Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong, Joe Getty.
I'm Strong and Jettie, and he.
Armstrong and Getty, but also that my show had value, and that I'm sorry that then what I was doing head value, he value and in the end, I'm sorry, I'm not I try not to cry on TV, and I say, this is kind of like me on TV, so I apologize.
We need the disclaimer that I realized most of you don't watch cable news, and those of you who do watch cable news don't watch MSNBC. And even if you watched him as a MESSNBC as I do, you don't watch joy Reid, which I never have. I've only ever seen the clips coming out of there because they're so crazy, because she's a not like an absolute crazy person, and she's been canceled by her own network.
Far left, race baiting, racist and lunatic Joy Reads show has been canceled out of sheer misogyny and racism by MSNBC. According to MSNBC hosts, I think national tragedy.
I think, as a guy who's taken in quite a bit of cable news over the years, and it's definitely a dying thing. I mean, the ratings are so low, you know, you could question whether it's even worth commenting on the ratings or so well, we're talking hundreds of thousands of viewers across the entire nation for some of these low rated shows. I mean, it's really I mean, they're way smaller than you know, medium sized radio shows or YouTube channels or whatever.
Way smaller. But she for.
Having, you know, of the three big cable networks, big Bigan quotes MSNBCC in Fox, Fox actually is pretty decent size, but CNN in MSNBC, I think of all those, she's the most extreme everyday hoax that has ever existed, wouldn't you agree?
I don't know who hate her? I mean, because she's way out there. Oh yeah, she's she's an absolute race baiting, wacked do socialist. Yeah, oh yeah, she is a racist. I mean to her core. I'm trying to find the quote from Andrew Styles in The Free Beacon who said two thirds of her audience whereas it is memory care patients who fallen asleep in front of the TV or something like that. That's dismissive and unfair. And I don't appreciate it. Let's see, he writes, never mind.
Well, she clips from I don't know have they announced who they're replacing her with.
Oh, there it is, Uh, I think is Jen Saki. Oh that's right, that's right, that's right. They did say a white woman.
I was just going to point out that, Uh, when when she got fired, there was I saw on social media. There was some you know, MSNBC is gonna try a different thing or turn a different direction or realize blah blah blah ah.
There's no, there's no. That doesn't necessarily have to be the case.
We're we're in the business, and uh, you just have to get ratings and generate revenue through advertisers. The people who own your station or channel or whatever generally don't care what you're saying. That you that you just need to bring in enough people that it makes money. So you know, she just not bringing in enough people doesn't mean they're changing direction.
Found one clip from Styles that I Loved or quote viewed they. He mentions that MSNBC was poised to announce major programming changes that would reflect the network's eagerness to quote maintain its progressive stance, rather than trying to tack towards middle ground. That's an actual quote from MSBC, So they're making it clear they're absolutely not going to viewed
in this context. Canceling Reid's show was a logical step, given the host's reputation for sober analysis and pragmatic centrism, not to mention her preternatural ability to connect with normal, working class Americans as some finally toned sarcasm during the
twenty two election. For example, Reid was one of the first media personalities to acknowledge that the word inflation quote is not part of the normal lexicon for most Americans until nefarious Republicans quote taught people the word in order to attack Joe Biden.
You've got to be kidding, No, she told me said, and she's closer to our age than not. I mean, she's got to remember back in the day. Inflation was the word in the seventies and earlier.
Oh yeah, yeah, Well, she's a professional liar and maist Marxist lie all the time. Read channel the exactnxiety as of working Americans who could not believe that Kamala Harris had lost despite waging what Reid called and I quote a flawlessly run campaign, and that she was endorsed by Queen Latifa, who never endorses anyone. And she expressed shock in twenty twenty when a Latino congressman suggested that latinex
was not the preferred term among actual Latinos. And she's I just looked up joy Read's fifty six.
So she's in our age group where you remember the seventies and inflation. Gerald Ford ran for president of nineteen seventy six on win whip inflation. Now, so her acting like that it's a newly made up term to Joe Biden, Wow, does she believe that stuff?
Did she believe that stuff? Let's let this sage speak for herself. Clip seventeen, please, Michael, from March of twenty twenty.
