about investing and talked about very way markets are working, forces, shaping the economy, all that kind of stuff. But you know, as you can imagine, as a. As a younger individual versus, um, my crusty self. Now, you know, a lot of my own thinking has evolved over that time, you know, back then. And I, you know, I think this appealed to some people, but, um, you know, I was really dogmatic. I’m a real estate guy, right? And I still am a real estate guy, but back then I wouldn’t give anything else the time of day to even think about, you know, and, and, uh, I, I, you know. I was dogmatic and didn’t always challenge my own belief systems. Um, I’m different now, right? I’ve softened And time is a way of, of changing all of that dogmatic stuff for you. You know, I’ve lived through multiple market cycles. I’ve watched, well, I’ve watched the stock market, which I, which I always maligned, you know, melt up to valuations. Uh, that felt absurd. And then keep going higher. I’ve seen gold, which was kind of ridiculous for the longest time. I watched it for like a decade, just pretty much flat, and then it goes parabolic. Over the last year, I’ve seen interest rates sit near zero for a decade and then snap higher. Uh, not even as time, just launch higher at the fastest space in modern history. And I’ve learned sometimes I guess, the hard way that diversification is about survival and that every class, every asset class has its day. Just like every dog has its day. And um, you know, one other lesson that I learned that I’m thinking a lot about these days is ignore major technological shifts at your own peril. So what am I talking about? Well. It’s kind of a, it is a technological shift, whether you think it about not, but Bitcoin. Okay. Back in 2014, I first started hearing people talk seriously about Bitcoin, and at that time I dismissed it. I was, uh, I was listening to critics beater Schiff that constantly called it a scam, said it was going to zero and so on. I didn’t, I didn’t take the time to truly understand it, to try to understand it the way I understand it now, that makes me a believer in Bitcoin. That, of course was a big mistake, not because, you know, everyone should have bought Bitcoin and, uh, back then, well, they, you know, would’ve been nice if they did, but because fundamentally I ignored something that was a structural change happening right in front of me. And since then, Bitcoin went from a cipher punk expression of freedom to the large CTF owned by BlackRock today. The dominant story is actually artificial intelligence. Now, whether you love stocks, hate stocks, prefer real estate focused exclusively on cab, whatever, you cannot afford to ignore ai. It’s not a fad. It’s a general purpose technology and a technology shift, and the scale of electricity. The internet bigger than the internet, bigger than the industrial revolution. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to invest in. I mean, I’m gonna go invest in AI and make a bunch of money because I mean, what does that even mean? It’s hard to look at headline names, trading at massive valuations like Nvidia and all that right now, and saying, oh, I’m gonna go buy that. Who knows? That’s gonna work out. When I talk about investing in AI isn’t really just investing in stocks or any individual company or data centers or whatever. It’s about understanding. The second and third order effects, energy demand. You know, as I mentioned, data centers, productivity gains, labor displacement, capital flows, and how blockchain and decentralized systems intersect with all of that. It is very, very complicated. Um, but it’s really important to start to try to understand, you know, an experience that stop me is this. You don’t need to be the first to invest, but you do need to be early in understanding. If you wait until something feels obvious, usually the opportunity’s gone by then. And you know, the thing about AI is even if you think it’s obvious now. The reality is that most people haven’t really caught on. Maybe they played with chat GPT, but I don’t think they’re understanding what this whole, you know, this thing is gonna do to our world. Um, anyway, so that is what this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast, uh, is about. It’s about AI and also, um, a little bit about, you know, bitcoin and blockchain and that kind of thing. Um, we’re gonna talk about what’s noise, uh, you know, where the long, what the long-term, uh, implications are all of this stuff. This is a show that, uh, I really enjoy doing really, really good stuff. Um, so make sure you listen in. We’ll have that interview for you right after these messages. Wealth Formula banking is an ingenious concept powered by whole life insurance, but instead of acting just as a safety net. The strategy supercharges your investments. First, you create a personal financial reservoir that grows at a compounding interest rate much higher than any bank savings account. As your money accumulates, you borrow from your own bank to invest in other cash flowing investments. Here’s the key. Even though you borrowed money at a simple interest rate, your insurance company keeps paying you compound interest. On that money, even though you’ve borrowed it, that result, you make money in two places at the same time. That’s why your investments get supercharged. This isn’t a new technique. It’s a refined strategy used by some of the wealthiest families in history, and it uses century old rock solid insurance companies as its backbone. Turbocharge your investments. Visit Wealth formula banking.com. Again, that’s wealth formula banking.com. Welcome back to the show, everyone. Today. My guest on Wealth Formula podcast is Jim Thorne, chief Market strategist at Wellington. L is private wealth with more than 25 years of experience in capital markets. He’s previously served as chief capital market strategist, senior portfolio manager, chief economist, and CIO. Uh, equities at