Left Of Greg 094 Has the press outlived itself

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Go live. That's not a plate in my head. Are we good? Should be live now, Greg.

So we will go ahead and get started today. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Don't forget always to check out the episode details for all kinds of different links to more exciting information: in-person training, online stuff, and we've got more coming up. But thank you for tuning in, Greg. Happy Monday morning when we're recording this.

Happy Monday to you. It's the family man.

Yeah, so it's on that FaceTime.

It is, it's on that... what is that? FaceSpace? Exactly.

Today's topic, we're going to be talking about the press a little bit, and not just the press but obviously news organizations, information, journalism, how it's changed a little bit over the years. The general idea is almost, has it outlived itself? Or at least maybe in its current form, is it no longer viable? Or what's happening with it? Because we look at all these different changes and how it affects us and how untrustworthy, in general, especially Americans have in the press.

There's less trust in journalism and it's now become politically divisive. We now have these different terms for something that one news organization brings out against someone and they say that's fake or that's made up or, "No, this is real, that isn't," or, "No, you've got to get on, you've got to go to these alternative news sources or alternative facts." So it's become this loud echo chamber of everyone trying to outdo each other. It's kind of a weird competition because there's always been a lot of competition in that field. But because of social media, because of things like Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, and instant access to information, even just you being on the phone now, it goes from someone where to be a journalist, you sort of had some sort of education and training, then you had to get a job, then you had to prove yourself at that job internally, and then externally with readers. People had to like what you were saying in order to continue that work, which is important.

Only to proctology.

Second only to proctology, people do have to like what you're doing. But the idea is now everyone's a journalist. So I can pull out a phone, I can write an article, and if I catch enough buzz, if I get an influencer out there who's popular and spreads it around, suddenly my message is out there. And that message may or may not be factual, it may or may not be well-researched, it might just be very opinionated versus, "Oh, I'm just going to try and stick as much to the facts as I can." So I guess it's a good general description of what we're getting into today, unless there's anything you wanted to add, Greg.

I am ready to go. I'd like to know a little bit about the history, Brian.

Well, yeah. So I throw back, I put all this stuff. We see everything in the news about everything we just talked about. So there's a lot of, not a lot of trust and faith in different news organizations, right? And I always throw back, "Well, let's put things into historical context," as we say with everything. This is probably not, or we're probably this isn't the first time our society or us has gone through a situation like this or felt this way. So what other historical examples?

And I throw it all the way back to the invention of the printing press, which is generally attributed to Johann Gutenberg, "Steve" (as they call him, modern-day Steve Gutenberg from the famous Police Academy movies, who is my favorite Gutenberg) of the Gutenberg clan, of the Gutenberg family. It arrives all the way back to the invention of the printing press. This happened in the 1400s, about mid-1400s. And now I don't want to get into the argument of there was something else in Asia several hundred years before that where they were doing some, but the idea was it made writing faster and easier, and transcribing of books, because it became a printing press versus before that you had to handwrite books. They had to be recopied and rewritten over and over again. So that means there were a lot less books, and there weren't really news articles being printed much. There's a lot less information available to the masses.

So you generally had to fall into some either upper-class family or society, or generally actually some religious faith. So that's where a lot of the knowledge and books and material and science and math and everything was actually institutionalized in different religious faiths. And so because they had the manpower and the money and the people and the study and the time to do it all, so they were the ones kind of like the keepers of all the information. So only so many people had access to it. So that's what the printing press did, it basically was almost like, kind of like what the tech industry did a few years back. It just exploded overnight. Of everything tech-relatable. Now this exploded everything in just a matter of like 10 or 20 years. All of a sudden there were entire cities just dedicated to basically reprinting books and publishing them.

And so there was a lot of criticism of it back then when it came out of people saying, "Hey, you know, yes, this is great that you can print books and manuscripts and materials very quickly, but that also means you can print incorrect information very quickly and disseminate it." So I throw it all the way back then, which is kind of not much different than what you saw when all these different social media platforms started to gain popularity with YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and all that stuff. Because, well, and now we now had access to more information than any generation before us. So we had that same almost type of historical moment where, "Wow, look at everything I can have!" And like we always say, that doesn't necessarily mean the information's any better. In fact, there's going to be a reduction in quality because there's an increase in quantity, and there's no gating mechanism anymore. So I always try to throw it back to then as a historical context of how to look at it and have we been through this before. And I would like to at least start there with framing it before we start, you know, everyone likes to bash journalists and the media and say, "Hey, for good reason," with proctology, "but you know, we need to smear what we don't understand." I don't know if you smear in proctology in the same sentence, but that's where I start with. I always go back to then as a good kind of example.

Two things I think that can make us some money here: Number one, first of all, I don't know enough about computers and typeface, but if there isn't a Gutenberg typeface, there needs to be. And it needs to be a guy who comes out Flintstones-style and chisels on the front door. Do you get what I'm saying? Okay, so if somebody wants to pair with us, that's a great idea. I'm ready.

Second part, Brian, and you allude to it, but you don't say it outright, and I'm going to: you have to remember that reading was fundamental. Nobody read. As a matter of fact, if you were outside of the nobility or if you were outside of the church, the likelihood of you being able to read was very, very low. So let's understand that that was a gating mechanism to being able to survive in society. You were told what that word meant, or you by context knew what a small number of words meant. But when somebody pinned something onto a door, most people said, "Hey, what's up with this guy?" And somebody had to transfer that knowledge down into words in their head.

So why is that important?

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's hugely important, right?

But listen, why is that important? Because we talk about the Fifth Estate. Anybody whose viewpoints are outside of contemporary society, they become the Fifth Estate: the pundits and social media and all the non-mainstream media outlets. Where does that term come from? Well, First Estate back then, Brian, was clergy. It was those people that were in religious duties, and many of the higher rankings could read. For example, in the Christian structure, with Catholics, the Pope and the bishops, but most of the people inside the church that went to church, they didn't know how to read. You get what I'm saying? So they had to take for granted, "I'm reading this from the Bible."

Second Estate: nobility. Well, isn't that funny that here we have the separation of church and state, but back in the day, there was no sufficient separation because nobility literally are the people that rank just below royalty. Third Estate was us, Brian, the commoners, ordinary people walking around, bucking on our head to stop the world from falling on top of us. But we didn't know anything. And then the Fourth Estate was the press, okay? And the press were the ones that were supposed to be the intermediary between the church and state and us. "Hey, we'll tell you what's important." And that's where that's where that horse crap starts building, doesn't it?