And so here we are again with conservatism, at least among a certain cohort of white guys, now rooting itself in the idea that even during a pandemic, then screaming men and women have the God given right to get their roots done and order a stake at the restaurant and hit the golf course and the bar, and that those rights which they claim were conferred upon them by God require a disproportionately black and brown labor force to return to work, get back on the wheel, and risk
death in order to serve them and return them to their comfortable lives.
Boy, what do you prefer, the mockery of the idea of liberty or the somehow deciding it was racial that white people wanted to exercise their liberty and they're served disproportionately by black and brown people, As if even if that were true, that would negate the first part of it. That's some perverse thinking.
Ye, But wait, the main reason you wanted to end shut downs with businesses or schools or anything like this because brown and black people, I don't care if they get COVID.
I need to be served as a white man. That's right, next clip my.
We've seen a growing movement to reframe how American history is taught in public schools. Well, some parents are opposed to critical race theory as new curriculum art to please.
Just because I do not want critical race theory taught to my children in school does not mean that I'm a racist damist, it actually does.
This just another example of Republicans turning kids into a wedge issue, just like their politically motivated attacks on transgender youth who just want to play sports.
Now, notice, because this is a masterclass, if you will, in the method of twisting well motivated actions policy thoughts like wanting to protect your little girl from having the hell beat out of her on a sports field that is actually hate of It's a great example of the anti racism thing. You say. I don't think critical rat theory should be taught in school, absolutely proves you are a racist. She has an evil presence, but that's not the way Rachel Madeau sees it. With nineteen Michael.
Even bigger programming change is at seven pm seven pm Eastern, where Joy Reads show the readout ended tonight and Joy is not taking a different job in the network, she is leaving the network altogether. And that is very, very, very hard to take. I am fifty one years old. I have been gainfully employed since I was twelve, and I have had so many different kinds of jobs. You
wouldn't believe me if I told you. But in all of the jobs I have had, in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Read. I love everything about her. I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her. I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC, And personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door. It is not my call and I understand that, but that's what I think.
Well, that is really interesting. Her show is garbage that nobody watches. And there's more from Rachel, but go ahead.
But she's a she's a racist socialist, and Rachel Maddow says she's never, you know, learned, not learned more from any other person she's ever worked with in any of the many jobs.
She said. It's just it's why Trump won.
The left, the left that gets all the attention is so far from the mainstream, and they don't know it.
Yes, they think amish, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.
They think they're center left when they're so far away from the mainstream. I don't know, I don't know why they haven't come to that conclusion.
Then.
Well, Rachel was far from over when she said it was merely unwise, in a mistake to let her walk. What could have motivated such evil.
Will tell you it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we've got two count of two non white hosts in primetime. Both of our non white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Fang on the weekend. And that feels worse than bad no matter who replaces now, that feels indefensible, and I do not defend it indefensible.
The best thing that could conceivably happen to conservatism the country, the health of the culture, is for these people not to wake up to continue being so loopy.
Well, and Rachel, I think you know from being in the business. If you get listeners, viewers, readers, you stay employed.
If you don't, you don't the end because of racism, misogyny.
Well, do you tell me if you think this is right or not. I think Fox is I always look at it like a football field for some reason our politics, with the fifty yard line being the very middle, and I feel like MSNBC is it like the.
Three to five yard line.
Way over on the left side of the field, whereas Fox is probably more like the thirty yard line.
I think the field, yeah, yeah, it's it's a center right channel. Now, some of the hosts are more overtly right wingy than others, but the primetime lineup is no, it's pretty center right. Oh worth mentioning this, I have dismissively mocked Miss Reid's show, as I think a piece of crap nobody watches. Last Thursday's episode of The read Out drew just fifty nine thousand viewers in the twenty
five to fifty four age demographic. Fifty nine thousand, fifty nine thousand in a country of three hundred and forty million people. It's amazing that anybody knows her name at all, as you've pointed out, and it speaks to the fact that cable news used to be of significance. It has an outsized influence in Washington, d C. Which is the only reason to even our pay attention up until recently.
Partially because our so many of our electric elected officials are so.
