Just answered this nationwide keyword on our website bank. That's bank answer it now. My Scott's Loan Show on seven hundred WLW is Instagram engineered like a like a casino in order to hook your kids. The jury's going to answer that question as tech CEOs get called to the witness stand in a very fascinating case where social media, TikTok, insta, Facebook, all of that is on trial. Jason Philibaum is a defense attorney here in Cincinnati and joins the show to discuss Jason, welcome, how you have.
Good morning, doing well? Thank you.
So I've read this and it's fascinating because we're all engaged in social in some way, shape or form, but especially on more impressionable younger people. And that's the crux of the argument. To me, it strikes me as a this is essentially a product liability case in that the defense is going to have to walk this type rope of going, well, yeah, the platforms are engaging by this, but they're not harmful. And that's the intent of this thing, is that the folk from here.
Yeah.
In fact, I think this is going to probably near the either the gun cases or the cigarette cases where you have, for example, the gun lobby shut that down. But the cigarette cases, they started out in the sixties and the seventies, and you have a couple of big verds. The next thing you know, you have a multi state settlement. So I think what you're seeing here is the beginning of either the end or the expansion of social media, having.
Tech companies or other companies that past successfully defended that accusation of their products.
Somehow it was addictive, yes, And that's what's interesting.
And again I see such parallels between the social media trial that's starting now in the cigarette cases, because when the cigarette cases first started, they defended it and they shot it down and they won I think the first lawsuit within the fifties, and they lost big time, and I think they even got attorning keys. And then you know, they started in the sixties and the seventies, and then finally it was in I think nineteen eighty eight or something like.
That you finally had a big verdict.
And then a few years later the state stepped in because now you have a flood of lawsuits. So I think what you're going to see here is you've got this lawsuit against a social media or all of them essentially claiming they're addictive, claiming they're subjecting the children to sexual abuse or other type of anxiety from the images they see. And what you're going to have is if they get a verdict here, you can see now a flood of lawsuits that follow, sort of mirroring the same evidence,
making the same argument. Yea.
Although here's the problem I have, and this is the argument I would tend to make here, Jason, if I were the big media companies, tech companies, is that, Okay, we're going to do this like we did the like the cigarette lawsuit.
What's the deal.
Well, we know cigarettes called cancer and the cigarette mantuffacts No, no, no no, And now we found memos that said, yeah, we recognize there's a direct correlation between smoking and lung cancer. That's irrefutable. And there's probably not much else you're doing in your life that would cause lung cancer save not
smoking cigarettes. Okay, so there's that direct scientific connection. Whereas in this case you're making the same argument going, Okay, if it weren't for social media, kids would be happy, they'd be engaged, they wouldn't be depressed. That might be an ally, that may be a factor but there's also other causes for this. The causation nightmare is what about family trauma? What about academic pressure, what about bullying, what
about genetics? What about COVID? It just keeps going and going and going, And so there's other factors I could I could point to in a child's life as to why they might be addicted to social media and why their temperament is bad. And you know, there are some kids killing themselves, there's no question about it, and maybe social pushes them over the edge. But there's a whole host of other factors you have with social media that you don't have with cigarette smoking.
And I think that's exactly what the social media companies are going to be seeing. So we talked, you know, just now it's almost like cigarettes. But one would argue, and I think your argument was, this is more like the gun cases, the firearm cases, where you know, yes guns can cause damage and yes guns can cause death, but there's an intervening cause and that's a bad guy doing it. You know, guns just don't pop up and start killing people. It's some bad guy picks up a gun and does something bad.
And so that's what they're going to argue.
Here in social media, which is, look, you know, we we have a platform, and if a bunch of you know, perverts get on and start, you know, sending messages your kids, that's a bad actor using otherwise okay platform. And so I think that's that's the biggest hurdle that the plaintiffs are going to have to get over, which is, you
know this this is designed to be you know, addictive. Maybe, but at the end of the day, it's only causing trouble because the bad guys on the other side doing things, and that's you know, one could argue with mirrors the gun lobby cases which end up going away.
Well, the gun lobby cases were interesting in that the argument we all to say product defect issue. This is a product liability issue and a gun company so well not really. You put around in the chamber, you load it, you rack it, and you pull the trigger and a bullet flies out. No, that works like it should. It depends on who's using it and what the intent is.
Right, That's what they basically said, like, look, these social media platforms, there's other reasons for mental health. You know, we have a society that's built.
On bad news or you know, We've got people on the other side that are them.
And all this does is is create more of a public form that you're going on yourself.
The parents are allowing it to happen.
And so the argument from the social media company is, look, we provide a platform where people can share pictures and talk about their life, and just because someone comes in and does something bad or because another friend starts to bully you, that's not on us. I mean, we can't have a free, open platform but then regulate everybody. That's
a whole different issue that Connors is looking at. And so I think that's what they're going to claim, is that bad actors are what causing your child's mental health, not the actual Instagram or Facebook or TikTok.
Well, the idea is you're getting fed a steady diet of everything that you want to hear. But okay, that's social media and there's an algorithm for that. How is that different in any way, shape or form than something I may watch on streaming, for example, or TV, whether it's I don't know, it could be food TV. Maybe I have a food today. I can watch food NonStop all the time to make a look good. They don't see the after effects of it, or something that we
could recognize as cable news. You know, if you are you know, if you write leaning, you watch Fox News. But there's even more extreme networks out there one America. There's Newsmax, right, and that's a steady the same algorithms and play here. Why would they be exempted social media?
Not?
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, I mean that's anything right now, that's just targeting on advertising. I mean you'll look up something for a puppy and next thing you know, you're flooded with everything that goes along with the puppy, from leashes, the food, the puppy pads, you name it. And I think in this case that's what they're going to argue is, look, yes, we set it up so if you show interest in baseball, we're going to show you a bunch of baseball stuff. If you show interest in workout, we're going to show
you workout stuff. And then likewise, you know, people can come on and talk to you, and if they're bad about it, that's on them. Now, what I'd be most interested is snap Chat and TikTok settled before this started,
and I'd be curious. We'll never know what that amount is for but you know, something about snap Chat and TikTok had them worried enough to leases to a settlement, and I'm guessing that settlement is what then is fueling the litigation on the other because there's experts involved, there was an undercover study done.
I mean, this is going to be very interesting to watch over the next month.
Yeah, there's another factor you don't have and all these other suits. Jason Philibaum, attorney at law, we're talking about the interesting case. I think it's going to kind of grip us here too, because we're all involved in social media in some way, shape or form. The young you are probably more likely. But products like Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and x are they engineered to hook your kids?
And the juries can answer that question as CEOs like Zuckerberg get called to the witness stand shortly to say, yeah, well we wanted the product to be engaging, but no, it's not addictive. It's not causing all these societal problems facing young people specifically. There's also something in there that's not applied to any other the types of suits we've talked about. When comes a pride to product liability, Jason. That's something called Section two thirty, which basically protects platforms
from liability for user generated content. So I may get on social and create something that's not on meta or YouTube, that's on the user, and so it does exactly so do section two thirty provide a shield here from these suits even more?
That's what they're going to argue.
And I think what you have is, you know, we had the whole argument what five years ago, when before X was taken over by month, you know, we're we're certain people being blocked out or being excluded, and is this a public form? And of course Congress acts and basically says, look, you can you can say and do what you want on these platforms because who it is
for me to say that's misinformation? And then so now I think you're going to see the social media companies argue the same thing, which is, look, we do make this engaging, we do make this interesting. If you like something, we're going to send you more things that way. But at the end of the day, we can't control what people do, whether they harass you, whether they put false information out there or anything else. We can't control that.
And there's actually a statue that says we shouldn't and we're not liable for that.
At the end of the day, this will.
Then come down to are they knowingly putting children at risk? And I think that's a hard burden to overcome for the plaintiffs. How does the First Amendment factor into that, Well, I think that protects the speech that comes across. But again, if you're it's like it's like a cigarette. You know, it's you, it's your right to to smoke, and you choose to do that. But we put a product out that we knew was going to be damaging, that we knew was going to cause cancer, and the only difference
and then we advertise towards you. Now that I think the same thing could be said about social media. We created this product that we knew would take up eight hours of your day of scrolling.
We knew that it would, you.
Know, cause vision trouble or or mental health trouble because you're not sleeping. And then we also made it more addictive so we can send more stuff at you. And we knew a lot of that stuff was that if that's what they can prove, then yeah, there could be a verdict in this case. But that social media comes back and says, wait a second. All we did was again create a platform that's fun, and the more fun it is, the more you're gonna want to do it.
But that's life. That's not creating a bad sort of product. That's the people that engage that you're with. It's like going to a park. We created a beautiful park, but if there's bad people and they're yelling at you and doing stupid stuff, that's that's not on us, that's on the bad people.
Jason. A couple of studies have come out in the last couple of years from different institutions, and I was talking about it earlier in the show, and that factors in here, and that is, you know, certainly young people in particular who spend a lot of time and girls especially spend a lot of time on social media, they tend to be more depressed, to have higher levels of anxiety,
less performance, things along those lines. However, versus kids who are completely banned from social media, the kids who have a little bit of social media in their lives tend to fare better. And so it sounds to me like the research says there's a happy medium. You know, if you spend all your time looking at your phone. That's really really bad. If you don't have a phone, or don't use or don't engage, it's it's not as bad as that, but it's also not good. There's a sweet spot,
and it's always in the middle in that regard. Then we have things like teen accounts and parental controls and screen time warnings and all that stuff. If those tools are out there, and the same people who bring the suit fail to engage in that and fail to monitor their kids because you know, they're kids, they don't have agency, isn't that an affirmative defense for the tech companies and saying, hey, listen,
you're a parent. You have a responsibility to parent. You know, you know, you got to know what your kid's doing and monitor. You gave them a phone. They didn't buy the phone themselves under the money, especially the young ones.
Is that on the parent?
Yeah, yeah, And that's what the meta attorney actually said in open which basically they have repeatedly warn parents and teams, but more importantly the parents that harmful conduct does or content does get past our firewalls. They do get past the safeguards, and this can be an issue, and you need the monitor child. It's like taking the child to a play area and just letting them go and they fall off the top. At some point, you've got to
monitor your children as well. And I think that's what you know, Meta at least was arguing, which is the parents have responsibility too, And you know, just because you open up an area and let your kid go unexplored, that's not on us. We've warned you. And this goes back to the whole product liability issue. You and I have joked about this. Before you want a drinking party at home, go read your warning labels on all your products, because that means someone did that to get that warning
label there. And I think that's what they're saying, is we put the warning here that said it could be a problem, and you ignored it and let your kid just have a free phone for eight ten hours a day.
