Matt (00:01.208)
Hello everybody and welcome to the Latter Day Lens. I'm your host, Matt. With me this week is Sean, as always, and we're so excited. We finally did it. We got Levi to join us once again.

Levi (00:10.853)
Hello?

Shawn (00:13.836)
Legend Ludi, legend!

Levi (00:15.695)
Yeah, like third, maybe fourth best guest host on the podcast. Glad to be here, folks.

Matt (00:20.27)
I'm always happy when Levi joins us. Levi makes me feel less liberal, which makes me feel good inside. Like people tell me I'm liberal. I'm like, I'm not liberal. Like haven't you heard Levi talk? Yeah.

Shawn (00:20.431)
You

Levi (00:33.401)
Are you here Levi? Yeah, that's what I'm here for.

Shawn (00:35.151)
But you have to be Levi. come from, you come from the great state of Oregon and you're right there in the heart of Portland. You have no choice. You have to be.

Levi (00:43.206)
What?

Matt (00:44.898)
When you're born in Oregon, they make you do that.

Shawn (00:47.577)
Yeah, that's like your obligation.

Levi (00:48.039)
Oregon has two freeways. We have the blue freeway and the red freeway. So if you go up to 205, you're like, where did I just land? There's like Trump flags everywhere. The blue freeway, that's where you want to stay.

Shawn (01:02.511)
Don't lie to us Levi, don't lie!

Matt (01:06.028)
No, it's true.

Levi (01:07.397)
No, you should come up, Sean. We'll show you the Trump side of town.

Shawn (01:11.129)
Do the Trump tour? Okay. All right.

Levi (01:12.887)
the drum tube.

Matt (01:13.196)
I don't think our listeners know this about Sean, but he doesn't leave his house very often. Sometimes he sort of like hints at it, but like, I'm, I would be shocked if Sean has crossed the street in front of his house more than he's like.

Shawn (01:18.269)
Yeah.

Shawn (01:24.84)
It's pretty true. You gotta build a paradise where you stand, man. Who was it in conference? was Uchtdorf. That's right, that's what he meant. That's what he meant.

Matt (01:33.474)
He said, lift, lift where you stand. Not, he didn't mean, he didn't mean stay where you stand and never leave again. Yeah.

Shawn (01:41.041)
Well, you need to pray more about that message, because that's what he meant.

Levi (01:44.133)
I was in Montreal this weekend and in the hotel they had this like virtual reality tour of Montreal and you could sit in the lobby of the hospital and take a virtual tour of the city of Montreal and my son and I were like, but you're here, you're here in Montreal. Why are you taking a virtual tour of Montreal in Montreal? But that's probably what Sean does is he probably has a virtual tour of San Diego. He sits down in front of his VR.

Shawn (02:08.441)
Ha

Matt (02:12.192)
I love Montreal so much. went there in August. It's one of my favorite places in the world. it's beautiful. It's right on the river there. It's it's there's a mountain there. They called it Mount Royal and you can see the whole city from there, but this is the thing that they have there. They have like soft serve ice cream cones of virtually any flavor you want. And then they'll dip it into like this hard shell stuff that also is kind of any flavor you want. And it's magical.

Shawn (02:17.721)
Why?

Shawn (02:39.407)
Okay, okay, hang on, hang hang on. You first had me at the, that's on a river. I'm like, okay, that sounds cool. Like any city that's on a, like when we visited Levi, it was like this big river that goes through the whole city. I'm like, okay, this is magic. Then you said it has ice cream with toppings. I'm like, that doesn't sound any spe, like special at all. What are you talking about, man? That's not a special place to go that it has ice cream with toppings. That's ridiculous.

Matt (02:48.547)
Yeah.

Matt (03:02.798)
Well, it's Montreal ice cream. It's different than other places you might go. there's, there's Sean there in any city you go to, there's the geography of the place. And then there's the food of the place and the treats that they offer there. And so I was just telling.

Levi (03:06.107)
you

Shawn (03:17.103)
They have this special thing called ice cream. Oh interesting.

Matt (03:21.614)
There is a variety in ice cream, Sean. Hey, this reminds me, you guys will be so proud of me. I went to a concert for the first time in like 20 years. I went to a concert on Thursday, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Do you know who they are? Yeah, they do.

Shawn (03:37.358)
Who'd you see?

Shawn (03:41.359)
Wow

Levi (03:42.732)
Awesome. Yeah, lots of Christmas music on the synthesizer. Yeah.

Matt (03:47.766)
Yeah. And, and like heavy metal guitar stuff. And, so this concert had lasers. There was like a laser show as part of it. There was a big screen behind them that had like various images. It had fire. It had drones. It was amazing. Like the music filled the arena and

Shawn (03:53.999)
you

Shawn (04:06.807)
Why did you go see them?

Matt (04:09.198)
I'm a big fan of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I love their music. I listen to it all the time. And I don't know who comes to Idaho. So if somebody comes to Idaho, I feel like I should go so that they'll come back again. And they'll be like, Idaho wasn't so bad after all.

Shawn (04:24.585)
Matt was here. He came. Okay, we'll go. We'll go.

Matt (04:27.214)
At the end of the show, he was like, how many of you are first timers? And I cheered really, really loudly so that he would know like, this is, Hey, that's it. Yeah. my goodness. The fire, like the pyrotechnics that went along with that song. was something else. Yeah.

Levi (04:27.878)
You

Shawn (04:45.241)
Was there moshing at the concert at all?

Matt (04:47.318)
Now, now it was mostly old people sitting in their seats, but we were all sitting in our chairs, except for sometimes it'd say, why don't you guys stand up now? And then we would all stand up and stretch our legs. And then occasionally I would see some like people kind of bobbing their heads forward and backwards. was like, something inside of them wants to like headbang. But, but they know this is like a, old people thing. It's not like we're not going to dance.

Shawn (04:50.563)
Old people can mush.

Levi (05:13.638)
I love that at Mads concerts they have a seventh inning stretch. They're like, take me out. You guys have been sitting too long. everybody, know, sitting's the new smoking. So stand up, stretch your body. Good call.

Shawn (05:13.814)
ha!

Shawn (05:20.367)
haha

Shawn (05:25.912)
Is this announcement here that he's gone to this concert the sign that Matt has tipped? He's tipped. His age is tipped. You've become an old person, Matt.