Right. That's a tremendous amount of power being able to read something for yourself and determine facts for yourself. It's hugely important. And you brought up two great points. One, I would throw back at you not being able to read, but I would also be a throwback at you, fake news, because now how do I, the commoner, differentiate between factoids (you get what I'm trying to say), fact-based journalism, and just heretic or opinion journalism?

Well, and this brings me to kind of my overall, my general opinion about this stuff, and I keep it a very general opinion about it, right? Meaning that this has always been there. There is no, what we see of, "Oh, hey, you're not reporting this correctly, this is all opinions." Like, this is what it has always been. And you brought up what I was eventually going to get to, is when you have all that information, information is powerful. If I'm the keeper of all the secrets, I then get to manipulate the message. I get to tell you what you just said. If I can't read and I have to get my information from you, well, hey, you can tell me whatever you want on there. You can make stuff up, you can add in your own information and get me to think and act a certain way. And it's not until someone comes along and, I know the big term is, "You've got to speak truth to power." It's like, "Okay, well, wow, that's a great T-shirt."

Yeah.

All right, exactly, that's a platitude. But then they have to say, "Hey, this is what they're actually trying to say." And now me as that commoner have to go, "Oh, well, wait a minute. What else are you lying to me about? Or what else have you been making up?" And that goes, and that's why I always bring it back to the 1450s as a good historical reference because it goes back even further than that. But I just think it's very similar to what we've seen in the last 15, 20 years of that kind of almost a revolution in information. It's no longer coming from these basic news sources, or I have my three news channels that I can watch and that filters out the information.

Because there's two sides of that coin, right, Greg? So if someone's coming along and I want to find out what's going on or what policy or what my candidate's position is, well, first of all, any one of these policies are very complicated. They're subtle, they're nuanced, they have second, third order facts. But they have to clarify that into a very simple message for me to digest. And then what the journalists or press should do is go, "Well, yeah, here's what they're saying, here's what they want to do." And they might explain it a little further. But then if I read someone else, one might be in support of it, one might be criticizing it. And so I have to take that into account. So the problem becomes then is now I go, "Well, wait, who the hell am I supposed to believe? Because you're saying this, Greg, but there's two people over here writing about what you're saying, and both of what they're writing is different than what you're saying." And me, I'm trying to understand three different perspectives now: one, what came out of your mouth, and then how that gets filtered through two people who are experts in the field or pundits or commentators or whatever. So that becomes very confusing to me. And so now I have to try and go, "Well, who do I trust now?" I don't trust anyone because I found out you went too far in one direction before. So let's say one reporter says, "Hey, I'm only going to tell the story this way," and they fall victim to normal human biases and confirmation bias and different things, and they report something. And then it turns out, "Well, it's not quite what you reported it as." But I never hear that retraction. I never hear about that mistake being corrected. So I think that that's very difficult, but at the same time, it's something we've always had to deal with.

Let me compare that. And you're exactly right, first of all, you're spot on. But our age differences are really showing now. So in my day, the media reported the news. And news literally means new information, newly received information that's relative to an important recent event. And now what's happened is the news media has taken on a role as an intermediary between the government and the people, and helps us determine issues, which side of society, which side of politics we should be on.

So, wait a minute, have you ever filled out a mail-in ballot ever in your life and gone to read about a new proposition or law or proposal that somebody makes about a mill increase or a levy increase? And it's this long, and it comes in three pages, and they expect us to read it just like, "Hey, but before you get your new update on your computer, read all and use your license agreement." No, nobody's reading that, Brian. They know that nobody's reading that. So I would liken that to if the information was as easy for us to say, "I support" or "I don't support it," it would only be a couple of lines, it would be a short, brief sentence: "We support growing of agricultural education in high schools," let's say. Okay, that's not what they do. They try to conflate and confuse issues. Why? Because they know that the common person, just like historically, the common person isn't going to take the time to read it, and they're going to get their information from some other source, and they're going to vote their emotion.

Now, let's liken that for a minute to the court. You have a prosecuting attorney and a defense attorney, and you have a plaintiff's attorney in civil cases. And they go up and they talk crap to the jury, to the people. You can't get away with that in a bench trial because in a bench trial, it's a judge and he keeps going, "Time out, Herodotus. Let's go back to the facts at hand. I want to know about this." But when you're in front of a jury, Brian, you're trying to influence that jury's opinion much like the news media is by throwing out for instances, and people object, "Your Honor, that's this!" But then it's up to the judge to go, "I've got to let it go for a minute. He hasn't actually violated any rules of evidence." Brian, why would it be different now with the news? We need to understand that when we watch the broadcast, that it's being paid for by all of the people that buy advertising space on it. The talking head is certainly not giving you their opinion; they're reading the prompter. Do you get what I'm saying? Watch them when the power goes out. Watch them when somebody comes in and goes, "Hey, this is live." They don't know what to say.

I'm saying that news media has outlived its usefulness because it no longer creates a bridge between news and us to make the decision. Now it informs us of a potential decision, and I think that's where it went wrong. I really think that it was a better system. And it's always been flawed, don't get me wrong. I get your point. Historically, you're exactly right. But I think that we've now made it a fourth pillar of the democracy. So now we have the judiciary, the executive, the legislature, and the news media. And I think that's horse crap.

Well, and I think it can sometimes overcomplicate the message, right? And yes, everything you brought up is there's always two sides of the coin, right? So no matter what the situation is, we're saying, "Oh, they're supposed to inform us of this," or, "You're supposed to tell the story for what it is." So the courtroom example is a great example because you've got the prosecution, you've got the defense, you've got the jury, you've got the judge up there. So you have these different dynamics. And I like that because if the prosecutor can only rely, a prosecutor can't make up some crazy story. They have to go, "Here's what I can prove happened, and here's why I think it happened that way, and here's the law, and here's precedent." So they have a framework that they have to stay within that's fairly tight, right? They can get a little bit here and there, but in terms of how I tell the story, I can always tell it in some dramatic fashion, but I have to stick to what specifically occurred. And then like the defense, they can come in and they get a little bit more play. They still have to play by those rules, but remember, it's the whole, "I don't have to prove my client is innocent, I just have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. I just have to create doubt." So that's the beauty. So, is it hard to create doubt in a jury? Well, in general, I would say no, meaning to create doubt in something and just go, "Well, it could have been this," or, "Do you think maybe it's this?" Or, "What about this area?" And that's kind of what everyone does now.

The problem is, if I'm sitting there on the jury or I'm watching the trial, I have to weigh it out and go, "Well, they gave a better argument." So sometimes just giving a better argument wins the day or wins my opinion, right, Greg? Even if that argument was based on horrible information or incredibly inaccurate information, I mean, that's part of the message too.

