All Episodes

October 20, 2025 128 mins

Massive “No Kings” protests swept across the country this weekend — peaceful, organized, and impossible to ignore. Chuck Todd breaks down what the demonstrations say about growing frustration with Trump’s leadership as his administration faces a government shutdown, soaring insurance costs, and a controversial new military campaign in the Caribbean. As Trump retweets crude AI videos and governs for only half the country, Congress remains silent on legally dubious strikes against Venezuela, an operation critics say has more to do with ousting Maduro than fighting drugs. Todd examines how America’s history of self-interest in Latin America and declining democratic norms at home have converged to create a moment of moral and political reckoning — and why ignoring it might come at a cost.

Then, Ars Technica space journalist Eric Berger joins Chuck Todd to unpack the new global race to the moon — and why it’s about power as much as science. With China poised to beat the U.S. back to the lunar surface, NASA’s Artemis program faces both technological and geopolitical pressure. Berger and Todd explore how space has become the next great stage for competition, where the first shots of a future war could be fired — not on Earth, but in orbit. From SpaceX’s dominance and Elon Musk’s influence, to Blue Origin’s lagging efforts and Boeing’s uncertain role, the conversation digs into who will actually shape humanity’s future beyond Earth.

They also discuss the growing role of private companies in both space exploration and weather forecasting, how AI is reshaping meteorology, and whether we’ll ever see space-based energy or asteroid mining become viable. It’s a sweeping look at how politics, technology, and ambition are colliding — in a sky that’s getting more crowded by the day.

Finally, Chuck Todd hops in the ToddCast Time Machine to recap the history of the Teapot Dome scandal and how it closely mirrors the corruption of the Trump administration, answers listeners’ questions in the “Ask Chuck” segment, and recaps the weekend in college football.

Got injured in an accident? You could be one click away from a claim worth millions. Just visit https://www.forthepeople.com/TODDCAST to start your claim now with Morgan & Morgan without leaving your couch. Remember, it's free unless you win!

Timeline:

(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)

00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction

01:30 No Kings protests held around the country

02:15 Protests were timed deliberately in advance of elections

04:30 Huge turnout numbers at the protests

08:30 No incidents at protests that led to confrontations with police

09:45 Trump retweets AI video of himself flying plane and dropping poop

10:45 Trump has the mentality of a 13 year old boy

12:00 Trump has no lifelong friends

13:15 Trump isn’t traveling the country to sell his agenda, unlike first term

14:15 Remarkable that so many people are willing to protest on a Saturday

16:00 Republicans would be wise not to dismiss the protests

16:30 Controversy grows around Trump’s military strikes in Caribbean

17:45 Congress is failing to provide any oversight of the executive

19:00 Insurance notices indicating massive premium spikes coming soon

20:00 Shocking there’s less outrage Trump governs for only half the country

20:45 Government shutdown has turned into a giant mess

22:15 Trump’s administration hints they aren’t sure boat strikes are legal

23:45 Venezuela story would get more attention if it was anywhere else

24:30 Administration refuses to call the strikes “war”

25:15 Repatriating captives helps administration avoid legal questions

26:45 Legality of strikes will be eventually be determined in US courts

28:00 Claiming cartels are “terrorists” doesn’t meet legal definition

28:45 Venezuela isn’t part of the fentanyl drug trade

29:30 Trump & Rubio’s obsession is actually about getting rid of Nicolas Maduro

31:00 The U.S. military has never gone after narcoterrorists before

32:00 Congress has not authorized use of military force in Caribbean

33:30 Members of congress not convinced by rationale for strikes

35:00 Trump is greenlighting killings without making case for it

37:30 If overdose deaths are the rationale, the problem is with Mexico

39:00 Trump hasn’t ruled out striking t

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, They're happy Monday, and welcome to another episode of
the Chuck Podcast. I got a few emails from some
of you who wondered how bad my mood was on
Saturday morning, because I have let you guys know that
my mood. The one thing University of Miami wins and
losses do more than any other of my sports teams,

(00:23):
more than the Packers, more than the Nats, is it
affects my mood. Here's what I can't admit. I'll have
a little bit more to say at the end of
the podcast. I have promised I will keep my sports
obsessions towards the end so that way the true diehards
to the Toodcast. We'll get there. We'll get that fix.

(00:43):
I have a lot to say about the game. I
hate the idea that I may have predicted this exact
outcome and how it went. I will get into it.
I will get into a little bit more. In college football,
we got another coach firing already, all fascinating to watch.
At some point, who's going to be left to hire

(01:05):
all these the amount of money when you have Penn
State in Florida and Arkansas, huge programs that are going
to throw all sorts of dollars at their coaching search.
Don't forget UCLA that has a lot of money. Who
else follows right down that road? Virginia Tech thinks it's
a major program. What about Clemson? It's clear that Dabo

(01:27):
was actually worried about his job. Anyway, I said, I
was going to wait until the end and I will look.
I think there was the big event of the weekend
obviously was an O Kings protest. A frankly, a pretty
I think it was a pretty impressive showing. I think

(01:48):
what the question with these protests is is what we
what do we learn from them? Do they translate into something? Look,
the timing of this protest is not random, Okay, The
timing of this protest comes basically in the middle of
early voting here in Virginia. You've got the New Jersey elections.
You have a bunch of off your elections, right, this

(02:09):
is these are these are as. My friend John Ellis
said it's a bunch of local elections that will have
national significance. And he's not wrong, and they will have
national significance. What happens in Virginia. How strong is the
anti Trump vote? Well, we now have an easy measurement
to find out how strong, how powerful are anti Trump
feelings in Virginia. Are they powerful enough for somebody who's

(02:33):
not qualified. I think I think has pretty much made it,
you know, from what has rhetorically said. It's certainly I
think there are questions whether he's qualified to be attorney
general and Jay Jones, but if he wins, it's really
a bigger statement on Trump, arguably really than anybody else.
Not Mer's, not Jones, not anything, you know, because if
this election is held sort of in isolations, Joan doesn't win,

(02:56):
Mirs wins this thing, and he still probably wins the
you know, I'd still probably rather be him. But we
know in these statewide elections, gubernatorial the gubernatorial vote has
a huge impact, and anything north of five points or
more will bring at least one of the down ballots
with her, Abigail Spamberger. The question is does it bring two.

(03:20):
I told you that Jason Miaris has already basically thrown
the Republican nominee for governor under the bus. Since they
have divergent strategies on Abigail Spamberger's rhetoric on j Jones,
Miaris has decided to embrace her rhetoric, even as Winston
mertle Series has been trying to knock it down. But
the point is is that when you're doing a political

(03:40):
protest like this, the true way to measure its impact
and whether it's having an impact beyond just being an
event for the day, is whether it translates into political activity. Well,
the next measurement of political activity is going to be
the off off year elections that take place in three weeks.

(04:01):
The timing of this in some ways the smarter campaigns
in New Jersey, in Virginia, in mayor's races in California
with the proposition you have Pennsylvania with the Supreme Court races.
So all of those cases there was likely organizing. We
know that there was organizing going on in those places
where there was a direct tide of the election. So

(04:22):
the point is there's a couple of ways to measure this,
and that to me is an important way to measure
I do. I've done, with the help of a bunch
of news articles searching, I've tried to compile here some
turnout estimates in various cities. So you can hear here

(04:42):
in d C sort of the central organizing effort for
the no Kings protest. The estimate is about over two
hundred thousand of DC area residents. Look, this is a
bigger turnout than they had in the first one. And again,
the real you know will know how success full this
was based on how strong the democratic performance is in Virginia.

(05:06):
It has been you know, this Jay Jones thing has
taken a you know, has had a huge impact on
turnout efforts on a lot of things in Virginia. Does
this turn the page on that and help Democrats? That's
a way to measure there. In San Francisco, one organizer
estimate claimed half a million. Look, it's a city of

(05:28):
what I would call a protest culture, very comfortable out
there protesting, So not surprising that this would be the
city with the largest turnout. This tell to me. And
I've seen the polling, you know, if you want to
see anecdotal versus polling, and you saw this protest had
a real focus on the proposition campaign, on the redistricting

(05:50):
response to Texas there, So I think this tells you something.
Half a million. Chicago had one hundred thousand grant parks
Butler Field. It was a march that not surprisingly went
past Trump Tower as they wanted to do. New York
City had an estimate of one hundred thousand. The largest
protests were somewhere in Times Square. That's where you saw

(06:13):
the most. Portland, Oregon, claimed about forty thousand protesters there.
They were in a downtown area, carnival like atmosphere. The
inflatable costumes that we've seen at the detention centers as
the protesters that the administration keeps accusing of being part
of this organized effort that they claim as Antifa, the

(06:36):
inflatable costumes have become a hallmark of Portland. San Diego
sixty thousand. Not insignificant in a military town. Okay, that's
a pretty big number for San Diego. Not a protest
culture there. Speaking of places where you don't normally see
protest cultures in the deep South, Atlanta only had about

(06:57):
ten thousand filled the Atlantic CI Civic Center parking lot,
if you will. But again, the South in general a
little less of a protest culture. The protest culture California,
the Northeast, a little bit. In the midwest. Madison, Wisconsin,
fifteen thousand a march near the state capital. Hartford, Connecticut

(07:19):
estimate of twelve thousand. San Jose Silicon Valley an estimate
of twelve thousand, about four thousand in Eugene, Oregon. In
Pittsburgh downtown Pittsburgh about two to three thousand. It seems
to be the best estimate I could come up with.
Their in Sacramento, you had about five thousand. State Capitol
of California, Roseberg, Oregon. It's a conservative part of Oregon,

(07:44):
so they were affected. You had a couple thousand show
up there in a more rural community that's of significance.
Rice Lake, Wisconsin. Another This is a town of nine
thousand people, so they claimed essentially that almost ten percent
of the town turned out to protest at nearly a
thousand folks there. Juddville, Wisconsin, also a thousand. This is

(08:04):
Door County community event. This is a little bit closer
to the green Berry area, if you will, in another
eleven hundred. So they had a lot of small protests
turn out in Wisconsin, which isn't surprising, right We've we've
what we've seen Wisconsin. There's there's quite a bit. Both
parties I think have super activists in they will so
look the big what I was curious about and nervous about.

(08:30):
I was curious about the Republican response and nervous about
the administration's response. Was there anything that was going to
happen in these demonstrations that was essentially going to be
bait if you will, or an attempt or would the
you know was the was Stephen Miller uh and that
wing of the of the Trump administration where they're essentially

(08:51):
looking for a confrontation. Would they find a confrontation Here's
there was no major confrontations like that. So in the
official level, it feels as if Lawnforce essentially treated this
protest the way we've treated protests for decades in this country, responsibly,
with respect, seems like protesters. I saw there was a

(09:12):
among the tweets. I saw the Austin Police Department, it's
official Twitter account put out a thank you to protesters
in't too law enforcement, saying everybody was well behaved and respectful, etc.
But then we have the social media memes, right, the absurdity,
and the one that has gotten the most is this

(09:34):
head scratcher, And it goes to this larger issue that
I've brought up a few times, which is why they
were Republican administration, why Donald Trump does not believe he's
president for all the people he really only believes he's
president for his base. It explains his rhetoric and explains
his decision making. It explains why he seems to not
care what swing voters think at all. And he retweeted

(09:59):
this that essentially had a AI personification of Trump flying
a plane and dropping poop on America, basically flying over
major cities and dropping poop. Seriously, really, I mean it

(10:20):
is you know, we're so used to sort of the
childlike behavior of him at times of this movement, there
is always I mean, one of the things that I've
said in the past about him is that there's an
arrested development quality, right that phrase mean phrase isn't just
a great title of a great television show, or at
least three and a half seasons of a great television show,

(10:42):
sorry Ron Howard, but it is an actual sort of
you know, at times, it's as if Donald Trump has
been thirteen his whole life, right, the mentality of a
thirteen year old What he thinks is humorous. And I
always say what he thinks is humorous because Donald Trump
doesn't laugh. Donald Trump doesn't naturally laugh. Go tell me

(11:03):
where you've found him naturally laugh. He does not sort
of have the normal social interactions. You know, there's always
a lot of people attempt to normalize him. He is
much more normal in person, but in the public setting
he doesn't quite He doesn't ever use humor. I remember

(11:24):
the one time he was asked to use humor was
at the Al Smith dinner in twenty sixteen, and he
was just so bad at it. He didn't know how
to do it. He doesn't know how to tell a joke,
and he doesn't know how to laugh very well. It's
just if you want to chalk it up. I'm not
going to sit here and try to diagnose him because
I'm not trained in psychology to try to do that diagnosis.

