Scott Adams and his community explore the value of open-mindedness, citing Keith Stanovich's research on avoiding extremism and contrasting Finland's top happiness ranking with US inefficiencies like California's costly butterfly bridge. They analyze geopolitical shifts, including a historic $40 billion nuclear deal between Trump and Japan amidst Iranian missile strikes, while debating foreign influence in American universities. The episode concludes by emphasizing that respecting differing priorities prevents redundancy, urging listeners to update opinions when new data arrives rather than letting ego dictate their worldview. [Automatically generated summary]
Wait, I still have to take down my Christmas tree and I'm not even joking.
Maybe I'll do that.
Oh, it's the first day of spring.
I think I'll take down the tree today.
Maybe that'll be a new tradition.
Yeah.
Welcome, welcome.
You guys, we have a fun show for you today after we do this sip.
Just want to give you another second to come in.
So I'm going to get spring before you, Marcella, and before you, Owen.
It comes in at, I think, 10.46 Eastern today during the show.
Ooh, during the show.
Yes.
But will you use your small window of being exclusively the only one with spring?
Probably sneezing because the trees are starting to bud.
I get to sneeze before you.
Maybe I'll have an Easter and you too.
I don't have allergies, but my wife does sometimes.
Owen, like stop being so perfect all the time.
No, I'm not.
I'm just I feel bad for my wife and for you.
Thank you.
All right, you guys, there's something we got to do and we got to do it now.
Are you ready?
Let's go.
Let us enjoy the real reason you came here, which is the simultaneous sip.
Yeah, that's why.
And you don't need much to enjoy the simultaneous sip.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen, jug, or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
Have you heard I like coffee?
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
The dopamine head of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
The simultaneous sip.
Go.
Oh, yeah.
Excuse me.
Got to grab my notes.
Hold on.
Don't go anywhere.
Oh, my God.
I swear, any extra noise after the sip makes me laugh so hard every time.
It's a rare vintage pre-mug mug.
Yes.
I think the sips are going from, you know, back in the day and we're working our way forward.
So we'll see the evolution.
So good morning.
Happy Friday.
Happy Friday.
All right, you guys.
So I wanted to just do a little bit of housekeeping, which is Jimmy from Scott Adams Meetups asked me to let you guys know.
So they've done over 100 meetups already.
He has a new and improved website that it might be up live already.
But if it's not today, it'll be tomorrow.
So he said DM him for any questions.
So this is anyone in any city or town or area or county.
If you want to meet with other sippers on Twitter, his handle is at Scott AdamsMeet.
And then you just hit a link in his bio right now, which will take you to a place to make a little meetup in a coffee shop or a restaurant in a park if it's nice.
Some people bring their mugs and you just get to chat with people who get it, you know, who get this whole community.
So please, we'll drop the handle for his X account in the chat.
If anyone's listening, if you could put that in there for Jimmy, it's at Scott Adams Meet.
And he is also going to be on locals subscribers with us, I think.
Oh, I forget what day.
One, one night next week.
And so we'll talk about the meetups and how fun they are.
The other thing I wanted to tell you.
So I love this.
Let me pull this up.
So one of our sippers here.
Okay.
His name is Grant Turner.
He sent a DM to me and said I could share this with you.
So I'm going to read it to you.
Okay.
So he said, let me open this bigger.
Sorry.
So he's in.
Okay.
I am.
Okay.
I also wanted to share with you, I am doing much of which is inspired by Scott.
Boulder City is the largest city in Nevada in terms of land, but has a population of only 15,000 residents.
We produce huge amounts of energy thanks to Hoover Dam, as well as 4,000 acres of solar fields, but our utility bills keep climbing.
I made a proposal to the city that we expand our energy production to include nuclear energy, a concept I learned about from Scott, along with a data center lease with the benefit of the residents being free power for life.
They loved the idea and immediately formed an exploratory committee and put me in charge.
In Scott's words, part of energizing myself is that I always like to be involved in at least one thing that could change the world.
In the end, Scott did change the world and he inspired me to do the same.
I listened to leverage my talent, my talent stack, and utilize all of Scott's persuasion lessons to accomplish this mission.
If you are interested, I'd be happy to keep you informed of my progress.
And that is so inspiring, you guys.
So here's Grant who was like, yeah, I want to do one thing or something to help improve the world.
And he just suggested an idea based on the things he learned here and what he learned about nuclear.
And oh my God, how amazing is that?
So maybe the data center lease will give the residents free power for life without having a bill.
That could be an amazing trade-off for the noisy data centers.
So what do you guys think about that?
Owen, what do you think?
That's awesome.
I mean, sounds like he's really being useful.
And I'd love to see more creative ideas like that.
I have a friend who did something similar more in the healthcare arena.
He lives in Tennessee and he's been, he's working with some of the legislators to get some different policies passed and he's having a lot of success.
And so I think, you know, if you're ever thinking, oh, I can't make a difference, you can.
You really can.
You know, you don't have to have any special credentials.
You don't have to have any special position.
You can just have a good idea.
And as Scott always said, the best idea is really the person in charge.
And I think we've seen that, you know, politicians in general really don't have any good ideas.
I don't know why, but they don't have any good ideas.
Marcella, what do you think?
I think it's great that he shared that with us.
You know, maybe other people can share that with you.
Don't overrun the DMs of Erica.
But I think it's great that Scott inspired all of us to feel like we can make changes and we can do it in our own way.
I'm just so in odd with everything that has happened after his death.
Like I said yesterday, I thought I would be very sad and crying all the time, which sometimes I am, but there's some joy in what, you know, in all of us because of what he brought to us.
