08-05-25 - *FULL SHOW* Demetri Kofinas; Denver Bond to Voters; Witches

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm enjoying the tea I made this morning. Just so
you know, I made a very good It's called Earl
Gray Moonlight, and it's very delicious, and I put some
honey in it.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
So my day is off to a very fine start.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Just in case you were wondering, I would like to
follow up on something that producer Shannon mentioned to me
before we went on the air, and I was busy
doing a lot of things this morning, so I missed
Jason Crow on Colorado Morning News. I'm sorry I missed
that conversation. He's better at going on with Marty and

(00:37):
Gina than he is with me. I have a bit
of a difficult time getting Jason Crow on the show
for whatever reason. But in any case, I am aware
that some days ago he and I think it was
eleven others something like that, are suing the Trump administration
over being denied access to the Ice Detention facility in Aurora,

(01:01):
which of course is in Jason Crow's district, Colorado's sixth
congressional districts.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
And I'm not going to spend long on this.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
I'm just going to say, to me, this is one
of those things, and there's quite.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
A lot of them.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
These days where there's no good guys, right, I mean
they are as My understanding is, by law, members of Congress,
especially those who are on the relevant committees that oversee
these things, should be able to visit these facilities without
having to make an appointment.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
And I understand why just put aside how.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
You feel about any of these members of Congress or
how you feel about the president. Put all that aside
for a second and just keep in mind the basic
concept that Congress does oversight of the executive branch.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
It's their job, and.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
That means that in order to be able to do oversight,
you would think that from time to time some of
these folks might want to show up so that whatever
for the place is that they are doing oversight of
doesn't have a chance to go clean it up and
go put the ugly stuff away. And you know, you
want to see it as it really is if you're
doing oversight. So that's kind of I have sympathy for

(02:14):
members of Congress who want to go do this stuff,
because I do think it is their job. But why
does this fall then into the category where you know,
I don't have sympathy for anybody on either side. It's
because I don't think that Jason Crow and these other
Democrat members of Congress are doing this out of any
real sense of wanting.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
To do oversight, right.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
They're just trolling for clicks and donations and you know,
an extra two minutes of fame or seeming relevant or
something like that.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
So I don't think their motivations are right.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
And I also don't have any sympathy for the Trump
administration blocking these people from being able to do their
congressional jobs, even though you and I both know.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
That they aren't really there to do that job.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
But still they they have the right to and generally
members of Congress don't need to alert these places that
they're going to show up and they are supposed to
be let in. That's not necessarily the same as saying
that they have to be let into every single spot
or be able to go into a room with a
violent illegal alien.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Criminal or whatever. But you get my idea.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
So anyway, good job Marty and Gina getting him on
the show to talk about that.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
And that's that's my take on it. All right.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
So you've heard a lot about this on Kowai's News,
some from me, some from our news desks, some from
Marty and Gina on this new bond, the Vibrant Denver
Bond package, and I just want to talk about because
it's such a big deal, right. I think it started
off in the in the estimated neighborhood of eight hundred

(03:51):
million dollars, ends up around nine hundred and fifty million dollars.
And one thing that I think a couple things that
I think are important. So first, the mayor, Mike Johnston
is arguing that taxes will not have to go up
because the city has been paying off other bonds.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
So they would use the money.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
That they used to use to pay off the cash
flow that they would use in the past to pay
off these other bonds to now pay off the new
bonds because the other bonds are fully paid off already
or will be now. The other thing though, to keep
in mind, is that depending on how long it takes
to fully pay back the bonds and exactly what the

(04:33):
debt structure looks like and what the interest rates are
at the time that they put all this stuff in place, Right,
we're talking about a nominal number of nine hundred and
fifty million dollars. But when you're borrowing, right, you have
to think about your total costs, and right now the
city is thinking that the and this is coming from

(04:56):
Denver Gazette dot com and they're quoting Laris Warts, communications
director for the Denver Department of Finance. She says that
a more likely, a likely scenario on the total cost
is one point four billion dollars. So if she's saying
that's likely, I guess theoretically, if you know, interest rates

(05:17):
crashed sometime soon and the city's credit rating looks good
and everybody wants these bonds, maybe they get a little lower.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
But the maximum cost, and I think this is actually
in going to be in the bill, is one point
nine billion. But can you imagine I mean, you can't
imagine that the maximum cost, depending on the interest rate
structure and how long they take to pay it off
and all that would be twice the nominal amount of
nine hundred and fifty million. I am not saying that
that's the likely thing. She's not saying that's a likely thing,

(05:46):
but it's possible. And the way to think about it
is this, right, Let's say you go buy a house
for half a million dollars and you put twenty percent down,
so you're borrowing four hundred thousand dollars and you're borrowing
at five percent, So just nominally, you're paying twenty thousand
dollars in interest a year.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
And I'm going to do this all wrong.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
I'm just going to massively oversimplify, right, But let's just
stick with me for a second here. So you're paying
twenty thousand in interest a year, and it's a thirty
year loan.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
But let's say you come into some.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Money and you pay off the mortgage after ten years.
And again, I realize mortgage math doesn't really work this way,
but stick with me. Imagine that you paid an average,
let's say of twenty thousand dollars in interest a year
over ten years. Right, So you paid two hundred You
paid two hundred thousand dollars in interest, plus the full

(06:36):
five hundred thousand dollars that you paid for the house
to begin with. So your total cost of ownership of
the house is seven hundred thousand dollars, even though the
nominal price is five hundred thousand.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (06:46):
So that's kind of what I'm trying to get at here.
The nominal cost nine hundred and fifty three million or
something like that. But the actual cost will be a
lot higher. The other thing that's kind of interesting about
this story is that for purposes of sending this stuff
to the vote, they broke it up into a bunch
of different packages.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Right, It's not all one thing.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
There's gonna be I believe, five different packages, each focused
on different things. And I don't have the whole list
in front of me, but it's gonna be. Well here,
I think this is it again from Denver g Iset.
Infrastructure and road improvements will be one thing. You can
vote on, libraries, parks, and recreational amenities in the city.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's gonna be broken up something like that.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
And there's some transit stuff there obviously, and people will
get to vote on do we want to issue bonds
for this or this or that? And they could vote
yes on all five, they could vote yes on zero
or anything in between. So that will be an interesting thing.
If they passed everything, just under half of all the money,

(07:50):
forty six percent of the money goes to streets, bridges,
and what they call mobility projects like and it's a
traffic and put estuary and safety. But the big money
is in streets and bridges, and about a quarter of
the money would go to city facilities like libraries and
animal shelters and community centers and stuff like that. In

(08:12):
any case, the big story basically is now we know,
as of the city council's vote yesterday, this will be
going to a vote of the people.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
We'll be right back on Kowa.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
So I was reading a story about some criminals going
on in criminal activity going on in Jefferson County. And
as I was reading this article, my very very first
thought was, geez, I need to get over to this lake.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
This seems like a lake that or a pond.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Rather, this seems like a pond that I really need
to visit because there could be some just some great toys,
you know.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Like if you ever walked down So this actually.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Happened to me one time in my life, and I
was probably fourteen, and were this true. I was walking
down the street somewhere southern California where I lived at
that time, and I found a fifty dollars bill on
the ground.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Fifty dollars when I.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
Was fourteen, Like when fifty dollars was a lot of money.
Now you can barely get a freaking big mac meal
for fifty dollars.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
But anyway, So finding stuff is fun.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
So here's a story from CBS Denver, And again, keep
in mind as I go through this story that the
moral of the story is I need to.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Go to this pond. Okay.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
So, Colorado law enforcement responded to a road rage incident
that started in Clear Creek Canyon.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
At least one.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Suspect shot at another driver and then tossed guns into
a pond before two people were arrested. The incident was
reported about eight thirty am Saturday. Skipping ahead a little
bit here, cops started chasing somebody and they drove into
a place called the Golden Ridge Apartment Complex off of
US six and Heritage Road, and allegedly the purpse not

(10:03):
the cops, tossed several unknown items into a pond in
the middle of the community. A Sheriff's office spokesperson said,
citing witnesses, the suspects got back in their car and
while trying to flee again, hit a deputies vehicle, causing
minor damage. They were then taken into custody around nine
in the morning.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
YadA, YadA, YadA.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
Nobody was injured and all that West Metro Fire Rescue
dive team was seen in the pond, trying to trieve
retrieve items that the suspects allegedly tossed.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Now here's the part that.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Brought me to why I wanted to share this story
with you, And really I probably shouldn't in the sense
that you know, I don't want you to know about
this pond because I want to go.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
I mean, but I've come this far. I'm just gonna
keep going.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Right, we're friends. Hopefully you'll just leave some stuff for me.
And here's where it says again cbsnews dot com slash Colorado, slash.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Whatever for this.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
They recovered multiple handguns, rifles, and ammunition from the area.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Of that pond, according to the Sheriff's office.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
By the way, the people who are arrested I won't
bother with their names face charges of and this is
a fun list. Attempted first degree murder with extreme indifference,
attempted second degree assault, felony, menacing, felony, eluding, obstruction, resisting arrest,
criminal mischief, reckless driving, tampering with evidence, habitual offender. That's
a good one. And bond violations. I wonder if Denver

(11:31):
will have any bond violations with their new vibrant Denver bond,
But I digress. Morris is the last name of one
of these people faces a charge of possession of a
weapon by a previous offender. But anyway, doesn't that sound
like an awesome place to go and just see what
you can find? They recovered multiple handguns, rifles, and ammunition

(11:52):
from the area of that pond. Like, who's living around
this pond? Why does that pond the dumping ground for
fun toys? I don't get it. Anyway, Look, if you
are going to that pond without me, save me something,
will you please? Okay, one other story I want to
share with you briefly, and I'm trying to look up

(12:14):
the news on this right now, because I would have
expected that this would have been done by now, but
it might not be done quite by by now.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
And it's a story I shared with.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
You a couple of days ago about a convicted murderer
in Tennessee named Byron Black. And by the way, this
guy's about to be put to death for crimes that
he was convicted of, and I don't see I don't
see good evidence that he's innocent. By the way, crimes
that he was convicted of, well, he committed in nineteen
eighty eight, which gives you a sense of one of

(12:50):
the arguments against wasting our time with the death penalty.
Can you imagine how many millions of dollars were wasted
by taxpayers arguing and certainly there were government lawyers on
both sides of this thing, arguing fore and against this
guy to be killed millions and millions and millions of dollars. Anyway,
the reason this story is a little bit interesting is