I believe I saw Mark Zuckerberg is going to testify, and that is going to be a moment for sure. What are the legal risks for Meta putting him on the stand.
Well, he probably doesn't know a lot about the You know, at the end of the day, you become so big in your company that you don't necessarily know the little but I think that'll be very interesting. I mean, he's testified in Congress, so you know, he's testified before hearings. I would think that he's going to do pretty well. Set up to testify. I think the things that going to be interesting is that they hit him with something that maybe he didn't know about, you know, something someone
lower or whatever they said. But in this case, this has been going on for a while. They've got Discovery. I would hope he's prep and I think Instagram CEO is also going to testify, and that'll again be interesting because they've all testified in Congress, again, pretty hostile crowds
where the rules of evidence don't apply. I would think they're probably going to end up doing fine, and it's the people underneath them that's that's going to be the real interesting is how this operates, how this works, how they actually target the kids.
That's that's I think going to be end up cruct of the case.
Yeah, because the I mean, it's really this, this whole thing we're talking about, this culture. It's all his fault because he was a nerd at Harvard and wanted to be chicks. That's that's basically what this whole thing came about. It was like, it's like a senior prank called wildly, wildly out of control.
And ruck, I mean downfall society, social media and next thing is terminator.
With all the ais.
But hey, at the end of the day, we're welking him it with open arms. And that's the defense of the social media is, look, you guys use it, so all we'd do is putting the products out there. And just because other people use it poorly, that's not on.
Us, right.
Okay, So we saw Snapchat and TikTok settle. Do they wind up just settling in this case? Is that and the foregone conclusion here? Jason philbum No, I.
Think they're going to go through with it.
I think they have decided that they're going to be a target if they settle, I mean if and I think I don't know why TikTok and Snapchat did. I don't know if there's maybe some internal memos that could have got them in trouble, but at the end of
the day they settled. But I think think you've got Instagram and Facebook and meta and all that they're going to fight this to the end because otherwise you're going to open up a flood of litigation like they do, like they did in the cigarette cases, and so I think we're going to end up seeing this at a verdict.
Interesting all right, he's Jason Philibum defense attorney. Maybe a little outside his scope here, but the guy knows more about law than most people do for sure, especially Lawa's Jason all the best, buddy, appreciate you.
I appreciate it. Thank you, and their.
Official attorney of the Scott Sloan Show here on seven hundred WLW, we'll get a time out of news. I want to talk about this more after the news here at nine point thirty. And this is a huge, huge issue and if you think about it, there are all sorts of core questions here because as I mentioned, there's a precedent if they wind up winning, the plaintiffs win this case, meaning that social media is addictive by design
and they're at fault. Does that open up I mean Netflix, for example, go after Netflix because of AutoPlay or you know, news sites, infinite scroll, or mobile games, online shopping. I'll go the thems pretty much everything, and I mentioned no cable news would be a great example of that. Are we just opening Pandora's box where if you just get on the information super high Highway, getting the digital fast lane. Now, all of a sudden, there's legal risk involved for the
company put the content out there. What uh yeah, that's pretty scary, right. I'll also make this case. I don't think social media should be on trial at all. I don't think that's what should be on trial. There's something else, and we'll get into that right after news in your calls just ahead, Scott's Loan show. This is seven hundred WW. Scott Floatan continues here seven hundred WLW. Welcome to the show on this Tuesday morning, the sunshine's in.
We're at h What I got here?
I don't have my ammometer here. Let me look at the old watch. I got thirty eight degrees. Watch this thirty eight. Let's go at thirty eight.
I don't know.
I have to hopefully north of fifty today. Hopefully your some pump is working, gonna be a lot by Buddy Bobby Miles and Basement Doctor's gonna get a lot of calls in three to one. That's just how it is. I kind of got a little theme running for the first half of the show. Tod I just had Jason Phillbaum and talk about the social media addiction trial. I
think that's fascinating. Christine Miles as a psychologist. She's on later to talk about then update on you know, the schools have banned cell phones largely because the dangers of that.
I mentioned the real problem here and I you know, thinking about it, was like, Okay, social media, it's so bad for kids, so bad, so bad, And then you have studies come out and going, yeah, but kids who aren't engaged in social media tend to also have problems socializing and mental stress and things like that, largely because that's her kids meet. You know, if you simply deny the kid going hey, you cal it's really bad you can't have a cell phone, that's our whole social sphere.
That's like saying, well, you're not allowed to go to the mall. You're not allowed to go to the movies. You're not allowed to go you know, when we were younger, that's how kids socialize in person. They do it digitally. Now it's just the way things are, and so's that's not good for the kid either. So there's a happy medium where you actually, I hate to say it, you know, we got a parent. That's the hardest thing in the world is parenting. You know, you just can't simply let
your kid go feral. And then when they spend twenty hours a day on the phone and there you know they they don't develop properly or they have mental health issues. You turn around and you sue the company. It's like, well you got on the phone. Is you do have a some liability in this yourself actually the bulk of it. And a kid has to be an educated consumer, sadly at a younger age than we were. But that's them's
the rules, right. And I point this out because you know, if you think about it, the problem here going after social media, that social in my opinion, should not be the thing on trial here. It should be smartphones. I mean a smartphone, it's a handheld slot machine. If you go into the casino, downtown anywhere for that matter, everything in there is set up for them to take your money. And we know this going in. We know the how hose always wins. You go to Vegas, Why do they
comp your drinks, why do they comp your rooms? Why do you get the comp this that? Because you spend a lot of money playing the games and at the end of the day when you get a free family members that go and they gamble it, and they gamble uf with like they never pay for a cruise. I think it's awesome. It's like you go now, it's one hundred dollars, basically, go on this cruise. Why is it because we gamble a lot and you can write those
now for your taxes. The whole thing. I don't know if it's a wash or not, but again, it's your money. You worked a lifetime, you earned it. Do what you want with your money. I don't need the government or anyone else tell me what to do what I want to do with my money. If I want to give it to charity, give it to the church, or gamble it away. It's my damn money. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. And so you go to a casino and it's all set to take that money from you, right.
All of the bells on a slot machine, the chimes are done in a certain way, in a certain fashion to make that the most appealing sound in the world to you. Done researching the whole thing about pumping oxygen, and they really don't. But it's a good wives tele all and get you to spend more money to game up more. Okay, so if that's true with the casino, we don't band casinos, we regulate them. I look at
social media, go. I don't look at social media. I think it's the phone, because it is that handheld slot machine. It is literally an amusement park in the palm of your hand. You can certainly look at social media. You can engage in that. You can scroll videos, you can listen to audio and podcast, you can play games, you can watch porn, you can bet, you can gamble. You can do all of these things you want to do within the palm of your hand. And so I don't
know if it's social that should be on trial. It should be the phone. But that's a whole separate set, that's a whole different indictment. It's easier to blame social media is the evil thing because yeah, in a way, we're on but no, I'm just on Facebook. I don't look at it that much. Okay, good, but you know that's not the platform young people are on. But you
can be. I'm addicted to that phone as well. I also point out this that if the whole crux of the argument, like smoking or guns or whatever it might be, as the fact that this is a product liability issue and nothing else and they win this thing. Here's what should scare you about this is that, all right, snapchack, the snapchat TikTok. They settled and now it's meta and YouTube right now. But okay, this social media's addictive. Well, all right, then they will come after your phones next.
This certainly makes a mobile phone even more so, I think, than social media, something that could be banned or litigated against, in the sense that the nature of the phone itself is addictive. I mean when the first iPod came out. You may not have been around then when the iPod came Remember the first iPod came out, and these things were you know, they weren't part of your phone, and it was you know, we weren't streaming music over the over your over data. It was a cost prohibit. You
had download the song onto the physical iPad. You have a phone and you have an iPod with you, and the iPod is about the size of while the cell phone now about the palm of your hand. And when they designed that, they designed it for something that had a tactile feel to it, like the back of the the the original and the iPods. They were chrome, they're heavy, and the edges were round it. It was shining and you
wanted to touch it. And the buttons were intuitive and you felt it and weren't you know, just touch screens, the actual physical buds and the whole product. The field was designed for you not to want to put it down. It felt good in your hand, and that was the first step towards developing a product, as all products are. That's not only visually and audio opena, but sensory from a sensory perspective of the peeling. It drew you in. It made you want to use it more. It made
it so you never wanted to set it down. That's that's a hell of a design. But okay, does that now mean that the whole idea of music YouTube, for example, against social media more than anything. I think it's just videos, it's not. It's a social media channel that those algorithms are set up for you to get more of the videos you want to see. So, by nature, the way we design things are that you use it more. You can say the same thing about food, about potato chips.
You know, I get you go get a bag of grippos the barbecue, especially, why do you want to eat the whole bag? Because they've got a great balance between salt, between fat, and between sugar. And we talk about that when it comes to obesity. Look at all the hidden sugar and product wires. There sugar in there. Shouldn't be sugar in this. Yeah, it's there's sugar in it to make it more appealing. So it rewires your taste buds, not in a conspiratorial sense, but rather they want you
to eat more because you'll buy more chips. You also have to have the ability to go I'm good, I'm satiated, I'm fine. So what else are we going to go after if they win this lawsuit? Is it going to be food? It's gonna be phones, It's gonna be music. Netflix comes to mind. They've got auto play. The algorithm sees what you're watching, goes hey, we think you'll like this. But that's not just Netflix. That's every streaming platform from Netflix to YouTube, TV to Amazon Prime, ESPN, whatever it
might be. News sites have something called infinite scroll. You read a story and it sends you more of what you want. I would argue also that if you're sitting there going, well, you know this is we got the social it's the problem the fu I don't know. If you're still hooked up to cable you're watching cable news, all right. If you like Fox, and you've watched Fox because you're conservative, you might really like like One America, or you might like Newsmax. We are the commercials for Newsmax.
And the whole thing with Newsmax is basically is like Trump likes Newsmax, so you should watch it too. Tell the president you watch TV.
Wait what?
