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So the one and only Cardi b main appearance on big YouTube channel podcast hot Ones where they like eat hot wings and talk about whatever they talk about, and had some very surprising comments on a favorite historical figure, FDR.
Take a listen what stays in my mind for a long time. As there I went to FDR's house. Anybody loves me, know me? I love FDR. FDR yes, And I love Eleanor Roosevelt. And you know how he got us through the Great Depression.
With a war.
Only president, the guy like the four time while he's in a wheelchair. As I grew up reading a lot about Elinor Roosevelt, she had a very sad life, and like when I went to her her house, well, she she had different houses from her from her husband, because you know, FDR Mama, she was always around like and she ain't really liked that like Eleanor wanted her space, just like me, I want my own space all the time. I saw the room where Churchill and FDR was talking
about the nuke. That is crazy to me, like like I'm really here, Like I like, I don't know why I'm obsessed with war. Yes, I'm obsessed with World War two, like I love War War one, like you know, I like reading about that, but World War Two, like I'm obsessed with just learning everything about it. So for me to be in the same room that you're too and FDR was discussing.
The nuke is like.
It was just such a moment for me.
Like, so I already loved Cardi B.
I remember, don't forget about that she endors Bernie.
Yes, but she is also bitching about income tax.
I remember that is true, that was these points.
Range Republicans at the time. World is right, keep your money.
I sides that from my mind. I'm just going to pretend that didn't happen because I love Cardi B. I'm actually I like her music. I'm just like a fan of her in general saga as a history a buff What did you make of face.
Comment, Well, I hate to break everybody's bubble.
That's basically regurgitating the Hyde Park tour word for word, and that's fine.
It sounds like she was very struck, but.
She was into the question that she was. Yeah, the question she was asked wasn't even about after. It was like her getting a cheese sandwich with Dave Letterman or whatever. And she was like, Oh, that wasn't the thing. This was the thing the thing.
For those were wondering.
She was talking about the Manhattan Projects, the development of the nuclear weapon.
Eleanor Roosevelt. It's true.
Sarah Roosevelt, who is FDR's mother, is like the quintessential helicopter mother. Because what happened is is that FDR's father was much much older than Sarah Roosevelt. I think he married her when she was like twenty or something and he was like fifty, So it was like a pretty
significant difference. The issue was that she got pregnant Franklin, and then the father got sick, and so because she was so young and they were alone, they were on this vast estate, you know, by themselves, they kind of made it a game about hiding how their father was sick, and the two of them they were more like siblings than like daughter, sorry, like mothered son relationship, which is a problem because Franklin, you know, marries Eleanor Roosevelt, even
though at the protest of his mother's His mother wasn't like her from the get go. She was ugly, and they were you know, fifth cousins or whatever, and there was like a rivalry there for his attention and control over his life.
And Eleanor never felt like she was viewed as adequate by his.
Mom and always treated her very badly.
It was always tense and uncomfortable, et cetera.
It's an interesting industry.
You know.
Ellen was very devoted to him for a while, but then she find out that he was cheating on her, and then you obviously they didn't agree in divorce, and they kind of went their separate ways. By the time they had adult children, and by the time they were in the White House, they had mostly reconciled.
Actually, yeah, I mean, and she was quite extraordinary in her own right and very like spoken in the day, and actually she was very she was kind of more of an isolationist there was some tension between them in terms of his desire to enter World War two. So she had her own views and her own like political contacts and her own political life. So I can see why Cardi b as very strong, indepenant woman. Yes, sees her as an inspiration because I think she you know,
she is an inspiration. She was an inspiration to a lot of women, a lot of marriage.
She was an og independent woman. Actually, she was very politically active.
She had her own college.
Columns that she's to right in.
She actually the most influenced, probably the most influential first lady of her time, because she was massively influential in the New Deal and in getting a blanket on the name. I think it's Francis Perkins, who was the first female Labor secretary, that's right, getting her too appointed, and the two of them teamed up to do a lot of
work on the National Youth Administration. They made it a big project of THEIRS during the New Deal to like save a lot of like youth who were suffering under the Great Depression.
So, yeah, she was an interesting way.
FTR really relied on her to be kind of his eyes and ears when he and go places he couldn't go like go into factories and see the working conditions and report back to him. And you know, she maintained a lot of contacts and like you know, the anti war movements and civil rights movements, and so she was more connected, had more of her finger on the pulse of the grassroots and the overall population. So then, yeah, she ends up being influential in terms of the crafting of the New.
Deal, and not only the un She did a lot of so anyway, yeah, forever, Yeah, so anyway, I'm blank on it.
I think it's called The Roosevelts. I think it's from Uh, it's either Ken, it's from PBS. It's like ten episodes, Darren watch it. It's tea.
It's a phenomenal series, like yeah, ten hours or so.