Matt (05:33.998)
I know even when I go to a concert, it's like an old person's like an orchestra concert or something like that. I don't think I could do one where you dance. Like this person sitting next to me, her shoulder was touching me and I was very uncomfortable for most of the concert. was like, I don't think, I don't want to touch strangers as I'm listening to music. So I don't know. I thought you guys would be more proud of me for my concert going than you are, but

Shawn (05:47.801)
Hahaha

Shawn (05:58.093)
Matt, you're true baby boomer at heart,

Matt (06:00.302)
Okay, let's open the mail back. Okay. This is the first time listener writing in. says, Hey guys, I just listened to episode 143. want to share my thoughts about AI at work. I'm a software engineer at a big company. Our company leaders want us to use AI for everything, but AI has not made our work faster. Actually, it has made our work much slower. It has set us back several years. The company fired many middle managers. They also cut entry level jobs.

When we start a new project, the company hires workers from other countries. These workers use AI to write all the code. The company only tells us two things, spend less money and use AI. I use AI for some coding work, but I think the main problem is that companies are greedy. We hear that AI will do all the hard work for us. We hear that everyone will benefit from AI, but I only see rich people getting richer and they have no plans to help anyone else. Love the show.

Shawn (06:55.202)
Wow.

Matt (06:56.076)
Levi works in software development, kinda, right? Is that what you see, Levi?

Levi (06:59.398)
Yeah, yeah, I work for a company that has a big footprint in AI. So thank you for your support. And sorry about that also.

Matt (07:07.118)
But my brother's a computer programmer. think he works for that, that big company in Utah that sells makeup. can't remember the name of Newskin. And, and he tells me all the time that company is regularly firing all of their coders, trying to replace them with people overseas who do their coding overseas. And I think it is true. A lot of the people that are coding overseas are just using AI to write the code for them.

but there's nobody, they're firing the people that have kind of like the big picture understanding of like how it should all fit together and how like, I don't know. I think that a lot of people are trying to use AI to replace workers and it's not benefiting anybody.

Shawn (07:51.183)
I mean, we're in that transition phase, right? And it's going to last a while to try and figure this out. I hope that, that what our listener experiences a realization like, wait a minute. There's value in time tested, experienced, strong American coders. And they realize it's a mistake and they come back, right? There's got to be a ton of like babysitting and management. If you're just trying to deal with overseas cheap labor, there's got to be.

Matt (08:18.378)
Yeah, Episode 143. Go ahead, Levi.

Levi (08:20.196)
Yeah. Well, yeah, I was going to say, yeah, I'm a coder. code all day. AI is very useful, but it isn't going to, and it's actually getting better at doing my job, but it can't replace me, right? Like it, it gets stuff wrong. Maybe it'll start getting everything right and then you won't need me anymore. But as of right now, like I feel like it, it's a good first start, right? I'll say to it.

hey, please give me a first stab at this kind of a program and it'll do like 80 % of the work, right? And there'll be some bugs and I'll fix the bugs and then it'll be good. And so it helps me get stuff done faster, but it won't, we're not at the point. And I don't think we're that close to the point where we can say, okay, do it and it'll just be done. Just my thought, yeah.

Matt (09:12.278)
Yeah. I just worry that if we train AI models to do jobs that people used to do, we're not training the next generation of workers to do the kinds of things that say Levi can do. And so we're going to end up with this big knowledge gap. That's huge gap where the next generation is not really employable because they don't have those skills and there's nobody that has those skills.

Shawn (09:33.881)
Yeah, I asked my son who's a BYU. said, how do you, how do you not turn your brain off and just let AI think for you? Cause he admits like, of course we're using it a ton. And like we were talking about some math problem he's doing in his class. And he's like, you know, I can, like they even allow me to use AI to kind of get these answers to check myself. And I'm like, well, how do you not turn your brain off? How are you not like, how do you, how do you continue to be a problem solver?

if that happens. He's like, well, I get the answers and I use that to understand the process. Like it's teaching me what the formula in math is as opposed to me just trying to find the right answer, not understanding the formula. I'm like, man, I hope you're using it for that. I truly do. It's scary.

Matt (10:17.827)
Yeah.

Levi (10:18.8)
But I mean, I think there was always a little bit of this in school, right? Like you could always look at like a lot of textbooks, you could look at the back of the book and see the answer. And the task of learning was always to say, yeah, but can I get there without looking at the answer in the back of the book, right? Can I get there without, you know, looking at my friend's paper and seeing how he did it. So I think learning has always been our individual responsibility and remains so. I do think it's a...

Shawn (10:28.943)
That's true.

Matt (10:35.33)
Right.

Shawn (10:46.329)
Yeah, that's good. That's good answer.

Levi (10:48.1)
an additional challenge there.

Matt (10:50.99)
Well, hey, listener, thanks for writing in. And I can't remember what we were talking about in episode 143. And that probably had nothing to do with what we just said, but we appreciate you writing in and letting us know. All right.

Levi (11:01.04)
Well, is it going to usher in a socialist revolution was my thought. Like, do we need to start thinking about, hmm, are there ways to better distribute the fruits of innovation?

Shawn (11:07.069)
You hope so. You hope so.

Shawn (11:14.639)
The two of you hope so. That's the answer.

Matt (11:19.138)
Well, you do too, Sean. Like you have children. You want them to be able to work and make a living someday.

Shawn (11:24.791)
not through socialism, that's not going to give them the ability to work someday.

Matt (11:30.681)
People keep saying I advocate for socialism. I'm never advocating for socialism. I just see that there's a lot of connections between the gospel principles about property and socialism, but I'm not a socialist. Like I'm not in favor of that economic system. I'm a consecrationist. I'm a consecrationist. That's what I...

Shawn (11:47.009)
it.

Levi (11:50.183)
But I want to know why Republicans insist on calling everything cool socialism. you know, like we're like, you know, everything that's cool, they call us a free college. They're like, that's socialism. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. Or, you know.

Matt (12:05.678)
Releasing the Epstein files, that's socialism.

Levi (12:08.858)
That's socialism, can't do that. Look, toppings on ice cream, that's socialism, you can't do that. You have toppings in your ice cream.

Shawn (12:09.359)
HAHAHAHA

Shawn (12:17.327)
You

Matt (12:18.552)
All right. The thought provoker this week, speaking of ownership of the public lands, Idaho just voted to sell 160 acres of state land near the town of Driggs. Now people who don't know Idaho geography, which is probably all of our listeners. Driggs is, if you think of the Teton mountains, there's a ski resort, Targhee ski resort, and there's this nice resort area and Driggs is kind of like becoming like

It's like what Park City was maybe 30, 40 years ago. It's a great place. It's beautiful. Anyhow, right now that land is being leased to a family that uses it for ranching. So they've signed a lease with the federal government that runs until 2032, but the state can legally break the lease anytime they want to. So the state right now is making $960 a year from the lease. The family doesn't own the land. They don't get to build anything, but they get to ranch their cattle and stuff on the land.

