Engineering Solutions: William Taggart on Rethinking America's Social, Cultural, and Political Challenges

What if we could engineer solutions to America's toughest challenges? Join us as we engage with William Taggart, a veteran professional engineer and author of "Fixing America: An Engineer's Solution to Our Social, Cultural, and Political Problems." Together, we unpack his data-driven, non-partisan approach to addressing issues like energy consumption, population growth, and gun culture. William's insights challenge the status quo, urging political parties to rethink their strategies and adopt practical, evidence-based solutions. His logical and well-researched arguments will captivate you, just as they did me, encouraging openness to new perspectives and fostering personal growth.

As we navigate through complex topics, we unravel the intricacies behind America's energy use and the transition to renewable resources. Our conversation veers into the realm of gun violence, where William reframes the debate, identifying poverty as a root cause rather than focusing solely on gun ownership. This episode is an invitation to move beyond superficial fixes and explore the cultural and systemic contexts that exacerbate societal issues. Discover how thoughtful analysis and comprehensive strategies can mitigate problems that often seem intractable.

The discussion also shines a light on the role of social media in exacerbating cultural divides while eclipsing critical issues like energy policy and national debt. William and I examine the shifting political landscape, advocating for discourse that transcends party lines and prioritizes education, poverty alleviation, and informed decision-making. This episode is a call to action for moderate voices to reclaim the political narrative, offering solutions grounded in history and data. By bridging political divides through education, we aim to pave the way for a more cohesive and progressive society.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Hello and welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast.
I'm your host, jack Hopkins.
Today's guest is WilliamTaggart.
William is a 30-yearprofessional engineer and if
there's anything that life hastaught me, it's that engineers
are solution-focused.
They look at what works andwhat doesn't work.

(00:48):
That's their whole game findingsolutions.
They tend not to get married toideas or a certain concept or a
certain philosophy about howsomething should be done or how
to go about it.
They are willing to ditchanything that doesn't work and

(01:13):
embrace anything that will.
William is the author of FixingAmerica, an engineer's solution
to our social, cultural andpolitical problems.
Now, if you are somebody who'snever listened to Our Social,
cultural and Political Problems,now if you are somebody who's
never listened to the JackHopkins Show podcast before and
today's your first episode youmight come away from it thinking

(01:36):
I don't know that.
I can say for sure who this guyvoted for.
And in this episode that's kindof the point, because the
thrust of this book is sayinglook, just because this party
has had this idea and run onthis concept for decades and

(02:01):
it's very important to them, ifit's not working, let's
criticize it, let's ditch it andlet's talk about the lunacy of
continuing to run with an ideathat hasn't worked or just isn't
feasible to implement.
And you'll find that thesolutions offered in this book

(02:28):
do not honor any particularparty.
In fact, on almost every pointor issue cultural issue,
societal or political concern,societal or political concern he

(02:50):
talks about things that eachparty needs to give up and get
rid of in terms of the agendasthat they push, but he also
talks about what each partyneeds to be willing to embrace.
I only got William's book in themail yesterday and I had told
him originally I wasn't going toread the book before we did
this episode because I wanted tocome from a know-nothing state

(03:11):
of mind.
Well, I guess I lied to himbecause I thought, well, I'm
just going to just kind of takea peek and this was late
yesterday afternoon, I guess itwas and as I started reading, I
soon found that I couldn't putit down.
I found that so many of hisconcepts and thoughts on the

(03:35):
various issues mirrored mine soclosely, the difference being he
had done the hard work, thedeep research to back everything
up, and it was reallyinteresting and refreshing and I
can't wait to dive back intothe rest of it tonight.
You are going to like thisepisode because it does

(03:59):
something that's pretty raretoday.
It doesn't honor a particularparty, it doesn't have a bias to
it, doesn't have a slant to it,it's just an exploration of
ideas and concepts, and you mayhear me agreeing with some
things or nodding to some thingsin this episode that make you

(04:23):
go, or nodding to some things inthis episode that make you go.
What Jack's agreeing with that?
If there's anything I pridemyself on, it is always being
willing to change my positionbased on new and better
information, and I've got totell you there have been some

(04:45):
points made in this book thatare backed by the data, that
have altered my thinking on somepretty critical issues.
Not that they are not importantto me any longer, it's just
that how we go about solvingthem.

(05:06):
That is what is a little bitdifferent now, because somebody
has showed me that, hey, youknow the way you thought we had
to do this.
Here are the facts.
That way has never worked andand it won't, and here's why.

(05:27):
But here's the data on whatwill.
So it's an interesting episodeand if it's one that leaves you
scratching your head, that's agood thing, because I've always
said the worst type of episodeor book that you can read, in

(05:52):
terms of you learning andgrowing, is one where you agree
with everything every step ofthe way, if it doesn't make you
rock back and go I don't knowabout this and force you to
think about it in more detail.
It may be interesting, but youare probably not growing and

(06:13):
learning.
So anyway, with that, let'sdive into this discussion with
William Taggart, the author ofFixing America and the
Engineer's Solution to OurSocial, cultural and Political
Problems.
Okay, william, I had told you insome emails that you know, when

(06:38):
I get your book maybe I'llglance at the chapters, but I
kind of want to enter this froma know-nothing position so I can
really curiously ask you aboutthe book.
And I found that I'm going tostill be able to do that.
But I couldn't keep myself.
I thought I'm going to peek ata couple of chapters and then I

(07:01):
couldn't stop.
A couple of chapters and then Icouldn't stop.
And I couldn't stop becausewhat you have written just makes
sense and it's so refreshingbecause so many of the books out
there today, if they arewritten by somebody who voted

(07:22):
Democrat, they're going to havea Democratic slant to them for
their voted for.
So I think what you and I havein common, even though what
we've done in our lives areseemingly so different you as an
engineer and myself as a changeagent, helping people with

(07:44):
their personal problems thething that you and I have held
in mind, I think that is thesame.
People used to ask me, jack,what theory do you operate from,
meaning you know, psychologicaltheory or therapeutic approach?

(08:05):
And my answer was always thesame I don't.
I don't.
Theories for me in the realm Iworked, are a trap.
The minute I assign a certaintheory, it's kind of the if all
you have have is a hammer,everything looks like a nail.

(08:27):
Yeah, right and yeah, so let'sget into.
I know you have kind of afoundational section in the
front of the book that kind oflays out the um underpinnings
the, the premise, and it's it'sso.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
My thing is coming from an engineer, and one of the
phrases that drives me insaneis when people say think outside
the box.
Well, when you're an engineer,you're tasked to build something
that has a job to do, so thefunction is the first thing.
You've submitted a budget.
They've agreed to pay this muchmoney for that task to be done,
and then you've got a schedulethey want it done by this date.

(09:08):
So those three things definethe box that engineers have to
play in, and so you can becreative as hell as you want
inside the box, but don't breakthe budget, don't go be late and
, for God's sake, it's got to dowhat you said it would do.
So this is the idea that thosefirst eight chapters lay out.
Okay, what's the box?
We have to play it.