But I love to say it's cool to see, you know, a cultural icon like Cardi b obviously defying a lot of expectations for what she would want to talk about in this interview, and she's like, you know, no, I don't want to tell you about Dave Letterman's cheese sandwich. I want to tell you about this historical thing that's really captured me.
ARDIV, come on the show. Let's talk about it.
Oh my god, I.
Would love that we can talk about taxes too.
Sure.
Washington Posts had a report on a really troubling epidemic that is really hurting young teenage boys. Put this up on the screen from the Washington Post. The headline here is I don't know what to do. Thousands of teen boys are being extorted in sexting scams, an unprecedented number of cases, leaving families devastated.
Some of the.
Numbers here just to give you the backstory and the idea the way that this usually works. And I'll tell you this is something that I'm aware of happening in you know, my little small town with one of the friends of my teenage daughter is they'll start chatting with some girl, you know, cute girl online and she starts
asking sending pictures, asking you to send pictures. Next thing, you know, they send something explicit and then she, which turns out not to be who she's representing herself as blackmails and says, basically, I'll release these photos if you
don't pay me X amount of dollars. And you know, if you're this kid, this team will say right, they don't want their parents to know they were sending nudes online, so they're embarrassed to go to their parents, and they don't want to get in trouble, and they don't know what to do, and so it's a horrific you know,
they end up in a horrific situation. The numbers here they talk to this group that serves as a clearinghouse for records of abuse, receive more than ten thousand tips of financial sextortion of miners, primarily boys in twenty twenty two from the public, as well as from electronic service providers like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. By the end of July twenty twenty three, they'd already received more than twelve thousand, five hundred reports routed to law enforcement, with more continuing
to pour in now its possible. They say that some of these reports are duplicates, but you can see the way that the numbers are skyrocketing and the fallow up from this is horrific. You've had at least a dozen boys who died by suicide last year after being blackmailed in this fashion. So it's just another way that I mean, there's just so many horrific things happening the kids that we would never have contemplated when we were young.
That's what really creeped me out of this.
That's one of the reasons I thought we were because you had told me that, you know, you would this kind of thing had happened somebody that you know, and I didn't realize it was so widespread. But it actually makes sense because you know, parents, unfortunately, it doesn't seem they're just handing their kids their phone and they're not having any conversations about this. And these kids don't have enough life experience to be like, yeah, some random hot
girl just message me online. They're like, wow, this is all awesome. I'm like, hey, guys, it's probably not real. Ninety nine point nine percent of the time, it's just not gonna be real. It comes with some life exceps.
Well, and that's the other thing is not only they don't want to get in trouble, they're embarrassed.
Yeah, of course it's amazing.
Yeah I'm probably embarrassing.
And you're like, I got fooled by this person to send these photos. I thought she really liked me, you know, I thought this was like a whole thing, and now you know, I'm being blackmailed. And sometimes what they'll do too, is they'll ask for like a relatively small amount of money to start with, and it's like, ari, fin, I'll send you the twenty parts just to like have this go away and not have to deal with it.
And then they just keep upping the ante up.
There, like you'll go get your parents' credit card or something like that, but that's awful, or send me crypto.
Probably my bad half.
These guys aren't even in America because they're technically dabbling in child born too, which is like a whole other thing.
Absolutely coat, it's really creepy.
I just think that, you know, I honestly, schools need to take charge in this. They need to start doing sessions on this when kids are like eleven twelve years old. I don't know what age kids what age the kids get phones now, like.
Ten around they're usually around middle school, Okay, so yeah, eleven twelve, that's right.
You got to start It's like you know, sex said health at whatever.
You know, you got to have start having like some sort of conversation about online and phone behavior if this is going to be happening, because otherwise you're just setting yourself up, like you said, for a nightmare and the really scary part, and what we wanted to highlight is that there are multiple suicides now directly linked to this. I mean, who knows how many. And we've also had
so many high profile incidents. Again adults, we know the whole, like Manny Tail story and the Catfish movie, all of those.
I remember them, you know, very well.
But a lot of these kids they don't know, you know, and they don't have as much experience, and you know, they're developing and so like it's just they're being thrust into the wild, like on Instagram and on their phones. Unfortunately it appears with like very little supervision or at
least like talking to from their parents. So we got to have we got to set new norms around technology and all this stuff, which you or I who may have grown up with this tech, you know, it seems very intuitive to us, but we got to think about a developing brain that's just immediately interacting with this tech.
Yeah, no, that's right.
And listen, I mean sometimes the parents do talk to.
The kids about you don't listen, you.
Know, I mean, because sometimes you learn things the hard way. If there's anyone out there listening who's been in this situation. Like, I know, it's embarrassing. I know you don't want to get in trouble.
Whatever.
Your parents are human beings too, They've made mistakes as well, Like get a grown up involved and do not send the money because it will not end. It's not going to solve the problem.
What are your parents, your whatever? Uncle?
Contact law enforcement because like you said, I mean there's serious not only the blackmail, but also you're talking about child pornography. I mean, there's serious penalties for this and.