But the state says we can make millions of dollars by selling this land because property values are going up in the area. And a lot of people want to have that land. And there happens to be a billionaire who owns a bunch of land right next to this state land. So a lot of the locals and county commissioners oppose the sale. They want to keep the land for farming and ranching. But the state wants to sell it. So the question I have is, is it morally wrong for states to sell public land to the highest bidder just to make money?

Shawn (13:42.895)
I love the themes today, Matt. I love it. You love government, Matt. You do. You love government. Yeah. And every question that you've asked today challenges, like it kind of gives an example of how kind of lame and bad at things government is. So I'm glad that you're being honest. That's great.

Matt (13:48.256)
I do love government.

Levi (13:49.712)
It's.

Matt (14:00.096)
So you go ahead Levi.

Levi (14:02.425)
Does the state of Idaho get to decide on the sale without any input from the county or Driggs or whatever? State of Idaho can just say, out of here.

Matt (14:09.709)
Yeah.

Shawn (14:10.639)
That's, that's socialism Levi, that's socialism. The government gets to decide for the people what happens with everything.

Matt (14:16.365)
says.

Matt (14:21.41)
There's something called the Land Board that has to make these decisions and the Idaho State Constitution says that land should be managed in the way that's most profitable for the state. their argument is as a state, as a state their argument is, look, we're only making a thousand dollars. Yeah. Yeah.

Shawn (14:33.411)
That's socialism!

Levi (14:37.316)
Nothing more socialist than profit, than profit motive. Okay. So nothing more socialist than profit motive, I guess.

Shawn (14:40.399)
What did you say?

Shawn (14:45.519)
Well, but look at the opposite of what they did with these guys. There was zero profit motive by leasing the land to some one individual, just one guy for $900 a year. Like there was the opposite of profit motive. And now the government's going, Oh, wait a minute. That didn't work. That's not working for the people. Now we need to make money for the people. That's your awesome government deciding for the people putting their nose in business where it shouldn't be. They shouldn't be involved in things like this.

Matt (15:09.79)
No, I think, I think what's happening, like they own the land, right? Cause the state owns the land. what they're saying is, rather than raising taxes, because people in Idaho hate to pay taxes, they say, let's just sell off this land. And then that adds a lot of money to our budget. And then we don't have to raise taxes. Right. But, but what I see, like, if you look in the Midwest or you go to like the East coast, there's hardly any public land left. If you want to go hunting, you want to go fishing.

Somebody owns all that land. And what makes the West so amazing is that the land is owned by the government and they can manage the land, but everybody can have access to the land. And so you get all these national parks, you get all this beauty. don't have how, yeah, it is. Yeah. Sean, if you think about why people love the beaches in California, it's because they can go to the beach in California.

Shawn (15:50.511)
Wait, that's...

That's what makes the West so amazing.

Matt (16:04.556)
Try to go to a beach in New England. They're all privately owned. You got to stay at this resort. But in California, it's all publicly owned and anyone can go to the beach. Maybe you have to pay a parking fee, but sometimes you don't even have to do that. You can just, if you can walk to the beach, ride your bike to the beach, it's free for everyone to use. So that's why I say states and governments should keep the public land for the public to use and not say, hey, here's a billionaire that would give us so much money for this land. Let's just give the public land to that person because

then you're no longer serving the public interest.

Shawn (16:35.311)
So you feel like the state of Idaho or the government should continue to lease this land for $900 a year to one individual? Or what do you think they should do?

Matt (16:44.76)
So, you know, the lease is a great deal for that person, right? They're getting, they're letting their cows graze that land for a relatively inexpensive price. But the purpose of the land isn't to produce money. That's what I'm saying. The purpose of this 150 acres is so that when the people of the area look out their windows, they see the mountains, they see nature. Like the cows aren't like pushing all the animals off the land. you're.

So that $960 basically allows them to sort of like maintain the land that they need to maintain. So they don't need to make money off. Why does the government need to make money off of the public land that they own? You should need to preserve it so that people can use it.

Shawn (17:24.185)
Leave a least say.

Levi (17:25.19)
960 is a really good deal. I mean, obviously they're going to renegotiate that lease. one thing I love about what Matt said is I do think we have enough places in our world where money is the thing that matters, right? Where, you know, if you go into the city of San Francisco, money is the thing that will get you to live where you want to live. But I do like that we have other spaces where your money doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how rich you are. You can't close this beach. You can't own this.

You know, can't own this mountain no matter how much money you have. And I think it's a really sad world where money gets to rule every square inch. That's really sad. And I like that we have some public lands.

Shawn (18:07.833)
That is the challenge. Some people view government's function as if there's a specific use for the general population, then government should do something with that land. If there's not a specific use, then they shouldn't be involved. Now you get a matter of opinion. Matt believes that the clear public purpose is to make this land hikeable, but I don't care.

Matt (18:33.518)
Beautiful sure mountain Viking

Shawn (18:37.689)
But Matt, I don't care about that. I don't care at all about that. So now you have two individuals who have a strong different opinion and now we're trying to rely on our government to serve one of us.

Levi (18:46.288)
Yeah, and we could solve that problem in one of two ways. The first way is we could say, who has the most money? And they get to make the decision. And the other way we could decide that is we could say, everybody gets one vote, rich people get one vote, poor people get one vote, and now we decide. And I really like that there are some aspects of our world where everybody counts the same, even if you're poor.

Matt (19:08.622)
I like the idea of there being beautiful things that were preserved by previous generations that are not for sale, that nobody gets to buy them. But this goes back to the thing Sean, have a property ownership anyways. I really don't think we're all way too obsessed with owning things, particularly property. And there are things that once this person buys that 150 acres, they're going to say, I can do whatever I want to do with that land. I paid millions of dollars for this. It's mine, mine, mine, mine, mine.

And if some kid wanders on the land or some whatever, it's my land. get to do what I want with it. And I just don't think that's good for society for people to think of public lands in that way.

Shawn (19:44.685)
But Matt, just to check you, five minutes ago you did say a lot of people accuse you of being socialist. That's why. Because that is a socialist idea that private property ownership is not good for society. That's a Marxist idea. That's a socialist idea.

Matt (20:03.331)
It's also, it's also a restored gospel idea. What is property unto me saith the Lord. That's like.

Shawn (20:06.928)
my gosh.

Do want me to read the verses about it?

Levi (20:10.884)
Okay, so pay attention young people, the following things are socialist. Hiking, that's socialist. Going to the beach, that's socialism, you guys. Toppings on ice cream, socialism.