(13:11):
he's supposed to be executed today. So far, no court
has jumped in to stop the execution, and neither has
the Republican governor of the state of Tennessee.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
His name is Bill Lee.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
And the reason the story is interesting is that a
little over a year ago, around a year ago, this guy,
who is medically frail to begin with, had an implantable
defibrillator put in him.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
And so the worry, it's not really much of a
worry for me.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
But the worry is that the lethal injection drugs will
stop his heart, and then this implanted defibrillator will shock
his heart and bring him back to life in an
attempt to restore it to a normal heart rhythm. And
the theory, and I'm quoting here from some news article.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
This is CNN. The theory is.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
That this could cause a prolonged and tortuous execution, violating
Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. There was
at first a report that said the hospital agreed to
deactivate the implant, and the hospital said that is not true.
We never agreed to that, and we won't. And then
the state that made the claim to begin with said, oops,

(14:20):
our bad. The hospital really did never agree to that.
So it appears that that execution is going to happen today.
And look, he's already gonna die. I'm not rooting for
him to be writhing around on the table as a
machine zaps him back to life over and over.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
You know.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
On the other hand, there is a little bit of
f around and find out we'll be right back to ross.
It's time to go magnet fishing at that pond. I
don't know if I'd be more excited about finding guns
or finding AMMO, but I'd have to dive for the
ammo Ross.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
This is mark.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
I get it on the death penalty, but can we
really trust that life without parole is really life without parole?
Given our state legislature and others. I do think we
can trust that most of the time. I don't think generally. Okay,
let me put it this way. Remember what legislators care about.
Most legislators care most about.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Doing the right thing.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
You you didn't believe that, did you? No legislators care.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make myself laugh that hard.
Legislators care most about getting re elected. And it is
generally a bad strategy for legislators to do something that
would would sort of let not just one person, but

(15:39):
perhaps many people who committed crimes that serious, serious enough
that the penalty they're getting is the highest penalty available
in a state where, for example, there is no death penalty.
Like if there were a death penalty, they might have
gotten it. Like they're not going to do stuff to
just suddenly give people parole, and there's a whole parole

(16:00):
board which and all this stuff. So now I'm really
not worried about that particular thing, even though I do
understand the question.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Ross.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
According to Grock, finding fifty dollars in nineteen eighty is
worth finding approximately one hundred and ninety seven dollars and
twenty cents today, assuming the estimated CPI for this year,
excellent Ross. I've got a decent metal detector. Let's check
the pond out. So here's here's here's what I wonder.
If there's all these people throwing rifles and pistols and

(16:28):
AMMO into the pond, I just wonder like, is it
safe to go to the pond? And and you know,
you know, to me, it seems like going to the
Salvation Army Store. Right, You're going to look for some
used stuff at a nice price, and you never know
what you're gonna find.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
And I mean, I don't go to Salvation.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Army Store with a metal detector or ARC or any
of those kind of thrift stores. I don't go very often,
but I actually do go from from time to time.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
I like them.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Sometimes you find a cool piece of old electron or
sometimes you find somebody like donates a really expensive shirt
that fits me.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Well, I'm not above any of that.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
And so to me, that's how I think about the pond.
If you don't know what I'm talking about with the
pond and you just joined the conversation, you're gonna probably
just have to go back to the podcast and listen
to the first part of the show. Because I'm not
gonna go over that all again. I do want to
do a quick giveaway and I'm.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
Gonna do this.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
I'm gonna do this quite easily. Here, I think, how
am I going to do this? Yeah, all right, I
know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna I'm gonna make
it a trivia question, and I'm gonna make it a
trivia question based on whether you were listening to the
show earlier.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
But it's an easy.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Enough question that you could just take a stab at
it and you might get it right, even if you
don't know what I said earlier in the show.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
So here's what we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
That is, I want to give away a pair of
passes for August sixteenth, that is sadder, Okay, a week
from this coming Saturday, August sixteenth, to the Colorado Garden
and Home Show at the Colorado Convention Center. And by
the way, if you don't win and you want to go,

(18:11):
passes are available at Colorado Fall Fall, coloradofallhomeshow dot com,
coloradofallhomeshow dot com. If you don't win, so right now,
as I speak, it's nine thirty eight and change, you
may hear it a little bit later than that, depending
on how you're listening. But the time is what it is,

(18:32):
so I'm going to do a little delay so people
who are listening on the stream can try to play along.
I will take texter number three at nine forty three am.
Texter number three at nine forty three am, and the
number you text to is five six six nine zero.

(18:53):
And what you must include in your text is three things.
Your name, your email address, and what kind of tea
I am drinking this morning? Your name, your email address,
and what kind of tea I am drinking this morning.
And I am telling you I did mention it at
the very beginning of the show, but I am also

(19:14):
telling you that it is a common enough kind of
tea that even if you didn't hear me say it,
there's a good chance you'll get it right. If you
take a guess, textra number three at nine forty three
am by my clock, not yours, with your name, email address,
and the answer to that question whins a pair of
passes for Saturday, August sixteenth for the Colorado for the

(19:37):
Colorado Garden.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
At Home Show.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
And we'll be giving away more tickets over the course
of days, different shows, not just me throughout here on Kowa.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
I want to mention one other thing.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
If you got a little time this Saturday night, I
will be m seeing a really great event that I
have m seed in the past. And it's called Diamonds
and dog Tags and it's by a wonderful group called
Warrior Bonfire and they are here to support veterans who
need particular, you know, kinds of support, psychological support, camaraderie, friendship,
things like that.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
And the event is kind of central Denver.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
It's near Alameda and Colorado Boulevard at a place called
cable Land, which is a really wacky mansion built by
Bill Daniels years ago and then donated to the city,
like I don't know, twenty something years ago to be
to be the mayor's house, but it never was the
mayor's house anyway. If you go to Warrior bonfireprogram dot

(20:32):
or you can find tickets, or just go to Rosskiminsky
dot com. I've got it right at the top of
today's blogcast Rosskiminsky dot com Tuesday blogcast. It's right at
the top. Buy some tickets, come.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
Hang out with me. I'll even show you the terrible, terrible.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
Haircut that I've got right now that I had to
do before getting my hair restoration from Advanced Hair on Friday.
My hair looks ridiculous right now, so I'm probably gonna.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
Wear a hat.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
But if you come and tell me, Hey, Ross, you
said you'd show me your terrible haircut, then I will.
All right, so let's do Let's do that. A listener
actually has it right with what kind of tea I'm
having and but doesn't want passes.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Hey, Ross, you're feisty this morning. I love it.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Okay, all right, I am. Let's do another feisty thing.
Here's a story that I will say is kind of remarkable,
but when you think about.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Who's in charge, it is not. That's the problem.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
By the way, whoever Marty, Marty who just texted in?
First of all, I'm gonna give you a clue, Marty,
you got the tea wrong. But also, don't text in
until nine forty three. If you text in early, your
text won't count. Oh and also, people remember if you
text in more than once, none of them will count.
Only one entry per person. To try to win anything

(21:47):
I ever do on this show with the text E
line only, you can only text in once per texty. Okay,
check this out. This is from the Denver Gazette. Let
me see if it's originally THEIRS. Okay, here we go.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services, also known as USCIS,
has updated its immigration policy to restrict visa eligibility for

(22:10):
you ready for it, transgender women seeking to competed Women's
Sports Wow. Under the policy update, USCIS will consider quote
the fact that a male athlete has been competing against
women end quote as a negative factor when evaluating visa

(22:31):
petitions in categories such as zero dash one A for
or O dash one A for Extraordinary ability EB one
and EB two, green cards for highly skilled workers, and
National interest waivers. Quoting again from the agency, USCIS will
affirmatively protect all female athletic opportunities and that's all hyphen

(22:56):
female right, so all female.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
Right athletic opportunity. It's supposed to be.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Four females by granting certain athlete related petitions and applications
that had previously been abused and offered to men only
to women, ensuring that male aliens seeking immigration benefits aren't
coming to the US to participate in women's sports Wow.

(23:22):
A spokesperson for USCIS said men do not belong in
women's sports. And added, USCIS is closing the loophole for
foreign male athletes whose only chance at winning elite sports
is to change their gender identity and leverage their biological
advantages against women. It's a matter of safety, fairness, respect,
and truth that only female athletes receive a visa to

(23:44):
come to the US to participate in women's sports. The
Trump administration is standing up for the silent majority who've
long been victims of leftist policies that defy common sense.
So let me say just a couple of things about this.
One is that I fully support making sure that women's

(24:05):
sports are just for biological women, especially, and this will
be almost every case in any situation where having gone
through puberty as a man or even grown up as
a boy would give an advantage, and that's probably almost
every situation at the moment. I'm not even really thinking

(24:25):
of a situation where it wouldn't apply. It probably exists.
But I'll give you one example of one where you
might not think it would be a thing, but actually
it is a thing.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
And that is and.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
This has come up on the show maybe a year ago, Chess.
Why would you have an advantage playing chess in the
women's side of the tournament versus on the men's side
of the tournament. Why would someone who grew up male,
grew up playing chess as a male and then transitions

(24:59):
to female and goes to play against women. Why would
that person have an advantage? It is not obvious, and
I was surprised when I learned it the first time,
which is why I'm mentioning it to you now. And
the answer is that in general, chess tends to be
a much more competitive men's sport, even at young ages

(25:23):
or at every age, and therefore, if you grew up
becoming a competitive chess player as a boy, you likely
faced stronger competition on average. It doesn't mean that the
greatest chess player in the world can't be a woman
could be. It doesn't mean that in a chess learning career,

(25:43):
it doesn't mean that you might not end up in
a situation where all of your best competitors would.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Have been women. It's possible, it's just not likely.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
On average, there are more stronger male players starting from
an early age, and there for even in chess, Even
in chess, on average, a transgender woman would have an
unfair advantage so I'm absolutely down with protecting these.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
Sports one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
I think going about it this way is interesting in
the sense that what USCIS.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
Is not the US Olympic Committee.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
They're going to make their own rules, and also each
individual sports governing body will make their own rules.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
So what USCIS here is saying is.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Not that there will be no women, no men in
women's sports, although the Trump administration would like that and
they're doing everything they can to make that happen. But
all USCIS controls as immigration. So what they're really saying
here is for other countries. Let's say that are in
sports where in those countries you can play against women

(27:00):
and even if you are biologically male. But we're going
to have you know, the world fill in the blank
championship here, or we're going to have the Olympics here,
And actually, aren't the Olympics coming to Los Angeles? I
think anyway, tell me if that's wrong. I don't pay
very close attention to the Olympics, but I think the
I think the Olympics are coming to the US, And

(27:22):
so what USCIS is saying is for athletes, if we
find that's what's going on, you know, you could be
on another country's Olympic team, and you could be abiding
by that country's rules, and you could be abiding by
maybe your sports governing bodies rules or the US Olympic
Committee's rules, but we're still not gonna let you in.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
Because we're here to protect women's sports.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
And I think that's super interesting and I think it
will I'll be interested to see whether any of the
international organizations that are thinking they're still going to allow
biological males women's sports. It'll be interesting to see whether
any of them change their minds about where to have championships,