Anytime we think of him or anytime we do something, we laugh and all that.
So it's great that all of us can make a difference, like Owen said.
And yeah, and like Grant is doing.
So he's going to keep us informed, you guys.
So we'll keep you posted.
And hey, Grant, maybe you can come on locals with us and tell us the process and was it scary and what'd you do?
And did you get your fear out of the way?
Which obviously you had to do.
Oh, also, guess what?
So Dr. Drew, friend of the show, he had Walter Kern on last night on his show.
And Dr. Drew gave a shout out to the Scott Adams School.
And I was so excited to hear that.
And you should all know that Dr. Drew listens as many days as possible.
He would listen every day if he wasn't traveling, but he does.
He really, he makes it part of his day.
He loves what we're doing.
He's proud of us.
And yes, he will be a guest professor soon.
I can't give you the date yet, but he is absolutely coming on.
He's thrilled to do it and he's really looking forward to it.
So like shout out to everybody here that's keeping it going.
I'm so proud of all of you.
And I know Scott is too.
And hi, Drew.
Hope you're having a good Friday.
Hi, Dr. Drew.
We love you.
We can't wait to see you soon.
Happy Friday.
Happy Friday.
I noticed Andy asked about my school pool tax.
There was a referendum in my where I live.
They wanted to spend massive, many, many millions of dollars on a pool and it was just going to raise our property taxes yet again.
And yes, it was defeated.
It was voted against.
So they're back to the drawing board.
They're still saying, oh, we want to spend still millions of dollars on it, but they're scaling it back to about a quarter of what they were trying for.
And I'll try and shoot that down too.
So no pool for the school.
Cool.
Okay.
But I told the story probably on one of my spaces about how they had an even bigger one for a different pool idea.
This was, I think they wanted like $100 million or something, or it was at least $60 million.
It was, it was a massive amount of money.
And they had to do a referendum to get the funding.
And it was voted against, but like by less than 100 votes.
Like it was really close.
And so it was like the only time in my life where I felt like my vote mattered.
Like I helped defeat that.
And if I and just a few other people didn't show up, it would have gone through.
And they tried again and then they got shut down again.
So hopefully they'll start listening.
That's one of my biggest fears.
My friend Mindy and I always talk about that.
Like, what if we don't vote?
And they're like, and it lost by two votes.
And we would be like, oh, no.
Yeah, there was, I think there was a mayoral race recently where it was one vote.
One vote.
Yep.
I don't know if it went the way they wanted to per se, but one vote.
I might be demanding a recount on that one.
Yeah.
No, when these projects come up, like the pool or like we had football, whatever needs to be done, usually comes overpriced.
Part of the reason, you know, is I, there's been, there's been people prosecuted for this in California that it was just kind of like used to give money.
It was fraudulent in order to give favors to certain lobbyists or certain companies, you know?
So I don't know if that's possibly like, like Scott would say, some sometimes the budget being as high as it is, it might be because of all the fraud that's going on.
I'm not saying that the pool was a fraud project, but it's Marcella.
I mean, I do think it was a real project and they probably would have actually done it if it passed.
But I will say I've seen several times in my local government where we're going to hire this consultant to do this study and we're going to pay him $100,000 to do just the study.
And I'm like, what the hell are you doing?
Like it's basically just to tell them what they think the government should do.
It's like, you guys are in charge.
You guys are the leaders.
Why do you need some consultant to tell you?
Yeah, they should resign and the consultant should be the CEO then.
Yeah.
That would be better.
But it would just happen all the time.
And of course, they have all the DEI and other stuff going on too.
Well, speaking of that, I mean, I don't know if you guys have this at the ready at all, if you even know about this, but this reminds me of this butterfly bridge in California.
So technically, so the news has go ahead and tell the story because the news is.
Fake.
It's a little bit fake.
Okay.
About the butterfly.
Okay.
So there's this, they're trying to build this bridge over a major freeway.
And it's because there's, this is, this is me talking.
And wait, where's my son?
This is my opinion.
I don't really know the story that well.
So they're trying to build this like overpass that's going to be like really wide and have like vegetation on it and dirt and whatever.
It's not for cars.
And then it has like two ramps and an overpass.
So I guess there's like a problem with the cougar population.
Like they can't, they're getting hit by cars when they're trying to cross this freeway.
I don't know what butterflies have to do with needing an overpass to walk over.
I think they could fly, but what do I know about butterflies?
So anyway, they allocated, I don't know, $40 or $50 million, maybe even more of taxpayer money to build this butterfly bridge.
Of course, they built the overpass part first.
They put all the vegetation stuff on there, but there's no on and off ramp.
So it's just sitting there and they're out of money.
And now it's like up to $150 million.
And now they're asking the good people of California to donate money to them so they can maybe get the little ramps on there.
So it sounds like it's going as well as that high-speed train.
So it's like a bridge to nowhere and a train docked at a station.
Am I close?
Well, I mean, it wasn't meant to be, you know, the whole issue of using the word butterfly.
I mean, a lot of voters in that area voted for it because it's dangerous for the freeway to have bears and mountain lions and coyotes passing through that area.
Bridge to Nowhere00:02:14
So it has become an issue.
And it could also, I don't know, I mean, I'm not okaying it, but at the same time, there's this issue of the mountain lions coming through the road.
And then sometimes it could cause death for the drivers because of the impact, obviously the mountain lion.
So this was a way to avoid that issue.
But it hasn't, it's been years.
It has yet to be opened.
And imagine if Gavin knew somebody's money.