And if that's part of your identity and who you are, then isn't that a steady diet of more of the things that you're addicted to? Now it doesn't give you a great sense of what's going on the rest of the world or opposing viewpoints, or you know, the ability to think for yourself, which I try to do. I just don't want people lying to me. I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican. I want to know what the agenda is and let me figure out the game myself. That's just how I'm more and I get
I'm a unicord in that regard. Although I suspect the way things are going maybe more people are going to go, yeah, you know what, maybe we got a back off, like social media, we need a back off a little bit. But you know, could you go after one of these conservative or you know, if you I don't know, maybe watch CNN. But now you're going, hey, you know, msnbs are the view for God's sakes. With that First Amendment lawsuit,
same thing. It's like, if you want a steady diet of progressive left or conservative right, you can find something to do that for you. Because it's not an algorithm, but it's alread it is. And so at the end of the day, are we opening up Pandora's box. We're engaging in anything becomes legally risky, whether I meaning it a potato chip or watching I don't know, cable news.
That's a pretty slippery slope, I think. And now everything that is because the idea of making a product is to get more people to buy it, regardless of what it is to consume it. And no one goes, hey, I'm going to design a product, but I don't really want that many people using I don't. I just there's lit the old theory about it's really not that true. But the idea you know, back in the old days, I get a refrigerator, and the refrigerator the last seventy year,
I still got an old, you know, calvinator. In the garage, I got a nord Er a Crossley that's still running. And yeah, if you look in that thing, it's you know, it's got a limited amount of parts. It was designed to be replaced as or repair as supposed to replace. But we live in a disposal age right now. It's lowered the cost of those goods substantially compared to what it was a long time ago. TV's are a great
example of that. You go back and look at I don't know, the cost of a TV for a twenty one inch you know, black and white TV let alone color was like four hundred dollars back in the seventies and sixties, and today, you know, you can get a you know, an eighty inch TV for less than a thousand dollars. For several hundred dollars. It's because well, it's not meant to be repaired, it's meant to be disposed. And they last a fairly long time for that matter.
But that's the idea here, is that, like, you know, we keep changing things and it gets gets a little better in a disposable society, for sure, But when it comes to the issue of, you know, the consumer culture. We try to make things as appealing as possible from a cost standpoint, for sure with the TV analogy, but also from something that we want to use over and over and over again. Yeah, we want product and brand loyalty.
Isn't this essentially tied in a digital fashion? I mean, can you go after Tide really cleans closed very very well? It's all I want to use is Tide. Well, they do a great job. Okay, P and G. So now is there going to be a LOSSU against P and gcs tied? So damn good? But you're not addicted to it's got that yeah, but I'm addicted to that smell and the clean.
You know.
And again, this is the way the legal system works. It pushes boundaries for sure, and pushes a lot of buttons. But I don't know, it's like we're battling over social media as the bad guy here, and maybe it is the smartphone. It's also probably a lot about us. It's the damnedest thing that started with the tobacco settlements, and
that's a little bit different too in a sense. I know that in this case, you know, there are documents coming out from Facebook and those companies that said, yeah, we've got an addictive product here, and we're keeping kids engaged, but it also it's causing mental problems. It's a smoking gun that executives knew their platforms harmed kids, but we
prioritize engagement in revenue. Anyway, I'm not sure if that's legally damaging simply because like, Okay, we got a product that's really really good and people, in this case kids want to use it. Should that really be legally damaging? I mean you can become addicted better to I guess food or potato chips, and certainly smoking, then you could social media or gun. I mean the argument fall apart with weapons in that. Yeah, well, it's not a product
liability if it works as we sold it. Well, what do you mean, Well, you're saying it's the product's dangerous. It's the liability. It's not dangerous in a sense of a defect. It's not defective at all. But you know, it's saying, like a lighter, I burned my house down
because the lighter worked. Yeah, well, you know you took the little bit lighter out and you pulled that little wheel and it made a spark, and then your thumb hit the button and made the buttane come out, and now you've got a flame the cause your fired that caused the house to burn down. No, no, it's not
the lighter's fault. At some point, you know, we do have to take accountability here, and I know it's easier said than done, because you know, raising my kids was hard, and I don't know if I did, how good a job I did, We don't know. I guess the standard right now is you know, nobody is in prison. I mean, if you st the par really low, neither my kids are in prison. I think it's good enough, but tend to be good, good people. Now, you may measure it differently,
and everyone does. As a parable, we don't know what the yardstick is. What is it supposed to be, how much money you make, how much education you have, what you look like. I'm not quite sure, but everyone's different in that regard. The one constant is it's damn near in posset. It's really really hard to do. And to simply let your kids be ferial and go, okay, well you go here here's a phone, go have fun. Just
don't bother me. I know it's today's version of you know, my mom and dad would go, hey, here's a TV. Here's some ma Ree runs, or watch TV. Leave me alone for a minute. You know, TV was the babysitter. Now it's something digital. How you going to a restaurant, how many kids or adults for that matter, are engaged on the screen. You know, you've got the you've got the tablet that you bring in with the cartoon on
it or game or whatever it is. And you know, kids as young as three four five are sitting there waiting for the meal to come out, and they're they're engaged with a digital thing. You know, in spite of engaging with the family, you give them a tablet and they shut the hell up. It's a digital pacify. Yeah, we've all done that in some regard help. You know, back in the day when the mini and are still there, but the you know minivans, Hey I got a TV.
I can put a video on for my kid in the back seat, so they quit bugging the hell out of me. We've all done that in some way, shape or form. Some people more extreme than the others but is it the fault of the You know, kids want to watch NonStop. My kid love Toy Story when he was growing up. Mean, we watch it once a day for real. I have the movie on and then you got to say, hey, listen, we need to turn it off. Despite the tantrum they held, you're still at the day.
You have to be the gatekeeper here, not expecting a big company like Meta or YouTube or Facebook or TikTok to do that for us, because watch out for the consequence. If we want that to happen as a society, then watch out for the negative side, which is going to be them going after Oh hey, wait a minute, Now that's different. I was watching that. Yeah, well good, now we're gonna shut down cable news or whatever it might
be that you're consuming, because essentially it's an algorithm. Let me get a news update and we'll continue this thread in a minute. A little bit different here, you know, a high windy can. We have banned cell phones in schools largely, which I think and for an educational perspective and during instructional time. I think it's obviously that's a no brainer. However, the idea, what are social media or phones for?
That matter.
Schools have banned cell phones, as you know, and I wonder now, as we're starting to get more data out about this, that maybe the phone wasn't the problem, because twenty five percent still of teachers say I have a difficult time trying to kid keep the young people engaged. Well, we thought it was cell phones, but it turns out it's not. What else does it play here? I got an idea. We'll share that just ahead here with my guest Christine Miles after news on the Home of the
Red seven hundred ww Cincinnati. By the way, iHeartMedia and the Big One. Salute Cincinnati's own Procter and Gamble. If you've got someone there you'd like for us to recognize on the air, text their name to five one eight eight one and be listening. Flown me here on seven hundred WWS. Schools across America locking up, snatching up kids cell phones like their hot conquer band. So you got bell to bell bands, you got the big mad night
of pousage, you got confiscation. Policies. Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana all require school districts to implement policies banning those phones during instructional class time. And each state's so a little bit different than that. Every but largely most states have this conon policy.
But here's the question.
You're ready for the question, here's the question no one's asking us. So new studies come out, and not just new, but preceding studies have come out. The shows teachers spend somewhere between twenty five and thirty something percent of their day, so between a quarter and a third of their instructional day trying to get kids to listen despite strict cell phone bans. That hasn't changed. So our phones the core problem? Or is it just a scapegoat?
On that?
Christine Miles, she's a psychologist and works with school systems across the country. Founder of the Listening Past. Christine, Welcome are you? I'm great.
I'm so glad we're talking about this, so thanks for having me on.
Yeah, you know, I was thinking about this before a conversation, and you know I was not. I don't know about you, but I was not part of the cell phone generation. Obviously I had my mobile down and had it for twenty thirty years. But I look back and go, wow, we didn't have this problem when I was a kid. As most parents and grandparents certainly say things are different. Of course they're supposed to be different. That's how the
world this is, That's how America's designed. I guess this would be like what if I in school, if I were allowed to bring my TV with a cable on it and I could watch MTV, What that would do for my ability to learn?
It's the same thing, right it really.
That's beautifully said, That's exactly what it is. We don't need We just don't need the cord. Yeah, so so, But I so appreciate the question because it is a big It is a big, big problem, and I'm so glad the schools are finally.
Taking this step.
I mean, we know better, we do better. I mean I remember I grew up when smoking was allowed in most places, but then we realized it was harmful for your health, so we took it outside and we made smoking areas and things like that. So setting some limits is similar to that, Because I think this is like that the ships sailed before we knew what the repercussions were. And I don't think it's the root cause it's just that in gasoline to the already raging fire. In terms
of the problem of kids, struggling to listen. There's also some rebound effects here. So you take the phones out of the schools, and attention spans are still harder to come by because when if they're on their phones and on devices, which the numbers are kind of staggering. You know, these are spending nine hours plus a day outside of school work. That's a lot of time. So it's not like your brain's going to recover just because you don't have it in school. But again we're still it's still
not the root cause. In my opinion, the root cause is that we're told, not taught, and this is a problem since been documented since the nineteen fifties.
Yeah, I was making that case, and this kind of a theme show today on this I had earlier. We're talking about the social media live trial. It's about to happen that social media and TikTok and snapchat and instant, all those platforms are addictive by design and will ruin your kid's life. Yeah, if they go uncheck, if they're completely fear aal online with no roadblocks up, But that's on the parent. I don't think that's on the company also made the case that the social is not the problem.
The phone itself is the problem. It is like literal, I mean, it's it's like bringing it's a handheld damn casino is what it is. Right, It's like I've got everything out that it's not social. It's I can message, I can look at videos, i can watch porn, I can check sports, I can bet online, I can I can do all of these things in the problem in my hand. That's really it's not social. It's the phone.
Well, it's it's all the things that are coming. It's the world coming at kids, not the world, you know, not kids exploring the world and what's finding them.
You know.