(11:49):
But I find it odd that he never ever laughs. Okay,
he will laugh along when an audience laughs with him,
but tell me when you have found him do a
belly laugh when he's just hanging with friends, you know.
And I'd actually thrown an aside. You know what phrase
you never hear connected to Donald Trump lifelong friend. There's

(12:11):
nobody that is connected to him that is ever described
as Donald Trump's lifelong friend, Donald Trump's former college roommate,
Donald Trump's uh friend from grade school. Think about that.
Every other president we've ever had has had a friend circle,

(12:32):
particularly once they got to the president that really did
go back to their college and high school years. Right,
Because ultimately, who do you trust people that knew you
before you were somebody? Right, I'm one of those one
hundred percent true. Right, You're more likely to sort of
weirdly feel comfortable with people even't interacted with about if
they knew you before you were, before you were somehow

(12:54):
a boldface name to somebody, not Donald Trump. It's the
it's one of the most Sometimes with Donald Trump, I
think we forget that there are non stories, stuff that
doesn't happen, which is worth reporting. Right, One thing that
doesn't happen anymore. He doesn't travel the country. He just doesn't.

(13:15):
He doesn't sell his agenda. He doesn't explain, you know.
He certainly takes plenty of questions. He seems active, but
he actually doesn't move very often. Yes, he goes overseas
and he wants his big summits. When's the last time
he just held a basic rally around the country to
sell the program. Doesn't do as much, certainly, not like
he did in the first run. It is a reminder

(13:37):
that why, I'm pretty confident even if he thought he
had the legal grounds to run for president, he wouldn't.
But I want to sum up with one other thing
about these protests. I said, there's two ways to measure them, right.
One measurement is going to be coming up on this
November election day. And you know, did you see you know,
did it truly? Did they find some new voters that

(13:58):
hadn't been paying attention? Did they do any voter registration?
So those are the things to measure. But here's something else.
You know, the rights very dismissive of this. Even some
in the center are dismissive. I've had some friends on
the left that are somewhat well, what are these protests game?
Here's what I would say. I think it's remarkable that

(14:18):
somebody wants to do this on a Saturday. There's we're
there's a lot of other things to do, particularly in
a fall Saturday. Right, I'm obsessed with college football. I'm
not alone in this. We're in the heart of some
incredible sports stories right now. Oh my god, show hey o'cani. Right,

(14:38):
there's so plenty to quote unquote to do. So the
fact that this got you know, millions across the country
to turn out these aren't you know you can they can.
Critics of this can say, well it was paid for.
That to me is even more impressive. There's an entire
group of people willing to fund, willing to put organization

(14:59):
around it, and they were able to get people to
show up, you know, to me saying oh they're paid,
this was paid or all of these things are always
organized by some entity that has money, right, nobody does it. Yes,
there are volunteers, but somebody's paying for some. And look,
I remember, I'm old enough to remember when the left

(15:21):
was very dismissive of the tea Party protests. Oh, it's grasstops.
I was told, you know, you know, don't overrate it.
You know, that would be the pushback, just like I'm
hearing from the right. Last time I checked, those twenty
ten mid terms were pretty rough on the Democrats. Those
tea party protests seemed to tap into something, and certainly

(15:42):
the tea parties I think is was a you certainly
you don't have Donald Trump without those tea party protests
twenty ten, twenty nine, ten, twenty eleven, So just it
certainly had I think so I would not at all
be dismissive of this, and I think you know again,

(16:04):
will I think these protests effectiveness will be judged down
the road right initially election Day twenty twenty five and
then election Day twenty twenty six. But I want to
pivot here to what really is the main story I
want to focus on this weekend, and that is the growing,

(16:30):
I think controversial controversy that's taking place in the Caribbean
right now. And what is where even the administration isn't
quite sure of how legal their bombings are. And I'll
explain why even though they claim they're legal, their actions
are actually admitting that they know there are legal questions
about what they are up to. But before I get there,

(16:52):
it is weird for me not to talk about the
government shutdown. Right, Here's what's amazing again. The most of
the Sunday shows were about the protests, or really about
this debate over is it legal? The what the administration
is doing targeting narco traffickers and just calling it a
marco terrorists. Does that make them enemy combatants? Does that

(17:13):
mean they're really that? This does fall under a previously
passed congressional authority of a use of force mission, whether
it's the one that I mean, it's it's astonishing that
this is sort of loosely. I understand the administration is
trying to claim the use of a few different authorizations
to justify this military action. But here's what hasn't happened.

(17:36):
Nobody really in Congress, I think, is very comfortable with this.
But there seems to be an odd amount of what
I would call not silence but muted concern about what
the administration is doing. And I think a tremendous is
just another reminder Congress is not working. Okay, Congress is

(17:58):
failing at its job of what it's what it's supposed
to do. Zero oversight takes place. You're supposed to do
oversight even when your party's in charge. This is the
exact thing that oversight was designed for. In fact, my
history lesson later in this episode is going to be
about the birth of congressional oversight. There was a scandal
in the twentieth century that where we didn't have oversight,

(18:20):
We didn't even have inspectors general until this scandal happened,
and then we got those things. So we are we
are seeing in a massive failure of the US Congress
here when it comes to this. But let me just
get to the shutdown here a second. Then I'll get
to this, get to the specifics of this fight, of

(18:41):
this battle over whether this is legal, what we're doing
in Venezuela. We're now at this full on stalemate. Donald
Trump is still not engaged in the shutdown negotiations. It
doesn't appear that Schumer and Jeffries, I mean again, they
do have the they do have the issue of health
care on their side. And we are about twelve days

(19:05):
away from premium notices, massive spikes in Obamacare premiums going
up on November first, massive spikes going up there. So
there will certainly be a cranky or public about the
issue of health care. But in the meantime, this not
keeping the government open. I just don't. I go back

(19:25):
to what I said, every single day this government is
shut is I think a day that Democrats lose whatever
they think they've gained out of this, and at some point,
a shuddered government simply harms people's everyday lives, whether it
is travel, which is the big one, food inspectors, whether

(19:49):
it's a national weather service. We're just this is ludicrous.
And then we're getting you know, we have an administration
that doesn't believe that their job is to govern for
all the people. It is the weirdest thing. I do
not understand why more people aren't upset about the fact
that this administration intentionally governs essentially makes decision based on

(20:09):
who supports them and who does it. And if they
think a piece of policy is a democratic policy, they
cut it. You know, they're just cutting it off. They
think a cabinet agency is a democratic cabinet agency. They've
decided the Education Department said democratic cabinet agency, so they
want to get rid of it. And as I've told you,
the Department of Homeland Securities they quote Republican agency. And

(20:31):
there's been hardly any furloughs at all, other than the
fact that they're getting they're going to get paid late.
They're not going to get paid on time, and we
don't know when these folks are going to get paid.
So this is I think this has turned into a
cluster of deep if you want, you know, it just is.

(20:52):
And at some point Democrats are going to have to
suck it up and open the government. They're going to
win this healthcare fight political, but they risk sort of losing.
I go back to this adult in the room issue,
the fact that they are the fact that they have

(21:15):
this power in their hands. And yes, technically Republicans could
open the government if they got rid of the filibuster.
I'm not sure anybody. I'm sure all Democrats want to
see that happen at this point. The fact the only
reason they have leverage is because the filibuster is still there.
And I do think there might be some progressives that
would love to see the filibuster go away, but I
don't think everybody in the Democratic Party wants to see that,

(21:40):
So I think they're you know, and again I go
back to the Democratic Party's inability to know how to
declare victory, to know when to essentially to know. Look,
you know, it's like you're trying to maximize profits all
the way to the end. Sometimes you sell even if
you think the stock's going to keep going on, but
you sell because you have actually think this doctor would

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(23:13):
Let me move to I feel like I should do
a pretty large dive now on the issue of Venezuela
in Colombia, because the biggest thing we have learned. And
the biggest sort of tell now that this administration isn't

(23:34):
sure what it's doing is legal is the decision to
repatriate two survivors from one of these bombings to their
home countries. That is the single biggest development of the weekend.
For that. The resignation, the decision by the head of
Southern Command to resign is another big development. And look,

(23:54):
he has not said why he resigned, but I will
tell you what Jim Stavridi's who also former head of
Southern Command, also former NATO Suprema like commander, what he
told me on my news Sphere show last week if
you were in a similar situation and he weren't sure
whether an order was legal, and he truly had questions
about it and worried because remember, if you end up

(24:15):
executing an illegal order, you will be held accountable in
our law. So this is not you know, this is
it didn't work at Nuremberg, right, this is not Ay,
I just followed an illegal order. Well, if you're concerned
it's an illegal order, your job is to bring that
up and then if you're still being ordered to do it. Basically,
the honorable thing to do is to resign and that,

(24:36):
and so this is a case where we're putting two
two and two together and we think we're getting four here.
But to me, you had that resignation and then you
had this repatriation announcement. This is the tell this administration
knows it's on unsteady legal ground. So here's what we

(24:59):
do know. And I'm sure you haven't been paying. Unfortunately,
this story is not getting the type of attention that
I think it would get if this were happening in
the Middle East, this were happening in Asia, this were
happening in a Mediterranean Sea. But it's happening in the
Western Hemisphere. And for some reason, when shit happens in
the Western Hemisphere, we don't prioritize it either in news coverage.

(25:20):
We don't prioritize it politically, neither party does. We've not
had a president do it, and in fact, we now
have a president who I think is about to make
some of the same mistakes, grave historical mistakes that have
happened in the past on Latin America. So let me
get started. So here's the pattern. We keep sinking The
United States keep sinking boats in the Caribbean, and they
keep trying to call it something other than war. Right,

(25:44):
it's not a war, but it's not a law enforcement action.
They've now carried out seven military strikes and suspected drug
smuggling vessels off the coast of Venezuela. The latest strike
has left three people and there were two survivors captured
and they have been quietly. This is the two survivors
that were patriated to their home countries. One is Columbia
Colombian and one was Econdorian. So why did they do this? Well,

(26:07):
that last decision to send them home rather than bring
them into US custody. Right, Why aren't we boarding these
boats and seizing this stuff? Right? Why are we just
deciding to destroy it? Well, it's the most revealing clue
yet about what's really going on here. So here's what
officials said on the repatriation decision. Officials said that this

(26:28):
was a humanitarian gesture, but to legal experts, repatriation looks
like something else. Entirely. It is a way to avoid
tough questions about the legal status of these survivors. Are
they criminals? Are they enemy combatants? Remember we went through
this during nine to eleven and getmo some of this
language is going to sound familiar to those of you

(26:51):
that remember all of those decisions about people. How are
they picked up these terrorists, these Alcaedo folks? Anyway, So criminals,
enemy combatants? Are they victims? Because the answer matters a ton.
It determines what laws end up applying. Do our laws apply,
do maritime laws apply? Do military courts have the upper

(27:14):
hand here? If they're treated as combatants, then the US
is admitting it's an armed conflict. If they're treated as criminals,
then they have rights to do process, to counsel, to trial.
That pesky constitution suddenly is in the way. Right by
sending them back to their home countries, the administration doesn't

(27:36):
have to choose. It avoids putting anyone in US custody
and therefore avoids the legal test case that could force
a court to decide whether America is now at war
with Venezuela in the Caribbean. I'll tell you this, this
is at some point, this is going to end up

(27:59):
in our court. Anyway. You will have perhaps the families
of victims claim, hey, they were fishing, they weren't part
of this. Maybe they were simply a worker on one
of these boats. Maybe they were hired hands. They weren't
necessarily part of the of the of of whatever the

(28:19):
narco business that we claim we know what's happening was
a part of. And it's likely they will try to
They're gonna look for some sort of uh, they'll probably
be looking for some sort of monetary justice, and it
could very well happen in our courts. So we're trying

(28:40):
to do this repatriation to avoid that. That's what survivors
what about with those that didn't survive, just saying this
is a legal quagmire that is coming, I promise you.
So the administration Pete Egseth has been pretty blunt. Here's
what he said on the Sunday shows this week. The
United States military will treat these organizations like the terrorists

(29:02):
they are. They will be hunted and killed just like
al Qaeda. So he is claiming these are terrorist organizations.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
Now.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
To truly be a terrorist organization, the basic definition means
you're using let's say you're narco terrorists. I means you're
using your drug money to essentially fund this sort of
political uprising. What political uprisings being funded here? This may
be simply a criminal enterprise, but I digress. Here's another thing.
Hag Seth admitted though on Sunday, we've sunk seven boats.

(29:32):
We've seized nineteen tons of coke. No fentanyl yet, but
that's next. Whoabody what this whole thing is supposed to
be about fentanyl. You haven't gotten any fentanyl yet. There's
a reason for that. Ventanyl ain't a part of Venezuela's
drug trade. Then I'm going to get to that, But

(29:54):
no fentanyl yet. It totally undercuts the entire public rationale
of what Trump and Ruby have been saying about why
this is legal and about why it should be done
the way they're doing it. The fentanyl crisis, which we
do have one, has nothing to do with Venezuela or Columbia.

