Artificial Intelligence Is Making Everything Weird

Hello and welcome to the Reason Roundtable. This is the podcast of free minds, free markets, and free takes. I'm your host, Peter Suderman, and today I am joined by my illustrious colleagues, Catherine Mangue-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Matt. welch everybody say hello howdy hi hello

Happy Monday to the robots. Sure seems like everything's going your way. All right, let's talk about AI, artificial intelligence. It's still in its early stages, but like the internet in the 1990s, our favorite decade, it is already... transforming the world. No one knows exactly how AI will develop or how all of this will play out. But there seems to be an emerging consensus that I think Jesse Singel got at in one of his recent newsletters that

Everything is about to get very, very weird. And in some ways it already has. So today I'll actually want to. Go around the panel and start by asking everyone to describe one way that they think AI either will get weird or that it already has. Matt Welch, you are our resident technology correspondent. I'll start with you.

I appreciate the point and laugh segment of this podcast. Actually, a beloved listener to this very podcast, videocast, and also listener to the Fifth Calm podcast, had an AI thing steal all of her. Soviet Israeli parents' life savings. This is how it worked. Pretty recently, they received a phone call, elderly parents, dementia, Alzheimer's. They received a phone call with her voice. And it was her voice.

saying that she got in a car accident, that she'd hit a pregnant woman, that she needed bail money. They kept them on the phone for four hours. They were very confused. It was definitely her. She is in distress and you just need to get those bags under the mattress. And and like bring them out to the guy in the taxi and he'll return the bags tomorrow just in case there's any worry about that. And it all went up in smoke. There are people who can crawl Catherine Mangu Ward's voice.

all of our voices actually since we are out there in the world quite a bit. And can repackage that in ways to make the old email Ethiopian scams, Nigerian scams, a lot more sophisticated and easy to fool the olds. So I would presume since. That's been part of the internet since its inception. And that is as recently as this morning.

I received an email that I assumed was a scam about my immigration status, and it wasn't. That was funny. But we are in a place where- Wait, Matt, do you have something to tell us about your immigration status? I do not. My private concerns will stay that way, Peter Suderman. No, all those things are going to seem a lot more realistic to people who don't know how to distinguish between.

what is real and what is not. And there's something about audio and video in particular. Once that is done well, it's going to make that scamming a lot weirder and a lot easier to do, I think. Yeah, you need a security word with your family to prevent that sort of thing. Catherine, what do you have for us? I'm looking forward to the ways in which my kids' education gets weirder. And I'm objectively pro-weird, as I think I've established over many, many years on this podcast.

podcast. This is just a totally bizarre moment to be teaching kids how to write. And frankly, our way of teaching kids how to write prior to this moment sucked. The five paragraph essay sucked and I am happy to dance on its grave. I don't know which direction things end up going. Probably both the direction of handwrite your essay in a blue book and also the direction of.

Screw it. Just use the AI to be as creative as you can by writing a very specific prompt. And both of those things seem better than the status quo. So writing's about to get weird. We are going to talk a whole lot more about AI and education later on this pod. But in the meantime, Nick, what sort of AI weirdness do you have for us in this essay? You will. I will provide a statement about how the great playwright and Englishman William Shakespeare once authored a play called Romeo and Juliet.

something like that i love i love the uh the college level five paragraph essay but that's separate no what i wanted to uh bring uh to people's attention was there's a new single a news england a news zealand uh member of parliament named laurie mcclure who felt a need to illustrate the dangers of uh ai and the ease in which you can make deep fakes

by claiming to create a nude picture of her shelf and then inflict that on the parliament of New Zealand. What's happening? She's on her Instagram feed. She's holding up this. pixelated picture of like I did this in just a few seconds a nude picture of myself which of course you know Nancy Mace our own you know excellent representative from South Carolina did something similar, but she was using old analog video. Actually, I guess it was digital, but not digitally enhanced or created.

So we're just going to see AI introduced into legislative proceedings in all sorts of weird and kind of distasteful ways. So I don't.

I suspect that anyone else on this podcast has ever played the video game Fortnite. I've played less than an hour in my life. I have. Oh, okay. Well, my kids were into it. Very popular video game. Very popular video game, in some ways a little bit more of a social network. And they sometimes incorporate characters from other media, other platforms, like, for example, Darth Vader. Now, Darth Vader, as we all know, is famously voiced by James Earl Jones.

who sadly died last year. But before he died, he signed over the rights to his voice, and they have made an AI version of his voice that you can talk to in Fortnite. And just about as soon as this thing went up, some kids playing the game got it. got James Earl Jones's AI Darth Vader voice to drop the F bomb. And so it's like freaking this and effing that. And it's just it's really weird. And it's, of course, exactly what you would predict, because it's like in some ways.

not what you would predict, but it's doing things that it's not supposed to do. It was also giving dating advice about how to deal with a breakup. quote, exploit their vulnerabilities, shatter their confidence, and crush their spirits. And you can just imagine James Earl Jones' Darth Vader voice giving somebody in a video game that advice and that.

That is the future that we are entering. That is the future that we are living in right now. 2025 is already pretty weird. All right. We have a lot more to talk about today. More on AI. It's an effect on jobs.

Maybe on like our souls and meaning in life. Plus, do Democrats have a problem with men? Do we? I don't know. Also, listener question about the big, beautiful bill and the deficit in Stephen Miller and what's going on with Trump's. tariffs and the courts. Quantum tariffs, folks, they're both on and off, legal and legal, who knows, all at the same time. Before we take a break, however, I do want to remind you of something that's coming up. Reason has a debate series.

It's called Reason Versus, and it pits reason versus other publications on big issues that divide us. This June, we will be taking on City Journal. A publication of the Manhattan Institute will be debating the proposition legalize all drugs. Reason is going to... for it. City Journal will be opposed. I will be moderating and you, the audience, will get to decide who wins, who has the best argument. This will be a debate with a winner. This debate will be on the evening of Tuesday, June 24th.

Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. That's Tuesday, June 24th in Washington, D.C. You can buy your tickets now at Reason.com slash events. That is Reason.com slash events. Alrighty, we will be back. right after this. Hey, Reason Roundtable listeners, Peter Suderman here. Do you know a student looking for a transformative opportunity that supports the foundations of a free society? Reliance College invites students age 16 to 24 to the 2025 Great Connection.

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Registration is just $800, including room and board for the full week with scholarships available. Don't miss out. Visit RelianceCollege.org slash reason to learn more and apply. That's RelianceCollege.org slash reason. to learn more and apply. Okay, let's continue our AI discussion in a segment I'm going to call AI of the Tiger. Yep. No. No, you were only allowed to host on the condition that you never brought up segment titles. I did not agree to that condition.

I know. That's what was great about it. No, no, no. This is not a contract that I've ever agreed to. All right. Let's talk about this, right? Do taxes next, Peter. I can understand that people have a lot of reactions to segment titles.

as well as the AI. And the reactions tend to fall into two categories. There's excitement. And there's also fear. And while we at Reason are generally in the excitement camp, I will admit I have some of both myself. A lot of excitement about the possibilities of AI, but maybe a little bit of worry, not so much fear, just a kind of deep uncertainty about the future.

seems less predictable than ever these days because it really sure feels like on every aspect of our current cultural and political debates, from the size of government to the role of men in workforce to technology-driven isolation, education. even religion and gender roles, AI is playing a part and maybe going to change all of it.

So today I want to probe our collective fear and excitement levels. I want to start with jobs because it seems like that's where many of the biggest concerns are. Recently, there was an essay in the New York Times by the chief opportunity officer at LinkedIn, which is the sort of. social network where you can post your resume. And this was the first sentence in that piece. And he went on to argue that AI seemed to be eliminating entry-level jobs.

for college-educated workers in particular, that that's what AI was good at automating. So Catherine, I want to start with you. Reason has typically argued in favor of new technologies, even when, sometimes especially when, they might eliminate some specific job category. This seems to be happening very fast to a very large swath of the job market. And part of the worry is that it's cutting out learning opportunities where.

for young college workers, sort of the type of jobs where they might figure out how to be a better worker. Does this give you any pause about your AI boosterism? Honestly, no. I really tried to like summon some kind of on the one hand, on the other hand for this segment. And I just don't feel it. Like, yes, of course.

The shape of jobs is going to change. And yes, of course, there will be disruption. Like the Luddites were not wrong that the technological innovation was bad for them personally in the short run, but they were profoundly and importantly wrong about whether it was bad for the world. And so I think. Yes. OK. This LinkedIn dude says the entry level jobs for college grads are changing. Cool. Those jobs weren't that great.

I guess, you know, I feel like we all had those jobs. And yes, you learn important things about how to be a person and how to be a worker in those jobs. People will still figure out how to learn those lessons doing slightly different functions in their day to day and hopefully being. not only entry level workers being more productive, but also everybody up the rungs being more productive. And I think that's so often overlooked is like.

How can we, if we lack the traditional ways of training junior people or educating students because AI has undermined them, how will we proceed? And the answer is, we'll figure it out. We're really, really good at figuring out how to take bright, educated people and turn them into productive workers. That is arguably one of the main things capitalism does well. And there are lots of people who would also say that is the worst thing capitalism does, turns us all into work.

workers, and we can fight about that. But I don't think AI changes that fundamental underlying thing. And what's more, I think everyone says, oh, no, it's happening so fast. That's always how people feel about radical technological change.

There is always something that feels like it is moving a little faster under our feet than we would be comfortable with. And the reason for that is because we are not actually comfortable with change. Everything moving feels fast to people whose brains were built in a kind of. let's all walk around the savannah and look for antelope situation. So that's just the way of being a human in the modern world. We're going to be okay.

But we'll figure it out isn't very comforting to most people. I mean, it's not an answer about what's going to happen. It is. It's extremely comfortable. I mean, to build on what Catherine's saying, the idea is whether or not overall employment. is going to increase or decrease um and ai is growing the economy it's already doing that it's going to do that more and you don't have you know pharaohs always need uh you know slaves right um so the idea

Again, comforting to people. You know what? It all works out in the Old Testament, I think. But the idea is if you take something like journalism, for instance, there's a lot of jobs that no longer exist. Some of them were editorial. Some of them were production related. When I started at Reason in 93, we were still pasting up pages. That era still existed, and that meant a whole series of jobs.

that had to do with people who were, among other things, literally cutting out and pasting up stuff onto boards, which then were brought to a printer who made plates out of them, photographic plates, et cetera. Most of those jobs disappeared. um actually i i can say with almost absolute certainty all of those jobs disappeared more people are involved in the producing of words and images that get put out somewhere and so the jobs including the entry

level jobs change. People aren't copy boys anymore. People don't wait at the desk of the editor-in-chief of some newspaper thing and grab a piece of paper that the guy gives you and then you run over to the printer. or something like that. But it doesn't mean that overall employment goes down and new entry-level jobs come up all of the time. So it's like you work... backward from the demand, and the demand is growing precisely because of technology and innovation. And it's just that...

You know, none of us or the three of us who are parents, we, if it hasn't already happened, we will not be able to tell our kids exactly how to get a job the way that we did. And even among the three of us, and we've got what? A millennial. Gen Z and a baby boomer on this, you know, just with on the parent side, like we each had different experiences finding our way to reason.

right you know and that's just that's going to continue and it will change and that should be comforting to people because the last place that you want to live is a village where you know your great-grandfather was the blacksmith and you're sitting there you know uh having a blast furnace in your face, catching metal filings while your dad is hammering a horseshoe and you're going to be doing the same thing.