Again, there's could be a lot of debate about algorithms and how we're targeting just espe. We could have debates about cigarette companies targeting the brain and making things addictive. So there's there's it's a very complex issue, and I think, yes, parental control is important schools. Taking these steps is important when again, when we know better, we do better, and we still be One of the things taking this time away in schools is that it forces us to do
something else. So, you know, I've talked with parents, as you know, a family therapist and one time a parent said to me, what if my child won't eat anything, drink anything but soda? And I said, well, if you take soda away in the house, they'll get thirsty eventually. So you know they'll eventually drink water if water is all there is. So what will happen is kids will start to reacclimate towards socializing with each other more than they will to the phones when the phones aren't in
front of them. But it's two at tempting, So we need to remove those barriers. But then we also got to give them the skills. I mean, we've been telling we've been telling people to listen kids, starting with kids from like I said, this is a problem documented back to the nineteen fifties where we don't have formal listening education and classrooms. So we tell them expecting the ears to do the work instead of building this as a skill, which is what it is.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I saw we should be addressing in school. She's a schools that's Christine Mouse, psychologist. Let's back up a little bit what goes on in the adolescent brain from a developmental psychology perspective, what's actually happening when their kids are always on their phone? And you metch you know, nine, ten, twelve or more hours a day.
Well, so I will say that I can talk about this from the This is not my core expertise. I'm a systems family therapist. But what I do know and what the research is, it's just a it's a dopamine hit. It's a constant dopamine hit. It is it is asking like a drug. Now we can talk about that from an adult perspective, and we know how difficult that is. You talked about family, you talked about porn. These are things for adults that they struggle with in terms of
the time on the phone. When you're bringing to the developing we're in a whole different realm here. So we were not forming the pathways that need to be formed in early childhood and in adolescence, which is really why it's so dangerous, because we're changing those neuropathways we're getting they're having a hard time self soothing, They're having a hard time you know. This is why we know the mental health issues are spiking, not just the attention issues.
This is very well documented now in the in the literature.
Okay, but there's also a separation factor here. I guess for lack of a better word, we're seeing some students are you know, they're experiencing genuine anxiety and panic attacks when they're separated from their phones during these bands. Is that a clinical concern we should take seriously or is that a warning for everyone else?
Well, I think it's a withdrawal issue. I think this is exactly you know what, let's go back to something simple. You know, we get to the pacifier because it helps them sue themselves and when it's time, when the parents go, okay, it's time to now wean off of that. There's some peers that when we have to say goodbye to something that was helping us south just because it helps us
suit doesn't mean it's good for us. This is not how we want we want kids to regulate is through a device and through having to have constant you know, attention coming at us, so that our constant stimulus. So we're we're not thinking, feeling, or even operating in the present and that's the danger zone. So this is where but we've got to fill that gap so that they're not as anxious again, this is where the socialization is
the answer. It's not just take it away, it's the only way to stop the behavior to start a new one. So you take the phones away, now you have to replace it with more socialization, more skill building around listening. Which is why again teachers have been telling kids to listen in the classrooms for you know, decades, and this is a constant battle because it's hard to pay attention for eight hours a day, especially if you don't have
the skill. If I said, you go run a marathon that you know how to run, but get into the get to the end of the race. Got you gotta train, you gotta build the muscle. And so this is our opportunity is to finally solve this problemhich is what I'm committed to doing, is to is to provide education from elementary classrooms to corporations. Because it doesn't matter what age you are, you only you know, a very small percentage, less than two percent have any formal listening training.
Yeah, she is Christine Miles. She's a psychologist of what it's cost to you not to listen to the founder of the listening path or talking about school cell phone And then we have that in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana to a large degree. But the question nobody's asking that I'm bringing in this morning is their studies are coming out and they're showing that teachers still spend a quarter or more of their workday, of their instruction day, just trying
to get kids to listen. Then that was before and now after cell phone band, so our cell phone is really the problem. They really wreck kids lives. I've also seen studies that pointed out early it said that that, you know, the extreme is if you spend all your time on the phone, it's really really bad for you. I mean, it's horrible for your development, all these things
we're talking about. That's absolutely true. But kids who do aren't on social or don't have phones, who don't use them aren't allowed to tend to also suffer some of those same symptoms. May not the extreme we're talking about with overusage, but under usage. There's a sweet spot right in the middle. And when I hear that, I go, Okay. Kids if they're exposed a little social media and able to congregate online with friends, because that's how kids socialize today.
I was a kid where we'd socialized at the mall or the arcade, and kids today do it digitally. So we have to lean into that. Is this just a lesson that we are woefully behind how we educate kids in America still today, because we're teaching them like we did a couple hundred years ago. There's a you know, maybe it's instead of a blackboard, it's a whiteboard or a smartboard, but you're still it's rote memorization. It's all
these things we've taught kids largely the same way. If phones and social media, Christine, are changing kids' brains, shouldn't we be adopting the school curricula to meet the way kids learn now as opposed to how they did a couple hundred years ago.
Well, you're this is such a good point. I mean, we we know that just what we know about the neurodivergency and the way kids learn that. Look, we're you know, you and I could go back and say, well, you know, if somebody was dyslexic or had genuinely had a d D or things like that, this wasn't necessarily talked about or diagnosed to the same degree. We once could argue that, you know, not everybody has a d D that, but
it is real. It is a real thing. So we just know that teachers have a lot of divergent learning needs and so it's really about meeting kids where they are, which is part of why the listening is hard too, because kids needs are different, which is why this is a this you're The point you're making is I think and I which is where my heart and soul is is this is a systemic problem. We're not going to
fix this with one thing. Again, we know that that phone that what we're trying to prevent is is keeping them off of engaging with each other, engaging with the future, and engaging with the with the core curriculum. Like you said, take the TV out of the classroom, that's just common sense. Right then we have the issue of what we do at home and how we limit time. We know that past the screen time, the scrolling, the doom scrolling, that's
not super productive and that can get that's very addictive. Well, you know, then there's some socialization. How can you mitigate that with socialization? And then you get to the but you take all that and you cure all that, you still have this learning problem and you still have this listening problem. To systemic communication problem. We focus on speaking, telling, knowing, and test scores versus how we're learning, and that's what AI, in my opinion, is going to come in and change
is that. You know, we had the calculator. Now we have something that can do the formulators but have formulas. But how can you explain it, How can you make sense out of it? How can you show up as a person that knows how to collaborate? And these are all the skills that are at the core of what's going to make somebody successful in the future. Starting we got to start teaching that at a very early age,
as early as first grade, so that they're ready. And this is where we have to fit this systemically, so that we're teaching the skills so everybody is a common language is how so they can understand.
So there's another factor here in my mind that this whole thing and I get it. There's a lot of talk about phones descrying attention spans, and the argument is whether the phone is the cause or just the most convenient delivery system for a culture that's already dopamine driven and overstimulate. I mean, you know, parents are were upset with the cell phone bands because they want to be able to get a hold of their kid instantly at any time during an emergency. But as an excuse to go.
I can text you during class because parents are also anxious all the time as well, and it trickles down that we're all anxious and all the time. But I
think it's interesting, is that. So the way to beat this whole thing is to simply use AI and use the algorithms for good as opposed to evil, if you want to call social media evil, and that is educators and the system should be creating platforms much like TikTok and snapchat in insta that feed that feeds a student a steady diet of what they're interested in to learn, that continues to push stuff towards them and challenge them and learn what their likes and dislikes are and try
and strengthen those dislikes and make everything better. Use use the technology for good instead of social media. But the problem with that is now you're going to replace all of these teachers and all these administrators in schools with something that's digital. That means now that threatens the teachers' unions, That threatens the administrators and the whole construct of schools
in general. Because guess what if I can do this with my phone much like we've seen, you know, broadcast, TV, go away radio, everything else, newspapers for example, because of the digital age that now threatens the livelihood of the education class and we can't have that in America. And so what winds up happening is it's disconnect between the kids in the classroom.
Am I wrong?
Well, here's what I think. I so, you know, I yes again the world. It's just like we could be saying the same thing about corporate America.
The road.
The road things can be replaced, well, can't be replaced by the human skills. And that's one of the things that I think teachers are getting away from, and not by the doing because there's so much pressure to teach to these core ideas and curriculum and the standards, is that they're getting away from the human part of the job, which is really how we develop kids, how we nurture kids. And so this is going to be the heart of what happens in the school and what teachers love to
do and why most teachers get into the work. So I think it's not that they'll be replaced as to what the emphasis.
Is that needs to change.
And that's the same thing that I see on the corporate side, that if you want to. You have to drive that value as a what in your job because some of the redundancies can be and so the answer isn't more time on screens. The answer is more connection in terms of how we raise the kids and how we teach them, and how we help them connect through language and through interaction, so that everything they learn in this kind of this fast paced digital world and what's
coming at them, then they can manage their emotions. They can manage the emotions of others, they can develop empathy. They have the things that the AI and the machines don't have. And that's the risk is that we're tipping over into too much of the screen time.
Right.
She is Christine Miles, psychologist. Her book is What Is Costing You Not to Listen? Founder of the Listening Path. Christine Miles thanks at the time.
I appreciate it, appreciate the conversation.
It's really really helpful.
I think I just made a case here teachers can be replaced. This is believe me, this is like, this is dangerous territory. If you could come up with an algorithm, and it's easy to do because we've seen this replicated time and time again, that would teach kids on their level,
meaning it feeds them a steady diet. The algorithm feeds them a steady die of things they're interested in and expands their knowledge base in learning and kind of sort of tricks them into learning where it becomes fun and engaging on a personal level, just like social media is. And now they're hooked on this, and you put that in the classroom and ban the phone and give them a device that is the alternate to social media and all the stuff coming at you. And that's how kids
learn today. They learn on social media, they learn through digital interaction. If you do that in the classroom, kids now become smarter, more engaged, more learned. But what happens to the educational system the computer replaces the teacher. We can't have that in America, can we? Because of what's at stake? There's also the is she mentioned important too? The social interaction thing? But is this like the it's like clickbait right? This is what the educational system doesn't
want you to know. This one weird old trick for saving us a lot of money and getting a better student. Thoughts after news here Scotsland continues on seven hundred WLW Good cute. Get the party start, let's go, let's go sloany here seven hundred WLW on this Tuesday morning, and a beautiful one at that with the sunshining right now, temperature's going up there. We've cost the forty degree threshold. Come home, baby, Let's get some melton, Go on? What do you say? What do you say? Just spent like
a first half of the show. We talked about social media addiction, Christine Miles, school psychologists and cell phone bands and the like, and yeah, I'll tell you what you know. It's kind of sobering.
Now.
We could make great progress when it comes to educating
kids if we just did it on their level. And in the digital age, they learn digitally now as opposed to face to face, and so if that's the if that's how you get kids and that's where they are, then you have to meet them on their level, and that would involve more AI, more digital algorithms to teach them what they don't know and kind of make it appealing to them in a way, because the old ways of teaching just don't simply how it makes the work. But let's face it, there's better ways to do it.