major investment firms and has also taught economics and finance at the university level. Uh, Jim is known for translating complex economic, political, and market dynamics into clear actionable insights to help investors and advisors navigate long-term capital decisions. Uh, Jim, welcome with the program. Thanks for having me Buck. Well, um, Tim, I, I, I, uh, had been following a little bit of, uh, what you discuss on, uh, on X and, um, one of the things that caught my eye is, you know, your, your narrative on, on ai, a lot of people are tend to be still sort of skeptical of AI and what’s going on, uh, with the markets. Um, uh, but at the same time, uh, there’s this. Sense. I think that ignoring AI altogether as an investor is, is, is downright potentially dangerous. So, uh, at the highest level, why is AI something people simply can’t dismiss? Well, we live in an, uh, uh, you know, many other people have coined this term, but we live, we’re living in an exponential age of, of technological innovation. And, you know, AI and I’ll just add into their, uh, blockchain is just the normal evolutionary process that, you know, for me started when I left graduate school and came into the business in the nineties where everybody had this high degree of skepticism of the computer and the, the, the phone, the, the. And the internet. And so, you know, what we do is we go through these cycles and there are periods of time where the stars align. And we have a period of time where we have what I would call an intense period of innovation where I would suggest to you that. People are skeptical. Skeptical, and yet at the same point in time, they very early on in the, in the, in the trade, call it a bubble when it’s not. And so I think it comes from the position of ignorance. One, I think two, fear, and then three. If you think about if you are an active manager, I in a 40 ACT fund, um, you know, and you’re sitting there with, uh, you know, mi. Uh, Nvidia at, you know, eight or 9% of your index. And that’s a big chunk that you’ve gotta put into your fund, uh, just to be market neutral. So there’s a lot of people that hate this rally. There’s a lot of people that are can, going to continue to hate this rally. But the thing I anchor my hat on are a couple of things. Look at if this is no different than the railroad. Canals, any major technological innovation, will it become a bubble? Yes. Just not now. So, so let’s follow up on that, because a lot of people think, or are talking about the, do you know the.com bubble, uh, comparisons, and you’ve argued that that sort of misses the real story. So, so where are we getting it wrong right now? Are those people getting it wrong? In the nineties buck, you’d walk into a bar and there wouldn’t be ESPN on there’d be CNBC on people were getting their jobs to become day traders. Folks didn’t go to the go to university because they were basically getting their white papers financed. You had companies that were trading off of clicks. So I lived that. Anybody who is of a younger generation has no idea what a bubble is, and it’s specious and pedantic for them to use that term when they have no clue about what they’re talking about. But you did mention that it could become a bubble. How do we know when it does become a bubble? Oh, it’ll become a bubble. Well, when, when, when you know, the, what, what I am looking for is, you know, when we, when the good investment opportunities start to dry up, when liquidity starts to dry up. So what I, it’s not about valuation, to me it’s about liquidity. So in 2000, what, and I’m roughly speaking, what went down was you had all these companies that were trading at Strat catastrophic valuation, this stupid valuations, and you walked in one day and they didn’t get financing. And if you read the prospectus or you followed the company, you knew that they were not going to be free cash flow positive for another two or three rounds of financing. All of a sudden you walked in and everybody goes, oh my God, this thing, you know, trading at 250 times sales. And everybody went, yeah, of course. And so what it was is, was when does liquidity dry up? So I’ll give you a date, um, you know, with Trump’s big beautiful bill act. 100% tax deductibility of CapEx and that goes until Jan 1, 20 31. So to me, that’s a very motivating factor for people to, um, invest. The last thing I would say to you in more of a game theoretic context book is, look, if you are a big tech company and you don’t invest in ai. You are ensuring your death. Yahoo, Hela Packard. I can go through the list of companies that cease to invest, so they’re looking. If it was you and I when we were running this company, I would say, dude, we gotta invest because if we don’t have a poll position in this next platform, whatever it is, we’re done. We’re toast. And I think that’s why you’re seeing all these hyperscalers spending as much money as they are. ’cause they get this, they saw it. So, you know, you framed ai not necessarily as a a tech trade, but as a capital expenditure cycle. Can you explain that to people? Well, what we need to do is we need to build out the infrastructure of ai. Then, and that’s the phase that we’re in right now. So it’s more like we’re building out all of the railroads, the railway tracks and the railway stations across the United States back in the 18 hundreds. And then we’re gonna go through that building phase. And then as that building phase goes, some companies, some towns, are going to basically realize and recognize what’s happening and start to basically take ai. Bring it into their business model, into enhanced margins. Right. So right now we’re building it out. I mean, you know, we all focus on the hyperscalers, but the majority of companies, pardon me, governments. Individuals, they haven’t used AI and, and what is interesting about this is back in the nineties, they were talking about how the internet had to evolve to be much more. You know, uh, have