It should be Yeah, it's a good thing you can actually get them in trouble.
Yeah, I hope law enforcement is like up to date on these types of crimes, because I know in the past there's been it's been difficult to get police to take these sorts of things seriously, Like this is a real crime because it was just so like such a new landscape and something they didn't know how to navigate either.
So makes sense anyway.
Stave Vigeland a very good friend of mine, Jason Willock, he now works over at the Washington Post. He's a columnist,
wrote a column which intrigued both of us. Is going to put it up there on the screen really highlights something We've been talking a lot here on the show, quote how the diploma divide came to dominate American politics, and he highlights specifically a University of Pennsylvania, a political scientist who has account of the recent political shift, the greatest shift really in all of our lifetimes, the diploma divide,
college educated voters dramatically going towards the Democratic Party, working class voters, with some exceptions, martally going to the Republican Party, especially when we're talking about whites. He says that within this that quote, whites with college degrees and not only white working class have driven the polarization process predominantly.
Quote.
From at least the early nineteen eighties to mid two thousands, there was essentially no difference in average attitudes on economic policy between college and non college educated voters. Beginning in two thousand and four, however, college educated white voters have moved steadily left on economic issues relative to the working class, so much so that the education gap on economics is half as large as magnitude as the party gap.
Was in the nineteen eighties.
But even more interesting, Crystal, and this is what really got us in this is that it used to be that college educated voters predominantly were the real culture war voters. Those are the people most motivated by cultural concerns. But with the stripping away really of economics and reality that things probably aren't going to change increasingly now the divide is around culture, and that's part of why our politics are exactly the way they are today, and economics in
some cases flows downstream from those two. It also just makes sense for anybody to come up in the college educated system in the last decade. Culture is all basically the obsession of not only the elite but the professors in terms of what's dominating campus life and what's there, Whereas let's say, in the nineteen sixties, there are very different conversations that were happen.
Maybe sixties is a good example.
I want to say it's pretty politicized then.
Too, Yeah, but it was different.
It was about Vietnam and even the culture quote unquote there it was about civil rights. I mean, it's just don't think it's funny even fundamentally the same as opposed to like what we're facing right now.
So yeah, so it's fascinating to me. It makes a lot of sense that it would be college educative voters who tend to be more economically secure themselves, who then would prioritize cultural issues. Right, It's like, I've got mine, I'm good. I don't really care about unions anymore. I'm animum wage I'm way above that. Not to be I don't want to be glib or like, you know, but just in terms of people looking out for their interest. So now I have the bandwidth to care about these
other social cultural issues. So that's what the model used to be, which is kind of what people still may intuitively think is going on. What we've seen shift is now basically everybody is a culture war voter.
And I mean I'm a little bit I'm a little.
Bit skeptical of this, but I think part of why it makes some sense is because in.
That earlier period.
In the nineteen eighties, certainly in the nineteen seventies, you had more of an active conversation about what the model of.
The economy was going to be.
Yes, you're right, once you get past Bill Clinton adopting, you know, a market radicalism very similar to Ronald Reagan, will both of the parties agree on some of the like major contours of the economic landscape, and so they seek to differentiate themselves by culture. By the way, culture is also a lot easier to deliver on and very comfortable for donors. You know, cultural issues don't threaten the
donor class really whatsoever. So it's much more convenient for parties to focus on those as being like the litmus test and the core of their identity. As we've had this big partisan sorting, it then makes sense that you know, if you're on the Democratic side, and this is like the set of issues both culturally and economically, that you just start adopting those no matter where you are on the economic spectrum.
If you're on the conservative side.
Like these are the people who are signaling they're on your team culturally, and so you take put more credence in the economic philosophy that they are preaching as well. One thing that I would note though, is in spite of that, and in spite of them arguing that working class conservative voters have tended to adopt more conservative ideology, we do see that there are a lot of economic issues where there's a huge commonality across the American people
that's not reflected by elites really in either party. I mean, you have this huge support for unions, right now, huge support for labor right now, huge support for upping the minimum wage right now, huge support for making healthcare better, expanding healthcare, negotiating Medicare drug prices, lowering prescription drug prices.
I don't want people to get the impression that there is no commonality in terms of an economic vision across the two parties, because I do still think that there's a big split just by the numbers, between what elites and the parties want and what the overall base of the party would like to see in reality.
You're right.
I mean, look, there's two ways to look at it. We're more divided than ever.
True. We are also more united than ever. Also true.
Two of those things can be true at the same time. It just depends on which conversation want to have. You we're talking about guns, Okay, we're more divided than ever you want to talk about you know, on some issues we're more divided than ever. But even within cultures, like what if we're talking about gay marriage, Well, actually we're more united than a vast majority of people of the country support gay marriage. So it all depends on the
conversation that you want to have. You can have a productive one or you can have a non productive one, and I think we know which one most of the elites prefer. But unfortunately, as I've said, I don't like this trend. Before your college degree is still the best, this single best indicator we have in this country of how you voted.