The problem with what you are saying is that you're saying the truth, and that's what makes it hard. Not palatable, because, "Don't gosh darn let facts get in the way of a perfectly good story." How many times have you heard that, right? So what you're talking about literally is the observer expectancy effect, and we expect results now. Now people hear us all the time talk about the different biases and cognition, and they hear about prospective bias and confirmation bias. Listen, to make it easy on you at home, they're all the same thing, because we're humans. We pattern recognize situations for survival, linked to our historical survival necessity. So things aren't ambiguous when we look at them from the time that man first appeared on the earth. So when something sounds like something we would be behind, we will only look at information that will support that theory. And so when somebody comes along and suggests things that are contrary to that, Brian, that's when we have the rub and we start saying, "Well, now it's us versus them."

So in the world of the jury, I only have to cast some doubt. For example, I can say to the ladies and gentlemen of the jury, "The number one reason that cases are thrown out of court is misidentification." And right away they're going, "Oh, that happens often!" Do you see what I'm trying to say? And the lady knitting stops and goes, "Well, wait a minute, I saw a documentary about..." Exactly. So all of those biases are linked to our personal knowledge of the world. Again, going back to the reading, and who's transmitting, and how we're receiving. So I want you to think about that for just a second and understand how powerful the media is. The media is so powerful that out of five domains that we were talking about—clergy, nobility, do you get what I'm trying to say—the media occupies two of them. The Fourth Estate, they were as powerful as the other estates. It wasn't, it was only fourth because they were comparing them, not saying it's the fourth most important. What I'm trying to say. And then the Fifth Estate, and shout out to Detroit, Fifth Estate was an underground newspaper in Detroit back in the early '60s, counterculture.

Right, yeah.

So what does counterculture tell to you, Brian? That tells me something very important that we don't have right now. We have a visible society, and we have a hidden society. We have those flyover states, or we have those people that have opinions that are afraid to share them because nowadays you might get punched in the mouth. It's not as bad as it's ever been. And the news media has never changed. Where did the term "yellow journalism" come from?

No, you brought up a good point. And then the whole counterculture aspect is true. Like you just said, "Hey, we had this, and then we had this little underground newspaper, and then people used to read it." It was like a counterculture thing, and everyone loves being a part of that because they're going, "Hey, they're giving us the real scoop. Hey, they're giving us..." And that's everything that still happens now today with some YouTube news channel or Facebook page, or, "This," you're like, "Yeah, but they're giving me the real information." It's like, "No, they're doing the same thing that the majors; they just aren't that big yet. They're just getting started." So, and I think that's important because one of the questions is then, "Do we need news channels now?" Because what I've thought of before is you've got different, like let's give like the CNN versus Fox News type thing, right? So Fox News came, CNN was first, cable news network, 24-hour news. We started. And then people kind of said, "Well, wait a minute, we're kind of, these guys seem to have like a little bit of a liberal bias here. They're covering it more from the left. We need something else." And that's kind of how Fox News came along, which in, if you think about that theoretically, that's great, right? You're going, "Well, hang on, we need some balance here." But what they both do is they both say, "Hey, we're fair and balanced," or, "We cover it from both sides." And, my opinion was always like, "Why don't they just say who they are and be that? Like, 'Hey, we're going to be the voice for the left, we're going to be the voice for the right,' and we'll have different guests on. But why don't they just take that and go, 'That's what we're going to do,' rather than sit there and saying, 'Well, no, we're covering it from all angles,' because they're not." So you get what I'm saying? Because now you have that competition, now you have that balance, now you have the ability to go back and forth.

I mean, take the dial and slow it down just a second, and I want to ask you the following question: When a person gets their Ph.D., do they tell them to table their opinions and not use them again, and only use facts? The problem is, it's so easy to get a Ph.D. and carry all those biases with you. So what does that mean? Well, you just brought up the perfect argument again about being in the court system. There are subject matter experts that come to court and they'll testify for the prosecution or the defense or the plaintiff's attorney or the state. And they'll come up and they'll say their story. Brian, are they ever in opposition? They're always diametrically opposed. Do you see what I'm saying? That's why there's news.

I'm going to piss people off, and I don't mean to do this, but there's not many TV shows about certified public accountants. They're all about cops or lawyers or emergency room workers. Why? Because that's what we, we eat the popcorn and go, "This is fascinating!" So I'm in the court, and I'll tell you about a caper, and I don't want to get very detailed, but a subject died, and a police officer was the approximate cause. Let's say, let's say, because it's true. But the idea was that the subject matter expert for the plaintiff at the time, for the lawsuit, said, "Always follow when somebody gets hurt or dies at the hand of the government," and police are at the hand of the government. What happened was, it was a Phillips head screwdriver that a person was attacking the police officer in very close proximity with. And the attorney brought the subject matter expert up and he said, "Listen, the guy didn't have a deadly weapon. He had a Phillips head screwdriver." And he kept putting that to the jury, "He had a screwdriver! You've got one in your toolbox, you've got one in the drawer in your kitchen." Well, yeah, and you also have that block of knives in the wood in your kitchen, and more people get stabbed with that during a burglary gone bad.

What happens is, you brought up a great point that I don't want to get lost on our audience. You know those new Axon cameras, all the other stuff. People say when they see that, they think immediately the in-car camera, the body camera, "We can judge right now! We just saw it! We just saw it!" You didn't feel it though. You didn't feel the stress it was on you. You didn't know what happened just before. You're not smelling the results. And what happens is the news sanitizes a message and tries to say, "Buy this chunk of message." What might be great is have the person that's the journalist or the person speaking saying, "I researched this and this is the opinion-based testimony I'm about to give." But then, Brian, nobody would tune in. And I'm saying that's what it's got to resort to. I'm not saying it's DOA (dead on arrival). I'm saying that if it doesn't go back to Huntley-Brinkley, where editorials were the only opinion that we got, and they were few and far between, I think that...

So that's also been a big problem, is when it goes back and forth between, "Is this an editorial piece?" Right? Because when you write an op-ed in the newspaper, it's very clear, "Hey, here's an opinion piece written by this person, and this is their opinion." Like, it's very, you know, they're stating facts in there to help state their case, but they're giving their opinion on something. And then that has, that's changed a lot over the years, right? I guess now where you can't tell, like, "Wait a minute, is this person just giving their opinion, or are they reporting the story that happened, or from their perspective?" And that's an important thing too. Perspective is a huge, huge distinction.