critical thinking in, in, in it. And it was more explained when you went to these conferences, as you know, you know, think about this. You’re hearing this in 99, okay? Not today. You go in and you ask Google or dog pile at the same time, or excite, okay? You would say, I wanna go to Florida in the third week of March and I wanna stay here and I wanna spend this amount of money and I wanna rent a car. Plan it for me. And they would come back and they would tell you that it would come back and it would, it would, everything would be there. And you would have your over here and all you would have to do is drop your money and you had your thing planned. So none of this is as, it’s aspirational, but we’ve heard it before. And in technology, what happens is it’s not like it’s new. We’ve been talking to, I did machine learning in in graduate school. Ai, you know, I did neural networks and I’m a terrible Ian. This isn’t, you know, Claude Shannon wrote about this in 1937, right? But it’s about when does it hit, and so it was chat GBT. Can we argue, was that right? As an investor, it’s stop arguing, start investing. Then what you’ve gotta figure out, which is the question you ask, is when does the music stop? I think it goes until the end of the decade. You know, one of the things that, uh, is interesting about this, uh, AI investment, uh, it’s, it’s unfolding in a higher interest rate environment. Why is that detail so important? Understanding its significance? Well, it’s the cost of capital, right? And so this phase that we have right now. It’s funny you say that, right? ’cause our reference point is zero interest rates, right? Yeah, yeah. Right. That’s right. So, you know, you know, so, so think about this, what it happens right now. Now we’re in the phase where you’ve got these hyperscalers that instead of taking all their free cash flow and buying bonds and buying back stock, are increasing CapEx because there’s a great tax deduction on it. So you get a lot of, so we’re in this phase where, for where, where a lot of the money is, you know, was. Was, let me, let me be clear, was a hundred free cashflow. Now we’re getting these guys, these companies like Oracle and what have you, you know, starting to issue debt and look at debt isn’t bad as long as the rate of return on debt is higher than the interest rates. And so, you know, you know, I, I would say historically speaking, for a lot of these high quality names, the interest rates are not, uh, at levels that will stop them from investing. Right. Right. You know, you’ve written that, um, productivity is ultimately the real story behind ai. So why does productivity matter more than the technology headlines themselves? Well, let me just put it this way, right? So we’ve grown, I grew up, I, I joined, I’m up here in Toronto, right? So I’m gonna give it to you in Canadian dollars, right? So I joined, I joined here. You know, I grew up here, went to the states, came back home. Growing this company I joined when we’re about three and a half billion. We’re getting close to 50 billion, and we’re the fastest growing independent platform in the country. I’m a one man band, right? I use three ai. In the old days, I’d have four research assistants. Where’s the margin in that? And so I, that’s how I see it. And let me be clear, it’s, you know, this isn’t we’re, it’s not perfect. But if I wanted to say, instead of you, but hey, write me a 2000 word essay on the counterfactual of what happened with railroads up until 1894 when the, when the bubble popped, give me a f, you know, a a thousand word essay and, and just a general overview. I can get that in less than five minutes. Michael Sailor is writing product on ai, which, which, which you would take, which you would take. He’s in his presentation, say it would take a hundred lawyers. So it’s gonna be more about those. And it’s, it’s no different than Internet of things or, you know, it was, uh, Kasparov that talked about this. Gary Kasparov talking about the melding of, of technology in humans. He would ran, run this chess tournament called freestyle. You could use a computer, you could use, you know, grand Masters. You could use whatever you wanted to compete. And who won? Well, who won it Was that those teams that were generalists that had a little bit of that, the knowledge of the computer and the knowledge of the test. Uh, o of chess, right? That’s what’s gonna happen. So this isn’t we’re, as far as I’m concerned, we’re not, yes, there’s going to be some d some jobs that are going to be replaced, but that is always the case in technology. I’m not a Luddite, okay? I am not Luddite. But the same point in time. I, I would suggest to you that it, it is just a really, for me, it’s a, helps me. Do research no different than when I was an undergrad and they went from cue cards in the, the library at the university to actually having a dummy terminal and I could ask questions in queue. You know, it stalked me from having to go to the basement of the library and going to microfiche. Right. Have helping that way. Now can it, can, will it do other things? I’m sure it is, and I’ll lead that to Elon Musk and the crew. You know, that’s above my pay grade. But for me, I see it as a very helpful way of, you know, allowing me to process and delineate. Much more information a a and not have me waste so much time trying to figure out what got went on in the past or, you know, QMF. Right. You know, summarize me the talk five, you know, academic papers in this area, what are they saying? And then they gimme the papers. Right. It just speeds the process up. Yeah. You know, um, one of the things that I’ve been sort of talking about and thinking about. Is that it’s hard to not see AI as a very, very strong deflationary force. Um, how do you think about that? Yeah. Technology is deflationary, right? Doubt about it. And so I look at it this way, Ray. Um, so I work at the financial services industry, okay. You know, Mr. Diamond of JP