Matt, since Nick brings up image creation and writing and that sort of thing, I want to ask you about one of the complaints that people have about AI, which is that it replaces fun or creative activities, right? It's like AI is going to make your move. for you and write your poems for you but what people really want is robots and AI that will do their dishes and mow their lawn and take sort of annoying boring tasks off of their hands like you like to touch grass and play guitar and listen

human-created music in spaces that are not filled with robots? Does this concern you at all? Human-created music, it's over. You know, it's been over. You know, Napster was released just a couple of days ago. Right. You know, back in 1999. And like since then, there's been no human music. It's really quite a wasteland out there. I think people that human music like it.

was fantastic because human created music is still with us as we know um a couple of points one is that um uh contrary to nick gillespie's blight assertion um My first job was at McDonald's and my 16-year-old daughter's first job was at McDonald's. And she lasted longer because she didn't quit. And your last job will probably be at McDonald's. With any luck at all.

Given current trajectories. She didn't quit after having them try to make her work during the World Series, as I did in 1984. But so I think that when we talk about all of this stuff, that there are all of these kind of overlapping.

sets of cultural concerns that inform and cloud the debate. There's a backdrop to it, you know, with just taking the little slice of... of teenagers nowadays well you know far fewer teenagers work than before this is not an ai driven trend because ai is pretty recent this is right there in the data over a long period of time and it's very troubling we spent

my household, a lot of energy, you know, trying to make sure that my kid got a job when she was 16. Because of that, you have to make, I think, some kind of extra effort, depending on where you are and who you are, to have. to work some of those grooves again. You know, we have famously, what, 7 million working age men are not working. That's strange. And again, this is long trajectories way predating AI.

I think people are rightly anxious about that and kind of puzzled from a policy standpoint, but also living with this sort of cultural upset potential backlash to all of that that is worth. Not just waving aside and dismissing, I think, especially during covid when we all had to go inside more than we should have been told to then. People had so many more of their experiences mediated through personal technology, and it really accelerated this moment of we're swapping out human interaction.

with the personal tech in your pocket. That can be good sometimes, but I think on a broad level, there are many ways to see that that's kind of bad. You need to actually spend some extra time figuring out how you're going to read more books because you read fewer than you used to.

how you're going to see more people go to community events, more touch, more grass, take some effort. You brought up music and sorry to ramble a little bit, but these are kind of disconnected thoughts. There is something to a hand clap in a Paul McCartney song. It sounds different. It hits your ear different. There is something to the strike of a tambourine.

You can use and people do use all this great technology to create other and, you know, even simulated hand claps in both country and hip hop and finger snaps constantly. But there is something that hits the ear that hits. the eye different about art that comes that is that is comes from a human um and there is uh i think something different about the

mediated through technology experience and human interaction. And I think people are right to say, hey, look, what's happening there? Is it good? Are there things that we should do to slow our roll on some of this? That doesn't necessarily lead you down. to some kind of technophobic hyper-regulatory response, like being scared that AI is going to eat your dog. But then I think it's worth talking about, you know, do you have more time?

to go to music in real life than you used to because of automation because really what we're talking about here is automation over time and it can take the form of ai but then there's all different forms and the fact is is people have more free time now and how they choose to use it might disappoint people because some people will be like, you know what, I like the computer-generated finger snaps and tambourine sounds. I like the others. And I think it's really important, Matt, your point.

is absolutely well taken that we should always be talking about this stuff nonstop as a society, et cetera. But we also really need to be careful that people's aesthetic judgments when it comes to how people should live.

we live now do not end up carrying the force of law because that is what happens when people say no there is no good value in an album you know that is created in somebody's bedroom compared to something that you know of juvenile delinquents learn how to play uh sloppy guitar in garages and that's the only good kind of music and we have to orient all of society towards that one thing or the other and that's where these things always end up so i think it's really important to push back

on the idea that the things that were are the things that we need to preserve endlessly. Matt, I think you in particular will appreciate a distinct memory that I have of being probably about 10 years old, sitting in a restaurant with my parents. And there was some sort of early 90s radio pop. I have no idea what the song was. You could probably guess based on the fact.

that it was the early 90s and you know every song from the, but something sort of Billboard-y, Top 40-ish. And I was listening to it and my dad was just like, listen to that. And I was like, listen to what? He was like, the drums, they're not real.

That's a drum machine. And then he went on this whole thing about how that makes it bad because there's no human touch. And it's like you don't get this sort of slightly off rhythm thing. Right. And like and I'm definitely somebody who appreciates music.

made with drum machines at this point and a lot of electronics. But like this was sort of a formative part of my life was being taught that that sort of thing robbed us of like the soul of music and that I really, I really, according to my dad, should be listening to more Beatles. So. my dad was right about a lot of things, at least about the Beatles, maybe not so much about drum machines. Catherine, let's talk a little bit more about education, specifically higher ed. There was a...

trend piece, a sort of a cover story in New York Magazine that went around recently about how all of the kids in college these days are using AI to cheat. They're using AI to answer their questions. write all of their essays for them and like it's just sort of depriving them of the real college experience of learning and of like the knowledge that they would be getting from college do you

feel like this is a valid criticism or is this just like, well, college never really was about learning anyway? I mean, you went to Yale, right? Like you learned something there. I'll give the expected answer and then also try to complicate it, I guess. So first of all. Teachers should get better at teaching. I don't know, man. Like if you can't figure out how to engage with your students in some way that isn't thwarted by the fact that they're going to go back to their desks and write.

a prompt into ChatGPT to do their reading response or write their essay, then you're bad at teaching. And like, I get that it's going to take a couple of years, a couple of few years to figure out how to transition. That's fine. People, you know, people can have a minute. But the. The idea that using AI to help you write is cheating, I think, is an idea with like the shortest time span on it. I think that is that concept is about to disappear entirely. And you say that.

As the editor of a magazine, right? So you're not necessarily opposed to, say, people submitting things that have been partially written by AI? I mean, I'm opposed to people submitting things that are dumb and boring and predictable and written in a hackneyed way, which so far a lot of chat GPT submissions are. But you know what? A lot of college essays already were that anyway.

So I think that there is absolutely no shame, especially in using AI as a research assistant. The deep research function on ChatGPT is better than any output of a research project that I've ever given to a... you know, intern or young person. And I say that with great love and affection for people in those jobs. And I was once in that job. We should be taking advantage of that. I will say I understand the kind of concern.