Old they think cable news is a bigger deal. I would argue that as of now, there's no point in paying attention to cable news or like sixty minutes. Sixty minutes is a dead husk of what it once was. It's watched by old people, and only a few of them. Anyway, I want to finish this. The readout drew fifty nine thousand viewers in their target demographic. Laura Ingram's show on Fox News same slot three hundred and eighty nine thousand,
three hundred and eighty nine to fifty nine. It's like Chief Seagels Super Bowl.
Well, getting to my speaking of football football field analogy and where Fox's versus where those MSNBC shows are for Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid.
Unless you're on a college campus.
Or the bluest of blue towns in America, practically nobody is into that. Whereas for your big Fox shows, that's giant swaths of red America.
Yeah, I'd agree with that stuff. It's not even the media is a weird little subculture that should only be a head scratching curiosity. They have twenty seven times the influence that they should have.
Yeah, any comment on that text line four one five two nine KFTC.
Today, Hacker has played an AI video of President Trump rubbing and kissing Elon Musk's feet on television screens at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The White House believes the video was created by a disgruntled employee, so that narrows it down to the entire federal workforce.
There's some truths to yes.
Speaking of AI we all see I think if you bounce around social media AI videos every day now, where you're just like, wow, where is this going?
I mean, it's just they're stunning. Yeah they are.
They're already stunning, and they're only going to get exponentially better over a short amount of time. But Sophabes is having its first ever AI art auction, which has got
some in the art community up in arms. This is the first time Sophabies is the highest level of selling art for the you know, the most viable, expensive stuff, and now they're they're doing it with AI art and uh and a lot of real artists don't want that to be counted as art, and other thinkers are arguing, well, how is it not art?
I mean art's art?
And uh, And I don't know where we land on this.
It's kind of confusing.
I just came off a deep dive on Impressionism for this long book that I read. Those fascinating about the Impressionist art movement and how it fit in with their politics and everything like that. But that's the way art has been throughout the history of mankind. It reflected what's going on culturally in the world at the time, and
it developed very slowly. You know, changes from art that only could be religious or or reflect the wealthy, to art that reflected commonplace themes, to Cubism to you know, Jackson Pollock splash and paint to Andy Warhol. Just changes in all these changes in art. But what is that going to mean when it's ai or if something new comes on the scene, like Impressionism and I think, oh,
I like the look of that. Makes something that's similar to that, But make it instead of a sunset, make it a you know, a pond with a frog in it.
And I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. No neither do I. And what meaning will it have to people in their heart? If you see an image you like, that's great. I almost Judy, and I almost bought an image created partly through a I I guess by this artist who Her picture's difficult to describe, but her pictures are always like they have a surprise and their whimsical once you catch on to what's happening visually, it's really clever. But we couldn't decide whether we wanted
it or not. Well't this makes us god harder to make a living as an artist.
Not that it's easy now, but this is the same way that you know, streaming services destroyed music. Even you're not going to sell an album. I don't care how popular are. You can tour and make money down me, you're not going to sell the album. I wonder if art's going to go the same direction.
And one of the big objections to this show is that the AI models are trained on copyrighted work that they have no right to use, but they use that work to develop their AIAR. There's no way you're never going to stop that. I don't think you can. I can't even imagine what the enforcement mechanism was. You looked at van Go's sunflowers.
No, I didn't, right, right, I didn't even get into some other important stuff. Wait, we got a half hour left in the show, so that's good. If you missed a segment, get the podcast Armstrong and Getty on.
Demand Armstrong and Getty. I've got a mole in the federal government.
That is, someone I know who works for one of those agencies who passed along an email they got about various crap they don't have to do anymore, m thanks to Trump administration and Doge.
We'll get to that next segment. I would like to hear that very much. I will stay tuned. A couple of notes from the world of science. Thought you might under might enjoy that's right, thank you, Michael. Even people who don't enjoy music, those who have musical and hendonia, which if I had ever come across that term before,
I don't recall it. But they have no response to music. Yeah, they still feel the urge to move to rhythmic sounds, suggesting our body's response to rhythm may be more fundamental than previously thought.
So okay, that's that's its own interesting thing. But so people, because I remember hearing Andy Rooney, who used to be on sixty Minutes. You're old enough to remember him say one time, it doesn't understand why anybody cares about music, doesn't like doesn't like any music, had no interest in any music.
