0:03

It's Monday, February sixth twenty

0:06

twenty three, From Pitchfish Productions,

0:08

it's the gestation by Pesca. A

0:10

recent poll by the Washington Post showed that

0:12

Americans were unexcited about a

0:14

potential Donald Trump versus Joe

0:16

Biden rematched for the twenty

0:19

twenty four election. Well, sure I

0:21

thought there are two variables there.

0:23

One may be unexcited for Trump

0:25

v Biden in the same way that one is

0:28

unexcited for a warm, brownie,

0:30

alamud, liberally garnished

0:32

with dog feces. You can't

0:34

really blame the brownie or Biden

0:37

v Trump as a concept might be unappealing

0:39

in the way that a wicker basket full of

0:41

puppies and one lone hand grenade

0:44

would not be considered an appropriate housewarming

0:46

gift. But I was surprised that

0:48

who represented excitement and who

0:50

represented excrement in this particular

0:53

pairing. According to the post, thirty six

0:55

percent of those polled say they

0:57

would be enthusiastic sick or satisfied

0:59

but not enthusiastic if Biden

1:01

were reelected. While forty three said

1:04

the same about Trump. Whoa. Trump's

1:06

more popular. Mhmm. But he's

1:08

also more unpopular. Thirty

1:11

six percent say they'd be angry

1:13

if Trump wins while thirty percent

1:15

say that about a Biden victory. So

1:17

more anger towards Trump but pretty

1:19

similar levels towards Biden. I

1:22

guess that just justifies the headline.

1:24

Few Americans are excited about

1:27

a Biden Trump rematch. When you

1:29

think about it though, the two men do have their similarities

1:31

They each have been one term presidents. They'd

1:34

each be octogenarians by the end of

1:36

a second term. They each have two sons,

1:38

at least one of whom can't be trusted with important

1:40

matters. They each have special

1:42

prosecutors looking into the handling of

1:45

classified documents. Speaking

1:47

on the Hugh Hewitt Show last week,

1:49

one of the two men, a pined

1:51

on his particular special prosecutor.

1:53

I have a guy as a special prosecutor

1:57

who's got who's just hates

1:59

Trump. His wife hates Trump.

2:01

His sister-in-law, I believe,

2:04

Hey, Trump. He's a wise man

2:06

guy. He's a Comey guy.

2:09

He's a Obama guy.

2:11

And it's a disgrace when

2:13

he does the people. It disgrace that he

2:16

should be ashamed of

2:16

himself, Jack Smith.

2:18

So

2:18

I have no idea what his name was perhaps

2:20

he changed it. We can report

2:23

he did not change it. Well, I gotta

2:25

hand it to Trump. That was a wild

2:27

accusation. And it really

2:29

was unexpected. So it

2:31

was exciting. And that, of course, is

2:34

a terribly important quality in a president.

2:36

The segment of hundreds

2:38

of thousands of COVID deaths, the thrill

2:40

a minute roller coaster of nuclear

2:42

negotiations with North Korea. The

2:44

nonstop adrenaline gusher

2:47

of feuds, firings, and unfilled

2:49

ambassador posts. We That's

2:53

what we want. Right? On ABC's

2:56

this week, this week, Chris Christie put

2:58

his finger on it. In the end, Joe

3:00

Biden is not an exciting candidate. He's

3:02

old, He's boring. Boo.

3:05

Low unemployment. Steady

3:07

progress against the Russians. Boring.

3:11

Christy did go on to opine that

3:14

even the Delaware Dillard would

3:16

beat Donald Trump in an election. To

3:19

which Trump lashed out on truth

3:21

social posting, sloppy

3:23

Chris Christie, the failed former

3:25

governor of New Jersey, Christy

3:29

then tweeted back that he was just

3:31

the latest of Trump's tantrums.

3:33

And yet, for all the norepinephrine

3:36

Now dousing each man's nervous

3:38

system, I am not sensing what you

3:40

would call anything approaching the presidential at

3:43

play. SO MAYBE WE WERE WRONG

3:45

TO INTERPERATE FEW AMERICANS

3:48

ARE EXCITED ABOUT A TRUMP BIDEN

3:50

REMATCH AS BAD NEWS. MAYBE

3:52

IT'S MORE LIKE lots

3:54

of Americans would rather be

3:57

less excited. On the show today,

3:59

Dredigible diplomacy has Republican

4:01

recriminations ballooning.