But you know, this goes into kind of where it goes from here, because, and you know, not to defend these news organizations, but they've been forced to change over time to stay relevant, right? So they can't take the time anymore because they're fighting every person with a cell phone and access to the internet, right? So they're like, "Crap, now we've got to do this. Hey, there's a running tally of whatever on this side, and there's fires and things happening here, and it's chaos and fear, and everything is breaking news. Everything's breaking news. Just in, breaking! Like, this is the most important thing you've seen." Well, over time, that loses meaning. So they have to add more and add more, and again, they've been forced to do that to stay profitable. Because profitable, not relevant, right?

I only challenge the whole thing that you just said, your use of the word "relevant." I think, temporally timely, they think they have to compete, so they're doing a less rigorous job of investigating the facts behind the caper. So if somebody calls in and they got the first person to call in to talk about the event that just happened, they'll get that person on the air. They'll shove that camera. Now, they've always done that, yes, but there's been a loop or there's been a content director or there's been somebody, a fact-checker somewhere. And now none of that exists.

Well, if that's also, like you just said, that's a time issue, right? Because now before, it was you had to send a van out with someone, or actually before that, you had reporters, and then they would sit there and listen to a conference and they'd call back to the news desk to give the update of what it was. And even then, right there, you're getting the part of it's the telephone game. But now because they have to stay profitable, which means they have to stay relevant and get people to tune in, it's that instantaneous, "Let's go right now to this. Hey, we have someone in here." And they're competing with everyone out on the street.

I agree with that. Competing for money. But, Brian, listen, how many times have you seen somebody walking around with a cell phone and they can't get off that phone, and you're looking at the person and going, "Are you a chest surgeon talking to another surgeon?" "It's actually opening, and no, the artery is a little closer." And you think, "Bill, okay." No, that's not happening. So the idea that the news is urgent right now when we need it, well, maybe if it's weather, maybe if it's a tsunami, you know, "Get your boat and head out to sea," kind of thing. He created that. We as a society created the insurgency. So don't confuse that with relevance. Don't confuse that with making money. And I don't mean you, I mean...

No, no, no. And that brings it back to everything you talked about. This is the human problem about observer expectancy effect and cognitive devices, and how we get information. This goes back to because that was one of my points about people made then about the revolution printing, with the printing press. To go back to that, it was people said, "Well, look, it's not the printing press, it's not the information that's not the problem. It's the people on the other end of it. It's always the individual." And that even brought up to even with social media platforms right now. It's not, it's the people, not the machines, meaning it's how we do it and how we handle it in our emotion-based way of processing information in our environment that maybe that needs some work. It's not so much the information coming at us. And that makes it even more complicated because how the hell do we change that? Or how do we fix that? Or how do I, or to be a news organization, how do I monetize that? How do I get that?

I would say, look at this, Brian. When you're looking at an advertisement on the screen, the commercial says, "Regrows hair on an egg in 15 minutes." And then at the bottom it says, "None of these claims are true. All of this is horse crap." And you can't, we don't even, we're not even though it says "U.S. government affiliated," it says, "It's about, we're not affiliated with anybody." I say that if we're in such a culture clash now where even my egg has to have written on it all the nutrition information, and everything's organic, then just start the broadcast by saying, "The views are those of CNN and don't necessarily reflect truth." Do you get what I'm trying to say?

Yeah, I get what you get.

Because at least then some people would go, "Holy crap, they said it!" We all know they do it, Brian, but do they say it? What, you think the jokes about attorneys just came on in this generation? What I'm trying to say. So the idea is anybody that changes the meaning of or the definition of something to gain an advantage, we should be suspicious of. And the news is guilty of just that.

But I would put the responsibility again on us and the people, right? Because you say like they're going to give what they think we want. And then when we, when we like it, when we tune in, they give us more of that. So it's a two-way street, right?

I always look at it as a team. That's called the crackheads' law, Brian, by the way. You just quoted it exactly. Thank you.

That's, well, exactly. I mean, but that's what it is. I mean, we're now, we're basically now primed and used to and conditioned to get that news and get that fill where maybe not that long ago, it was there was a nightly broadcast and that was it. And you had to, they had to sum up what they felt was important for that day to broadcast to that network or that, what happened to Greta Thunberg?

There's your answer right there to your crackhead argument. We wanted Greta Thunberg, so we got her.

Right. So we got something else. Yeah, but something new and shiny comes along.

I agree, that's my point, is that you know, these things become sensationalized for 10 seconds, far past the scope that they should. And that's when they should come with a warning. Like, for example, you wouldn't expect to see Godzilla, the Gojira film, and all of a sudden at the bottom saying, "Be advised, there's no real Gojira. Calm down, everything is fine. This is made." Yeah, it's a movie, but at the end of all movies, it says it's not based on any real character. "Hey, because you, I know that was Uncle Frank." Yeah.

But the idea is that I think that you're assuming that the citizen should be responsible for it. I don't think that citizens have enough wherewithal to make those decisions. It's like PTSD. You can't walk in and go, "Hey, I have PTSD." Okay, wait a minute, you've got to have, someone has a doctor in the loop. Do you get what I'm trying to say? We've got to add somebody. So the same thing. We don't know what's best for us with computers. Computers are a big, important thing, and somewhere right now, instead of listening to us, somebody's making a bomb, or going on and figuring out how to poison their husband. So whenever you have that much power that people wield, I think it should come with some sort of warning or maybe training wheels.

Does mom and dad (or mom and mom or dad and dad, I don't care, folks) sit at the kitchen table anymore and discuss the big issues with the kids? No. And so there's a big chasm between even your age group and my age group on different things. When we drive around, we're always in disagreement on things because I see things in a patently different, much more organized way, and you're like the archaic piece of candy. And that's all good because we come to the same decisions almost every time. But I think it needs to come with some structure.

Well, what would that, but that's the whole thing is what would that structure be? Because it used to be gating mechanisms where not everyone had access to information. You had to prove somewhere, or you had to be, not proved, but you had to fit in some category. Like same thing like you said, reading. Well, if you couldn't read, then you could guess what, you didn't know what was going on. So then you either had to, well, maybe I didn't have access to an education. So now this is where it comes in is that you were born in one family and they taught you how to read. I was born, grew up in the fields, that's all I know. And I come into the city and I see that message taped to that wall or pounded into that door and going, "What the heck does that mean?" And then you go, "Oh, Brian, don't worry, just go back to toiling the fields. That means it means nothing to you." When in fact it was, "Hey, do you know how badly they're ripping you off? And this is what's going on, and they're upset." I mean, that's the whole point is that where does that come in? Because I agree, I think, you know, obviously you want access for all, but then what I think is to get up to that area of if you're like us right now on this, we have a small audience, right? But we have an audience. So what do we do? We try to be careful with what we're putting out because we go, "Hey, we're going to try and stick with our lane. We're going to explain what we think behind it, and we're going to articulate it using some form of artifact, evidence-based testimony, so to speak."