(28:07):
you know, or where to have big competitions and say,
you know what, we're we're not going to do this
in the United States anymore.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
We're gonna move somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
So anyway, I thought that I thought that story was
pretty interesting. I just saw it this morning. Let me
let me change something to something completely different here. Not politics,
not economics, just kind of.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Kind of fun.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
This is a piece over at the Wall Street Journal
from actually a couple of weeks ago, but the timing
doesn't matter. And the headline is this Etsy do you got?
You know what Etsy is? It's sort of like it's
like a shopping site. It's not quite like eBay, not
quite like Amazon, but it's a shopping site, usually for
artistic kind of stuff. A lot of creatives are there.
You know, you'd be making clothes or making art, or

(28:48):
making this or that, and and you sell it on Etsy.
That's that's what it's. It's a big site, it's publicly traded.
It's it's a big thing. So Etsy witches charged for jobs,
Sunshine and Nis like the New York Knicks Wins business
is booming.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
This is fun.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
Janudi Pereira spent all spring looking for a retail.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Job, but had no luck.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
So the college sophomore in Queens, New York did what
many around her do when a situation doesn't go their way.
She paid a witch on Etsy to cast a spell. Quote.
The job market is terrible. I'm not getting any responses,
so why not help myself out, said Pereira. And if
it doesn't work out, then, oh well, it was only
fifteen bucks. Pereira said some of her friends bought Etsy

(29:34):
spells during finals. She isn't an ardent believer in witchcraft,
but does believe in manifesting, the ritual of envisioning desired outcomes.
The Davy Etsy witch cast the spell, Perreira said she
got a job offer from Whole Foods, where she is
now a store shopper. Was it magic? I really dig

(29:54):
this story. I have to say I'm not a believer
in any of this, but I love this story, but
especially because you know it's not about Jason Crow or
guns and ponds.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Although guns and ponds are a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Witchcraft and spell work have become an online cottage industry.
Faced with economic uncertainty and vapid dating apps, some people
are putting their beliefs and disposable income into love spells,
career charms, and spirit cleansers.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Would that be like drinking pine sal anyway?

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Etsy, an online marketplace for no that would be a
spirit cleanser would be more like snorting pinesel, not drinking it.
So let's just make sure we get that right. Etsy,
an online marketplace for crafts and vintage, has long been
home to psychics and mystics, but the platform has enjoyed
new callouts from TikTokers as a destination for witchcraft. The

(30:45):
concept of hiring an Etsy witch had a fever pitch
when influencer jazz That's Jaz Smith told her TikTok followers
that she had paid one to make sure the weather
was perfect during her Memorial Day weekend wedding.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
The blue skies and warm temperature have.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
Inspired TikTok audiences to find Etsy witches of their own.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Smith did not respond to requests for comment.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
Oh row Hit Towani, a creative director in Los Angeles,
said Smith was his inspiration for paying an Etsy witch
eight dollars and forty eight cents okay to cast the spell.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
On the New York Knicks.

Speaker 1 (31:20):
Ahead of Game five of the Eastern Conference Finals in May,
Tiwani found a witch offering discount codes.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Tiwani was half.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Kidding about the transaction, but was amazed when the Knicks won.
Maybe there's something cosmic out there. Now, this is an
interesting thing. If the codes were and I'm sorry, if
the spells work, did the spells know how much you
paid for them? Like if I go to the supermarket
and I buy, let's say, a yogurt, a little thing

(31:51):
of yogurt that's on Manager Special and it's usually a
dollar twenty five and it's on Manager Special for sixty
three cents, I tell you, as a matter of fact,
I get, but it's somewhat less credit for my wife
for having that yogurt in the house.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
My wife's getting better at it.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
It's getting better at understanding that that's how I shop,
But I get.

Speaker 2 (32:11):
A little bit less credit.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
So I wonder if Karma or the universe, or whoever
it is who's responding to these spells, knows that the
spell was acquired at a discount, and if so, does
it make a difference.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Tiwani bought a second spell.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
This one was twenty one dollars and eighteen cents if
you wanted to know from that same Etsy, which for
the next game. But the Knicks lost, which would seem
to answer my question. So the bargain hunting spell they
won the game. The full price spell they lost the game.
So maybe actually the part of the universe that is

(32:49):
responding to all this is kind of a bargain shopper
and appreciates all that. I'm just I'm theorizing here. I
don't know, all right, I'm not stating this as fact.
I'm just you know, as we go along together as
friends having a strange conversation in the morning, the shop
Mariah spells. M Ariah spells all one word has over

(33:09):
four thousand sales on et C and four point nine
stars and sells a permanent protection spell for about two
hundred dollars. I wonder what that protects you from. Another shop.
Spells by Carlton has over forty four thousand sales and
lists a bring your ex lover back spell for about
seven dollars.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
See this is where I get torn. If you only want.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
To spend seven dollars on getting your ex lover back,
then she or he was probably not that great. On
the other hand, if we are talking about a world
in which the invisible spell grants out there are bargain shoppers,
then maybe seven dollars is exactly the right amount.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
In any case, this article is much much longer.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
But gonna I'm gonna stop there, except for just moving
all the way down and sharing the last two sentences
of this piece from.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
The Wall Street Journal.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Claire at bat Leo, twenty one years old, believes more
people her age are willing to gamble on witchcraft for careers, income,
and love. She says, like we're young, dumb, and broke.
It's out of desperation. Gosh, I love that story. It's
up on the blog at Rosskaminsky dot com so you
can enjoy it yourself. We'll be right back on KOA,

(34:28):
so please to have a Rod back with us, joining
us from training Camp. KOA at Training Camp is powered
by Chevron, committed to our local communities and safely delivering affordable,
reliable energy that powers Colorado Forward.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
A Rod texted me a picture of.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
Sunglasses on a table rather than on your head.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
Hi a Rod, Hello, Hello, Yes, I will kind of
go up and down yesterday at the sunglasses on for
the social media video. Today the sunglass is sitting on
the table, so I don't make anyone anyone too mad
about my wearing or not wearing of thy shades.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
It's strange how much of a thing that has turned into.
I want to talk a little football with you, and then,
as is usual when you're talking with me, I have
something else for you as well. But you sent me
a little note that I don't entirely understand, so I
would like you to explain it. Something about a yearly
tradition of Sean Payton's buzz storyline. And at first I

(35:22):
thought it was going to be like Sean Payton got
a really short haircut every year or something, But I
think that's not what you mean.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
No, that's nikolay Oak before playoff runs. Everyone waits for
him to get that haircut, that he's ready for the playoffs.

Speaker 4 (35:34):
No by buzz storyline. For Sean Payton.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
What I mean is is every year here so far
as the head coach at the Denver Broncos, Sean Payton
has I don't know whether it's intention or not, but honestly,
I think it is because he's very methodical in nature
where he wants to control the narrative. He's a Bill
Parcells guy, Bill Parcell's disciple. He's wanted to control the
narrative year in a year out. We saw it start
two years ago and year number one where he railed

(35:56):
on Nathaniel Hockey.

Speaker 4 (35:57):
He then kind of drew.

Speaker 3 (35:59):
It back and said I should probably, you know, take
my fox hat off, and he kind of brought that back.
But his narrative was that the coaching was obviously not
very good before his time here. Last year, it was
all about kind of framing that it's a clean slate,
getting ready for everyone to say this is now his squad.

Speaker 4 (36:13):
He's got his quarterback.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
So every interview he did, he made sure everyone knew
that that they were ready to get this thing started
and refreshed this year.

Speaker 4 (36:21):
We've already heard.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
It from both him on the podium and from national media,
local media. Everyone is basically not afraid to say super Bowl.
And yesterday Yahoo Sports Charles Robinson got the one on
one with him, and basically it's exactly what Sean's doing.

Speaker 4 (36:36):
He is saying.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
He says, I've talked about a Super Bowl. This is
my seventh team that I think has a super Bowl potential.
And then he went all in on mister bow Nicks,
who now is his own YouTube channel, which he's not
quite Billichick Belichicking and a Sean Payton, but he's letting
bon Nicks have that YouTube channel. And he said boon
Knicks is going to be one of the top four
or five quarterbacks in the league the next two years.

(36:58):
So Sean's going all in with the squad. That's his
narrative and that's what he's gonna roll with for this season.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
It's probably a little bit hard to tell, but are
what kind of reaction are you hearing or just sort
of feeling as a vibe from the team after Sean
Payton says that kind of stuff, Oh.

Speaker 4 (37:17):
The team, the team is leaning in big time.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
I think that they all believe that this is really
a squad that that can do it. I will say,
I mean, I think everyone's really said, both the players
and really all the media that have reacted to to
to the strong feelings of this team that it starts
and ends with the defense. I believe, really honestly going
into this camp that this could be a top two,
top three defense. Ben actually said the same thing esstry
On Koe Sports could be a top two, top.

Speaker 4 (37:42):
Three, and they may not be two or three.

Speaker 3 (37:44):
And when you have a defense, it's going to be
that dang good that people are looking to say. Maybe
you can compare it to the no Fly Zone and
this one with this unit could be across the board
with being the top flight defense. Even if the offense
approves just a hair. They could, they could, they could
really compete, and all the players on the put him
they all believe.

Speaker 4 (37:59):
I mean.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
I asked Adam Troutman the other day, who was a
tight end that played for Sean Payton in New Orleans
and now I called him here to Denver. He said
that the great practice they had last Wednesday was the
best practice that he has had in his entire time
here in Denver, and that is real.

Speaker 4 (38:13):
I mean they mean business. They've done a lot.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
Of trash talking, Ross, but it hasn't translated into scrapping,
into fighting into brawls because they wanted to make sure
they get the time and x as and O's to
become the best that they can be. It has been
all business and they really believe they can win it all.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
So I'm a little bit superstitious and I want the
Broncos to win. So I'm not going to say anything
about like, oh they seem like I just I don't
do that.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
I'm too superstitious.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
But just what you reminded me of when talking that
way is when the Broncos won the Super Bowl with
Peyton Manning's quarterback.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
Right.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Obviously, Peyton Manning is one of the greatest quarterbacks of
all time. By the time he got to the Broncos,
he was still one of the best, but not at
his peak. And we won that Super Bowl on the
strength of our defense. Manning did enough, but we won
the game because of defense.