(09:30):
And the thing I'm coming to moreand more is this the national
debt can't be broken.
You got to get, you got to workwith it in the terms of the
national debt.
Um, climate change is the thingthat first got me started in
this, and I'll tell you thatstory in just a moment.
And then it's.
You know, this is America.
We have the Constitution, we'vehad a balance between authority

(09:55):
and responsibility and we'vegot to maintain that it's what's
worked, so don't break thatrule.
And that defines the box.
We need to find it, and I thinkour commonality is we're
looking for solutions, yes, andwe're not trying to lock in on
an ideology.
It's, hey, what works here, andthat was really amazed me yeah,
you know you, you bring up.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
You said, I think what we have in common we're
both looking for solutions.
Um, I will tell you somethingthis whole influencer thing on
social media was nothing I everplanned to do, but with it has
come facing someresponsibilities and obligations
that I fear a lot ofinfluencers never recognize.

(10:43):
For example, one thing I'vediscovered at this point is, if
I want to gain a whole lot morefollowers, right, all I need to
do is fall in step with thedemocratic, democratic idea on
everything, and that will assureme that write new followers.

(11:10):
But when you think about theterm influencer my
responsibility, as I see it, ifI'm going to be influencing
people, I have a duty toinfluence them in useful ways,
not popular ways, right, andsometimes popular, as I'm sure

(11:34):
you had running through yourhead as you were writing this
book.
What's popular within the partyand what works or what's
sensible are at odds with oneanother, at least initially.
Yeah, yeah, you know what Imean initially, in the
acceptance of the idea, they'renot at odds with one another in

(11:57):
terms of the uh outcome or thatit, this idea, can eventually
work.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
It's just that in that acceptance period, but one
of the big things I see that'swrong is we've become very
tribal.
We've become very much.
We're in our group, we're inour media bubble and we don't
venture out of it.
And one of the things I make inthe book is you've got leaders
who are saying the other side isevil, they're deranged, they're

(12:25):
mad and, as a result, peoplecan talk with other people and
make deals where they don'ttotally view, if they view the
other side as intelligent andthey can work to find a middle
ground, but if you say the otherside's insane or deranged,
you're not going to talk withthem.
We've lost those discussionsand, as a result, people live in

(12:47):
these media bubbles.
We've become very tribal and Ithink that's the big thing
that's killing us right now.
Because it's interesting thebook was.
I never set out to write a book.
What happened was in 2020, Iwas running a big oil and gas

(13:07):
project through the worst ofcovid and at the end of that, I
realized I've been workingstraight for 32 years at that
point and I said I'm done, I'mbroken, I've had enough, I gotta
step away from this.
And I stepped back and I hadtime.
And one of the first things iswhen you're in oil and gas,
you're, you're told we'reburning the planet down.
Our climate change is a hoaxand I'm like, okay, I, for my

(13:31):
own peace of mind, I need tounderstand this, and I'm tired
of being told what to feel, whatto believe.
I want to look at the dataright um.
so my career was built aroundtwo main things.
One, I was either running bigprojects and having to get stuff
built and that's part of yougot to learn how to compromise,
because you got to stay and playwithin the box and you got to

(13:53):
figure out how to get it done.
But the other times I would begiven a problem.
It's hey, this is broken, findout, why, fix it.
So when someone says do theresearch, I've done the research
.
I've had to go, pull all thedata, look through all the files
and figure out, okay, what wentwrong?
Who pulled the wrong valve?
What's going on here?
So I looked at climate change.

(14:13):
I said, okay, let's look atthis.
And when I got done, there wasa point where I went, okay, this
is not the answer I expected.
In the book I talk about how Ididn't get the answer initially,
once I started looking atpopulation density and other
stuff, I began to realize whatclimate change is.
Climate change is real, butwe're not burning the planet

(14:34):
down, but we do need to makeadjustments for it.
And once I did that, it led meinto immigration, it led me into
lots of other topics and atthat point I turned to my wife I
said okay, this needs to a book, and that's when it started to
be a book.
But I never set out to write abook.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
It's been a weird path, and you said something
that is interesting to me,because you said climate change
is real, but it's not burningthe planet down, and what we've
talked about previously is thisidea that if you accept that

(15:10):
climate change is real, you alsohave to accept that it's
burning the planet down.
Now, as your research showed,that's not the case, and I think
what we see over and over againis when somebody comes in with
something that clashes with thenarrative, they want to boot

(15:33):
them out of the, but you haveelectrical power lines that
started the fire.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
You have lots of brush and dryness that was left
to thing, there was a reservoirthat was allowed to drain down,
there's a whole lot of otherstuff and by claiming it's
climate change, you excuseeverything else.
Well, that's not right.
And the other thing is you'vegot to realize if you're
building in that area and you'renot building a fireproof house,
why.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
Good point.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
I had two houses flooded from hurricanes.
One was in New Orleans, one wasin Houston and my view was,
when the house in Houston, I waslike, okay, I've got to raise
it up, I've got to do something,I've got to make it more proof.
Now, because of personalreasons and all that, we ended
up just selling the house andbeing done with it.
And the other guy there rightbehind me, he just rebuilt it as

(16:34):
is, flipped it and sold it.
And I'm like, okay, well, if ithappens again, that house is
still vulnerable.
So we really haven't learnedfrom what happened.
And that's, I think, the bigthing is.
But yeah, there's lots going onthere where we're using climate
change as the excuse.
We've cast the oil companies asthe primary villain, when I

(16:55):
think there's a lot of otherfactors involved, kind of
created this Hollywood story ofclimate change.
It's killing us.
The oil companies are bad.
Stop fossil fuels, that's allyou got to do.
And I'm like, no, that's not it.
There's a lot more going onthere.
And that's what worries me iswe've taken these simple

(17:16):
solutions.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Every industrial problem I've solved has had a
simple solution to it, or thedesire to pick just one and say
this is the problem and then putall resources behind.
That probably is going to leadyou astray almost every time.

(17:56):
How would you feel about thatstatement?

Speaker 2 (17:58):
That's completely it.
So I'm speaking at Rotary Clubsand at breakfasts.
I'm going to talk at aconference in Austin soon and
one of the things I say is so ifyou look at 1960 to now, our
energy usage has only gone up inthe US by about 15% per person,
but our population has gone upby 91%.

(18:19):
And if you look worldwide,we've gone from 3 billion people
in 1960 to 8 billion people now.
I mean that's big.
And if you look at that energyusage worldwide, we've had an
increase of about 67%.
It was very low numbers, lotsof people.
We use energy in the US waymore than anyone else does, but

(18:41):
the world is catching up andthat, combined with the massive
increase in population, is thebig problem.
So if you just focus on carbondioxide and we don't talk about
population increase, we don'ttalk about all the trash that
we're putting out, we don't talkabout all these other issues, I
think you're missing the point.
Right, and one of the things I'mX oil and gas.