Yeah.
So Christopher Rufo apparently went after this person to expose all this.
And apparently the woman who's running it responded by blaming the weather and unprecedented biodiversity collapse.
That's her excuse for why it's like $20 million over budget and still not done.
Mary West, I am completely okay with a bridge also for this type of thing, but this is out of control.
Like, you know, bridge.
So not to defend the lady, but I am.
Part of I worked in government in California.
So part of the issue is the rules that you are governed by.
Like, for example, I'll give you an example.
I was waiting in an LAX for the flight to take off.
And I guess there was some issue with the airplane.
But because it's, I don't know, this might not even be connected to California.
They had to get mechanics that were union employees to come to fix it.
And they were about 40 minutes away.
They couldn't use any other type of airline mechanic.
They had to be unionized.
So the rules that that lady might have to deal with, she might have not known that there's certain things where you have to get a union employee to build this thing.
And then you have to do an environmental study.
And so whenever you want to build anything in California, it takes millions and millions of dollars because of the system that it's within the system.
And I don't think she's able to change that.
So she might have not known all of that, or maybe she should have, you know.
Nordic Education Scores00:05:59
Okay, but wait a second.
So I'm reading about this and it says that a big part of this is kind of a patronage system where they're hiring a bunch of people to work on this bridge and to work after the bridge is up.
And it said they prioritized hiring indigenous team members to help steward the plants that will vegetate the bridge.
So the plant, the bridge, you guys, already has the vegetation on it, but there's no way to get on top of the bridge, just FYI.
And the nursery's co-manager, the nursery's co-manager, who's working on the plants for this thing, I guess, says she makes an offering after collecting seeds, sometime including pieces of her hair.
God bless America.
And that costs a lot of millions of dollars, I suppose.
It does.
Her hair.
Special hair.
It's indigenous hair.
It's hard to get.
She sounds very, she must be MAGA.
Must be.
Yes.
They were blaming it on the tariffs and this and that, but whatever.
It's California as usual.
No shade to you.
But they also have an expert that's a fungi expert.
So he's, he's, you know, you need those, right?
To scrutinize the root samples under a microscope.
Shout out to Uncle Fungus.
Yeah, he's a fun guy.
All right.
All right.
So that's, that's your corruption update, y'all.
Nothing new in California.
All right.
Owen, give us, give us another juicy news story.
All right.
Well, I wonder if there is any science that they didn't need to do today.
Oh, here's something.
Actively open-minded thinking protects against political extremism better than liberal ideology.
Oh.
I mean, that's shocking, isn't it?
I mean, you know, who would have guessed that?
Open-minded thinking.
Interesting.
Anyone know about that?
Open-minded thinking?
Or as Scott would say, you could have just asked Scott.
Yeah.
It says actively open-minded thinking outperforms liberal ideology in resisting extremism and irrational beliefs.
It's a cognitive style seeking contradictory info, tolerating ambiguity, and revising opinions on evidence.
The take-home is a quote from the person in the study.
The take-home message of the study turned out to be that actively open-minded thinking comprises the good part of liberalism.
Specifically, being liberal without displaying actively open-minded thinking is no advantage at all in avoiding suboptimal thinking.
Who did this science study?
The person's name I just quoted was Keith Stanovich, but I don't see the institution's because he's a Keith.
All right.
Well, that's your backward science.
That's for sure.
Oh my gosh.
What do you have?
Yeah.
So in the most obvious news, we have the 2026 World Happiness Report has just been released and they picked the happiest country.
I don't know if you want to put it in the chat.
What country do you think is the happiest?
I have no idea.
You guys put it in the chat.
What do you think?
What do you think going?
Who's the happiest country?
I can't wait to see the guesses because I legit have no clue.
I haven't heard this.
Someone got it in the chat.
Denmark, Finland, USA, North Korea.
Not Canada.
Not Canada.
Nepal.
Poland.
Somalia.
They're happy over there.
They have voter ID.
Somalia.
They have lots of money.
I think my guess would be, my guess would be Denmark for the obvious reasons, but what is it?
It's Finland again.
Finland.
For the ninth time.
Oh, wow.
Again.
And then it says that it's because they have strong welfare, excellent education, safety, and deep connection to nature, and lots of winter.
The next one running up is Iceland, then Denmark, which you're pretty right about that one.
Costa Rica and Sweden.
And then the US.
Where do you think the US came in?
I don't know.
It keeps me 23rd.
Above Poland and Canada.
Canada came in 25th.
The thing I have to explain about this whole Finland thing is, and a lot of those countries is they have a lot of oil revenue and they use those to pay most of their welfare and taxes.
And so it's almost like they have a UBI, you know, system there where, you know, there aren't any poor people.
Not in Iceland.
In Finland.
And I think they are having problems now with crime, with some of the migration stuff going on.
And I think they're starting to realize that mistake.
But, you know, it's like a very homogenous country otherwise.
Like they're all the same race.
So you don't have any racial divisions.
You don't have a lot of socioeconomic division.
So, you know, they have a lot of sort of natural advantages.
And they're also obviously a lot smaller than the United States.
So not nearly as diverse.
And so it's really hard to compare those things.
I mean, one of the things you mentioned, education, a lot of times people point to places like Finland or Denmark and be like, why can't we have an education system like theirs?
Because their scores are so much higher.
But if you dig into the numbers, if you match them up by income, like how much the families are making, they're no better than the United States.
They're exactly the same.
And so it's really just the fact that we have a lot more poor people here that, you know, have more struggles in education.