Speaker 4 (39:05):
Well, Ross, I'm going to give you another example.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
Two years before they won, who did they face forty
three to eight, losing to the Seattle Seahawks led by
a young Russell Wilson and a now consider one of
the best defenses of all time in the legion of
Boom that could be comparable to what we maybe see
here this season. The team that beat the Broncos of
two years before, could be the blueprint to say, hey,

(39:27):
bo Nigs, we've got a window here where if he
excels enough and develops enough, and then this year and
the next year on the rookie contract, you're shelling out
these deals to Zach Allen, to Cortland Sudd and you
imagine they'll get something done with Nick Beniat and hopefully
John Franklin Myers. This is the window to potentially do something.
Sean knows it. He knows he needs to get the
mentality of the squad. Because here's the thing. If Sean

(39:49):
Ping goes out there and says, yeah, you know, I
think we can take that next step, you know, win
the division and maybe get to that second round. Maybe
if you get to that point, it's hard to look
forward beyond that point. But if you're saying let's go,
oh for it, all, this is a team that can
do it. He's been coaching. I think This is like,
I think it's his eighteen season in league. He says,
it's a seventh team that he thinks I can win
it all. This team's going to buy in when they
have a coach of the caliber, of the respect of

(40:11):
Sean Payton saying this squad right here, you guys can
do it. If that buy ins in the locker room,
they are going to believe that they can do it.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
All right, I got one minute left with you and
I and I want to switch gears with you to
something I like to talk to you about. This is
from Forbes magazine. I'm gonna do this quick. Box office
hounds are currently looking at the horse race between Superman
and Fantastic Four, the former of which will apparently top
the ladder in terms of ticket sales unless some dramatic

(40:39):
shift takes place. It's not just a win for DC
and the new DCU, It's something that goes well beyond that.
If this happens with Superman, and it looks very likely
that it will, it will be the first time that
a DC movie was the highest grossing comic book movie
of a given year since two thousand and eight. So, first,

(41:00):
any comment on that, and second, can you remember what
the one would have been in two thousand and eight where.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
A DC movie was the.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
Highest grossing comic book movie of the year.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Well, real quick, on the ladder of the questions, it
had to be something that maybe beat out iron Man.

Speaker 4 (41:15):
What was the DC movie in eight?

Speaker 2 (41:18):
That's what I'm asking you.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
What I said, I can't think of the DC movie
that would have beat out iron Man in eight. So
while I think on that the former of your two questions,
I honestly I should be that way in the fresh take,
you know, James Gunn moving over to DC and doing
what he's doing with Superman. It's a fresh take. They
did really good at marketing. I'm not surprised. Doesn't mean

(41:39):
it was a better movie, because it wasn't. I clearly,
even the vast minority, Fantastic four was head and shoulders
better than Superman. It broke my top ten in the
MCU rankings for the first time in a long time
since The Latest Spider Man and then since Endgame. So
you know, once they get away from being Sunday a
Saturday morning cartoon feel and stop being so cheesy like
they were in this movie, then maybe, you know, then

(42:01):
I'll get more behind it.

Speaker 4 (42:02):
But but it should.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
Rightfully so probably do better box office wise, because it's
a fresh take on Superman's the start of the DCU
and it's the start of something new.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
All right. I don't know what that movie was, The
Dark Knight. Oh of course, yeah, Dark Dark Knight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, rightfully,
so that.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
Was incredible, overrated but very good that game from training
what Ryan over here? People always the most understood word
of the English language is overrated, and Ryan did not
like me calling Dark Knight.

Speaker 4 (42:28):
Overrated, which it is. It's very very good.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
It's a very.

Speaker 4 (42:33):
Good movie, but it's left not top of the food.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
Chain in terms of in terms of yeah, no, right, yeah,
we'll have to get We'll have to get Ryan on
for that debate. Training camp koa a training camp powered
by Chevron. Thank you Chevron, Thank you a Rod. We'll
be right back on k That was the Dark Knight theme.
Oh okay, you know, I don't even think i've seen
that movie. Sorry, what I know. I am not a

(42:57):
big Batman guy. I've seen a couple of them. Its like,
maybe you're a bit of a comic book nerd, you do, Like, really,
I only pretend to be to make a rod happy.
I really don't care. Okay, I really don't care. I mean,
I'll watch the comic book movies. They're entertaining enough, but
I mean, it's like, nah, Dragon, I forgot to mention

(43:17):
yesterday because you and I asked listeners to text in
on a scale of zero to ten how much they
like their chocolate chip cookie dough cooked, with zero being
raw dough and we know you're a zero and ten
being ten being as crunchy as a cookie could possibly
be that you could still theoretically eat.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
It, and I would like you to know. And this
happened last time too.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
The answers really were all over the place, like the
average was probably around five, because there were a bunch
of sevens, eight nine's. There were threes, not nearly as
many zero ones and twos as I thought. One person
gave an answer which is probably pretty close to my answer,

(44:00):
which is three point one nine one four.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
It's probably pretty close to my answer.

Speaker 5 (44:05):
There was one that I saw that it was kind
of confusing. I want to know how you're able to
obtain this level of baked cookie. But the outer was
like a seven, but the inner was like a four. Oh,
I wonder how you how you do something like that.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
I think I think you would do that by putting
the oven on a very high temperature. Yeah, yeah, and
then and then cooking it, cooking it for a short time.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah, all right?

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Ross, Is there a difference between a soft baked cookie?

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Wait? Where did that go? I lost it? That was
a good pay not so cooked cookie.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
I don't like my cookie to fall apart when I
bite it.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
But my number is a five question mark.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
I'm with that. That's kind of where I am. I
want a soft cookie that doesn't fall apart.

Speaker 5 (44:54):
Yes, there's definitely a difference between a soft baked cookie
because those would be fully baked and yeah that is
underbaked in something less than a five. So yeah, I
would say there's a big difference. You can buy these
soft baked cookies in stores. I don't think stores will
sell you know, something that's baked at a two?

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Right?

Speaker 1 (45:14):
I agree, because the lawyers won't let them, right, yeah, right,
the lawyers.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
The lawyers won't let them.

Speaker 5 (45:19):
It's just the ingredients and what particular order and how
you make them to make a soft bake cookie versus
a crunchy cookie.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
This listener says the best chocolate chip cookies are at costcos. Oh,
I have a quick story for you as long as
we're wasting time on cookies. So normally, when you buy
cookies and you put them in this little room in
our kitchen that we call the pantry as if it's
some glorified thing. It's a slightly large closet, especially, and
normally you buy a thing of cookies and you.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
Put it there, and it'll be gone pretty soon.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
And we've got kids in the house, which means that
not only will the cookies be gone, but the package
will still be there, fooling you into thinking that they're
still cookies there and setting you up for massive disappointment,
especially if they were soft baked chocolate chip cookies or
some other cookies that I like a lot the uh
I forget the exact name, but the Keebler ones that
are kind of like Girl Scout thin mints.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
I really like those ones a lot too.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Anyway, Anyway, there has been a package of cooked sitting
in our pantry for the better part of three months now, unopened,
and dragon, when I explain to you what it says
on the label, you will fully understand why they are unopened.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
So Are you ready It says organic, doesn't it.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
No, it's worse. It's worse. Sugar free oatmeal cookies. Oh yeah,
sugar free oatmeal cookies. So I asked my wife, why
are these here? And she said, oh, I crumble them
up sometimes and mix them into some things when I'm baking,
which which makes a little more sense. I mean, it's

(46:56):
it's still not great. It's it's still not great, right,
But my wife likes to bake really, really healthy things,
and so I guess she thinks that's part of it.
But I have I just wanted to mention it to
your Dragon, because I have literally never in my life,
I mean a package of cookies go unopened like that.

Speaker 5 (47:15):
Yeah, you know, not surprising once you read the label.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
No, not surprising at all, Absolutely not surprising at all.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
All Right, I feel very proud that.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Dragon and I have just been able to waste a
solid five to six minutes of your time on cookies,
adding to the time that we wasted of yours yesterday
on cookies. And by the way, feel free to send
any chocolate chip cookie text you want at five six
six nine zero when we come back. We are not
gonna waste your time We're gonna have a really interesting

(47:47):
conversation with a guy who I think is one of
the most thought provoking podcasters out there. His name is
Dimitri Kafinis. He runs a podcast called Hidden Forces that
is an absolute must listen. This is going to be
a really big picture, macro kind of conversation and I
hope you enjoy it.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
It's coming up next on KOA.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
So I'm very careful about what I listened to, and
there are lots of podcasts I like, but they're not
very many podcasts that I like enough never to miss
an episode.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
My next guest, Dimitri Caffinis.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
Is the proprietor and host of an amazing podcast called
Hidden Forces. The website is Hiddenforces dot io. It is
a must listen and must subscribe if you care not
just about you know, thinking about the world, but if
you're really interested in hearing from from voices you will
rarely hear anywhere else. He gets some of the most

(48:40):
amazing guests. I have to say, he gets some of
the most amazing guests, and some of them some of
them are people I hadn't even heard of, and they're
just incredible, And so I really love listening to Hidden forces,
and Dmitri has kindly agreed to take some time out
of his day to join us for a big picture
conversation today. So, hi Dimitri, thanks for be in here. Hey, Ross,

(49:02):
it's my pleasure.

Speaker 4 (49:03):
I would like to I.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
Would like to start with the burning question of the
day from the show, and then we'll get into the podcast,
into your podcast. From zero to ten, with zero being
raw cookie dough and ten being the most you could
possibly cook a chocolate chip cookie and still be able
to eat it. What is the optimal level of cooking

(49:26):
of the cookie dough for dimitry Cafinis.

Speaker 6 (49:31):
Uh, well, that's an interesting question, I guess uh, I
definitely would like it. I like everything more. I like
everything more raw than I like it cooked. So that's
not just true for cookies. It's true for meat, it's
true for everything. So some were below five, Okay, fair enough.
I'm I'm around to three myself. So that's that's a

(49:51):
good answer. That sounds about right. Actually, that's what that's
the number I actually would have would have said. So three,
we're in a quarters here.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
Do you think that enjoyment for less cooked stuff comes
from a Greek heritage or is that just a.

Speaker 6 (50:03):
Prison albums that actually a Greek people tend to overcook
everything in my experience, and actually when it comes to meat,
it's a perfect example. I grew up in a house
where everything had to be well done, and then when
I moved and Dataly, where I worked and lived for
some period of time, I started eating raw, rare cooks
of meat and I realized that, oh, actually this is

(50:24):
way better.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
All right, now, let's get slightly more serious.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
For people who don't know you, I want to just
set a brief foundation of you, as you often do
with your guests, but just briefly, like twenty nine seconds,
because I like prime numbers. What do my listeners need
to know about you and your background to have a
framework to understand what we're going to talk about next.