4:03

But first, Derek Thomson's a staff

4:06

writer for the Atlantic where he writes the work

4:08

in progress newsletter and he's host

4:10

of the plain English podcast. Derek's

4:13

been writing for a while about where

4:15

the rubber of technology meets

4:17

the road of society, whether

4:19

it's our response to COVID, or

4:21

the possibilities of chat, GPT,

4:23

Derek Thompson up next.

4:33

Angie's list is now Angie, and we've

4:36

heard a lot of theories about why I

4:38

thought it was an eco moon for your worst

4:40

less paper. It was so you

4:42

could say it faster. No way.

4:44

It's to be more iconic. Must be

4:46

a tech thing. Those aren't

4:48

quite right. It's because now you can

4:50

compare upfront prices, book a service

4:52

instantly, and even get your project handled

4:54

from start to finish. Sounds easy.

4:56

It is. And makes us so much more than

4:58

just a

4:58

list. Get started at angie dot com.

5:01

That's ANGI, or download the

5:03

app today.

5:05

Dark Thompson is a writer for the Atlantic

5:08

and the host of the plane English podcast,

5:11

a great podcast so good. That for

5:13

instance, the host of someone who's been doing a

5:15

podcast for ten years listens to it and

5:17

says, oh, this is inspiring. Derek

5:20

writes a lot about technology, its

5:22

maintaining, the conception thereof,

5:25

and some of his recent articles in the

5:27

Atlantic took this head on. He wrote

5:29

why the age of American progress ended.

5:31

Invention alone can't change the world. What

5:33

matters is what happens next.

5:35

This was also titled the Eureka

5:38

theory of history is wrong. I

5:40

would like to talk to him now about the precipice

5:42

that we're standing upon and what

5:44

we think and how to think about

5:46

what I think are massive technological breakthroughs

5:49

that maybe didn't touch

5:52

all of our lives as much as they could

5:54

have or should

5:54

have. Derek, welcome.

5:55

It is

5:56

great to be here. Thank you. It's a long time listener

5:58

to realigner to here and you're right. Progress

6:00

right now is a lot more questions and answers, but

6:02

hopefully we can provide a few

6:04

of the latter for some listeners.

6:07

Yes. So what sparked the

6:09

questions? As I just

6:11

follow your writing on it and you've

6:13

been writing on this general theme for a long

6:15

time, I take it that you look

6:17

back at the pandemic and said, wow, what

6:20

a contradiction. The science

6:22

was amazing and operation war

6:24

speed was that and then we stupid

6:26

humans got in the

6:27

way. But was that actually the spark? I

6:29

don't know what the spark is. It's sometimes difficult

6:31

to figure out exactly why I get interested in certain

6:33

things, but think that to a certain extent

6:35

the broad concept of progress served as a

6:37

really nice vessel to pull together a lot of

6:39

things I was interested in. I am interested

6:41

in science and technology I'm not just

6:43

interested in breakthroughs that have

6:45

no impact on people's lives. I'm interested in

6:47

the way that life actually changes. And

6:49

so progressing like a really nice and capacious

6:52

word or vessel hold all of these things that

6:54

I was fascinated in. When it comes to the

6:56

pandemic itself, there's

6:58

no way to avoid the fundamental fact that

7:00

story of the pandemic for the first two years was in

7:02

many ways a story of our not

7:04

doing enough. You have Fauci in

7:07

March twenty twenty saying don't wear masks because

7:09

they're aren't enough to go around. And then after

7:11

the vaccines, they were we were told not to get

7:13

boosters because they weren't enough to go around. And

7:15

I remember my, you know, the the my my

7:17

head really hit the ceiling when was,

7:19

you know, lining up, queuing up in a

7:21

cold January for some free

7:23

COVID test, and we were queuing up because there

7:25

weren't enough people COVID test to go around.

7:27

And I was just thinking to myself, wow,

7:29

you know, these things aren't that difficult

7:31

to make. We know exactly how to make them.

