January 9, 2026 • 68 mins
Well, folks, the results are in: 2025 was a rough year for American science. Massive funding cuts to research and development aren't just slowing the pace of innovation -- they're also sending thousands of the nation's best and brightest out of the country... and straight into the arms of nations that would love to have them. What does this mean for the future? What does this mean for the families affected? Perhaps most importantly: Why is Uncle Sam hamstringing science in the first place? In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel dive deep into the new era of Brain Drain.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan Chicago pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Okay, can you really have done? Had Thin Crest Pizza
and Chicago. I bet it's really good. I bet it's
still really excellent.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, sure, Yeah. Who doesn't love a pizza? Bad people?
Bad people don't love a pizza? hEDS and Neighbors. It's
officially twenty twenty six. As you're tuning in with us,
we're so excited that you're here and we are coming
in hot and ready with something we first addressed on
Strange News a while back. Brain drain. You guys, remember
(01:12):
the concept brain drain does.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Sound like a bit of a space alien sucking your
brain goo out of your skull situation.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
It is like it, except with policy.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah, it does. It does conjure these images of ravenous
aliens right cracking open graniums like little Pharaoh Racero's Yeah, fronation,
I love it.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
I'm gonna go with yours. I think you might be
the right one, Ben on the right side of history.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
There as as we'll see. Uh guys. Brain drain is
a very real concern. It dates back to ancient times.
It only becomes more important in the modern day. And
tonight's episode we started asking ourselves ever since we talked
about this on Strange News, what exactly is brain train
and why, pray tell, are so many people concerned about
(02:07):
it right now in the United States?
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Why? Indeed?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Because science good, science good.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Yeah. At the end of the episode, we got to
have them scientists, and they apparently are going elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Here are the facts, all right. Not to be confused
with brain.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
Rot six seven due use that correctly.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Everybody is using it correctly, because it doesn't really mean
anything cool. Brain's raining is describing this phenomena where highly
educated or highly skilled individuals move from one place to
another on mass It could be one geographical place, or
(02:56):
it could be moving from one industry to another, like
if you are if you are one of the top
boffins in the world of what's something people don't do anymore,
in the world of recreational lithium, and recreational lithium is
no longer a legal thing to give to children. Then
(03:19):
you get into some other part of pharmaceutical so well.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
You know, it's interesting, it's not quite the same. But
I think a part a version of this that we
experience here in Georgia, uh is the brain drain that
is the kind of migration of the film industry, you know,
out of Hollywood and out of Los Angeles and into
our fair metropolis of Atlanta. And you hear people in
LA talking about that all the time as something that's
(03:43):
really wrecking their industry. Obviously it's a boon for us,
but there are various reasons that this kind of brain
drink can happen, and in our situation, it seems largely
based around financial incentives, you know, government subsidies and things
like that that places like LA just can't seem to
figure out how to compete.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I love that example.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Though, Oh yeah, fantastic example. And in today's case, we
are talking about, as we said, these highly skilled scientific minds,
highly intelligent people who are very much interested in pushing
the boundaries of the field that they're interested in. Right, So,
for that stuff, you generally need money for research, and
(04:23):
in many cases grants from a government or an institution
that then gets money from governments. Usually, So, why in
the heck are people leaving right now?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Well, historically brain drain has This has been fascinating me
ever since bringing up on strange news. Historically, brain drain
is caused by the opposite of some of the things
we just mentioned, political instability, economic hardship, war, human rights issues,
or just the appeal of better opportunities, better options somewhere else.
(04:55):
It can occur on local, regional, global levels. And this
this stands out to us, folks. If you have spent
a lot of time in some parts of rural America,
you have likely encountered brain drain and its consequences firsthand,
even if you never heard the term. You know, where,
like manufacturing dries up and all the technically skilled employees
(05:20):
who worked at that assembly line or worked at that
factory have to scramble for options, and often without a
lot of lead time. They may find a job in
a related industry, or may even start a new career
that doesn't require moving that's the ideal case.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
We certainly saw a lot of that around the housing crisis,
the collapse you know, of the housing industry, when a
lot of related fields and whole towns that you know,
were built around making things products, fabrics, whatever, carpet, whatever
it might be, building materials, and then when that market
kind of dried up, you started to see here in
(05:58):
Georgia a lot of communities scrambling to figure out what
to do in place of that industry that had more
or less disappeared. And that was when you really started
seeing the kind of this situation where a lot of
these private prisons were coming in and capitalizing on these
sort of ghosts downs that had become that because of
exactly what you're talking with.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Oh yeah, man, More often than not, these individuals who
get the rug pulled out from beneath them have to
look beyond their community for survival. So if you can
afford it, you're probably gonna move your family somewhere else.
This can have real serious consequences for the local economy,
especially when it occurs at scale. Unfortunately, as we know,
(06:39):
as I think a lot of people have recognized a
lot of times of family cannot move due to financial
concerns or medical concerns or familial concerns that can also
be bad for the local economy. It's real, Kobeashi Maru,
because now if you are the local economy, you don't
have people moving away, but you have an influx of
(07:02):
people who are underemployed or straight up unemployed, and that
puts unprecedented strain on support services. It's tough either way
you look at it. We also see brain drain in
support services. Guys. We know a lot of folks throughout
rural America and communities here in the United States where
(07:25):
people are hours away from a doctor now because hospitals
and medical centers close their doors and shout out to
the one doctor in that small town who stay behind
because they wanted to fulfill the hippocratic oath and to
help people. Now, they're overworked, they're probably underpaid. They're probably
(07:46):
considering leaving as well and finding an area with more opportunities,
a more prosperous place.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, and that's tough, right, because you're talking about people
with highly trained individuals with medical expertise that have to
make that hard choice of continuing their career right rather
than actually helping people in a place that really do
need help. You can't make the money there to support
yourself and your family because of you know, whatever aspirations
(08:14):
you've got, because of the standards of the pay for
you know, people in the medical industry here in the
United States, the only place that has that weird private
healthcare thing instituted, you know, which means doctors can make
a craft ton of money if you play the game right,
and only if you play the game, which requires you
to be in a place that has a lot of
(08:36):
patients and has a hospital slash medical infrastructure that.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Is prosperous and like nothing against people trying to play
the game and you know, rise in their career and
make more money. But we also know, to the previous
examble of the doctor sticking around, there are plenty of
people that are highly specialized that it's more they're more
in it to do the work, and they're more in
it to help people and help communities. Like for example,
maybe a lawyer who could very well become a defense attorney,
(09:02):
but rather than do that, decides to work protecting you know,
tenants from being evicted by corrupt landlords. That's not a
higher paying job, but it involves the same degree, and
it is a very conscious choice, and we're seeing a
mix of that in this situation as well.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Absolutely, and don't worry, friends and neighbors, this situation gets
worse because you see braid drain is bad for the
source region, but it can also be damaging for the
destination region. Real Grapes of Wrath with all the Oaks
showing up to the Orange far right and you have
you have three hundred jobs available, but you have three
(09:43):
thousand people who want them right, and they've already moved.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Tell me about the Okies.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
So the Okis is a term we're shouting out the
book Grapes of Wrath, which examines the mass migration of
people from Oklahoma who were called Oake in a pejorative
way by the media of the time.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
They in California way, it's trying.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
To work right. Largely largely agrarian communities swept up by
the climate disaster in the mid Midwest, lost their farms,
lost pretty much everything, and desperately sought to survive by
hitching up their tent stakes and as as Grapes of
(10:27):
Wrath had it hopping on a jealoppe, which is just
a fun word to say. I don't know why. It
sounds like a sandwich, but it's a car, all the
stuff strapped to.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
The roof, and you know, their whole family. And I
mean a big part of that too, was it was
there the corporations of the companies, the larger farms down
in California, up in California were capitalizing on this, and
they were advertising these jobs and this like, you know,
come here, move to California and change your life, bring
your family, all are welcome. And it was a lie
(10:57):
because there was just not there weren't nearly enough jobs
for the amount of people that saw those handbills or
advertisements or whatever it might be and uprooted with the
hope of changing their lives, only to get there and
realize that not only were there not enough jobs, but
the jobs that were available were often very difficult and
low paying, and they were treated like chattel.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Sleeps more or less. Yep. And the destination region, that
is what occurs. And to add to that, these folks
have gambled everything to get over there and they can't
go back, So now it's a problem for the destination region.
There's more on that in a moment. But we've got
(11:38):
to point this out. I don't know about you, guys,
but I was astonished to learn, folks that the phrase
brain drain is pretty recent. The etymology traces back to
just nineteen sixty three, but the concept is so so old.
Brain drain has been around ever since empires started empiring.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, imagine, really, it's talking about getting the best brains right, literally,
that the best humans, the best innovators, the best inventors,
the people, no matter where they live, get that person
to work for you. If you're let's say, an empire, right,
how do we get that person to work for us?
(12:24):
Or how do we incentivize that person to come and
innovate in our land so that we can make use
of those inventions and innovations. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, if you go back through the sort of dendo
chronology of human society, you can trace the tree rings
of brain train through war, disease, famine, all the hits, right,
all the slow jazz. And it's because just as it
was then it is today. Nobody wants to live in
a war zone, no one wants to get the plague,
(12:58):
and most people in jail federal like to have a
good idea where their next meal is coming from. So
this this also ties into I love that you're bringing
up to this point, Matt. It ties into the fact
that a certain level of economic activity has to exist
to support skilled labor. So if you're an ancient tradesman,
(13:18):
you're a metalsmith, you're an armorer, you have to flock
to large towns, villages and cities to survive. And when
you do that, and there's nothing wrong with you doing that,
you're leaving your old stopping grounds without the town blacksmith, yep,
you're taking that knowledge with you. You're also you're you're
not only not there to make stuff, but you're not
(13:39):
there to teach people to make stuff later.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Oh man, exactly. We've talked about the importance of that
that system of training, right master apprentice, and how how
important that was to humanity for so long, and how well, yes,
but how that still exists, especially in academia, right. That's
that's a lot of what's happening here. You've got circular
(14:02):
learning that occurs because you've got people in positions to
teach others the thing that they've mastered, which you know,
you take that master away. As you're saying, Ben put
them in a different town. Now that town is going
to benefit from what that person has to offer.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, exactly, man. I mean history is also littered with
accounts of people then as now at the tippity top
of the socioeconomic pyramid, and those folks, we call them
enlightened despots, would by hook or by crook, gather all
the smart brains from all the planet not planets, but
(14:40):
basically planets at that time, from all the example. Yeah, yeah,
Alexander the Great, you know, rolls through a place, Djengus
rolls through a place, and they both say who here
can read? All right? Kill the first like the second one. Yeah, yeah,
And this is this is a true story. And over time,
(15:03):
funny thing is that became a net positive because some
seventeenth century monarchs in Europe would gather the boffins and
they would actually listen to them. They would listen to
the experts and they would say, you know, oh that's
a that's a good point. Maybe we should try to
clean the water or do science. You know, I'm glad,
(15:28):
I'm glad you're not the one we killed.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Well, there lies the enlightened aspect of the deskmt. I mean,
it is still technically someone ruling with an iron fist,
but they've you know, they're open to two new ideas
and potentially good and progressive ideas.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
And hey, guys, it's me the king.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
We have sort of an open door policy exactly, you
know what I mean, So like, keep your eyes down,
no eye contact. But tell me about this heliocentric concept.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Oh man, It really puts into perspective the concept of
putting in place advisor around you, let's say, as a
king or a president of just people that you like
or want to hang out with. Are people who like
you enough or say they like you enough to just
you know, be copasetic when you're around everything feels good, yeah,
rather than an actual you know, a group of scientific
(16:16):
experts who can say things, well, what did you say
about it? We should clean the water. That is such
a perfect example, especially for our times right.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Now, sycophants versus actual experts who will speak their mind
and who are given the space to speak their mind.
When you start to have people in high levels of
power surrounding themselves with just people telling them what they
want to hear, that's its own kind of brain drain,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yeah, it's it's definitely an emotional drain for the sycophants.
I imagine. I mean, like we think about what.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Happens everything, you know, It's like it's like a bosituation.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah, yeah, let's let's think about it this way. So
a good hang is a yes.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
At that's right.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Good science is a no, but good science is a
well actually.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Yeah, maybe a yes, but also yes. It's about diplomacy.