Speaker 6 (50:47):
Well, I mean, I'm sort of an autodide act and
I've always just followed my instincts on what I find interesting.
And I've always been an entrepreneur, and I've started companies
both on the product side of the business, so in
video game industry on the technology side, and application development
design working in the cable industry. And then I had

(51:09):
a radio show, a TV show, I had a theater company,
so I'm just kind of like somebody that always has
just done lots of different things. But my curiosity has
always been my north star. And ever since I started
this podcast, I've just used it as a vehicle for
me to explore topics that interest me, and I find
experts who are really interesting and thoughtful that can speak
to those subjects, and I bring them on for two
hour long conversations.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
We just nerd out.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
Yeah, and I think listeners who know me know Based
on Dmitri's description of his own podcast, why I love
it so much Because I'm a nerd and Dimitri and
I won't say we necessarily agree on everything, but that
isn't really the point.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
We very much.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Share the list of what issues we might say are
the most important things going on in the world, and
Dmiti just brings such interesting guests and conversations about all
these things. Now, before we get into specific issues, you
were talking in a recent episode. I forget which episode
it was, because I've listened to I got a little behind,
so I listened to a whole bunch in a row.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
About how you've had a little drift.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
Between pessimism and optimism lately and tell us a little
about that.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
Which way are you drifting and why?

Speaker 1 (52:22):
You know?

Speaker 6 (52:22):
That's an interesting and timely question because I think now
I have objective evidence to suggest that I've clearly become
more pessimistic. Because so I have a mini podcast series
that I'm doing with Grant Williams where we both share
the series on our respective podcast since called the one
hundred Year Pivot, where we speak with people about what
we think are century you know, one hundred year changes

(52:44):
happening once in every few generations. And the guest that's
coming on the show tomorrow is Jonathan Kershner, who had
been on the Hidden Force podcast some years ago. And
I went back and I listened to that episode and
I listened to my introduction and it was so hopeful,
and I was sort of appealing to the list and
appealing to the audience to say, like, we can do
something about these things that are these things that aren't

(53:05):
working in our life, we can change them, we have
the power, blah blah blah. And now I definitely have
drifted to a state of more pessimism. I don't think
it's pessimism, ross Honestly, I think it's acceptance.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Like I think it's just acceptance.

Speaker 6 (53:18):
Of what the world where we are, what people seem
to want, and the fact that we just seems that
we need to go through this process that we're going through.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
And I guess that's the perspective I have now.

Speaker 6 (53:28):
I had the perspective before of like, this is a problem,
this is what we need to do to fix it.
Now I'm like, this is a problem. We have to
go through this hell in order to sort of become
the people that were meant to be after we get
through it.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
Okay, And a lot of times, folks, in conversations that
you hear Dmitri have with guests or the occasional conversation
that Dmitri have offline when we're just talking or texting
or something, it delves, it drifts a bit into philosophy,
which I love. And so I'm not sure that my
next question is exactly philosophical, but I should have started

(53:59):
with this when you say you're drifting into pessimism, at
least a little bit pessimism about what exactly. I guess, you.

Speaker 6 (54:11):
Know, like, here, here's I'll give you one maybe to
sort of focalize this a bit. I just finished the
conversation yesterday with someone who's a broad thinker. He's somewhat
of a philosopher, Butody also thinks about geopolitical issues. And
the focus of the conversation was quote world building. So essentially,
the United States was a builder of worlds post World

(54:34):
War Two. It helped build the international framework upon which
the Western world really existed throughout the Cold War and subsequently,
and it has now seemingly receded from that responsibility, and
in its place, someone else will necessarily build the world. Now,
maybe it's China, maybe it's a panoply of international corporations

(54:55):
functioning alongside other sovereign states. But I guess what I'm
pessimistic about is the American order and the liberal world order.
And I'm concerned that there is a kind of a
dark energy that has taken over in our world and
we and and that, and that we've sort of like
exhausted our generative energy to build a constructive universe. That's

(55:19):
so much of the language today in the political sphere
is sort of built in, is couched in negatives, like
you know, we have to stop so and so, like
we have to exclude so and so, Like it's it's
it's not it's not affirmative, and I think that I
guess that speaks to one of the sort of sources
of my pessimism.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
And I'm with you on that.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
I I don't know that I would try to compare
degrees of pessimism. I in general, over most of my lifetime,
I have thought that there is something in the American
spirit that tends to overcome most things. And my concern
right now is that a generation or more of hardcore
leftists who are against most things that I believe in,

(56:04):
and I don't mean policy, I mean most principles that
I believe are.

Speaker 2 (56:10):
Good and true and beautiful.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
These people have been running especially higher education, for long
enough that I think a lot of the people, especially
the people who went to college, who are going to
be the people running things. I think that American spirit
that I, in my mind, have relied on to bring
us out of some of these downward moves where we
get isolationists or xenophobic or whatever. I just I'm less

(56:36):
optimistic than I used to be about that American spirit triumphing.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Pessimistic, but I'm at least closer to neutral than I've
ever been. Well.

Speaker 6 (56:46):
I also think that we're in this place in America.
We don't know who we are, and until we figure
that out, we're not in a.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
Position to really.

Speaker 6 (56:56):
Express lofti ambitions about what the world should look like.
And I don't know why we're in this place right now,
but it seems that we are so that when you
tell me, for example, you know, like what you think
you were sort of somewhat externalizing.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
This idea of like what American values are, I feel.

Speaker 6 (57:14):
Like we don't actually have a consensus view of what
that is and what it means to be an American anymore.
And I don't mean that in a sense of immigration
and in the sense of like genetic archetypes of what
does an American look like? I mean in terms of,
like what are the values? What does it mean to
be an American? What do we support? What does what
does an American form of governance look like? You know,

(57:34):
so many of the norms and values that we have
we're being actively shattered. But again, to go back to
my point about the source of my pessimism, it isn't
isn't the destruction of those values that concerns me. It
is the lack of a positive, affirmative vision of the
future that concerns me.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
So all we're doing is destroying, but we're not creating.
That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
I want to dig into some specific topics with you,
and again for those just joint we're talking with Dimitri Caffinis.
His podcast is called Hidden Forces and you should go
find it and subscribe to it. There's a lot of
different tiers of subscription, and as you go up you
get more benefits if you get If you do the
Genius tier, you get invited to essentially small online conversations

(58:23):
where you can do Q and A with these brilliant guests.
And you also will get invited to small group dinners
and I haven't been to one yet, but I mean
Dimitri has done South America and Europe and the US
and I don't know where else, and I really got
to get to one. And that's if you subscribe at
the Genius tier. You know, at the risk of free advertising.

(58:44):
Do you want to add anything to what I just said, Dimitri.

Speaker 6 (58:47):
Ah, you're so kind, thout, No, No, that's fine. Ross
people can learn more about that at Hiddenforces dot io.
But thank you for your kind.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
Words Hiddenforces dot IOH. I've been catching up a little
bit on the stuff you're doing with Grant Williams, who's
super interesting, and this thing that's coming up a lot,
and I think in the most recent episode as well
with the economic historian, Dude, is this thing you talk
about called one hundred year pivot?

Speaker 4 (59:12):
What is that?

Speaker 6 (59:14):
The one hundred year pivot is a term that we
co developed with Grant to describe this moment in time,
which we think is a moment that comes around every
once every few centuries, maybe once every few generations, maybe
like every once every eighty or one hundred years. And
because in some sense, you know, human history is cyclical,

(59:37):
and that we want to try and understand it to
the best that we can, and also to the extent
that we do understand it to be able to position ourselves,
our families, and our portfolios to navigate it as effectively
as possible. So that's what that's where the that's where
the pivot component comes in.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
What do we do about it?

Speaker 1 (59:56):
One of the things again, and I was actually listening
to this conversation your podcast this morning while I was
walking my dog, was how the interest rate environment has
changed a lot, and we've gone to from the early
days like gold standard days and even much much older days.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Than that, even before there was a United States.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Perhaps we've gone to a period of time with higher
highs and lower lows on interest rates.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
Why does that matter? Why does it matter that interest
rates are going up?

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
You're asking, why does it matter that the range of
interest rates has become what it has become in modern times,
where you could get Fed funds close to twenty percent
and also zero over the course of generation.

Speaker 6 (01:00:44):
I see, So, how did we go from close to
twenty percent of the Fed funds rate in the early
eighties to where we are today?

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Or where we were? I don't mean, I don't mean
how did we get there?

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
What I mean is what is the significance of the
fact that it's possible for interest rates to have a
range like that? When it seems like it used to
be possible for interest rates to have a range like that.

Speaker 6 (01:01:03):
Uh, well, I don't know that that it wasn't possible,
that interest rates didn't I mean, I think what I
would say is that traditionally interest rates have been very volatile.
It's only been in the modern era during the period
of the Great Moderation. I would get say, sometime after
the nineteen eighty seven crash to some time before the pandemic,

(01:01:25):
that we've experienced this incredibly low volatility in interest rates.
And I think that, and I have always made the case,
you know, going back to my time in television, that
the reduction of interest rate volatility increases the instability of
credit markets because it increased the propensity of market participants

(01:01:46):
to take risks. So it isn't just having low interest
rates that encourages risk. It is interest rates stability, interest
rate non volatility that encourages risk because market participants have
this unreasonable expectation that they should be able to source
credit at a predictable price. And so I think that,
I mean, I don't know that answers your question, but

(01:02:08):
I so I get so the answer to your question is,
I don't I don't know that. I don't know that
the range of interest rates is the thing that's notable
about the period that we've lived in, or something we
should we should be concerned about. I think that what
what what I would say is concerning and is notable
isn't even necessarily the reduction in the price of money

(01:02:32):
or the interest rate, the historical reduction since the since
the early eighties, I would say that it is the.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Socialization of the American economy.

Speaker 6 (01:02:42):
And if we want to talk specifically about interest rates,
then we would want to focus on the Federal reserve
and has that has been through all the forms of
innovation related to monetary policy, beginning with the targeting of
interust rates, which again this wasn't a policy in the
American experience. The federal reserves created to support credit markets

(01:03:03):
during periods of cyclical stress, to be there as a
lender of last resort, But it wasn't even intended to
set the interest rate, let alone telmarkets what that interest
rate is let alone conduct all forms of forward guidance
and balance sheet expansion in order to accommodate the banking
system on a perpetual basis. So I think that is
to me, what is notable the extent to which the

(01:03:25):
American form of capitalism has become socialized.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
That's a great answer.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
It's a deep answer that requires a whole bigger conversation,
and probably is a whole bigger conversation At one of
your Genius Tier dinners, we're talking with Dimitri Caffinis. The
website Hiddenforces dot io. The podcast is Hidden Forces. It
is an absolute muscless, And seriously, I'm going to ask
you one more, one last question because we just have

(01:03:52):
a few minutes left and you probably haven't gotten this
one too many times. I don't know how many people
interview you, because usually you're doing the interview. How has
your view on any of this kind of stuff that
we are talking about, other than the proper degree of
cooking of a chocolate chip cookie changed by your becoming

(01:04:14):
a parent.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
Oh, interesting question, you know, I don't know that it's changed.