7:34

The problem isn't in the invention. It's in

7:36

the deployment. It's in the implementation. And

7:38

I'd really become obsessed with

7:41

the difference between invention

7:43

and implementation in the story of

7:44

progress, and that has motivated a lot of

7:47

my work in the last few years. But

7:49

then when there were enough back scenes to

7:51

go around, they didn't go

7:53

around because would you say it

7:55

was the same failings

7:58

that suppress the number

8:00

of tests, as

8:02

suppress the uptake

8:05

of vaccines, people just choosing not to

8:07

take them. Would say when it comes to progress,

8:09

it's all

8:09

human. Right? It's people who come up with

8:11

a science and mRNA science. It's people

8:13

who come up with the vaccines themselves. It's

8:15

people who write the rules about how to

8:18

administer the vaccines that are manufactured, and

8:20

it's people who determine how the vaccines are

8:22

manufactured. So it's all human challenges

8:24

and all human solutions. But I am

8:26

absolutely interested in the fact

8:28

that very often, it is

8:31

so so difficult for people

8:33

to figure out how do we

8:35

make that which we invent. How do we make

8:37

enough of that which we invent? And this

8:39

obviously is a story that goes way beyond the

8:41

vaccines themselves. Like, an

8:43

American invented the elevator and

8:45

we don't build enough apartment buildings in the

8:47

US that use elevator technology. Americans

8:49

invented the solar cell and we don't build nearly

8:51

enough solar energy. Americans built

8:53

nuclear reactors, the first nuclear reactors. We

8:55

don't build enough of those today.

8:57

Americans built the first semiconductor

8:59

chip An eighty percent of advanced

9:01

semiconductor manufacturing happens in like

9:03

Taiwan and Eastern Asia rather than

9:05

the US. So a major theme to

9:07

me of American technology and

9:09

yes, of progress is that we

9:11

are like the r and d factory of the world

9:13

that doesn't understand how to build

9:15

enough of what we invent And of

9:17

course, this was a problem that we saw throughout

9:19

the pandemic. And if you look into things like

9:21

the housing crisis, it's very much there

9:23

as

9:23

well. I think that there are at least two

9:26

different kinds of human

9:28

failings that you're

9:30

describing or that you're at least hinting

9:32

at. And one is

9:34

everyone, when it comes to rapid tests,

9:36

almost everyone, there are some

9:38

extreme vaccine

9:40

desires who probably think that

9:42

it's bad. Almost everyone would say, why can't

9:44

someone somewhere along

9:46

the way have done something better

9:48

such that we get all of

9:50

these tests? But when it comes to say

9:52

vaccines, there are a whole bunch of people

9:54

who say, I don't want the vaccine. And

9:56

the the pushing

9:58

up against progress is

10:00

just trying to convince people

10:02

that this thing that is

10:04

progress really is. I think maybe

10:06

solar panels are a little like that. I don't

10:08

know if everyone. Maybe it's

10:10

changing, but there was a lot of

10:12

suspicion about them in

10:14

general and now maybe even

10:16

hardcore Climate

10:18

denialist will say, yeah, I'll take a solar

10:20

panel. So is is that how

10:23

important is that distinction in trying to

10:25

analyze this

10:25

problem? Yeah. You've landed on the distinction that is

10:28

absolutely core to the

10:30

way that I think about progress. One

10:32

answer to your question is that I think about

10:35

most stories of human progress

10:37

as being a kind of four legged stool. And

10:39

the four legs are science, technology,

10:42

politics, and culture. So this story maps

10:44

on beautifully to the COVID

10:46

vaccines. You needed the science of synthetic

10:48

mRNA from people like Caitlin Carreco in

10:50

order to understand how do we actually

10:52

get this stuff into our bodies. You

10:54

needed technology. Technology,

10:56

I would say, is how we turn science into

10:58

a product. Right? You needed Moderna. And

11:00

BioNTech to actually invent

11:02

vaccines themselves. Okay. Now you've got

11:04

science and tech. You still need policy. How

11:06

are we gonna build this stuff? We've never

11:09

built you know, billions

11:12

of vaccines in in a single year. We

11:14

needed operation warp speed and similar

11:16

policies around the world to build this stuff and then

11:18

to deploy it fairly and quickly to

11:20

people so that they could just go to local

11:23

CVS and just get a shot in your deltoid.

11:25

But then finally, and I think it's very

11:27

savvy of you to point this out. We need

11:29

culture. People need to demand

11:32

new things. In order for north

11:34

new things to actually be

11:36

implemented. Sometimes you see this

11:38

culture problem happen in

11:40

places like housing, where no one wants any

11:42

new houses in their neighborhood. We call this

11:44

nimbyism, not in my backyard. Sometimes

11:46

we have a kind of cultural nimbyism or

11:49

a cultural fear of the new, a

11:51

kind of neophobia, fear of the

11:53

new, I think in many ways, that's something that

11:55

happened with the COVID vaccines. People

11:57

said synthetic mRNA is

11:59

not real. It's not natural.