But as a threat to that precious ecosystem and all that fat cache that goes to our school systems from our property taxes, And that's what's in danger here. You know, you want to be a disruptor, but how disruptive do you want to get? You know, the fear is a lot of jobs are being replaced by AI. As I speak. The City of Cincinnati is coming up with a policy that would regulate data centers in Hamlin County, specifically in Cincinnati. Obviously,
also that's an issue for the commissioners too. Do we want data centers in Cincinnati? Look what's happening in Kentucky Butler County up near Columbus and around the area, And that's a concern. Big, huge, multi acre plants that suck up a lot of resources, natural resources, water and of course electricity and the grid can't handle anymore. Do we want that in the city of Cincinnati itself? They're debating it as we speak, what that policy would look like.
And so we are all guilty in some way, shape or formed this whole thing. If your job and my job is endangering to be replaced by AI. Would teachers? Would education? Which educators be any less in danger? Should they be protected like I don't know, you know here at seven hundred w W and iHeart we have the guaranteed human. I'm sure you've heard the we're guaranteed human, yeah for now. When you hear they're like, okay, well we're guaranteed human today tomorrow they're it's gonna be hard
to compete with AI. Let's face it, for spoken order, music or video. Hollywood's in danger being upended by AI. Everyone's job is in question right now. Nless, of course you're in the trades, and you know, as long as I can do plumbing and electrical and carpentry and stuff like that, I got a gig for now for now. So should we protect the status quo in schools? And I think, you know, we talk about homeschooling, which is I think somewhat.
Of a threat.
I think the education, but of course privateized schools, private schools is a threat. I think the next big threat's gonna be AI, because we're going to teach kids on their level, and I think you're gonna have smarter kids. Granted, there's going to be a lot to be desired when it comes to interpersonal communication and talking with a living, breathing human being. You're still going to need that skill, and I think that's going to be maybe the big challenges whole thing.
But man, I don't know.
I'm looking over my shoulder going, why don't we just have a platform like you would with social media, be a TikTok or Instagram and using the same type of algorithms teach kids on their level. And he said, hey, and look at that. You don't even have to go into class, right, you could be at home doing this stuff.
Frightening. We want change, but that much change.
Anyway, We've got that going on today, on this on this beautiful Tuesday morning, Big Dave points out to me, my producer, that Ohio is ranked twenty first in the nation for alien abductions. You know, whether it's like business or education, cost of living, we always middle of the pack. We are mid ass Ohio, that's what we are, always right right near twenty five, well right in the mid sometimes as high as twenty, sometimes as low as forty.
But generally speaking with some outliers, we're right. How are you? We're very mid mid Ohio was legit, we're mid twenty first of the nation for alien abductions. What you have a ready for the percentages. Now, according to this is a British website, so I'm sorry, British gaming site, So I don't know what the credibility is here, but if believe in the markets, Ohios have a one point one
three percent chance of being abducted by aliens. So you're saying there's a chance we have and this has surprising me. Over four thousand abductions since twenty nineteen. Reports of abduction
since twenty nineteen. Don't know how many of those reports dealt with hallucinogens or alcohol, drugs, whatever it might be, but four thousand and if you're wondering if you want to increase your chances of being abducted by an alien, if you're looking for something to do, Maine in Idaho are your top two states for abductions, which is surprising because you think it would be Nevada, you know, Area fifty one and all this stuff, maybe Arizona, but nope,
it's Maine in Idaho and Maine and Ahiho. There's nothing better to do than to get abducted by aliens. Maybe you're so busy in Ohio, Kentucky, Anyon elsewhere, we just you know, abducted we don't pay attention to it, but there's still a little going on in Idaho and Maine that I mean, some people probably look forward to. It's like hitting the lottery. It's like getting a number in Kino. And by the way, the percentage is only two percent, so you know, we are kind of splitting hairs here.
So good to no, there you go middle of the pack. Even aliens are like, Ohio, that's all right, Midway, Yeah, yeah, okay, we're fine. We need a body book there. But largely Maine in Idaho look looking for trouble out there. This is the United States of drama. I was looking forward to talking about that. I didn't think, honestly, if you asked me, hey, what are you gonna be talking about on Tuesday, I didn't think we would still be talking
about this about America, the Snowflake. It is incredible to watch how we could be this upset over a ten minute free concert. Literally tens of millions of people fighting over a halftime show, and the biggest winners NBC and the NFL, because you know, the super Bowl itself kind of boring. I mean, there was some action, but it was a defensive battle. No touchdowns, to the second half. The ads were a couple ads. I like the Dunkin Donuts one because it's nostalgic and I'm old and that's
what we like. Anytime you can get George Costanza and Ted Danson in there.
Good.
I thought the William Shatner won will shat Fantastic made me laugh out loud, a little snort going on there. Like Sarah Le's the heart is certainly Budweiser. They always hit out of the part with a bird that became an eagle, and a couple other ones as well, but buying Large's like, yeah, it's kind of kind of the Ohio super Bowl NBC NFL they win because I think of all the controversies surrounding the halftime show. So here we are in day two and one of the stories
still trending is bad Bunny. We got about twenty percent of the country outraged about an all Spanish show by a Puerto Rican man against ice raids, and then another twenty percent thinks this show was somehow transformative and historic and progressive awakening, and it's bringing tears in my eyes and just thinking how far he's come, And like, I think both sides. I think it's a gross exaggeration. And
this is back to phones and social media. But we all have to have a hot take, and we got to be pissed off about everything at all times, and everything is a microaggression, and we take our accues from leadership. Trump is great at being aggravated by seemingly the pettiest things, and we have to look for validation of our beliefs and everything. So you're supposed to act now today that everything is upsetting and polarizing, and it just it's perfectly normal to go, eh, not for me.
It's not for me.
It's not a validation, nor is it an indictment. It's just targeting a different audience. You can say what you want to be. The NFL and the spectacular crack to the NFL is going to regret this whole thing as we all have sleepless executives and finger pointing and speed like the it's like when they you know, when they went woke with bud light. No, it's not like anything at all. Simply in this case is because the NFL
is almost too big to lose at this point. And if you look at the numbers from the halftimes, they got what they wanted free publicity, well maybe not free, but publicity and eyeballs to the tune of a hunder thirty five million people. And so yeah, mission accomplished. And if they're looking to expand the market to Latin America as they did Europe, then this is how you do that. It's a math game to them and nothing else. It's
not about patriotism and taking signs. They love that stuff because it means more people are going to watch over the controversy or the support, as the case may be for those on the left. But you know, and here's the thing, I try to be consistent. So I'm trying to figure out the inconsistencies here and it's pretty easy. So initially the backlash of bad Bunny was and I
get it. You know, he's anti Ice, and you know, to those people that think that I should be completely shut down, it's like, well, yeah, that's great until the person that they take into costody as someone who's accused of, I don't know, abducting Savannah Guthrie, not saying that that's someone who.
Shouldn't be here.
We don't know, but you know what I'm saying, it's like, you're just assuming that those people are innocent and they're not. They may be here legally, which in itself technically is a crime, but not to the level of what we're witnessing in streets. But if you're trying to get people out there who are here illegally and also committing serious crimes, you want that you're standing up and fighting for a criminal. That doesn't make a lot of sense. In my book,
it'd be nice to know which one you know. Is this a guy we're just picking up because he's out there and is here illegally, or is he here illegally and also committing some serious felonies, because that to me and that there's a distinction there. But the consistency here is I think what makes me laugh. We're angered that No, I'm not angered. I got it. It was in Spanish. I used to know a little more Spanish than you today. I don't use it that often. I'm really good when
I'm drunk by it. Give me some tequila and I'm spitting Spanish like I'm Pablo Escobar.
It's unbelievable.
That the lyrics are in Spanish, and therefore some I like, I don't know about you, but I'm not just this is one of my not super powers. For share can understand lyrics of a lot of songs, especially newer songs, and that and that's an English because there's a lot of slang. And as you get older, it's like, I'm not sure what the vernacular is and what this is supposed to mean. And I don't you know thet the battles between Kendrick and Drake. I'm like, I'm not quite
sure this whole thing. And you know, we've been also been whether it's an English or not, we've been getting wrong. We've been screwing up lyrics or generations. I think about it, how many songs we sang out loud in our car or in the shower or whatever, Like you hear what the lyrics are, They're like, wait, that's what he's saying. You mean it's revved up like a deuce, not revved up like a douche. When my wife is young, and that song was fairly popular verse Springsteen, Manford, man et cetera.
Back in the day. That song time, and she sung along with it. Her mom forbid her from listening to that song because mom was convinced it was rebbed up like a douche, which makes no sense. It's a deuce, it's about a car. It's nonetheless, that's where things do. We always screw up lyrics, so I don't know way to speak, and I don't also point out too, like one of the most successful genres of music right now in America is K pop. Korean pop very popular Spanish.
If you look at, for example, in my business and radio, one of the top formats across the country is Spanish. I'm really not outraged about that. It's you know, you're trying to sell materials and good services and a like too to those folks. Yeah, because guess what. Edy doesn't just affect old white people like me and you listening to this radio station. I'm sure there's plenty of Spanish
speakers out there who need those ed supplements. Nonetheless, I will also say the outrage machine then turned to the offensive lyrics somehow and pearl clutching over impressionable kids who don't speak Spanish.
So no one understands this.
But then at the same time, once you get the lyrics decoded, once you get the lyrics decoded, then we have to be offended. Well, if you don't speak Spanish, you don't have to really worry about that, do you, And now you look predictable. Ah, my side says, okay, we'll play that game for a second. I think this is just the offensive lyrics over bad Bunny. All right, there's some offensive lyrics and they're sure. Meanwhile, the alternative,
the wholesome American alternative. This was kid Rock. Now I always heard to see kid before he really blew up, and I thought he was, man, this guy's gonna go play.
He's awesome. And I've seen him I don't know four or five six times, and you're going, oh, it's it's really the lyrics are you know, kids are impressiable and they're young, and they're seeing and they're seeing these women shake their asses like, hey, guess what you can see far worse in a store on your phone or in person then you know some Latina, big bone latina women shaking i ass on TV is like it really wasn't that.