(19:05):
So I watch, watch the energyindustry a lot.
If you shut down drilling, youknow let's say the whole we're
going to stop fracking.
If you stop fracking, you stopdrilling, because new oil wells
are not economical unlessthey're.
If you stop drilling, stopfracking, us oil production from

(19:25):
the shale fields drops by halfin 18 months.
You can't build renewables fastenough.
You can't build electricvehicles fast enough.
You're looking at creating anenergy shortage, and that's why,
when these people are doing allthese crazy protests screaming
stop oil, stop oil, you can't dothat.
You will kill people if you dothat.

(19:46):
So it's got to be a reasonablesolution that we need to be
working on.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
How many of the challenges that we are facing
that you have looked at, do yousee, stemming from the fact that
the untruths are popular thingsto run on as a politician?
That, for example, as we werespeaking before we went on air.

(20:17):
You were raised Republican, aswas I, was I, and while I am a
fierce advocate for reducing thenumber of gun-related deaths in
this country, one thing youwill never see me post is it's

(20:40):
the guns.
Yeah Right, Because that's onearea where I have looked at the
data and guns are an easy thingto become fixated on, especially
for the Democratic Party,because while a fair number of

(21:02):
Democrats own guns, guns weren'tnecessarily part of the culture
in the same way they were forRepublicans, who not only own
guns but have had guns in theHouse for multiple generations.
There's a different view aboutthose.

(21:24):
So speak to that, notnecessarily about the guns, but
just on the simplicity factor.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Well, that's it, and you've hit on it.
A good point, because it is.
We take a simple solution tocomplex problems.
And guns was one of the pointswhere I went into the chapter
thinking, oh yeah, we got toomany guns on the street.
This is ridiculous.
And then, once I startedgetting into the data, I'm like
but wait a minute, it's like atenth of a percent of the guns

(21:52):
are used in crimes.
Well, 99.99% are in the handsof people following the law.
So how is this going to work?
And digging deeper into the data, it really comes down to, you
know, we have gun suicides andthat's mental health, poverty,

(22:12):
problems like that.
And then when you look at thehomicides, there's actually a
lot of countries in the worldthat have higher rates of
homicide than the US and thething they all have is higher
levels of poverty.
And I've come to that pointwhere it's the poverty that
drives the crime.
And I found that correlation inso many places.
And I was watching a special onLyndon Johnson and he declared

(22:36):
war on poverty in the 1960s.
And I hate to tell everybody,but we may have declared war in
the 60s on poverty, but we lost.
We have not got it resolved.
They may have declared war inthe 60s on poverty, but we lost.
We have not got it resolvedRight.
And it has had an amazingimpact, not only on crime,
education, health.
You know, in the chapters onhealth care, I look and I say,
okay, overall we have a 60% dietof fast food, of

(22:59):
ultra-processed food, anunhealthy diet, and that's
really more focused in the poorthan it is in the rich and, as a
result, we're getting highlevels of obesity, high levels
of diabetes in poor people andthey can't afford it and, as a
result, it's dragging ourhealthcare system down.
And I think poverty issomething that we've got.
Either you're going to getserious about it or we have to
accept the fact that it'sharming our statistics.

(23:21):
And it was that digging intothe data and really looking at
it that forced me to look atthings.
And, yeah, we simplify.
You know, we want to do ourdebates and our policy with 250
character Twitter responseaccess responses, as I should
say and it just can't do it.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
I think people underestimate and I should
clarify, I think people who saywe just we need to get rid of
the guns.
First of all, I don't thinkmost people think about the
impossibility of that.
It is just not something youcould ever do, not in this

(24:05):
country.
And so often people will pointto other countries and what
they've done there and thedifference.
As I see it, the same gunculture did not exist there.
And that, I think, is the boxthat you talk about.
You have to work from insidethe box, and our box includes

(24:29):
gun culture.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Right.
And the thing is with the gunsyou can't confiscate them.
There's too many people thatlegally own them, that haven't
used them for anything bad, andwhy should you force them to
give them up?
During the last Trumpadministration they had an event
in Las Vegas and the bumpstocks were declared illegal.
They haven't been able toconfiscate any.

(24:50):
It's held up in the courts.
Nobody's turning them in ontheir own.
It just shows me that you'regoing to have a real hard time
confiscating guns.
And when you get down to it, ifyou address the poverty and you
address the hate that's beingpumped into our culture, which
is the cause for most of themass shootings, then you don't
need to take away the guns Now.
We do need common sense gunrestrictions.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
There needs to be a waiting phase.
You know, remember when we usedto have to go to buy a car and
we'd have to come.
Here's our car, we're going tobuy that car and we'll come back
in two days and actually get it, because it takes that long to
process the whole application wedidn't get the car immediately
right.
Um, and the thing is with thegun.
It's the same way.
I don't.
I think you need to have acooling off period.
Yeah, I'm going to buy that gun.

(25:34):
I'll come back in two days.
Well, in two days the guy goesoh, you know, my kids need shoes
and they can really use that.
Maybe I don't need to buy thatgun.
That would make so much moresense.
But that's not something thatthe gun sellers want.
They want that immediate.
Hey, here's your gun, and Ithink we're going to run smack
into the NRA about that.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
I think so too.
It's necessary.
By the way, everyone should buythis book.
Buy this book If you areinterested in reading about real
solutions, and not just what'spopular within your party, but

(26:16):
actual solutions that would work.
Get the book.
One thing I want to point outin your book, william, just so
that anybody listening to usright now is not inclined to
think, oh this Tiger guy, he'santi-guns.
That's not the case at all.
One thing you point out that Iabsolutely agree with, even

(26:39):
though I am a gun owner.
I don't want to give up my guns, but I agree with this point
you should not be able to carryan assault rifle in public,
right, and can you speak to whythat is?

(27:02):
I think anybody listeningprobably has their version of
why that is, but what was yourbasis for that?

Speaker 2 (27:10):
So my thing is okay, we should have gun ownership.
If you want to have concealedcarry, that's great, that's fine
.
But in the 2020 elections andin some other cases, we've seen
people with semi-automaticweapons, with big magazines walk
up and that the police officersare the ones saying look, we're

(27:30):
outgunned, and all it's goingto take is one guy pulling the
trigger and then we've got amass shooting event and that,
just to me, is insane.
So I really don't think youshould have.
You know, if you have concealedcarry, if you have to, if
you're allowed to openly carrypistols, bolt action rifles,
stuff like that, that's fine.
But if you can walk up with asemi-automatic weapon with a 30

(27:53):
round my gosh, the guy in LasVegas had 100 round magazines I
mean that's that's insane, right?
That is just too much of apotential for an event, so we
should not allow that.
But yeah, I think it'sconcealed carry.
Open carry, that's fine, butnot when it's a military grade
weapon that can carry 30, 50,100 rounds.