Morgan is talking about how they are starting to embrace blockchain and ai. They are going to cut out the back end of that in the, the margins in that, in that company by the end of the cycle are going to be fantastic. People just do not get in. You know, the financial services industry is built on a platform. Of the 1960s, dude. I mean, they’re still running Fortran, cobalt. So you know what I, how I look at this is much more as a margin type story, and there’s going to be a lot of displacement. But at the same point in time, I look at Tesla and automation and ai. And you know, people look at Tesla as a car company. I look at Tesla as an advanced manufacturing company. Elon Musk could basically go into any industry and disrupt it if it wanted to. Right. So that’s how I look at it. And so, you know, the hard part is going to be, you know. Nothing. If we get back to where we were, it’s not going to be perfect, right? Because here’s, here’s where the counter is, here’s where the counter is. Right? If you, if, if you think about, and we’re, I’m gonna take Trump outta the equation and ent outta the equation right now, but if we just went back to the way things were before COVID, we would have strong deflationary forces. Okay. Just with demographics, just with excessive levels of debt. Just with, you know, pushing on a string in terms of, in terms we couldn’t get the growth up, you know, and, you know, and the overregulation of financial institutions. Trump and descent are basically applying what’s called supply side economics, and they’re deregulating. It’s says law, which is John Batiste, that says basically supply creates his own demand and it’s non-inflationary. But really what they’re going to try to do is they’re going to try to run the economy hot and they’re gonna try to pull this way out of the debt. And if you do that and you deregulate the banks. And allow the banks to get back to where they were before the financial crisis. Okay. You know, and, and the Fed takes its interest rates down to neutral, expands the balance sheet. Then I don’t think we’re gonna go back to the zero bound in deflation. I think this thing’s gonna run hot for a long time. And I think it, the real question is, is, is is 2 75 in the United States the neutral rate? I think it is. Uh, but as, as, as Scott be says, and, and, and, and, and let’s be clear, buck, the guy’s a superstar. Okay. Guy is a legend. Just you sit there, just shut up and listen to him. Okay. They keep up, right? Well, so they’re gonna run it hot, but where we are is, in his words, mine, not mine. We’re still in this detox period, you know what I mean? We still got the Biden era. We still got, you know, a over a decade of excessive ca of Central Bank intermediation. That needs to get, you know, go away. So what I say, and what I’ve been writing about is 26 is going to be the year that the baton is passed back to the private sector. Let’s get rates down to 2 75. That’s, I mean, I’m going off the New York Fed model. That says real fed funds, the real, the real neutral rate is 75 to 78 basis points. I think inflation’s at two. That that gets you 2 75. Get the rates there and then get the balance sheet of the Fed to the level so that overnight lending isn’t loose or tight. It’s just normal. And then step back, go away and let Wall Street and the private sector create credit. Create economic growth and let’s get back to the business cycle. And if we do that, we’re gonna have non-inflationary growth. It’s gonna be strong, but we’re not going back to the zero bound and we’re gonna grow our way out of this. And so that’s where I get really excited about. This is a very unique time in history. A very, very, very unique time in history where, and I don’t know how long it’s going to last because of the compression that we have now because of the, you know, we live in such a digital world, but let’s say it’s five years demographic says it’s to 33, 32 to 33. That’s, you know, that’s how long this run is. And, and to me, uh, AI is a massive play. I, I, to me, blockchain is a massive play and to me it’s to those countries and companies that get it is, whereas investors, we wanna think, start thinking about investing. Yeah. You mentioned, um, non non-inflationary growth. Can you drill down on that a little bit just so people understand a little bit where. Usually you think of an economy running super hot, you, you think automatically there’s an, you know, an inflationary growth. So I want you to think in your mind into your list as think in your mind. Go back to economics 1 0 1 with the demand curve. In the supply curve, okay? And there are an equilibrium. And at that equilibrium we have a price at an equilibrium, and we have an output as an equilibrium. Okay? Now what I want you to do is I want you to keep the demand curves stagnant or, or, or anchored. Then I want you to shift the supply curve out. Prices go down, output goes out. We can talk all this esoteric stuff, you know, you know Ronald Reagan and, and Robert Mandel and supply side economics. But it’s really your shift in the supply curve out, and that’s what, and that’s what BeIN’s doing. I mean, this is a w would just sit down and be quiet. He’s talking about, you know, what is deregulation? He’s pushing the supply provider. Oh, hold on. My phone. My, my thing. And what did, since the two thousands, what did, what was the policy? It was kingian, it was all focused on the demand curve. Everything was focused on demand. And so all we’re doing is we’re, we’re getting the keynesians out. I use 2000 ’cause that’s when Ben Bernanke really came in and was very influential. Let me just say he’s a very smart, I learned so much from reading. Smart, smart, smart, smart guy. But his whole thing was Kasan. He came from MIT, his thesis supervisor was Stanley Fisher, right? We’re going back to, you know, Mario Dragons thesis supervisors, Stanley Fisher, all these guys came from MIT, Larry, M-I-T-M-I-T, Yale, and