12:01

We shouldn't put this in our bodies.

12:03

It's clearly gonna make us infertile

12:05

or it'll, you know, kill us five years

12:07

from now or something. It'll mess with our

12:09

gene code or whatever some people were saying.

12:12

They came up with a bunch of, I think,

12:14

rationalizations. To

12:16

backfill their cultural

12:18

disinclination to what's something that

12:20

was new. And you

12:22

need all four of these legs

12:24

to stand up the stool. Because for

12:26

an individual who rejects the vaccine,

12:28

it's as if none of these previous things happened at

12:30

all. For that individual who rejects the vaccine,

12:32

It's as if the science never

12:33

happened, as if the invention of the vaccines never

12:36

happened, and as if operation Warp Speed

12:38

itself never happened. So if you don't solve

12:40

the culture problem. You do

12:42

not get progress. So let's

12:44

take cancer where it doesn't have

12:46

these debates. Is it good to save

12:49

is it good to cure cancer? Ninety

12:52

nine point something percent of people think it

12:54

is. And

12:56

we are making great strides

12:58

incurring cancer. And as I noted

13:00

on the show a couple weeks ago, we

13:02

are generally even though three

13:04

hundred thousand of us would be dead

13:06

who aren't based on the current trends. We're

13:08

not really recognizing that. I don't know

13:10

if we're doing enough to

13:13

I don't know if we're doing enough to

13:15

promote the cancer

13:17

cures that we have out there. Mostly, a lot of them

13:19

are our cultural cures like the cessation

13:22

of smoking and

13:24

uptake of the HPV vaccine,

13:26

but the reason I raise it is it's a little

13:28

different from the

13:31

COVID story. There isn't

13:33

this cultural opposition

13:35

to embracing it. But there's

13:37

still huge saw huge

13:39

downsides to what we should be calling

13:41

progress. What I'm putting my finger on is

13:43

a failure to recognize it. But

13:45

maybe because you've written about this

13:47

too, there are other there are some other

13:49

failures embedded within the

13:51

actual great success of our progress against

13:53

cancer? I think cancers are

13:55

really interesting. Way to

13:58

look at my four legates to inferior

14:00

progress. Because I

14:02

think that there are deficits in

14:05

every single quadrant. We

14:07

have science deficits. Number one,

14:09

because there are certain cancers like say pancreatic

14:11

cancer. We just don't know what to do

14:13

with it. When people are diagnosed

14:15

with late stage pancreatic cancer.

14:17

My mom died of pancreatic cancer. I

14:19

am intimately familiar with this. It's a

14:21

death sentence. When you are diagnosed with late stage

14:23

pancreatic, it's it's a death sentence.

14:26

Yeah. In ninety percent of cases. In

14:28

technology But that's the

14:29

worst. That is the worst. Of all the

14:31

cancers and maybe there's always going to be a

14:33

worse and some other cancers

14:35

which were once as deadly have now

14:37

fallen to twenty percent cure

14:39

rates. That's true. But when you look

14:41

at why those cancer mortality

14:43

rates are declining, typically, it's

14:45

not just because we have these incredible

14:47

breakthroughs in Shearing late stage cancers,

14:49

it's also because we have breakthroughs in technology

14:51

for screening. So increases in

14:53

screening for prostate cancers are overwhelmingly

14:56

responsible for the decline in prostate cancer mortality.

14:58

In the last twenty, thirty years. That's technology.

15:00

Right? New screening

15:02

technologies. Then you've got politics.

15:05

Right now, one of the problems with

15:07

cancer, prevention, medication,

15:09

taking a pill that keeps you from getting

15:11

lung cancer rather than treating it after

15:13

you're diagnosed, One of the problems

15:15

with cancer prevention medication is that

15:17

the FDA and the

15:19

NIH have certain rules for exactly

15:21

how you can test for this stuff. If

15:23

I take a pill right now to keep me from getting

15:25

lung cancer at seventy, alright, I'm thirty

15:28

six years old. I have to wait thirty

15:30

four years. To know whether or not

15:32

this pill is working. That doesn't work. You

15:34

need something called short term proxies. And we

15:36

have short term proxies for things like Heart

15:38

medication, we can sort of say does this lower your

15:40

blood pressure and we'll assume that's going to prevent

15:42

you from getting heart disease later. We have

15:44

these kind of short term proxies for heart

15:46

medication. We don't have them for

15:48

cancer prevention medication. That is a

15:50

political change we can make to the way

15:52

that the FDA approves certain clinical

15:54

trials. And then finally, there's culture.