I would really love.
To get away from that. I don't like that it is that way. I think there's a lot of social ills that come as a result of that. That also whitewashes most conversations that I think people could be having around real issues. But also, as you're highlighting, that doesn't mean that those can't happen, because people still vastly agree on all that whether you went to college or not, you know, in terms of wages or the way healthcare whatever, and.
Perhaps more than ever post pandemic. Yeah, I mean, I do think that there was a real shift in the pandemic that we've seen play out in terms of, you know, people's attitude towards the economy and attitude towards the boss class and workers and what workers deserve.
Et cetera.
So yeah, I mean, it's it's complex, it's very complex. I guess the last thing, and I'll say is given that for quite a while, you haven't really had either party delivering on the economic pieces of their promises. It makes sense that people would be like, all right, well then culture, like they can signal to me culturally and like be on my team. And I guess that's the
best that I can hope for. Like, that makes sense, And it's going to take a shift in our political outcomes in order to, you know, to change people, convince people that no, I should like, I actually should care about these economic pieces because I have a reasonable hope that they may actually come to fruition.
Yeah, I think that's true.
Well erstwhile Jets quarterback er, I should say, recovering Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers may be physically injured, but he seems mentally pretty sure. During his weekly appearance on The Great Pac McAfee Show on ESPN, Aaron Rodgers called Travis Kelcey quote, mister Pfizer, take a watch.
I didn't have a crazy game, and you know, mister Pfiser, we kind of shut him down a little bit, and you know, he's like crazy impact game. He had, you know, some yards and stuff. But I felt like, for the most part, you know, we played really tough on defense such the last three quarters.
All right, right, so Jets lose to the Chiefs. Rogers calls Travis Kelse on ESPN, which cannot have been happy with that, Mister Pfizer, because Travis Kelce, I think has done ads. He's actually partnered with Pfizer. This is actually from Fox need quote. Kelsey recently partnered with the pharmaceutical giant to promote its COVID nineteen and flu vaccines in commercials. Rogers had a conversation with with Travis Kelce after the game.
He said he's going to leave at private, but he said, quote, I've known Travis Kelce for a long time and we had a great chat. Got to have a quick chat with Mahomes about how every time we're supposed to play each other, it doesn't happen. Aj Hawk was his former player, his former teammate A J. Hawk when they were at the Great Green Bay. Packers was on air as well, and both of as people just saw McAfee and AJ
Hawk's reactions were pretty priceless. Mister Pfizer, you know Aaron Rodgers, Rogers has you know, even appearances on Rogan Show and McAfee's show basically come out as a vaccine skeptic. He's kind of railed against woke culture. What did you make of this clip?
Ryan just clout chasing Travis now that Travis is like the second most famous person in the world, right, I mean, that's what this is at this point.
Do you think he wants Taylor Swift?
I mean I think he wants some of the attention probably, Like It's funny how like the NFL thought it was a big deal and then Travis Kelsey started dating Taylor Swift and they realized what an actual big deal it's like because Travis Kelsey, you know, maybe the best tight end in like football history. And but to the Swift, he's like, who is this? Who's this nobody taking taking our tailor?
There was an.
Amazing post from somebody at a Chief's tailgate who was wearing a Travis Kelcey jersey. It was like a girl and it was spelled Kelsey, like the name the girl's name Kelsey Jersey was on the back. Because clearly they've never heard of Travis Kelcey, don't know much about the guy, but they love him.
The only thing I really have to add to this conversation is that if people haven't seen it. They should google his younger brother, Jason Kelsey's his Super Bowl speech that he gave in Philadelpia. Oh that's eighteen.
That's right.
Jason Kelsey, by the way, possibly the greatest center in football history.
Did you watch the HBO documentary? No, you'd really like it.
There's a lot of good Philly stuff too.
I forget that you're an Eagles fan. So you guys really like Jason Kelce.
Oh yeah, and it's it's an incredible it's an incredible speech. You would like just go google Jason Kelce like speech and like that all that'll send you. If it sends you down to Jason Kels here at Kelsey Brothers rabbit hole, it'll be time better spent than some of the other Ann Rodgers rabbit holes that you could probably end up going down.