This actually gets back to Nick's paste up example, right? You can tell a whole story and it's a true story about how physically doing the paste up makes you appreciate. the way that articles are structured and really makes you appreciate the importance of being kind of disciplined and parsimonious with your word choices. And it really makes you appreciate.

just what it really means to write a 700 word piece versus a 1500 word piece versus a 4000 word piece. And also inverted pyramid style. Very inverted pyramid style. Very important. If you're going to physically get away from those pyramids.

Pharaohs and slaves all the way down. Inverted pyramid is very important if you're going to run out of space at the bottom of the page and need to end it in a graceful way. There are real skills that can be learned there, and that is one path to learning a good way of writing. The version that I had when I was starting out was...

older writers who would say, go get a job at the local paper and cover like the crime blotter, do the like cats and trees writing, because that's the way that you that's the way that you practice. And that was also terrible advice by the time I was receiving it because nobody can. that good experience to become a writer of opinion journalism for a magazine, for example. So we're always...

Finding ways to use the tools we have to teach the skills we want people to have and the vanishing of the need for paste up or. crime blotter writing or whatever it is, does not mean the vanishing of those skills. It just means having to figure out a new way to teach them.

Matt Welch, I want to ask you beyond college, like what about the grade school aspect of this? There's just increasing evidence that AI makes for a pretty good tutor and that it's especially good for disadvantaged kids who maybe don't have great access.

to public education do you see this as something that can disrupt the kind of public school quasi monopoly that we have maybe even sort of help deal with the teachers unions that i know you love so much I think that the biggest disruptor to the school monopoly is just the proliferation of school choice, which is now the law of the land in like 14 states when it just wasn't five years ago, which is one of the greatest shifts in American public policy in life.

that has happened in largely without a lot of people noticing it too much, which is kind of interesting. I mean, on the grade school level, it's hard to convert that. Kids, it's really difficult to get your stuff mediated on a screen. when you're five on six, seven, eight. I think it improves with time. And certainly once you start getting into specialized areas, that definitely improves. And that's good. I would also...

Like to encourage people to think about education is not just what we inflict on our little darlings before they go off into the world. Education is something that everybody does. And in that sense. sort of ai slash technology however you want to to say it um so great i was thinking about little 10 year old peter suderman in a really lousy chain restaurant in florida somewhere crabs in aquariums listening to a song that dad's telling him to check out the drum sound.

Well, you can put up Shazam now and he could say what that song is. That is an incredible thing for me because like you hear it and I'm like, my God, I think that's the monkeys. And you find out, no, it's like Paul Revere and the Raiders. But then you can go down a rabbit hole and it's. Terrific. People do this. I know a lot of people who are hobbyists, tinkering with old cars, for example. AI is a godsend.

right like you go uh you know it's not just the youtube tutorials of people who help you like understand how to do things and clear out culverts and all that kind of porn for Matt type stuff, but also like I've got this weird problem in my manifold. That's the thing, right? And AI is already so much better on that than like your Reddit forums.

and everything else like that's really great that's adult continuing education the merlin bird app is all that education too so i see it less as um ai is going to you know hurt a teacher's union

happy to hurt teachers unions any day of the week. That's nice. But I think that's more of a structural thing to do more than having kids in front of computer screens. But we should think about education as what we all do with ourselves all the time. It makes us more knowledgeable and it makes us more productive.

Nick, there's also a kind of geopolitical ramification here. I want to get into some of the policy aspects of this, right? Because there are a lot of people who worry that China is going to get ahead of America and developing AI, that we need to restrict our technology, that China is going to- They need to restrict their technology.

Well, we need to restrict our technology from going to them so that they cannot use our technology, their export controls. The Biden administration had the what is it called? The Biden's framework for artificial intelligence.

diffusion. I spent a little bit of time reading about that over the weekend. And the short version, it's a bunch of export controls. But every single sentence I read about this policy just made me want to gouge my eyes out with like a cocktail pick. And it just... like made me think not only should these people not be in charge of AI, maybe they shouldn't be in charge of anything at all, but like.

Is this something that concerns you that, say, China, which is an authoritarian country that doesn't share our values, might end up with AI that makes them much more powerful, gives them an edge over the United States? Sure. And what do we do about that? What we do is we proceed along our path and we live in freedom and we export freedom and we allow our inventors and the people who are in our borders or that we do business with to...

be able to innovate and do whatever they want i mean this is you know it's it is not a small reason that biden and the democrats and harris lost this election was the approach that they took to ai which was incredibly backward looking. It was very Luddite and it alienated Silicon Valley, which had been reliably pro-democratic party for a long time and moved a bunch of people into the Trump camp.

And for good reason, because Trump, even in his first term, he was better on AI than the Democrats or at least the Biden White House had been. They were trying to strangle everything. I mean, if you want to think about Joe Biden's men. I mean, in his policy work, whether or not it was signed by an auto pen or it was, you know, a repurposed Hall of President Disney animatronic that, you know, that was actually governing. He was terrible on AI. and tech in general.

You know, that's the way that you do it. If you're worried about China having better technology than the United States, it's probably a safer bet to allow American inventors and people who actually believe in things like life, liberty and the pursuit. happiness a freer hand to create something that will compete in the marketplace of good services and ideas real quick on that six years ago believe it or not i spent a week uh long junket in silicon valley

visiting a bunch of tech companies, leading ones, Google, Tesla, Palantir. I wish I was wearing a microphone for that one. Healthcare companies, et cetera. They've recorded everything, Matt. You can be sure of that. You just need to get the files. I was surprised six years ago before the pandemic that everyone was talking about AI and machine learning, which, of course, are very different from one another in ways I could totally.

tell you about. That was the message they all said. This is what we are using. We are re-retrofitting our entire operations to use this productivity machine. It's going to make our existing work so much better. You will see some of this coming downstream, but these industrial giants who are already the tech leaders.

richest companies in the world in this most innovative sector on the planet that everyone wishes that they could replicate. We're already using that then to make their operations better. productivity gains are going to be felt by a whole lot of people in ways that are not just like this consumer thing is replacing my whatever. If I may, too, I've been very sunny on AI. But there are ways in which.