If we're going to talk about a case that's happening, we bring up, "Well, this happened, this happened, this happened, and then there's a precedent here legally with the Supreme Court," or this, like you just brought up court, you brought up we did one on the First Amendment. So we try to stay with them there. And then I go, "Well, here's what I'm thinking about it," but it's not a fully thought-out opinion piece yet because we're having this discussion now. That's, we always say, "Do your homework," right? But that's what I'm, that's what I'm saying. There's a, there's a level of responsibility you have when you have some sort of audience. That's my issue is that now if, I agree, if you're some influencer type person who has a large following on social media, you now have the power to manipulate the way a large part, a lot of people think. And that's my problem is that, "Well, who, why do you get that? How did you earn that opinion? Because maybe you're an expert over here or you did something. But how did you get to influence so many people with that interpretation of events when it was not fact-based, it was purely emotion based, and you just got a half a million people to go, 'Yeah, absolutely, I agree with that?'"

I mean, you just saw the article you sent not long ago about, I forget where the township was that said, "Hey, we don't want police pulling people over who don't have driving without headlights, headlights are out." Exactly. So you're like, "This, this is look, I get if you're saying, 'Hey, let's not write them a ticket because they might not have the money for it,' but you're going to want to drive, let them drive around no lights on, unsafe, and now they kill someone in an accident like that?" Like, this is this because people didn't want that? So you're coming in with these, "Hey, I'm upset about this, but I don't know what it is. Hey, if I get outraged here, they'll change that and now I feel like I've done something." But then what happens when that person with no headlights on kills someone? "Well, I'm not responsible. I didn't know that was going to happen." Maybe you should be though.

It's a country that's a rule of laws. And you're saying two things that would seem dichotomous, but it's the struggle I think that every one of our viewers and listeners go through. So I'll offer two quick things. One, the smell test. Shelly and I have a refrigerator that's probably only two years old. When we bought the house, we had to do certain upgrades and one of them was that we live off the grid somewhere, so things like a refrigerator really matter to you. But the cool thing is that Gunnison is always called, "You just leave the door open." Yeah, how often is that? Chipmunks. "Look, there's a squirrel."

But the idea was that we had a smell, Brian, a smell for the ages that was coming. And so I'm like, "Where is this smell coming from?" So I have a serious photo record of me first doing everything they said online: charcoal, the baking soda, the baking powder, all this other stuff, leaving it for this, doing this, shutting it off, taking all the stuff out. So I did the freezer first, blew out all the lines, did the refrigerator, washed every item in the refrigerator, including the racks, took them all out. It took me two and a half days probably to get everything. Pulled the refrigerator out from the wall, vacuumed the coils, went inside, did all this tray underneath that nobody knows. If you have a problem with your refrigerator, folks, call Brian.

Craig. Yeah, we'll do another episode on refrigerator maintenance.

So even though I took everything out, there was a brick of Camembert cheese that Shelly had bought brand new, and it's in this wooden expensive thing. And you know, I mean it looks fancy, so we got it. We got it from Safeway, and Safeway had it on a discount bin, and it was further discount. So I never once in my mind ever thought of opening this wooden thing that we got for cheap. Well, now we know why we got it for cheap. It was the most fetid foot cheese you've ever seen in your life, and it smelled everything up. Brian, when it didn't pass the smell test, I went through all these procedures to make sure that it was in the refrigerator, never thinking it was the cheese on the top shelf right at eye level. So when things don't pass the smell test, there's a whole bunch of scientific experiments you've got to do. But most of the time, like the Gordian knot, it's the thing that's right in front of you.

The second part of that is accountability. If you say that we are accountable for the words that we're saying on this show, I would agree with you. But I would also say that if the printing is too small or if Joe Namath (I'm getting sued for that one) comes on and says, "Oh, you know, so sign up today for free in-home visits by phone," if I'm believing that horse, there's got to be a warning. So if we're going to spend money on a government agency to do something, it's to hold people accountable. Well, we don't need to do because the law is already there. And the law says stuff like libel and slander and lies. I'm saying that we don't use them anymore because we're so used to lying that we kind of accept the news. I, Brian, think if we held the news media to a higher standard and we didn't call anybody with a phone a journalist, and we made some sort of architecture for going after people if we find out that their information wasn't based, we'd be better off. The court does it every day. Well, there are rules of evidence. There are just no rules of evidence for the Fifth Estate or for the Fourth Estate.

That's another issue too is what becomes free speech, and then there's libel, there's different, and slander, and different laws about that. But I, and you're right, there are laws, but those are very, very tricky, and I agree, are able to like, but that, that's what brings it up too, is that if I start my own Facebook page and I have a million people following me and I put out a bunch of stuff that I just made up and those people agree with me and they think it's true, well, I have no legal obligation, right? I'm not purporting to be some news agency or saying that like, it's this weird, that's the issue where the social media is a little bit different, is that it's us. It's me and you could have, we could have a million people following us tomorrow and retweeting and resharing our videos and showing everyone and agreeing this. And now we have some thing that, "Oh, well, did you take into account what this person's opinion was?" And then you'd have maybe a bunch of subject matter experts in there going like, "Who, what, why would we list who, what are you talking about?" Some, but now that's become, and again, there's two sides that coin. It's good in the sense that too, it does allow for information that may have not, other, or stories that may have not been covered or gotten out there to get out there to create real change. Whether that's shining light in an area that needs to be shown and, you know, whatever that is. So, so there's always, but that, that line has always been there, Greg. And I just think that there's like you said, accountability, and like I said, responsibility. Is there has to be some mechanism there to go, "All right, this is you, you now have reached a certain amount of influence, so you now are accountable for your actions and what you say." And I think that maybe that type of accountability isn't there right now because we're still figuring it out though. But I, I don't know because I always go back to what historically have we done before in the past where it's happened before? I mean, anyone can write a story or spread something, or, you know, Orson Welles can go on the radio and talk about an invasion of UFOs and people think it's real and get scared. And then come up like, "No, it was just a show broadcast." And which it was in that case. But I'm just saying like, you, you run this risk of going too far with those laws and I don't know.

I agree. What you just brought up scientifically for those that are following us is proportionality bias. So proportionality bias literally says that the bigger the issue is, then we have to come to some conclusion because it's got to be the government, it's got to be real. Yeah, I mean, if there's UFOs and I can't find any evidence for them, that's because they're covering it up. Everybody's in on it, because look at all the gosh darn stars in this guy. So somebody's got to be covered up.