15:56

You said earlier that one of the big reasons

15:58

why lung cancer increased throughout

16:00

the twentieth century and now has declined in

16:02

the last twenty, thirty years, is

16:05

because of the history of smoking. So

16:07

the hit smoking hit an all

16:09

time high in terms of cigarettes per person

16:11

in nineteen sixty three. Forty

16:13

five hundred cigarettes per

16:15

person in America. That is half a pack a

16:17

day. Now that's declined by about

16:19

seventy, eighty percent in the last,

16:21

I guess, sixty years. Exactly.

16:23

The reason that we've had a huge

16:25

decline in lung cancer mortality in

16:27

the last sixty years has mostly has

16:29

to do with the fact that culture change.

16:31

The culture of smoking

16:34

changed. So again, with cancer, you need all

16:36

four quadrants. Yes, we need better

16:38

science. Yes, we need better technology. My dog is

16:40

approving of my four quadrant. Your

16:42

age? Yes. We need better politics, but we

16:44

also need better culture

16:46

to to implement the understandings

16:48

we

16:48

have. Yes. So that's excellent journalism. It's

16:50

a good critique of where we stand

16:53

on an important issue. I hadn't

16:55

thought or known about a lot of that

16:57

yet. Big picture, I look at the cancer

16:59

question, I say, what this tells

17:01

me is that the technology the

17:03

science is mostly excellent. It kind of

17:05

blows me away. Of course, maybe that's because of

17:07

the four quadrants. The one I'm

17:09

definitely not on is scientist, a part

17:11

of the culture. I cover politics.

17:13

Etcetera. So it seems

17:15

to me like a lot of other things in our society

17:18

where the technology and I think

17:20

you're right about this in the

17:22

eureka theory, meaning that once the technology is invented,

17:24

are cures, the actual

17:26

lived experience of the cures start to

17:29

come. The Eureka is

17:31

there to a large extent.

17:33

It's everything else. And so I think about the

17:35

implications of this. Maybe we

17:37

need to think about convincing human

17:39

beings. Maybe the public health

17:42

aspect of the public health field

17:44

needs to think more about

17:47

breakthroughs when it comes to the

17:49

public part of things than when it comes

17:51

to the health part of things, or maybe that's

17:53

impossible. Maybe a

17:55

cancer cell is eminently more

17:57

fixable than the

17:59

complexity of culture and human

18:01

interaction or American

18:02

politics. The way that I think about it There's invention,

18:05

there's implementation, and it's

18:07

all human, so it's all

18:09

complicated. It's really, really,

18:11

really hard to cure late

18:13

stage cancer, to understand the science

18:15

of how to stop really rapid

18:17

abnormal cell growth. We have spent

18:19

hundreds of billions of dollars

18:21

to try to cure all sorts of late stage cancers, and

18:23

we know how hard it is to do so with

18:25

the technology that is on the shelves right

18:28

now. It's also really difficult to get people to

18:30

change their habits. Right? We know. We we

18:32

have we have lots of science of, you

18:34

know, what kind of diets are likely to

18:36

help certain people. Keep off

18:39

weight, avoid obesity,

18:42

and avoid the kind of

18:44

cancers that are made more likely

18:46

among people who are obese. But

18:48

we also know that diet and

18:50

exercise is really, really hard

18:52

to succeed with over time for many,

18:54

many people. There's all sorts of NIH interventions.

18:57

And maybe you've done a lot of episodes on this. I just had

18:59

did a few episodes on plain English about the

19:01

science of obesity in America. The NIH

19:03

has done all sorts of studies.

19:06

Where you get the best behavioral scientists in the world

19:08

and they bring on some brilliant

19:11

motivated people that are overweight and they say we're

19:13

gonna give these brilliant motivated

19:15

people the best diet and exercise

19:17

intervention we can possibly think of,

19:19

and it's still hard for them to keep

19:21

off weight after several years because the

19:23

body's metabolism changes in response to

19:25

diet and exercise and becomes more efficient,

19:28

and so they have to keep eating less and less

19:30

and less. And that's really hard

19:32

to do when you've got a messy complicated life.