(28:16):
I mean that's just we're askingfor trouble.
We need to be reasonable aboutthat.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
Right, and on that note and the lethality of
high-capacity weapons, I did aride-along with a friend of mine
a few years back who's ahighway patrolman, right, and at
that time he was doing druginterdiction on Air State 35,

(28:42):
where there is a lot of drugactivity going on.
And I met him at midnight at atruck stop to park my car and
get in with him, just off of 35,and I had brought along one of
my handguns.
Right, he said, if you want to,because we're going to be

(29:03):
stopping some hairy people,things can go wrong.
So I brought mine.
But we were talking in betweenstops that night and what we
both agreed to very quickly wasthat if we or if he pulled
someone over and they steppedout of the vehicle with a

(29:30):
high-capacity, high-velocityweapon and started firing, we
were probably both going to die.
Right, he had a shotgun, whichwas an amount which he would
have to, you know, take a momentto get it out and then to be
able to get out of the car withit, and a sidearm, a handgun,

(29:55):
and I had a handgun.
Well, if the other person's outof the vehicle before you are,
everything they're firing isgoing to go through every part
of that car except the engineblock right.
So you spoke to high-capacityaccessories.

(30:17):
Can you talk about that alittle bit?

Speaker 2 (30:19):
Yeah, and in the book I lay out some things and one
of them I say is you need adelay period to buy the weapon.
We do need, like, a nationalconcealed gun permit that could
be adopted nationally, Becauseright now if you've got a
concealed gun permit, you don'tknow what state you're legal in
and what state you're illegal in, and that's kind of a

(30:40):
ridiculous situation.
It should be a national system.
These are the national minimumrequirements.
If you meet this, the permitqualifies for national and you
can go into these other areasand just have a coordination
there, Right.
But then the other thing is ifit's 30-round magazines,
150-round magazines, I don't seethe need for them.
If you need a 30-round magazineto to go hunting, you probably

(31:04):
need a marksmanship coursebecause you bet it, and it just
when you look at the massshooting events.
The the three commondenominators are, uh, high
velocity rifle, semi-automaticand big magazine.
Well, if you want to go hunting, semi-automatic high velocity

(31:25):
is kind of a need to.
You know you're not going totake down an elk with a 22.
Right, you'll piss that elk off, but that's about it.
Right.
So to me it came down to thehigh capacity magazine was the
thing.
If you control that, then itallows people to keep hunting,
it allows people to do otherstuff.
But that was the thing I lookedat was okay, let's restrict the
high capacity magazines.
You know, saying we're going toban assault weapons makes no

(31:48):
sense, because then you knowwhat's a hunting rifle.
Is it an assault weapon or isit not?
It's a question there of whatis the true technical definition
that you're going to ban.
And I thought the magazine wasthe easiest solution.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
I think so too, because, look, any weapon can
become an assault weapon.
Right, I have a—one of myhandguns is a Glock handgun, a
9mm Glock, and the capacity ofthe weapon as it comes is seven

(32:26):
if you include one in thechamber.
Right, it's one of the smallerversions.
Single stack doesn't have thedouble magazine they market and
sell.
Right, I can load up as many as30.
Right, I, I can load up as manyas 30.

(32:50):
Now, it's going to be extendingpast the grip, but if, if I had
ill intentions, right, anddecided, hey, I want to do as
much damage in as short a periodof time as possible, I could
buy two or three of those.
Right, I go in with three.
I've got 90 rounds that I canfire in a very brief period of
time.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
The guy in Las Vegas.
I can't remember the number, itwas like 500 or 700 rounds that
he shot off.
I mean that's insane, and it'sjust to me.
The magazine was the.
So what everybody needs tounderstand is this book lays out
, each chapter, gives you thehistory, the data and then some
possible solutions.
So I'm not saying this is theonly solution.

(33:30):
I gave you possible solutionsand at least give us a starting
point to have the discussion.
And in fact, on the book there'sa website.
If you go to the website,there's a tab called data.
You can actually look at myoriginal data tables.
There's a tab called data.
You can actually look at myoriginal data tables.
I will show you how I got,where I got, and show you where
the data came from.

(33:50):
And that's one of the thingsthat drove me crazy is, with it,
people will make a claim andit's like well, where did that
come from?
And they don't say and to me,that's hey, we were taught in
school, you got to show yourwork.
So I think it's a good idea tohave that.
But yeah, to me, it me, it'swith the guns.
There are very sensible rulesthat we need to apply, but

(34:11):
mainly it's address the poverty,address the hate, and that will
get us back into a betterposition.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Well, I think one of the things you point out in the
book you looked at variousperiods and times, specifically
after 9-11.
Yeah, right After 9-11, therewere just as many guns, right,

(34:38):
same amount of guns.
But you describe what existedmentally and emotionally and
culturally in the United Statesat that time, that you feel
responsible for, the decline andthe thing is so after September
11th, after 9-11, we had nomass shooting.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
I think we had like two mass shootings between then
and the end of 2002.
I mean, over 15 months we hadalmost nothing.
And to me that shows you thatit's not the guns, the volume of
guns, it's the hate, it's theanger within.
And when we came together after9-11, the mass shootings just
dropped to nothing.
Now people say, oh, we hadheightened security, we had

(35:17):
heightened security at airports.
We didn't have it at churches,we didn't have it at businesses,
and that's where most of themass shootings occur are at
schools.
And we didn't have it atbusinesses, and that's where
most of the mass shootings occur, are at schools.
And to me that shows that it's athat's really the issue, it's
the hate within the society.
And I mean you look at it,right now You've got far right,
far left, both pouring out,screaming, you know, and

(35:38):
amplifying this hate.
But yeah, and the thing is, Ilook at it drives me insane with

(35:59):
the solutions where, so youknow, nra says we're fine gun
laws going to harden the schools.
Well, you're hardening theschools from a mass shooter when
it's much more common eventthat fires occur.
So if you're limiting everybodyto one way in, one way out.
How's that going to work with afire, which is a much more
common event?
And that just it amazes me,because we get focused on the

(36:21):
wrong thing and we do the wronganalysis.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yes, and it almost becomes like a fad, right?
Certain solutions become like afad.
It's the thing that's popularto talk about.
It's the thing if you postabout it will assure you a lot
of likes.
And I see social media asplaying such a big role in our

(36:47):
societal problems today and Ithink you address that some, I
do.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
I do.
And the thing that I think iswell, first of all, everybody's
got to understand is Twitter onX, x, blue sky threads, facebook
, all those they are not publicsquares threads, facebook, all
those they are not publicsquares.
So when you get angry that ElonMusk is maybe kicking people

(37:13):
off X or doing something, orZuckerberg has decided he's not
going to do something onFacebook, it doesn't matter.
A corporation owns that site,owns that media event, and you
can't think of that as firstamendment protected.
That is, if you don't trust thecompany running the site, you
can't trust the site, and that'sjust the way it's got to be the

(37:34):
way it is.
Um, and one of the things Ithink you got to do is so, right
now, if a newspaper were to runan article and say you, I don't
like this or I don't like that,and to violate any show, any
racism or any inequality at all,that they would be subject to
certain criminal laws.
There are certain laws thatapply to those newspapers and to