Speaker 6 (01:04:21):
I you know, even before I became a father, I
always not I don't know always, but I cared about
other people's children, and I had a sense of responsibility
around what I had a sense that, you know, I
was the inheritor of, you know, the wealth of my

(01:04:44):
experiences of the world I've lived in that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
I had certain responsibilities to give back.

Speaker 6 (01:04:49):
So I don't know that becoming a parent has it
further invested me in the future and the future beyond
my life. I've always felt a sense of responsibility for
those that come after me.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
That's a super interesting answer and a laudable one, and.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
I'm not being sarcastic here.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
It's not an answer I could give right becoming a
parent changed me a lot, even in terms.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Of thinking about government policy.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Rightly, I never liked big spending and big national dad
and all this, but then you become a parent and
you realize these people are stealing our children's future standard
of living, and it really came to upset me even more.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
And then things sort.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
Of outside of politics, you know, it used to be
you'd see or hear some bad story about a child
getting hurt or killed, and before you're a parent, you know,
you think, oh, that's sad, and then when you are
a parent, you know, depending on the story. It got
me to a point where sometimes I'll like see the
beginning of the headline and I'll just shut it down,
like I can't even read that, And I think that's interesting.

Speaker 6 (01:05:55):
Paradoxically, the becoming a parent has done less to change
my view of the future and the extent of which
I'm concerned about it, and it's done more to endear
me to the past and to the.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
People that came before me.

Speaker 6 (01:06:09):
I think much more about my parents, my grandparents, the
people that came before them, and you know what, you know,
I guess what really matters in terms of a human
life and human experiences and what is it, what's the
sacred space that I want to crave for my children.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
That's great, That's just absolutely great. And folks, I think
you can understand from that why I like this guy
so much. And you know he doesn't tend to get
this personal in his podcasts, but now you understand the
mindset that guides why he's talking about what he's talking about,
how he talks about it, and why I like Hidden
Forces so much. Hidden Forces dot Io Dmitri. It's probably

(01:06:50):
full already. But when and where is the next Genius
Level dinner.

Speaker 6 (01:06:55):
Our next dinner is in New York City in September.
Then we've got another dinner in Miami December, and then
we're working on two weeknd retreats for the following year.
Of course we'll have all those other dinners, but we
have one week of retreat that we're going to do
on a Greek island and another one that we're going
to try and do probably somewhere in the Caribbean.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
Wow, you know, I don't I guess a lot of
you know, your genius people will come see you from anywhere.
I would love to get you here in Colorado, whether
in Denver for a regular dinner or out in one
of the mountain towns.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
You know, we find a place.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
Out by the in Veil Veil steamboat, any of these
places for more of a weekend retreat kind of thing.
I would love to help you organize one, if you
ever want to get out here, I'd love to help.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
It's a great place, it's a great place to do one.
I might take you up on that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
Folks, go to Hiddenforces dot io and learn more there,
or just go into your podcast app and search for
the Hidden Forces podcast. It'll make you smarter, it'll make
you more interesting, and it'll make you more interested in
the world around you. Dimitri, thank you so much for
making some time for me. I know you're busy and
you're a dad and all that, so I'm really grateful.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
I'm grateful as well. Thank you. Thank you for having
on Ross. All right, we'll see you all right, We're
gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back on Kowa.
This show is going so fast today.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
I do have another really interesting guest coming up in
about half an hour, and we're going to talk about
how AI is changing marketing right, how companies are going
to use AI to sell you stuff. I would like
to mention two listener texts quickly. First, Whole Foods has
a burned butter chocolate cookie that is delicious. Lucky for me,

(01:08:36):
you can buy just one.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
I will have to go look for that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
I don't often go to Whole Paycheck, but sometimes I
will go to Whole Paycheck just to look in the
saale in the chocolates section or the ice cream section
to see what they have on sale, because sometimes they
have these really amazing, ultra luxury pints of ice cream
that are normally seven or eight dollars for a pint,

(01:09:01):
and they'll put them on sale for buy one, get
one free, and then all you know, I'll buy two
or four. So sometimes they go into Whole Foods just
to look for that. So next time I'm gonna have
to go, I'm gonna go look for a burned butter
chocolate cookie that I can buy just one of and
just see if I can do that without having to
take out a second mortgage or something.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
Were you saying something?

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
Game alone scares me.

Speaker 5 (01:09:24):
I don't want to have associate anything with my cookies
that's burned, So I'm assuming it's more like a brown butter.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
And that must be so it must be. Yeah, but
it's still just the name alone. I wouldn't buy it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
If any if anybody else has had one of these cookies,
text Dragon at five six six nine zero and tell
him how afraid or unafraid he should be of that term.
And maybe maybe they don't even call it burned at
the store. Maybe they call it browned. And the listener
just said that, I don't know it could be. And
then the other listener text, I would like to acknowledge,
says cook keis at two point seven one eight two

(01:10:03):
eight are exponentially better. And I would just like to say, uh,
I understood that joke, and I am not going to
explain the joke, but that is one of the best
nerdy texts.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
I've gotten in a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
And if you want to go look up, just type
into the Google machine two point seven one eight.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
That's probably all you need.

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
Type in two point seven one eight, and then you
will understand the joke. Cookies at two point seven one
eight two eight are exponentially better. Thank you very very
much for being the single nerdiest person listening to my
show today. I very much appreciated that let me do
just a few minutes here of some foreign policy stuff

(01:10:48):
with you, because this is very important, doesn't get too
much attention.

Speaker 7 (01:10:52):
On the news.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
We had a conversation, oh a week ago ish with Doomberg.

Speaker 2 (01:10:59):
You remember Doomberg, I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
Sure, one of the other truly great podcasters out there.
And one of the things we were talking about is
the ongoing trade conflict, trade war, whatever you however you
want to characterize it, between the United States and China.
And the concept in this conversation is that Donald Trump

(01:11:21):
began the trade interactions with China, assuming that because of the
United States buys a lot more stuff from China than
we buy from them, that we had what in negotiating
terms you would call escalation dominance.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
Escalation dominance means you can.

Speaker 1 (01:11:40):
Raise the intensity of the fight and at some point
you're definitely going to win because you've got the advantage.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
Over the other guy.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
And as you escalate, they can only try to escalate
along with you up to a certain point, and then
they run out of tools, they run out of cards
to play, whatever metaphor you want to use, and in
that case, you have escalation dominance. And the United States
does in fact have escalation dominance if we want to
use it, and clearly Trump does want to use it

(01:12:09):
against most of our trading partners, against most of the world,
but not China. And Trump was thinking, well, you know,
we buy five hundred billion dollars a year more of
stuff from them than they buy from US. Now, of course,
keep in mind that they have those dollars and they
will use those dollars, for example, to buy American bonds

(01:12:30):
or buy this, or but whatever. The accounting of it
is more complicated than Trump seems to understand. But the
main point is Trump thought that since we are a
much bigger customer of theirs than they are of ours,
that eventually they're going to have to give in because
they won't want to lose our market.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
YadA, YadA, YadA.

Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
But the problem is that we do not have escalation
dominance over China for one particular reason, and that is
rare earth minerals and a couple other minerals that I
think are slightly outside of rare Earth but still critical
minerals that are critical to industry.

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
And I want to tie two stories with you.

Speaker 1 (01:13:11):
This first one is from ABC News from two days ago.
China rejects US demands to stop buying Russian and Iranian oil. Now,
I think I mentioned on the show just in Passing
a few days ago that when Donald Trump was saying
that he was gonna he was going to try to
stop China from buying oil from whoever they wanted to

(01:13:32):
buy it from, it was nonsense and it wasn't gonna work,
and it wasn't gonna and it wasn't gonna do anything.
And China says, quote, China will always ensure its energy
supply in ways that serve our national interests. And they
added coercion and pressuring will not achieve anything. China will
firmly defend its sovereignty, security, and development interest. So what

(01:13:53):
is really happening with the US trying to pressure the
world not to buy Russian oil. Well, the people who
go along with the US pressure don't buy Russian oil.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
They buy it from somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
Could be the Middle East, it could be US, it
could be you know, other places that make oil, that
produce oil. And then the places that don't care about
abiding by what we want go buy the Russian oil,
usually for a discount, So Russia makes a little bit
less money, but the discount isn't really all that much.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
So Russia is still making plenty of money.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
And meanwhile, our enemy, or at least adversary or competitor,
China is getting oil at a discount and building up
their own economy using cheaper energy than we've got because
we've created the discount for China and we cannot stop
them from buying it. And this takes me to a

(01:14:45):
Wall Street Journal piece that originally came out a couple
of days earlier and was updated as well. China is
choking supply of critical minerals to Western defense companies. So
these rare earths, We've talked about them quite a bit.
They are a bunch of things that these rare earths
are good for. And one of the absolute key things

(01:15:06):
is highly specialized magnets. Okay, so magnets that are made
out of these materials that China completely dominates the the
mining of and then the refining of. So not only
do they dominate getting the ore out of the ground,
they absolutely dominate turning the ore.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
Into the metal into the metal.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
And these things are used, for example, in electric car motors.
But also here's an example. Sumarium, an element needed to
make magnets that can withstand the extreme temperatures of a
jet fighter engine. That that metal apparently now is trading
for about sixty six zero times the price that it

(01:15:49):
used to before we got into this trade war with China,
and according to defense industry experts, that is already driving
the costs of US weapons systems that we need to
buy higher. These are also used in microelectronics, missile targeting systems, satellites,
night vision goggles, on and on and on, and China

(01:16:13):
is massively restricting how much we can buy. And in fact,
if there are companies that make things that can be
used for military but also end used for civilian purposes,
the Chinese sellers of these materials are contacting that would
be American buyers and making them certify that none of
this is going to go for a military use. So

(01:16:35):
we do not have escalation dominance. China has us by
short ones right now. This is a huge problem. Is
part of the reason that the Pentagon just agreed to
invest four hundred million dollars into an American rare earth
company called MP Materials. But it's going to take a
while until that really makes a difference. Anyway, that was

(01:16:56):
very nerdy, but it's super important and I wanted to
share it with You'll be right back. Let me talk
about my alma mater for a minute, Columbia University.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
Columbia University was pretty bad when I was there.

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
It got much worse. Of course, it got much much worse.
And we know what's happened lately in Colombia has made
this agreement with the Trump administration and paying a couple
hundred million dollars and promising to be less antisemitic and
more in supportive free speech and all this stuff. Now,
when when I was at Columbia, there was a professor

(01:17:27):
there and I'm pretty sure he's dead now. His name
is Edward Said Said, and he was one of the
most prominent academic anti semites in the world, a tenured
professor at Columbia. And I actually believe I could be
wrong about this, but I believe that he was part
of the Plos negotiating team where he and Yasser Arafat

(01:17:51):
and a couple others would sit down and pretend to
negotiate with the Israelis, pretend they wanted peace, and then
walk away.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
A really bad dude.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
Professor at Columbia for a long time, including when I
was there in recent years. There's another really bad sort
of hired not that long ago. But his name is
Rashid Khalidi k H A L. D I.