So Aaron Rodgers is a really interesting figure because when he was Brett Favre's backup and far was clearly on the way out and actually ended up in a really similar situation to Aaron Rodgers towards the end of his career with the Packers. Rogers is somebody who's always taken himself so seriously. He was famously kind of jilted in the draft, wanted to play for the Niners and you didn't get drafted, and that spot ended up falling in
the draft. Becomes this wonderful, fantastic quarterback, but he always has taken himself so seriously, except for maybe like the smoke and JA memes. Do you remember that with Jay Cutler back in the day. Those were pretty good and
was really sort of well liked. And then towards the end of his career with the Packers starts getting what I think a lot of fansy is an attitude, and that is working at the same time as he starts like also railing against wote culture, not taking himself that seriously, going on McAfee show and going on Rogan and all
this other stuff. And it is just fascinating to me how he's kind of We've talked about this the hippie to QAnon pipeline, and I'm not saying that Aaron Rodgers' just QAnon and I'm not saying there's nothing about that, But there is the like the crunchy type of people, surfer type of guy who is now like actually aligning with the right. And then you have some of these more soccer moms who are aligning more with the surfer type hippies on this question of like medical freedom and
vaccines and listen, people have very legitimate questions. That's not but we're not winging in on vaccines here. It's just an interesting confluence.
And yes, I think people that self identify as free thinkers, and I think it's important to understand that that phrasing and that framing used to position themselves on the left, and today, yes, people who self identify as free thinkers position themselves or find themselves positioned on the right now. I also think that people who self identify as free thinker as often are not are a little bit obnoxious and not as free thinking as they think they are.
People overrate their own intellectual agency and ought to have some more humility about how free thinking they actually are, because if you call yourself a freethinker that, but then you agree with a particular person on everything, should ask yourself freely, how freely did you arrive at that conclusion?
Right?
So, yes, the hippie to QAnon pipeline is a real thing, like we've seen it. We've seen it move, but I don't think it's as simple as people want to make it out to be. And I would encourage people to think more freely about that.
Yeah, And I don't think it's like it's not specific to vaccines, and the hippie to QAnon pipeline isn't specific to Aaron Rodgers obviously, But what we're talking about basically is the kind of vendiagram between like conservative soccer moms and hippies where there's this middle ground now where you have, you know, maybe like people like Aaron Rodgers coming down on the same side on particular questions like woke culture and vaccines, and that's where like RFK Junior launching what
appears to be a third party bid on Monday, I bet Aaron Rodgers supports r of K Junior.
Oh no, no question. Yeah, Like this is.
A real u there's a real constituency for this, And that doesn't mean everyone's going to do it responsibly, But I do think there are some responsible conversations that can be had because when you again relegate people to the fringes of society who are otherwise like intelligent normal people, you make those you let you allow bad ideas to kind of metastasize in the shadows instead of just like like ESPN should be happy, like seriously, because you should
be able to have these questions in broad daylight, which is how we used to do so that people can then smack it down. Jenny McCarthy stops start saying weird stuff on the view great like the American public and everyone else will weigh in and be like, yeah, no, this is all right.
And before people think I'm being too critical of self identified freethinkers, self identified people who quote unquote follow the science are also obnoxious and are also very rarely following the science. So I just want to be equal opportunity here.
Yeah, that's fair.
Criticizing the self identified freethinkers from a hardcore fish fan is a real.
Bold move right, and everyone at the Fish Show thinks they're like, you know, breaking from the monoculture, and they all look the same there. So let's just be humble about it, That's all I'm saying.
There, you go, all right, Well, we'll see you guys later.
So for some time we've been tracking what is a completely insane situation that's been unfolding in Arizona. The backstory here is that companies owned by Saudi Arabia effectively have been putting in place alfelfa farms in the desert in Arizona, soaking up massive amounts of water, using it to feed then this alfalfa to cows in Saudi Arabia. Now, in the country of Saudi Arabia themself itself, you were not allowed to grow water rich, water requiring whatever the word is.
Crops like alfalfa.
So they exploited some local water usage laws in Arizona to be able to grow these crops use them to feed the cows in Saudi Arabian. And this of course comes at a time when Arizona's facing massive drought, huge heat waves, all of these issues that have created a lot of water usage challenges for Phoenix and for WURL users alike. So put this up on the screen. We actually have some good news. The governor there, Katie Hobbs, shuts down corrupt deal with Saudi Arabia for Arizona water.
Huge wind for water rights for Americans in the drought plagued Southwest. So the backstory here is that not only did the company exploit these long standing water usage laws where basically once they got these leases, they could pump as much water as they wanted out of the groundwater supply with zero accountability, without even having to track how
much water they're even using. So they exploited those laws and they made sure that they kept this deal in place by effectively buying off the legislators in what for a long time was a Republican dominated state. They had lobbied the legislature and the previous governor. They hired key people with high level connections. One of their top lobbyists had actually served as finance chair for the Arizona Republican Party.
They put a former Republican member of Congress on their payroll too, And because for so long it was a Republican dominated state, paying off these key Republican figures worked Now because there's been a lot of press scrutiny and because the situation has become so dire, you've really had a shift. And Katie Hobbs has come in and said
she was going to look at it. She put in place a plan and now she's not canceling all of their leases, but she's canceling some of their leases in the hardest hit, most drought stricken parts of the state. And Sager, yeah, I did a monologue on this.
A while ago.