Yeah, well that's the same thing that the common folk, me, a commoner like me, thinks when they see Biden and Trump go at it. Both Biden and Trump and both camps, and both vice presidents, have engaged in saying information that isn't necessarily true, depending on how far you dig. Yeah, or what your perspective is, or it can be misleading, it can be taken both ways because for every expert on one side that says it's a lie, there's an expert on the other side that says, "No, no, here's the statistical analysis and all that other stuff." So proportionally, Brian, I look at that and I go, "If the president can get away with that, if the guy running for president that's been in politics for 47 years can get, what chance do I have?" And then what we do, we tune out and tune in to that interlude music that we like. It's not going to be jazz. Don't trust jazz.

But the idea is that you said it yourself, so the news media goes, "Hey, listen, we're getting a return on this, so let's push more of that into the market to make more money." If you came out with a fried ice cream stand in Anchorage and people didn't buy it, you're not going to sell it anymore. You're going to move to some place where it's more palatable. I'm saying there's two things: there's a responsibility for the people that are listening to broadcast to do their homework and do their research on the topics on their own. And contrary because it's not at the time that we can't read and Gutenberg and computers are everywhere, even in inner cities. I see the second thing is that we have to use the laws that are already on the books to enforce the people that continue to lie to us. And just putting something on the news and just releasing it live to YouTube, like Gangnam Style, doesn't necessarily mean it's true. But we still have people in this world that say, "It's such a big problem for us, if it's on the news, it's got to be true, Brian. Somebody would have taken it off if it wasn't."

Well, yeah, and that, that becomes, that becomes problems especially on social media with stuff with, "Well, no, all these people, it wouldn't be out there. All these people wouldn't be saying it." You know, they're harvesting dead children for adrenochrome. I mean, like these insane, insane, insane stories.

But you're saying it's insane, and I keep getting some of our friends, Brian, that we've known for a long time, that are sending, "Have you seen this?" "Yes, I've seen that. It was on Weekly World News!" You know what I'm saying? It was on Mad TV right next, right next to the Bigfoot interview. I mean, it's, so that's the issue is with any type of information, is how do you sift through it? And I know that's a lot of what we do. I think a lot more than people even realize when they're finally like, "Hey, you guys really go into the details about this!" And you're like, "Yeah, like, you just have an understanding of how nuanced these issues are."

And so to kind of somewhat bring it back to the discussion of journalism and the press then, like, what, what do you do going forward? Like, what does that look like? What's the, what's a better way to do it? And again, like you can't, and this is, these are not, I'm not of course asking you for a framework and specific answers, but it's a general idea that we, it's a thinking point that we all have to think about about, you know, accountability and responsibility, and what that means. Because everyone gets to use that term. It's the whole "truth to power" thing I said earlier.

Oh, don't start. Everyone uses that. You're right on the razor's edge of logic and science meeting with a perspective that I can endorse 100%. So I'm going to slam cops for just a second. I can because I was one, just like being a fat guy and slamming other fat guys. I know that the reason I'm fat is because I don't work out enough and I put too many calories in my mouth, and all of them happen to be baked goods.

So listen, if you're a police officer and you say that, "I am a professional," you know what it means. You know what the standard is to be a professional. Do you know how many courses that you have to take to maintain your certification as like a doctor or like we said earlier, a proctologist, Brian, any of those skills that we say there?

I don't think that guy was a proctologist.

Yeah, I know. And I don't think that was because I think it was, well, she wasn't even a good lab coat. Look, but the idea, Brian, is if we take a look at something like a pilot, and we take a look at some of the military stuff that we've had to do in the past where they go to the lowest bidder. We don't want United and American and Delta to go to the lowest bidder and put a guy in there and go, "Yeah, he flew back in the '60s." You know, it's like watching pretty much the same airplane. Can anybody fly the plane? Everybody starts screaming. Well, the same thing. If we want to call it a profession, then there should be some professional degrees that are associated with it. I went and got two advanced police officer degrees and a degree in evidence technology and all this stuff. Why? Because when I was out there talking crap and testifying and somebody would go, "Well, why do you know better?" I, "Because, because of these things, I spent time at college to do them." But right now there's no longer that standard for a journalist or somebody from the press. We can assign somebody that they can say, "I'm now the person that's responsible for this." And I, Brian, I think that's horse crap. I don't think that we should listen to somebody just because they've got a media forum.

No, no, no, they're on a few days. That, that, well, that's a, that's a good, that's a good point. And I think a good way to look at it is like a professional standard, right? Yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter what, whether you know, and because especially here in the U.S., like if you're going to, if I'm going to call you, "You're a plumber," and I call you over my house, you have to meet certain criteria in order to be certified and licensed and all this. Because now it doesn't mean you're any good, it just means, but you've met this. You're not going to rob me.

Yeah, yeah. You're not going to, "Oh, yeah, but we have to replace all of this."

But what it does is that filters out the 90% of people who would just charlatan. But yeah, would just make up that they're a plumber just to take your money and come into your house and steal your stuff or whatever, right? So the idea is, it's not necessarily going to say, "Hey, this, your opinion is any better or worse or or your bet," but you have to know the standards and procedures. So I think getting at the professionalization, I mean, I, it makes sense theoretically to then say, "Okay, this is what's covered under free speech laws, this is what slander means, this is what hyperbole." Like, you have to understand what this is. So at least there's some gating mechanism in there if you're going to deliver information to a man and then you could to a massive audience, right? Because then you could say like, "Hey, we're certified under this." Now you can go get someone that isn't off of YouTube, you can go get whatever. But you have to at least know where they fall in. I mean, that's definitely a good analogy. Now, how that would actually, or, or good, you know, how would it actually work? You know, you've heard the story of the doctor's going to amputate the leg and they write R and L on the leg so they know which one's right and left. And then they wrap the one that's not supposed to be cut. And still somebody makes the wrong decision. And, "All right, crap." You know, it's not like getting your tonsils removed, they can't go back.

I'm saying that there's a function for finding bad doctors. There's a function for finding bad cops. There should be a function for finding bad journalists. And one has nothing to do with the First Amendment rights and people's free speech.