And I always thought that so nuts.
He must be one of these people, like it just doesn't do something in the brain the same way, right, But when the beat starts, you just gotta move. In essence, I wonder if this has anything to do with the ventral striatum. Let me read on the brain process is the pleasure of music.
And the urge to move it through different pathways. Pleasure through the ventral striatum, yes, there it is, and movement through the dorsal striatum, but anyway. Research suggests that the response of tapping your foot or moving a little bit to the groove might be more hardwired into our bodies than previously thought. In fact, a new Canadian study, soon to be an American study, shows that even people who don't particularly enjoy music still feel this instinctive urge to move when they hear it.
Wow, if you have one of those brains that doesn't enjoy music, I feel as sorry for you as like someone who has more outwardly, you know, defects that seem like they'd be doing. Because what a joy in life? Music is like your entire life. Can't imagine hing that?
Yeah, I've always said that there are very few things that give me the feeling of transcendence or chrissholme as the French say, in music is on that list of very very few things. It's incredibly important to me emotionally, but music, and don't you, oh my god, if I go two days without seeing a ballet. I feel empty inside or participating musical Anhedonia isn't about being toned, deaf,
or having trouble understanding music. This is so interesting. People with this condition can tell perfectly well whether a melody is happy or sad, you know, major minor key, or they can recognize their national anthem. They can even spot a wrong note in a familiar tune. What makes them different is that music simply does not give them any emotional buzz that most people experience.
I feel like I'm that way with food. I don't care about food the way other people do. Yeah, like I can taste it and everything like that.
I just don't care. Yeah, well your heart of tasting and should never comment on that top. I don't think I am as it said there.
The people can hear the music, they can write, they just don't care for whatever reason.
Maybe it's something we don't get. I don't know, right, yeah, yeah. And the condition affects a subset of otherwise healthy individuals who enjoy other pleasurable experiences. Normally, they might appreciate art, good food, form strong emotional connections. It's just that music leaves them cold and they're trying to get to the bottom of this. And but one of the most interesting offshoots of the study was that, hey, even people who have no desire to listen to music get nothing out
of it. They can't help but tap their foot. There's something deep and primal in us which is really interesting. And most everything can be explained evolutionary wise. Would what would groove into a rhythm help men, human beings Homo sapiens survive? I can't even come up with anything. Oh, it's an incredibly common part of all ritual, tribal rituals and prehistoric rituals and modern ritually.
It's got to be something to do with bringing us together, we bond around it. It's got to be something like that.
And so you know, and Hondonia obviously musical, and Hordonia it's not adaptive. It's a it's a you know, a quirk. What do they call that in genetics? A mutation that's not adaptive, But it probably doesn't matter in the modern world anyway. So I mean, if back in the caveman days, if Ogg wasn't down with the drum beaten in Boota's assuh, he's always saying we don't want you around here anymore.
You know, war, drums, beating the drums, war, whatever you could get beaten on a drum really loud get men young men worked up to go into battle, and so people that responded better to that survived and people that didn't didn't survive.
Is it that over a million years? I know, every time I hear a fife or a drum, I just want to shoot a brit put them together, and there's no holding me back. You know. That was intended to be a little shorter than it was. It's just such an interesting topic, especially if you're a music lover. I was gonna get back to this. Excuse me, I do not have the monkey pots like Jack salaries. We touched on this like a week ago and ran out of time,
and I'm afraid the same thing's gonna happen again. But it was the story about blocking mobile internet on your phone, no cun activity on your phone for two weeks, and it had an effect on depression larger than typically seen in antidepressant drug studies, and improved sustained attention comparable to reversing ten years of age related to decline WOW, and increased well being in ninety one percent of participants in at least one key area. I don't doubt that a bit.
That doesn't surprise me in any way.
I think we all ought, well, everybody you hear they go on a vacation where they don't have Wi Fi after the.
Initial like shanks and vomiting.
Yeah, shease and vomiting. I love it, appreciate. We all feel like it makes us happier. Then we go right back to staring our phones. Yeah, we took a vacation with the kids a long time ago. There might have been a phone in the room. It was in Hawaii, I'm not sure of Kwahi.