I mean, you want to play it, you want to
read the room, but it should ultimately result in a
butt this.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Thing, right, My favorite is a yes, but ah.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Oh, here's we'll put you on some game here, right, Yes,
because you avoid the social danger of a no, but
or well actually, and you just sort of make it
sound like the leader's idea. Right, yes, because the water
should be clean, like oh, this guy's great.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Do the dance a little bit, right.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Little parkour now? And then, I mean, this is the
other side of the the other side of the cerebellum
or the butt cheeks. People in communities who get left behind,
the folks who are not highly skilled or don't have
a resource or knowledge base to sell, or the folks
who just get afford to move. It's like your town
(18:03):
got bypassed by the new train line. History rolls on
and you are not on the ride. It's scary.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
You're still out there digging up rud of vegas.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Yes, yes you are, and your problem. That's a very
respectable way of earning it.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
And you're probably using an older shovel. So the better
shovel got invented in the.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Big big city, the auto shovel.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Right, yes, they called it the John Henry with no
trace of irony, and yeah, exactly, And thanks Illumination Global Unlimited,
our first and primary sponsor every war. We talked about
this too in the past. Guys. Every war in human
history brings this mass transfer of knowledge. And sometimes it
(18:53):
happens organically, but in other cases, like in post World
War two, countries purposely headhunt the best and brightest from
the losing side and then leverage that desperate situation to
their advantage. Operation paper clip.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Is that Varoner von Braun?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so many other let's really hit
that home. The United States has NASA, no matter how
you feel about that, right, the folks that in innovated
space travel and space exploration because of World War Two,
because of brain drain, because of Nazis.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Because of Yes, brain draine Nazi scientists, it definitely happened.
History is not original, Okay, that's what we're saying. It's
important to remember that as we record Monday, December twenty second,
twenty twenty five, history is closer than it looks in
the rear view mirror. In fact, in the course of
(19:54):
our investigation for this, we found that tons of experts
have examined facets of this over the past centuries and
sometimes Okay, technology modifies a few plot points, but the
story at its core, if we're writing a screenplay about
brain drain, it is always the same. It's the same thing,
(20:15):
beat for beat, and that means research is solid. But
it also means we can make some disturbing predictions about
the future. Yeah, real pyrrhic victory. Nice when you guys,
kind of an own goal on our part.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Uh, it's really messed up as we're about to get
into here. When you look at this a survey, right,
how do you trust surveys nowadays? When you can, you know,
open up Google and it'll just serve you surveys and
you'll get like zero point two cents if you fill
out the survey or whatever. But anyway, one of the
(20:49):
main things we're talking about today is based on a
survey just of how people are feeling, which is this concept. Right,
we can look to the past and then we can
feel this way, some particular way about what's coming right,
and that feeling ends up being the thing. Just the
way it moves markets. It can also move researchers and academics.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
And science, and we do have some quantitative data as well.
These are not just articles of faith. We're talking about
the future of brain drain. I mean, okay. Something that
is good for the average person is that today's world
is cartoonishly more connected than it was in the past.
It is now easier at this point in history than
(21:32):
ever before to gather information to learn how much your
same job pays in another town and another part of
the world. It's also easier to travel, and it's also
easier for powerful people, the new enlightened despots, to find
you if they want your skills. This ties into immigration. Sure,
(21:54):
you know, let's play along at home. If you've got
your second screen up, if you're on your phone and
you're watching this on a different device, figure out your
dream country. Just name a country, check their immigration policy,
and you were going to see a wish list of
dream employees from that country, right, the country, you know,
(22:16):
Canada says well, we don't want everybody, but are you
a doctor? How much do you know about semiconductors.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
As intense as the immigration rhetoric's been out of our country,
it does seem like they're certainly willing to make exceptions
kind of after the fact, after a lot of this
like Saber readily nasty talk about not wanting immigrants, but
yet we do want these particular type of immigrants that
are going to benefit us, which just I'm sorry, I'm
(22:45):
not trying to be politically or but does seem inherently
hypocritical to have like the two sides of that coin,
and like we want you, but not you, but the
you that we want, but then the other ones that
are not benefiting our bottom line, we you know, get
out of here.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Wait, we're letting the Nazis in. Yeah, but just like
the rocket.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Nazis, Yeah, yeah, yeah, the medical Nazis.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Well all right, guys, we're we can't have everybody on
the list, though, But see.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
That's also a really tough thing because just because someone, uh,
some scientists, some research, or some academic who is living
in a country where there is an oppressive regime like
the Nazis. Operator doesn't make them Nazis. Right, of course,
you've got to we have to keep that in mind.
But there's also that thing where when you're in a
country like that that is going through some oppressive regime,
(23:34):
perhaps your your the thing you're good at, your research,
your your innovations, inventions are being used by that crew.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
You're against your will sometimes though you're not like getting
to choose which exactly they are pulling you in, and
then you are being installed in a position that uses
your skills, that benefits the regime.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
But the thing is, even before any oppressive regime takes action,
let's say invades Poland or you know, invades Venezuela or whatever.
Just given some examples here, maybe you see that coming
and see it happening as one of these academics or innovators,
and you choose before that occurs to get out right, Well,
you've got a post and a pre brained drain that occurs,
(24:20):
and there's even a during like let's say wartime brain
drain that occurs. It just we're just trying to make
a point that it happens in stages on both sides
of some big change.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yes, cyclically predictive, and it happens proactively and reactively. One
historical precedent that I think would be a great case
would be a scientist of Jewish heritage who saw what
was on the horizon and felt what was in the
wind right and escaped before the Nazis committed their genocide.
(24:53):
And for a lot of modern history, from post World
War two to recent years, the United States was often
considered the place to be the last man standing. In
the wake of a horrific global war. Uncle Sam begins
exporting all sorts of things, and one of the most
successful products the country ever exported was the idea of
(25:18):
what we call the American dream.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
You know, you can be a new man, you know.
I mean it's like the United States has historically had
this image of we are innovation first. Innovation for that
is what we care about. Come here, we will support you.
We will you know, patronize your research and the things
that you're passionate about, whether it be the arts, whether
(25:40):
it be science, whether it be any number of these
types of skilled and very specific professions. That was the
reputation that we I believe have had, and I think
with good reason, especially given the state of higher education
here in the United States. People want to come here
for that as well.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yeah, come forth, you huddled masses. We yelled, we're fair here.
We got no kings, we got no ingrained classism. Where
the world's best meritocracy. You work hard, that you pay
your dues, the future is yours double plus good thumbs up.
This turned out not to be entirely true.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
It was at least partly true in ways for a
while exactly right. Parts of all of those were kind
of true.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
It was true in that we all thought it was
a good idea when we wrote it down in the
writer's room. Everybody was the writer's room of the founding fathers.
Everyone said, this is a banger, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
They were like, played really well at the table reading.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah, they were like, this is the new Seinfeld. And
someone said, what Seinfeld spoilers. So fast forward, folks, it's
twenty twenty six, Fellow conspiracy realist. As you hear this
and experts fear, America, once the dream destination for billions,
is turning into one of Earth's worst cases of brain
(27:00):
drained storms on the horizon of fell wind blows and
what does this fell wind mean? Well, it's going to
be tough to figure out if we don't have scientists
to do the research.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Yeah, we're just gonna have to make our best guess.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
The Mozart of math will be in Australia going oh, well,
I can do it over here.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
I'll do the method.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Right, and we're gonna pause for an ad break. We'll
ti back in. Okay, okay, everybody, let's pump our brakes,
cool our jets and thanks to the people who invented
breaks and jets. We don't want to be alarmist or hyperbolic,
(27:42):
but there is a problem. There is a problem because
historically the United States led the modern world and scientific breakthroughs.
And oddly enough this might surprise a lot of our
fellow residents of the US. Oddly enough, for decades and decades,
funding for research and design and all sorts of stuff
(28:04):
was stable. Investment in basic science was a given. It
was largely backed by the big dog political parties and
the fringe parties. But now Uncle Sam has closed the
wallet on tons of research. And no, you know, I
always respect it when you say, when we take pains
to say, hey, we're not here to be politicos or whatever,
(28:28):
but we do have to acknowledge it's because of the
recent presidential administration. This changed the game in May of
twenty twenty five, because of something called the Big Beautiful
Bill or the Fiscal twenty twenty six budget proposal. And
we've got some stats we want to kick which are
(28:49):
pretty sobering for sure.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
I mean, also just to add that there was a time,
it would seem where the time you were describing then,
where science wasn't really a partisan thing. You know, both sides,
even the and his parties were like science good, like
what Matt was saying. So here are some of these
stats and a lot of this Big Beautiful Bill stuff,
which is a mouthful. It does seem that even though
they claimed it wasn't the direction, they were going to
(29:11):
be things that support that whole Project twenty twenty five initiative,
which is this dismantling of a lot of these government
agencies and installing let's just say secafants, yes, yes, people
in order to push political agendas in place of science.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Yeah. And for the record, that Project twenty twenty five
stuff is heavily plagiarized from the Foundations of geopolitics by
Alexander Dugan. So the what did we call him, Russia's
new respute.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
Right, Yeah, for sure, a bit of a shadowy figure.
So here's some of the stats we're talking about. The
White House released these details surrounding fiscal year twenty twenty
six in a budget proposal that called for reducing the
Nowtional Science Foundation's budget by fifty seven percent, the National
Institute of Health's budget by roughly forty percent, and NASA's
(30:07):
the aforementioned NASA's science budget by forty seven percent. These
are some slicy dicey cuts here. The Department of Energies
Office of Science faces a fourteen percent cut, while the
National Institute of Standards and Technology would see a twenty
eight percent reduction in their budget. We also have cuts
(30:28):
to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the weather One NOAH,
and also the Environmental Protection Agency. These are government agencies,
but they have historically had some autonomy, and they're the
ones that are supposed to be doing the science and
then recommending to the government the things that we need
to do to maybe not like blow ourselves up or completely,
(30:48):
you know, deplete the resources that our planet has to off.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
And these are not propagadendistic numbers. These are actually coming
to us from the American Physical Society and Olivia Newton
John fan Club. They're they're super into physics and that
kind of science, but they probably also rock some Olivia
you know, and doesn't have a good time.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Oh no, no, Olivia is the best. Xana do is
what I think of also grease. But let's also just
not act like we are completely wearing rose colored glasses
and thinking that these organizations have not in the past
also played politics, no question about. Is not like a
cut and dried situation that we're talking here. I just
think that we're seeing a much more slippery slide into
(31:33):
a much more divisive use of these types of organizations.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Oh you made it sound so fun man. I miss
slip and slides.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
They're dangerous.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Though they are dangerous. They are dangerous, but it's way
better than the non consensual slip and slides I've had
the past, you know what I mean. It's it's funny
because I broke my toe earlier this year, but we
record from the waist up.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Right, you know, it would be good to help out
with that. Guys, I just thought about this, and I
thought about it this whole episode.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
DARPA.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
We haven't talked about DARPA yet, cause there's that's one
one area of science funding that seems to be going gangbusters.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Interesting, Yeah, because DARPA has a different wallet source it does.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
It's the Pentagon thing in the what is it the
Defense spending bill that just went through pretty recently here
in the US, and I think they're allocated around four
point three four point four billion dollars just for DARPA.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
All right, Yeah, let's all be cool because we want
the grand Yeah. Please check out some of our earlier
episodes on DARPA. We've called them in the past the
mad scientist branch of the Pentagon, which is not inaccurate,
but maybe a little bit clickbaiting. It's a little bit
(32:59):
of a fun way to say to say what they do,
which is providing funding and grants. They like the enlightened
despots of old. They identify skill sets and research that
they dig and in most cases they will propose a
problem or question and you pitch them shark tank style
(33:22):
an answer, and they might throw a little a little
bit of scratch your way to explore the idea further.
But then in other cases, on the other side of
the spectrum, if you already have an idea and they
think it's a threat to national security mine, yeah, secrecy Act, but.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Arly talk about it, Yes you cannot. But generally, you
know north of Grumming or your Boeing's or company works.