And part of what you find out too is this is already having a huge impact. Some of the workers who tend the alfalfa fields, they don't even have like drinking water and wells that they can themselves use because the sources have been so depleted. They have to like cart buckets of water for their own personal use.
So this has already had a huge effect.
And you're talking about parts of Arizona that are you know, have a lot of high level of poverty. They don't have a lot of a lot of local wealth, and so they'd also do things like oh, they buy some little nice thing for the football team or whatever to try to buy off the locals on the cheap. So it's good to see that there's actually progress in the right direction.
Ye should cancel all their leases, not just some of them, especially because it's it's already we have issues with private especially in the West water use and land use up there.
It's wild because it varies state by state.
There's that whole project by the Sam Walton family in order to try and privatize water like oh my god, Tanna, Yeah, that's all like a whole other story. But at least those people are our sat We could deal with that here with our laws. This is just straight up exploiting the ability to bribe their way into the US. So they don't want to waste their money, I'll go ahead and waste hours in a very similar climate, I would add,
in order to feed their cows and their populations. Like, okay, well you can buy it just like any other person. But instead what they do is they buy up their access to the towns, the farms and all that.
So it's very basic little things. I am happy.
I've been seeing a lot of democratic energy around this in recent times. So Katie Hobbs just canceled this. I got to give the man credit. Fetterman gave a very eloquent, a good speech in Congress about Chinese farmland buying in the state of Pennsylvania specifically, like critical farmland, which was previously owned by American citizens, is a very similar thing.
Is a huge problem, actually.
A big problem.
It's a big problem in Iowa that relates very much to seeds and a lot of industrial espionage stuff like that. Because they don't they're a net importer of a lot of their food, umlike us. So anyway, it connects to a lot of bigger stuff, and I'm happy to see it, and it just should be a message like no, you can't just buy your way in here when you're government.
And just to give you a sense, for a long time, we had no idea how much water they were using, and then the first step forward was like, all right, we're going to force you to track it. And they found out they were using in a single year the amount of water that would supply a city of fifty thousand people this one farm just to feed cows in
Saudi Arabia alfalfa wild situation. So it's good to see that there's been I really think a lot of the public security and the public outrage, which was bipartisan, forced this governor to make some changes that are in positive direction. Apparently they have leases in California as well, So this isn't this isn't the only problem, but good to see progress in this direction.
Looking at you, Gavin Knew.
Some very interesting details coming out about Bob Menendez's wife, who has been directly implicated in that alleged bribery scheme, getting her hands on a nice brand new Mercedes and allegedly texting the guy who allegedly bought it for her.
You know, it's not about all that alleged, because there's text.
For this beautiful new Mercedes GLC car sounds nice. Well, it turns out one of the reasons that she needed a new car. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Apparently, while she was Menendez's girlfriend, she hit and killed a man while driving on Bogata's main street in twenty eighteen. There is apparently this happened in Bogaton, New Jersey. I didn't know there was such a thing as Bogaton, New Jersey, but there it is. And it's
only a month after the crash. According to that indictment bought by the US attorney, that she was texting with this Egyptian businessman about the lack of a car, who he then provided her with a twenty nineteen Mercedes Bend C three hundred convertible, a very nice car of which she then purchased, of which she then thanked him for it. Now the details of the crash, it was ruled that she didn't do anything wrong.
Here's what they said.
They responded to a call of pedestrian hit by a car at seven thirty five pm. The crash occurred on Main Street after a man was fatally injured in front of his home. The police department ruled that she was not at fault with the crash. Mister Coop was jaywalking. He did not crash the street at an intersection or in a marked crosswalks. So this isn't like a tawdry report here about how she was allegedly at fault and
there was a cover up or anything like that. It's that the reason she needed a new car, Crystal, was because she was involved in his crash, and it seemed that she seemed very comfortable after losing her car in this crash to then be going to this gentleman allegedly again for the lawyers to be asking for a new car.
But there are some eyebrow raising details about the circumstances here. She was not She was not taken in for questioning at the time of the of you know, this fatal accident where a pedestrian ends up being tragically killed.
She was not tested for drugs or alcohol.
Ask yourself that if.
You were in this situation, do you think they would bring you in. Do you think they would do a field sobriety test?
At least you or I hit somebody and fatally killed them, no matter what the details are. Of course, our asses are getting pulled on at night too, just so we're all now you think we're not getting in immediately to blow through whatever hundred percent.
And apparently some retired nearby police officer ends up on the scene because he says, oh, his wife is a friend of Nadine's. The family very much thinks that there was some sort of special deal, cover up, et cetera. They do not feel that justice was done here, and so anyway, there are I think the fact that she there was no field sobriety test done, she wasn't taken in for questioning any of that, I think is very eyebrow raising and does suggest some special treatment that ordinary
citizens would not likely receive. And there was no there were no news reports of this at the time.
Well that's crazy.