(37:57):
radio stations and TV stations,but it doesn't apply to the
social media sites because of Ican't remember the number now,
but anyway, it's a section ofthe US Code where it says
because other people are makingthe content and the social media
site is simply putting thecontent up.
They're off the hook.
Well, I don't think that'stotally right If you're holding
the New York Times to one set ofstandards, but Facebook is held

(38:20):
to something completelydifferent.
There's a bit of a disconnectthere is held to something
completely different.
There's a bit of a disconnectthere.
I think what we have to have isFacebook X, blue Sky.
They have to know that they'redealing with a real human being.
I mean, we've had bots, we'vehad all kinds of crazy stuff
that I think you've got tocontrol and you've got to set it
up where, if somebody postssomething that essentially is

(38:43):
just propaganda and someone elseflags it, the media site has to
check and go yeah, that ispropaganda, we need to take it
down.
And, by the way, the cost ofthat effort should be applied to
the person who put it up.
There should be a penalty.
Anyway, I'm not going to gettoo far into the details of that
, but I think around socialmedia, there is stuff that we
need to do, and while peoplewill say, oh, it's not covered

(39:05):
under the Constitution, theConstitution is over 200 and
what is it now?
240 years old Getting close tothat.
Yeah, it'll be 240 in 28, 2028.
And I'm sorry, I don't thinkthey thought about this when
they wrote it no, you know goahead.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
I didn't want to interrupt you there.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
No, I was trying to remember when the last
constitutional amendment was.
It's been a long while, so tome we're due for some
constitutional amendments tostart addressing some of these
issues.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah, you know, I think of that often when that
topic comes up.
One thing I like to ask people,just kind of get them thinking,
is if you were scheduled foropen heart surgery tomorrow,
would you be okay with havingsurgery with a surgeon who is

(39:57):
using the surgical techniquesfrom 200 years ago?
Would, of course, not right.
We can recognize that therehave been all kinds of changes
since then and we want the mostcurrent and that's been able to
utilize the science and thetechnology to say look, this is

(40:20):
the best we have.
Hey, that's what I want.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
But we, for some reason, we don't apply that same
thinking when we think aboutthe Constitution, that, hey,
it's not that these guys werestupid, it's just like right now
.
We cannot anticipate what theworld's going to be like 200
years from now, so how could wewrite something that will still

(40:44):
be serving the people well?

Speaker 2 (40:48):
And the thing is so.
The constitution was extremelywell-written and it was
extremely well thought out, youbet.
But the thing is we haveallowed the separation of powers
to shift.
Congress used to have much moreauthority, much more power.
I saw some memes where therewas like, oh, trump ran up this

(41:09):
much debt and Biden ran up thatmuch debt.
I'm like, no, the Congress ranup the debt, the Congress
controls the purse.
We've let Congress off the hookand I think the big problem
we're seeing is that we'vegotten rid of the moderates.
There are no moderates left inCongress.
There's nobody who's sittingthere going trying to make a
deal, trying to work it out,trying to get us back to a

(41:30):
balanced budget.
I mean, that's what we'remissing.
We have allowed the RepublicanParty to go farther to the right
.
The Democratic Party's gonefarther to the left and
everybody in the middle has beenleft out in the cold.
The Democratic Party's gonefarther to the left and
everybody in the middle has beenleft out in the cold.
And that was the thing about mybook.
In talking to a lot of people,I'm talking to those moderates.

(41:50):
Those moderates are coming upand talking to me, going.
I love your book.
Now can you just tell me how toget it done?
And I'm like well, you've gotto start electing moderates to
Congress.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
You know, I know a couple of former congressmen
personally and love them both todeath and they are currently
still making wonderful in factprobably bigger contributions to
the nation out of Congress.

(42:21):
But I would describe both ofthem as moderates and they are
no longer in Congress.
Right, there's no space for amoderate today.
When you look at the otherpeople in Congress, they don't

(42:42):
want moderates working aroundthem.
They gum things up, they slowthings down, they want
extremists for lack of a betterword Somebody who just will
parrot.
I can tell you.
I can tell you've got somethoughts on that.
Go ahead.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
I think we I think on the Trump side we're seeing
Trump as a potential dictator,but watching Biden rule, I was
seeing a lot of the same thing.
We have ceded too much power tothe presidency.
I hate to say it.
I hate to say it.

(43:32):
I actually think we need tohave a president fully indicted
and impeached just so that wecan have that event and get past
it.
Andrew Johnson, lincoln's vicepresident, who became president
after he was assassinated.
They didn't impeach him by onevote and the guy who cast the
vote said he didn't want to bethe guy to be the first one to
cause a president to beimpeached.
That line was so feared tocross that the guy said, no, I'm
not going to impeach him.
And Andrew Johnson was probablyone of the people who most

(43:54):
deserved to be impeached, butthat didn't happen.
And I think that's the samething is.
We just don't want to crossthat line and until we do, the
presidency has become toopowerful.
It's become too immune.
I mean, I'm very concernedabout the Supreme Court
decisions where we've given thepresident even more immunity?

Speaker 1 (44:12):
Oh boy, yeah, you and me both.
I've often thought, and I havenothing to back this up.
It's speculative, of course,but I've often thought had Nixon
served 18 months in prisonrather than being pardoned, I'm
not sure that Trump would havehappened in the way that he did,

(44:33):
if at all.
I don't know that he would haveeven wanted to run if we had
that precedent.
You know, if we had thatprecedent.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
I think we should have a policy where every when a
president finishes his term, hehas to go before Congress in a
trial to be, you know, to havehis record reviewed and see did
you break any laws?
If so, we're sending you tojail, Right.
I mean, that would be a greatevent, that would be like a
closeout event, but instead wesay okay, go build your library

(45:10):
somewhere and have fun.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
we're letting you off the hook and it's like that's
wrong.
On that note, you.
You share something verysimilar in your book that I
agree with 100 where it comes tosolutions for some of the gun
issues that we face, and it'spretty simple make the owner of
the gun criminally responsiblefor what happens with that gun.
End of story, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
You know, that.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Look, I know as a gun owner just knowing that.
Look, no matter what, no matterwhat, whatever happens with
this tool, somebody does with it.
You are responsible.
That shifts your thinking veryquickly, right?

Speaker 2 (45:57):
Well, but think about it If your son steals your car,
or well, he takes the keys andgoes out on a joyride or
something and he has an accident, your insurance is on the hook.
Oh yeah, you loan the car tosomebody, your insurance is
still on the hook.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
Right.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
So how do we let a gun be different?
That's the interesting thingand one of the things.
So we don't register guns inthis country.
It's only voluntarily, andthat's fine.
But the thing is you look atcars 95% of America's cars are
registered and tracked, and wedon't do that with a weapon that

(46:37):
can kill 30, 40 people at ashot.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
That's a little different yeah, and I think
that's.
I think that's something that alot of people don't realize,
that that as many weapons arenot registered as as there are.
I I think a lot of people, uh,just assume that there's a, just
as you stated, because there iswith vehicles.