They raise their hand, they say, we'll take that one actually,
and then now their their private company has a lot
to do for the next couple of years.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
You will heed the law, they say, right back. He
jokes were to get trouble.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
And all this comes, you know, on the heels of
a ton of other cuts and slices, a lot of
which took place under Elon Musk's relatively short lived DOGE initiative.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
Please could dodge the Dude Governmental efficiency, it was called.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
That's exactly right. And of course there were a lot
of questions surrounding how.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Politically motivated those cuts were, whether they.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
Were in fact going after waste and fraud, even some
of the effectiveness of the cuts that were made, or
what cuts actually were made, because the lists of them
kept being revised as they were posted, and there was
this whole sense of we're going to be completely transparent
about this, but a lot of that information seemed very
tricksy in terms of the math. They were talking about
(34:49):
having cut grants that I think expired like years and
years ago, and things that had already been built they
were saying they saved money on. So there was just
a whole lot of real tricky cocktail napkin math going
on with that whole situation.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Call it it now, doje episode in the future.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
I think that's right.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Yeah, yet's do it. And we know that these these
cuts were describing were controversial and resulted in thousands and
thousands of federal employees, including a lot of scientists, getting
fired but then rehired after a court order. And well
there are some whoops too.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
There was some we didn't mean to get rid of
USA now people, Oh my gosh. But let's let's put
it back.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
We fired the tires on our road trip. Whoops. That's
what happened, was big whoopsie. And we know some people
who had to go through that emotional roller coaster, which.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
Absolute very research universities, for example, even just like in
the maintenance or it departments. You know, like I have
a friend. We both have a friend of the show,
Matt Riddle, who works maintaining MRI machines for a very
prestigious research university involving and these machines are used for research,
And when those grants were potentially pulled, there was a
(36:04):
lot of questions around, am I gonna even have a job?
Am I gonna have MRI machines to maintain? Not to
mention the a lot of the hot button things that
were sort of being discussed were like, we don't want
research on transgender mice or something like that. There were
a lot of these very hyperbolic, sort of manipulating ways
(36:26):
of describing research that when you actually dug down into
the details of the real realities of them, were not
quite accurate.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Yeah, political theater, that's one way to put it. In
our Doge episode, which I'm instantly super excited about too,
we've got several conspiracies involved regarding the motivation of what
was targeted to be cut. We also know we've got
close friends at the CDC, which I hate that that
(36:54):
sounds sketchy now, but here in the Atlanta area and
our fair metropolis, we have the Center for Disease Control
and those folks are rightly asking, why are you cutting
us from the game. You know, these budget cuts. This
is the point. These budget cuts are not hitting playing
(37:16):
all abstract science. Nobody is fruitlessly trying to reinvent the
number nine. Instead, these cuts are directly impacting programs that
result in better training in scientific breakthroughs, innovations, jobs. We
saw a twenty twenty three survey by Research America that
(37:38):
proves the public supports this. More than three and four Americans,
more than seventy five percent of three hundred plus million
people who ordinarily do not get along, they agree that
investing in research creates jobs in the United States. And
then there was a related question on that survey than
(38:00):
eight and ten, so more than eighty percent of Americans say, yeah,
the federal government should help out with research. It's not controversialist.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
No, it shouldn't be for sure. And just to clarify
the thing I was mentioning that kind of here's the headline.
You know, NIH money is being used to fund research
on transgender mice, on you know, gender affirming care for mice.
But that was just a tiny fraction one point four
million of an eight million dollar funding grant, and the
rest of it was actually used for Alzheimer's breakthroughs PTSD
(38:35):
and clinical depression, like the kinds of stuff that could
benefit not just members of the trans community, but anybody
you know and people you know, your grandma, you know,
your mother who's dealing with a slide into dementia, things
like that. So there's this a lot of this demonization
that's going on and pulling out just the thing that's
easy to kind of weaponize and throw around and make
(38:57):
people think that there's all this like super whatever liberal
research going on and it's just not the case.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, it's easy to make a breathless, misleading claim when
you have three minutes, right, and the people who are
on the receiving end of that propaganda typically are not
going to take additional time to delve into this. This
is why, like, all right, here's the thing, folks. Good
(39:24):
research is good for everyone. Solid research, even if you're saying, hey,
Alzheimer's doesn't run in my family, that solid research will
make the world a better place. It is important. It's
kind of like it's similar to the way the Hope
Scholarship here in this in our fair home of Georgia
(39:48):
helped improve society by allowing more kids to go to college.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
Would you also say that that was a way of
preventing brain drain here in Georgia by giving you know, locals,
people that grew up born and raised here an opportunity
to stay in state.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Yeah, that's a great point. It also it also shows
measurable reductions in certain types of crime, because now if
you're able to go to college or pursuing a career,
that's one less radio stolen off of pods.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
I know, yeah, I remember when people to take their
CD players face the car.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Yeah I remember that. Yeah, Ed and economists are making
frightening predictions right now. I was looking at these studies
that indicate a twenty five percent cut in research funding
will reduce the United States GDP gross domestic product by
three point eight percent over the next several decades. Sounds
(40:50):
like a small number, but it's four percent of a
very big pie. A fifty percent cut just to spend
this out further will reduce GDP by seven point six
percent across the same timeline. That would be a drop
bigger than anything since the Great Depression, which again is
a terrible name.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
It wasn't yeah, because it was great.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
I'm thinking about what all of that like, this is
just this is knowledge that we've researched, y'all that you
can go out and find. Right now, I'm imagining what
this is doing to the morale of highly intelligent people,
people that are far smarter than I am. But people
who are out there, let's say, going for a PhD,
(41:39):
Like they want to become a PhD student, and they're
looking I feel like people and maybe I'm wrong, but
I feel as though people who are at that level
make five year plans, ten year plans, concepts of where
they will be in the future, and they plan out
there are steps I need to take in order to
get to end goal X, right, and then why we'll
(42:02):
be on the other side of that one. When you
when it feels like you just can't see yourself on
any kind of pathway forward, why in the heck would
you try to make it work in a place that
is putting up those roadblocks for you.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
It's demoralizing. Yeah. Shout out to the postgrads, Shout out
to the grad student. Shout out to the best and
brightest minds who are pursuing internships or in high school
and saying I want to be a physicist. But should
I institutions have reacted swiftly to these cuts. Hiring freezes
(42:41):
went into effect, grant request got stonewalled, research got mothballed,
some really good tasted research too, and scientists across the
country had to face some serious, like Dark Knight of
the Sole questions about the future. This all poses two
big problems. First, the United States has this obsession with itself.
(43:03):
It kind of suffers from main character syndrome like people
who are not good at asking other people questions. The
United States is a very self centered enterprise. But the
research is global. Research will continue with or without Uncle Sam.
The train rolls on, and there are other countries that
(43:26):
are eager to capitalize on this misstep. And that's the
first problem. Second problem, people doing that research, just like
in the days of ancient empires, they are going to
look for somewhere else to go. They put too much
time in. They're not gonna shrug their shoulders and say, oh,
my career is over. I guess the world will never
learn about zero point energy. They want to get this
(43:49):
stuff across the finish line. And that's why one of
the things that informed our Strange News conversation later informed.
This episode was when the journal Nature asked something like
one thousand, six hundred and eight American scientists if they
were considering leaving the country due to these harsh budget cuts.
(44:11):
Three fourths of those responders said, yeah, I'm thinking about
skip and town, dude, And they were across scientific disciplines. Again,
this is like three fourths bla blah. So it's like
round one thousand, two hundred of the scientists. So again,
(44:32):
seventy The breathless headline, right, the three second headline is
seventy five percent of scientists are going to leave the
United States. That's not quite the case, but it's still very,
very bad for us because there are a lot of
other countries that can't wait to have some science refugees.
How is that a term? How did we get to
(44:54):
this point where science refugee is a term? I want
to be a science refugee.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
What kind of science you got work in? Bowling? Hey, hey,
tell us more information. We'll figure out if it's worth
our time.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Yeah. I just need a passport. I need a lifetime
Dave and Buster's card. Do you guys have Dave and Busters?
Because if not, I'm going to talk to the next
country over.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Yes, sorry, we don't do that here. We're strictly and
in this.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Place, right, okay, all right, it's a dilemma. Yeah, and
this introduces us to the concept of a new project
paper clip, and we've returned. So not for nothing did
we mention paper clip. There are several new things that
(45:47):
are kind of like a less agro version of paper
clip that are happening right now. We talked about this earlier.
There are several outfits in France that in March and
April of twenty twelve five said, hey, we have created
something called a Safe Place for Science program. We create
(46:09):
a safe and stimulating environment for scientists wishing to pursue
their research in complete freedom.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
Uh oh, real opportunity for some other parts of the world.
What's happening here?
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Yeah, yeah, If I'm a scientist, I'm saying, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
So but here's the thing, Yeah, these are this is
an incredible opportunity for you know, someone to become a
science refugee from another country, let's say the United States,
or or a lot of other places, even places like Venezuela, Cuba.
I mean, just think about places that are that you
could have a scientific mind in that in that country
(46:45):
that is going to have a really hard time in
that country, here's an opportunity. The only thing is, it's
almost like it's like any time you're giving out grants, right,
as a research institute, you can only give out so many.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Right, there's a limited number of seats on the train.
And the issue then becomes one of it's a real
sticky wicket. It's a real bag of badgers, folks. Because
if you were the person approving the grants, then you
have a couple of things. First, are you saving someone's life?
Is their life in danger because of their research still
(47:23):
happens today? Secondly, is there and actually probably flip those
The next one is how does our nation state prioritize
this research?
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Right?
Speaker 3 (47:36):
If we know somebody is going to die because they're
doing research on hormone therapy and their country hates it,
do we save them or do we prioritize someone who's
doing some really cool stuff with semiconductors over in Massachusetts?
(47:56):
You know what I mean? What choice we make? And
how do we phrase it as the greater good? In
just like one month after putting out the Safe Place
for Space applications, this university in France received some ballpark
three hundred applications from scientists. The vast majority We're American,
(48:18):
and they were seeking refugee status America's best and brightest.
We're officially in a world where science refugee has become
a thing.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
I can't believe American science refugees.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
You sounds like an album name.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
You know, you may be finding us for the first
time right now, But if you go back in the
old archives and all the places you can find stuff
they don't want you to know, you'll find many an
episode about similar topics. One of those is the time
we covered Iranian scientists specializing in fissile materials. If you
get our meaning there, who kept dying And when you
(48:59):
imagine when we're talking about the stakes that are potentially
at play here for specific types of science work that's
being done, you could take your mind back to that,
because that's a real thing. You can look that up
if you want and go listen to our episode if
you want. There are there can be real stakes for
an individual attempting to escape a country.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
Absolutely. Yeah, that's another part about brain draining, because sometimes
depending on the point in history or the regime you're
talking about, sometimes you can't leave. They won't let you go, right,
or they will let you go like aq con Folks
who was sent from check out the episode. You know,
(49:43):
write to us if you want, if you want full
sources examination of that. But yeah, a lot of scientists
are being treated as casualties in a greater war. Other
countries have similar programs for American science refugees, or they
play and to implement them. A guy named Epo Bruns
(50:04):
perfect name, sir, is the Minister of Education, Culture and
Science for the Netherlands, and he's been making a pretty
successful pitch to start the Netherlands version of the refugee
program right, and the Netherlands is pretty great if you've
ever been there. Can you imagine your sweating grants? One day,
(50:26):
you've got a hiring freeze, your advisor tells you your
work is amazing, but the government's not going to help you.
And then all of a sudden, some folks in Amsterdam
are like, hey, you want to hang out.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
We think you're the best.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Actually, I think you're cool. Will also give you money.
Have you ever considered living on a canal? Yes?
Speaker 4 (50:48):
And we haven't really mentioned the h one B visa situation.