And if you're curious, it's very back when it was very quiet and rural and the rest of it. And it was incredible once you got used to it. No screens anywhere, if any sort those pretty smartphones too, So I mean it was unplugged. It was you and nature. I borrowed an acoustic guitar and we played games and took walks and it was wonderful anyway. And this is so intuitive but so powerful. Just because something's obvious doesn't
mean it's not worth contemplating. Without mobile internet access, participants naturally spent more time socializing in person, exercising, being outdoors, and these shifts and behavior partially explained improvements and well being, and some benefits persisted even after internet access was restored. Only twenty five percent of participants fully maintained the two week mobile internet block, but even those who reduced their
usage showed improvements. So wow, seventy five percent flaked either a little or a lot, they just stopped. This suggests that less extreme approaches, such as time limited internet blocking, could still provide significant benefits.
I want to talk about this more, maybe in the One More Thing podcast, because I'm trying to lay down some rules for my kids as they get older and more involved in texting and smartphones and all that sort of stuff, and man, it's tough.
I think it is good because there's a little more data, and I love the idea. We can talk about this in the One More Thing podcast. But as I look at some of the data and some of the pros, some of the cons and some of the behaviors of people in the study, it is one hundred percent it is you're an alcoholic, you're a cocaine addict. You are fully cognizant that you ought not to drink any of your nec But for instance, you can't stop sexing up the corpse. You but you can't stop, even though you
know you should practically universally, Well, they don't care. No, Oh my god, Look what I gotta work with, folks. This is important and and funny boy over here won't stop abusing corpses. I'll take your silences, consent any o. Lord, I give up, I give up, give up. I was gonna save your life and your soul and your happiness, but Jack is ruined it all. I quit.
Michael, Well, there's that There's there's no way to measure. And this is what I think people miss it is there's no way to measure the interactions that don't happen.
So this idea of like at the airport.
I was at the airport the other day for my birthday trip, and everybody's standing around the gate waiting for them to say line up in you know, a's one through fifteen.
And everybody's staring at their phone.
If we weren't staring at our phone, you might strike up a conversation with the person next to you. And you have no idea where that would go or who would you meet or whatever like that, and we don't. There's no way to measure all those interactions that don't happen.
Eighty percent of people under thirty are worried they use smartphones too much, and few have and few have done anything concrete to cut their use.
I'm surprised that they're worried about it, since they've grown up with them. I've always tended to think that's those of us in the older generation who at least live the life without them. My kids have no idea what life is like without the smartphone. I remember standing alone in the airport waiting for them to call your name, and people might talk, or at least you're alone with your thoughts or whatever. But it wasn't everybody staring at a ice.
You want to dage your brain ten years down the smartphone.
Wow, that is interesting, my mole in the government, I need to pass that information along. I think you'll find this to be good news, among other things on the way.
Numerous times today, President Trump expressed confidence that this war could really, in reality end in.
A few weeks. Can you share that confidence? I hope so.
That is France's President Macrone with Bear on Fox yesterday, he went with, I hope so, and the war between Ukraine and Russia could be over in.
A couple of weeks.
But I want to get this on because I haven't heard it yet. This is Mark Theeson of the Washington Post explaining the mineral deal because I don't quite get what's going on there.
The minerals deal is actually more important than the peace deal. When that mineral deal is a signed, you, Russia has lost the war because Putin's goal was to conquer Ukraine and throw years later. The end result is the US is going into business with Ukraine. We are investing literally, not figuratively, billions and billions of dollars in a deal
with with with the Ukrainians. If Russia takes over Ukraine, Putin is not going to pay US hundreds of billions of dollars for the weapons that we gave Ukraine to fight his troops. The only way that we get the hundreds of billions of dollars that Trump is negotiating right now is if Ukraine remains a free, sovereign, independent nation with whom we're doing business. And when this deal is struck, I mean, I know, for Trump has said he's going to have the earth movers and the tractors going in.
People are saying, there's not They're not US troops involved. He's sending something better, billions of dollars in US direct investment, US bulldozers, US earth movers to dig up those minerals. And you need to free you need free trade, you need ports, you need to export them, and you need peace in order to do that.
It has to be lasting.