(47:01):
I think they just assume thatthere is some recorded
transaction when a firearm ispurchased or sold.
And I can tell you right now, acouple of the handguns I've
owned were from people.
I just went to their house,paid them the asking price and

(47:22):
walked away with it and nobodyhad to know about that.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
Yeah, I think that's a that's a weak link in how we
do business regarding firearmsyeah, it's, it's we need, and I
don't think we have to changethat thinking so much.
But so we need to do somethingto understand and to realize the
a handgun is a threat, it's aresponsibility and it needs to

(47:47):
be treated more as aresponsibility.
Right, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
Let's talk a moment because this is something that
and again.
You were raised Republican andI was Republican until not that
long ago.
In the grand scheme of things,but one thing I have always been
that did not win me favor withfriends in the Republican Party

(48:13):
when I was Republican.
I've always been a fiercedefender of LGBTQ rights,
Because I've seen the bullying,the hate and just the.
I've always been.
I'm for the underdog right.
Look, if you aren't doinganything wrong, if you are just

(48:36):
trying to live your life andsomebody is screwing with you,
just for that, count on me beingthere to back you up.
With that being said, you bringup some issues in the book,
which I agree with, by the way,that we probably would see more

(48:58):
progress made in this area if westopped pushing so hard for
these particular points.
Do you mind?
talking about that.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Yeah, and actually I've run a little blog on
Substack and I wrote about afterthe election.
I said I think one of the bigissues with the election was the
Democrats are pushing the DEIstuff.
They're pushing, you know,bring more inclusivity and all
that.
They're pushing it so hard andthe thing you got to realize is
a lot of the older middle classpeople they grew up in the 60s

(49:33):
they have, they've had to,they've seen their world shift
so much, you know allowing, youknow being more open to gays,
being more open to lesbians,being more open to all this
other stuff.
And yet we're demanding morechange from them.
And you can't change how aperson thinks.
You can't rewire their brain.
It just doesn't work like that.

(49:53):
So the harder you push againstthose people, the less you're
going to get.
Now in the book I talk abouthow we had these Supreme Court
cases and the first one was theColorado baker who refused to
make a cake and they took it allthe way to the Supreme Court.
And the Supreme Court says youcan't force this guy to make a
cake.
And then he's back in theColorado court system because

(50:14):
somebody walked in and demandedthat he make a cake for a trans
person's birthday and it's likeguys, you know, this man doesn't
want to do that, why did y'allgo do that?
And the thing is because someof these trans activists are so
insistent that they're provokingthese cases and I think you
know people aren't going to likethis idea, but it's creating a
backlash.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
It is, it is, it is, and I can tell you from posts
that I've made on social mediapeople don't like some of these
ideas because, again, it doesn'tline up with the narrative.
And my thing is is if youhaven't been able to achieve the
results you seek with thenarrative you have, maybe you

(50:56):
ought to look at changing thenarrative and including
something different.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
So and one of the things you can look at is and I
got to shoot, I'll have quick,I'm going to have to find the
data real quick but back in the1960s they were asking about
interracial marriage Do youaccept it, do you not?
And I think the people againstit in the 1960s was like 96%,
something like that, and thelast time they asked the

(51:22):
question it was like down to 8%.
That's a huge improvement.
If you want to get it down tozero, that's not happening, guys
there are racist people outthere and you can't change them,
you can't rewire them.
You've made great progress.
Except the progress you've made, hope to make more progress in
the future, but don't try andforce it.
And I think what we're seeingright now is um.

(51:45):
I think that that Trump won theelection for three main reasons
.
One is um Biden shouldn't haverun in the first place.
His that.
I was listening to that firstdebate.
My wife and I were on a tripand we were driving a rental car
and I was listening to thatdebate on the radio and I was
shocked.
I was like, oh my gosh, this ishorrible and I think that was a

(52:11):
huge deal.
The other thing is theDemocrats are all proclaiming
Biden was the next FDR.
Oh, he did so much, he did sogreat stuff.
He passed a coupleinfrastructure bills, all of
which were either funded withdeficit funding or with future
tax cuts, when we're $36trillion in debt.
That's not good guys, right.
And then the third thing wasthey kept pushing the DEI, kept

(52:33):
pushing the.
You know, we're going to bemore inclusive, we're going to
give more stuff to these people,more stuff to those people, and
it's like you know what themiddle class said no, thank you.
I think that was the big thing.
The middle class came out andvoted and said we want the
border fixed.
And the thing is, in the firsttwo years of the Biden
administration they didn't touchthe border.
No-transcript the Democratstalk about.

(53:17):
It's our messaging.
It's our messaging.
It's our messaging.
No, it's your governance.
America wants good governance.
America is now wanting to seesomething done about the
deficits and about the debt.
There's a lot of focus there,but neither party is addressing
that.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
No, no, I recently wrote about this to some extent
in an article that I wrote formy newsletter, and when I
brought up the topic of theborder not being aggressively
approached by the Bidenadministration, one of the most

(53:58):
common comments back will be andit's a valid point for that
particular time, but it doesn'tmake up for the rest of the term
is well, they put forth thebill that Republicans rejected,
and that's correct.

(54:19):
But what were we doing prior tothat?
What did we do?

Speaker 2 (54:25):
after that, in 21 and 22,.
You had Democratic control ofboth houses.
You could have got it throughthe House, put it in front of
the Senate, republicans and said, okay, shoot it down.
If you want, go ahead.
I mean that was the whole thing.
I don't think they did that.
And the thing is, you see theresult.
I mean the Democrats lost theTexas border region with Mexico.

(54:49):
Those were hardcore Democraticcounties and they went red.
And I mean, if that's not a bigred flag.
And then you go, look at NewYork and California, where there
was a massive shift to theRepublicans in those two states.
That should be a screamingannouncement to Democrats Stop
fooling around.
People want to have, they wantgood governance.

(55:11):
Yeah, it would be nice to makethings fair for all the
minorities.
I appreciate that.
But the thing is, don't allowit to be unfair for the minority
, but don't push it too far theother way.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
People want, they want the cities to function in
the book, the way I so oftenthink about it.
If you are thinking from theposition of somebody who while

(55:43):
it's a very ambiguous term, butsomebody who's an independent or
somebody who's an undecided,somebody whose vote you might be
able to win over right, lookingat it through their lens and
through their eyes, they look atthe percentage some of these

(56:05):
populations make up of theentire United States, correct?
So if you look and I doremember you addressing this in
the book I think the number oftransgender people in the United
States I think it was less thanit was like 0.6%.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
Well, but Jack, we don't know that's the problem.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Right, right, I think I used a figure of like 1.2,
but I also think I addressedthat it could be more, just
because we don't know.
I guess, my point being thislet's just assume it's 10%,
right, let's just really ramp itup.
If you are somebody on thefence just before the election

(56:56):
and most of the noise that youare seeing and hearing on social
media've got no problem withtransgender people, but they are

(57:17):
10% of the entire population.
I don't hear you spending asmuch time talking about the
issues that unpack everybody.
Yeah, right, yeah.
And so the point I make in thisnewsletter article is this the

(57:59):
point I make in this newsletterarticle is this Undecideds don't
necessarily look to thepoliticians and what they are
consistently bringing up intheir rallies and their speeches
without knowing that they arealso constantly monitoring the
posts on social media andlooking at what's the most
prevalent topic that's beingaddressed on social media, and
then they unconsciously assignthat to the candidate right and
the entire party and they saylook, this is a party that only
cares about transgender peoplein restrooms, right, and they
feel left out because they don'thear the discussion.