But the funny part about the whole alternative thing on attorning point was kid Rock is performing who boy like Kid Rock has a giant middle finger on the tall of its private jet and when kid Rock broke and this would have been late nineties. I remember the outrage from the same conservatives about the you know, the great society's falling apart because of hip hop music and the like. And here's this guy out there, and he's in and he opens, He opens with a song and and bob
with the ba is. I want to read the lyrics for you that he sang. And the same people are offended by bad Bunny. We're not offended by the midnight glances and the topless dancers, the gender freaks, the g's and the forties and the chicks with beepers, and there are the lights of Southern comfort. It don't it don't
even matter that their veins are punctured. And he talks about topless dancers and say it, talks about his heroes and the methadone clinic and the crackheads and the critics and the cynics and the crooked cops and the cluttered desks, all you bastards at the I R s and the half pints of love and the fifthest dress for the hooker. I'm not going to sing the song, but you know he's celebrating his homies in the county at cell Block six,
and so I don't know. I will look at that, go okay, if a kid here's that and has to ask you, you know what meth is or what a chick with beepers to show you how old a song is, Like I don't know. It's like I can't equate, Like why bad Bunnies more offensive than that? I don't think either one is offensive. It just it's music. It's always been that way, and it's the snowflaking of America and
this time conservative of snowflakes that are worked up about this. Meanwhile, it wasn't a long ago for progressives that are having that smug look on their face. I'd say, weren't y'all upset? Like a couple of years ago when when Baby It's Cold Outside was outrageous, you know, the old classic standard, baby It's cold Outside, where the guys try to talk her into staying because it's cold outside, and basically he went wants sex and she's like, oh, I don't know.
It's like what did you put in this drink? And now it's the me too movement came involved and it was like we are all rolling our eyes, going are you kidding me?
Right now?
Because at the same time, that everyone and any way on the left was upset about baby It's Cold Outside, which is stupid the number one and the number one song in the United States when that song was always it was Cardi B's wap what letter a P word?
Female body?
Well go look at that, Like, why are we upset about the number one song in the country is far more offensive than baby It's Cold Out? Saying that's different. Okay, Now, the selective outrage, it's just exhausting, right, Like now we're down to the super Bowl where the super Bowl halftime show is what everybody's pissed off about. It's it's part of the outrage culture and certainly has to do with what we've been talking about in the morning. That social media.
I don't know.
I've got to go, hey, you know what it used to be like that's not for me. Look when people would complain about my show, I hate your far How are you Why are you still? Like, well enough people listen. If enough people don't listen, I get fired. That's how our same w any show that's streaming, I hate that show? Why is that show a thing? Why are you exist? Why are you telling people what they should and shouldn't like, why are you so insecure that you're looking at that
going well, somebody must like it. Fine, great, good for you. It's not my thing.
I'm good.
But instead of just being passive about being so aggressive and going, it needs to be canceled because I don't agree with it. I just I don't understand that it's all about the money. At the end of the day, if you understand it's about green and nothing else, that's what it is. Anyway, I got a news update in here. Enough of this more to follow. It's we'll talk to Andy Shaffer eleven thirty five. Keep it money related for the next hour. Has that because it's a good day
to think about money. Because if you got a little bit on the market, it's just a little bit. You're making more. It's a good day. Seven hundred W you got futted back on seven hundred WLW welcome to it. We'll jump right in with stuff because there's stuff, you know, we got stuff. Trumpet administration has decided to ease the fuel economy standards know it as a cafe standards for vehicles, so roll back. Under Biden, they required a two percent
annual efficiency and improvement, so two percent annually. They have to make better better fiel accountanies, I guess the new proposal cuts us back to a half a percent, and they're also rolling back the taelpipe emission standards. So the question is what does this mean overall for the car industry Because cars we've hit American consumers said we're not paying more for cars. We have had a breaking point in the costing new automobiles.
What does that do for us?
Brian Moody is the executive Adam Kelly Bluebook and Auto Trader.
Welcome Brian hy Ben.
Yeah, thanks. You're right, that does change things a little bit, but I think it could be for the good, even though temporarily the headlines are going to be bad.
Yeah, I think in the long term it seems good. You know, we have this quest to try and lower efficiency start, you know, increase efficiency and how many more miles you would drive per gallon tank, and we know there's environmental impact there, and that's all well and good, but it feels like the screws have really been put to the auto industry itself and saying, okay, there's a reasonable bound here, but we'ren't in the point of absurdity.
Right I agree. It turns out the government is a terrible automaker, and not just ours, but across the world. If you look in Europe, for example, it was government that incentivized diesel to the point where that became the dominant fuel type across Europle. It turns out that's not good for you. So when government is in the position of building consumer products, that's not great. And when it
comes to regulation, I don't think people understand that. They understand that good Bettershoel economy is good on one sense, so I think we all understand that. But what people don't understand is that regulation which leads to needs compliance, which costs money, which adds complexity, which adds weight, takes away certain things from consumers such as reliability, low cost, and you know, the lightweight of the car, which could be a safety feature. I guess, for lack of.
A better word, yeah, understand those masks. But the fact of the matter is we, as American consumers, have an insatiable demand for trucks and SUVs that's at odds with these outdated standards or two aggressive standards I guess under the by administration.
Yes, And here's the thing about trucks, and SUVs. You could argue, well, are people buying those because they need it or because it's what they want? I don't really know. Consumer choice always benefits the consumer. But here's a great example of how trucks can become more efficient while also serving the consumer's need. For example, there's a Ford pickup right now called the Ford Maverick. It's a small pickup truck.
Well that hasn't been around for very long, of course, the name goes way back down to the seventies, but the actual vehicle that we have now, the Ford Maverick small pickup, has only been around for a few years. When they first introduced that, they couldn't make enough of those to keep up with demand. So that shows that consumers want something that makes sense. It's up to automakers to meet them where they are and give them the range, the price, the value and reliability they expect.
I thought I had rare or heard that the Maverick, the Ford Maverick is just basically what it's replacing, the Ford Escape.
Yeah, I mean, the Ford Escape is a small suv and we may end up seeing hybrid or plug in hybrid versions of that in the near future. The thing with the Maverick that was so I guess telling is that it doesn't have a big VA, it isn't oversized, it doesn't cost sixty thousand dollars, it doesn't even cost fifty thousand dollars. It's low price. It has some nice features, but it arguably has much less capability than say a Ford F two fifty, which is probably a special thing
that some people do need. But the Maverick is a great example, and I bet you you'll see others when it comes to hybrids and electric counts more right, size solutions for what Americans want today.
Yeah, I mean, you've seen the small pig and I guess I don't know what you categorize, but the small pickup truck Jeep has a model. It's like every manufacturer's rolling out a small pickup truck because they pickup truck.
Aesthetic, right, Like there's a Hyundai Santa Cruz. You know what these cars all remind me of. It's almost like everything that's everything that's new, or everything that's old is new again. These small pickups like the Hyundai Santa Cruz and the Fort Maverick and some of the ones that you mentioned, what they kind of remind me of as a Chevy El Camino. It's small car base, right, not the Jeep, but the other ones are car based, better fuel economy, and it occasionally helps you do some utility
tasks that you might need or might not need. But meanwhile you can drive it around every day comfortably.
It can't belong before bring the station wagon back. You think that's gonna happen.
I'm hoping because here's what I've noticed, and I'm this is only anecdotal. My own kids, who recently became driving age, have said nobody wants those big SUVs because it's too hard to judge where you are and when you're learning how to drive. They both kids said they prefer a small sedan or a hatchback. Well, SUVs replaced all those cars. So what's going to happen when these younger people move into the place where they're like, I don't want SUVs.
They don't want SUV's because why we didn't want station wagons. That's my mom drives.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And eventually we'll come back like trucker hats and fanny packs. He's Brian Moody. He's the executive editor of Auto Trader and Kelly Bluebook talking about Trump's and the Trump administrations cut on cafe standards, which environmentals
are gnashing their teeth over. But I think it's a good business simply because it's so hard for Detroit or all automatic American automakers, for manner doesn't have to be Detroit to try and keep up with that kind of stuff, And it totally does not mesh with what consumers demand, which are more trucks and SUVs and even smaller pickup trucks and SUVs for that matter. Do we also have
to talk about evs. I was blown away when I traveled this summer to Australia the number of Chinese evs that are on the market as ubers there, and I thought the fit and finish looked pretty good in most cases, sometimes maybe not so much. But how much a threat is that to our market here?
It's a big threat. That's how economic weapons work. I mean, they use their advantage to drive the price down, and they have working conditions and things in other parts of the world we wouldn't have here. But in other parts of the world they don't go by those same rules. Undercut the price of what's there and introduce it to a market and then you can drive the other people
out of business. That's called an economic weapon. The idea that people would want these cars is not surprising because they're good, but there has to be some kind of protection all over the world, not just in the US, to make sure that it's living up to the standards that we all hold amongst ourselves in terms of where are the materials come from, how is it built, and who's building.
It well as we relax cafe standards for internal combusting engines. It looks like to me, and again it's a brief sample. You tell me, Brian, the global market continues to prioritize electrification. Is that kind of put us at a disadvantage in the next I don't know, within the next ten years maybe.
But here's the thing, more realistic goals would be helpful. No one's going No one's arguing that, you know, oh, electric cars are going to go away. That's not true. I think if most people, the average American, if they were to drive an electric car, they would like it. Yep. Now that means there's other things that have to be solved though. What about the price, what about the durability, what about the resale value. What about where I charge
it up? It's perfect for people to have their own home, because that's about eighty percent of people that have electric cars charge them up at home. What about everybody else? Right, it's not the car that's necessarily the issue. It's a lot of other things that go into it.
Yeah, if I live in a metro city like Cincinnati and I don't have a garage, I don't have access to that. How do I charge my electric vehicle? I need a traditional internal combustion engine at least, so we solve that. But again, the market will decide that.
Right, the market should always decide these things. One thing that's a misnomer that I've heard often with electric cars is there's an argument that presumes that people who live in apartments or in mixed use housing. Let's say they don't want electric cars because they're too expensive, and the reason they're living in an apartment is because that's what
they can afford. That's not true. There's many, many people in many cities across the country that choose to live in apartments, townhouses, or condos because that's what suits their lifestyle best. Not everyone wants to mow yard on a Saturday. Not everybody wants that. They just want come home. I have a place to go. It's all taken care of. And that's the thing that we need to solve next for how do you charge those things up? Also, there's just a mechanism of how long it takes to charge.
If you need ten gas pumps, you probably need thirty charging stations based on the duration of time it takes to quote fill up your tank with an electric car.
Yeah, it makes sense.