Yeah, no, I, I, I get it. I mean, it's always, a lot of that stuff is, is it's easier to discuss and talk about theoretically than to put it into an actual operational framework. But at the same time, like you said, it goes back to, we do have laws, we do have standards. We do, if we use what we have on the books now and start there, maybe then it leads to, because this, that what you're bringing up kind of leads into what people have now been, well, we're against now, for now, against going back and forth to different companies like Facebook and Twitter about regulating what can go on there, right? They're saying like, "Well, you can't have these articles," or, "You can't talk about this." And before it was an open forum, and then they started to say, "Hey, well, all this misinformation or crazy conspiracy theories are being spread, you have to crack down." Well, that's one, that's really tough because then you, where do you start? Well, who decides what is and what isn't? And then that's where you get into the actual that how, you know, how people can then get blocked for sharing something. And now you're, they're also like, "Hey, we're not, we're a private company. Why are, why do we have to do this? This isn't," or, "And why do we have to regulate?" But also when people complain and say, "Hey, you're doing this," they could say, "Well, we're a private company. If you don't want to, if you, if you don't like it, you can go somewhere else. Exercise your choice." Yeah. But then people now are saying, "Well, no, because of the amount of people on it, you're now a public forum, so to speak." Right? It's almost like you should almost be handled like a, like a utility or something, right? Because you have to have some regulation.

Energy. Yeah.

Yeah, because I mean, that's how we have to do it with, you know, power and water and stuff in our country because otherwise it would be mass chaos. We need some regulated system, right? So maybe that's, that's kind of a step. But again, it comes down to like, I like the idea of the standard slash professionalism or, or some way of gating and board, a regulating board of some sort.

Self-regulating.

Yeah, but then we know, and then that becomes, well, who's on the board and what are they? You know, it just, it gets into it. But I, I think again, this is just kind of theoretically speaking on how we're supposed to do that. But either way, it's, you know, I, I, if I try to apply any historical context to it, or if I try to apply just a basic understanding of adaptation and, and evolutionary biology, it's like, well, the strongest is going to survive, right? Or whatever it becomes. So, so I, the best ideas always stand the test of time for the most part.

In the background, exactly. It's going to self-regulate.

Yeah, so it becomes a self-regulating thing. So I'm just curious is how do we as a people do that? How do I understand it? How do I sift through this information and go, "What do I believe, what not to believe?" And to me, I'm always doing the, "Let's just take it all with a grain of salt." Right? I don't care whether you like it or not, whether it's an article that you go, "Yeah, this really confirms what I was already thinking." Then you need to understand that it's confirming what you're already thinking.

Give me just a second to step up. You're muted there. Okay, I'll give you a second. You'll be back. We'll just have dead air from now on. And I'll try to answer some of the things that some of the listeners, especially Shea, have been saying. This two-way conversation has now become a one-man show.

So, getting back to the beginning of what I was talking about, where this came from, if you're just tuning in now, is that we kind of gave the analogy of how the invention of the printing press back in 1450 is not unlike the similar reactions we're having to current social media trends and how that started with the internet blowing up and things like Facebook and Twitter, and how information spreads. And it's always two sides of the same coin, as we say. So there's always a good that comes from it and there's always a bad that comes from it. And I think in general, I don't know that the good is going to outweigh the bad, but the bad is going to seem really, really bad. And when we have access to this information, it doesn't necessarily mean we have an increase in quality, it just means we have an increase in quantity.

There's Greg, he's back.

Hey, sorry about that. Just remember when you live at Rogue Man or West, you never know what's going to happen and you have to jump out on a live broadcast. Brian, you made a great point. I'd like to circle back to one.

Please do.

Legal, moral, and ethical. We, you and I, couch everything that we say in a legal, moral, and ethical framework. One: Is it legal? Is there a law that protects? What's a precedent on legal? Moral: Is it the right thing to do at the right time for the largest group of people? You know, can we move the dial in a positive direction? And then ethical, when you know the ethos, the imperative for us to do the right thing when we're given this much power. So anybody can set up a podcast, anybody can broadcast. And so both people, the user and the deliverer, have these responsibilities. But who holds us to those standards? With police officers, and people don't believe it now because they've had so much misinformation, I'll tell you this right now: good cops hate bad cops. Good cops don't want them around and they'll do anything they can to avoid them or to make sure that they're found out. But I worked in an agency that was one of the most corrupt agencies in the world, and I understand how entrenched that can be. Well, there's got to be a way to call them out. Well, there is, and you don't fulfill the obligation to your community by cutting out the public information officer, which some agencies have done. Now what you're doing is you're only limiting the bandwidth of information getting out of that agency. And that's a huge, important thing.

So what I'm saying, Brian, is that doctors have professional standards, and lawyers certainly have professional standards. You lie on the stand, you get up there and you say something that's patently untrue, you're going to be found out. And so the journalistic ethics are to me non-existent. And somebody's going to call and go, "Oh, well, there's a whole body that does it." I haven't seen them censoring, and I haven't seen it, so show me.

That's right. And that's, that's a good way you talk about self-regulation. Is, it's funny because when you have, anyone, especially in like military selection processes for different, different units or something, right? You're getting evaluated the whole time by the instructors. Then at the end, what do they do? They give you the peer evaluation form. And you get to write, "Hey, yeah, you guys, I know Greg you think is a stud, but this is all the things he's been doing that you haven't seen." And sure enough, if they get all the students that say, "Oh, wow, this guy, we, we've been missing it," because you don't see everything, right? But I think that's a good point is that you then, then internally they can vote people off the island and go, "No, we don't, we're, we're all coming out against this person because he's complete BS." And that makes their, the thing is they don't want to do that. People don't want to do that. But guess what? It leads to better quality. It's better off for them.

Alarms. Just like you said, "Good cops hate bad cops." Yeah, great doctors hate shitty doctors. Great, I mean, it's across the board. The Supreme Court hates bad law. Yeah.

Yeah, it doesn't have to deal with that, but they hate it. But we all, those getting rid of those that small percentage that has such a massive effect on the whole. Because those good doctors hate those bad doctors because now that good doctor is paying out the ass in malpractice insurance because there's that 10% or whatever who are screwing everything up. So I think it's, it's this is the same kind of standard should be applied to journalists. Sometimes we know information that not all of our readers or watchers or viewers or whatever knows.

So, Brian, you know that we've been privy to after-action reviews conducted immediately after critical incidents by some of the highest performing units in the world, right? Who do they always start with?

Yeah.