Princeton. Whereas previously it was the University of Chicago. It was Milton Friedman. It was, it was supply side economics. We’re going back, they’re going back to supply side economics and right now we need it. We need balance. But my god, what did we end off with? We ended off with four years of mono modern monetary theory. Deficits matter. That’s insanity. You had mentioned a little bit, uh, you, you’ve talked about blockchain a few times here. Talk about the significance. I mean, it’s sort of, you know, blockchain was a thing that everybody was, everybody was talking about it, you know, three, four years ago, but now it’s all about ai. But you know, now you’ve got, um, but in, but in the background, blockchain has grown, uh, adoption has grown. Uh, tell us what’s going on there, and if you could tie it into the significance of, of where we’re at today. Yeah. Um, uh, Jeff Bezos gave a wonderful speech, I think in two thou, early two thousands, where he basically talked about the fact that, you know, once this innovation is led out of the genie’s, led out of the bottle, whether or not, you know, buck and Jim, like it as an investment, the innovation continues. And so after the internet bubble pop, right? Really smart guys like Jeff Bezos, uh, Zuckerberg, you, you, the whole cast of characters, right? Basically built it out. Okay. And it wasn’t perfect and everybody knew it wasn’t perfect. I mean, that was the whole thing that was so bizarre. But they knew it wasn’t perfect and they knew that they needed to solve some problems. Right. And you know, it was a double spend problem. I mean, the internet that we were dealing with right now was developed in the 1950s and so on and so forth. And so, you know, that always stuck with me. Right. A couple of things stuck with me because I’ve lived through a couple of these cycles. The first one is Buck. When the, when Wall Street coalesces around something just shut up and buy it, right? I mean, I, I spent too much of my life arguing about whether dog pile and Ask Gees was better than Google. Wall Street said Google was the best. Shut up. Invest, right? And so, so look, blockchain solved the double spend problem. Blockchain solved all the problems that the original iteration of the internet could solve, and everybody knew it was coming along okay. So it’s a decentral, it’s decentralized, right? Uh, does, does not need to be reconciled. So no. Not only do you have another iteration of the internet. You have basically introduced into society the biggest innovation in accounting or recordkeeping since double entry. Bookkeeping accounting was introduced in Florence, Italy centuries ago by the Medicis and, and buck. All this is out there like, so this is a profound, right? So think about you’re in an accounting department and you don’t have to reconcile, right? So look. The first use cakes was Bitcoin. And what was the, what was the beautiful thing about it? Well, first off, it grew up by itself. And secondly, it’s got perfect scarcity, right? And so let’s just full stop. And I mean, yes, gold and silver had the run that they should have had decades. So I had been waiting and listening to people, gold bugs, talking about this type of run since the nineties. Okay. Um, but look, you know, and the problem with fi money, right? I mean, this is, this goes back decades. It’s an old argument. The way you solve it is, is Bitcoin. That’s the solution. I mean, forget about it. I mean, if they’re gonna whip it around and do all this stuff, fine. But the other thing that people miss and Sailor hasn’t, and Sailor is brilliant, is look. Bitcoin is pristine collateral in 2008, in September. What caused the, the system to stop was the counter. We could not identify counterparty risk for near cash. It was a settlement problem. Anybody you talk to Buck that says it was, you know, the subprime this and it, yeah, that was crap. I get that. But when the system shut down is you had a $750 million near cash instrument with X, Y, Z, wall Street firm, and you did this for three extra beeps and it was no longer cash. Guess. And guess what? Your institutional money market fund broke the buck. That’s when the system blew sky high. When the money market broke the buck and it was a settlement problem, blockchain and Bitcoin solved that. Sailor knows that, look where Wall Street’s gonna go. They understand now that. Bitcoin is pristine, collateral and capital that is 100% transparent. Let’s lend against it, and that’s what Sadler’s doing. That’s why Wall Street hates the guy so much, right? Think about that. Think of where is he going after he’s going after all the stranded capital on Wall Street. And, and the whole point is he’s sitting there going, I’m too busy for this. And you’ve got all these other people that are gonna live off of other people’s ignorance. Meanwhile, Jing Diamond knows exactly what he’s talking about. We can identify, if I hear one more person on me in, in the meeting say, I don’t know. You know, you know, uh, micro strategies balance sheet is so complicated. Really. Compared to JP Morgans, I mean, you know what his capital is. It says Bitcoin, like, what are you guys talking about? But hey, fucking in this business, people make generational wealth on ignorance of people who think they know what they don’t know. So, you know, just going back to Jamie Diamond, you know, he spent, I don’t know how long. Throwing every insult, uh, he could towards Bitcoin. And now they’ve really kind of, they haven’t backtracked. I think he’s, he’s, you know, his, his, um, I think the way he phrases is the blockchain’s a real thing. He never seems to really say the word Bitcoin, uh, in this regard. Um, banks in general, where do you think they’re headed with this stuff? I mean, I, you know, right now, again, you can kind of see even. Um, I think, you know, some of the big advisory firms suddenly recommending one to, you know, one to 4% of people’s portfolios in Bitcoin. I mean, this