Shawn (20:23.619)
hahahaha

Matt (20:25.705)
Speaking of not socialism, let's go to Marjorie Taylor Greene. I think everybody knows who Marjorie Taylor Greene is, but just for those who might not know, she ran for Congress about six years ago. No, it'd be, yeah. Well, she's in her third term in Congress right now and

She came in as diehard hardcore Trump supporter. Nothing he could say was wrong. Everything he said was right. But in addition, she had some other kinds of crazy ideas. So if you think about like far, far left, crazy on the left, Marjorie Taylor green would be the equivalent of that on the conservative side. I mean, what she's saying isn't conservative stuff necessarily, but if you think of like a right and a left, she'd be far, far right. And frankly, she's been like very loyal to Trump.

They've been buddy buddy for a long time. He's said great things about her, but she today announced that she is not running for reelection in Georgia. And I think about a month ago, I noticed that she was like making the rounds. She would go on the view and she was on CNN and she was on, television stations that normally didn't have her on. And she was saying things that were like critical of president Trump. Like she was saying that we should release the Epstein files. I think that's one of the big things she fought for.

but she's also been critical of other policies that Trump has been promoting lately. And so the question is, what in the world happened to Marjorie Taylor Greene? Like, why is she suddenly resigning? She and Trump, I know how to falling out, but like, what's going on? Why is she leaving? And what does that tell us about what's going on in politics today?

Shawn (22:03.683)
Yeah, what do you think Levi? Do you think about this at all?

Levi (22:06.694)
Well, I mean, I think I've always been unique on the left in that I think I have more respect for Marjorie Taylor Greene always have than people on the left. And I know she, you know, got in trouble for saying there were Jewish space lasers. But I mean, she's actually a person who isn't a trust fund baby. Like she, you know, kind of made her own money. And and yeah, I don't we don't have a lot of the same values. But I she's.

One of the good things about the Trump movement, I think, is this movement away from, only serve the rich. And I think Marjorie Taylor Greene sort of reflected that. And even though I mostly disagreed with her, I kind of always thought that was a good thing about her. is this different though? mean, like lots of people have left Trump's orbit, like Rex Tillerson and General Mattis, and like a thousand people have had to fallen out with Trump. And why is this different, I guess is my question.

Matt (22:55.438)
Everybody. Everybody.

Matt (23:03.21)
I always say that Trump is like the Midas touch in reverse. Everything Trump touches dies. Right? So everybody who was buddy buddy with him in the first term, where are they now? Even his own vice president, like everything he touches, he kills it politically and it dies and withers away. And so in some ways I think, well, this is just another manifestation of that. the reason I think it's meaningful and important is now.

I don't know if Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is like the best source of information on like what's going on, but she says that Marjorie Taylor Greene wanted to run for either governor of Georgia or for Senator of Georgia. And president Trump said, look at the polling numbers. You don't have a broad enough appeal to win that. So I'm not going to endorse you. I'm not going to support you. And so she was upset about that. I think really what she did was she said,

Okay. Can I try and have a broader appeal? Can I try and widen my support away from just the MAGA crowd enough that I could maybe seek higher office? So like she has ambition, right? And I think that there's no way to stay loyal to the MAGA crowd and to widen your support base broadly. And so she had to choose and in doing so that she has a falling out with Trump. And so that's why to me, it's kind of a big deal because it suggests that

Shawn (24:19.727)
Wow.

Matt (24:27.488)
All of these people that are loyal to Trump right now, that are like hardcore MAGA people, somewhere in their minds they know that unless they have his favor all the time, that their political career is over. And so that's the thing that to me is frightening because there are a lot of people running our government right now that rely on Trump's support for their positions. And if they know that he's the only source of their support, that when he takes it away, their career is done, it makes it so they'll be way less willing to challenge him in the future.

Shawn (24:58.639)
Oh, you know, if I want to go to, if I want to learn about punk music or I don't know who I go to, some expert, but if I want to learn about political happenings, I go to my political scientist, Matt Miles. That made perfect sense, everything you just said.

Matt (25:15.246)
Does it scare you,

Shawn (25:17.803)
Hmm, about Trump?

Matt (25:20.032)
about the people who surround, like Trump can't be there forever, right? So does it scare you about the people who are currently running our government right now?

Shawn (25:25.743)
It doesn't scare me because I think obviously when Trump's gone, the Republican Party now has to make an enormous pivot, right? That's their leader. They all just are foot soldiers in his army. And so when he's gone, I have no clue what the Republican Party will look like. I think it'll go into chaos. don't have a...

Levi (25:46.033)
But I was wondering if Marjah Taylor Greene is a prototype for what is going to happen to not just not just politicos in the Republican Party, the republic, the MAGA crowd. I wonder if we're going to see people that are disillusioned with Trump and then don't say, I'm not going to like Marjah Taylor Greene didn't announce I'm an independent. She didn't announce I'm a Democrat. She said, I'm resigning. Are we going to see

MAGA voters doing the same thing. Are they going to say, Trump betrayed me, I'll never vote again, or I'll never, you know, whatever. I'll never believe in a politician again. And that would be kind of sad.

Shawn (26:26.479)
I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think that'll, I don't think so. I think that there'll just be a lot of confused MAGA people like, well these new guys aren't MAGA. There'll be a lack of leadership, I think.

Matt (26:41.752)
Yeah. I think the best analogy for what will happen is look at turning point USA, right? Charlie Kirk dies. And then now there's this fight among the MAGA crowd for who's going to control turning point USA. And that fight is nasty and it's anti-Semitic a lot of it. And it's like, it's, there's, it's not something I would be want to be a part of. And I think that if this happens to the Republican party broader, more broadly, when Trump goes away.

that doesn't bode well for our country. That doesn't like bode well for our message of peaceful politics and and like civil discourse and all that sort of stuff. I think that like I know it's weird to tell me tell me why.

Shawn (27:22.809)
But it actually does, I think. I think it actually does. Like, turning point USA was Charlie Kirk, right? With him gone, the thing will struggle and probably not get a foothold. It's okay that there's infighting because it's not really anything, I don't think, without Charlie Kirk. And so the thing goes away. I think that's going to be the same with the MAGA Trump movement. The Republican Party right now is not defined as the Republican Party. It's defined as Trump and his MAGA movement. I think it's okay that that goes away. It's just going to take a while for the Republicans to find their

What are they going to go back to traditional republicanism? Are they going to try and define something new by rallying around someone new? I think it's okay. I think going away from the Trump, Trump MAGA republicanism is probably a good thing, right?

Levi (28:04.016)
But why is that the case? So Sean, so take Charlie Kirk out of Turning Point USA and you say Turning Point USA is going to go away. Take Trump out of the Republican Party. The Republican Party is not going to go away. It's going to... Like why wouldn't Turning Point USA do the same thing you're describing with the Republican Party?

Shawn (28:13.039)
I think so.

Shawn (28:19.715)
THE MIG

I'm don't you think that the MAGA version of Republicanism is going to go away? I think it will.