This is the first time that we're learning about it because it was sort of like alluded to in this indictment, and a bunch of local journalists and national press were like, wait, what, let's look into the details of it. And like I said, there are some very eyebrow raising details contained here.
Because she was only his girlfriend at the time, I guess, not his wife, and it was only afterwards that it would have I guess at the time that would have happened.
But yeah, I don't know the details on it.
I mean, the police had said that he was jaywalking, you know, not in a crosswalk. I'm not saying the man deserved to die, of course not. It's a tragic situation, so what I had read the details, But the blood alcohol thing is.
Very very suspicious.
The fact they're not branding, and then of course anytime some like retired person is showing up quota as a friend. I mean, once again, anybody here has ever been involved in a fender. But it's a terrible experience. You know, everyone's stressed and people are mad at each other. It's like, it must be nice to have somebody be able to show up who's connected on your behalf.
So who knows, actually that's true.
Really, who knows whether she didn't receive a lot of special treatment because she was the girlfriend of a sitting US senator and then literally getting stuff on his behalf, allegedly as.
Laid out in the indictment.
Just gross, gross that they there's a totally different standard for these people whenever they do anything.
Absolutely it said. She initially agreed to let officers search your phone, then.
She took it back.
Shortly thereafter, she was allowed to to get personal effects out of the vehicle. This retired cop shows up to help shepherd her through the whole process.
Anyway, Yeah, that's me off there, are right.
We'll see you guys later.
The avocado you're looking at is about thirty days old, yet it still looks about as ripe as the day it was picked. The source of the magic. It has been treated with a new tasteless, edible coating called Appeal, an invisible shield promising to double the lifespan of your fruits. But is there a catch?
Appeal Sciences you may remember that it takes left behind plant materials like leaves or peels and blends. They bake them into a kind of shield that you spray it on fruits and vegetables.
It keeps them from going bad.
Founded in twenty twelve, Appeal is a family of plant derived coating that is applied to keep produce fresher for longer. The company's Food Gone Good mission aims to tackle global hunger and help me to gate climate change by saving water, increasing the shelf life of produce, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In the past few years, the company's valuation has skyrocketed, and produce coated with Appeal can now be found in grocery stores nationwide as well as internationally.
Monks figured out in the Middle Ages that you could put beeswax on an apple and it lasts a little bit longer. But if you go into a store today and you get an organic apple, it's still got beeswax. And so Peel comes in and says, you know what, Let's use food to solve this problem in a way that dramatically reduces ways.
Using food to reduce food wet sounds like quite the scientific innovation, but some in the healthy eating community are beginning to ask questions and voice concerns that I think warrant our collective attention.
Did you ever think that your produce would have an ingredient list?
Kristen Dornic is a cookbook author and founder of Kristen's Kitchen, a food blog that promotes eating real food. I recently spoke with her to better understand the controversy surrounding Appeals and new innovative so.
Appeal is a plant based coating and it's used on produce to keep it fresher for longer, But there's a lot of there's a lot of questions about what it's made of.
Based on the company's website, Appeal is made of mono and diglycerides, which they say are naturally occurring in all fruits and vegetables, and that this ingredient has a long history of safe conception and has been verified by regulatory authorities around the world. But once you dig a little deeper, I found the answer to be a bit more opaque
and a bit more complicated. First off, mono and diglycerides, sometimes referred to as monoacloglycerides, are plant based in the sense that it is extracted from grape seeds through heavy industrial processing at high temperatures, somewhat analogous to the process to extrude seed oils commonly found in ultra processed foods, which serve as emulsifiers or preservatives to enhance texture, stability,
and shelf life of food products. Such substances are considered by the FDA to be generally recognized as safe or gross. What most people don't know, maybe, is that grass certified ingredients means that the companies themselves are self certifying the safety of the substances through their own hired experts in their own trials and submitting a grass notification to the FDA, and ninety nine percent of the time the company's claims are not independently verified by the FDA. It's what's known
as a loophole. And if we look closely at appeals gross notice submission to the FDA, the industrial process they use to extract monoacloglycerides from grape seed leaves residue of processing aid residuals such as ethyl acetate and hebtaine, along with heavy metals like palladium, arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury.
A recent European Food Safety Authority review of monoacoglycerides E four seven to one concluded that while there is no reason for a safety concern, they also warned that the potential exposure to toxic elements resulting from the consumption of E four seventy one could be substantial and the need to lower the current maximum limits for arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury. It does sound like a lot of scarymicals that we probably don't want in our food.
No, this is something that is eventually going to be put on all produce. You're not just getting exposed to a little bit here and there. You're getting exposed to a lot. You know, it's on organic produce too.
In a now deleted Instagram post, Appeal co founder Jenny Due defended her company's use of chemicals.
Everything around us is chemicals.
You and I are all made of chemicals.
In fact, even more amazingly, we are all made of star stue.