Of it all. I just thought maybe we could briefly
touch on that, because we were talking a lot about
science and health care and that kind of research that
you know, really could help people in terms of quality
of life and things like that. But we of course
also have these giant tech corporations like Apple and Google
(51:10):
that rely a lot on skilled workers from abroad to
staff these positions. And with various changes in H one
B visas, which are of course worker visas that the
Trump administration has been putting forth, we're seeing folks from
these companies, leadership from these companies telling their workers that
(51:31):
they shouldn't leave the US. Well, things are in such
a sketchy sort of you know, tenuous position. We're talking
about them encouraging people who are in this country on
H one B visas not to go home and visit
by families lest they be rejected upon re entry, which.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
Is a very real concern, you know, so much so
that there were folks who were traveling to India recently
earlier this year who got the news about the visa
controversy and then demanded that their play not leave with
them on it and said, look, I'm going to stay
in the United States. This is a frightening thing. H
(52:07):
one B visas essentially are for specialty, special career roles
that require a bachelor's degree or above, and there's an
annual cap of sixty five thousand. But then you can,
I mean, you can play with it a little bit
and get an additional twenty thousand. We're talking about a
(52:28):
lot of people who are doing good work, and I'll
say it, often underpaid, and now, through no fault of
their own, their lives are in danger. You know, this
is something that other countries. I can't say that it's
actually altruistic, folks, but this is something that other countries
(52:48):
have clocked and they're moving quickly to leverage it. They
are Chinese universities right now that are I don't want
to say targeting, but aggressively recruiting Chinese undergrads in other
countries and saying, hey, all right, you don't want to
do the game, you don't want to have to do
(53:08):
the whole dog and pony show and publish or parish
and all that crap. Come back home or just come
to China and we will enroll you directly in some
of our most prestigious PhD programs. Also, what is your
take on robotics. And I loved your paper about semiconductors.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
Oh god, Chaus, let's let's talk about this thing. Because
even that all of that you're describing there, Ben, and
we talked about it before. The change in what is
it if you cut funding now? The change in like
the result of the future. While so a lot of
these large scale research studies and research experiments and projects
(53:54):
that go into effect, right, you get funding not just
for one semester or one year. You get you'll get
a large scale funding for you know, several years, for
a decade if depending on the types of projects, especially
if you're looking at things like climate that take a
long time to study, right or or large scale term yes, yes, okay.
(54:16):
Gen Xer is a great example. Funding that type of
research is such a future focused action, right, because you're
not you're not taking steps now to make profits, short
term profits even long term profits. Necessarily, you're taking steps
to to innovate and invent and change things. I guess
(54:38):
as as a future investment, right, but it is. It's
in order to in order to focus on the future
and imagine where you could go. That's why you put
funding in in the now. Yeah, and it just feels
to me like it feels to me like there there
are some people who are really looking at the short
(54:59):
term as the the only thing that's necessary to focus on.
Speaker 3 (55:03):
Yeah, the issue is the issue is well known throughout history.
It reminds me of the old quotation that I think
we should all hear paraphrase. It is that civilization exists
when one generation plants a tree and they know that
(55:24):
they'll never sit under the shade, right, It's for the
next generation, you know. And that is something that is
increasingly forgotten right or glided over in our current instant gratification,
instant answer economy of attention. I mean also, in all
(55:45):
of these cases we have described so far, the reason
we're calling it like a paper clip light is because
the movement the great brain drain is technically consensual thing.
Most of these scientists are not being kidnapped by some
greater good nuclear non proliferation thing. In most cases, the
United States is not quote unquote kicking them out just yet.
(56:08):
These folks are choosing to move sort of, but they
feel their hands are tied because moving to a different country.
I know a lot of us watching or listening tonight,
I know, a lot of us have experienced this, so
you can confirm moving to a different country is pretty difficult,
even if you already speak the language. Right. Shout out
(56:29):
to a lot of people who said they were going
to move to Canada from the United States because of
some political stuff and then found out how difficult it
is to legally immigrate to Canada.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
Yeah, I know. We just want to do the whole
winter festival thing. Remember we talked about that. There's a
big snowman guy up there and Quebec. We just want that.
Speaker 4 (56:47):
I want to go to I'm gonna go to Montreal
for the first time real soon. I hope they let
me back in. I wanted to just dovetailor, like maybe
put a little bow on the thing I was saying
about H one B visas and a comment that I
made up top about how there's this sense of we
don't want these immigrants, but we do want these There
is some complexity in the President's perspective on H one
b's and on skilled workers in situations where it affects
(57:12):
commerce directly, you know, like chip manufacturers, for example. He
says that there's an article from Politico. I'm just going
to quote from He pointed to the multi billion dollar
expansion of chip production in Arizona, saying the company Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing Company will bring in thousands of workers that
he will welcome those people. I love my conservative friends,
I love MAGA, but those people are going to teach
(57:34):
our people how to make computer chips, and in a
short period of time, our people are going to be
doing great. So I'm a little confused as to what
the real hard line is here, because it seems like
he was saying these things in a way where he
kind of had to hedge it a little because he
knows it's not a popular thing. But it does seem
(57:55):
like he's thinking about the bottom line of it all,
even though the bigger discussion is about this brain drain
and about these people turn and tail and going out
somewhere where they're more welcome or they have more opportunity.
Yet there does seem to be some discussion within the
Trump administration. But how can we attract skilled workers from
other countries?
Speaker 3 (58:13):
Yeah, it's the question that all these countries have been
asking historically, even before modern nation states were a thing,
and earlier we said moving to a different country is
easier now than it has ever been at any point
in history. That is true, but it's still pretty difficult.
I'm looking at Australia, by the way, so any advice
(58:35):
is welcome. Folks, hit us up. You are even in
the best case of international movement, you are losing a community.
If you have kids, you're definitely throwing a plot twist
to your kid's childhood. You could also compromise your spouse
or your partner's career in the process. The good thing
is the scientific community is international. Right. If you are
(59:00):
one of twelve or twenty people who understand a thing,
guess what you know? The other eleven you know the
other nineteen people. They're the only ones who like get
you man. And so the scientific community has a lot
of brain drain folks aiming toward countries and institutions where
(59:21):
they already have friends, they already have colleagues, they already
have a previous worker publishing history. So this is not
the end of the world, but it is alarming. I
want to go back to a point we raised or
briefly touched on here. There are some bulwarks for the
great US brain drain. The United States in particular has
(59:41):
some of the best higher education on the planet. So
the presence of outfits like Harvard Mit at all, they
can stem the bleed a little bit. And we are
still you know, I get it, we're talking about a
relatively small slice of the country's population. But when these
folks move, just like in empires of old folks, they're
(01:00:04):
not just taking themselves and their families. They're taking the
knowledge that leads to new stuff like medicine, breakthroughs in astrophysics,
the next leg of the space race. I mean, heck,
even we might be losing new snack technology and I
take that personally flavor science man.
Speaker 4 (01:00:23):
Yeah, we love it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Well, we were also losing research studies that have been
going on for years, and you know, you take the
individuals out of there and that research is gone and
they're potentially taking it with them to some other place,
or it's just it's not usable anymore. It's it's over.
Speaker 4 (01:00:37):
Talking about longitudinal studies that like involve the same people,
like for a very very long generation, yes, period of time.
Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Yes, and from places like UCLA. If you can head
over to PBS News Hour and read a whole story
about this guy, UCLA professor Terrence Tao and how he
is really considering going back to Australia and he's having
to consider that because funding is drying up for all
the things that he's attempting to do, not just for him,
but also for students that he's attempting to teach.
Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
Yeah, gave that out a little bit further, folks, also
past the students for everyone on the planet.
Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
Yes, because it is more of a philosophical thing at
stake here, a public good thing that is at stake here.
And it's not about profits, It's not about any of
the short term stuff. It's about how do we increase
humanity's experience here for the good, Like how do we
make things better for everybody, not just for people that
(01:01:34):
are invested in some weapons manufacturer.
Speaker 4 (01:01:37):
And maybe just to remind everyone too. So then we
mentioned at the top that this is not a big picture.
The research will continue somewhere, you know, these contributions to
the greater good, hopefully in theory, will continue and will
still happen, and humanity will still benefit from them. They
just might not be happening here.
Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
Right, And then I would argue that a lot of
the technology or research post brain drain will make it
back to the United States. But there's an important point
to remember. It will arrive as a stranger. It will
be in the form of an import and Uncle Sam
to explore our capitalism. Think here, Uncle Sam, who once
(01:02:20):
ran the general store, now becomes the customer. And at
this level of trade and interaction and transmission of research
and ideas, the customer is not always right. Instead, the
customer is beholden now to the whims of foreign countries
and foreign corporations.
Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Including their tariffs.
Speaker 3 (01:02:41):
It is a bad look, and I guess this leads
us to a different place. There's so much further that
we could go with this conversation, but one of the
best questions is why is this happening? What prompted these cuts?
For critics of the current a minute stration, this is
(01:03:01):
political theater. As we said, it's a cynical grift and
it just happens to have unfortunately real consequences. Supporters, to
be fair, argue it's a necessary move against government bloat.
They're saying we've been handed out free money with little
in the way of results. That last part is pretty
easy to disprove. Actually, in about five minutes, you can
(01:03:25):
go to your platform of choice and you can verify
that this funding has, indeed, as we've been saying, made
the world and the United States a better place. But
the long tail effects of the great US brain drain,
they're not going to be apparent to the average American
until a lot of time has passed. You know, it's worrisome,
(01:03:49):
there are conspiratorial thoughts of play, but it's happening. It
is definitely happening. I think I mentioned to you guys,
I got a little bit of a headhunt for research
position I passed.
Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
Yeah, you got head hunted.
Speaker 4 (01:04:04):
Well, yeah, I mean it's it's not It's not unheard
of for that to happen from time to time for
any any of us in the company, or folks that
are part of an industry that have been you know,
around for a long time and that have that legacy expertise,
because there are other companies and other countries that want
to capitalize on that and benefit from that and potentially
gain a leg up from their competition by you know,
(01:04:27):
pulling those experts in those individuals away from that competition,
whether that competition be another company or another country.
Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
I'm just a humble Farber.
Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Congratulations been that's awesome. We would I'd love for you
to hang around us if we can still do that,
that'd be cool.
Speaker 3 (01:04:44):
Oh yeah, no, no, we passed. It was sketchy. It
was it was a we're not going to talk about
it out.
Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Are well, let's let's let's continue down the sketchy path
a little bit because something that just happened here in
the US, and it happened with very little fanfare. There
was a lot of others stuff happening in the news.
The Jeffrey Epstein files kind of a little bit got
trickled out. Yeah, kind of the means.
Speaker 4 (01:05:07):
Of priceless black black pages, just like what is that
pantone color. It's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
There's a lot more to cover there, and you will
certainly see us on here talking about that very soon.
But this thing, NDAA twenty six passed and it just occurred,
and it was to the tune of nine hundred and
one billion dollars for defense slash war spending here in
the United States. And when you think about that in
(01:05:35):
compared to the money that is being saved by research
dollars going away and a lot of that funding, you
can really see kind of the future, or at least
the way the United States is posturing itself for the future,
and you can see why. Just as we talked about
the top of this episode, about Operation paper Clip and
all these things where scientists are choosing to get out,
(01:05:56):
there's writing that's already on the wall, right and that's
sitting there and anybody who's paying attention can see it.
So it is really it's important that we know this.
We think about this, and I don't know is there
anything any of us can do as we're just sitting
here and imagining this if we're not a PhD student
or a professor or something.
Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
Yeah, love to hear your answers on this, folks. Again,
the big question. Okay, it's definitely happening. The brain drain
is definitely occurring and probably will continue. But why and
what happens next? What is the role the average person
could do to mitigate this. We'd love to hear, especially
(01:06:35):
from our friends in academia or in research positions. How
has this affected you? What do you see next? And
again I keep going back to this, why why do
these cuts in the first place? That for now is
the stuff they don't want you to know. Let's continue
the conversation, folks. We'd love to hear from you. You
(01:06:58):
can give us a phone call. You can always please
send us an email with anything you want ed. You
can find us on the lines and sip those social medis.
Speaker 4 (01:07:08):
That's right. You can find this on most of the
social media platforms of note at the handle conspiracy Stuff,
and that includes Facebook with our Facebook group Here's where
It's Crazy, XFKA, Twitter and YouTube where we have video
clips galore for your enjoyment. On Instagram and TikTok. However,
we're conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
Hey, we have a phone number. It's a voicemail system.
You can call it with your phone right now if
you want to. It is one eight three three std WYTK.
Turn those letters into numbers. Then you'll be on your way.
You've got three minutes. Give yourself a cool nickname and
let us know if we can use your name and
message on the air. You'll find that on our audio podcast.
(01:07:47):
If you want to send us an email, you can
do that too.