(30:14):
It has everything to do with Mexico and China. But
that's not where we're focused here. So none of these strikes,
they at least are admitting it. You got to give
haig Seth credit have actually stopped the flow of fedel
because they haven't found any fentyl. That's not where it is.
It's Chinese ingredients being manufactured in Mexico. We've known this

(30:39):
forever and ain't Venezuela. This is an obsession to get
rid of Maduro. Frankly, it's a worthy obsession. I empathize
with it. He's illegally in office. He lost an election,
a small d democratic election. The lack, frankly, that of

(31:00):
international community of coming down harder on Venezuela over Maduro
essentially not abiding by the elections, has been extraordinarily disappointed.
Why this, If this is the you could argue, you
could make this the rationale. I don't know if a
lot of people would love it, because I do think

(31:23):
one of the reasons Trump has a has been able
to build MAGA and his base is by at least
rhetorically claiming that America First means we're not going to
get involved in other people's business, and in this case,
Venezuela would be other people's business. But the Defense secretary

(31:43):
admitted they've yet to seize any fennol here, so you're
you're essentially bullshit. Rationale for this is going to come
home to rust. Marco Rubio defended the strikes. He called them,
quote lethal strikes on drug vessels operated by designated narco
terrorist organizations. Well, it's a designation that's not quite made up,

(32:04):
but kind of because we've never really had a narco
terrorist organization that we've that we've gone after. You could
loosely claim al Qaeda was narco terrorists because they certainly
they certainly had the poppy trade in Afghanistan, and certainly
they were using that money to fund their war within Afghanistan.

(32:30):
Now Rubio has been he's trying to be extraordinary careful
in what he says in public. He insists that hits
are targeted, that they're not invasions, and that the president
is not is simply waging war on narco terrorists, not
on the people of Venezuela. And now here's what's fascinating.
This latest boat that they that they bombed wasn't even

(32:50):
head of the United States. Rubio noted the latest sub
was likely bound for Trinidad and Tobago or some other
country in the Caribbean, not the US mainland. He had
another inconvenient fact, if the goal is to stop drugs
from reaching American streets, so here's where the story gets
even a bit murcurer. Congress has not authorized any of this.

(33:13):
What the administration is trying to do is use older
authorization use of military force. Other aumfs out there the
big one from two thousand and one, which never named
a single organization in it. This is what's been used
for all sorts of operations by multiple presidents, even as
multiple even as a both Obama and Trump and Biden,

(33:35):
all three of them at some point admitted that this
AAMF needs to change, but they didn't exactly urge Congress
to do it. They said, yeah, if Congress sends me
something I would I would sign it. Congress has not
been able because it is a It is a fake.
This is one of those fake issues in Washington where

(33:55):
everybody says that what the correct answer, but behind the
scenes they do everything they can to make sure that
answer doesn't come to fruition, right, and getting rid of
this authorization Use of Military Force Post nine to eleven
that has been used for all sorts of questionable military
activity every time there's been bipartisan efforts to get rid

(34:16):
of it, and just when those bipartisan efforts happened, there's
bipartisan efforts to kill it, and there's always enough force
to kill it behind the scenes. But it makes it
look like, oh they're trying, but I digress. So here's
what various members of Congress have said. None of them
believe this has been authorized. Mark Kelley, Democrat, said after
a classified briefing on these issues. He said they had

(34:38):
a very hard time explaining the legal rationale and the
constitutionality of doing it. He said the brief we got
referring to the US Senate had a tremendous number of
holes in it. Tim Kaine went further, Tim Kaine has
been on this trying to repeal the original AMF or
redo it. He's been trying to do it for essentially
most of his time in the A Senate. If my

(35:01):
colleagues think of war with Venezuela is a good idea,
they need to pass an AUMF about just that stop
the administration from dragging our country into an unauthorized and
escalating military conflict. And then there's course the loudest Republican
who's questioned these things. It's Ran Paul, much more of
a libertarian and frankly, very consistent on these issues in general.

(35:22):
He said, all of these people have been blown up
without us knowing their name, without any evidence of a crime.
We are simply supposed to take the word of Pete
Hagsat Marco Rubie. All of these folks who are not
under oath. When they're saying these things, they're simply on camera.
Keep that in mind. So so far, there's been no
formal vote, no war powers authorization, no clear oversight, just

(35:45):
a White House declaring an armed conflict with cartels and
expanding operations under that banner. By redefining traffickers as unlawful combatants,
the administration claims the right to use lethal force without
the normal checks that apply to law enforcement operations or
to wars formally declared by Congress. Essentially, by having this

(36:07):
murky nature trumpet, we're just green lighting just the killing
of folks without having to make a legal case that
we can do this. It's pretty unconstitutional, it's pretty undemocratic,
and it is a terrible precedent for us to say,

(36:29):
I mean, who are we to ever lecture any other
lecture China on the Wigers. Who are we to lecture
Putin on Ukraine and his sphere of influence for the
way we're behaving in the Western hemisphere Here? There are
legal ways to do this. The case against Maduro is strong,
make the goddamn case against Maduro and is illegal co

(36:51):
opting of the government itself. He lost a free and
fair election. There are actually reasons to do this instead
of pretending it's something having to do with fentanyl when
it has nothing to do with fentyl. The administration's argument
is that these maritime operations right there claiming it's a

(37:15):
direct response to the overdose crisis in America and that
these cartels are killing Americans, so this is self defense.
But here's the disconnect. Fentanyl, the drug responsible for the
nearly two hundred thousand US deaths last year, is not
coming for the Caribbean or Venezuela, according to the DEA.
You know, again, this administration struggles facts sometimes, but there's

(37:36):
actual facts that sit out there, and there's data that
tells you where this fricking fentanyl's coming from. More than
ninety percent of fentanyl enters through US Mexico lands ports
of entry. It gets through the regular port of entry
because it's been impossible to seize. We seize it, but
other stuff gets through. This fentanyl is produced by Mexican

(37:59):
car tells not these Venezuelan cartels, and they're using precursor
chemicals that they import from China, all of which we
do know already, all of which the administration does cherry
pick whenever they want to get tough on Mexico or
whenever they want to get tough on China. But what
they're doing here with Venezuela is manufacturing an argument. That

(38:22):
is an argument if you wanted to make it with Mexico.
But we're not. We're not going down that road. That's
a different story. They're just essentially trying, and they realize
they're hoping that you, the American taxpayer, and you the
American public, is just going to conflate Ah, the Venezuelans, Mexico.
It's all the same. That's how stupid this administration thinks

(38:47):
you are. They think you're this stupid. They think you're
that you're going to be able to say all drug
smugglers are the same. They all look alike. That's how
stupid they think you are. Nobody says we don't have
a cocaine problem still in Colombia, a cocaine trafficking issue
in Venezuela, but it is not the one driving American

(39:10):
overdose deaths. If this is the rationale, and you better
be declaring war against these Mexican cartels. Basically, the current
US campaign has focused on geography. Marco Rubio has been
obsessed with Venezuela. Understandably, he's a South Floridian.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
I always said that there's all sorts of biases that
people have. Some of it is just bias from where
you're from. I grew up down there. I get it.
I have Venezuelan friends. I see this. This guy's bad.
We've destroyed a great country, an incredible culture, and he
is it is. We got to do more to get
the world community, get this guy out of here. There's

(39:51):
a variety of ways to do it. This seems to
be a way that risks American lives. One two risks
creating a martyr. I mean, we're gonna we haven't ruled
out striking targets in Venezuela. My guess is will say,
it's places where they're manufacturing the drug. This ain't gonna

(40:16):
be the jungles of Venezuela. Ain't gonna be an easy
place to fight a war. And you know, let's you
know it was this is how we get Mission creep.
Go look at the history in the very beginning of Vietnam. Okay,
this is how Mission Creep happens. But let's go back

(40:40):
to what this repatriation really reveals here, because it really
is the Big Toe. The United States is now flying
B fifty twos over the Caribbean, deploying Special operation helicopters,
sinking boats, killing people. It calls narco terras. But when
two of those survivors are captured alive, they quietly are
sent back to their home countries, out of sight, out
of US, and out of court. What the decision tells

(41:02):
us is that the administration understands they're in a legal
gray area that they're operating in. And if these men
were brought back here, judges and journalists would start asking questions,
and they don't want to have to answer those questions.
They'd have to answer questions about evidence, about jurisdiction, and
what rules would actually apply. Congress hasn't authorized this war.
None of these strikes are legal, the targets aren't attacking

(41:23):
the United States, the drugs that carry aren't the ones
killing Americans, and yet the White House keeps calling the
self defense, which brings us to the term you've heard
the President and his cabinet repeat over and over again,
narco terrorists. What the hell does the term mean? Where
did it come from? Okay, well, let me tell you

(41:44):
it's certainly here's the actual definition for Merriam Webster terrorism
financed by profits from illegal drug trafficking, right, meaning it's
the drugs are the drugs are sold to finance the terrorism.
Is that what's happening? All right? It's a generic term
narco terrorism, and it refers to the nexus between terrorism, insurgency,

(42:06):
and drug trafficking. So, as a working definition, a narco
terrorist is a person or group that uses drug trafficking
or profits funded to funder carried out acts of violence, intimidation,
or political corrosion, blurring the lines between criminal and politically
motivated violence. Can you make an argument Maduro's doing that?

(42:26):
Maybe you could, Right, Maduro is certainly repressing his people,
he's illegally in office, and he certainly has some sort
of influence and control over some of these gangs. Now,
it's not a brand new term. It was first used
actually in Peru Tero Rissimo. It was used by the

(42:49):
Peruvian president in nineteen eighty three to describe attacks by
traffickers on anti narcotics police. But it isn't clear the
first time the US this government ever really formally used
it was this year. The executive order that Donald Trump
signed on his first day back in office uses the
vehicle of designating cartels and other organizations as force foreign

(43:11):
terrorist organization and specifically designated global terrorists. So essentially, it
was trying to create They created a definition to fit
the already previous authorized use of military force. That's what
this is all about. This does not mean Maduro is

(43:33):
a victim here. Okay, I don't want that. I'm not
interested in that coming across. But the United States has
succeeded being the leader of the free world because we rationalized, justify,
and we make legal arguments for what we do. This
administration doesn't believe in anything having to do with this Constitution.

(43:55):
They view the Constitution as an impediment to be worked around,
and they're always in search of a loophole in the
Constitution rather than upholding the spirit and the values of it.
And this is a clear and present danger. You see
what I did there, This is a clear and present
danger for the US's influence over Look, he's now mad

(44:17):
at the Colombian president. Look this guy. They're sort of
you know, it wasn't the friendliest Colombian leader to get
elected that's true. He seems to be a bit more
lenient with the more socialist leaning Latin American leaders. But
you know what, he's unpopular in his own country because

(44:38):
what he promised has not come to fruition. He is
likely to not survive politically. This is a strong Columbia
is a strong democracy. The last thing we want to
do is create a martyr out of this current president.
And I would just warn this administration if backing out

(44:58):
of legal deals that we've made with the small This
man is a democratic small the democratic elected president of Colombia.
This is not like Maduro the risk of suddenly giving
him because Colombians don't want to look like that any
of their leaders are simply puppets of this administration, puppets

(45:21):
of the United States. The Trump's actions while he's trying
to send a message to Petro to work with the
United States instead of working quiet. Look, he's got his
own migration issues coming from Venezuela. You know, you think
we've got issues of Venezuela's coming over the border because
they're trying to flee the oppression of Madurea. So does Colombia.

(45:41):
But this, you know, our history in Latin America is
atrocious because we just go down there, always worried only
about our interests, never seeming to be concerned about the
people themselves, and we find a way to make more
enemies out of this place than we do allies. It
is been you know, fricking China has more allies in

(46:04):
South America than the United States does. That is a
big problem. And doing legally questionable military action like this
only makes it harder for the United States to sort
of win back Latin America into the US ecosystem rather
as they're drifting away into the China orbit. So I'm

(46:27):
going to stop there. My guest is Eric Berger. He
is frankly one of the best space journalists that's out there.
Those of you that have known me a long time
know that this is sort of a one of my
many policy obsessions when I can do a deep dive
on space. We're in the middle of a debate, right,

(46:47):
you know, do we go to Mars? What do we
do with the Moon? We're in this race with China
now to put a base on the Moon. What's the
status of that? Is NASA up to it? The privatization
of spaces that set a back or giving us a
hand forward. All of those questions I deal with with
Eric there, but he's also a meteorologist, so we also

(47:08):
talked a little bit about weather journalism in general, extreme
weather and science reporting generically. My point is it is
if you're kind of a space geek, kind of a
weather geek, you know, this is going to be the
most political conversation. If you're just coming, you know, I
don't always want to have these hard left right conversations.

(47:32):
That's what my monologue was for today, If you will,
this conversation is about what's happening in space and the
geopolitical fight essentially for space supremacy. So we'll sneak in
a break when we come back, Eric Berger, and then
on the other side, it's the toodcast time machine. It's
a doozy today. It is not Nixon related. That's my

(47:55):
only clue with that. I'll see. On the other side, well,
joining me now to talk a little bit about the

(48:16):
space race and maybe a little bit of politics behind
our space policy is Eric Berger of Ours Technica. He's
been a space and weather and reporter for decades Houston
Chronicle back in the day. He's got a degree in astronomy,
and a master's in journalism, and he's a certified meteorologist,

(48:39):
but he writes quite a bit these days on the
privatization of space policy. You name it. Eric, Welcome to
the podcast.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Thanks very much, Chuck.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Great to be here, hopefully I said enough of your
resume there. Do you feel like I covered it all?
Anything I miss?

Speaker 2 (48:57):
I like space and I like to write about it.
So that's about you need to know.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
Excellent. Well, I do too, I just don't know as
much and I always want to know more. But what
triggered me wanting to book you was a report you
did in about mid August where it was we're essentially
China's on track to beat us back to the moon.