I think it has negative impacts that go to the education argument, particularly. And one thing I would say about that is that, you know, the problem for lower income Americans is that they only have access to public education.

um and to the extent that ai will be a workaround even even with the proliferation of charter schools and school choice the other stuff that is good about ai and matt was talking about this for you know middle-aged mechanics and stuff like that for younger people who are interested in learning at their own pace

You can do that online. And I think AI is already helping to accelerate that tremendously. I remember very fondly, I went to a really crappy Catholic parochial school that was the shittiest school in. The town that I grew up in, all of the public schools were better. And for reasons I won't get into, my parents felt a strong need to send me there. One of the godsends was a thing called...

an SRA reading program where you could read books and take kind of automated tests, early versions of automated tests, and you could just read at your own pace. So if you didn't want to read that much, you didn't have to, but I was able to. read well above grade level and escape the tedium of everyday school. And that is something that AI is going to allow more and more people to do in math, in science, in reading, and all of that kind of stuff. And that's the positive.

transformation of it. The negative thing is that I think there is a broader generational shift away from interpersonal contact. I was talking about this over the weekend. I was at the Cascade PBS Festival of Ideas in Seattle. Washington. And a lot of us were talking about how older generations, boomers and Gen X, are more likely to interact with people as a first order. If you have a question, call somebody up or ask somebody.

younger generations, and I think this is accurate, are more likely to look things up online or to do their own research. And I think to the extent that that's a significant shift in kind of the way we behave, it's not necessarily better or worse, but it's very different. And it is probably good to preserve more of that interaction, that actual.

interaction and temper all of the capacity of this new technology to allow us to get information that we want, but not necessarily through human exchange. That's a balance worth striking. Okay, but on the other hand, Gen Z is the last generation to ever have the... fight with their dad at the kitchen table where dad tries to teach you math, but he learned math different. And so then everyone ends up shouting because now there's an AI built into Khan Academy that does that. Yeah.

So that's a social interaction that we should eliminate as soon as possible. The way I learned long division was totally useless to my kids.

OK, OK, let's move on very quickly to a much more pressing political question about interactions and young people. Do Democrats have a problem with men, especially young men? Recently, Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times report. And I just want to actually read this bit because it's so good.

This is a quote from The New York Times. Democratic donors and strategists have been gathering at luxury hotels to discuss how to win back working class voters, commissioning new projects that can read like anthropological studies of people from faraway places. The prospectus for one $20 million effort obtained by the Times aims to reverse the erosion of Democratic support amongst young men, especially online. It is codenamed Sam.

which sounds like an AI, rogue AI, short for speaking with American men, a strategic plan and promises investment to, quote, study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces. recommends buying advertisements in video games among other things now 20 million dollars is not a lot of money by government standards but that is more than the annual budgets of some think tanks i can think of catherine

Let's just go real quick around the panel, but I want to start with you. How much should Democrats? spend to understand men. You're on a podcast with three of them. How much do you spend now? Like, what does this make you think of? Right. What's your just sort of like, how does how do you react to hearing that?

I am sure that $20 million is not enough money for me to understand the three of you, much less an entire generation of men, though I would spend it to try because I value you so much. And I think Democrats are spending it to try because they. can't not. I think that what they found out is like use brain rot. Gen Z slang or Gen Alpha slang on YouTube video ads. And that's perfectly fine as far as it goes. I continue to hope, believe.

dream that the way that a political party could connect with voters would be by being normal. Just being normal, just saying normal stuff. That's normal. Recent politics have not borne that out in either direction. So maybe my theory is wrong. Yeah, that would kill the Republicans, wouldn't it? Both parties are flatly not pursuing this strategy, which is what makes me think there's a market gap for just being fucking normal. But what do I know?

But also it might not work for some people on this podcast. Nick, I want you to answer this question. Like, how do you sort of what do you think of when you hear that passage from The New York Times? But also like contextualize this. You've talked to folks like Richard Reeves who've been.

studying some of the ways sort of looking at some of the ways that young men are following behind especially in school like how does this how do these things interact here There is a major shift in the way that people conceptualize and talk about and enact masculinity, and that is a society-wide issue. that is worth understanding better uh it's not

Things aren't getting better or worse, but they are changing, and we don't understand that. When it comes to the Democrats, though, the main thing for them to understand is that across every demographic, they lost this last election. You know, so it isn't just men and it isn't just young men. And I find what's more pressing for the Democratic Party, and there's a version of this in the Republican Party, but it's younger Gen Z is trending.

from the Democrats at high rates both men and women and that this is much more ultimately about generational shifts and it's coming for the Republicans or it's come for the Republicans in different ways but there is a significant difference in the way that boomers and Gen Xers see the world and millennials and Gen Z. And it's especially as you get to younger millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

the parties that we have as embodied by a shuffling you know babbling uh you know uh person donald trump and then the even worse version of that which was joe biden simply do not speak to these people um to these large cohorts who will soon be taking over control of the American government and American culture. So good luck to the Democrats.

trying to figure out how to talk specifically to young men is not going to fix what's wrong with you. Matt Welch, close the circle for us here. Instead of spending $20 million on this, shouldn't Democrats just ask chat GBT? I would hope as someone who is less interested in political branding exercises by the second, like significantly less than I was at the beginning of this podcast.

that they might spend that money to figure out why it is that states in the South have improved reading scores so dramatically over the last five, 10 years. It's a fascinating story. It's public policy. By the way, it's by centralizing the reading curriculum. Fine, whatever. Figure it out. And enforcing it. People are not necessarily, people are rarely looking at actual results of governance.

And they love to talk about rebranding exercises. Meanwhile, people live in places that are governed badly. Govern better, things fall into place for you.