Speaker 4 (01:07:49):
We are the.
Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
Entities the read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be
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pick up your phone if your phone is nearby, folks,
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(01:08:12):
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Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
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Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan Chicago pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Okay, can you really have done? Had Thin Crest Pizza
and Chicago. I bet it's really good. I bet it's
still really excellent.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, sure, Yeah. Who doesn't love a pizza? Bad people?
Bad people don't love a pizza? hEDS and Neighbors. It's
officially twenty twenty six. As you're tuning in with us,
we're so excited that you're here and we are coming
in hot and ready with something we first addressed on
Strange News a while back. Brain drain. You guys, remember
(01:12):
the concept brain drain does.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Sound like a bit of a space alien sucking your
brain goo out of your skull situation.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
It is like it, except with policy.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah, it does. It does conjure these images of ravenous
aliens right cracking open graniums like little Pharaoh Racero's Yeah, fronation,
I love it.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
I'm gonna go with yours. I think you might be
the right one, Ben on the right side of history.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
There as as we'll see. Uh guys. Brain drain is
a very real concern. It dates back to ancient times.
It only becomes more important in the modern day. And
tonight's episode we started asking ourselves ever since we talked
about this on Strange News, what exactly is brain train
and why, pray tell, are so many people concerned about
(02:07):
it right now in the United States?
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Why? Indeed?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Because science good, science good.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Yeah. At the end of the episode, we got to
have them scientists, and they apparently are going elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Here are the facts, all right. Not to be confused
with brain.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
Rot six seven due use that correctly.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Everybody is using it correctly, because it doesn't really mean
anything cool. Brain's raining is describing this phenomena where highly
educated or highly skilled individuals move from one place to
another on mass It could be one geographical place, or
(02:56):
it could be moving from one industry to another, like
if you are if you are one of the top
boffins in the world of what's something people don't do anymore,
in the world of recreational lithium, and recreational lithium is
no longer a legal thing to give to children. Then
(03:19):
you get into some other part of pharmaceutical so well.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
You know, it's interesting, it's not quite the same. But
I think a part a version of this that we
experience here in Georgia, uh is the brain drain that
is the kind of migration of the film industry, you know,
out of Hollywood and out of Los Angeles and into
our fair metropolis of Atlanta. And you hear people in
LA talking about that all the time as something that's
(03:43):
really wrecking their industry. Obviously it's a boon for us,
but there are various reasons that this kind of brain
drink can happen, and in our situation, it seems largely
based around financial incentives, you know, government subsidies and things
like that that places like LA just can't seem to
figure out how to compete.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I love that example.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Though, Oh yeah, fantastic example. And in today's case, we
are talking about, as we said, these highly skilled scientific minds,
highly intelligent people who are very much interested in pushing
the boundaries of the field that they're interested in. Right, So,
for that stuff, you generally need money for research, and
(04:23):
in many cases grants from a government or an institution
that then gets money from governments. Usually, So, why in
the heck are people leaving right now?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Well, historically brain drain has This has been fascinating me
ever since bringing up on strange news. Historically, brain drain
is caused by the opposite of some of the things
we just mentioned, political instability, economic hardship, war, human rights issues,
or just the appeal of better opportunities, better options somewhere else.
(04:55):
It can occur on local, regional, global levels. And this
this stands out to us, folks. If you have spent
a lot of time in some parts of rural America,
you have likely encountered brain drain and its consequences firsthand,
even if you never heard the term. You know, where,
like manufacturing dries up and all the technically skilled employees
(05:20):
who worked at that assembly line or worked at that
factory have to scramble for options, and often without a
lot of lead time. They may find a job in
a related industry, or may even start a new career
that doesn't require moving that's the ideal case.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
We certainly saw a lot of that around the housing crisis,
the collapse you know, of the housing industry, when a
lot of related fields and whole towns that you know,
were built around making things products, fabrics, whatever, carpet, whatever
it might be, building materials, and then when that market
kind of dried up, you started to see here in
(05:58):
Georgia a lot of communities scrambling to figure out what
to do in place of that industry that had more
or less disappeared. And that was when you really started
seeing the kind of this situation where a lot of
these private prisons were coming in and capitalizing on these
sort of ghosts downs that had become that because of
exactly what you're talking with.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Oh yeah, man, More often than not, these individuals who
get the rug pulled out from beneath them have to
look beyond their community for survival. So if you can
afford it, you're probably gonna move your family somewhere else.
This can have real serious consequences for the local economy,
especially when it occurs at scale. Unfortunately, as we know,
(06:39):
as I think a lot of people have recognized a
lot of times of family cannot move due to financial
concerns or medical concerns or familial concerns that can also
be bad for the local economy. It's real, Kobeashi Maru,
because now if you are the local economy, you don't
have people moving away, but you have an influx of
(07:02):
people who are underemployed or straight up unemployed, and that
puts unprecedented strain on support services. It's tough either way
you look at it. We also see brain drain in
support services. Guys. We know a lot of folks throughout
rural America and communities here in the United States where
(07:25):
people are hours away from a doctor now because hospitals
and medical centers close their doors and shout out to
the one doctor in that small town who stay behind
because they wanted to fulfill the hippocratic oath and to
help people. Now, they're overworked, they're probably underpaid. They're probably
(07:46):
considering leaving as well and finding an area with more opportunities,
a more prosperous place.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, and that's tough, right, because you're talking about people
with highly trained individuals with medical expertise that have to
make that hard choice of continuing their career right rather
than actually helping people in a place that really do
need help. You can't make the money there to support
yourself and your family because of you know, whatever aspirations
(08:14):
you've got, because of the standards of the pay for
you know, people in the medical industry here in the
United States, the only place that has that weird private
healthcare thing instituted, you know, which means doctors can make
a craft ton of money if you play the game right,
and only if you play the game, which requires you
to be in a place that has a lot of
(08:36):
patients and has a hospital slash medical infrastructure that.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Is prosperous and like nothing against people trying to play
the game and you know, rise in their career and
make more money. But we also know, to the previous
examble of the doctor sticking around, there are plenty of
people that are highly specialized that it's more they're more
in it to do the work, and they're more in
it to help people and help communities. Like for example,
maybe a lawyer who could very well become a defense attorney,
(09:02):
but rather than do that, decides to work protecting you know,
tenants from being evicted by corrupt landlords. That's not a
higher paying job, but it involves the same degree, and
it is a very conscious choice, and we're seeing a
mix of that in this situation as well.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Absolutely, and don't worry, friends and neighbors, this situation gets
worse because you see braid drain is bad for the
source region, but it can also be damaging for the
destination region. Real Grapes of Wrath with all the Oaks
showing up to the Orange far right and you have
you have three hundred jobs available, but you have three
(09:43):
thousand people who want them right, and they've already moved.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Tell me about the Okies.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
So the Okis is a term we're shouting out the
book Grapes of Wrath, which examines the mass migration of
people from Oklahoma who were called Oake in a pejorative
way by the media of the time.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
They in California way, it's trying.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
To work right. Largely largely agrarian communities swept up by
the climate disaster in the mid Midwest, lost their farms,
lost pretty much everything, and desperately sought to survive by
hitching up their tent stakes and as as Grapes of
(10:27):
Wrath had it hopping on a jealoppe, which is just
a fun word to say. I don't know why. It
sounds like a sandwich, but it's a car, all the
stuff strapped to.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
The roof, and you know, their whole family. And I
mean a big part of that too, was it was
there the corporations of the companies, the larger farms down
in California, up in California were capitalizing on this, and
they were advertising these jobs and this like, you know,
come here, move to California and change your life, bring
your family, all are welcome. And it was a lie
(10:57):
because there was just not there weren't nearly enough jobs
for the amount of people that saw those handbills or
advertisements or whatever it might be and uprooted with the
hope of changing their lives, only to get there and
realize that not only were there not enough jobs, but
the jobs that were available were often very difficult and
low paying, and they were treated like chattel.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Sleeps more or less. Yep. And the destination region, that
is what occurs. And to add to that, these folks
have gambled everything to get over there and they can't
go back, So now it's a problem for the destination region.
There's more on that in a moment. But we've got
(11:38):
to point this out. I don't know about you, guys,
but I was astonished to learn, folks that the phrase
brain drain is pretty recent. The etymology traces back to
just nineteen sixty three, but the concept is so so old.
Brain drain has been around ever since empires started empiring.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, imagine, really, it's talking about getting the best brains right, literally,
that the best humans, the best innovators, the best inventors,
the people, no matter where they live, get that person
to work for you. If you're let's say, an empire, right,
how do we get that person to work for us?
(12:24):
Or how do we incentivize that person to come and
innovate in our land so that we can make use
of those inventions and innovations. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, if you go back through the sort of dendo
chronology of human society, you can trace the tree rings
of brain train through war, disease, famine, all the hits, right,
all the slow jazz. And it's because just as it
was then it is today. Nobody wants to live in
a war zone, no one wants to get the plague,
(12:58):
and most people in jail federal like to have a
good idea where their next meal is coming from. So
this this also ties into I love that you're bringing
up to this point, Matt. It ties into the fact
that a certain level of economic activity has to exist
to support skilled labor. So if you're an ancient tradesman,
(13:18):
you're a metalsmith, you're an armorer, you have to flock
to large towns, villages and cities to survive. And when
you do that, and there's nothing wrong with you doing that,
you're leaving your old stopping grounds without the town blacksmith, yep,
you're taking that knowledge with you. You're also you're you're
not only not there to make stuff, but you're not
(13:39):
there to teach people to make stuff later.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Oh man, exactly. We've talked about the importance of that
that system of training, right master apprentice, and how how
important that was to humanity for so long, and how well, yes,
but how that still exists, especially in academia, right. That's
that's a lot of what's happening here. You've got circular
(14:02):
learning that occurs because you've got people in positions to
teach others the thing that they've mastered, which you know,
you take that master away. As you're saying, Ben put
them in a different town. Now that town is going
to benefit from what that person has to offer.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, exactly, man. I mean history is also littered with
accounts of people then as now at the tippity top
of the socioeconomic pyramid, and those folks, we call them
enlightened despots, would by hook or by crook, gather all
the smart brains from all the planet not planets, but
(14:40):
basically planets at that time, from all the example. Yeah, yeah,
Alexander the Great, you know, rolls through a place, Djengus
rolls through a place, and they both say who here
can read? All right? Kill the first like the second one. Yeah, yeah,
And this is this is a true story. And over time,
(15:03):
funny thing is that became a net positive because some
seventeenth century monarchs in Europe would gather the boffins and
they would actually listen to them. They would listen to
the experts and they would say, you know, oh that's
a that's a good point. Maybe we should try to
clean the water or do science. You know, I'm glad,
(15:28):
I'm glad you're not the one we killed.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Well, there lies the enlightened aspect of the deskmt. I mean,
it is still technically someone ruling with an iron fist,
but they've you know, they're open to two new ideas
and potentially good and progressive ideas.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
And hey, guys, it's me the king.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
We have sort of an open door policy exactly, you
know what I mean, So like, keep your eyes down,
no eye contact. But tell me about this heliocentric concept.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Oh man, It really puts into perspective the concept of
putting in place advisor around you, let's say, as a
king or a president of just people that you like
or want to hang out with. Are people who like
you enough or say they like you enough to just
you know, be copasetic when you're around everything feels good, yeah,
rather than an actual you know, a group of scientific
(16:16):
experts who can say things, well, what did you say
about it? We should clean the water. That is such
a perfect example, especially for our times right.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Now, sycophants versus actual experts who will speak their mind
and who are given the space to speak their mind.
When you start to have people in high levels of
power surrounding themselves with just people telling them what they
want to hear, that's its own kind of brain drain,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yeah, it's it's definitely an emotional drain for the sycophants.
I imagine. I mean, like we think about what.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Happens everything, you know, It's like it's like a bosituation.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah, yeah, let's let's think about it this way. So
a good hang is a yes.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
At that's right.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Good science is a no, but good science is a
well actually.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Yeah, maybe a yes, but also yes. It's about diplomacy.