Insulation Costs a Fortune00:03:23
Not to do a sharp turn on this, but is the chat trying to tell us that Chuck Norris died?
Is that what's happening?
Yeah.
It's just been reported.
I don't believe it.
TMC just reported it in 86.
He had six.
Chuck Norris invaded heaven.
Kicking.
Oh, I'm really sad about that.
Yeah.
Chuck Norris.
Shout out to you, man.
To Chuck.
Chuck.
Here's to you, bruh.
Chuck.
All right, we'll have to watch a Chuck Norris movie this weekend to celebrate his life.
Condolence to his family.
Work out with his machines.
Aw, okay.
Thanks for letting us know, you guys.
All right.
Well, I have a story about energy usage in homes.
Apparently, insulated homes don't use less energy.
There was some kind of Irish review that found very little difference between what they call A-rated and G-rated homes that they, regardless of the rating, use pretty much the same amount, like 10,000 kilowatt hours per year.
If you want to do this deep retrofit to get A-rated, it can cost like 43,000 euros plus another 24,000 in disruption costs while they're doing it.
And then they found that the G-rated homes use just 3.7% more energy than A-rated.
So they basically are saying it's just hardly any difference at all.
And, you know, it doesn't match the theory at all.
It says the F and G-rated homes use 56% less than the theoretical models predicted.
So there you go.
We got models that were showing that they would do very well, but in reality, they don't.
We're not saving money with all the things that we're trying to do.
So that little flyer I get, they're like, your neighbors are more efficient than you.
I get those all the time.
Do you get them too?
It's like this total guilt trip flyer from the energy company.
And I don't believe it.
I don't even believe it's real.
I don't believe that I'm using, because it looks like I'm using almost twice as much energy as supposed efficient neighbors.
And I'm like, okay, who are these efficient neighbors?
Because I don't, all the houses look just like mine.
I know my neighbors.
You know, I live in a 100-year-old house.
So yeah, it's got lots of leaky whatever and it doesn't have very good insulation.
And by the way, the reason it doesn't have good insulation is because it would cost a fortune to do that.
Oh, yeah.
Because like I, the cheap way to do it would be to blow in insulation, right?
Like you just, there's a service you can buy where they just come in with this big hose and they open up your floors under your attic and they just pump in a bunch of like, you know, whatever pellets.
And I would be very willing to do that.
It's not that expensive.
It would be, you know, great.
And I would use less energy and my house would probably feel better just based on being able to keep it warm and cool easier.
But the problem is I have knob and tube wiring.
You won't use less energy.
Japanese Wiring Secrets00:05:29
You just read the study.
Well, that's probably true.
And so it makes me feel a lot better.
So you're saving money by not spending the money your goofy neighbors spent.
But so the reason I can't do it is because with knob and tube wiring, what that means is you have like cloth wrapped wires that in theory degrade over time because they're not the plastic that probably lasts forever because they're forever plastics.
And but the reality is it's actually totally safe to do this.
Like you, because when you put in knob and tube wiring, what they do is they staple one of the wires to one side of the joist and the other one to the other joist.
So they're like a foot apart, right?
There's no chance of a fire or a short or anything.
It's just totally, it's like a lot safer than normal wiring.
But in order to do this, I would have to rip out all that wiring and put in all new circuits.
And it would cost like tens of thousands of dollars just to get to the point where I could put in insulation.
So I just said, screw it.
I'm not doing it.
All right.
Well, you're ahead of the game, apparently.
I have the same kind of wiring too.
We have a very old house too.
Love it.
All right.
Who's up, Marcela?
President Trump rolled out the red carpet for the Japanese prime minister.
I'm gonna about to butcher her name, Takaishi, hosting her at the White House.
The historic visit, yeah, my Japanese is not so good.
I need to practice.
Historic visit marks the first trip for the first female prime minister since taking office.
She's a great friend and partner, Trump said, praising their close ties.
He, in the, you know, he talked about how he supported her run and how her and him had a, you know, basically they were, you know, a landslide election for both of them.
And they were just joking around a lot.
She doesn't speak too much in English.
So there was a lot of translation in Japanese.
But he did indicate jokingly that she has about her strong English skills.
That's what Trump said.
You have strong English skills.
Knowing full well that she can't really speak much English, but that was funny.
The two leaders had a toast.
They talked about trade and the cherry blossoms and so on and so forth.
Takaishi was really good at saying that he was the he still believes in him in Trump and that he believes he can still bring peace to the world.
But the funniest moment came, and I think some of you must know this already.
A Japanese reporter asked Trump, why didn't you tell us about the struck us before you struck Iran?
He said, Trump said, Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor?
Yeah.
So he's like, who knows better about surprises than Japan?
When, when, okay, so you have to see it.
When Trump said that to the reporter, he was looking away from the prime minister, but then the prime minister was looking towards Trump because she didn't know what was going to be asked.
Immediately, when he said that, she was like, oh, you know, because she understood that.
A lot of it was being translated for her, but she got that immediately.
She was like, I heard someone go, oh.
But they also announced a $40 billion small modular nuclear reactor deal.
And apparently, that brings the total investment to $550 billion, which sounds like a really big number.
Japan's also joining the Golden Dome.
Now, I think during that meeting, they said they were not going to help with the Strait of Hormuz.
But I have another story that says they are now.
And a handful of other countries have changed their tune.
And now we're going to have several countries that say they pledge to support what Trump wanted for the Straight of Hormuz.
They were saying that the U.S. obviously has the strongest Navy.
And then after that is China, from what they're saying, but the next strongest Navy is Japan.
So having them on board is very important.
Yeah.