All right. One last question about public policy, but not about GPT or men. Well, about a man, Catherine. There was a Jared Isaacman as a pilot for SpaceX who was looked like he was going to be confirmed to be to run. NASA and be the NASA administrator, but it now seems that his nomination is being pulled because he gave some money to Democrats. Anything you want to say about Jared Isaacman before we go here?

He is really cool. And I'm very sorry to see his nomination be pulled for what seemed like bad reasons. He's not quite a pilot for SpaceX. He's a pilot and also a partner of SpaceX. And all of those things are. Really good and reasonable qualifications for the head of NASA. NASA's budget is being cut dramatically. I have mixed feelings about that. Mostly positive. NASA's not doing great stuff with that money anyway. But what seems to have scotched his nomination is.

In the ongoing internal warfare in the Trump administration, he's perceived as a Musk affiliate. And the anti-Musk forces told Donald Trump that in the past, Isaacman had given money to Democrats. Therefore, RIP, a already vetted, approved and extremely qualified nominee for the role. The new guy whose name is being floated seems like he is fine. He's also a bit of a China hawk.

So I guess we'll see how that goes. This is just a great example of what happens when you do important appointments by sort of patronage and favoritism. Live by the sword, die by the sword. But I like Isaacman. I'm a little happy he's going to be returned to the private sector where he can do more good anyway. All right. Well, we are going to do some more good right after this break.

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This week's listener question comes from Marty, who asks the few remaining libertarian voices in Congress are opposing the budget reconciliation bill on grounds that it balloons the deficit. The administration is pushing back on this in particular cartoon villain. And Stephen Miller is claiming that it does, despite the numerical evidence, no such thing.

There's a tweet of his making the rounds of Trump apologists. The tweet basically says it's long. I'm not going to read the whole thing. But tweet from Miller basically says that doge cuts would have to be done through a rescissions package, which is not part of an appropriations bill. And the big. beautiful bill. It's not an annual budget bill, does not fund the departments of government. In fact, it does a whole bunch of things that he thinks are good.

all while reducing the deficit. Marty asks, can you all parse his arguments and sift out the truth? Matt Welch, let's start with you. So the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget has looked at this and concluded that.

What it will do is cause the annual budget deficit to jump in really short order from $1.7 trillion to the annual budget deficit, larger in nominal terms than the government was. and adjust for inflation, of course, but still 25 years ago, it's going to go from 1.7 trillion to 2.3 trillion in like a year. That's 600.

Billion dollars is a lot when the cost of borrowing is going up. We are spending so much money on interest on the debt. And so you can say that you are cutting government, which no one who looks at this. at all who is a credible professional believes, like this is literally not a single person, not one, especially the odious authoritarian cartoon monster of Stephen Miller, who doesn't believe in habeas corpus.

and wants to restrict your freedom. So he's going to lie about it. One of the reasons why this happens is that the tax cuts are front loaded and the offsets that we're hearing about happen at the kind of end. So you are going to have this mismatch. This is going to increase government spending. It's going to increase the debt and deficit at a time that we are careening towards what looks like the biggest possibility of a debt spiral in our lifetime. So he is a liar. Don't worry about it.

Don't worry that he might be somehow telling the truth and seek out institutions that spend a lot of time doing serious work on this. Nick, what do you have to say about Stephen Miller and the deficit? The important thing in his. tweet and his statement, which he was trying to hammer home, is the idea that this does not increase the deficit. It does and it will. Everything that Stephen Hunter, Stephen Miller says is a lie.

Whenever he is talking, you know that the large point he's making, the exact opposite of it is true. I will point out to a recent piece by Damon Root, who covers the courts for us, talking about the... now already forgotten case of Abrego Garcia, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador when the Supreme Court told the Trump administration, you've got to help facilitate and effectuate his return.

Stephen Miller immediately went on a bazillion broadcasts and whatnot to say that the Supreme Court and he actually told Donald Trump this, the Supreme Court sided with you. Mein Fuhrer, this, you know, like you don't have to do anything. He is absolutely a liar. And it becomes fascinating. What do you do in a democracy when people who are very close to the president just.

always make things up and are almost always wrong. It forces media literacy on all of us. I will note that it's not just Stephen Miller saying this. It's also the. White House Press Secretary Catherine Leavitt, as well as House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is just insisting that there's no way that this bill will add to the deficit, despite every single reputable outside analyst saying absolutely it will.

Catherine, do you have anything to add here? Just that her name's Caroline. Leave it. And you should not tar my name with her since. Oh, I'm so sorry. Caroline. It is with a K though, right? It is with a K. It is a K. I accept alphabet responsibility, but not full name responsibility. All right.

So, yeah, the basic thing here that I just want to say is that what Republicans are doing, the best kind of argument they have is that this bill does cut spending. But if you cut revenues more than spending, the deficit is the gap between the two. And so the deficit goes.

up, even if you are cutting some spending or even if you were cutting a lot of spending or planned spending increases, the deficit is going to go up if revenues go down more than you cut spending. And that is at least part of what is happening here. Let's move on to our final.

topic last week, the U.S. Court of International Trade struck down President Trump's use of emergency executive powers to impose tariffs on nearly all imports. ruling blocked the tariffs Trump imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. This is what the Trump administration had cited as the legal basis for the Liberation Day tariffs imposed in April. But that injunction.

was temporarily paused by federal appeals court on thursday meanwhile a second federal court also ruled thursday that the tariffs were unlawful so that The tariffs here are in like some sort of I think it is Eric Boehm, who said they're in like a state of quantum superposition. They're on and they're off. They're legal and they're illegal. We don't really know what's happening here. Nick, what do you make of this back and forth between Trump?

in the courts uh i'm very happy to live in a country where the courts are independent of the uh executive branch and i think we all should be they've been acting as a really great check including many of uh the judges and magistrates that were appointed by trump himself showing that um

You know, the Constitution and the separation of powers and kind of setting the different branches of government against each other is a genius idea, and it holds up. You know, it held during Trump's first administration, and it seems to be holding now. So like on that meta level, I think it's great. One of the things that Trump has learned.