(49:22):
And it felt almost like the culmination of the pivot
that I think Elon Musk convinced Trump of, which is
move away from the Moon and move towards Mars Am.
I over simplifying it, I mean somewhat.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah, it's a pretty complicated story, but the bottom line
is that China has decided, for geopolitical reasons, especially like
the United States did in the nineteen sixties, that demonstrating
a lunar landing would be really important to bolstering their
credibility as you know, a superpower at least on par
with the United States, if not exceeding it. And so
there has been set up this so called space race

(49:59):
between you states in China and the US has played
along our space leaders, our political leaders have kind of
played along into it, such as it now we're in
this competition to put humans on the moon, you know,
buyer before the end of this decade, and at this
point China seems to be have pulled ahead in terms
of the hardware and planning it has.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Look I was down at Kennedy's Space Center in Theory
to interview Bill Nelson. This is back when I was
at Meet the Press before the Artemist launch, and of
course we set up the interview and finish the interview,
and the Artemist launch gets postponed. But it is it

(50:38):
did seem to be more of a priority, is it
Is it less of a priority now on the NASA
side of things when it comes to Artemis and comes
to getting back to the Moon.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
No, it's still the same. I mean, they're still pursuing
the Artomist program. We're gonna have the Artomist two launch
probably next February or March with with actual humans going
around the Moon. The problem is that there's a huge
leap from the Artemist one and two missions to Artemist three,
which is actually the Lunar landing. And and you know Nelson,
who I liked and obviously did you know, was qualified

(51:13):
for the position as NASA administer, They didn't ever really
tell the whole truth about the complexity of the Artomist program,
the challenges that NASA was having, and you don't really
hear that truth from the new appointee to lead NASA,
Sean Duffy. And and the reality is that that that
we just are not developing our program quickly enough to

(51:35):
match what China's doing.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
They're always there's a there's a geographical location that they
want to get to, and so do we want to
get to? And so do we know where the Chinese
want to go on the Moon? And are we be
concerned that if they get there, essentially they're going to
claim it.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
Yeah, So so China and both China United States are
interested in the soft pole of the Moon, and that's
where it's believed that most of the water ice exists
in these permanently shadowed craters. It's not clear whether the
first Chinese human landings is going to take place at
the soft Pole. I suspect since it's easier to land
in the equatoil regions of the Moon, they won't go

(52:16):
to the poles. But eventually, yes, we would like to
get to the poles. And you know, the reality is
that it's kind of a sweet spot where you can
get lots of daytime sunshine to drive solar energy, but
then also have relative close access to these permanently shadowed regions.
Basically go into the crater and it's kind of behind
these walls where you never really get sun, so it's

(52:38):
super cold and it trapped moisture and ice over time.
And that's not a big area we're talking about, you know,
you know, dozens of kilometers across, so it's not so
like you could stake a claim to really the the
coveted areas of the Moon, and it's not like a
Texas sized area.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
What's the Are there minerals on the Moon that we
want or do we want to base the Moon or
is it both?

Speaker 2 (53:07):
It's really not entirely clear, right, So there are some
companies that will say there's helium three which is valuable
for cooling and for superconducting cooling, and potentially for energy.
That's not at all clear to me. The business case
closes for that. There's water ice at the Moon, and
if you could harvest that and process it, you could

(53:27):
turn that into rocket fuel. It's got liquid hydrogen and oxygen,
which is useful, but again it's not clear economically whether
that's the base case. Other potential applications are space tourism,
like if you could actually build some kind of a
hotel or resort on the Moon. I think that that

(53:48):
would be pretty popular. There are military applications the Moon,
and certainly Cyslinar space is a very convenient high ground
looking back at Earth. And so there's all these potential applications.
It's not clear to me whether there's any killer one,
but you know, it is the next step for humans

(54:08):
as a species going out there.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
And so.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
If you want to say that you are the predominant
space faring species on planet Earth or nation, you need
to really have a presence, a strong presence of the
Moon over the next decade or two.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Is there a it is is basing. I mean, in
order to get to Mars more conveniently would it make
more sense to launch from the Moon.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
No, not really. The starship vehicle that SpaceX is building
Elon Musk is building is really the only credible Mars
vehicle on the horizon, and their plan is to refuel
in lower th orbit and not go to the Moon
at all.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
So they think they can do it that way. It's
not you know, look, I for all mankind was it
was a junkie on that, and that one of my
you know what, when they get to Mars they use
a essentially a solar I don't know if you what
I call it. I guess almost like a sale, right,
a solar sale. And I was fascinated with it. And

(55:10):
then they were always really good about what's the science
behind this? Is this possible? And that that it came
across it, that it's more possible than maybe it appeared.
Is what are the different ways to feel to it?
Is solar power a realistic way to do it?

Speaker 2 (55:28):
For propulsion, not really, but potentially nuclear electric propulsion is possible.
The problem solar electric propulsion is that it's very fuel efficient.
It SIPs fuel, but it takes a long time. So
if you're sending cargo to Mars, that's a great solution.
But if you're a human and you want to get
there in you know, four to six months and not

(55:50):
four to six years, and you've really got to go
chemical propulsion or nuclear electric propulsion or something like that.
And there's are certainly architectures where you can go to
the Moon and sort of build basically as spacecraft in
lunar orbit for fuel it there and then go from
the Moon to Mars. But you know, those are all
theoretical right now. And so, as I said, the only

(56:12):
company really building hardware that could go to Mars is
the Starship Vehicle and that has that has plenty of flaws,
but they're actually building things, which is refresht.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
So in sort of in our first ten minutes of
this conversation, is there is there a real reason to
be on the Moon other than flexing.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
I think in the near term, flexing is the reason
to be there. Okay, that it goes back to like
it was in the sixties with the first base races.
It's all about geopolitics, right it was. We were trying
to demonstrate the world that we were superior, and the
lunar landing was a very dramatic way.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
To do that.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
So it's kind of back to that, and there are
potential reasons for lunar activity, but we're not really going
to know until we go there, put boots on the
ground and do stuff with robots and humans and really
figure things out.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
Is there a space treaty that has any sort of
jurisdiction over how countries have and I guess did China
sign on to it? I mean, what is there anything
that governs the Moon at this point between countries.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Yeah, so there's the Outer Space Treaty signed in nineteen
sixty seven by all the major players, including the United
States and China, which basically says no country can own
the Moon. It's kind of analogous to Antarctica here on Earth.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
But we're questioning that right now, aren't we a little? Well?

Speaker 2 (57:41):
I mean, who knows right this what this administration is
going to do. But there is nominally no one who's
planning to like stake ownership of on the Moon. Now,
the United States did several years ago basically create legislation
allowing it. So if you're a private company and you
want to go harvest a resource on the Moon, you

(58:03):
can do that, but you can't, like, say, we own
these six hundred acres and you know, we're going to
build a resort. It's that all is a little bit fuzzy.
But but yeah, there is a treaty and it is
nominally respected by all of the players.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
So Waite, I want to go back to what you
just said that if a private space company finds a
mineral that they want to harvest, how how do they
stake the claim on it?

Speaker 2 (58:28):
They go there, they build their factory, and they start
harvesting the resources. They just can't say that this is
you know, this land is owned in perpetuity by you know,
the solar harvesting company you know, or whatever.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
But who are they getting their license? Who are they
getting their permission to do this in this case?

Speaker 2 (58:46):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
And this is acceptable within the terms of the treaty.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
I mean, if China was going to go to the
Moon and harvest ice from the poles like we would
not or could not stop them, like the treaty allows that.
It's a little bit fuzzy. I mean this is bear
in mind, this was written six decades ago.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Right right. Is there any movement to revisit it or
does nobody want to touch it?

Speaker 2 (59:14):
There is movement to revisit it. But there are more
pressing matters in sort of global space diplomacy that kind
of the top One of them is debris and lowerth orbit.
You know space ax Elon Musk has eight thousand, seven
thousand satellites and low werth orbit flying around. China's starting
to launch a lot more satellites. Jeff Bezos is now launching,
has launched more than one hundred satellites this year. And

(59:35):
so in want group, so like there's all these objects
flying around to we want to make sure we're communicating.
I think that's the top priority right now in terms
of space and that I.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
Mean, how how crowded is it up there? And is
there a point where it's getting too crowded.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
It really depends on who you ask, Chuck, because some
space environments will say it's already two crowded.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
And environmentalists that's an interesting phrase.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
They exist, okay, and they do look at things like
glorboral debris and worry about sort of runaway collisions called
the Kessler syndrome. But what you see when you look
at the data is that the number of collision of
avoidance maneuvers over time has gone up quite a bit

(01:00:22):
and the real concern is that as the United States
and China get more and more satellites up there, are
they talking to one another and Russia has assets up
there too, Are the governments talking to one another and
making sure that that everyone has the best data about
these objects to avoid collisions. Yeah, so space is very
big and it can accommodate a lot of satellites, but
you need increasingly sophisticated traffic management up there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Well, there's traffic management, but there's also I mean, I
did a magazine story, sort of a TV magazine show
that we had at meet the press on the next war,
and it was the next war starts in space. Was
the conclusion that that's the most likely first shots would
be fired at satellites in space, not necessarily shots fired

(01:01:10):
here on Earth. So it is it's one of the
rationales for the Space force. It was my understanding. But
what is the vulnerability up there? And how concerned should
we be about it?

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
First of all, I think that premise is exactly right.
We have seen certainly the war in Ukraine has opened
the eyes of all the major governments, including the United
States and China, about the value of space assets, and
in fact, Chinese government saw the value of starlink, like
how well that worked and how useful it was, and

(01:01:46):
like they immediately sort of redoubled their plans to build
a similar type of constellation. And we've seen it through
commercial synthetic capture radar and other things. So that's exactly right.
These space assets are increased, you know, very vulnerable, and
over the last twelve months, we've seen active maneuvering by
Russian and Chinese satellites to fly up to US vehicles

(01:02:07):
and like make close pass bys, like.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Just almost like the way you would like take a
fighter jet and say hiyah, yeah, like you know, we're here.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Two submarines passing like you know, in the deep. It's
exact same kind of thing, although maneuvering in space in
terms of the energy required is much much more difficult
to change orbits, but we've seen those kinds of maneuvers
and the United States has talked a lot more about
offensive capabilities in space. Up until a few years ago,
it was much more about protecting our assets through defensive

(01:02:37):
mechanisms and proliferation. So for them now it's more like
they're talking about putting offensive capabilities in space. So we
are clearly moving to a much more contested environment in space.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
It seemed like fifteen years ago we were we were
it was more likely that we were going to behave
jointly with other nations. You know, the relationship with the
Russians that was pretty mature. When it came to our
space partnership, we certainly had the EU partnership. Yet all

(01:03:08):
these nations sort of all kind of working together on this.
Is this just sort of China breaking off and then
everybody becoming nationalistic again? I mean we were we not
on that path for a while.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
Yeah, things were, things were kind of yeah, if that's
a very astute observation, I.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Think Star Trek e almost right like we were on
our way to being you know, the vision of what
Star Trek show. I mean, all the nations work together,
you know, I don't know if we're on.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
Our way to Star Trek that would be sort of
a really a glass half full view of areas. But
but you are, you are a stute that certainly we
were in a much more peaceful posture. A couple things
have changed. First of all, the US Russian relationship has
deteriorated a lot over the last ten or fifteen years
for obvious reasons. And then and then the rise of
China as a real space power has changed things dramatically.

(01:04:00):
They they are doing things on both the civil and
military side. They are very impressive and have lots of capabilities,
and that has really changed the game. So you've got
three main powers. But then you've also got you know,
India shooting down satellite so demonstrating anti satellite capability. Japan
has an increasingly sophisticated space program. Turkey is starting to

(01:04:20):
get going. You got the European Space Agency, which is
sort of the European If you want to look for
a Star Trek like player in space, it's the European
Space Agency. They're trying to do good things and have
a holistic approach, but it's it's new players coming in
and demonstrating serious capabilities that have up the temperature.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
Who can get up there on their own?

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Though? Is it just the three countries or in terms
of humans? Yeah, So Russia still has its Soye's system
which is now fifty five sixty years old, China has
a capability that's two decades old, and the United States
can get up there because of SpaceX and Dragon. But
that's you know, Musk.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Everybody else has to sort of lease, right, has to
sort of buy a seat or contract with Maybe it's SpaceX,
maybe it's with the with NATE, right like the European
Space Agency has to go up with somebody else.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Right, Absolutely, And they're at least a decade away from
having a human capability.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Who I was just gonna say, are there other countries
trying to develop their own abilities to get up there?
I assume India is. India is.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
They've had a program called gargan Yon, and they've been
making some progress. But initially I think they wanted to
get up there by twenty twenty two, and it became
twenty twenty four. Now I think it's probably closer to
twenty twenty eight. So they've had some teething pains that
they've developed this capability.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
And what is the uae up to.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
The UAE is seeking UA and other countries in the
Middle East, but certainly the uae IS is most prominent
among them. They're spending a lot of money to develop capabilities,
and right now they're in the phase where they're partnering
with NASA, they're partnering with US companies and research institution.