Matt (28:27.854)
Those people aren't going to go away, Sean. They're going to, they're going to want power, right? They're going to want like JD, JD Vance isn't going anywhere, right? JD Vance is.

Shawn (28:33.455)
But there is no MAGA without Trump. Yeah, but don't you see they're all sheep foot soldiers? They're all just like, look at Marjorie Taylor Greene. She pivots a little bit away from Trump and she's a goner. All the other guys, all of them, like JD Vance, they're just praising Trump and everything that he does. When he's gone, they're going to have an independent voice and it's going to look different from what Trump MAGA is. No?

Matt (28:58.434)
Yeah, but I'm worried about what happens to those people along the way because cash Patel, Pam Bondi, JD Vance, they all have ambition just like Marjorie Taylor green did. And I don't see them all going away quietly. I don't see them all just saying, well, I, shot my shot and it didn't work. whatever they're,

Shawn (29:15.711)
But I don't think people are going to rally around one of them the way that they've rallied around the cult of personality of Trump. No one will. And so they're going to try, but I don't think they'll be a leader. No.

Levi (29:23.59)
So that.

The word for this is Balkanization, right? And it's a reference to when Tito, the dictator of Yugoslavia died, suddenly you had all these ethnic groups in Yugoslavia. They didn't know how to get along and you had lots of real suffering, right? This is why Yugoslavia is now five or six different nations and had a lot of bloodshed along the way is because you had this one leader who disappeared. They didn't, as a group,

pulled together and remake themselves instead they just splintered and fought amongst each other and I wonder if that'll happen.

Shawn (30:02.157)
Yeah, that's my prediction and that it'll take a while for them to find a leadership or a voice or a movement. And I don't think that's a huge problem, right? I don't think many of us are very proud of Trump's version of Republicanism. Like I can say that he's done some good things, but overall, no.

Matt (30:15.8)
Yeah, but the challenge is...

Matt (30:20.31)
challenges that you have to have an institution that allows for peaceful disagreement, peaceful ways of resolving things. And because we've torn down trust in the electoral institutions and because political parties don't even have to be fair in the primary elections that they hold, there's just a tremendous risk that when that all falls apart, it doesn't happen peacefully, that it happens with violence and a lot more anger. And I have a lot of friends that are like, I can't wait till Trump's gone.

Cause it's just going to be peaceful and nice and wonderful again. And I'm just like, I don't know. Like Trump is tapping into some anger and rage and he's giving voice to it. And when there's no, no, like a legal way to give voice to that, then people turn to less legitimate, less legal ways of giving voice to that anger and rage. But unless you can make the anger and rage go away, then you still have a problem.

Levi (31:14.98)
Well, and my thought is, I mean, think the thing that happened to Trump, right, was he showed up like other fascists. He showed up and people had a problem, right? Like workers had real complaints and he said, let me tell you, you have real complaints and I heard you, the problem is the brown people. And I think that the Republican party has to get over that. The Republican party has to start combating that from within.

There's a lot of racism there and they need to start saying racism isn't cool here. Not even your sort of mild racism that you had for all those years before Trump. You have to kind of say, no, we're going to be a forward thinking racial group.

Shawn (31:57.711)
Yeah, but, but, but what's interesting though is like Republicans don't see themselves as that way. And they see themselves as, whoa, for the last 20 years or 10, uh, eight years or, or so, or I don't know the, the, the, the Biden Democrat control, the Obama Democrat control has gone so far to the left with making racism more racist. This is, this is what they're saying that, that they don't see themselves as like this traditional.

Matt (31:57.858)
Okay.

Shawn (32:27.087)
Yeah, I don't think that they see that they have that problem. know that you do and leftists do, but they are just, Trump, Marjorie Taylor green, like her biggest platform, you know what it was? It was, we've got to get like, was illegal immigration and it was DEI. Well, but it was DEI and it was the transgender movement. her, right? Like she was going, okay, my only job here is to just look at the extremes that the left has gone to over the last 10 years and fight against it. Like she was responding to it.

Matt (32:40.502)
yeah, America first.

Matt (32:46.197)
yeah.

Matt (32:57.39)
Okay. I'll give Levi one point and I'll give Sean one point and I'll give myself no points. Okay. Sean, I know you love Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The third.

Shawn (32:58.147)
Yeah

Shawn (33:10.159)
I don't, you always say that, I don't. Why would you say that love him? I don't love him.

Matt (33:13.994)
No, I know you don't love Robert F Kennedy, but I do know that.

Levi (33:16.56)
He's like the Josh Hawley, the new Josh Hawley. Sean's always just swooning over this RFK. He's so dreamy.

Shawn (33:22.413)
You talk about Josh Hawley ten times more than I've ever talked about Josh Hawley. One of us is obsessed with him and it's not me. Levi, it's you.

Levi (33:30.15)
He's like the... he's like Sean Sir Thomas Mann.

Matt (33:30.446)
I only said...

Shawn (33:35.639)
I like literally never brought up Josh Hawley, but you've brought him up like every single episode. So one of us is obsessed with him Levi, not me.

Matt (33:35.822)
I'm gonna say it.

Levi (33:40.23)
You

Matt (33:44.994)
I have it that Sean and Robert F Kennedy jr share similar skepticism towards big government involvement in, in a pharmaceutical industry. Is that fair to say?

Shawn (33:51.501)
government.

Shawn (33:56.033)
Okay, that's, that's fair, which is ironic because he is big government and. Okay.

Matt (34:00.564)
Now he is now he is. Well, so that's why I want to bring it up. Okay. So it's, you know, it's all over the news. People are mad. The CDC changed its website to say that vaccines might cause autism. used to say there was no link between vaccines and vaccines and autism if you went to their website. But now Robert F Kennedy jr. As the health secretary, personally ordered this change. Now Levi's mentioned this before that Kennedy has made millions of dollars from his work against vaccines.

Many studies with over a five million participants have shown that vaccines do not cause autism, but Kennedy says more research is needed. Doctors say this change is dangerous because it might cause parents to stop vaccinating their children. So the question is a little bit different this time. The question is what could RFK Jr. Do to persuade people that he's doing the right thing and not just looking out for himself.

Shawn (34:58.123)
I I guess, that's what saying. I guess from a marketing standpoint, the only thing he could do is call for new research without altering the conclusions, like the established conclusions. Like get new data if you truly are making claims. Like he just, I just seem complaining and complaining. there's just not enough data. Well, there's actually a lot of data. Well, it's not good enough. It wasn't hyper-focused. And there's no, like these vaccines are not held to the same,

Matt (34:59.032)
Cause Sean, you're the marketing branding guy. Like.