Cool. The star stuff that she's referring to, once again, based on her own company's registration with the EPA, is classified as a pesticide. That's right, organ Appeal, which is appeals organic formulation that the company uses to quote organic produce, comes with a massive warning label and considered to be a hazard to humans and domestic animals.
On top of that, the EPA.
Registration raises even more questions about the ingredient lists, as it lists the active ingredient as citric acid ato point sixty six percent and other ingredients at ninety nine point three four percent. But putting aside ingredients and chemicals for a second, are there other health implications if All of our produce is coded with appeal.
How do you know when that apple was picked?
Was it picked three days ago or was it picked thirty days ago?
You can't tell.
Because the outside it looks it still looks pretty good because of that coding.
Because appeals barrier coating halts the visual decay of fruits and vegetables. The next question consumers have been asking is does it lock in the nutrients too? It has been well documented that most produce loses thirty percent of nutrients three days after harvest. In fact, University of California studies show that vegetables can lose fifteen to fifty five percent
of vitamin C, for instance, within a week. Now, I know, we've just covered a whole lot of claims about appeal from chemicals to nutrients, which beyond mainstream fact checkers like those from the Associated Press reiterating that the FDA considers appeals coding to be safe for human consumption and correcting a post that erroneously confused appeals code with a cleaning solution with the same name. Appeal themselves have not really publicly addressed much in terms of these claims and concerns.
Until now, I had the opportunity to sit down with Appeals co founder Jenny Doo and the company's VP of Marketing, Lauren Sweeney to try to get to the bottom of some of these concerns. We've just covered the mystery ingredients of appeals organic formulation, the ninety nine point three four percent other they say is just purified mono and diglycerides, which is the same ingredient in their non organic formulation,
along with food grade sodium bicarbonate. In regards to the publicly available grass submission and other patent submissions that we've referenced in this piece, the company states that they quote do not represent our current manufacturing processes. Neither heptane nor ethyl acetate are used in our manufacturing process and heavy metals are also not intentionally added to the product. In
a follow up email, miss Sweeney reiterated that quote. With almost a century of safety use as a food additive, rigorous purity and safety standards, and low levels of exposure consumption, it is very unlikely that there would be any long term health hazard related to the consumption of our product on produce. They also revealed that in order to comply with the new EU standards, reflective of the notes in
the SS study that we reference earlier. The company has quote already conducted testing on finished formulations that show we are already conforming to those forthcoming revised specifications. Misdew and miss Sweeney also shared that in addition to protecting produce against visual decay, Appeal also locks in nutrients better than
produce without their coding. When comparing, for example, appeals protected blueberries with unprotected blueberries, all of which were harvested at the same time and from the same lot, appeal protected blueberries maintain higher vitamin C levels and over a longer period of time. And there you have it. I obviously can't tell you who to believe, but I do want to say that I'm very grateful that Appeals senior leadership has made the decision to actively participate in this discourse,
and I hope they continue to do so going forward. Now, moving away from the science for a second, let's talk money, because I don't think we can ignore Appeal's appeal.
I think Appeal's got a break future to one today.
Were able to raise twitter and fifty million.
Last month at a billion plus valuation.
That's right. Appeal has attracted a number of high profile investors, including celebrities Katy Perry and Oprah Winfrey. Other investors listed on the company's website include the Who's Who, a venture capital, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the latter of which has been on a spending pair tens of billions of dollars over the past decade in what some would describe as a coordinated plan to consolidate control over the world's food supply. Now, how does Appeal fit
into this equation or does it fit at all? Just something to think about. Appeal has also been recognized as a World Economic Form technology pioneer and is a part
of the World Economic Form Global Innovator's community. The company's CEO and co founder, James Rogers, is also a World Economic Form Young Global Leader conspiratorial insinuations aside, it is at the very least I think concerning that direction of where our food system is going, which is, I think in a direction that seemingly favors a shift from localized, community level farming to top down globalized industrial farming, where
the food supply necessarily becomes more centrally controlled and further
removed from the communities that consume it. This is just my personal opinion, but without an active mission to empower local farmers and dismantle a food system that has been financialized to the degree that we as consumers have no idea or almost no idea, where our food is coming from or what's in it, it would be difficult to see how Appeal and its current incarnation would be able to do much more than co opt what I think are legitimate concerns like climate change and food insecurity as
a means to make its investors a little bit richer, but a last Regardless of where your personal thoughts lie, whether you think a product like Appeal is a positive game changer, a part of a noble effort to end global hunger or battle climate chain, or if it encapsulates everything that's gone wrong with our food system in the last half century. I hope this segment brings about more discussion and more discourse and the importance of food and the need to advocate first food system that is truly
designed for the people. That's it for me this week. Please comment below share your thoughts about Appeal and about our food system. If you found this segment to be helpful, you can support my work by going over and subscribing to my YouTube channel fifty one to forty nine with James Lee. The link will be in the description below. Your support would mean a lot to me, of course, keep on tuning into breaking points and thank you so much for your time today