I mean, if you drive several hundred miles, for example, you road trip it, you're going to have to plan out how long and where you stop. It's going to take more time to get from point A to point B driving a electric you can do much more on a hybrid, which seems to also have fallen out of favors. And I mean my son has a hybrid, he's had one for years. He loves it. He's getting like ninety nine miles of the gallon and when it's not charged, the internal combustion engine kicks in. It seems like a
fair trade. Why did that fallow the favor.
Well, because I think a lot of it is marketing. I think a lot of it is headline grabbing. But I think twenty twenty six will be the year of the hybrid. I really do think that people have kind of come to terms with the taxpayer funded incentive for EV's is gone. The cars at current state are relatively expensive, about fifty eight thousand dollars on average. Hybrids are much more affordable, and you have brands like Towyta that are
moving to almost all hybrids. All of their cars either can be had as hybrids or in some cases like the Sienna and the Camera and the Crown, that's the only way it comes. So we're moving to a point when you look at Twitter like as a leader in this area, right, they're moving to a point where it's not a choice about getting a hybrid, it's just going to come that way, and the way they operate is normal.
For the most part. They've changed. Listen, anybody out there who's thought, oh, I was going to get a hybrid fifteen years ago, but they're terrible to drive. You've got to drive one today, they're much much better.
Yeah, technology improves, I mean in EVS. I drove a Tesla a few years ago and it was an incredible experience. You know, you're driving a computer, self driving computer for that matter. That technology is only going to get better. But I still think we I think hybrid bridge is a gap for a long time. I'm to Thomas Brian Moody over Kelly Bluebook and Auto Trader talking about Trump relaxing the cafe standards, which is great for manufacturers. It's
also great for consumers as well. We going to see prices level off, if not drop because of this.
We may.
But here's the thing about any kind of those predictions. The cycle where automakers planned and developed and research vehicles is much longer than a year or two. It's more like six to eight years. So the few economy standards that we have now, yeah, there's a few things they can do in the short term, but planning, long term planning, And this is probably a point where what President Trump has done might be a disadvantage because the back and forth can be hard on the automaker being able to
plan out their product portfolio long term. So it would be better to have a middle ground and just say, hey, we all agree, let's just keep it this way for the next twelve years. That would be better than up and down out in the short term.
I guess get more granular here, Brian, what's the actual production cost difference between meeting the old two percent standard versus the half a percent standard per vehicle? How much does that shave off a car any idea.
I don't know how much it shaves off a car in terms of production, but I know that it does reduce the cost of building cars in terms of compliance. For example, I spoke to this. This is some time ago. I spoke to an executive at the company Renault, which is a French company, and one of the reasons they stopped making one of their cars with a certain power train I think it was a diesel powered subcompact. They said, we can't make money on this car because thirty percent
of the cost is compliant. So any kind you hear an additional piece of equipment being added or standards being changed, there's a cost for compliance. There's a cost for testing in addition to the actual production of the car. Let alone, whether or not you decreased drivability or reliability.
Okay, that's what we'll set that aside. That's an interesting perspective from them too. But the other element here too is, Okay, we don't have the ev incentives anymore, so, you know, no more bellouts for EV and relaxed standards. What happens with market share relative to EV's and it's not hybrids but just electric vehicles over the next let's say, five to eight years, I.
Think they're going to level off at a certain there's there's going to be a point where it's going to feel comfortable as part of the market, maybe ten percent, let's say. However, I think that the elimination of the rebates, the taxpayer funded incentives for electric cars, I think that's going to be good for electric cars in the long run.
What about the sun costs that all automakers have gotten into with evs, and now that we're backing off of that, what happens with that?
That's hard. They're going to have to make some adjustments, and we already see companies like Volvo, for example, maybe walking it back a little bit. And rather than saying, hey, we're going to force an ideological solution onto the consumer, they have recently said we're going to let consumer demand dictate what we do. So full electric by a certain time okay, maybe, but they're not going to artificially set those times. They're going to let like you had said before,
let the market decide. That's always going to work out best for the company and for the consumer, because what do we pick. We all picked the thing that we like best that we can afford.
Okay, But then, logically speaking, three years from now, let's say a Democrat gets elected. Does this all get wiped out and we start over again? And how do you plan that far ahead, if at all, If you're an auto manufacturer or tell a car.
Dealer, that's a risk. I mean, that's definitely a risk. And some could argue that's a weak point in the system, that it's too prone to partisan back and forth. It would be better to have a middle ground that just said, hey, here's a good number for a fuel economy. Let's all agree. Let's have like a cross party committee that can just agree that this is a number and not politicize it. Because most cars today, like the average car, you can get a car that's gackling only not a hybrid that
can get forty miles per gallon on the highway. That was unheard of twenty years ago, right.
Because of well, how much of that is innovation and how much of that is government? In that Hey, as soon as gas prices go up, people start selling their evs and cars and get more fuel efficient things. We have another oil prices. Everyone wants an EV or something that's going to get more miles to the gown. The minute it starts to go back down, we go back, whipsaw back to the other things. And that's well, again, that's a consumer demand in the thickleness that we have there.
But I think it's.
Valid, right, But consumers don't want a twelve mile per gallon car and the generation to go or less. That was not an unusual thing. Today, people expect their car to get reasonable fuel economy, add hybrid to it, and like you said, I personally drove a plug in ibridge for three months. This won't happen to be a Volvo. I've got seventy five to eighty miles per gallon plugging it in every day, so I know that's possible. And I think what happens is the fuel economy ads convenience.
You now have cars, especially hybrids, with a driving range of five or six hundred miles. That is a lifestyle changer. When I hear people with electric cars or who are electric car proponents say well, on a long trip, it only takes an extra forty five minutes to charge up. That's true, it does only take an extra forty five minutes to charge up. But that sounds like someone who doesn't have toddlers.
Yeah, right, exactly, and we'll leave it at that again. Brian Moody Kelly Bluebook in the Auto Trader, he's the executive editor there. So I think this is a great thing. Quite honestly, is getting a little bit more common sense back in manufacturers will thus they'll be incentive for them to reduce an increased fuel efficiency in the future. It's not like simply it's going to go well twelve miles a gall and we won't stand for that anymore. It's
all about consumer demand, not what the government wants. And this one makes sense to me. Brian, all the best, thanks for jumping on this morning.
Thank you beautiful day.
Edd.
Speak of weatherwise, we're gonna push maybe mid fifties today. By this time next week we could see sixty the big six to oz incredible full forecast in the Way Traffic News and when a return, we'll keep it money with Andy Schaeffer from all Worth Financial on that and more. Just ahead seven hundred WLW time to talk.
About money, how to make it, how to keep it, and how to keep others off your stash.
This is all Worth Advice with Andy Shaeffer. Yeah's time we'll talk a well cash money. He is the cash money player. The Minister of Money is Andy Shaeffer. Joining us from all Worth Financial this morning on seven hundred WW Scott's Loan Show, Little Tuesday Morning check at a case and last week ended pretty damn well with the Dow Jones closing about fifty thousand dollars for the first
time ever. Although I'm told that is the old person's index, a younger people, younger investors don't give a damn about the Dow.
Andy Schaeffer, Well, I'm not exactly a young person, so I kind of care about it. And I mean it did it hit fifty thousand on Friday, which was great. You know, I celebrated Friday night because I remember when I started in this business out in Denver, Colorado, back in nineteen ninety nine, it was around nine or ten thousand. So you know, that tells you immediately that if you just stay the course and have some strategies in place to navigate volatility, you know you're gonna come out on
the other side looking pretty good. And so yeah, fifty thousand was a big deal to me. You know, usually when you talk about the markets and how the markets are performing, I think the S and P five hundreds is a little bit better gauge. You have five hundred of the largest US companies compared to the Dallas thirty. But it was still an exciting day and I certainly celebrated Friday night because I think that's a big deal.
With well, like a ten thousand dollars bottle of wine.
Yeah, well, you know, we had a good time.
I mean, I saw Street. I know what happens in those limos.
Amount of money.
Well, and I think you know, a lot of people have made a lot of money over the last three years. If you've been invested and didn't panic during the terrorists last April, made some adjustments to your portfolio, there's a lot of people that have made a lot of money over the last three years. And you know, hopefully everybody's continuing to participate. You know, our data right now is fairly stable, So hang in there. I think there are still brighter days to come.
Yeah, as Cube said, it was a good day. That's right at the same time we got fifty thousand the Dow. We also saw a little bit how AI can disrupt markets.
Oh yeah, so AI was interesting last week. You know that at one point there was a venture capitalist that said that software is eating the work, eating the world. And he said that back in twenty and eleven, and and what he meant by that was that, you know, when we have this new technology, it can make other
technology a little bit obsolete. And one of the things that he said was, you know, the emerging cloud computing capabilities and the ability to scale infrastructure with low upfront costs, you know, can have a big impact on our general production and the way that we do business. And so you know, if you fast forward to today, there's some fear that AI is kind of doing the same to software.
And some of that was evident last week when you saw Anthropodict showcase some of the new features in It's in its cloud agent that basically can handle a lot of the complex workflows that you would have with your basic CRMs. You know, we use Salesforce here at all Worth Financial, and I do love that CRM. But what you're starting to see is is that some of these AI capabilities you know, can solve a lot of these workflows a lot more efficiently than what we see with
General CRM. So there's some concern there.
Now.
I don't think that this is going to you know, change the way that we do business overnight or make the software obsolete, but there has to be a transition on the end user companies to attempt to kind of recreate some of those types of AI approaches, and so that's something that has a lot of investors concern generally speaking, and I think there could be over time some pressure on that industry. But you know, it's you have to be.
Seen, okay, Yeah, and it's it's all changing, its intermingling and those things across I guess it. So at some point, maybe AI companies become traded on the Dow and then the young people who hate the Dow will and lean into it because they're older and that's where the money is it's more stable. So that's right. It just trickles up.
It's just I mean, you look at it throughout history.
You know, when we were in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, you know, we had mostly an industrial type of economy, you know, general Electric used to be on the Dow. They're not on the Dow anymore. And so you know, when you when you look at the way that we transition from a society where it used to be manufacturing was the driver to how you know, our total output as far as GDP was more important than the services industry. Well, that is flipped on its head.
You know, now the services industry is way more important than our manufacturing industry, and you just have to be willing to adapt.
Okay, very good, that's the volatility. Where at the Dow, things are looking good. Everything's holding steady. Right now, Let's talk about that job market. The January jobs report laid because of the mini meltdown that Congress had last week, but there's plenty of labor market data to decipher.