(58:23):
That applies to everybody.
How?

Speaker 2 (58:27):
off.
Am I on that?
No, you're not, you're dead on.
And to think about it, actually, I'll turn it around slightly.
So I don't know if you saw thedebate between Cruz and Allred
in the last few weeks.
Cruz kept coming back andhammering, allred on the
transgender thing.
You voted for these transgenderbills and bang, bang, bang.
Did we get a nuanced discussionof energy policy, which is one

(58:49):
of the biggest things in Texas?
No, right, and that's the thingis.
It's also extremely easy forthese politicians to hit the
culture, war issues than to sitthere and try and discuss okay,
what are we doing about energy?
How are we going to handle theenergy transition?
And to me that's a huge thingIn the analysis.
I've got a little bit in thebook.

(59:10):
I've got more on the blog thatI'm working at.
You know, I don't think Texasis ready for when the Permian is
going to peak in its productionand start to go into decline.
I think that's, and I thinkthat's in the next three to 10
years, and we should be havingdiscussions about that right now
and we're not.
And then the other thing is the$36 trillion debt.
I mean the interest rates.

(59:32):
I saw where recently, wheresome interest rates are still
going up even after the Fed madecuts to the interbank loaning
rate.
That's a new factor that has abad indication.
There's what's called the Ginicoefficient.
It measures income inequality.
It's been going up.
The last time it was this highwas in 1929, just before the

(59:52):
great stock market crash and theGreat Depression.
We're not having thosediscussions.
What are we talking about?
They're eating the dogs.
They're eating the cats when itturned out, it weren't.
I mean what's going on here?
We've allowed these culture warissues to take over everything
when, in fact, the government ishere to address structural

(01:00:14):
problems and to address thestructural things that we, the
people, can't build on our own.
We need a government tomaintain a military, to build
the large-scale infrastructurewe need to set long-term policy.
I just did a look back on theERCOT 2024 year and I just
published it on the blog on theSubstack blog I run, and the

(01:00:36):
thing that really jumped out atme was we don't have a 20-year
energy policy.
And when you look at China,china has massive amount of
nuclear reactors being built.
They're building a huge amountof what's called pump storage,
hydroelectric, which is biglong-duration energy storage.
We have zero in constructionright now here in the US and to
me that is a huge indicator thatwe're not taking that long-term

(01:00:59):
view that we need to be taking,and that's the whole point of
the book is.
The book is look at the culturewar issues, but now look at
these other issues that we'renot talking about, that we're
not letting Congress off thehook and not letting them have
to address, and to me it's justinsane, and I have to say I've
said it before but I want tokeep saying it your book is not

(01:01:23):
to defend a party.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
Your book is about solutions.
You talk about both parties,you criticize both parties, you
praise both parties.
It's about solutions and thatis, I think that's where social
media has really amplified theproblem, because it has not only

(01:01:46):
has it.
You know, we always hear aboutcreating a division, but I think
the bigger issue is theintensity that it generates on
either side of that line.
We've always had division, butnow the level of angst and hate

(01:02:10):
and frustration.
There's a big shift in theemotional aspect of our division
.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
And not only that, but to me social media really
provides a means for thirdparties, for foreign actors, to
go and drop a little bit ofvitriol in here and put a little
bit of hate over there and youcan just pin that thing up.
We know the Russians did that in2016.
We don't know what's been donein the last election.
And that, to me, is why?

(01:02:38):
Because that's where, if youallow bots and you allow people
to be in social media and youdon't know whether they're
actually in China or in StPetersburg, russia, or in
Macedonia, then you know, someguy claims to be your next door
neighbor and he's actuallysomewhere far on the far side of
the world.
You don't know.
So how do you trust that voice?

(01:03:00):
And to me it comes back to andI think it was you were talking
about earlier about how youwanted to be a real voice, a
trusted voice.
Trusted voices are what we needright now, and we've lost them

(01:03:35):
no-transcript.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
I've always felt like and we'll never know, but I've
always felt like that WalterCronkite had enough integrity
that had the producers have cometo him and said here's the
angle we are going to run withthis.
This is the approach we needyou to take.
I think he had enough integrity.

(01:03:59):
He would have refused and, atthe extreme end of things, he
would have resigned.
We don't have that kind ofcommitment in journalism any
longer.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
I don't think, not as a whole, well, the whole
semantic lawsuit brought out.
So much about Fox News, whereyou were like, where they were
like, oh my God, this is crazy,but we're going to run with it
anyway, right, it's like that'sinsane.
Yeah, I mean, you have to havethat ability to have a trusted
voice, and that's one of thethings I look at is there's a
chapter on fake news where I say, okay, you need a way to

(01:04:31):
challenge the news companies onstories, but the news companies
also need a way to challenge thenews companies on stories, but
the news companies also need away to challenge the government
as well.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
And you got to have that balance and we've lost it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
Yeah, um, but yeah, we need that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
I think something too , and I think you can appreciate
this as an engineer I I thinkwe need.
We need a much greaterwillingness to admit when we are
wrong.
Yeah, To admit.
For example, people ask me allthe time, not as much as they

(01:05:04):
did when I first made the shiftto Democratic Party, at least in
terms of voting and support.
People say how did you do thatafter you know so long of being
a Republican?
First of all, I had to bewilling to admit that the guy I
had voted for in 2016 was inerror, that I had not done due

(01:05:29):
diligence.
I had to accept some thingsabout myself and my decision
that aren't pleasant.
You don't get excited aboutthem, but at the end of the day,
to me, it's just how you live.
If you realize you've made amistake, correct it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
Yeah, rather than doubling down, which is what so
many of these other people donow.
And that's the thing where andone of the things that drives me
insane is and we have an eventin some city or in some state,
and they go to the president andgo what do you think of that?
And the president should go?
That's the governor's job, notmine, right?

(01:06:09):
Just say that that would befine if we could accept that.
Yes, you've got your wheelhouse, stay in it.
Yes, but we don't do that.
We're demanding that Hollywoodactors give us opinions on
political situations worldwide.
It's like wait a minute, whatdo they know?
Have they really looked at thedetail on that?
Right, because it's hard.
And that was the book.