And, you know, I think his model here is more Franklin Roosevelt than anybody, you know, like Ronald Reagan or from an ostensibly conservative or limited government side, is that you just keep sledgehammering away. Because if you're the government, all you have to do is win one victory at a time and you have unlimited resources to kind of keep hammering away at this kind of stuff. So I worry about that. And, you know, we're in an era of horseshoe politics.

And the idea that Trump and FDR are kind of two sides of the same coin should be terrifying to all of us who believe in limited government. And we need to start figuring out how to motivate our... useless members of Congress, which is almost all of them. Indeed, Trump's trade policy is terrifying.

Wow. All right, Catherine, let's close out with you. Is there something that could be done about all this tariffs on, tariffs off, like courts ruling contradictory craziness, like say by Congress? Like could could the legislature? make an impact here somehow. As always, Congress could do its job and that would help. In the meantime, I am gauging how things are going exclusively by the mood of Eric Boehm, our trade reporter. When he comes into the office, I just kind of like check out his vibe.

to see how things are going. And a couple days back, right after the series of events that you described, Peter, Eric came in buoyant. joyful, bouncing. He reported running his fastest mile time ever on his run the following the previous day. And he suggested jokingly, but then we actually did purchase champagne like beverages from.

both Italy and France to celebrate free trade in all of its glories and have a little toast here at the office. I don't know. It seems like the news is bad and good and bad and good, and I don't know what's going on, but Eric was in a good mood last week, and I'll take it. Yeah, in fact, one of the companies that sued here that made the successful argument was a small wine importer. So if you are happy that the courts are ruling against Trump's tariffs, thank the wine industry.

Maybe have a glass of something special yourself. All right, let's move on to our cultural recommendations here. Matt Welch, what have you been watching, reading, and otherwise consuming this week? I watched a Netflix documentary from last year called ABBA.

Against the odds. Did you watch it against the odds or that's what it's called? No, it's really the odds were really heavily in my favor that I was going to watch a documentary about ABBA. Hell yes. It's great. It's not a great documentary, but my enjoyment of it was great. And I suspect that Nick Gillespie would also take great enjoyment from it. A couple of little bits that are especially delightful.

It just basically covers their run. They burst on the scene with an absolutely ridiculous winning of the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974, doing Waterloo in ridiculous costumes, and then had eight or nine straight number one records in England. and conquered most of the world, not quite America. And then they all got divorced and sad. And then they called it quits in 1982. And it's just kind of amazing.

Songs are so great. And the thing that I learned about it, he had to do some follow-up Wikipedia-ing on this. Unbelievable that the song SOS only went to number 15 at Gillespie. Pete Townsend, we learn in this. went to see ABBA at Wembley in 1979, as did Led Zeppelin. And Pete Townshend allegedly told one of the Benny Bjorns in ABBA, like, dude, that is the best pop song that's ever been written. And I think Pete Townshend is right.

That is such a great song. Just the splash of color in an otherwise absolutely dreary Europe, especially Sweden. People turned against ABBA from the beginning in Sweden. splash of color against gray and beige uh and you know they wanted them to be less commercial and to be commenting on Latin American right-wing politics. And I swear to God, they bring this up. And it's like, what are you talking about? This is ABBA.

So it's delightful on all of those levels and just what a fantastic band and songwriting outfit. I love it. Abba, against the odds, B minus, but God, what a pleasure of B minus. Nick Gillespie what do you have for us?

I watched Pee Wee Herman or the HBO documentary Pee Wee as himself, which is fascinating both in the way that it was made and in the content just very quickly about the former. We've talked a lot about how most documentaries that get produced these days are kind of terrible because the subject of the documentary tends to be the executive producer and have, you know.

total control over presentation and whatnot. This project started like that, but Pee Wee Herman or Paul Rubens died. And the director who brought it to fruition, Matt Wolf, who is a very interesting documentarian.

uh grapples with this uh it's it's just fantastic in that sense where it's kind of authorized but unauthorized at the same time it is an absolutely positive portrayal of paul rubens and what i will take away from it and i suspect all of us have some memory of peewee's playhouse uh the uh the kids show or the set it's not a kid show with a saturday morning show that was on for about five years in the 80s where um it is just still one of the

greatest weirdest most wonderful moments in entertainment and it's amazing that it was shown on a major network Rubens the character It talks about how when he was a young kid, growing up first in Oneonta, New York, and then in Sarasota, Florida, he was gay. He was an outsider. He was drawn to.

art by people like Andy Warhol and Warhol's director, Paul Morrissey. And he always saw himself as becoming a kind of alternative artist, an underground artist. And really what Pee Wee's Playhouse kind of represents, you know. in a fantastic way is how underground art became mainstream at a certain point, partly by destroying the mainstream, but also just by broadening our palette. And I think it's, it's useful to think about somebody like the.

Pee Wee Herman character and Pee Wee's Playhouse and the movies and whatnot as paving the way for other kind of underground artists who in the past would have been niche tastes, but things like the South Park guys, you know, even recording artists like Billy.

Eilish, you know, if we're talking about people who make albums in their bedrooms, you know, with their brother on an old computer or something like that. Lots of drum machines in Billie Eilish. I mean, I don't think any of the noises originate. with instruments, right? Or even a major movie director, somebody like Darren Aronofsky, who essentially does art house movies with mega budgets. Pee Wee Herman is an important figure in all of that.

We should pay homage to him. It doesn't skirt over the personal issues that he had and the legal issues he had. He was arrested for masturbating in a theater in his hometown of Sarasota. It was a porn.

It was a porn theater, so it's not as bad as it might first sound. And then he was also brought up on... possessing child pornography, charges that were dismissed, but they really hurt him because he was gay and America had not yet gone through, I think, the place or the doorways that we've been through where this does not matter. in a profound way. So it's...