Speaker 1 (01:06:10):
Should almost like having a private equity firm helping you
out financially. I mean, to be totally cynical, I think so.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
But I think they do have a long term vision
of building some kind of spaceport capability in the UA itself,
but it's really hard to spin that up from the ground,
So they're in the partnership phase at this point.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
Can America get up into space without private contractors right now? Nope?

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
And and you know they NASA warded two contracts a
decade ago to Boeing and SpaceX, and Boeing still hasn't
demonstrated a reliable capability, So like it's it's all space
X for at least the next few years for the
United States and probably beyond that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:50):
I mean, this is what you know. Not to delve
too much into politics. I'm not asking you to be
a political pundit. But Elon Musk has a lot of
I mean, he he ended visually holds a lot of
keys to the access to low orbit satellite systems and
getting up there, doesn't He he's.

Speaker 2 (01:07:08):
The most important person in spaceflight globally, and it's not
even close. And it's not just like our getting our
astnasts to and from the space station, like he has
the contract to safely bring the space station back down
to Earth. He as you say, you know, controls the
Starlink network, which is increasingly valuable to our allies and
to our national defense, in addition to all of its

(01:07:31):
commercial applications. And then of course SpaceX launches now the
most military satellites for the Department of Defense.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
Has he shifted policy goals yet or not, because it
did seem as if that that was the assumption of
why he wanted to be so involved with the Trump administration.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
See, I don't think he would have got involved with
the Trump administration because of space politics. He had other
priorities such as they were, and he but he's always
been interested in Mars and always been pushing every administration
to focus on Mars. So I don't think that was different.
He found a willing audience for a few months in
Donald Trump, but they've sort of backed off that. And

(01:08:11):
it's really the politics actually of the Artemist program are
interesting because SpaceX has the contract to land actually land
humans on the Moon, take them from lunar orbit down
to the surface and back up and starship. But at
the same time, like that lunar lander program is not
a priority at all from Musk, so like they are
not putting a tremendous amount of resources into it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
Then they issue to contracted in Blue Origin get one too.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
They did, and this is where it gets even more interesting.
Blue Origin, of course owned by by Jeff Bezos, now
their lander. They're behind SpaceX in terms of development, so
like their initial their capability right now will not be
ready in the twenty twenties. But I just reported last
week that there is a plan inside Blue Origin to

(01:08:59):
use their their existing lunar lander, which is going to
watch for the first time early next year, and to
try to put humans on that, which could potentially allow
NASA to get to the Moon this decade on a
Blue Origin vehicle. And so so far, so we have
to see if the NASA administration takes that up.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
Seriously, let me just sort of put a I want
to go back to the Boeing situation, because this is
I mean it is I mean, this feels like a
company that isn't getting anything right, whether it's deliveries of
airplanes or these space contracts. Given the shakeup that happened there,
I mean, do we expect Boeing to ever deliver on.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
This, not in a meaningful way. I think you might
get a few human missions on Boeing Starliner spacecraft of
the National Space Station, But after twenty thirty, the future,
at least in the Western world, is going to be
private space stations in lower thorbit. And I just don't
expect Boeing to be able to compete on price with Dragon,

(01:09:58):
you know, because NASA is not going to be paying
for for a lot of those missions. It's going to
be you know, if you know Chuck Todd wants to
take a two week visit to a private space station,
he's footing the bill, And so are you going to
pay an extra fifty million to fly in a Boweing
vehicle which is not as safe as Dragon because it's
not flying as often?

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Right, I know, I feel like I'm hodgepodging here, But
you've brought up space sort of tourism a couple times.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
Are is the first sort of.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
Hotel going to be floating or going to be on
the Moon.

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
You know, that's a great question because we've finally been
the last five years with with Virgin Galactic and Blue
Origin seen real actual space tourism, so you as a
private statist, you can go buy a ticket and actually
have some expectation of going to space pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
It's a lot of bitcoin, but yeah, it's a lot
of bitcoin.

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
But it's you can actually do it now like you
couldn't really do it before. And but on the on
the other hand, like there has so he's been pretty
high demand for this star war world space tourism or
basically go up and come down and like you know
a few minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
Kind of what Bezos has been doing with the celebrities.

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
Yeah, yeah, and those are I mean, what a what
a fantastic ride that would be.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
He kind of find partially finances those launch finances, all
of it. Yeah, I mean yeah, with other people buying
a seat, right, yeah, okay, So but what we.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
Have not seen is great demand for orbital missions. So
like you can also book a dragon now, it's not
going to be a million dollar ticket. It's going to
be at least probably sixty million dollars to go to
orbit for a few days, and you have to train
a lot more and it's more dangerous and more rigorous.
There hasn't been a lot of demand for that, and

(01:11:41):
I think the story is really to be told on
whether these private space stations, when there's several companies in
the United States working toward that, building successors to International
Space Station, I don't I have not seen enough for
an economic site to show there's a huge demand for
that outside of like government astnauts, so like UA would
pay for some of its people to go there, or

(01:12:02):
Turkey or Brazil, But whether private citizens are paying money
to go to these as hotels, I'm not so sure.
I do think there is potential for a lunar space tourism, yeah,
just I think that's more appealing, Like you can go
you can be in a gravity well, you can go outside,
and I think there's more of a market there. But
that's also you know, much more difficult to bring into fruition.

Speaker 1 (01:12:24):
Is this twenty forty twenty eighty, So for I think, you.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
Know, we'll have pretty good lunar activity in twenty thirties
by governments, So I could see private I could see
some kind of private station or accommodations at the hotel
by twenty forty.

Speaker 1 (01:12:41):
It's not out of the realm, so within within you know,
within our lifetimes, we're likely to It's that it's within
the realm of possibility. Yeah, absolutely, it's not as zero.
Now what about Mars?

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Oh, Mars, So.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
Mars.

Speaker 2 (01:12:59):
I'm not sure. What I love for your listeners to
appreciate is it's really, really, really hard to go to Mars,
A lot lot harder than the Moon.

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
So but I thought Arnold Schwarzenegger was already there.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
Yeah, okay, so, and as hard as it is to
get to Mars safely, it's even harder to come back.
So like SpaceX has the Starship vehicle, but but refueling
that on Mars is extremely difficult. So I think the
first missions we see to Mars are going to be
one way mission. And you know, it's very difficult for

(01:13:31):
me to see a human on Mars before twenty forty,
but after twenty forty it's certainly possible. I mean, we are,
for the first time in history, we're actually building a
transportation system that can get people there. It's all been
theoretical up until this point.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
What do we I mean, Look, I know why you
do these things. You don't know what you're going to find,
but you know you're better off exploring than not, right,
It's sort of the same explorer mentality that the Europeans
had in the fourteen hundreds and the Fife. But what
have we learned so far from our these robotic missions?
And is there is there is there even more reason

(01:14:11):
to get there sooner? Like, is there is? Is this
going to be a a There's going to be richer minerals,
richer resources there than we realize.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
You're talking about Mars. Yes, no, there are, there are,
there are At this point, there are no known resources
on Mars that you could send back to Earth that
would have any kind of value, certainly have the value
that would justify the extraordinary cost and energy of shipping
them back here.

Speaker 1 (01:14:36):
So it feels like we may be spending a lot
of money to build an outpost in a desert like
environment that really is not that appealing to live in
unless there's no place else to live in the universe.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
So any location on Earth is far superior to Mars
on its best day. Yeah, there's no question about that.
And in reality, the United States government has not been
spending a lot of money on Mars. In terms of
humans to Mars, we really haven't.

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
You're making the case never to send a human to Mars.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
So there is Chuck there is only one reason really
for humans to go to Mars, and it's this, like it,
do you want humanity to be a space varing species?
Like do you want us to live elsewhere in the
Solar System? And Mars is not great, but it is
better than almost anywhere else in the Solar System other

(01:15:27):
than planet Earth. And so if we're going to take
our first step towards living on other planets, it's probably
got to be on Mars. And then you know, then eventually,
when we develop technology to go to other stars and
find more habitable worlds, we'll have all of these lessons learned.
But if you want humanity to live beyond Earth, and
some people think that's crazy, and I understand that, but

(01:15:48):
I happen to believe in the Starchspeck vision you outlined
earlier that I mean, I think humans should go off
and live elsewhere in the universe. And that's really the
first step.

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
No, I'm all for we got to find you know,
I think we you know, that's what it's all about,
right is I think frankly, it's part of the whole
search for meaning. Right, Why are we here? Is there
something else?

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
There's a lot of reasons why you want to keep exploring,
But it seems to me that that we'd be better
off doing all of this for robotics. I mean, we've
made such advancements on this that that we shouldn't be
risking human It doesn't seem as if we need to
risk human lives yet.

Speaker 2 (01:16:26):
If your goal is to do scientific exploration of the
Solar System, robots are superior in almost every case, certainly
for the cost of the mission. So yes, I would
agree that if we just want to make discoveries about
this fascinating solar system we live in, and it is
truly fascinating, sent robots.

Speaker 1 (01:16:49):
If you could pick more places to go to see
if there are better habitable places in our Solar system?
Is it moons of Jupiter and Saturn that are worth searching?
Where where? Where is it that that that the that
those that have that have some hypotheses about the rest
of the Solar System and what and what we've learned

(01:17:11):
so far from from all the all the the long
term satellites we've been sending up there, and the and
the incredible the web, the web telescope and all of that.
Where else would it be Europa? Is that a that's
the name of one of the moons.

Speaker 2 (01:17:25):
Europa's hell Man. Europa is bathed constantly in this deadly
radiation from the planet Jupiter. Like Europa is the last
place you would want to go.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
Why is there always this fantasy about Europa?

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
Because there's this there's this huge ocean. There's more water
on Europa than there is on the planet Earth. Beneath
the ice shell, there's internal heating, and so if you
look at the black smokers on Earth where where life
is thought to have originated there, it's it's it's entirely
conceivable there's life in that ocean on Europa.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
And that's why there's this fascination of getting there. It's like,
let's just let's get some eyes on it, let's see, and.

Speaker 2 (01:18:01):
We absolutely should because it's a fascinating, fascinating place. Now,
if you were asking me, and I think you were,
to sort of rank places in the source and.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
To live, where do you go next? And you know,
after Mars obviously, because it's closest, well the moon is
the moon is closest, sure, right, and so that's that's
a good place to go as well, because you can
get back.

Speaker 2 (01:18:18):
Within three days. That there's some kind of emergency and
you could probably there are probably caves on the Moon,
or you could dig tunnels on the Moon and live there,
and there's plenty of solar energy. Mars is probably the
best planetary body surface. It's got a very thin atmosphere,
but it does have resources water, carbon dioxide, other sort

(01:18:38):
of things that you kind of needs as humans. Other
potentially interesting places are like the clouds of Venus, because
there's a certain elevation at Venus where the atmosphere is
not breathable, but it is one standard atmosphere, so you
could walk around.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
What does that mean? I've heard this the clouds of Venus?
I mean is this a is is it putting a
space station in Venus' orbits or is it actual? Like
explain that big zeppelins.

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
Maybe yeah, you know you could, you could as a
science fiction person, you could kind of go wild, but
you know, there isn't There is an elevation in Venus'
atmosphere where it's the basically the pressure air pressure is
similar to this here on Earth. Like on the surface
is that absolutely hell right, super hot and you would
be crushed instantly, But but at a certain altitude of

(01:19:28):
Venus you could get earth like pressure and temperatures wouldn't
be crazy either, So that's interesting. But like there's nothing hard,
there's no firm surface right to build upon. You'd have
to float. And then you could look at a moon,
maybe like Ganymede around Jupiter, which might have some potential.
But but you know, when Jeff Bezos says Earth is

(01:19:50):
the best planet, he's right. I mean, Earth is far
far more suited to humans in any other place in
our known solar system. But you know, fortunately ten or
fifteen years we started to find exoplanets around other stars,
and we see that there's billions and billions of planets
in our galaxy, and some of them are going to
be very earth like, and some of them, I don't

(01:20:10):
know if it's like a tiny, tiny fraction, but there
will be some that could easily support you in life.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
Right. Look, you know, and one of these civilizations may
be developing faster than us or vice versa, so we
could find out on that. But let's go back to
developing the moon. And that is because I remember Bezoos
saying something once that I thought was made a lot
of sense, that he thought our heaviest industrial manufacturing should

(01:20:37):
be outsourced to the Moon that it was actually you know,
could be the best if if you care about climate
change in this on this planet and trying to mitigate
the warming of the planet some that that would be
a big idea that could have a big impact. Pipe tream.

Speaker 2 (01:21:00):
Not a pipe dream, but it's difficult, but we could
get a lot of resources from space that we basically
we could get energy from space, right, whether that's a
huge form of solar panels on the Moon or space
based solar power, which has its challenges, but you could
certainly being lots of energy back to Earth.