I mean, you want to play it, you want to
read the room, but it should ultimately result in a
butt this.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Thing, right, My favorite is a yes, but ah.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Oh, here's we'll put you on some game here, right, Yes,
because you avoid the social danger of a no, but
or well actually, and you just sort of make it
sound like the leader's idea. Right, yes, because the water
should be clean, like oh, this guy's great.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Do the dance a little bit, right.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Little parkour now? And then, I mean, this is the
other side of the the other side of the cerebellum
or the butt cheeks. People in communities who get left behind,
the folks who are not highly skilled or don't have
a resource or knowledge base to sell, or the folks
who just get afford to move. It's like your town
(18:03):
got bypassed by the new train line. History rolls on
and you are not on the ride. It's scary.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
You're still out there digging up rud of vegas.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Yes, yes you are, and your problem. That's a very
respectable way of earning it.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
And you're probably using an older shovel. So the better
shovel got invented in the.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Big big city, the auto shovel.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Right, yes, they called it the John Henry with no
trace of irony, and yeah, exactly, And thanks Illumination Global Unlimited,
our first and primary sponsor every war. We talked about
this too in the past. Guys. Every war in human
history brings this mass transfer of knowledge. And sometimes it
(18:53):
happens organically, but in other cases, like in post World
War two, countries purposely headhunt the best and brightest from
the losing side and then leverage that desperate situation to
their advantage. Operation paper clip.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Is that Varoner von Braun?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so many other let's really hit
that home. The United States has NASA, no matter how
you feel about that, right, the folks that in innovated
space travel and space exploration because of World War Two,
because of brain drain, because of Nazis.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Because of Yes, brain draine Nazi scientists, it definitely happened.
History is not original, Okay, that's what we're saying. It's
important to remember that as we record Monday, December twenty second,
twenty twenty five, history is closer than it looks in
the rear view mirror. In fact, in the course of
(19:54):
our investigation for this, we found that tons of experts
have examined facets of this over the past centuries and
sometimes Okay, technology modifies a few plot points, but the
story at its core, if we're writing a screenplay about
brain drain, it is always the same. It's the same thing,
(20:15):
beat for beat, and that means research is solid. But
it also means we can make some disturbing predictions about
the future. Yeah, real pyrrhic victory. Nice when you guys,
kind of an own goal on our part.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Uh, it's really messed up as we're about to get
into here. When you look at this a survey, right,
how do you trust surveys nowadays? When you can, you know,
open up Google and it'll just serve you surveys and
you'll get like zero point two cents if you fill
out the survey or whatever. But anyway, one of the
(20:49):
main things we're talking about today is based on a
survey just of how people are feeling, which is this concept. Right,
we can look to the past and then we can
feel this way, some particular way about what's coming right,
and that feeling ends up being the thing. Just the
way it moves markets. It can also move researchers and academics.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
And science, and we do have some quantitative data as well.
These are not just articles of faith. We're talking about
the future of brain drain. I mean, okay. Something that
is good for the average person is that today's world
is cartoonishly more connected than it was in the past.
It is now easier at this point in history than
(21:32):
ever before to gather information to learn how much your
same job pays in another town and another part of
the world. It's also easier to travel, and it's also
easier for powerful people, the new enlightened despots, to find
you if they want your skills. This ties into immigration. Sure,
(21:54):
you know, let's play along at home. If you've got
your second screen up, if you're on your phone and
you're watching this on a different device, figure out your
dream country. Just name a country, check their immigration policy,
and you were going to see a wish list of
dream employees from that country, right, the country, you know,
(22:16):
Canada says well, we don't want everybody, but are you
a doctor? How much do you know about semiconductors.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
As intense as the immigration rhetoric's been out of our country,
it does seem like they're certainly willing to make exceptions
kind of after the fact, after a lot of this
like Saber readily nasty talk about not wanting immigrants, but
yet we do want these particular type of immigrants that
are going to benefit us, which just I'm sorry, I'm
(22:45):
not trying to be politically or but does seem inherently
hypocritical to have like the two sides of that coin,
and like we want you, but not you, but the
you that we want, but then the other ones that
are not benefiting our bottom line, we you know, get
out of here.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Wait, we're letting the Nazis in. Yeah, but just like
the rocket.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Nazis, Yeah, yeah, yeah, the medical Nazis.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Well all right, guys, we're we can't have everybody on
the list, though, But see.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
That's also a really tough thing because just because someone, uh,
some scientists, some research, or some academic who is living
in a country where there is an oppressive regime like
the Nazis. Operator doesn't make them Nazis. Right, of course,
you've got to we have to keep that in mind.
But there's also that thing where when you're in a
country like that that is going through some oppressive regime,
(23:34):
perhaps your your the thing you're good at, your research,
your your innovations, inventions are being used by that crew.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
You're against your will sometimes though you're not like getting
to choose which exactly they are pulling you in, and
then you are being installed in a position that uses
your skills, that benefits the regime.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
But the thing is, even before any oppressive regime takes action,
let's say invades Poland or you know, invades Venezuela or whatever.
Just given some examples here, maybe you see that coming
and see it happening as one of these academics or innovators,
and you choose before that occurs to get out right, Well,
you've got a post and a pre brained drain that occurs,
(24:20):
and there's even a during like let's say wartime brain
drain that occurs. It just we're just trying to make
a point that it happens in stages on both sides
of some big change.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yes, cyclically predictive, and it happens proactively and reactively. One
historical precedent that I think would be a great case
would be a scientist of Jewish heritage who saw what
was on the horizon and felt what was in the
wind right and escaped before the Nazis committed their genocide.
(24:53):
And for a lot of modern history, from post World
War two to recent years, the United States was often
considered the place to be the last man standing. In
the wake of a horrific global war. Uncle Sam begins
exporting all sorts of things, and one of the most
successful products the country ever exported was the idea of
(25:18):
what we call the American dream.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
You know, you can be a new man, you know.
I mean it's like the United States has historically had
this image of we are innovation first. Innovation for that
is what we care about. Come here, we will support you.
We will you know, patronize your research and the things
that you're passionate about, whether it be the arts, whether
(25:40):
it be science, whether it be any number of these
types of skilled and very specific professions. That was the
reputation that we I believe have had, and I think
with good reason, especially given the state of higher education
here in the United States. People want to come here
for that as well.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yeah, come forth, you huddled masses. We yelled, we're fair here.
We got no kings, we got no ingrained classism. Where
the world's best meritocracy. You work hard, that you pay
your dues, the future is yours double plus good thumbs up.
This turned out not to be entirely true.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
It was at least partly true in ways for a
while exactly right. Parts of all of those were kind
of true.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
It was true in that we all thought it was
a good idea when we wrote it down in the
writer's room. Everybody was the writer's room of the founding fathers.
Everyone said, this is a banger, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
They were like, played really well at the table reading.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah, they were like, this is the new Seinfeld. And
someone said, what Seinfeld spoilers. So fast forward, folks, it's
twenty twenty six, Fellow conspiracy realist. As you hear this
and experts fear, America, once the dream destination for billions,
is turning into one of Earth's worst cases of brain
(27:00):
drained storms on the horizon of fell wind blows and
what does this fell wind mean? Well, it's going to
be tough to figure out if we don't have scientists
to do the research.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Yeah, we're just gonna have to make our best guess.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
The Mozart of math will be in Australia going oh, well,
I can do it over here.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
I'll do the method.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Right, and we're gonna pause for an ad break. We'll
ti back in. Okay, okay, everybody, let's pump our brakes,
cool our jets and thanks to the people who invented
breaks and jets. We don't want to be alarmist or hyperbolic,
(27:42):
but there is a problem. There is a problem because
historically the United States led the modern world and scientific breakthroughs.
And oddly enough this might surprise a lot of our
fellow residents of the US. Oddly enough, for decades and decades,
funding for research and design and all sorts of stuff
(28:04):
was stable. Investment in basic science was a given. It
was largely backed by the big dog political parties and
the fringe parties. But now Uncle Sam has closed the
wallet on tons of research. And no, you know, I
always respect it when you say, when we take pains
to say, hey, we're not here to be politicos or whatever,
(28:28):
but we do have to acknowledge it's because of the
recent presidential administration. This changed the game in May of
twenty twenty five, because of something called the Big Beautiful
Bill or the Fiscal twenty twenty six budget proposal. And
we've got some stats we want to kick which are
(28:49):
pretty sobering for sure.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
I mean, also just to add that there was a time,
it would seem where the time you were describing then,
where science wasn't really a partisan thing. You know, both sides,
even the and his parties were like science good, like
what Matt was saying. So here are some of these
stats and a lot of this Big Beautiful Bill stuff,
which is a mouthful. It does seem that even though
they claimed it wasn't the direction, they were going to
(29:11):
be things that support that whole Project twenty twenty five initiative,
which is this dismantling of a lot of these government
agencies and installing let's just say secafants, yes, yes, people
in order to push political agendas in place of science.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Yeah. And for the record, that Project twenty twenty five
stuff is heavily plagiarized from the Foundations of geopolitics by
Alexander Dugan. So the what did we call him, Russia's
new respute.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
Right, Yeah, for sure, a bit of a shadowy figure.
So here's some of the stats we're talking about. The
White House released these details surrounding fiscal year twenty twenty
six in a budget proposal that called for reducing the
Nowtional Science Foundation's budget by fifty seven percent, the National
Institute of Health's budget by roughly forty percent, and NASA's
(30:07):
the aforementioned NASA's science budget by forty seven percent. These
are some slicy dicey cuts here. The Department of Energies
Office of Science faces a fourteen percent cut, while the
National Institute of Standards and Technology would see a twenty
eight percent reduction in their budget. We also have cuts
(30:28):
to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the weather One NOAH,
and also the Environmental Protection Agency. These are government agencies,
but they have historically had some autonomy, and they're the
ones that are supposed to be doing the science and
then recommending to the government the things that we need
to do to maybe not like blow ourselves up or completely,
(30:48):
you know, deplete the resources that our planet has to off.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
And these are not propagadendistic numbers. These are actually coming
to us from the American Physical Society and Olivia Newton
John fan Club. They're they're super into physics and that
kind of science, but they probably also rock some Olivia
you know, and doesn't have a good time.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Oh no, no, Olivia is the best. Xana do is
what I think of also grease. But let's also just
not act like we are completely wearing rose colored glasses
and thinking that these organizations have not in the past
also played politics, no question about. Is not like a
cut and dried situation that we're talking here. I just
think that we're seeing a much more slippery slide into
(31:33):
a much more divisive use of these types of organizations.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Oh you made it sound so fun man. I miss
slip and slides.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
They're dangerous.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Though they are dangerous. They are dangerous, but it's way
better than the non consensual slip and slides I've had
the past, you know what I mean. It's it's funny
because I broke my toe earlier this year, but we
record from the waist up.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Right, you know, it would be good to help out
with that. Guys, I just thought about this, and I
thought about it this whole episode.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
DARPA.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
We haven't talked about DARPA yet, cause there's that's one
one area of science funding that seems to be going gangbusters.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Interesting, Yeah, because DARPA has a different wallet source it does.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
It's the Pentagon thing in the what is it the
Defense spending bill that just went through pretty recently here
in the US, and I think they're allocated around four
point three four point four billion dollars just for DARPA.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
All right, Yeah, let's all be cool because we want
the grand Yeah. Please check out some of our earlier
episodes on DARPA. We've called them in the past the
mad scientist branch of the Pentagon, which is not inaccurate,
but maybe a little bit clickbaiting. It's a little bit
(32:59):
of a fun way to say to say what they do,
which is providing funding and grants. They like the enlightened
despots of old. They identify skill sets and research that
they dig and in most cases they will propose a
problem or question and you pitch them shark tank style
(33:22):
an answer, and they might throw a little a little
bit of scratch your way to explore the idea further.
But then in other cases, on the other side of
the spectrum, if you already have an idea and they
think it's a threat to national security mine, yeah, secrecy Act, but.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Arly talk about it, Yes you cannot. But generally, you
know north of Grumming or your Boeing's or company works.