Speaker 2 (01:18:20):
And I saw a story just I saw it this morning.

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
It came out last night at a really good website
called the College Fix, and the headline is professor cancels
Middle East course over Columbia's anti Semitism deal with Trump. Now,
I'm gonna kind of summarize a little bit. But he
he's retired, but he was gonna come back and teach one,
you know, big course that he calls a course on

(01:18:47):
Middle Eastern history. But let me just give you a
sense of how this guy talks. And and here's what
he says. He says the school Columbia adopted a definition
of anti Semitism, which he says, deliberately, mendaciously and disingenuously

(01:19:08):
conflates Jewishness with Israel, so that any criticism of Israel,
or indeed description of Israeli policies becomes a.

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):
Criticism of Jews.

Speaker 1 (01:19:16):
Now, I will say that there are some people who
don't like the definition of anti Semitism that has come
out of this group called the Holocaust remembrance alliance. But
then Rashidi Khalidi, I'm sorry Khalidi goes on to say this,
it makes it impossible with any honesty to teach about
topics like the history of the creation of Israel, okay,

(01:19:37):
which he hates, the ongoing Palestinian nakba.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
So nakba is.

Speaker 1 (01:19:42):
Is their word that means tragedy basically, right, And so
that's how he talks about this all.

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):
Like the existence of Israel is a tragedy.

Speaker 1 (01:19:56):
And I want to make sure I've got that word
translate catastrophe catastrophe, not tragedy catastrophe. So he wants to
talk about the existence of Israel as a catastrophe. And
then he says culminating in the genocide being perpetrated by
Israel in Gaza with the connivance and support.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
Of the US and much of Western Europe.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
So I'll say something that I've said many times in
the past, and that is, if Israel actually wanted to
commit genocide in Gaza, the number of dead people in
Gaza would have another zero on it, right, Israel, Yes,
the civilians have gotten killed, Innocent people have gotten killed.
There are also a lot of people in Gaza who

(01:20:38):
are portrayed to us by the left wing Western media
as innocent who aren't. But in any case, there's no genocide.

Speaker 2 (01:20:47):
It's war. War as hell.

Speaker 1 (01:20:50):
You started it and now you're paying the price, and
for a round and find out right. But this guy
wants to come to Colombia and teach that Israel should
not exist.

Speaker 2 (01:21:01):
And I am.

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
So happy that, for the first time since I graduated
from that university more than thirty years ago, they have
a raging anti Semite professor who is not going to
be able to teach a ragingly antisemitic course.

Speaker 2 (01:21:26):
And look, I am.

Speaker 1 (01:21:27):
For open dialogue, open conversation, open thoughts. I don't need
everybody to agree with me. But this guy, it's not
about open thought. It is about evil. It is about
hatred behind a thin veneer of intellectuality or something.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
He's bad news.

Speaker 1 (01:21:49):
He and people like him are this generation's equivalent of
Nazi propagandists. And I am so glad that he will
not be teaching at Columbia.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
We'll be right back. It's pretty amazing to be one hundred.

Speaker 1 (01:22:02):
Year old radio station, but we wanted to talk about
something much more modern than the origins of KOA stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
We're still sort of figuring it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:08):
Out right now, joining us for what I think is
going to be a fascinating conversation and maybe something that
you'll have in mind as you go through your daily
life for a while.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
Scott Brinker is editor of Chief.

Speaker 1 (01:22:21):
Martech chief m art tec seventeen year running blog on
marketing technology management website Martech maar t e c h
dot org. And I had seen one kind of short
article about AI and then this morning Scott sent me

(01:22:42):
this really substantial one hundred and thirty seven page report
that his organization has put out about marketing technology and
the state of his company and the state of the
industry right now. And there is a lot to talk about.
So Scott, welcome to KOA. It's good to have you here. Yeah,
great to be here with you. So I just got

(01:23:04):
your report this morning, so I've been kind of working
my way through it a little bit during the show
as I've had time and this So just so you know,
I'm a huge nerd. So this thing that just jumped
out at me is Moore's law versus what you call
Martex law. Can you please explain this because this looks
like a very interesting organizational theorem.

Speaker 7 (01:23:26):
Yeah, sure, all right.

Speaker 8 (01:23:28):
Well War's law has been around for like decades, and
it's basically the computing.

Speaker 7 (01:23:33):
Power doubles every two years or so. I think everybody
feels it's not.

Speaker 8 (01:23:38):
Just raw computing power, like tech in general, it kind
of feels like it is always expanding on an exponential rate,
like it's always a run to just keep up with
all of this. Okay, we got that. But then at
the same time, we know change is hard. Like we
as human beings, we tend not to change an exponential rate,

(01:23:58):
and then when we're organization of humans in a business,
we definitely do not change at an exponential rate. And
so if you take those two curves like this exponential
growth and technology acceleration, and then the slower i'd say
logarithmic curve of like how organizations change, and you put
those two against each other, you're like, well, wait a second,

(01:24:21):
the gap between these keeps expanding. And I think that's
what a lot of people are feeling right now with
all things AI.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
So to the extent that these trends are more or
less permanent, what you're suggesting is that not all, but
on average businesses will fall constantly further and further behind
the technology that's available to them. Is that overstated? I mean,
mathematically that's what would follow. On the other hand, at

(01:24:50):
some point, businesses who do that will be out of business,
and businesses who maybe have a better understanding of the
newer technology to begin with will start up and kind
of change the average at a given moment.

Speaker 7 (01:25:03):
Definitely, you've like zero writing in on it.

Speaker 8 (01:25:06):
I mean, what business do you know today that doesn't
feel like they're behind in all of this change? And
I think this is one of the things you have
to recognize, Like when you talk about, like, okay, how
do you deal with that situation of technology changing exponentially
organizations not changing that rate, Well, one of the things
is organizations just can't embrace all the changes.

Speaker 7 (01:25:28):
Happening at the same time. They have to pick their battles.

Speaker 8 (01:25:31):
They have to pick the ones that are most relevant
to their specific business, their specific customers and focus on
getting those really right and be okay that there's going
to be other changes off on the side and further
adjacent that aren't necessarily as relevant to what they need
to do right now.

Speaker 1 (01:25:48):
Okay, I want to focus with you a little bit
or more than a little bit on AI, because it's fascinating,
it's utterly transformative, it's you know, it in a.

Speaker 2 (01:26:00):
Sense, it's dependent on the Internet.

Speaker 1 (01:26:02):
But even so, I think it has the potential to
be at least as transformative as the Internet, which is
a hard thing to say because the Internet changed everything
a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
But this is going to be a big deal.

Speaker 1 (01:26:13):
And so oftentimes we talk about AI in lots of
different ways, but I haven't spent very much time talking
about how AI might be used to sell you stuff.
And this is kind of your world. I don't want
to be too narrow. You can talk a little more
about how you're thinking about AI in the context of
your industry, But how is AI want to change marketing

(01:26:34):
or how is it already?

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:26:35):
Why do people?

Speaker 8 (01:26:37):
I think people do recognize that, just like the Internet,
this is one of those sort of large changes that
is going to disrupt a lot of the ways in
which we do business. The thing is for the Internet
as transformative of the change as that was. It actually
took about ten years to really play out. It wasn't

(01:26:58):
really until like round two thousand and three to two
thousand and five that we started to see like, oh okay, yeah,
this is the new way we actually do business, and
it became a little less novel and a little bit
more of just how we how we work in our lives.
The thing about AI that's really fascinating is it's arguably
at least as large of a change in the impact

(01:27:19):
that can have on business and what people do personally.

Speaker 7 (01:27:21):
But the speed at which it seems to.

Speaker 8 (01:27:23):
Be evolving and getting adopted is much much faster than
what we saw with the Internet. So we're kind of
a little bit in unprecedented territory. I think with marketing,
there's a number of ways that it's changing, you know,
So I'll give you two. You know, one is sort
of behind the scenes, you know, how does marketing produce
the things it does? How does it produce content? How

(01:27:44):
does it produce web pages? How does it engage in
email campaigns with their customers? A lot of that work
was very manual work that took a lot of production
time to bring to life. And one of the first
use cases we've seen for a lot of these new
generative AI tools is their ability to help accelerate creating
content and not just like you know, like text content,

(01:28:07):
you know, like helping with video content and you know,
editing podcasts and you know, all these sorts of things,
and depending on how people have adopted it, this could
be like a two x, three x five x impact
on the productivity of what marketing can create. The other
example would be the sort of stuff that we see
interfacing with customers and so, you know, in digital marketing,

(01:28:31):
for like, my goodness, twenty five years, we've sort of
relied on Google.

Speaker 6 (01:28:36):
Right.

Speaker 8 (01:28:36):
We type of the search for something we want, you know,
there's a list of the.

Speaker 7 (01:28:39):
Blue lengths and maybe some ads.

Speaker 8 (01:28:40):
Then we click through and then we figure out what
we want on the different websites. Marketers spend a lot
of time optimizing their businesses to make sure they showed.

Speaker 7 (01:28:49):
Up in the proper places in Google.

Speaker 8 (01:28:51):
Well, now with all of these AI assistants, you know, chat,
GPT or cloud or Gemini, even like now that it's
sort of AI summary is you know, coming out of
Google Search, people are no longer getting links to websites
that they go offer. They just asked the questions of
what they want to the AI assistant. The AI assistant
does all the research behind the scenes, gives them an answer.

(01:29:12):
They can query it back and forth, you know, have
a dialogue, and they never actually show up on the
marketer's website, well at least until much further down the
road when they're actually ready to purchase. So this is
a whole way of like changing the way we think
about how do we find and engage with people in
this new environment.

Speaker 1 (01:29:31):
Well, I wonder about that in terms of how much
damage will that do to websites that require traffic that
was primarily coming from search ins is especially Google because
it's so dominant before.

Speaker 2 (01:29:47):
Is the is the rise of AI going.

Speaker 1 (01:29:50):
To destroy lots of online websites or just somehow change
how they're going to have to acquire customers? And if so,
how will they if there's not going to be a
link to them?

Speaker 8 (01:30:02):
This is a very legitimate concern, and so like if
you're in the business of selling something through your website,
people are already trying to figure out like, Okay, we
know what we used to do to show up in Google,
what do we have to do to make show up
make sure we show up in the proper way in
these AI assistants, And that field is very young, it's

(01:30:23):
very emerging. People are trying to figure that out. But
there's also a lot of websites where they weren't even
really selling something, right, it was simping about, you know,
a vehicle to produce you know content, you know, perhaps
influencing thought leadership, and there are people are genuinely concerned
that We'll wait a second. If the AI engine sort
of reads myself and then it just packages it up

(01:30:44):
and it serves it directly to people, then if I
was like supporting my site with say advertising or sponsorships, yeah,
I'm starting to lose traffic.