Speaker 1 (01:21:20):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
The big thing now is data centers, right, which are
consuming an enormous amount of power and water are environmentally
very you know, very not good for the planet. You
could put data centers in space where you get twenty
four on solar power you don't need to use water
resources and so that there are some challenges for cooling

(01:21:41):
those in space, but I think they could be overcome
with radiators. You know, you think about all of the
strip mining we do the planet for valuable metals, not
so much on the Moon, but an asteroid. There are
metal rich asteroids, some of which are in near Earth
orbits that that theoretically we could get mine and bring
all the platinum back and other metals that we could

(01:22:02):
ever want for our needs here and manufacturing like and
it's just for a lot of applications. Manufacturing and microgravity
is a lot different of course than manufacturing on Earth,
but it's in some ways it's much better. Or you
could put manufacturing on the moon. So, you know, best
bezos Is vision is that you know, we create a

(01:22:22):
garden here on Earth and offshore or all of our
you know, and and in theory that's all possible, but
it's it's it's extremely challenging to do it. But we're
taking we're taking baby steps toward I mean the first
step this.

Speaker 1 (01:22:35):
Is like one hundred year plan like this at best right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
But the first step was like lowering the cost of
access to space. And we've seen that like SpaceX with
its Falcon nine rocket is a miracle. It launches more
in a year by a lot. Then you know, a
few years ago, every country in the world, every company
the world, we edit it all up and it was
like half of what the Falcon nine does now every
year on its And so like lowering the cost of

(01:23:01):
access to space. Your reasonability is an essential first step,
and we're taking.

Speaker 1 (01:23:06):
It so obviously I let my brain to go to
politics too often. But you know, one of the difficulties
I think, I think one of the reasons I feel

(01:23:26):
like we sort of stopped space exploration for about twenty
years because of politics, meaning we didn't stop it, but
we weren't as aggressive, like the end of the Cold
War came and we didn't feel the pressure and urgency
to flex. So for whatever reason, you know, that seemed
to be the main reason. And then of course politically,
why are you spending money on there and not on healthcare? Right?

(01:23:47):
And not on childcare? Is there a plausible way to
sell spending on space by saying, look, we're going to
be able to bring the cost of power down on
this planet and it's going to be a game changer.
I ask it. It is. It is among the plot
points of for all mankind that you know, the discovery

(01:24:09):
of this incredibve helium three transforms you know, energy consumption
on Earth and just totally transforms the economies of both
the Soviets and the United States in this science obviously,
this alternative history mindset. But is is that what the
assumption is about the Moon that this could be you know,

(01:24:30):
the best asset besides offshoring stuff and space tourism, is
it could provide a cheaper, cleaner power source to power
Earth essentially.

Speaker 2 (01:24:40):
Yeah, So, like you're absolutely right. After the Apollo program,
Nixon and then Carter and Ford basically said NASA was
spending way too much money as five percent of the
fiddle budget when you do.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52):
A massive inflation, right, it was a terrible economy at
the time, right.

Speaker 2 (01:24:56):
And so like for all these reasons, they said, here's this,
here's the budget, you have fit a nice space going
to that. We got the Space Shuttle. It was like
thirty years of that. The big change what's driving this
and it makes some people uncomfortable, and I understand that
is that a lot of the activity that's happening now
is not being led by NASA or Dark Bow or departments.
It's private companies that are going out there trying to

(01:25:16):
figure out way to make a buck in space. They're
trying to follow the space X and and you know,
you've got the billionaire billionaire oligarchs Bezos Musk who are
kind of driving the bus on that. But there's lots
of other companies too, it's not just them, and so
government programs would help. But what's really going to drive

(01:25:37):
us forward in that future, I think is if private
companies figure out a way to deliver that power, and
government contracts certain would help speed that alone. But we've
got to show it can be commercially viable to do
these things, and we don't.

Speaker 1 (01:25:52):
Really have it, does I see what you're saying. But
what you're saying right now, there's not a It's not
as if that's the true for NASA, right. I mean,
you could have Congress say your mission is to figure
out what resource on the Moon is going to help mankind? Yes,
what would we do differently?

Speaker 2 (01:26:10):
The Department Defense mission is to space dominance, right. NASA's
mission is to explore, and there's no agency really that's
doing commercial development of space. Things that would help would
be like a directive from the US government that we
want ten percent of our power to come from outer

(01:26:32):
space by twenty fifty or something like that. That would
really drive this kind of activity. But you're right, at
this point, there is no overarching federal push to move
all of these activities into space for the benefit of Earth.

Speaker 1 (01:26:47):
Let me use your meteorological expertise, but more on the
commercial side. Who's got the best info on weather these days?
Is it the private sector? Is it's still the government.

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):
It's the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasting ECMWF.

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
How did they become the dominant player?

Speaker 2 (01:27:10):
Well, they invested in it. They invested both in putting
supercomputing power toward it, but also in the ability to
very quickly take real time data from around the planet
and put it in their their global models. And now
they're modeling is just far superior to what's being done
in the United States.

Speaker 1 (01:27:24):
And why did we fall behind on this? Just lack
of investment, lack of interest.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
Lack of investment. You know, this was this happened. It
wasn't a Republican or Democrat thing. It happened kind of
over a decade or more. And obviously the recent cuts
to NOAH, which which aren't so much affecting day to
day forecasting as much as it is sort of draining
the future of basically forecast improvement. So it's not it

(01:27:53):
doesn't look like it's going to get better.

Speaker 1 (01:27:54):
In Tenson, does AI at all provide sort of a
finger in the dyke aspect? To things like, Okay, we're
not investing, but boy the boy, the acceleration of of
AI tools in the weather forecasting space might does that
close the gap at all?

Speaker 2 (01:28:12):
So that's a great question. And one of the really
powerful applications of AI that I've seen has been in modeling.
You know, to run a traditional physics space model, where
basically you're trying to emulate all the activity of the
physical processes around the world, and you need these vast
supercomputers and take some hours to run through these complicated

(01:28:34):
models to produce point by point forecasts. AI models don't
use physics like that. They basically learn from past forecast
conditions and to see what happened. And and those models,
some of which can be run on a desktop computer,
are shockingly.

Speaker 1 (01:28:49):
Good hurricane forecasting already.

Speaker 2 (01:28:54):
It that's to be determined, but early the early returns
are that they are almost as good as or as
good as the best physics space models in hurricane forecasting
and other kinds of forecasting as well. It's really early innings, right,
It's not like these are not mature products like the
physics based models we've been working on for decades. These
are months and years. So I do think AI has

(01:29:16):
as a really opportunity to change the game. It remains
to be seen to be me like by how much,
but absolutely it's an important component of forecasting going forward.

Speaker 1 (01:29:27):
How good is the private sector in weather forecasting? Meaning
are they throwing real money at it? As it's similar
to what we've seen with SpaceX and Elon or is
it not quite that mature of an industry if you will.

Speaker 2 (01:29:43):
The difference is that SpaceX could be its own space
agency and in a lot of ways would be superior
to NASA in the things it does. It does not
need NASA anymore for a lot of lots of things.
That's not true in the weather enterprise. Casters private companies
still rely on the federal government to collect data, to

(01:30:04):
store data, to run these large models, to run regional models.
So there's this whole foundation that the governments in Europe,
the United States, Japan, China have built and the private
apparatus is kind of built upon that. If you were
to remove that foundation, the private companies would stuffer significantly.

Speaker 1 (01:30:25):
So the private companies don't like these cuts to know.

Speaker 2 (01:30:28):
It, No, I don't think they do. Now you could
see like someone from ACU Weather being made the no
administrator who was like trying to hollow out some of
the public facing products the National Weather Service does. They
can come in and sell those, but the basic work
that the federal government does, Yes, that's not good for anyone.

Speaker 1 (01:30:48):
If you could waive a magic wand and you know,
eliminate politics out of this. What investments do you think
we need to be making in weather data collection that
we're not doing right now or that we're too slow
in doing so.

Speaker 2 (01:31:01):
The things that we need to do are improving our
ability to collect real time data around the planet, but
especially in the oceans and atmosphere near the United States,
and then we need to get much better systems to
assimilate that data. But that I mean is just you
take that data and get it into the computer models

(01:31:22):
as quickly as possible, so you're starting with the best
set of initial conditions you have. And one way where
we're we could really improve that is if you think
about all the airplanes that are taking off today from
airports around.

Speaker 1 (01:31:34):
The world, it should be weather balloons.

Speaker 2 (01:31:36):
A lot of them. Are A lot of them are
they have like a sensor on them that collect that
data as it goes up. And now you get a
very nice profile the atmosphere up to about thirty five
thousand feet. The problem is a lot of that data
is proprietary or it's not shared quickly enough. I would
try to make that much more efficient and those kinds
of things that we have the best possible information about

(01:31:57):
our planet now, so that the five day forecast is I.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
Have to say, why why is that proprietary data?

Speaker 2 (01:32:04):
Well, I mean, if you're a company that has paid,
you know, a million dollars to get your sensors or
one hundred million dollars get your censors on United Airlines planes,
then you probably want to sell that to the government
at a high price, and the government may be willing
to pay for some of it but not all of it.
Or you know, it's just that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:32:21):
The airplane can't get in the air without the government.
I mean, I don't mean to sound like a you know,
but it seems as if the government shouldn't have to
have to pay for data collection that is sort of
pickingbacking off of essentially government getting that airplane into the air.

Speaker 2 (01:32:39):
Well. I'm happy to talk space policy all day, but
do you get pretty quickly into politics. I know, of
those kinds of regulations.

Speaker 1 (01:32:45):
Oh, I hear you, but it's like that does seem
it seems odd that the government would then have to
pay for something that. Yeah, that it that, frankly is
a This feels like a good that benefits everybody. Yeah,
that it's not necessary, you know, I mean, I get
the look, I get the private sector motivation and that
specific thing, but everybody would benefit from that data.

Speaker 2 (01:33:07):
The airlines is certainly benefit from market forecasts.

Speaker 1 (01:33:10):
Right, which brings me to something that you know, did
you think thirty years ago that being a meteorologist, Because
it seems as if private companies all over the world
want to hire their own meteorologists now different, you know,
sports leagues now do it. And I say this with
a little bit of personal ambition here. My daughter's a

(01:33:32):
senior majoring in oceanography and minoring and meteorology and learning
marine biology. And you know, there was a time twenty
years ago, I don't there was really only the governments
as a place to go. This does seem as if
that the job market for people with this type of

(01:33:53):
expertise has never been better.

Speaker 2 (01:33:55):
It is a great time to be a meteorologist, you know,
with skills like I'll just give you a very basic
example the kind of information the government does provide, but
where the private company can step in. So let's say
your Target corporation, and you've got shopping carts in the
parking lot, and let's say if the wind speeds get
above twenty three miles per hour, then those carts are

(01:34:18):
blowing around and you can get lost, they could blow
into cars, they become a hazard issues.

Speaker 1 (01:34:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:34:24):
Uh, yeah, So you as target would love to know
when it's at forecast the winds or forces to give
about twenty three miles per hour at every store you operate,
and then you can communicate that to bring in the
cars or carts or do whatever. And so ten years ago,
fifteen years ago, that's kind of where the private weather

(01:34:45):
industry was like like sort of helping those kind of
use cases. And it's just grown, especially as with climate change,
weather becomes more uncertain and it's becomes more impactful. So
it's it's just, you know, it's every business has their
own specific you know, information they need about weather, and
so it makes sense that this is happening, especially since

(01:35:06):
the government provides it's a generalized product, you know, they
provide the warnings for hurricanes and tornadoes and things like that.
They don't provide specific forecast to target.

Speaker 1 (01:35:16):
Look the I think one of the more remarkable developments
over the last fifteen years has been micro forecasting. You know,
I sit here and I think, frankly, it's a it's
it's something every local I'm trying desperately to come up,
you know, work in this space of how do we
expand more local news again, how do we revitalize it?
And micro forecasting is something everybody wants. I mean, I

(01:35:38):
live in the the Washington metro area. I don't want
Washington DC weather. I want Arlington County weather, right, And
I'm you know, for the most part, you can get
that in Capital Weather Gang, which is one of the
few local products that the Post does that is really
really good and almost like reason alone when you live
in this community to be a subscrip Bribert, this micro

(01:36:02):
forecasting just wasn't possible. It seemed like fifteen years ago
that this part of weather forecasting has really improved.

Speaker 2 (01:36:08):
So Capitol Weather Game folks are good friends of mine,
and I operated a site in Houston called Spacity whether
that's similar in scope to that, So I'm very well
familiar with what you're talking about. I think the big change, Chuck,
is the Internet. Like I worked at a newspaper before,
and forecasting was your forecast was twelve to eighteen.

Speaker 1 (01:36:28):
Hours late by the time it automated to print. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:36:31):
So the Internet was a great equalizer because you could
put as much information out there. You could share all
kinds of graphics and things like that, and so it
became a better medium than television for communicating that kind
of information. So, yes, the forecasting tools have improved, but
also the means of communication the medium.

Speaker 1 (01:36:47):
Well, let me add so the data itself was probably
there fifteen years ago, we just didn't have a good
way of sharing it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:54):
The data has certainly improved in terms of amount and
accessibility online, but the ability to share it has also
been a big piece of what's changed.

Speaker 1 (01:37:06):
Before I let you go tell me about arts Technica
and tell me the mission and sort of I'm curious
what you've thought of the transition from the Houston, you know,
Houston Chronicle to this.