is all, I mean, gosh, I, I’ve, you know, been talking about Bitcoin since 2017. This is in unbelievable transformation in less than a decade. Where do you see this going in the next five to 10 years? It’s called the, it’s called, what is it? It’s called, I’m gonna call it the Evolution of Jim. Me, you know, in my business and, and, and, and you know, the thing I have book is I’ve survived and I’ve gone through a lot of cycles. I’ve done a lot, you know, and you ask yourself, you scratch your head a lot and you’re, and you, but you’re continually doing objective research and you’re this, if you, this is why I love this game so much. Right? So let’s just go stop for a second. Let’s get some context. Right. My first summer job, one of my first summer jobs, I worked in the basement of a bank in the in, in downtown Toronto, right up the street from the Toronto Stock Exchange. And my job was to let guys in with beak, briefcases into the cage, into the big vault, to basically bring in certificates. Okay. And, and what? Stock certificates. And so remember, you know, and I remember my grandfather when we, when he died, look at, we couldn’t sell the house because he didn’t believe in the banks. And we were finding certificates all over the house in the walls. Okay? Right. So in the 1960s it was bare based. The whole industry was bare based. And there was the volume in Wall Street started to pick up to the point where they couldn’t handle the volume. There was a paper crisis where almost a third of the companies went down bankrupt because of the cage. The cage. Okay. So basically what happened was, to make a long story short, they came out with, they came, Hey, why don’t we get two computers At one point in time, they said, okay, crisis. Let’s solve it. Well, why don’t we get these two computers and we can solve, or we can sell trades among, amongst each other. Okay. And then we don’t need to have guys riding around Wall Street with bicycles and big briefcases. Okay. And then what we did was, what we did was we sat there and said, well, why don’t we have a centralized clearing, and we’re gonna call it DTC or CDS, depending on what country you’re in. And what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna offer paper, we’re gonna, we’re gonna issue paper rights to the underlying stock that was developed in the early 1970s. That’s the system that we’re on right now. There are a lot of faults with that. Let me give you, when you’ve talked about the GameStop a MC situation, when you have a company that’s basically have more shares outstanding short, sorry, more shares short than outstanding, that shows you that the old system doesn’t work. It’s called ation. The paper writes to the underlying assets, it, it doesn’t match up. There have been guys that make a career outta this and write books about this, right? Dole Pineapple. They had a corporate, a corporate event, right? Hostile takeover. 64,000 for 64 million shares, voted, I think, and there was only 3,200 on. We all know this, so this has to be solved. The way you solve it is you tokenize assets, and this was talked about a decade ago, and they know about it and true tofor, they, and if you’re thinking about it, it’s totally logical, right? But if we allow this innovation to go full stream ahead, we’re wiped out, right? So what did they do? They delayed. They delayed. And as you know, you could talk about, it’s called Operation choke 0.2 0.0. Right. You know, the Fed overreached their bounds, they de banked people. I mean, this is why, why Best it’s going after them. They, yet they stepped over their constitutional mandate. Right. The federal, the Fed Act is not, uh, does not supersede the US Constitution. Elizabeth warned the whole thing. They did it. Okay, so let’s not complain about it. So now Atkins is gonna, we’re gonna have the Clarity Act come out and they’re gonna basically deregulate New York Stock Exchange already there. They’re gonna put everything on the blockchain and when you put everything on the blockchain, trade a settlement. There’s no hypo. Immediate settlement. Immediate, which is a benefit if you can get your act together because it, you know, for Wall Street firms you need less capital, right? So it’s a natural evolutionary process. And then you sit there and go back in history, if you and I were writing it, we’d sit there and go, well, should we be surprised that the incumbents right, the status quo pushed back on innovation? No, there was a guy, there was a prophet, um. At, at Harvard, his name was Clay Christensen, and he wrote this wonderful book called The Innovator’s Dilemma. You know, why does, why don’t companies evolve, or why do they go bankrupt? It’s because they cease to evolve and the status quo doesn’t allow the evolution of the companies to take place. Right? Well, that’s what happened in RA. We’re gonna complain about it. No, it, it is what it is. It’s water under the bridge. And so what I think is happening is, you know, Mr. Diamond is basically saying. He’s pragmatic, he’s a realist. And now he’s saying, we gotta evolve. And hey, by the way, now I’ve gotten to the point where I think I can make a tunnel. Think about that. Yeah. Think about his own stable coins, right? So his own stable coins. And, uh, well think about this. If you trade like internal meetings, right? And I’m hyped this hypothetical, right? I go, fuck, don’t screw this up this time. And you’re gonna go, Jim, what are you talking about? I go. We want a nice bread between bid and ask in these financial price. We don’t wanna go down to pennies. Okay? Can we go back to the old days when we were, you know, trading in quarters and sixteenths and so we can make some skin in the game? I think you’ve got the deregulation of the banking industry where the banks are gonna, they’re fit. It’s gonna be baby steps. But what’s gonna happen is they’re gonna basically say, stop taking all that capital that’s sitting at the Fed, making four or fed funds