Pee-wee as himself, it's a two-part documentary. It's probably about four hours total. It will remind all of us, I think, who lived through it, how drab the world was until Pee-wee came along and how much better a world we lived. in both for social freedom but especially for kind of a you know an aesthetic cornucopia where you can find things that you want at anywhere that you want them in the cultural arena and we're better off for them

Catherine, what do you have for us? You know, I thought I had talked about this on the podcast before, but I searched it and I don't see it. So I'm going to talk about it maybe again. An album that I just like re-listened to a lot, which is The Drop That Contained the Sea. It's a kind of crossover classical album, I guess, by Christopher Tin. A good example, I think, of our conversation earlier.

perfect hybrid of our like digital music world and the real life music world because I found this album because the YouTube algorithm gods were like, hey, we think you would like this weird. Huge, huge live show with two choirs and a full Philharmonic Orchestra performing a song that is a Ugandan rain making song. rewritten and composed by a dude who is mostly famous for writing the soundtrack of Civilization IV.

YouTube was right. This is a banger, if I may say. Walo Yeloni, Walo Yelmoni. I don't even know how to say it. It's in Lungo, which is a Ugandan language, apparently. It's a whole album of songs about water. And this is by far the best one, but they are all very good. Maybe it's about climate change or something. I'm not even bothered because you know what? It's in Uganda. So I can't hear the annoying lyrics.

And it's just like bringing together huge, huge swaths of the world and history and music making technology. It is it is, you know, sort of sounds like a film score. He studied with Hans Zimmer. Like the whole thing is coming together to just be the kind of music you should listen to. But only when you're psychologically ready for a 12-minute onslaught of Ugandan rainmaking composition. Are you suggesting there are times when I'm not ready for that?

Some of us need space for it. Some of us can do it while multitasking. Y'all make your own choices. But The Drop That Contained the Sea by Christopher Tyn. A glorious blessings of both our digital overlords and just humans making music all in a room together. So I recommend it.

All right. I watched the new Lilo and Stitch sort of live action remake. I say sort of because there's actually a whole lot of CG in this movie, including the opening sequence, which just looks like a. Pixar movie from like 2004 and then suddenly you're in Hawaii. It's very strange. So guys, something is going on at Disney. And I don't know what, because earlier this year, I also watched the Snow White live action remake. And that movie was.

It was awful just on every level, but specifically was weird and awful because it basically decided that the reason that the evil queen was evil wasn't because she's evil in like a fairy tale sense, but because she. had bad economic policies and specifically because she had non socialist economic policies. The evil queen was evil because she wasn't a socialist. It was explicit in the text of the of the script. It was just a.

totally bizarre choice for a children's movie. The new Lilo and Stitch is much better. I wouldn't say it's great. It's not exactly. Is it a bad age of consent laws? Not quite, but it is about a little girl and Medicaid policy. and family separation policy because the whole movie, the plot engine that drives this thing is, okay, so Lilo is like six years old and she's got a 19-year-old sister, right? So like an adult sister who is taking care of her, who is her legal guardian.

But they have a social worker and the social worker is like, your house is messy and things seem to be somewhat chaotic there. I will note it's a little messy of a house. But in fact, if you know anything about like truly chaotic and disordered homes, the house actually looks like basically. And things seem like basically put together. But the social worker, who is played by Tia Carrere, by the way, just like.

Very funny is like you have to do a couple of things. Clean up, stock the fridge and most important, sign up for health insurance. Well, the older sister has to deal with this little this little monster alien who's running around.

doesn't get around to signing up for health insurance. And then Lilo almost drowns in a surfing incident because this movie takes place in Hawaii and they go to the hospital and it's like, well, okay, she's okay. But this is the shadow of death moment at the end of the second act. inserted into this film was not in the original animated movie. And the social worker comes up and is like, well, you're going to have some hospital bills. And here's the thing.

The state can take care of them, but you're going to have to relinquish control of your sister, right? Basically give your sister over to the foster care system or something like it. And this is on the one hand presented as a hard. choice the movie doesn't isn't like well this is just easy and wonderful and on the other hand basically presented as like the good and responsible thing that you should give your child like your child your sister who is you like

to the foster care system because of Medicaid policy, presumably Medicaid policy. I don't know that Medicaid is explicitly mentioned, but it's like a state health insurance program, which would be Medicaid. And it's just a really, really bizarre choice for a plot.

engine for a for a kid's movie i'm also not sure it actually makes sense on any uh like policy dimension i've talked to several medicaid experts about this and no one could figure out how accepting medicaid would require you to at that point

give up guardianship of your little sister in a situation like this. Maybe there's something in the movie that I just looked like overlooked, misunderstood. It's possible. I didn't go back and watch it a second time and take even more close notes on this, but still. Just what is going on at Disney that they decided that this was a good way to remake like a wonderful. Actually, the original is really kind of great and charming kids movie. And it's just it's just odd.

I am at a loss to explain it. If someone can make sense of this for me, please.

please write us a letter. In fact, if you want to have your question answered on the show, I should have said this earlier, if you want to have your question answered on the show, please send your questions to podcasts at reason.com. Short, pithy, otherwise not very long questions. podcast at reason.com. All right. That is our show, folks. Before we go, remember, we do have a reason versus debate on drug legalization this month. You can buy tickets at reason.com slash events.

And we are also thrilled to announce that the Reason Roundtable will be coming at you live in New York City at the Village Underground on July 15th. That is Tuesday, July 15th. It is going to be a hot one and a fun one. Join us as we talk about the news and answer your questions. It's going to be a good show, folks. Nick, do you have anything else you want to add on the events front?

Yeah, we've got tomorrow night in New York City. I'm interviewing Susanna Cahalan, who's the author of a biography of Rosemary Woodruff Leary, who is the wife of Timothy Leary. It's called The Acid Queen. There are some tickets still available. And then on June 25th... We're going to have a Reason Speakeasy featuring Reason's own Elizabeth Nolan Brown talking about her Maha cover story. That is at the Blue Building on June 25th, and you can get information about it.

Those events, plus the ones you've mentioned at reason.com slash events. I hope there will be an AI element to Liz Nolan Brown's Maha Speakeasy, since apparently the Maha report contained a whole bunch of papers and citations. to things that just didn't happen because they used AI to make it. Speaking of all the ways that we are living in a very weird AI world.

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