"Hey, here's how they start with themselves. Hey, I'm going to stand up. I was a lead on this and this is what I saw and this is what I did. That's what I did wrong." Okay, that's what I'm saying. And if you come up there and you go, "Hey," like for example, these people doing the gosh darn, "I am against you, you're against me," standing behind the pulpit, the things that are on it, that we've been watching, and the word eludes me when you have a commentator that's asking each part. Debates. Thank you so much. Such a simple word. I can come up with a constitutional bias, but that no, a debate is ongoing. And remember, even the art of debate has been lost. It's no longer for sure, you can't even define it as a debate. I took debate class, I know what it's like. But it would be better saying, "Hey, I want to start off right now and let's just choose President Trump as the side I'm talking to. I just want to start off president saying, 'I'm not voting for you.'" I don't think like Sean McFarland. Did you see that? General McFarland, great friend, wonderful leader, ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), everything he's done. And he goes, "Hey, I just want to tell you, these photos that have been coming out lately, me walking with Biden, I'm not voting for Biden. They just use those photos." Remember how powerful that image becomes. And somebody goes, "Well, if Sean McFarland's doing it, right?" No. Come right up front and go, "Hey, listen, I'm not going to vote for you, but I'm the moderator, so I'm going to give you an equal share of the time and I'm going to ask you the same arduous questions that I would not softball." And then go to Vice President Biden and go, "Hey, listen, I haven't voted since 1987. I have no idea the issues. I'm just a moderator, Brian. Truth in advertising." Now that's all I'm saying is that if your words are coming out of your mouth, back them up, because a scientist, a doctor is held to a standard. A police officer, your governor is supposed to be held to a standard. I'm saying enforce the standard, it's already there. Legal, moral, and ethical is a standard. Hell, if we could all agree with that, you know?

Yeah, I know, I know. But there's the, the access to, you know, to anyone. Like you said, anyone can have a podcast or a video thing, and if it goes popular, that's the other issue, is that you're, you can have the best, you know, standards, the best requirements, all that stuff for all these major networks. But then I can come on here and I can get a couple million people on YouTube to click, "Listen to what I'm saying." And that's what those folks are competing against. And that's what also makes it a little bit more complicated. But again, I go back to that. That's what the folks in the past before who had all the information were competing against, right? They were, they, they then went, "Oh, man, instead of me have someone who I literally write and copy books for a living, that's my job. And I'm always going to have work. Now I got this printing press. I've got to compete against." So what do I have to say? "Oh, well, that, it's not as good. It's not the same. It's not the quality." And that's maybe a little bit true, but it's already happening.

News made people rich. My brother's company spends a whole lot of time protecting one newspaper's executives, you get what I'm trying to say, from harm. And those people, just like the steel industry, by shaping the country with the words that were on the paper. And we all know that not always was that information true. I'm saying, to take the moral high ground means to be a good citizen, be informed of the three branches of government, be informed on issues, and don't fall for horse crap. Don't fall for the shell game on the street. And I'm saying that that's your responsibility as a citizen. Then I'm going to politicians and specifically the Fourth and Fifth Estate and saying, "You have an obligation to report news," which means the weather, which is probably the most urgent thing I need to know about if there's a big change. Trends, "Hey, don't go near that stove, it might be hot." And then some human interest stories. When's the last time you saw a good human interest story? And people would go, "Oh no, that's fine. I've got this scrolling news thing now because I've got the new computer thanks to Brian." Everybody. But on the new computer, Brian, to get to the human interest story, I've got to go scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. It's "46 Alpha." It's all the way at the bottom of the screen and it's a squirrel water scan. I'm saying that there's an obligation to you that if you're going to push out news and if you're just going to be entertainment, say your entertainment right up front. When I watch Entertainment Tonight, I know they're not going to give me some juicy tidbit of news that I need to have to survive tomorrow.

And yeah, but that's, that's kind of what it's all become now, right? Because they, too, it really is, well, they had to take those models to compete. And I mean, we're going to, instead of having it this very antiseptic, clinical approach, it's going to be how much scrolling crap we can put on the screen and how many people we can get in little boxes shouting at each other. But again, now that sort of seems to be correcting itself with just don't call it news.

But you're exactly right, it's just correcting itself. That part is correcting itself. And then now with things like podcasts and people wanting to listen to different discussions or different viewpoints, but then you have the same issue with that where they get to say and do whatever the heck they want. And if I'm listening and it sounds good to me, well, I'm on board with it regardless of how accurate or true or logical it really is. And so you don't hear thinking about defunding the journalists.

Well, that brings you back to kind of what we said, is that, "Is it, do we need news channels now?" Is that really...

I think that, I'm not going to answer that specific question because I don't think I can. But I can tell you this, that social media has called the bluff of these huge conglomerate media channels, absolutely. And that the truth is out there, like that old TV show about UFOs (The X-Files). But the truth is out there, you just got to dig a little deeper to find it because now there's 200 million voices rather than the, you know, seven because I had 2, 4, 7, 9 and then Channel 56 in Canada. Channel 9 and 56 were the Canadian stations and because Detroit and Canada have a link. But now more news, hopefully it'll be better quality, not quantity, but quality.

Yeah, and I think that 400 years ago, people were having the same exact conversation. I really, I really do. Gutenberg just put it in print. That's Steve Gutenberg. And we thankfully, finally, generations later, Steve Gutenberg came out with perhaps the greatest law enforcement videos of all time.

Exactly. The Police Academy series. How many movies are there now, Brian?

That's a good trick. I don't know. I think that's like, I knew there was nine.

No, no, it's much more. Oh yeah.

Yeah, they didn't keep making them, did they? I don't know. Yeah, all the way up into space, I think, and it's none of the original players. Like, I think the only one that's still alive and that still does it is the guy... Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, I can't think of his name because he was one of my favorites. Yeah, he was in Spaceballs.

Oh, that's right. Another great movie about the journalists in journalism.

All right, I don't know. I think that's probably a good, good, good place to end. I see the shepherd's crook coming in. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I just, we've, we've been in this before, so it's always the next, "Well, what do we think comes of it?" And I always have your homework.

Well, yeah, absolutely. And I always have to have an optimistic outlook. Otherwise, what's the point? I mean, why even have this conversation if it's all going to lead to, "Wow, we can't leave our viewers with that"? Training changes behavior, folks, and things are getting better and the pendulum will swing back and everything will right itself. We're not on the Titanic, the Lusitania, or the Poseidon.

No, that's what, that's what I'm saying. I always have the, well, I mean, we've had these discussions before. All right, that's a good place to wrap up. Don't forget to check out the episode details and all the links. We've got some new stuff coming up and some new video analysis if you haven't checked that out yet. And follow us on all the different social media platforms. So please like it, share it with your friends, tell other people about it, or get more feedback from folks. And if you'd like us to cover anything specifically, we'd be more than happy to. So just shoot us an email at info@thehumanbehaviorpodcast.com, and we will get back to you as soon as we can. So thank you. Thanks, Greg, and don't forget that training changes...