So Trump made us a truth social post about this, you know, kind of reading in the Riot Act about how, you know, they protect everybody or we protect everybody, but nobody protects us.
And so, you know, he kind of put the, you know, almost mocked them with his truth social post.
But apparently now Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands have pledged support after initially refusing to help.
Oh, they did?
That's the story I have.
It's being reported by, let's see, this is 100% fed up.
So I don't know exactly what that is, but yeah, I've seen a couple stories about this.
So it looks like it is true that several countries are now saying they're going to pledge, at least pledge their support to the Strait of Harmonies.
I guess we'll see if they follow through with it.
We need to wrap this up.
This excursion needs to be like, whoa, whoop, let's go.
Oh, all right.
So let's go on to the next.
Foreign Students vs Local Slots00:07:22
Iran's, I'm sorry, I'm not going to have a lot of Iran stories, but the next one is Iran's regime secret U.S. campus network exposed.
So shockingly, the U.S. higher education had hired or had hired a few children of the Iranian leaders.
So an explosive New York Post investigation reveals that several close relatives of the Iran's top regime had been professors at prestigious American universities.
You know, when you ask like, oh, why are children so left of center?
You know, why are they thinking this way?
But some, because they're being taught by these type of people, among them are Layla Khatami, daughter of former President Mohammed Khatami, who teaches mathematics at Union College in upstate New York.
Fatima R. Dashir Larijani, daughter of Ali Larijani, who was killed recently.
He was the leader in the IRGC, or who was an assassin, who was an assistant professor.
She was an assistant professor in oncology and hematology in Emory University.
She was let go and fired in January.
So I don't know how people feel about this situation.
There's another, there's several other professors that were children of these Iranian leaders.
I mean, part of it, as Scott would say, is like, that's your parents.
That's not you.
But it would be interesting to see why Larijani's daughter was fired in January before this was even before the Iranian war or Operation Epic Fury started.
I mean, how I feel about it is send them all home.
I mean, I think, you know, I feel the same way about all the children of the CCP officials that come here.
Like, they're clearly not our friends.
They're not our allies.
And even apart from that fact, we should be educating our own people first, America first, in our universities.
And so I don't see why we would reserve all these slots and almost prefer these foreign students.
They're not students.
They're the professors.
Well, even that.
I mean, I would say I'd rather give the job to an American than someone from another country.
And, you know, let's promote our own people.
Let's educate our own people.
Let's have our own professors.
And, you know, a lot of these are taxpayer-funded institutions.
So we should be making sure that that's going to the benefit of Americans, not foreigners.
Yeah, I agree, especially with our colleges becoming indoctrination camps.
Like, God only knows what's going on in there.
Of course, I don't agree, but that's always the case.
I think of, I think this way, if you are like the daughter of a leader in Iran and maybe you don't agree with them and that's why you left and you came here and tried to like do your own life, you know.
Are they citizens?
Probably.
The story doesn't say whether they're citizens.
I think at a minimum, you should require them to renounce their citizenship from Iran.
Yes, I agree.
If that's even possible, but yeah, they could, you know, because a lot of the times it's like you think, why aren't they over there?
Maybe because they don't agree with their father, you know, how many times have you agreed with your parents, you know, and then you're like, no, Rebel, I'm going to go.
Yeah, but you know what?
I see, you know, I might not have felt this way years ago, but now looking at like Ilhan Omar and what's her name, Rashida, they clearly are not America first.
Like they are for their home country first.
And that is really hard to stomach seeing them, you know, in Congress and cheering for Somalia and poo-pooing America.
It's like, no, So I feel the same way about colleges because Steve Cortez will be back on with us next week.
But remember what he was saying about like China infiltrating the universities that when they have football games now, they have to have Chinese commentators speaking all in Chinese because they're taking the place of American students.
And why is that?
So I think it's a, it's not to say slippery slope, but it is because we're just, we're like so accepting of this that the ball's been rolling and now it's snowballing.
And America doesn't look like America anymore.
Like there are colleges, our universities, a lot of taxpayer money goes to a lot of these places.
Why aren't they filled by Americans, Americans only?
Now, you can be from Iran, renounce your citizenship, become a citizen here and do that.
But if you're like even dual citizenship, I'm not into it.
And I'm really against all the foreign students coming in, like maybe make 1% of your students foreign.
But what's happening is like, I just can't even wrap my brain around it.
Like, what are we, what are we doing?
I don't know.
There's big numbers.
And then we have the birthright citizenship issue with this apparently very large program of Chinese people that come here to have their babies and then raise them back in China.
So they just bring them here to get citizenship and then they bring them back to China and they're raised with that culture and that ideology.
And when they reach 18, they can vote.
So there's like 100,000 potential votes.
And I think it might even get up to 1.5 million over time.
100,000, I think, might be per year, where, you know, you could have millions of foreigners voting in our elections with mail-in ballots from China.
And they could swing all sorts of elections.
And there's nothing legally we could do to stop it if we allow this birthright citizenship to continue.
It is suicidal empathy.
You're right.
It's it, you know, you have to be very careful because, you know, it's so funny.
You know, I wish I had the, not that I could have done anything, but the foresight to see like what the anchor baby situation would turn into now.
And, you know, we didn't think about it before because it wasn't like necessarily a problem.
But yeah, I mean, if two Chinese people, I'm just picking on China because we're talking about China and they're not our friend.
But if two Chinese people come here or one lady comes here pregnant and has her baby here, no, like you need to be a citizen for your kid to be a citizen.
That's such bullshit.
Oh, excuse me.