Shawn (35:27.919)
pharmaceutical standards and trials that other drugs are. So it's not conclusive. Well, but the data that does exist goes against everything you're saying. So I think if your question is what can he do to persuade people, he needs to get new research. He needs to get new data and prove it.

Matt (35:42.862)
So rather than just changing the website, he should say, I finally have the resources as secretary of health and human services to do the kind of research that needs to be done. And so he should announce, that's good, Sean.

Shawn (35:51.693)
to go prove my point. Yeah. Yeah. If he truly believes in it, what else can he do? That's the question. What else could he do?

Levi (35:59.623)
Yeah, and I think you should make this a falsifiable hypothesis, right? Like this is like Karl Popper's falsifiability that if you have a claim that you're trying to test, you need to establish that there is a way that you could disprove that, right? That there's something that could happen that would make you change your mind, right? And he needs to approach this and say, okay, let's do this study. And if the study that we do as carefully as we know how,

turns out to show no link with autism, then we can say, okay, it turns out this link that we thought was there is not there. But I just don't feel like there's any, this is not a falsifiable claim. And so it can't therefore be tested.

Matt (36:42.658)
Yeah. So in my world, sometimes people will talk about conspiracy theories and why people believe in conspiracy theories. And then my response is always to say, everybody believes in at least one conspiracy theory. So trying to understand like why people believe in conspiracy theories is sort of silly because everyone has their conspiracy theory they believe in. For example, I believe that if you wear silk boxers, you're going to be infertile. You're going to experience male infertility. And it doesn't matter to me.

like how much science there is, what the Google says, like none of that matters, because I just know that it's true. And I think that there's a lot of things like that. Members of our church, we believe all kinds of crazy things, right? There's like no scientific evidence or whatever that you could present to Sean that he'd be like, no, now you're right. The Book of Mormon is not true, because Sean just knows that it's true. And so what happens then is it's similar.

Shawn (37:38.383)
Is that my- wait, your conspiracy theory is silk underwear and mine is that the Mormon- mine is that the Mormon church is true. Mine is the Mormon church is true.

Matt (37:41.448)
Hahaha

Levi (37:41.924)
Look, Boxers, and Sean's is the golden plates.

Matt (37:46.158)
I haven't explored all of Sean's conspiracy theories. I was willing to admit to one that I hold on to hold dearly. I also believe the church is true and people would call that a conspiracy theory. but so then the answer is if I believe in a conspiracy theory and I put in charge, let's say that like I believe in whatever the thing about silk boxers, right? And so then now I'm in charge of policy.

for the United States about silk boxers, what I do is I recuse myself. say, I'm not going to do anything about that. Cause I know that I have an agenda. know that there's something I believe. So I appreciate Sean where you say, let's do the study the right way. And I appreciate Levi's point too, but I think that the best thing you do is you just say, recuse myself. You say, I spent my whole life fighting for this thing that I believe in. Now that I'm in charge, I'm going to step aside and let the science go where the science goes. I'm not, you know what I think.

Shawn (38:42.255)
Matt, that tells me that he truly believes in his cause as opposed to this is just a, I mean, he could be just blinded and his being really obvious about his corruption and his pursuit to make money at this, but I don't think so. I think he's just really truly believes in his cause for various reasons. And that's why he would be doing these things when he has the power. I like, yeah, but he believes in it. He believes in it.

Matt (39:05.358)
So that's he shouldn't do it though, right?

Levi (39:08.042)
I think that he, I mean, man, I think that he maybe sincerely thinks that he's combating everyone else's bias, that he says, the science are the people that are biased, I'm not the biased ones. And if I step away, then you have all these people with their bias and they're going to get to have their say. And so I need to step in. I think he's a nut, but I suspect that's what he's going say.

Shawn (39:16.911)
That's right.

Shawn (39:26.777)
I think you're right Levi. Yeah, I think you're right.

Matt (39:30.062)
But that's missionary work. mean, right, I believe that I'm right about religion, so I go and try and persuade people that I'm right. But I don't say give me an official government position where I can impose my view on everybody else regardless of what they think.

Shawn (39:43.587)
Yeah, but you would, you would if you truly were, and you are an amazing missionary for the Savior. And if you had a position of power, I bet you would, you would try and use your influence to help people come to Christ. Yes, you would. yeah, true.

Matt (39:55.406)
Not in a government position, right? I would say, I would say I swore an oath to the constitution. I believe like, like Sean and I know we believe we agree about this, that we believe that our nation should be ruled by laws and not by people. And so I'd say we're a nation of laws. So even though I'm in charge of health and human services, we're going to uphold the law. We're going to follow the law. And sure, I might give speeches. I might go around telling people what I believe, but I'm not going to use the

the I have in the government to try to enforce my view.

Shawn (40:28.173)
Yeah, unless you believed in it so deeply that it's such a problem. Like Levi said, that everyone is so biased and this is such a deep rooted problem that I have to platform it to change things. That's, I think that's where he is. What's fascinating to me, Matt, is when, when you sent over this question and the first thing that it says is the CDC just changed a policy or change some verbiage. How many people stop there and go, well, if the CDC has made a new announcement, then that's the way it is.

Matt (40:48.27)
Their website, yeah.

Matt (40:57.346)
Well, they have to, that's the problem, Sean. Like by law, public health officials have to rely on CDC information.

Shawn (41:06.095)
But I'm talking about the public. Like what percentage of the public will just go, well, if the CDC says it, then it's gospel, it's law. Some do, no, no.

Matt (41:09.4)
No, don't even, yeah, the public doesn't even know, right? I don't.

Levi (41:14.53)
I just did a Google search and it's the first thing that comes up. I just said, do vaccines cause autism? The first thing that comes up is the CDC's website that says the claim vaccines do not cause autism is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that blah, blah, No, legit, right?

Shawn (41:24.473)
No way.

Shawn (41:30.475)
Are you serious? Dude, that's crazy. Cause when, cause, cause when Matt sent it over, I immediately went to, well, let's see, I immediately went to chat GPT and they were extremely like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's overwhelming evidence that it doesn't cause vaccines. I was like, well, let me go to the non more nonbiased one. Let me go to grok like Elon Musk's and they doubled down. They're like, no, there is no evidence that it causes vaccines. I was like, okay, well AI is, is against RFK.

but you just Googled it and RFK was, wow, that's fascinating.

Levi (42:01.626)
Yeah.

Matt (42:04.312)
Wait, you're telling me that Grok is less biased?

Shawn (42:07.481)
Grok, I was shocked. Grok was like, no, listen, look at the evidence. Here's all the evidence. And I was trying to fight against it. Like, no, no, no, but he says this. What about this? And no, it was very anti-RFK.