They raise their hand, they say, we'll take that one actually,
and then now their their private company has a lot
to do for the next couple of years.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
You will heed the law, they say, right back. He
jokes were to get trouble.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
And all this comes, you know, on the heels of
a ton of other cuts and slices, a lot of
which took place under Elon Musk's relatively short lived DOGE initiative.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
Please could dodge the Dude Governmental efficiency, it was called.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
That's exactly right. And of course there were a lot
of questions surrounding how.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Politically motivated those cuts were, whether they.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
Were in fact going after waste and fraud, even some
of the effectiveness of the cuts that were made, or
what cuts actually were made, because the lists of them
kept being revised as they were posted, and there was
this whole sense of we're going to be completely transparent
about this, but a lot of that information seemed very
tricksy in terms of the math. They were talking about
(34:49):
having cut grants that I think expired like years and
years ago, and things that had already been built they
were saying they saved money on. So there was just
a whole lot of real tricky cocktail napkin math going
on with that whole situation.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Call it it now, doje episode in the future.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
I think that's right.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Yeah, yet's do it. And we know that these these
cuts were describing were controversial and resulted in thousands and
thousands of federal employees, including a lot of scientists, getting
fired but then rehired after a court order. And well
there are some whoops too.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
There was some we didn't mean to get rid of
USA now people, Oh my gosh. But let's let's put
it back.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
We fired the tires on our road trip. Whoops. That's
what happened, was big whoopsie. And we know some people
who had to go through that emotional roller coaster, which.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
Absolute very research universities, for example, even just like in
the maintenance or it departments. You know, like I have
a friend. We both have a friend of the show,
Matt Riddle, who works maintaining MRI machines for a very
prestigious research university involving and these machines are used for research,
And when those grants were potentially pulled, there was a
(36:04):
lot of questions around, am I gonna even have a job?
Am I gonna have MRI machines to maintain? Not to
mention the a lot of the hot button things that
were sort of being discussed were like, we don't want
research on transgender mice or something like that. There were
a lot of these very hyperbolic, sort of manipulating ways
(36:26):
of describing research that when you actually dug down into
the details of the real realities of them, were not
quite accurate.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Yeah, political theater, that's one way to put it. In
our Doge episode, which I'm instantly super excited about too,
we've got several conspiracies involved regarding the motivation of what
was targeted to be cut. We also know we've got
close friends at the CDC, which I hate that that
(36:54):
sounds sketchy now, but here in the Atlanta area and
our fair metropolis, we have the Center for Disease Control
and those folks are rightly asking, why are you cutting
us from the game. You know, these budget cuts. This
is the point. These budget cuts are not hitting playing
(37:16):
all abstract science. Nobody is fruitlessly trying to reinvent the
number nine. Instead, these cuts are directly impacting programs that
result in better training in scientific breakthroughs, innovations, jobs. We
saw a twenty twenty three survey by Research America that
(37:38):
proves the public supports this. More than three and four Americans,
more than seventy five percent of three hundred plus million
people who ordinarily do not get along, they agree that
investing in research creates jobs in the United States. And
then there was a related question on that survey than
(38:00):
eight and ten, so more than eighty percent of Americans say, yeah,
the federal government should help out with research. It's not controversialist.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
No, it shouldn't be for sure. And just to clarify
the thing I was mentioning that kind of here's the headline.
You know, NIH money is being used to fund research
on transgender mice, on you know, gender affirming care for mice.
But that was just a tiny fraction one point four
million of an eight million dollar funding grant, and the
rest of it was actually used for Alzheimer's breakthroughs PTSD
(38:35):
and clinical depression, like the kinds of stuff that could
benefit not just members of the trans community, but anybody
you know and people you know, your grandma, you know,
your mother who's dealing with a slide into dementia, things
like that. So there's this a lot of this demonization
that's going on and pulling out just the thing that's
easy to kind of weaponize and throw around and make
(38:57):
people think that there's all this like super whatever liberal
research going on and it's just not the case.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, it's easy to make a breathless, misleading claim when
you have three minutes, right, and the people who are
on the receiving end of that propaganda typically are not
going to take additional time to delve into this. This
is why, like, all right, here's the thing, folks. Good
(39:24):
research is good for everyone. Solid research, even if you're saying, hey,
Alzheimer's doesn't run in my family, that solid research will
make the world a better place. It is important. It's
kind of like it's similar to the way the Hope
Scholarship here in this in our fair home of Georgia
(39:48):
helped improve society by allowing more kids to go to college.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
Would you also say that that was a way of
preventing brain drain here in Georgia by giving you know, locals,
people that grew up born and raised here an opportunity
to stay in state.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Yeah, that's a great point. It also it also shows
measurable reductions in certain types of crime, because now if
you're able to go to college or pursuing a career,
that's one less radio stolen off of pods.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
I know, yeah, I remember when people to take their
CD players face the car.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Yeah I remember that. Yeah, Ed and economists are making
frightening predictions right now. I was looking at these studies
that indicate a twenty five percent cut in research funding
will reduce the United States GDP gross domestic product by
three point eight percent over the next several decades. Sounds
(40:50):
like a small number, but it's four percent of a
very big pie. A fifty percent cut just to spend
this out further will reduce GDP by seven point six
percent across the same timeline. That would be a drop
bigger than anything since the Great Depression, which again is
a terrible name.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
It wasn't yeah, because it was great.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
I'm thinking about what all of that like, this is
just this is knowledge that we've researched, y'all that you
can go out and find. Right now, I'm imagining what
this is doing to the morale of highly intelligent people,
people that are far smarter than I am. But people
who are out there, let's say, going for a PhD,
(41:39):
Like they want to become a PhD student, and they're
looking I feel like people and maybe I'm wrong, but
I feel as though people who are at that level
make five year plans, ten year plans, concepts of where
they will be in the future, and they plan out
there are steps I need to take in order to
get to end goal X, right, and then why we'll
(42:02):
be on the other side of that one. When you
when it feels like you just can't see yourself on
any kind of pathway forward, why in the heck would
you try to make it work in a place that
is putting up those roadblocks for you.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
It's demoralizing. Yeah. Shout out to the postgrads, Shout out
to the grad student. Shout out to the best and
brightest minds who are pursuing internships or in high school
and saying I want to be a physicist. But should
I institutions have reacted swiftly to these cuts. Hiring freezes
(42:41):
went into effect, grant request got stonewalled, research got mothballed,
some really good tasted research too, and scientists across the
country had to face some serious, like Dark Knight of
the Sole questions about the future. This all poses two
big problems. First, the United States has this obsession with itself.
(43:03):
It kind of suffers from main character syndrome like people
who are not good at asking other people questions. The
United States is a very self centered enterprise. But the
research is global. Research will continue with or without Uncle Sam.
The train rolls on, and there are other countries that
(43:26):
are eager to capitalize on this misstep. And that's the
first problem. Second problem, people doing that research, just like
in the days of ancient empires, they are going to
look for somewhere else to go. They put too much
time in. They're not gonna shrug their shoulders and say, oh,
my career is over. I guess the world will never
learn about zero point energy. They want to get this
(43:49):
stuff across the finish line. And that's why one of
the things that informed our Strange News conversation later informed.
This episode was when the journal Nature asked something like
one thousand, six hundred and eight American scientists if they
were considering leaving the country due to these harsh budget cuts.
(44:11):
Three fourths of those responders said, yeah, I'm thinking about
skip and town, dude, And they were across scientific disciplines. Again,
this is like three fourths bla blah. So it's like
round one thousand, two hundred of the scientists. So again,
(44:32):
seventy The breathless headline, right, the three second headline is
seventy five percent of scientists are going to leave the
United States. That's not quite the case, but it's still very,
very bad for us because there are a lot of
other countries that can't wait to have some science refugees.
How is that a term? How did we get to
(44:54):
this point where science refugee is a term? I want
to be a science refugee.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
What kind of science you got work in? Bowling? Hey, hey,
tell us more information. We'll figure out if it's worth
our time.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Yeah. I just need a passport. I need a lifetime
Dave and Buster's card. Do you guys have Dave and Busters?
Because if not, I'm going to talk to the next
country over.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Yes, sorry, we don't do that here. We're strictly and
in this.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Place, right, okay, all right, it's a dilemma. Yeah, and
this introduces us to the concept of a new project
paper clip, and we've returned. So not for nothing did
we mention paper clip. There are several new things that
(45:47):
are kind of like a less agro version of paper
clip that are happening right now. We talked about this earlier.
There are several outfits in France that in March and
April of twenty twelve five said, hey, we have created
something called a Safe Place for Science program. We create
(46:09):
a safe and stimulating environment for scientists wishing to pursue
their research in complete freedom.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
Uh oh, real opportunity for some other parts of the world.
What's happening here?
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Yeah, yeah, If I'm a scientist, I'm saying, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
So but here's the thing, Yeah, these are this is
an incredible opportunity for you know, someone to become a
science refugee from another country, let's say the United States,
or or a lot of other places, even places like Venezuela, Cuba.
I mean, just think about places that are that you
could have a scientific mind in that in that country
(46:45):
that is going to have a really hard time in
that country, here's an opportunity. The only thing is, it's
almost like it's like any time you're giving out grants, right,
as a research institute, you can only give out so many.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Right, there's a limited number of seats on the train.
And the issue then becomes one of it's a real
sticky wicket. It's a real bag of badgers, folks. Because
if you were the person approving the grants, then you
have a couple of things. First, are you saving someone's life?
Is their life in danger because of their research still
(47:23):
happens today? Secondly, is there and actually probably flip those
The next one is how does our nation state prioritize
this research?
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Right?
Speaker 3 (47:36):
If we know somebody is going to die because they're
doing research on hormone therapy and their country hates it,
do we save them or do we prioritize someone who's
doing some really cool stuff with semiconductors over in Massachusetts?
(47:56):
You know what I mean? What choice we make? And
how do we phrase it as the greater good? In
just like one month after putting out the Safe Place
for Space applications, this university in France received some ballpark
three hundred applications from scientists. The vast majority We're American,
(48:18):
and they were seeking refugee status America's best and brightest.
We're officially in a world where science refugee has become
a thing.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
I can't believe American science refugees.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
You sounds like an album name.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
You know, you may be finding us for the first
time right now, But if you go back in the
old archives and all the places you can find stuff
they don't want you to know, you'll find many an
episode about similar topics. One of those is the time
we covered Iranian scientists specializing in fissile materials. If you
get our meaning there, who kept dying And when you
(48:59):
imagine when we're talking about the stakes that are potentially
at play here for specific types of science work that's
being done, you could take your mind back to that,
because that's a real thing. You can look that up
if you want and go listen to our episode if
you want. There are there can be real stakes for
an individual attempting to escape a country.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
Absolutely. Yeah, that's another part about brain draining, because sometimes
depending on the point in history or the regime you're
talking about, sometimes you can't leave. They won't let you go, right,
or they will let you go like aq con Folks
who was sent from check out the episode. You know,
(49:43):
write to us if you want, if you want full
sources examination of that. But yeah, a lot of scientists
are being treated as casualties in a greater war. Other
countries have similar programs for American science refugees, or they
play and to implement them. A guy named Epo Bruns
(50:04):
perfect name, sir, is the Minister of Education, Culture and
Science for the Netherlands, and he's been making a pretty
successful pitch to start the Netherlands version of the refugee
program right, and the Netherlands is pretty great if you've
ever been there. Can you imagine your sweating grants? One day,
(50:26):
you've got a hiring freeze, your advisor tells you your
work is amazing, but the government's not going to help you.
And then all of a sudden, some folks in Amsterdam
are like, hey, you want to hang out.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
We think you're the best.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Actually, I think you're cool. Will also give you money.
Have you ever considered living on a canal? Yes?
Speaker 4 (50:48):
And we haven't really mentioned the h one B visa situation.