But, you know, it's just like, what are we doing?
And then I have friends who are here trying so hard to get their citizenship the right way.
LNG Capacity and Damage00:07:32
They have spent upwards of $20,000.
It's been more than like 10 to 13 years for some of them trying to do this the right way.
And I'm like, what are we doing?
You know, so there are people that are here now trying so hard.
They're so deserving.
They're working.
They're paying taxes.
They're doing all the right things.
And then we're like, hey, drop a baby off.
And now your kid's a citizen.
We have to, we have to reset.
And it might be like we're like the bad parent, you know, like, oh, big daddy's home.
But somebody's got to do it.
Somebody's got to set this straight.
So that's where it will be decided pretty soon.
And the Supreme Court will decide whether that stays or goes.
Unfortunately, I think it's probably leaning towards they're going to say we still have it, but I'm hoping they're hoping to be surprised.
Andy, Andy said, stop the sexy talk, Erica.
He likes it.
So apparently Iran is heating up.
Trump approved over $200 billion in war supplementals bypassing Congress.
I think this is separate from the $200 billion they're asking from Congress to do emergency arms to the Gulf allies.
So the UAE got like $8 billion.
I think it's $4.5 million for the Thad missile system, $2.1 billion for counter-drone systems.
There's the Amrams, which I think is another missile system for $1.2 billion and a bunch of munitions for F-16s.
Kuwait got $8 billion in radars.
Jordan got $70.5 million in support.
So things are ramping up in the region.
It looks like we may end up having some of Iran's neighbors joining in the effort.
So, you know, it's looking like it's ramping up to me.
And Iran got hit by a missile strike in Tel Aviv.
So there's more going on there.
There was some video I posted about that where it showed some of the damage in one of the residential blocks.
I think it hit eight different sites.
Two people were killed.
And yeah, so there's a lot of casualties on both sides at this point.
And then Saudi Arabia is threatening military action against Iran.
So the foreign minister says they reserve the right to military action.
They posted this kind of aggressive looking video of all their military capabilities with their jet fighters and things like that.
And it said the Prince Faisal said the kingdom will not succumb to pressure.
On the contrary, this pressure will backfire.
We reserve the right to take military action if deemed necessary.
So we may have Saudi Arabia joining the fray.
This changes everything.
The Gulf states like Dubai and Saudi Arabia and all that, not Dubai is not a country.
The United Arab Emirates.
Like before, it was open to tourists and people to move there and it was a haven of peace.
But now since Iran has hit them, it's become, they've become more active and more supportive of the United States because it's really hurt.
It's really going to hurt their tourism.
Yeah.
Yeah, and energy.
I mean, there's a story I posted about Qatar's liquefied natural gas.
They're describing it as worse than Nord Stream with the damage that was done to it.
It's going to take many years to rebuild.
So, you know, that's one of the reasons oil prices are so high right now and natural gas prices are probably falling.
But it's going to be offline for at least months, probably years.
They're thinking Europe's gas prices might double.
So it's like a real big deal for the liquefied natural gas industry.
And I think I saw in a separate story that the U.S. is pumping out their liquefied natural gas like at capacity, like as much as they possibly can.
So if we have more shortages, I don't think there's necessarily anything much we can do to make up the gap.
Yeah, I think would they say that that was like 20% of the world's fueling place?
Oh, I mean, that's really scary, you know?
And I think it is interesting because Iran is, you know, shooting at its neighbors now and people that normally wouldn't have even felt threatened by them necessarily.
And so they're really just like isolating themselves further.
So I am not saying it's good.
You guys understand what I'm not saying like, oh, it's good that that happened.
It's not good that that happened.
But what's good is it just makes people want to rally against Iran.
So that's the good news.
You know, so now they're just kind of like sitting there and they've pissed off everybody around them.
So it just makes everybody else unite more is what I see.
But in the, in, in, you know, in connected news, the oil prices have spiked up to $110 a barrel.
I don't know right now.
It's probably gone up since I started the show.
We started the show.
119.
The stock market may be going down.
Owen.
Owen.
Oh, it's down.
Don't check it.
Don't check it.
It's not red.
The S ⁇ P is down 56 points right now.
Yeah.
It's not looking good on the stock market today.
So don't, yeah, don't check your stocks.
But yeah, no, the economic impact is pretty big.
And I think there's stories I've seen that it's going beyond just energy because like one example is when you make, when you extract natural gas, there's a whole bunch of other chemicals that come out of that that are used for agriculture, especially fertilizer for food.
And I think it's like 40% of the sulfur that is used in agriculture comes from that region.
And so it's a pretty big percentage of our food supply that depends on these chemicals that are coming from this region.
And so if you disrupt all of the oil and natural gas supply in that region, we may have food shortages next year.
And that's unfortunately just part of the supply chain of all this, that there's a lot of other things that's used in pharmaceuticals and other things too.
So there's a lot of chemical processes that are using whether it's ammonia or sulfur or other things that come out of that natural gas extraction process.
So, you know, it's great that we're doing more and we're at capacity in terms of what we're doing in the United States, but I don't think that's going to make up for it.
So, you know, it could end up being a worldwide crisis if this continues for a long time or if there's a lot more damage in the region.
Yeah, I fear about how long this is going to last and what's going to happen.
Will you guys indulge me for a minute?
Because it is Friday and I just, I know this is me taking another sharp turn.
Yeah, I'd love to read a quick reframe, you guys.
And it kind of fits in.
Well, it fits in for every day.
So, you know, talking about, well, we'll talk about it after.