And with the idea, I guess of no, you can't. You know, if Russia decided to re attempt to grab more land, we wouldn't put up with that because we got our bulldozers and construction workers and everybody there.
Is that the theory, Uh, yeah, it is. And I thought that was intriguing last night on Special Report with pret Beer asked for the audio. The more I think about it, though, to play out the scenario, Putin decided. Putin says, yeah, I still want Ukraine, and the US is not going to go to war with me. So he moves in, and he maybe even cuts a different deal for some of the minerals, but he just takes what he wants. Unless you have the will to stop a bully, a bully's gonna bully. I like Martisa, and
I is that point of view is not insane. But if you lack the will to do what he hinted we would do, which is defend our interests, then it doesn't matter. It's a house of cards, paper tiger.
I guess that's a question. Would we lack the will to defend those interests? I don't think. I'm not sure Trump.
Would and the next president, yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Okay, here's my mole in the who works for a federal government agency?
And this only relates to the Department of digging holes in yards?
The only relates to California stuff, but maybe in other states too. So this memo went out. I won't say what department this is, it's what are your really big ones? This memo went out to all staff in this department, subject California Civil Rights Advisory Committee to comply with the attached to USDA. And then they go through a whole bunch of different agencies and departments and all these different things.
List them all, I won't list them all.
All activities from the California Civil Rights Advisory Committee have been ceased. What does that mean? I'll tell you what that means. It means that all the as this person says, all the useless hours that have been wasted in years on webinars and meetings to celebrate everything like LGBTQ plus Asian Pacific Island Day or month, Women's Month, or a Black month or day brat, all these different things are going away. All of those things are going away as
a directive of the Trump administration. You can't make in California people do all that stuff. Yeah, we'll see you think that will be challenging.
Uh No, I just think that wherever they can, people will keep doing it in defiance of the law, or create loopholes or pretend to be doing what they're supposed to do but not doing it. That's the thing. These people don't obey the law. They think their grand principles are too important. I can't believe we.
Have government employees that we're paying doing all that stuff.
It's crazy. Thoughts down, strong, strong, ready, and.
Strong.
That's right.
Here's your final thought with your your host for final thoughts, your let's.
Get a final talk from everybody on the crew to wrap up the show. There is our technical director Michael Angelo. He will lead us off.
Michael I have had the worst food craving in the last day. Joe, you mentioned you love tacos, and now I am stuck on the idea of I've got to get some tacos today. It's just I've been thinking about it all the show, the whole show long.
Do you have a fast food go to taco or are you gonna make home tacos?
What are you gonna do?
I'll probably go to a fine restaurant and get some good tacos.
There you go. Yeah, Oh, the delicious Mexican sandwich, the taco Katy Green our steams use him as a final thought. It's Katie's turn, Michael Katie final thought. Well, I'm just gonna go along with Michael's thought.
Michael, you can do that because it is Tuesday, therefore Taco Tuesday.
And now I want Taco bell crunchy tacos. So I know that's not Mexican food.
That's the opposite of a fine restaurant, I know, but they're so good.
And so cheap.
Jack a final thought for us, I will say, the best tacos I've ever had in my life is any of those tacos stamps in some tiny town in the middle of nowhere in Mexico that costs you like a dollar to eat till you're so full you can't eat anymore.
They got all the fresh ingredients and the making them right there. Oh my gosh, that's some goody street tacos they call them. Yes, just delightful. My final thought is whether it's a government administrator like Jack was talking about, or even a cop. If you don't like what they're doing, point your finger aggressively at them and say I pay your salary, because that is something they generally respond positively to. Arms Strong in Getty wrapping them under. They're grueling, four
hour workday teachers. So oh yeah, so little time good Armstrong in getty dot com a lot of great hot links, what sages law check it out. See you tomorrow, God bless America. I'm strong and get So what's different with you? Well, I would say this, I'm going in.
You made it rights riding a long time.
Ye.
Absolutely, So let's go with a bang.
And scrotum watchers are going to be seen if the Supreme Court takes that up.
Scotis Scotus is the generally uh usedtus acronym. I get that mixed up all the time. Oh, that's that's got to be uncomfortable. Thank you all very much, Armstrong and Getty