Matt (42:19.374)
What if I said to grok something like Elon Musk is an income poop? Do you think that grok would be like, well put, there's a lot.

Shawn (42:24.333)
It would.

Levi (42:24.814)
Is this not in your social media feed these days? So Grok apparently recently took a turn and is now quite pro Elon. And so people have been asking questions about Elon and it's very enamored of Elon Musk. But in the past, woke Grok has been a thing, right? People keep asking him questions, asking Grok questions and it gives these very woke answers. But Elon apparently was gonna go in and change that. I don't know much about that.

Matt (42:49.07)
GROK is the only AI I don't use. use Anthropic, use Gemini, I use ChatGPT. I've never even heard of GROK.

Shawn (43:01.199)
Matt, I, Grok is Elon Musk's. Yeah, it's actually, it's interesting.

Levi (43:06.854)
It's on Twitter. You tweet at it. You tweet at your questions.

Matt (43:10.991)
I see. you have to be on Twitter to use Grok.

Levi (43:13.904)
Yeah. is there a grok app? OK, alright.

Shawn (43:13.941)
No, no, no, no, there's an, no, there's a grok app. You can get your own grok app. Yeah. But Matt, my point is what's interesting is how many people just because the authoritative government CDC says something, so many people are going to start believing it, which I know that you're saying, well, this is a problem because RFK is lying here or he's, he's, he's, he's deceived himself or whatever the reason is, but it's fascinating to me that now you have a problem with government.

Matt (43:16.81)
I left.

Matt (43:30.14)
Shawn (43:41.593)
You have a problem with government. Now that they, now that you, and this is so poetic and beautiful to me. Now that someone in government is doing something that you really dislike, you're upset at government and you shouldn't trust your messages. Don't trust the CDC. I love it that you've gone 180. You can't trust the government, can you Matt?

Matt (43:41.743)
you

Matt (43:47.022)
Ha

Matt (43:57.269)
don't think I said any of those things, Sean.

Shawn (44:05.184)
All your face did.

Levi (44:06.758)
One of the things that I, so when it comes to conspiracies, I like to judge a conspiracy by the number of people that would have to be involved and keep that secret, right? So if there's something that says one person and his buddy did a thing and they kept it a secret, I'm like, yeah, that's a conspiracy I could buy. But if a thousand people,

did a thing together and they all had to keep the secret and none of them had to spill the secret. I know we're about to talk about MKUltra, which is gonna come back to bite me, but I think the more people involved in the conspiracy, the less likely it is to happen. So I love your idea, Matt, that the RFK should recuse himself and let the thousands of scientists at working at the CDC make this decision in his place, right? He should just say, we're gonna let this decision be made by 2000 people instead of one person.

I'd be in favor of that.

Matt (45:05.621)
Levi, that's a great segue into the big question. So I found out about MKUltra because there was a story. There was a woman who's suing the federal government because there was this, anyhow, there's a recent story that, that helped me kind of see about this, but okay. So MKUltra was a secret CIA program that ran from 1953 to 1964. By the way, I teach a research methods class and we have all these laws about like human research, things you can and cannot do.

Levi (45:08.217)
Okay.

Matt (45:35.648)
And I always use the horrible things that people have done, like our government has done in human research as examples. But now I've got another one, MKUltra. I'm so excited to use this in classes. Anyhow, the CIA was interested in understanding how to control people's minds and behavior. So they tested drugs like LSD on thousands of Americans without telling them. They used 86 universities, hospitals and prisons to do the work. Some of them were also in Canada. It wasn't just a United States thing.

Shawn (45:46.223)
hahahaha

Matt (46:05.226)
Many top researchers didn't even know the CIA was paying for their work. The program had 149 different projects. Some tested drugs on prisoners and hospital patients. Some gave LSD to people in cities like San Francisco and New York without their knowledge. At least one man died after the CIA gave him LSD without telling him. Many people who were given these drugs suffered mental health problems for their whole lives. In 1973,

The CIA destroyed most of the records about the program. The program was wrong because of her innocent people broke their trust and treated them like test animals. The American government later said that this should never happen again. So here's a big question. Democracies require public disclosure of this kind of information so voters can hold elected officials accountable. But when people find out about this stuff, they lose trust in government.

This is one reason why if you're like suing somebody in the private sector, you sign a non-disclosure agreement so that you can't reveal what actually happened, what that company did to you. So the question I have is, should governments be allowed to settle cases like this and include non-disclosure agreements? Should they be allowed to keep this kind of information private?

Shawn (47:20.879)
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Like it's things like this. Matt, how can you not like Milton Friedman's libertarian approach when you study things like this and you know, when you get this much power to individuals to make these bad choices? Yeah, no, of course not. When government violates rights, secrecy only protects them and not the public.

Matt (47:43.406)
Okay, but Sean, if I were to say to you, in 1973, the federal government said this should never happen again. And so it hasn't. In the last 50 years, nothing like this has ever happened again, because the government learned their lesson and they said it shouldn't. And so then we know it won't happen again.

Shawn (47:55.129)
that you know.

Levi (47:55.809)
Thank

Shawn (48:00.227)
that you know of, you weird, weird, weird dude. Is it not happening?

Levi (48:04.165)
Well...

Matt (48:06.712)
Well, that's what I'm saying. Like when you find out it happened 50 years ago, then nobody will trust them today. Right? If I say, I say, Sean, you can totally trust them. like, no, you can't look at this this and this and this, but, but sometimes you have to do bad research, like research that causes harm to people to find out that it causes harm to people. And so companies will do that sort of stuff and people and animals and whatever gets harmed. And then they get their big payouts from the company and you don't ever find out about it. And so when somebody's like,

Shawn (48:12.719)
That's correct. That's right.

Shawn (48:17.785)
That's right.

Shawn (48:25.583)
Yeah, exactly.

Levi (48:34.534)
Thank

Matt (48:34.978)
You can trust Maybelline. They're a great brand. Everyone's like, of course I can trust Maybelline because there's no reason to not to.

Levi (48:39.782)
because I've never heard anything bad about him, yeah. Well, I agree. The asymmetry is the problem, right? The problem is not that people have too little trust in government. The problem is that people have way, way too much trust in private businesses and in markets, right? And it's because private businesses get to keep their secrets and we get to, you know, we listen to Milton Friedman and Milton Friedman says, the businesses would never hurt you guys. The businesses are the good guys, you guys. The bad guys are the government.

Shawn (49:06.703)
That's not, that's the opposite. That's the opposite of what Friedman would say. He would say when, and they always do when businesses do wrong, there's one function of government that matters. That is providing a justice system with courts of law that allows people to sue other people. And that's great, but we could go in the news right now and show 100 examples of how people and businesses are suing other businesses for their wrongdoings and they get made to pay huge fines and they.