Speaker 2 (01:37:18):
Yeah. So, our Technic is a digital publication. It's been
around for about twenty five years, bought by Conde Nasts
about a decade ago or a little bit longer, and
it's just it's just a news, technology, science, space news
website where we try to, you know, provide rational information
and increasingly irrational world.

Speaker 1 (01:37:39):
I hear there the transition. Do do you feel as
if you're in the independent space or how do you
describe it?

Speaker 2 (01:37:46):
I'll tell you what. I wrote a lot about NASA
when I was at the Houston Chronicle covered Johnson Space Center.
I did feel like I was more restrained writing for
the traditional publication, Like there were times I wanted to
take the gloves off a little bit and be a
little more critical. And so moving online has been more
freeing in that sense of being able to write more

(01:38:06):
of what I want to write and what I think
is most important to cover.

Speaker 1 (01:38:09):
What is your balance in writing for experts versus writing
for lay people versus writing for the general public?

Speaker 2 (01:38:16):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:38:16):
I think to me that's the real challenge. And maybe
AI is going to be a great tool for this. Hey,
you know, take this and help me translate it to
an audience that doesn't have you know that maybe hasn't
read up on this, etcetera, etcetera. But how do you
think about it when you're writing? Who are you writing for?
In your head.

Speaker 2 (01:38:34):
Yeah, so it's a great question. So at the Chronicle
it was very much a general lay audience. Ours Technica,
as the name suggests, is a little bit more of
a technical oriented site, so it's more for like a
more informed audience. But still, I mean, you know, with
space and other topics, you get pretty niche pretty quickly,
and so I think I would say it's written for

(01:38:56):
an intellectually curious audience.

Speaker 1 (01:39:00):
I'd like to think that that's where I qualify because
I don't know any of the technolo the technology that well,
but but I'm just enough to be dangerous enough to
ask questions which is which is? I guess that's a start.

Speaker 2 (01:39:12):
You got to be curious about the natural world and
want to learn more.

Speaker 1 (01:39:15):
Yeah, it is one more for you because it's something
I've said to my daughter, since you're you're both you're
you're into science on this planet and and in outer space.
Do we know more about our solar system or our oceans?
There's been this idea that we actually may not know
as much about our oceans as we think we do.

Speaker 2 (01:39:37):
Yeah, no, I I think that's that's that's a tough
one for me to answer. There's certainly a lot of
undiscovered country and our oceans as well as the Solar System.
I do think we're more actively exploring the Solar System
and have some pretty interesting missions that are in the works,
are just flying to interesting places. So I think we've
probably explored more of the Solar System than the but

(01:40:00):
I also think there's probably more things to be discovered.
As we talked about beneath the ice on Europa, we're
sending a really cool mission to fly across the Saturn
Moon Titan. There's lots of things to discover, whereas I
don't think we're going to discover you know, super large
new species as the part of the ocean, although I
mean I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:40:19):
Know no, But is is there ocean exploration that would
help with you know, sort of weather history, which then
in turn would help with weather forecasting.

Speaker 2 (01:40:29):
So it's a great field called paleo tempestology, which looks.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
My daughter's favorite professor at Miami is a palaeontologist, weather climate.
I forget what he called himself, but yes, in this field,
it's fascinating.

Speaker 2 (01:40:43):
It is fascinating what you can learn by going out
and studying the planet, and it just it's it's all beneficial.

Speaker 1 (01:40:51):
Yeah, uh, Eric, this is great. It was really great
to get to know you as as you see, I'm
sort of a junkie. He doesn't know very much about it,
but it's desperate to want to know more. And am
I Do you hate the for All Mankind references? And
when people like me ask you those questions? Or do
you find that that show is actually healthy for your beat?

(01:41:15):
Because I say this in that I hate the West Wing. Okay,
I can't stand when people say to me, how come
this is it like the West Wing? God damn it,
That's not the way it works. And yet here I
am taking a fantasy TV show and trying to apply
it to the real world. So I'm curious your reaction
on that.

Speaker 2 (01:41:31):
So first of all, I say, what about VP? Does
that more accurately portray well?

Speaker 1 (01:41:34):
VIEP is more accurate? Yes, that is the more correct
version of how our share show really works.

Speaker 2 (01:41:39):
Yes, my favorite show about to White House Politics, So
I would say I like it because I think For
All Mankind does. One of the technical consultants is Garrett Reesman,
a former Astronauts friend of mine. He does a great
job sort of trying to keep it real and I
think anything that increases public interest and exploration, I mean space.

(01:42:00):
At the end of the day, everyone was kind of interested,
but it's kind of like a mile wide and an
inch deep, and so anything that sort of deepens that
interest is is valuable to me.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
Well, look, it's I'm glad to hear that on the
space side, because I was really impressed at how they
handled the politics, the alternative history there they were. They
made some they made turns of who would win, who
would lose, and all this stuff, and they were very
clever about it. That wasn't unrealistic based on different forks
in the road. So I'm glad to know that that
as a as on the on the space side and

(01:42:29):
the technical side, that they they tried to stay I
guess within within the possible they get.

Speaker 2 (01:42:36):
I think it was an attempt to make a realistic
fictional show.

Speaker 1 (01:42:40):
Yeah, and no, it did, and it made a lot
of sense if if you know, if we had lost
to the Soviets, I do believe we would have acted, well,
we're not going to lose anything else, let's throw it
in more resources. That is that is uh, the American way. Anyway,
Eric Burger, this was terrific. Thanks for your time. Thank you,
you got it well, I hope I scratched your geek

(01:43:13):
itch there on that. I know, I scratched my Space
geek itch. And ultimately, you know I got. One of
the great pieces of advice I got about podcasting is
if you're not interested in the guest, neither's your audience.
If you're interested in the guest, it's likely that your
audience will be interested in the guest. So I am
marking that time. But it is time for the podcast

(01:43:33):
time machine. Where are we going? Where could we be going? Well,
where are we going? We are going and give you
the date, the specific date.

Speaker 2 (01:43:50):
Here.

Speaker 1 (01:43:51):
We are going to October twenty fifth. As you know, right,
I'm always looking at the week, the week we're in.
So October twenty fifth, this week, where that is the
date I am latching onto because in October twenty fifth,
nineteen twenty nine, the United States government and a jury,

(01:44:11):
and a jury made up of US citizens, convicted the
first ever Cabinet secretary to prison. And it all had
to do, and in fact, it all happened. He gets convicted,
and a couple of days later, the stock market crash
and the Roaring twenties come to a total and complete end.

(01:44:32):
But that's where I want to bring you. So October
twenty fifth, nineteen twenty nine, how did we get to
that point where we prosecuted a cabinet secretary? He was
prosecuted for his role in so called Teapot Dome. So
this is I've been teasing about this. Let's talk about it.
It was the Roaring twenties. It was a decade that

(01:44:52):
treated oil like we treat data today, the fuel of
the future, limitless and irresistible. Right, the car was just
coming up. Everybody realized how important oil was. Well, data
is that thing today. Just setting that aside there, just
be thinking about that. But let's go back to the twenties.
At the center of all of it sat a rock

(01:45:12):
formation in the Wyoming Desert that was shaped like a teapot.
This is how the scandal got its name. Beneath it,
the US Navy had stored millions of barrels of crude
oil for wartime emergencies. This site was called Teapot Dome.
When Warren G. Hardy became president in nineteen twenty one,
he promised to make Washington run like a business. We've

(01:45:35):
heard that before, right, He was genial, handsome, little bit
more of a salesman than manager, and his poker knights
in the White House reflected that the press called his
inner circle the Ohio Gang. These were members of his
regular poker gang. They were his friends from Marion, Ohio,
Harding's newspaper pals. They were campaign backers and other hanger ons,

(01:45:56):
and followed into DC the Attorney General, Harrydaughtry. He used
the Justice Department as a political machine, part of the
Ohio Gang. Charles Forbes at the Veterans Bureau skimmed hospital
construction contracts and fled to Europe when he got caught.
Jess Smith was the fixer for Harry Daughtry at Justice.
He killed himself as investigations began to close in. It

(01:46:20):
was a government that looked like a poker table full
of cigars and whiskeys, and IOUs into that circle stepped
another man, Albert Bacon Fall. He was a hard drinking
former senator from New Mexico. Harding admired his frontier swagger
this New Mexico in the nineteen teens and twenties. Right

(01:46:42):
Fall ran the Interior Department, and he saw those idle
navy oil reserves as wasted assets. Harding, trusting his friend
mister Fall, signed an executive order that quietly transferred control
of those fields from the Navy to the Interior Department.
Fall then leased them without competitive bidding to two oil barons,

(01:47:05):
Harry F. Sinclair, founder of Sinclair Oil. He took Teapot
Dome in Wyoming, and yes, that's the same Sinclair Era
with the green Dinosaur logo still operating out of Tulsa today.
Edward L. Dohiney was the head of the Pan American
Petroleum and Transport Company. He received the California naval reserves

(01:47:27):
at oil reserves at Elk's, Elk Hills and Buena Vista.
Dony's firm would eventually be absorbed into Standard Oil of Indiana,
later Amaco and then BP. Sort of a corporate fossil
that still traces roots to this deal. So what did
Fall get in return? Well, he got four hundred thousand dollars,

(01:47:48):
which is seven million dollars in today's dollars in loans
and gifts. One infamous delivery saw Downy's son carry a
black bag full of cat straight into Falls Washington apartment.
We haven't had fifty thousand dollars paper bags of cash
in any story lately have we? But I digress. When

(01:48:10):
the story leaked in nineteen twenty two, the US Senate
decided to launch hearings led by Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana,
a Democrat. Harding, weary and embarrassed, set off on a
cross country voyage of understanding in order to reconnect with
the public. Essentially, pay no attention to these scandal headlines
that you're seeing. By the summer of nineteen twenty three,
twenty three, rumors were swirling not just about Teapot Dome,

(01:48:33):
but about Harding's personal life as well. He had carried
on a long affair with a woman named Nan Britton,
who claimed her daughter was Harding's child. It's a claim
that would be confirmed by DNA tests in twenty fifteen.
By the way, another mistress, Carrie Phillips, had written him
hundreds of steamy letters the Republican Party would pay to suppress.

(01:48:55):
So when Harding collapsed in San Francisco that August nineteen
twenty three and died suddenly at the age of fifty seven.
Remember he was a little bit overweight, the whispers spread
faster than the telegrams had he been poisoned this this
is something to do with teapot, don't had he died
in bed with another woman. The truth, of course, was

(01:49:15):
more mundane. He likely had a heart attack brought on
by exhaustion and bad health. But the gossip boy did
that stick because the corruption already felt contagious after his death,
President Calvin Coolidge silent cow allowed investigators to keep digging
because he really wasn't that involved in this. In nineteen
twenty seven, the Supreme Court voided both leases, calling them

(01:49:37):
products of corruption and fraud. And on October twenty fifth,
which will be coming up pretty soon, so we're almost
at the one hundredth anniversary. That the ninety sixth anniversary,
Albert Fall was convicted of bribery. He'd be the first U. S.
Cabinet member ever sent to prison. He served nine months,
and he died penniless a decade later. He didn't I

(01:49:58):
guess he didn't have a president that was willing to
pardon him or commute his sentence. But I digress. That
convention came the very same week the stock market crash,
ending the Roaring twenties with some poetic symmetry, a nation
drunk on speculation finally waking up with a hangover look.
I bring this up not because it's an interesting nugget

(01:50:20):
in history, but because, as we know, history as a
way of not quite repeating itself. But boyd does it run.
So here we are a century later. The names have changed,
but the temptation hasn't. One hundred years ago, it was oilies.
Now it's the public private partnerships, infrastructure megaprojects, defense startups,
crypto mining zones, social media ventures, all dressed up as innovation,

(01:50:45):
all blurring who's serving whom. President Trump has made these
deals a centerpiece of his second term. Some may be legitimate, but,
as with Harding, personal loyalty often outruns public accountability. The
language is even really familiar. Right efficiency, cutting red tape,
bringing business savvy to government. Harding used that language, So

(01:51:06):
does Trump. Albert Fall use those phrases to justify bypassing
the competitive bidding rules. Teapot Dome taught Congress why oversight
is not bureaucracy, it's protection. It birthed, in fact, the
modern system of inspectors general at different cabinet agencies. We
didn't have them before this. Financial disclosures, senate investigations that

(01:51:29):
still bear Washle's fingerprints, the Montana Senator. But the guardrails
only work if we use them, and this Congress does
no oversight. We've gone through this the politically, we only
will do Congress will only do oversight if the president,
and if Congress is controlled by a different party than
the president in the White House. It actually probably we

(01:51:50):
ought to change our oversight rules. I believe Japan does
it this way, where the out party should always be
in charge of oversight, just pure and simple. You know,
whatever party the president is, the chairman of the oversight
committee with subpoena power ought to be ought to be
from the other party. But I digress. So making government
run like a business sounds good until the business becomes

(01:52:13):
self dealing. And that's what happened with Harding, and that
is a concern of what's happening today. Harding's friends called
him the most likable man alive, and that was the problem.
He couldn't say no to anyone he liked. Sounds familiar,
doesn't it Today is the federal government signs profit sharing
deals with companies tied to the president's allies and family network.
The same question Lingers that haunted teapot Dome. Where does

(01:52:33):
public service and and private profit begin? If history has
a lesson, it's this when secrecy and self interest merge.
The scandal isn't an accident, It's inevitable. So before we
all call every new venture a partnership, remember what happened
in October twenty fifth, nineteen twenty nine, when Albert Fall
traded the nation's trust for personal gain. And he fell

(01:52:54):
hard enough to give his name to history on this one.
So there's your history lesson for the day, Teapot Dome.
I'm telling you, folks, forget Watergate. Are you looking for
a parallel of an uncomfortable situation we're in right now
with the government's relationship with the tech industry. Go back
to the twenties, my friend, go back to the twenties.