I'm going to read it, but I am obsessed with this reframe and I really want you guys to soak it in.
Get your books, everyone.
It's going to be page 189 in the paperback.
Reframing Nuance00:09:44
And it's called People Think Like You.
And this is like so important for everybody listening to remember, like even when we have differences of opinion about things, you really never know why.
And so I love how Scott wrote this out.
And I'm just going to read it and then we'll discuss it.
So page 189, people think like you.
One of the worst misconceptions of life is that other people think the same way you do.
Humans are similar in a lot of ways, but in any specific situation, your basket of preferences and mine will be different.
That means you can't reliably predict what people will do or why they will do it unless money is involved.
But we imagine we can predict well because we make the poor assumption that people are working with the same set of variables and intentions we are.
That is rarely the case.
If you don't understand someone's motives and you end up guessing based on how you would feel in the same situation, you're indulging in nonsense.
The usual frame, others think and feel approximately as I do.
The reframe, others are unimaginably different.
When others act in ways you would not, don't assume they are necessarily lying, selfish, stupid, weasels.
They might be exactly that, but that's not the first explanation you should go with.
Instead, assume you are all seeing is all you're seeing is a difference in priorities or a difference in who brainwashed each of you.
The power of this reframe is that it helps you understand why you can't change people's minds.
You might be looking at the same facts, but the processes in your heads are as different as porcupines and bowling balls.
And I wanted to bring that one up because, you know, oftentimes, like, so we're giving our opinions here.
You know, it's my opinion.
But what you might not understand is maybe I have a method to my madness.
Maybe I'm saying something just to be provocative, but you don't know that.
Or maybe I got information you didn't get or I had a life experience that made me feel a certain way I do.
Maybe there's a lot of nuance to what I'm thinking.
So like if somebody gave me like a list of a thousand questions and said, you know, how do you feel about each one of these things?
You could never predict my answers on those because I have so much nuance in me, Erica.
I have so much nuance in my thinking.
I'm not like left or right or center.
I am all over the place on every different issue.
So I say that one, I'm bringing this one up because being on here subjugates us to criticism and opinions and people telling us what to do and how to think.
And listen, that's like fine.
Like it doesn't bother me when people do that.
Like I kind of get where they're coming from, but it is who you are brainwashed by.
So we have to allow people to have their own opinions and to think differently than you.
And like I said, you never know the motive behind it.
Like I'll, I'll make a random Twitter poll.
Who would you rather be aligned with?
And I'll give you the choice of like Don Lemon or Joy Reed.
And then people are like, oh my God, you know, or, you know, I could be like Don Lemon or Tucker Carlson.
They'd be like, oh, I see what you're doing here.
And I'm like, you don't see anything I'm doing here.
So it's like, you know, it's that silly, you guys.
So I just want to recommend that we understand that everybody has different opinions about things for all sorts of different reasons, none of which you can predict or know.
Like you might think like, oh, I've known Erica for 10 years on here and this is how she'll feel about it.
But something might have changed my mind last night and I might take a sharp turn and I could take a sharp turn again the next day, make a U-turn and spin around.
So just try to let everybody have their own free thinking opinion.
And I think it's okay to bring other ideas and opinions to people and to have a discussion, but we can't be so sure that our opinion is the only way and be so dug in.
And I also want you guys to understand that when new information comes, it's okay to reassess what you think and maybe find some nuance in it or understand how it could be another way.
And like I always say, the superpower is, is if the information changes and you can change your opinion and publicly do so and not be afraid, you have a gift.
And that means your ego is not ruling you.
Your friend group isn't ruling you.
You are a free thinker.
And there is nothing better.
I mean, Walter Kern talked about it yesterday, you know, or we heard it yesterday when he spoke at Scott's Memorial Service that he was free.
And I hope every one of you know that you can be free and be in charge of your own life and your own thoughts.
And you can allow others to do that too.
I'm going to toss it to Marcella first.
And you can see us here.
Like, you know, we have differing opinions, the three of us.
We're three very different people, but like I'm obsessed with them.
Like I love them so much and it doesn't matter.
I do.
I love them so much.
And it doesn't matter like what we think.
Like we still have affection for each other.
So Marcella, what do you think about this reframe?
No, this reframe is great because a lot of the times, you know, at work, home life, anywhere, it's like sometimes you're thinking, oh, these people all think like me.
They all know.
Like a lot of us here that are part of the community in Scott's community, he would always remind us like all the things that you guys know, that's like 1% of the rest of the population.
So if you go out there, you know, you go to your Thanksgiving dinner, you go to, you know, any kind of social setting and you talk about like, oh, Joey Reed and, you know, Don Lemon and all that, they'd be like, who?
So a lot of it is realizing that we are very different, even with us compared to people that are not, that don't know about Scott and all the other things.
Always remember, I always have to remember that people, you know, are very different.
When I speak to them in regards to certain things, they're like, what is that?
What is this?
Iran, where?
You know, so a lot of things are going to be different.
And you have to realize that we all are here together in this planet.
So we have to get along.
And a lot of the misunderstandings between people is the thinking that they're thinking like you.
So I love it.
I love the fact that you brought this up today.
Oh, good.
Owen, your thoughts?
Yeah.
I mean, I love that other people have different thoughts or different opinions.
I don't, I think it would be a very boring place if everybody thought exactly the way I did.
It would be kind of redundant, I would think.
And I always try and stay curious about what other people are thinking or why they believe what they believe.
And I try to be respectful of those differing opinions.
But I also try to seek out those opinions.
I mean, I would say at work, when I've gotten in trouble, usually on projects, one of the common reasons is because we just didn't talk to the right person.