(01:06:32):
The book was a three-yeareffort of research,

(01:06:57):
no-transcript.
You've made a huge mistake, andI see a lot of people doing that
.
Oh, did you hear the funnystory?
The flat earthers sent adelegation down to Antarctica,
because if you can have the24-hour sun, then the earth
can't be flat.
So a group of flat-eartherswith some scientists went to

(01:07:21):
Antarctica and they saw the24-hour sun.
The sun stayed up for 24 hoursbecause Antarctica is on the
edge, and all that and theflat-earther emails back to the
other group.
Oh, I guess we were wrong andI'm like like that is the moment
.
Yeah, right, because they'vegot some really slick video.

(01:07:43):
One of the slides I showed inmy presentation was I said look,
you can look at these slickvideos that the flat earthers
have done and at the same timeyou can watch a live feed from
the international space station.
And to me that showed theinsanity of youtube, of what
know we could be blatantly liedto and then we could look at the
truth.
And how do you tell thedifference?
You've got to make your choicethere.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
And, having been immersed in the field of
psychology and human behavior myentire life, I'm fascinated by
how easily our perceptualfilters are fooled right.
And I'm also continuouslyfascinated by, even though I
know so much of this stuff, howeasily I can still be fooled

(01:08:27):
right.
And just out of curiosity, Ithought I'm going to watch some
of these flat earther videos,right, and I have to tell you,
there were a couple where Ichuckled in the middle because I
realized that if I was watchingthat and not really being on my

(01:08:51):
toes and asking questionsinternally about what I was
watching as I was watching it, Imight have been able to be
swayed to at least question myprevious assumptions.
Right, and that's a scary thingto realize is that I'm watching
this to analyze it and I'mwatching this having a pretty

(01:09:15):
good, solid background in humanperception, and I still feel
myself getting tugged a littlebit and going right.
And so I came away with thatgoing wow, man, that's spooky,
because if you take somebody whodoesn't have that background or

(01:09:36):
who does not push, click orplay, having already decided
they are going to analyze it andask questions, they may very
well be converted on the spot.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
And that's the thing.
And it amazes me how we'vegotten to a point now where
we're insisting that.
You know, we have some peopleinsisting that you have to have
both versions of a theory shownin school.
Well, you know, I'm sorry,there's not both visions of a
theory on flat Earth.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Right the.

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
Earth is round.
We've proved it.
The Greeks proved it 3,000thousand years ago.
So we're having this discussion.
Why it's?
It's insane, so, but I thinkwe've got to do that.
We've got to get to the pointwhere, um a, I think we got to
address poverty, we got toaddress education and we've got

(01:10:30):
to address the fact that we'velost the moderates.
The moder moderates have beentaken out of government and we
now have a government where wehave crazy people from both
sides and they're driving ustoward a cliff, and I think
we've got to do something.

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
I agree.
Look one more time.
Let me get my highlighter outof your book because I've been
highlighting like crazy.
Look, this is a book I have notyet completed because I just
got it in the mail yesterday.
But I was up very late lastnight reading this, even after I
had promised William I'm notgoing to read it before we do

(01:11:08):
the podcast.
I couldn't help myself once Istarted.
I can't wait to dive back intoit later today.
Once I started, I can't wait todive back into it later today.
If you are thinking, I wonder ifthat's something that would be
useful in expanding my knowledgeand helping me clarify how I
think about the solutions to theproblems our country's facing

(01:11:30):
by the book.
I can tell you already that itwill do those things.
It has helped me.
As I was talking with Williambefore we went on air, I said
you know, from what I've read sofar, you and I align on so many
of these issues, differencebeing, you've done the hard work

(01:11:53):
, the deep research on thesewhich allowed me to go oh okay,
I'm not off base for feelingthat way, for thinking that,
because there's actuallyinformation that supports it.
I think it's central to whatwe've been talking about which

(01:12:13):
is we need to be willing to stepinto that middle ground and
talk about solutions.
All throughout the book, fromwhat I've read so far, you again
, you're not defending any party, you're not sparing any party.
Right, you go for the throatwhen it's warranted and I

(01:12:38):
appreciate that.
But but then again and this iswhere we have this similarity um
, look, acknowledging somethinguseful out of the republican
party, as hard as it may seem tofind these days.
When you do that, there'salways going to be pushback if
you are a Democrat, correct?

(01:12:58):
But I think until we startsetting the example that, look,
we've got to take these littlemicro steps towards coming close
.
We may not be ready to reachacross the aisle and grasp hands
, right, but if we don't startthat movement so that

(01:13:22):
incrementally there's less andless distance from this side to
that side, look, and as youpointed out, we're never going
to probably get to the placeever where everybody's holding
hands across the aisle.
That's just not a reality.
But a reality is because we'vebeen there before where there's

(01:13:44):
not as much space between.
If you were going to answer thequestion why should you buy my
book?
What will I get out of yourbook if you buy it, what would
you say?

Speaker 2 (01:13:57):
I would say that the book because it's written not
from either party's policy ordogma, but it's written from
find the history, find the datapresent it and say, okay, here
are some solutions.
It gets you more educated onevery one of these topics so
that you can be more educated todiscuss that topic with other
people.
It gives you the foundation sothat you understand where our

(01:14:20):
taxes are at.
Where's our debt?
Where did it come from?
Why do we have these laws?
Where did social security comefrom?
Social security is in troubleright now because when it
started, it was eight workers toone retiree.
We're now to three workers perone retiree and that's why we're
starting to have problems.
That ratio has changed, thedemographics have changed, and
that's what we need tounderstand.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
And will that?
I've never done the math ortaken it that far, but at some
point would there be an inverseof that, where it flips, where
you've got more retirees thanworkers, or do you?

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
have they?
They're projecting it'll getdown to two workers per retiree
in, I think 19 in the 2030s Ican't remember the exact year,
but yeah, it's going to keepgoing lower.
Um, one of the things thatshocked me was the gig economy.
36 of our jobs are now gigeconomy guys where they don't
work for a company, they don'thave that 2,000-hour work week,

(01:15:18):
a year working job, you know40-hour-a-week job and the very
fundamental being thefundamentals of being a middle
class or lower class worker havechanged in ways that I don't
think we've fully gotten ourminds around.
So, yeah, but the book is tohelp you understand the issues
that we're about to be facing.

Speaker 1 (01:15:40):
I can't recommend the book enough Fixing America an
Engineer's Solution to OurSocial, cultural and Political
Problems by William Taggart IV.
William, I am so glad that youwere on today.
I've learned a lot.
I had learned a lot from youbefore we even spoke, just from

(01:16:03):
reading your book, and Iunderstand that I'm going to be
learning a lot more soon.
I would like to have you backon sometime, because I think
what would be fun is to just say, okay, let's pick one slice of
this book and let's talk it todeath, and there are so many
issues in there we could do that, there will be one chapter that

(01:16:25):
will jump out at you, that willgrab you and make you question
what you believe.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Pick that chapter, jack, and I'm happy to come back
anytime you want.

Speaker 1 (01:16:32):
Fantastic.
Hey, you're a sharp guy.
I appreciate you bringing theframe of reference you use for
thinking about the world to thepublic, because it is a frame of
reference we desperately needright now.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
Great.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
Thank you, I'll talk to you again soon.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
Thank you, jack, take care.