Here.
What do we have?
Yeah, so the January jobs report was delayed last week. We're actually going to get those numbers tomorrow, so that will be interesting. Yeah, we're looking at kind of lukewarm report, maybe seventy thousand new jobs added. I think unemployment might
hold study at about four point four percent. But we did get some some data last week, the Jolts Report, which we like to call to take this job and Shove it report where if you have a job and you're actively seeking another job, and so you know, that gives us an indication of how much availability in jobs that are out there. And we saw that they fell sharply and December at about six point five million, and
that was its lowest level. So it's twenty twenty. The ratio of job openings to unemployed workers further fell below one, So that kind of signaled a hiring demand and wage pressure are easing a little bit. And so you know, when we flip that towards the FED, you know, the FED is thinking at this point, well, if we continue to see you know, more stress in the labor market than things starting to cool down, that might allow them to cut rates even further. So we'll see how that goes.
Now, we saw jobless numbers go up, though.
Yeah, jobs claims rose from two hundred and nine thousand to two hundred and thirty one. Some of that might be seasonal around the MLK holiday than a sudden deterioration, but I do think, you know, we did have this data that came out which is the Challenger Jobs cuts, and what that means is that a lot of these large companies have to announce cuts before they make them.
If you have certain meat, certain criteria as far as the size of your company and the revenue that you have, you actually have to give a heads up, you know, from a public standpoint, about what you're planning to do. And so we saw those ers to over one hundred and eight thousand in January, so that was about a
over one hundred percent increase year over year. Now a lot of that has to do with three of the major companies on the S and P five hundred, Ups which is about thirty thousand, Amazon about six, and now Chemical which is about four point five. So I think this is a little bit more concentrated as opposed to a more wide ranging issue when we move forward.
Really interesting too, Okay, So yeah, job as a go to, I guess the thing is, I'm looking at the Dow when people always connected wrongly. So, but what's going on Wall Street and mainstream at the jobs? Okay, so it's hard to find Why is it so hard to find a job?
Do you know?
What I do know?
And so what we're looking at now is there's still uncertainty out there manufacturing, even though we got a positive report from the Ism Services for the first time in a year. It's still wavering a little bit. And so a lot of times what you're looking at is from a corporate standpoint, when you go to the c suite and they're trying to make decisions as far as payroll is concerned, is that they're happy with the employers that they have. They're basically holding steady. We still don't have
full clarity on the impact of tariffs. We still don't have deals done with China, Canada and Mexico, and so instead of hiring more to begin to ramp up for more production, a lot of companies are holding steady. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that they're making cuts. But if you have a job right now, it's like that you'll keep a job. But if you don't, it's going to be harder. And I did see a report from economists not too long ago, particularly college graduates are having a
difficult time to find a job. And so you know, when I'm explaining what's going on from a corporate standpoint, this is more about white collar jobs and it is about blue collar jobs. They're hard to find. What companies are looking for, if they do hire, is usually somebody with experience that has specific, specific talents that are able to help them get you know, pass of certain goals that they have as opposed to training new people out of school. So it's really hard right now for college
graduates that are coming out now. Blue collar jobs are available, so they're to be had, and I'm a big support of the trades. You know, it's particularly for young people. It's an easy and fast way to begin a career that can be very successful in rewarding, and you can make good money doing it. So it really just kind of depends on the industry that you're looking at. When people say it's hard to find a job, it just kind of depends on the demographic.
I think schools are leading into it. Earlier the week I had on the present, Miami University talking about that new thirty one million dollar tech center that they have up there right advanced Manufacturing. They partner you know, they partner with Butler Tech. They partner with companies to basically create a workforce. And I think University of looking at this and going, hey, you know what, the old model, the way we taught for your degree, that's not working
a lot of areas. We got to lean into this the workforce development thing, and we got to get people interested in manufacturing.
Again.
It's all high tech. It's not like the factories of old. For sure, the money are really good, but it's good to see the educational system, in particular Miami lean into this thing.
Yeah.
I actually heard that that was a great interview too.
Well, thank you, I appreciate it.
You're pretty good at your job. But yeah, that was that was awesome. And one of the things that I took away from that was he was talking about, you know, you can start a career there, and you can get high school students to get involved there as well and merge with a lot of the college students. They can earn credits, and furthermore, it's not you know, you're there for two years or you're there for four years, and then you move on to your career and they never
see again. One of the things I found fascinating about your interview was that he's like, he said that, hey, you can keep coming back and continue to add credentials and continue to add skills and those type of things, and I thought that was neat. The other thing that stood out to me was when he was explaining about what work looks like in factories these days. And I have a client that was an executive at Schneider Electric down at Lexington, and I went down to visit his
factory and had a meeting with them. When you go in some of these factories these days, they are spotless. I mean they're run very well. They take the very specific precautions about cleanliness and efficiency. I mean you have to you know, mask up and put boots on, you know, like slippers and clean Oh my gosh, it's amazing. And
the efficiency and the technology that's involved with it. It's not like it was back in the thirties or forties, where you have Greece and the place and you know, and you're hammering and all that kind of we still battle that. Yeah, it's it's completely different. So, yeah, that interview was great. And then you know, it just goes to show you that people are not forgetting about the trades, particularly Miami University, and they put money into it, and
that facility up there in Butler County is amazing. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how that all plays out up there, because I think that's pretty exciting.
I mean, taking a little paper million you made a huge investment there, and I think it's gonna it's gonna pay dividends for the future of the workforce. So you know, there are jobs out there we just got to get. It's also the mind changes that we talked about too, is you know that the people, and largely it's influenced by mom and Dad and Graham and Grandpa, that it's a greasy, grimy job and you know you're gonna get hurt and your disability and it's like yeah, and then
you walk into a place to go, wow, this is manufacturing. Yeah, it looks like a lab where they would make microchips. That's right, you know, and it's it's as safe as as possibly can be. You know, the robots and the like are doing the that that kind of dangerous work, and you kind of supervise. But I'm not saying it's it's you know, just watching machines run all day, not
at all. It certainly involves a skill level, for sure, but you know to think that somehow it's it's degrading work and you walk into go wow, so are you like an engineer? It feels like it right, it's advanced podcast.
Well that's really the titles of a lot of those workers. You know, I was I was walking around freely, and they have some very specific skills to be able to run these machines. And these machines are you know, hundreds of tons, and it's just amazing to watch these workers and the delicate balance that they play of operating these machines and the efficiency and it's kind of a it's
a calmer environment. You know, a lot of these workers that have their headphones on, they're interacting with each other. You can make a good wage at these places. So you know, I would encourage young people to consider, you know, you work in the trades and you know, in blue collar industries because it's not like it was fifty years ago.
Yeah, exactly.
So anyway that's going to make and Hamilton, I'm sure that's going to be replicated anywhere. Yeah, it's going to be really really good. So there are jobs there, it's just again look finding the ones that that most people turn their nose up at it. Why he would because that's a really really good, playing to paying job. So I'll say today snapshot, we talked about the market and
the now hitting fifty thousand AI being a disruptor. Jobs where to find him and what's going on in the week between now when we next talk on Tuesday.
Yeah, we have some data that I have my on obviously, the jobs report tomorrow, you know, that's that's a big one.
You know.
We're also going to get the CPI index, which is the Consumer Price index that is a measure of inflation. That's going to be on Friday. Thursday. We're going to get existing home sales. I think that, you know, I can continue to watch home sales, building permits, things like that, and I know you're interested in that too, Scott. And I think that as rates continue to come down, you know, this might loosen up the housing market quite a bit.
You know, it's likely that we're going to see at least one cut this year, probably in June maybe two. But I think if we start to get mortgage rates into the fives, I think that will really shake things loose, to encourage people to start moving around a little bit. So as the year progresses, you know, I think that will happen. And we're going to get those numbers on Thursday, So I'm interested in that as well. Quick question, Yeah,
where's gold today? Gold this morning is somewhere around six thousand. Let's see, it's at five seventy seven, so it's down quite a bit from its ties. You know when we talked about three weeks ago and you gave me the business because I wasn't a big fan of it, and then all of a sudden it went down about a thousand points. And I think gold is still high. I mean,
there's a lot of value there. And the reason that it started to come back to reality was is, you know, there's some you know, more technical issues that are involved with it, with futures contracts and margin calls and things like that. But it's a steady hedge against inflation, and when you continue to see inflation come down, it becomes a less attractive area to put your money. You know,
gold is fine. I don't have anything against it, but as a long term investment, I don't think that's your best option.
Okay, so what about these gold medals. I'm an Olympian. I want to unload one of these gold medals? How much checking get?
Well? I think, you know, and what I can tell I think the golden medals are about you know, six grams or something like that, and so you know, if you get.
What's that an American.
Yeah, you know, somebody mentioned kilogram the other day. I don't know if that's eight pounds or one hundred at one point, but I think you know, with a you know, six gram of gold, a mouse about a thousand bucks. And so if you if you win a silver medal, you're probably looking at you know, for the price of the medal, you're probably looking at somewhere around eighty dollars. Bronze medal, you're probably looking at something about six dollars.
But that's not why these athletes are out there. It's they're not out there for you know, winning a medal and turning it in at a pawn shop. They're there for you know, the glory of their country and doing it for their families, and you know, for competition and achievement. And I'm a big fan of the Olympics, and I've been keeping up with it and I can expect I'll continue to watch throughout the weekend.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, all the semantics and that it's a thousand bucks. A thousand bucks. It's like a carping. Yeah, because I'm thinking of unloading my old medals and maybe I'll just hold on them.
I don't know. You know, I think if we gave you six months, you might be able to make the curling team.
Listen, I might multiple you know, if farting were an Olympic sports schaeffer, I would be. I'd be the Michael Phelps. Anyway, He's Andy Schaeffer at all Worth Financial every Tuesday morning week chopping up with your money. And it was a good week. Let's let's make it two in a row.
Andy, all the best.
That sounds good, Scott.
Hay care man, appreciate you so much. Let me get a news update in Willie is standing by afterwards here on the Big One. As we start to cross the fifty degree threshold today, where so we're close to it, some people are saying, like, hey, maybe forty eight forty nine catch marks is like fifty five. Hope she's right. Meant a little of the snow out. I just hope. I just hope your basement stays dry. That's all Sloany.
Home of the Reds Pitchers and catchers reporting yesterday there at Goodyear seven hundred WWT, Cincinnati,