Levi (49:08.911)
And it's still...

Shawn (49:35.939)
hopefully are correcting their ways. Whereas the government here has no consequences. No consequences.

Matt (49:40.824)
Well, no, they paid fines. They paid out huge settlements to these people.

Levi (49:42.311)
The government is the only ones that have got it. They paid fines and they have to disclose it and we get to read about it on Wikipedia. But the stuff that Maybelline does, we don't get to read about it on Wikipedia. They don't suffer the same consequences that government does because super rich people need you to trust businesses.

Matt (49:51.331)
Yeah.

Shawn (49:57.237)
they do.

Matt (49:59.438)
Face it.

They settle, right? Sean, they settle out of court. And as part of the settlement, there's a non-disclosure agreement that says you can't talk about this. And if you do, you have to pay back all the money. So there are so many, I bet there's at least hundreds of non-disclosure agreements between Trump and the Trump organization and individuals along the way. We don't know what happened in all of those situations because that's private and non-disclosure agreement stuff. But all the bad things the government does, we find out about it. They still pay out.

But we know about it, whereas we don't know about it the private sector.

Shawn (50:31.759)
I don't know Levi why you've got such a hatred towards Maybelline. Like what do you got against Maybelline? But listen, took me 30 seconds to Google and I've just found six lawsuits where they were harmed and had to pay regarding PFAS. That's a huge thing in the news. Guess what? The whole world knows about the dangers of PFAS.

Matt (50:38.841)
No, I just picked that randomly.

Levi (50:39.27)
They've done me wrong. Did you see this makeup I'm wearing? It's terrible.

Shawn (50:58.157)
because someone whistleblowed, someone sued one of these companies. And now PFAS is an incredibly hot topic and a lot of clothing and a lot of food is being made without PFAS right now. did our governments step in there and help out? No, they didn't. This was a private lawsuit and Maybelline was being, you know, they were doing it wrong. So they've been made, they were exposed. And now, look at that. It took me 30 seconds, 30 seconds and I've got 15 here.

Matt (51:20.856)
Are you serious? Maybelline actually did something wrong. I was just totally just picking anything.

Shawn (51:29.859)
company, all these major companies do stuff wrong, of course there's going to be lawsuits. And that's great about our free market system is that when they do things wrong, what is it Matt? The hand, something about a hand, the invisible hand. Look at that.

Levi (51:29.915)
yeah.

Levi (51:42.053)
That's what happens. Just look at it, Matt. Whenever business people do stuff wrong, you never hear of them again. We never heard it. That was the last we ever heard of Maybelline. Donald Trump did wrong stuff and fortunately the free market made sure we never heard from him again. He just went away. Like, I don't even know who he is anymore because he did bad stuff.

Matt (51:42.092)
The invisible hand.

Matt (52:00.332)
He went away.

Shawn (52:00.729)
Wushu solution.

Shawn (52:05.295)
Levi, do you believe that the, what's the charm in Harry Potter that just destroys you completely off the face of the earth? Expecto Patronum? Yes, maybe that's it. I don't know. You believe that if Maybelline does something wrong, zam! And they should be wiped off the face of the earth.

Matt (52:14.35)
when guardian Leviosa.

Matt (52:27.342)
Well, so my take on this is the opposite. Actually, I think that Sean is right. Full disclosure from the government is the right way to go. And therefore non-disclosure agreements of any kind should go away. Businesses shouldn't be able to use them. Nobody should be able to use them. There should be no such thing as that.

Levi (52:43.718)
That's exactly what I just said. What did you think I said? That's what I said.

Shawn (52:46.137)
That's what Levi said too. Yeah, he also said that. No, I said it first. No, we both said it.

Matt (52:49.573)
okay. Wait, everyone agrees? No more non-disclosure agreements?

Levi (52:55.417)
Yeah, I totally agree.

Shawn (52:55.538)
I mean in the civil in a civil lawsuit. I mean, yeah, I don't I don't see why I don't see why it should exist in a civil lawsuit, right in a civil lawsuit someone's harms. Why not make that public? Of course. Yeah, I agree with that.

Matt (53:07.672)
Well, because now this is going to sound weird after what I said last week, but Bill Cosby is the reason why you have non-disclosure agreements, right? Because women sued Bill Cosby saying that he raped them and all of that information was kept private in a non-disclosure agreement. So he paid money and he never had to face criminal charges because he just paid money in a civil lawsuit. But once that information became public, then they're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. He needs to go to jail for the things that he did. So.

If you don't have non-disclosure agreements, then you're going to have a harder time getting settlements like monetary settlements because companies and individuals won't admit to the wrong things they did. You'll have a harder time proving that they did something wrong.

Shawn (53:51.119)
So you're arguing now against your argument. I mean, that's an interesting question. Levi, would you prefer, so let's say someone was done wrong by a person or a company or a government. Would you prefer that they get a huge civil payout or would you prefer that they don't, the victim does not, but the person or the company, yeah, goes to prison or gets destroyed?

Matt (53:53.836)
No, I'm just saying that's reason why you don't, right?

Levi (54:17.114)
Yeah, it's a good question, right? In a negotiation, we've taken one tool away, right? We've taken one carrot away that victims could have used to extract more money from these companies. I think that's okay. I think overall we'd be better off. The problem that I'm, I'm not saying that victims aren't important, but the problem I'm really interested in is preventing future victimization.

Shawn (54:41.359)
interesting. See, that's the kind of thing like why a government would be so hard because you're sitting in a room discussing this. Like, it more important to, yeah, just is it preventative and that's it? And all these innocent people who suffer don't get any compensation? do we, yeah, that's a tough decision, but you would say preventative measures are the most important. That's interesting.

Matt (54:43.438)
preventing future crimes.

Levi (54:45.232)
Yeah.

Levi (55:04.602)
Yeah, mean, think if Bill Cosby's first rape had been made public, right? Think how many women would not have been raped by Bill Cosby.

Shawn (55:13.507)
Yeah. Yeah. Great point. It's a great point. Wow.

Matt (55:16.248)
Right.

Matt (55:19.724)
Hey, well, good job, you guys. Nobody gets points on the big question because that's just not the way we do it. But good discussion. What did you say? So I thought you were saying something, Sean.

Levi (55:27.204)
It was good. Don't.

Shawn (55:32.447)
No, I just, I know how much you like points, so if you want points, you get points on that one.

Matt (55:34.798)
I really do like points. Hey everybody. Thanks for joining us this week. It was good to have you, reach out and contact us if you'd like to. we had a lot of messages this week, but I just chose the one cause you know, new listeners, get special privileges when they write in for the first time. Okay. Talk to y'all again next week.