rate overnights wherever it’s four half, 3 75 right now. And you can now trade it. Go back to prop trading, which is what they did. And they’re gonna start off, they will start off with, its only treasuries. Eventually they’ll be able to expand throughout our lifetime. So the old way you gotta look at it is, you know. We’re bringing the ba, you know, we’re putting the band back together, man. Right. And the banks are gonna deregulate, they’re gonna deregulate the banks, they’re going to innovate, they’re gonna be able to use the capital, their earnings profile going out into the end of the decade. It’s, it’s gonna be monstrous, it’s gonna be, you know, it, it’s, it’s, and, and that’s how I get, you know, when people say, where do you think the s and p goes? You know, I say, you know, 14,000, you know, double from here by the end of the decade. And he goes, well, what about ai? I go, well, they’re gonna, that’s important, but it’s the banks. I think the banks are gonna have a renaissance. Yeah. Yeah. Um, one thing just to get your thoughts on, so when you look at the banks, you talked about sort of the inevitability of tokenization. Um, the stock exchange, uh, we talked about stable coins. I mean, another great way for banks to make money. Uh, essentially where does that, how, how does that help or hurt Bitcoin adoption? Because Bitcoin is a sort of a separate, separate, you’re not, you’re not building on Bitcoin as much as you are, say, Ethereum, Mar Solana or, you know, some of the, some of the blockchain things. So, so is it just that. Is it just a, an adoption issue? Because you live in a, in a different world. You live in a world of blockchain and Bitcoin is, its currency. It’s weird, right? Because I, I’m writing this feed like, so Buck, where are you right now? Where, where, where are you located? I’m in Santa Barbara. You’re in California. So, yeah, so I’m in Toronto, right? Uh, you know, I lived in, worked in the States for, you know, a decade, a couple of decades, and I’m back home and it’s like, man, they don’t get it. Right, and, and, and, and what am I talking about? Well, well, this, this is the, the thing that you’ve gotta understand is this, right. Ethereum was invented by Vladi Butrin in this town, Joe Alozo, who’s the head of one of the largest Ethereum groups. Father is a dentist at Bathurst and Spadina. We’re up here and people are saying, oh, you know, president Trump don’t talk about being a 51st state. We act like a colony, duke. We are a, you know, we forget about calling us one. We are. So, look, it, look, there is no doubt in my mind that Ethereum is going to have a place and, and we’re going to use it. Seems like we’re going to use Ethereum and that’s the smart contract, you know? Um. And that’s fine. Um, you know, but going back in time. But, but remember, there’s not per, there’s not perfect scarcity there. So I like Ethereum, don’t get me wrong, but I look at Bitcoin and I look at the, I look at the scarcity, and I also look at the fact of, you know, what sa, what Sailor, if you sailor did a presentation in the middle of next year and all hell broke loose. What he did, and it’s, you know, and of course I’m hypothesizing. He basically went to New York and said, I am going to create fixed income products and I am going to give yields. On those products, and I’m coming after the stranded capital that sits on Wall Street that you guys have been ripping on for years. In the middle of last year, staler went public and declared war. Okay. Are we surprised that Jim Shane Oaks came out and everybody came out basically guns a blazing. Are we surprised? But what he, what Sailor did and put and slammed on the table is it’s pristine capital, it’s transparent capital. And what are you willing to pay for that? And now you GARP banks trading at. We have no idea what their capital structure really is. Honestly, we have an idea, but it’s very opaque, right? You know, the high quality names are trading at two, two to, you know, two times tangible book. You’ve got fintech’s companies trading at four to five times, right book, and you know, what’s Sailor doing right now? Diluting his stock so he can buy as much Bitcoin as he wants because he sees the next game. He says the hell with what you guys think the next game is going to be. Wall Street’s going to realize that Bitcoin is pristine capital and there’s only 21 million of it. What do you and, and what just happened today? What did Morgan Stanley just file a treasury company. So everything you and I are talking about, they know they’re smart guys, right? They’re real, they’re not. That’s, this is the whole point. They’re really, really, really smart. Okay. They see they’ve gone through the history. They know. Okay, so you’re sitting there, you get around the room, you say, so wait a minute. Wait. Whoa, sailor’s over here. And he’s basically saying he’s gonna give you a a pref that’s basically backed by Bitcoin charging 10%. And he’s going after our corporate clients. I mean, and what’s the pitch Buck? You’ve got a hundred million dollars. Okay, you got a hundred million dollars in the kitty. Okay, buck. What happens is you need $10 million a year for working capital, which is in cash, which means you’ve got $90 million sitting there idle. Hey, buck, I can give you 10% on that. You go to Jamie, he’s giving you two. What are you gonna do? Yeah. I think one of the issues right now is I the, the perceived risk profile of that. Right. Uh, you know. I tend to agree with you about the, uh, pristine nature of Bitcoin s collateral, but just in general, the perception. I don’t know that, that that’s. That’s the case. Well, you gotta go back to the fact that, do you think Bitcoin’s going to zero or not? No, of course not. Yeah. ‘ cause the Bitcoin doesn’t go to zero. There’s no, then, then that are, there’s Bitcoin could go to zero. There’s no, I mean, I don’t think, I mean, non-zero probability, of course, right? I don’t think it is. And