Like we didn't include one of the stakeholders.
And so we, you know, come up with a set of recommendations or things.
And I kind of assume, okay, everybody's aligned to this.
I've shared these ideas.
They all say that's great.
And then they say, oh, well, we got to get approval from this person.
And it might be someone I had never heard of before.
And then all of a sudden we put it in front of them and they're saying, this is BS and this is not at all what we should do.
Or this isn't even solving the right problem.
And all of a sudden, the whole perspective changes.
And, you know, it comes back to just saying, well, if we had included that person from the start, maybe we would have been able to convince them that this is a good idea.
Or maybe we would have at least found out without wasting a whole bunch of time that we had to go in a different direction.
And I mean, even very smart people can have great ideas that aren't the right ones.
I mean, my experience at my startup was like that, where we had, you know, this initial idea of like, here's the product we're building.
Here's who we're selling it to.
Here's the benefits.
Here's the reasons they would all want it.
And then we started approaching those people pretty soon after we started and found out the people you're trying to sell to don't want to buy it.
But there's this other group of people that absolutely do want to buy it for totally different reasons, but they would actually need the product to be pretty different than what you were planning for it to be.
And so we basically had to go back to scratch and say, let's redesign this whole thing from the ground up to serve this other customer.
And then it took off.
Then it was like, okay, everybody wanted to buy it.
You know, our typical response when we put it in front of a customer would be like, why didn't anyone do this before?
This is like such an obvious and great idea.
Why isn't, why is this the first time I'm seeing this?
And, you know, it was, it was a very big success.
But if we had just stuck to our initial idea and said, no, no, no, we're selling to these people.
And this is the important functions and here's the features.
It would have flopped completely.
It would have just been terrible.
Oh, and I didn't know the CIA was so non-competitive.
Yeah, like so flexible.
Show Thank You00:05:06
That's so nice to know.
I mean, I just like, for example, you guys, so also if there's someone you like, okay, and they're like measured or thoughtful or smart or whatever, and then they say something that you don't like on one topic, just relax.
Like we don't have to like banish them to hell.
Okay.
It's okay.
Like I, you can't possibly agree with one person on everything.
It's just not possible.
And if that's how you're going to judge people and have relationships, you're going to be lonely.
And, you know, the other day I got lambasted by a few people and I didn't even make an opinion.
I said nothing but this.
I mean, Scott used to get this all the time.
I love to listen to like, anyway, I'm going to, I'll just say this.
I listened to a podcast.
I don't know who was interviewing who.
I think Brett Weinstein, who everybody knows is measured and calm, super intelligent and has been through hell and back.
I think he interviewed Tucker or Tucker Carlson interviewed him.
I can't remember who's, who was who.
It was such an amazing podcast.
I didn't even say why I thought it was amazing, but it was one of the best podcasts I've heard in a long time.
Again, I didn't say why.
I mean, it could be a million, it could be the clothes they were wearing, the lighting.
It could have been whatever it was.
But I posed to that and some people got so pissed off.
And I'm like, calm down.
Like, it's okay.
I can say I like it.
I can promote it.
I thought it was an amazing podcast.
I could have listened to 25 more hours of it.
It just really grabbed me and it was making me think.
And I didn't tell you what it made me think, but it was making me think.
And I appreciated listening to two intelligent people having a deep conversation long form.
I thought it was, it was fascinating.
So, but it's okay, you guys.
You know, it doesn't matter what it was that I thought about it.
That could be a private discussion if somebody wanted to have that with me.
But, you know, so let's not jump to conclusions.
Let's not say like, oh, Erica's out.
You know, I'm assuming something about it.
Yeah.
Or like, don't mind read her.
Don't mind reading her.
Yeah.
Don't mind read me.
I am very complex and so are you guys.
And, you know, we have to remember that we are complex beings.
Owen, I have a question.
What is happening tomorrow for the after show, the after party?
So I am not available tomorrow, but I'll put this to Marcella.
If she's available, she can host it.
Are you up for that?
Yeah, sure.
Do people want me to host it in the chat?
Do they think I should host it?
And Marcella, it doesn't have to be five hours.
No, it doesn't.
I think it just has to be eight.
Yeah.
Well, the most important part is just doing it at the right time and having the simultaneous sip.
And that's the important part to get it started.
And, you know, even if it only went for an hour, that would be great.
I think it does typically go probably closer to three hours, but that's just because I let it go that long and people have a lot to say.
And so it's typically a great conversation.
And so I think Marcella will probably be posting an invitation to that and I'll repost it on my timeline so you can find it.
And then we'll have the after party as scheduled.
I love that.
You guys, we have what I can tell you so far for next week is on Wednesday, BJ Dixter will return.
We're going to cover some of the things our Canadians wanted to talk about that we didn't get to.
So he returns on Wednesday and Thursday, Steve Cortez is coming back.
He's working on new projects and I just think he's such an interesting and smart guy and a useful person.
So we have him to look forward to.
And what else is happening next week?
I'll let you know as we come closer.
But you guys are amazing.
We had so much fun with you this week with Walter and BJ and our guests.
Like it was just such a fun week.
And I hope you guys are enjoying the show.
And if you are, please, please hit the like button, hit the thumbs up on YouTube, give a heart on locals when you are on here.
It's so helpful for us and share it with your friends.
Repost it.
We appreciate you so much.
Owen and Marcella, have a great weekend.
All the beloves and everybody on here, have the best weekend.
Touch your grass.
Be useful.
Think of ways to be helpful and kind and go after your goals with your systems.