(01:53:16):
All right, with that, let's take a new Let's do
a couple of questions, and I'll get in quickly to
my college football takes. Ask Chuck. I'm going to do
just a couple questions because I went a little bit long.
Here's the first one, Rich from New York. Hi, Chuck,
love the show. Appreciate all you do for all of us.
Keeping a level head in politics. On Saturday, I participated

(01:53:39):
in the No Kings march. It had great energy, but
at a minimum made me feel like I'm not crazy
for my outrage other than my own personal feelings. Does
it have any impact on politics? It seems to me
these protests were large and blue northern cities where the
Trump administration has been hostile. Additionally, this will have zero
to no effect on Mike Johnson or John Thune, and
it also won't have any real effects on the midterms.
Lay it to me straight, Did I waste my Saturday

(01:54:00):
or is there something accomplished from the protest? Thanks? Well, look,
I'm curious what you think of the what I said
the two measurables were measurables were of this? I do think, like,
you know, if Democrats overperform in Virginia in November, and
to me, overperform, is you know, getting north of fifty

(01:54:20):
five state house seats, winning all three of the state
wide elections, even with an extraordinarily flawed, if not unqualified
candidate for attorney general. Well that will tell you. These
protests were certainly helped with political organizing. I think the
fact that the president expressed his feelings so grotesquely and

(01:54:41):
there's been this sort of demonization of Americans here. I
think that actually is going to have some legs that
likely won't go well politically for the Republicans. But again,
you're not wrong for asking this question. It was the

(01:55:02):
question I essentially led the podcast with today to which
if you're listening all the way through, you already know this,
But I will say this, be careful underestimating the impact
of these protests. I think it's quite remarkable that where
there was an incredibly nice day all over the country
in many places, well actually, unless you were in Fayetteville, Arkansas,

(01:55:23):
where they had a two hour rain delay for that
football game, it was a pretty nice day. In a
lot of these cities, there was plenty of reasons to
do other things. I think this, You know, if it's
a trigger in political organization and voter registration, then that's

(01:55:46):
how you can call these effective. All right, let me
dig the next questionnaire. David from Baltimore. Since most people
assume that liberals control the mainstream media. While there may
be a moderate liberal slant in much of the news,
or at least in what's left of it, I feel
that MAGA actually dominates the talking points. Trump in particular,
has mastered the art of deflection when it comes to
media coverage. Simple remarks, some like suggesting he might run again,

(01:56:06):
end up distracting the public from issues such as the
legality of ICE raids, military actions in Venezuela, or the
blatant corruption involving Trump and his family, all three topics
that I think we've already discussed in this episode and
didn't do too much on Ice. How can democrats regain
control of the narrative and keep public attention focused on
the issues that matter most, especially those that could make

(01:56:26):
a real difference in future elections. David for Baltimore. Look,
I do think you know it's funny. I do think
that all media consumption has a right lean. Right. If
you look at the totality of social media, the totality
of if you put it all together, the ideological lean

(01:56:47):
and the sort of impact is on the right. Right.
There's definitely more on the right than on the left.
The right's a bit more comfortable, sort of sort of
rallying around one large talking point. The left is more diffuse. Right,
I think the fact is that Trump, the anti Trump
coalition does not have a lot in common other than

(01:57:09):
anti Trump, The pro Trump coalition has a ton in common.
They feel grievance and victimhood and all of this in
that sense, and that has fueled so right. Social media
really has proved to be an accelerant for victimhood and grievances,
and I think because of that it has allowed the
right to essentially control the narrative right. And that's essentially

(01:57:33):
what you're saying. Chris Hayes, an MSNBC host. He's written
he's written a pretty good interesting i'p ed today in
The Times that I would tell you to check it out.
And he's wrote a book about this issue of the
attention economy and his essentially his answer to this question
is Democrats have to essentially do what they can to

(01:57:57):
dominate the attention economy, even if it's on issue hues
that have nothing to do with politics. That Donald Trump
essentially and it goes back to sort of a philosophy
he would sort of adopt somebody else's grievance on anything,
almost like that's sort of where this Maha movement, how
did it end up in the Mega movement. These are

(01:58:17):
folks who are pretty liberal on a lot of issues,
but they have sort of they have some antiquated views
of science, and they found their grievance partner in Donald Trump, right.
And so you know, I wonder if it's attitudinal right

(01:58:37):
that if the left wants to But I just you know,
I go back to something my mother said, why she's
a Democrat because she doesn't want to agree with everything
someone says. She views the Democratic Party is more diverse
on disagreeing with each other, more open to being although

(01:58:58):
I think that's less and less. I think there was
a time the Democratic Party was the bigger tent, and
now the Republican Party has become the bigger tent, or
the perceived bigger tent. And when you look at where
young men are, where this Maha movement is there certainly
are in Latino voters. There's certainly some pieces there. There
seems to be more rules, you know, And that's where

(01:59:20):
if you're looking for add initudinal, the left seems to
have a bunch of rules that keep people from supporting them.
The right has no rules. But in a weird way,
it makes it a bit more inviting, or it feels
as if you can you're not going to get judged
if you decide you're going to support them on one
issue and none of the others. So that's basically where

(01:59:43):
I come out. I do think the point you make
those an important one, which is, let's not forget. Yes,
the New York Times may lean left, but overall most
the totality of media people consume it all leans right.
People are getting a right leaning media narrative on a
more consistent basis than anything being driven being driven by

(02:00:07):
the left, and that's born out by actual data. Right,
there's this perception. You say something enough people believe it.
Media is liberal, media is liberal. Media's liberal. Media is liberal.
The media is much bigger than what you know. If
you want to say Dan Rather was liberal, or you
want to say The New York Times was liberal, or
you want to say CNN or MEMBSBC, but it is
not the dominant to sort of. It may have the

(02:00:33):
more famous names that run those news organizations, but it's
not actually the dominant content that's out there. The content
of the internet leans right. All right, let me dig
into my weekend from hell, the loss, the University of
Miami's loss. Now, look as I sort of as I previewed,

(02:00:58):
I said, this was Louisville's most important game of the year.
It always is. This is one of those every every
major football program has rivalries that they don't care about
as much as the other team cares about. Right in
the Big Ten, there's a ton of them. Right, Michigan Minnesota,
I think they do the Brown jug game. Boyd does
Minnesota care about that? Eh, Michigan Right Michigan Michigan State.

(02:01:20):
Boy does Michigan State care about that game? Michigan doesn't
want to lose it. They hate when Little Brother wins,
but they care more about Ohio State for Miami we
care about I care about the Florida State game, and
I think Florida State equally cares about the Miami That's
one of those where the rivalries it's kind of like

(02:01:41):
Michigan Ohoa State, but Florida doesn't care about the Miami
game as much as Miami cares about beating Florida. I
think there was a time Miami Notre Dame was pretty
equal and maybe that comes back if they start playing
each other at TAD more frequently because of this acc
rotation and because they're going to drop USC Miami Notre Dame.
I just you know, and you know it's a there

(02:02:03):
is it has just a little bit of everything. But
it is one of those not name fans care about it.
They don't like losing to Miami because of those memories,
at least at least there. But it's still it's it's
a point in time rivalry. So I don't know, they
need to play more for it to come back. Now
Louisville and Miami are going to play more. It's really
important to Louisville to win this game, so they put

(02:02:24):
everything into it. You know, this isn't a game where
we can you know, there's been this assumption and frankly,
Miami's done this for years. Even in their national title years,
there was always a game they almost blew out of nowhere.
I remember ed Reid saving a game against Boston College.
In Boston College, we were playing terribly and Boston College

(02:02:45):
is about to go in for the winning touchdown and
he just grabs a ball. He just he we get
a turnover and then he grabs the ball and runs
it in for a touchdown and just puts the game away.
But it was like Edward wasn't going to let us lose,
But we almost blew a game that we had no
I think we're three your four touchdown favorites in that one.
Every year there's a game like this, there's been this reputation.

(02:03:06):
Is Mario Christobal going to like, you know, screw up
you know, the clock management game or something like this,
like that infamous Georgia Tech game two years ago. There
was none of that there. This was Carson Beck trying
to be a hero. I saw a lot of Georgia
fans pop up in my feed to say, hey, we
know this version of Carson Beck. Look he did, he

(02:03:26):
tried to be a hero, and yet we still almost
won the game. So I'm weirdly I expected this or
Pitt to be the game that bitness. Pitt is our
last game of the year, and that's that pit hopefully.
Now this means we are super focused in every game,
and we look they scored. When you look at what
Louisville had to do, they used every they literally created

(02:03:47):
an entirely new first Drive game plan. They got their touchdown.
They never ran any of those plays again because you
only can really run them once, and they essentially they
scored quickly fourteen points and then and then Miami won
the rest of the game twenty one to ten. But
I wasn't enough. Fourtun neerves are going to do that,

(02:04:09):
pure and simple. So I'm disappointed, sadly, a little not surprised.
I hate these Friday Island games. They suck, all right,
they simply suck. So what does that tell us about
college foot? Look, I I think it's still possible that everybody,
everybody in the playoff will have one loss. That's that's

(02:04:33):
my bold, hot take prediction. Everybody in the playoff will
have at least one loss. Now, of course, the question
is who beats Ohio State. Well, won't be Penn State
in two weeks, that, I promise you. But UCLA goes
to Ohio State, are you betting against I bet I'm

(02:04:53):
certainly not gonna bet on UCLA winning that game, but
I bet you that's close. They play Michigan and then
I'll have the Big Ten title game. I think they
have three games on their schedule that they are that
they need to be a little bit concerned about the
UCLA game, the Michigan game, which will be at Michigan,
and then of course the likely title game against Indiana.

(02:05:14):
The potential for them to have one loss is certainly there.
How about Indiana, where would they get their one loss. Well,
Indiana has remaining. I think we're all curious ab how
UCLA does against You know, the UCLA is a totally
different team now, right, they should be fine at Maryland

(02:05:37):
and at Penn State, But aren't you kind of curious
to see how those road games go. Indiana is different
on the road. They almost they should have lost Iowa.
Maybe that's the game that will be the one that
they should have lost, and there'll be none of others.
And don't sleep on their last game of the season
against Purdue. It's at Purdue, right, and these in state
rivalries throw the records out. Then of course there's a

(02:05:58):
big ten title gamex A and M. That's the other
big undefeated that's left. I think, what do we have
left in the undefeated?

Speaker 2 (02:06:04):
That's it?

Speaker 1 (02:06:04):
Really. I think that's the major undefeateds that could be
in the playoff. A and M. I think I said
told you they would get a scare in this one.
They have LSU next week. Although this feels like we're
going to find out everything we need to know about
Brian Kelly, Billy Napier was the firing so far, I
play is LSU gonna also have an open I mean,
my god, the level of jobs out there. I mean,

(02:06:26):
what the hell is Virginia Tech gonna do? Right? They're
behind Penn State, They're behind Florida, now behind UCLA. Does
LSU change? Arkansas already has big money that they're throwing
at their potential coaching opening. So I think next week
LSU loses, Kelly gets fired. That's because the game's at LSU.

(02:06:46):
We're going to find out how much this team likes
Brian Kelly. Will they rally for him. It's a huge game,
and m plays at Missouri, and of course they have
the big game against Texas at the end of the season,
so there's certainly plenty of ways that they that they
are likely to go down. So the likelihood that everybody
has one loss, right, b YU still undefeated. I doubt

(02:07:08):
they finish their season undefeated. It's just unlikely that's going
to happen. Georgia Tech's undefeated, that's another one. They got
Georgia left on their schedule, and they're going to face
a Miami or a Louisville or somebody like that in
the ACC title game. So just consider that. Maybe I'm
just saying that I make myself feel better about Miami.
There's a tiny bit of that in me. I'm not

(02:07:29):
gonna lie. But it's also the way this college football
season's going. I think if you could find a bet
out there that say there'll be no undefeated team in
the playoff. I have no idea whether Fandel, DraftKings, bet MGM,
whoever wants to sponsor my little segment here. They're welcome
to sponsor it, so we'll only pick one of you,

(02:07:50):
But that would be a fun bet to lay that
no undefeated team will be invited to the playoff. Mark
it down. That's my prediction, all right. With that, I
will see in forty eight hours. Thanks for investing some
time in this show. Appreciate your support, Appreciate your listenership.
Thank you for all those likes. Tell your friends more subscriptions.

(02:08:13):
We appreciate it. See in forty eight hours.
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