Speaker 7 (01:30:53):
And so this is to get two down in the weeds.

Speaker 8 (01:30:56):
But there's a company called cloud Flare, you know that,
So it's kind of like a layer of how things
get routed through the Internet. And they actually last month
announced like a way to block AI engines from like
reading your content unless the AI engine was willing to
pay you for access to your content. So wait on,

(01:31:17):
will this be a new model by which content is
supported on the web?

Speaker 7 (01:31:21):
Very early days.

Speaker 1 (01:31:23):
Yeah, we're talking with Scott Brinker, editor of Chief Martech
seventeen year running blog now about marketing technology management.

Speaker 2 (01:31:31):
The website is martech dot org, mar.

Speaker 1 (01:31:33):
T eh dot org and that and his new report
one hundred and thirty seven page report is up on
my website right now at Rosskominsky dot com. And just
to kind of hone in and then I'll switch gears
for a second. But let's say, let's say you and
I each like to write about our favorite bourbons.

Speaker 2 (01:31:53):
Okay, I don't know if you like bourbon, but I do.

Speaker 7 (01:31:56):
And I won't turn it down.

Speaker 1 (01:31:57):
Yeah, So you and I each like to write about
our favorite bourbons. And we've spent some time making websites,
and you and I have each made a website where
we make a few bucks. Maybe it's not our living
full lea, but we hope it will be one day
selling advertisements to high end bourbon companies or local liquor
stores that sell the best high end bourbons. And people

(01:32:20):
come to our websites because they want to read my
tasting notes and they and they want to read your
tasting notes. And now somebody goes on the search machine
and says, tell me some things about the best tasting bourbons.
And then the AI says, well, Scott Brinker thinks this
one is really good and says has aromas of carmel

(01:32:41):
and almonds, and Ross Kaminski says that one's not as good,
but this one is really great. And meanwhile, these people
have gotten our thoughts and not come to our site
and we're not and now our advertisers are not getting
any benefit, and now all the financial gain we might
have had from.

Speaker 2 (01:32:57):
Our website is gone.

Speaker 1 (01:32:59):
So I mean, I'm that's what you were already talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:33:02):
I'm just kind of making it a specific example.

Speaker 8 (01:33:06):
Yeah, it's a terrific example, and as the exact scenario
that people are concerned about right now.

Speaker 7 (01:33:12):
You know, even if it doesn't completely eliminate the.

Speaker 8 (01:33:15):
Traffic, because you know, these AI engines generally are pretty
good about like providing attribution of where they saw certain things,
and so people read it and are really really interested,
then might still come to your side and maybe they
sign up for your newsletter, but it's not going to
be the level of traffic that we had when like
everything that came through Google was at best just a

(01:33:35):
pointer to then like have people go to your website
and really consume that.

Speaker 7 (01:33:39):
And so that again, that's one of the reasons.

Speaker 8 (01:33:41):
Why that cloud Flare company is trying to make a
move to say, okay, if you're going to destroy the
ads supported commercial side of how content was created, you know,
for the past twenty five years on the web.

Speaker 7 (01:33:56):
There needs to be another model. There needs to be
some other.

Speaker 8 (01:33:58):
Way to economically compensate these creators for what they're doing.
And they're proposing being the toll gate to the AI
engines to say, like you can set for your Bourbon site.

Speaker 7 (01:34:09):
You can say like, okay, AI engine you.

Speaker 8 (01:34:11):
Can crawl my site, but every time you crawl it,
you have to pay me twenty bucks. And maybe I don't,
you know, write as well about Bourbon as you do.
So I'm like, hey, AI engines, if you crawl my website,
you can crawl it for ten dollars a crawl.

Speaker 7 (01:34:23):
Or something like that.

Speaker 8 (01:34:25):
But basically the creators of this content cloud Flair would
like to give them the option to basically set a
charge for these AI engines.

Speaker 7 (01:34:35):
Will this model actually take hold, I don't know.

Speaker 8 (01:34:37):
But it's because of the fact that the ad supported
model is under serious threat in this environment that people
are trying to figure out, like, okay, what do we
do instead?

Speaker 1 (01:34:46):
Yeah, so you don't know this, but I'm president of
the Bad Analogy Club and I'm going to give you
one right now. So, and this is a very common,
well understood thing in nature imagine you have a bumper
year of of rain that grows lots of trees and
grass where the where the deer live, and the deer

(01:35:08):
is there are lots and lots of there's lots of food,
so they have lots of babies and they eat everything.
And the next year is a bad year and there
isn't enough food and lots of deer die. And uh,
that's what this is, right, AI AI is the deer
and all the websites is the grass, and and the

(01:35:30):
by destroying the grass and the plants, by not essentially
not letting it get more get the advertising money, essentially,
the deer are gonna kill themselves without even knowing it, unless,
as you say, they change the model. You can just
do a quick response to that, and then I want
to get to a couple of listener questions for you.

Speaker 7 (01:35:51):
Yeah, I think that's that's a fair analogy. And again,
you know, I don't want to overhype it, and this is.

Speaker 8 (01:35:56):
Still a thing that's in transition, but that is the
exact that so many content creators have and you're right,
it's a feedback loop because ultimately those AI engines need
those content creators.

Speaker 2 (01:36:09):
A listener asks what about AI sales agents?

Speaker 1 (01:36:12):
And I've noted in recent days, recent weeks, and I
sort of hate to say it, but the quality of
an AI sales agent on a phone. Oh like I
called well three s XM today today and this female voice,
my name is Harmony, I'm your AI assistant. They actually

(01:36:34):
do a much better job than they did a year ago,
if they even existed. They do a much better job
than they did six months ago. And what should we
think about AI sales agents?

Speaker 8 (01:36:47):
Yeah, well, I mean certainly sales customer service in particular
have been a lot of improvement here over this past year,
partly because these agents they're taking advantage of these you know,
generative AI engines that are very good conversationally, and then
companies are also getting better on the back end of
hooking these things up to you know, their knowledge base,

(01:37:10):
the history of support tickets, you know, all the information
about common questions that come up in sales. And so
as a result, these AI agents, whether it's for sales
or customer service, are actually getting very good. I think,
as long as you know, my caveats to this are always,
first of all, just always make it clear that it's
an AI agent and not a human.

Speaker 7 (01:37:29):
Don't play any games with that. And the second is
if someone.

Speaker 8 (01:37:33):
Who's running into an issue where they don't feel the
area or resolution through the AI engine, make it just
AI agent, just make it very easy for them to like, no,
I actually do need to connect to a human on this.

Speaker 7 (01:37:44):
I think if you do that too, it can be
a win win for everyone because.

Speaker 8 (01:37:47):
Let's face sure, nobody really likes waiting on hold for
a p limited number of humans to get to their
call in twenty minutes. If you can get it self
served right away with an AI agent, like, yeah, that's
actually a better experience.

Speaker 1 (01:38:00):
Yeah. I will say I have stayed on with AI
agents more in the past few months than in the
past than before that, because they do get it done,
and they are they're they're they're good, they're better will
a listener question, will AI keep me from being advertised
to as much?

Speaker 7 (01:38:22):
Oh? Well, that's interesting.

Speaker 8 (01:38:24):
So one of the reasons people, I mean, there are
many reasons people enjoy working with like Chat, GPT or
Claude or geminis the AI assistance. Partly because boy, you
can just ask really detailed questions on a dialogue. You're
getting very good answers without having to click a bunch
of layings that go off and hunt things in different websites.

Speaker 7 (01:38:43):
But you know part of.

Speaker 8 (01:38:45):
That is right now today, most of those AI agents
aren't really advertising supported.

Speaker 7 (01:38:51):
You know, many of them, you know.

Speaker 8 (01:38:53):
Charge subscriptions if you really want to use the service,
you know, on a regular basis, you know it's twenty
dollars a month or whatnot.

Speaker 7 (01:39:00):
Some of them are.

Speaker 8 (01:39:01):
Looking at possibly making money by essentially using affiliate links,
so like, oh well, if you do.

Speaker 7 (01:39:06):
Decide to purchase through us, you know we'll get to
share that revenue. But right now, the.

Speaker 8 (01:39:10):
Experience, the user interface doesn't have a lot of advertising.

Speaker 7 (01:39:14):
And people appreciate that's when it gets rid of some
of the noise and focuses on the meat. Well it's
say that way, Well.

Speaker 1 (01:39:22):
We don't know, yeah, I mean I think Look, I
used to say this about Facebook all the time, and
it's not to pick on Facebook. And just as a
as a business model, if somebody is offering you something
that is valuable and costs money to produce to supply,
and they're not charging you for it, then you're not
the customer, you're the product that's being sold. Right, And

(01:39:44):
if the advertising model is kind of going away. Then
you're gonna have to become the customer instead of the product.
And the only way I shouldn't say the only way.
Who knows how this is going to evolve, but one
way that it could evolve is people being willing to
pay one or two or five or ten dollars a
month for access to their AI engine. And if enough
tens of millions of people do it, then these companies

(01:40:06):
will make money. Got just a couple seconds left, Scott,
if you want to wrap it up, Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:40:12):
No, I think you're absolutely right. This is a really
exciting time, you know.

Speaker 8 (01:40:16):
I mean, nobody knows exactly how all this is going
to play out, but we know the world is changing
around us. And whether you're on the marketing side or
just as a customer and a consumer leaning into this
and discovering what lies ahead.

Speaker 7 (01:40:28):
It's an adventure.

Speaker 2 (01:40:30):
Scott, you are a tremendous guest.

Speaker 1 (01:40:31):
I'll definitely have you back on the show if you're willing, knowledgeable, enthusiastic,
really good. I'm glad I had John Scott Brinker is
editor of Chief Martech, this seventeen year running blog now
on marketing technology management. The website M a r Techmartech
dot org and all of that is linked on my blog,

(01:40:54):
along with his new big report on this stuff that
we were talking about. If you go to Rosskominsky dot
com you can find all the links. Scott Brinker, thanks
so much for making time, especially on short notice. I
only invited you yesterday and you made it work. It
was a great conversation. Appreciate it.

Speaker 7 (01:41:08):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 4 (01:41:09):
Ross.

Speaker 7 (01:41:09):
Have a great day.

Speaker 1 (01:41:10):
Okay you too. All Right, folks, that's all I got
time for today. We'll leave it there. I don't know
who's in for Mandy. It might be Jimmy, I don't know,
but somebody will be in for Mandy next to have
a wonderful rest of your Tuesday, and I'll talk to
you tomorrow.