Of it all. I just thought maybe we could briefly
touch on that, because we were talking a lot about
science and health care and that kind of research that
you know, really could help people in terms of quality
of life and things like that. But we of course
also have these giant tech corporations like Apple and Google
(51:10):
that rely a lot on skilled workers from abroad to
staff these positions. And with various changes in H one
B visas, which are of course worker visas that the
Trump administration has been putting forth, we're seeing folks from
these companies, leadership from these companies telling their workers that
(51:31):
they shouldn't leave the US. Well, things are in such
a sketchy sort of you know, tenuous position. We're talking
about them encouraging people who are in this country on
H one B visas not to go home and visit
by families lest they be rejected upon re entry, which.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
Is a very real concern, you know, so much so
that there were folks who were traveling to India recently
earlier this year who got the news about the visa
controversy and then demanded that their play not leave with
them on it and said, look, I'm going to stay
in the United States. This is a frightening thing. H
(52:07):
one B visas essentially are for specialty, special career roles
that require a bachelor's degree or above, and there's an
annual cap of sixty five thousand. But then you can,
I mean, you can play with it a little bit
and get an additional twenty thousand. We're talking about a
(52:28):
lot of people who are doing good work, and I'll
say it, often underpaid, and now, through no fault of
their own, their lives are in danger. You know, this
is something that other countries. I can't say that it's
actually altruistic, folks, but this is something that other countries
(52:48):
have clocked and they're moving quickly to leverage it. They
are Chinese universities right now that are I don't want
to say targeting, but aggressively recruiting Chinese undergrads in other
countries and saying, hey, all right, you don't want to
do the game, you don't want to have to do
(53:08):
the whole dog and pony show and publish or parish
and all that crap. Come back home or just come
to China and we will enroll you directly in some
of our most prestigious PhD programs. Also, what is your
take on robotics. And I loved your paper about semiconductors.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
Oh god, Chaus, let's let's talk about this thing. Because
even that all of that you're describing there, Ben, and
we talked about it before. The change in what is
it if you cut funding now? The change in like
the result of the future. While so a lot of
these large scale research studies and research experiments and projects
(53:54):
that go into effect, right, you get funding not just
for one semester or one year. You get you'll get
a large scale funding for you know, several years, for
a decade if depending on the types of projects, especially
if you're looking at things like climate that take a
long time to study, right or or large scale term yes, yes, okay.
(54:16):
Gen Xer is a great example. Funding that type of
research is such a future focused action, right, because you're
not you're not taking steps now to make profits, short
term profits even long term profits. Necessarily, you're taking steps
to to innovate and invent and change things. I guess
(54:38):
as as a future investment, right, but it is. It's
in order to in order to focus on the future
and imagine where you could go. That's why you put
funding in in the now. Yeah, and it just feels
to me like it feels to me like there there
are some people who are really looking at the short
(54:59):
term as the the only thing that's necessary to focus on.
Speaker 3 (55:03):
Yeah, the issue is the issue is well known throughout history.
It reminds me of the old quotation that I think
we should all hear paraphrase. It is that civilization exists
when one generation plants a tree and they know that
(55:24):
they'll never sit under the shade, right, It's for the
next generation, you know. And that is something that is
increasingly forgotten right or glided over in our current instant gratification,
instant answer economy of attention. I mean also, in all
(55:45):
of these cases we have described so far, the reason
we're calling it like a paper clip light is because
the movement the great brain drain is technically consensual thing.
Most of these scientists are not being kidnapped by some
greater good nuclear non proliferation thing. In most cases, the
United States is not quote unquote kicking them out just yet.
(56:08):
These folks are choosing to move sort of, but they
feel their hands are tied because moving to a different country.
I know a lot of us watching or listening tonight,
I know, a lot of us have experienced this, so
you can confirm moving to a different country is pretty difficult,
even if you already speak the language. Right. Shout out
(56:29):
to a lot of people who said they were going
to move to Canada from the United States because of
some political stuff and then found out how difficult it
is to legally immigrate to Canada.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
Yeah, I know. We just want to do the whole
winter festival thing. Remember we talked about that. There's a
big snowman guy up there and Quebec. We just want that.
Speaker 4 (56:47):
I want to go to I'm gonna go to Montreal
for the first time real soon. I hope they let
me back in. I wanted to just dovetailor, like maybe
put a little bow on the thing I was saying
about H one B visas and a comment that I
made up top about how there's this sense of we
don't want these immigrants, but we do want these There
is some complexity in the President's perspective on H one
b's and on skilled workers in situations where it affects
(57:12):
commerce directly, you know, like chip manufacturers, for example. He
says that there's an article from Politico. I'm just going
to quote from He pointed to the multi billion dollar
expansion of chip production in Arizona, saying the company Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing Company will bring in thousands of workers that
he will welcome those people. I love my conservative friends,
I love MAGA, but those people are going to teach
(57:34):
our people how to make computer chips, and in a
short period of time, our people are going to be
doing great. So I'm a little confused as to what
the real hard line is here, because it seems like
he was saying these things in a way where he
kind of had to hedge it a little because he
knows it's not a popular thing. But it does seem
(57:55):
like he's thinking about the bottom line of it all,
even though the bigger discussion is about this brain drain
and about these people turn and tail and going out
somewhere where they're more welcome or they have more opportunity.
Yet there does seem to be some discussion within the
Trump administration. But how can we attract skilled workers from
other countries?
Speaker 3 (58:13):
Yeah, it's the question that all these countries have been
asking historically, even before modern nation states were a thing,
and earlier we said moving to a different country is
easier now than it has ever been at any point
in history. That is true, but it's still pretty difficult.
I'm looking at Australia, by the way, so any advice
(58:35):
is welcome. Folks, hit us up. You are even in
the best case of international movement, you are losing a community.
If you have kids, you're definitely throwing a plot twist
to your kid's childhood. You could also compromise your spouse
or your partner's career in the process. The good thing
is the scientific community is international. Right. If you are
(59:00):
one of twelve or twenty people who understand a thing,
guess what you know? The other eleven you know the
other nineteen people. They're the only ones who like get
you man. And so the scientific community has a lot
of brain drain folks aiming toward countries and institutions where
(59:21):
they already have friends, they already have colleagues, they already
have a previous worker publishing history. So this is not
the end of the world, but it is alarming. I
want to go back to a point we raised or
briefly touched on here. There are some bulwarks for the
great US brain drain. The United States in particular has
(59:41):
some of the best higher education on the planet. So
the presence of outfits like Harvard Mit at all, they
can stem the bleed a little bit. And we are
still you know, I get it, we're talking about a
relatively small slice of the country's population. But when these
folks move, just like in empires of old folks, they're
(01:00:04):
not just taking themselves and their families. They're taking the
knowledge that leads to new stuff like medicine, breakthroughs in astrophysics,
the next leg of the space race. I mean, heck,
even we might be losing new snack technology and I
take that personally flavor science man.
Speaker 4 (01:00:23):
Yeah, we love it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Well, we were also losing research studies that have been
going on for years, and you know, you take the
individuals out of there and that research is gone and
they're potentially taking it with them to some other place,
or it's just it's not usable anymore. It's it's over.
Speaker 4 (01:00:37):
Talking about longitudinal studies that like involve the same people,
like for a very very long generation, yes, period of time.
Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Yes, and from places like UCLA. If you can head
over to PBS News Hour and read a whole story
about this guy, UCLA professor Terrence Tao and how he
is really considering going back to Australia and he's having
to consider that because funding is drying up for all
the things that he's attempting to do, not just for him,
but also for students that he's attempting to teach.
Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
Yeah, gave that out a little bit further, folks, also
past the students for everyone on the planet.
Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
Yes, because it is more of a philosophical thing at
stake here, a public good thing that is at stake here.
And it's not about profits, It's not about any of
the short term stuff. It's about how do we increase
humanity's experience here for the good, Like how do we
make things better for everybody, not just for people that
(01:01:34):
are invested in some weapons manufacturer.
Speaker 4 (01:01:37):
And maybe just to remind everyone too. So then we
mentioned at the top that this is not a big picture.
The research will continue somewhere, you know, these contributions to
the greater good, hopefully in theory, will continue and will
still happen, and humanity will still benefit from them. They
just might not be happening here.
Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
Right, And then I would argue that a lot of
the technology or research post brain drain will make it
back to the United States. But there's an important point
to remember. It will arrive as a stranger. It will
be in the form of an import and Uncle Sam
to explore our capitalism. Think here, Uncle Sam, who once
(01:02:20):
ran the general store, now becomes the customer. And at
this level of trade and interaction and transmission of research
and ideas, the customer is not always right. Instead, the
customer is beholden now to the whims of foreign countries
and foreign corporations.
Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Including their tariffs.
Speaker 3 (01:02:41):
It is a bad look, and I guess this leads
us to a different place. There's so much further that
we could go with this conversation, but one of the
best questions is why is this happening? What prompted these cuts?
For critics of the current a minute stration, this is
(01:03:01):
political theater. As we said, it's a cynical grift and
it just happens to have unfortunately real consequences. Supporters, to
be fair, argue it's a necessary move against government bloat.
They're saying we've been handed out free money with little
in the way of results. That last part is pretty
easy to disprove. Actually, in about five minutes, you can
(01:03:25):
go to your platform of choice and you can verify
that this funding has, indeed, as we've been saying, made
the world and the United States a better place. But
the long tail effects of the great US brain drain,
they're not going to be apparent to the average American
until a lot of time has passed. You know, it's worrisome,
(01:03:49):
there are conspiratorial thoughts of play, but it's happening. It
is definitely happening. I think I mentioned to you guys,
I got a little bit of a headhunt for research
position I passed.
Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
Yeah, you got head hunted.
Speaker 4 (01:04:04):
Well, yeah, I mean it's it's not It's not unheard
of for that to happen from time to time for
any any of us in the company, or folks that
are part of an industry that have been you know,
around for a long time and that have that legacy expertise,
because there are other companies and other countries that want
to capitalize on that and benefit from that and potentially
gain a leg up from their competition by you know,
(01:04:27):
pulling those experts in those individuals away from that competition,
whether that competition be another company or another country.
Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
I'm just a humble Farber.
Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Congratulations been that's awesome. We would I'd love for you
to hang around us if we can still do that,
that'd be cool.
Speaker 3 (01:04:44):
Oh yeah, no, no, we passed. It was sketchy. It
was it was a we're not going to talk about
it out.
Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Are well, let's let's let's continue down the sketchy path
a little bit because something that just happened here in
the US, and it happened with very little fanfare. There
was a lot of others stuff happening in the news.
The Jeffrey Epstein files kind of a little bit got
trickled out. Yeah, kind of the means.
Speaker 4 (01:05:07):
Of priceless black black pages, just like what is that
pantone color. It's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
There's a lot more to cover there, and you will
certainly see us on here talking about that very soon.
But this thing, NDAA twenty six passed and it just occurred,
and it was to the tune of nine hundred and
one billion dollars for defense slash war spending here in
the United States. And when you think about that in
(01:05:35):
compared to the money that is being saved by research
dollars going away and a lot of that funding, you
can really see kind of the future, or at least
the way the United States is posturing itself for the future,
and you can see why. Just as we talked about
the top of this episode, about Operation paper Clip and
all these things where scientists are choosing to get out,
(01:05:56):
there's writing that's already on the wall, right and that's
sitting there and anybody who's paying attention can see it.
So it is really it's important that we know this.
We think about this, and I don't know is there
anything any of us can do as we're just sitting
here and imagining this if we're not a PhD student
or a professor or something.
Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
Yeah, love to hear your answers on this, folks. Again,
the big question. Okay, it's definitely happening. The brain drain
is definitely occurring and probably will continue. But why and
what happens next? What is the role the average person
could do to mitigate this. We'd love to hear, especially
(01:06:35):
from our friends in academia or in research positions. How
has this affected you? What do you see next? And
again I keep going back to this, why why do
these cuts in the first place? That for now is
the stuff they don't want you to know. Let's continue
the conversation, folks. We'd love to hear from you. You
(01:06:58):
can give us a phone call. You can always please
send us an email with anything you want ed. You
can find us on the lines and sip those social medis.
Speaker 4 (01:07:08):
That's right. You can find this on most of the
social media platforms of note at the handle conspiracy Stuff,
and that includes Facebook with our Facebook group Here's where
It's Crazy, XFKA, Twitter and YouTube where we have video
clips galore for your enjoyment. On Instagram and TikTok. However,
we're conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
Hey, we have a phone number. It's a voicemail system.
You can call it with your phone right now if
you want to. It is one eight three three std WYTK.
Turn those letters into numbers. Then you'll be on your way.
You've got three minutes. Give yourself a cool nickname and
let us know if we can use your name and
message on the air. You'll find that on our audio podcast.
(01:07:47):
If you want to send us an email, you can
do that too.
Speaker 4 (01:07:49):
We are the.
Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
Entities the read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be
well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void rights back. Now
pick up your phone if your phone is nearby, folks,
and play a little game with US conspiracy at iHeartRadio
dot com. Write to us now right now. No you specifically,
(01:08:12):
you do it. I don't care what they're saying. Do it.
Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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