if that has been, if it has been selected and now you have Wall Street coalescing it, I haven’t even mentioned the president of the United States or his family. Right. Uh, or the Commerce Secretary and his family, right? Or if you go to New York, wall Street, right, they’re all talking about it, right? So, I, I, you know, to me, I, I, the question about micro strategy, to me it’s not. That it’s a treasury company and it’s got a pile of Bitcoin. What does he do with it? Does he become a bank? Like why does it, this is me. I’m pitching him. Right. Hey, Mike, why don’t you just become a FinTech, say you’re like a FinTech company and you’ll get, and you, you’re gonna instantaneously trade it five to six times book. Why don’t you, why are you, you’re talking like you’re attacking them, but you’re still, you’re still a software company with a, with a big whack of Bitcoin that you are writing pres. Right? So, and, and so that’s, that’s how I look at it. I think the wave is too big. We are going to digitize. And the other thing that we didn’t really touch on with respect to AI and blockchain, and I’m gonna paraphrase the president. Right. Um, Mr. Trump is, look, um, it’s a matter of national security, duke, and when I hear that, I go back to the nineties in the eighties when I was in late eighties when I was an undergrad. Right. And it wasn’t China, it was Japan. And, and you know, what happened was, you know, it, it’s funny, Al Gore did deregulate so that. The internet could become for-profit. We all stood around and said, you know what the hell could, how do we make money on this? That’s, you know, what do we do? And then what did we do? We, we, we threw a ton of money at it and the United States controlled it. And what did we get out of it? We got out, we got, you know, all those companies. Right. The last thing I would say to you, and this is much more of a personal story, is I, when I was younger, I was in New York and it was 2000 and I was at the Grand Hyatt, and it was a tech, it was a tech conference and, uh, Larry Ellison Oracle was there and he gave a, he gave a, he gave a a, a fireside chat. Then, um, we go to a breakout room and, you know, in a break, I don’t know about if you’ve been to one, but you go to a breakout room, it’s a smaller room at the hotel, and you know, sometimes you got 25 people, sometimes you got 50 people, right. And, you know, I went to the, I went to the breakout with Mr. Allison ’cause of Oracle and I went in there and it was absolutely jammed and I was sweating and he just looked at us and he just ripped us. He AP Soly, just, I still have the scars today. I’m talking to you about it. Okay. He called it a bubble. He called it a bubble. He, he was early in calling it a bubble. I never forgot that. And then you sit there and see what he’s doing right now. Where he’s levering up the balance sheet. Now, to me, having survived in this game for such a long period of time, and I call it a game, it’s a game of strategy, whatever, you know, how does that not, you know, I would say to you, we were, your office was next to mine. Fuck. I remember New York, he’s loading the goose loaded in. He go in, he’s borrowing money from his grandmother. He’s, you know, what is going on. And he’s really stinking smart. You know, he’s, he, Larry Allenson just doesn’t do, and people, oh, he’s in, you know, he’s, no, he’s not, he’s, he’s like the mentor of all of these guys. You know what I mean? So there’s a, to me, there’s a discontinuity that these need to believe that we’re still early on because you know, what, if Larry’s, what do we take when Larry or Mr. Ellison is leveraging up to me, it’s profound because I’m anchoring off of my bias to the New York, the New York high at, at the Tech Co. I think it was, I think it was at Bear Stearn. I couldn’t remember Bear Stearns or Lehman. But you know, one of those I carry that experience on with the rest of my life. I do. It’s like, what is Larry thinking? Right? So he’s leveraging up buck. That’s all I know. He’s a priest or guy. Well, that’s probably a good place for us to stop, Jim, uh, chief, uh, market strategist at Wellington Elta Private Wealth. Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks so much and be safe. You make a lot of money but are still worried about retirement. Maybe you didn’t start earning until your thirties. Now you’re trying to catch up. Meanwhile, you’ve got a mortgage, a private school to pay for, and you feel like you’re getting further and further behind. Now, good news, if you need to catch up on retirement, check out a program put out by some of the oldest and most prestigious life insurance companies in the world. It’s called Wealth Accelerator, and it can help you amplify your returns quickly, protect your money from creditors, and provide financial protection to your family if something happens. The concepts here are used by some of the wealthiest families in the world, and there’s no reason why they can’t be used by you. Check it out for yourself by going to wealth formula banking.com. Welcome back to the show everyone. Hope you enjoyed it. Uh, and, uh, as I said before, do not ignore ai. This is something that you need to start using. Have your kids start using it. Uh, make sure that they, you know. They use it every day because this whole world is turning AI and it’s gonna happen. You know, it’s gonna happen in, in a blink of an, uh, blink of an eye. And the world is gonna change and there are gonna be real winners out there. And the winners are gonna be people who knew where there was, was going and kind of used it in their mind’s eye as they looked on navigating how. You know how to allocate their money. Anyway, that is it for me. This week on Wealth Formula Podcast. This is Buck JJoffrey signing off. If you wanna learn more, you can now get free access to our in-depth personal finance course featuring industry leaders like Tom Wheel Wright and Ken McElroy. Visit wealth formula roadmap.com.