19:34

So I think it's just complicated across

19:36

the board. I'm I'm not trying to sugarcoat any of

19:38

this and make it seem easy. I do think

19:40

there might be some examples of

19:43

low hanging fruit when it comes to the fight against

19:45

cancer. But I think it's worth

19:47

observing. We're being honest about the fact that all of this

19:49

is going to be hard, and that's why we need

19:51

really all hands on deck to try to solve a

19:53

problem like this.

19:55

To ask the next question, let's just establish this.

19:57

Would you say the mRNA

20:00

vaccine, the

20:02

technology that allowed

20:04

us to give

20:07

vaccines for COVID was

20:09

amazing. Blue Your Mind -- Yeah.

20:11

-- impressive. So I think

20:13

that there are a lot of inventions

20:15

that actually are in that bucket,

20:17

but they're treated there's

20:19

the New York skepticism that you could always

20:21

get commissioned to write an article somewhere.

20:23

This amazing technology is,

20:26

is it really progress or

20:28

But let's concentrate on the downsides, which

20:31

is important to concentrate on the

20:33

downsides. But there is a skepticism

20:35

about the amazing changes

20:37

in the world all around us

20:40

that I think is sometimes an

20:43

enemy of progress. I mean, sometimes you could

20:45

say, well, you want ethicist to consider what are

20:47

the what are the implications of,

20:49

say, having a supercomputer that you

20:51

carry in your pocket all the

20:53

time. But on the other hand, it's freaking amazing

20:56

and not recognizing that

20:58

and not utilizing or allowing

21:00

just you know, the people who can manipulate

21:02

that amazing technology to be

21:04

the ones who recognize it as amazing

21:07

versus the ones if the

21:09

countervailing force of the people who are skeptical of the

21:11

technology as it is,

21:13

that's not great societally. I

21:15

I talked about the cell phone and

21:17

how it's gonna change us. I'm thinking about

21:20

AI and what we're seeing with chat, GPT.

21:22

I think right now,

21:24

we would be best to say that this

21:26

is absolutely amazing and

21:28

not to downplay or

21:31

poo poo the

21:33

potential of it. But to really try

21:35

to get our heads and minds around it

21:37

as an amazing technology, rather

21:40

than just have the people who own the technology,

21:42

be the only ones to recognize that,

21:44

and then define how that technology is

21:46

gonna be

21:47

implemented. I think Jack BBT is utterly

21:49

fascinating, and I'm still trying to wrap

21:51

my mind around what exactly it is and what

21:53

exactly it's going to become. I mean, some

21:56

people say It's like a calculator for writing.

21:58

It's like this new incredible tool for writing we've

22:00

ever seen before. Other people say it

22:02

essentially allows us

22:04

to synthesize the work of, like, you know, a hundred

22:06

interns for certain people in white collar

22:08

businesses. I think its potential is

22:11

just so interesting and bizarre

22:13

to think through because it's kind of like seeing a

22:15

tadpole and a tadpole

22:17

like looking embryo and trying to predict is

22:19

this thing gonna be a frog or

22:21

a human or an simply do

22:23

not know. It it could become any of

22:25

them. It could become all of them. Right. I think the

22:27

chat, GBT. It's actually fascinating. I love

22:29

playing with it. I I actually

22:31

don't even think it's the most interesting AI, sort

22:33

of generative AI that I've seen in the last two

22:35

years. That would be this technology called

22:38

Alpha fold. Alpha fold is a

22:40

technology from deep mind, a

22:42

company based in London that's owned by

22:44

Alphabet, the parent company at Google.

22:46

And Alpha fold essentially allows

22:48

scientists to anticipate the

22:51

design and the shape of just about

22:54

any protein. So if we could

22:56

design synthetic proteins, it opens up

22:58

all of science. I mean, that's

23:00

maybe one of the most exciting things that I that

23:02

that that exists in in in the world to me and

23:04

I don't even know how it's going to change

23:05

science. I'm glad you're advocating for

23:08

best case scenarios and thinking about

23:10

these things more rigorously. But let's

23:13

talk about the real world. Is there

23:15

any society, any country

23:17

to model us on? Do we

23:19

have to be the leader in how to

23:21

best to best ten to our

23:23

stool or can we look to? I don't know,

23:25

Singapore or the Nordic nations or other

23:27

countries that might not be as technologically

23:29

inventive as us, but have some

23:31

of the other legs of the stool more,

23:33

you know, sharply honed. It's

23:35

a great question.

23:35

You know, in certain things, I could definitely say if you said,

23:37

you know, who does a great job of building urban

23:40

housing? I could say, look at Tokyo. If you say, like, you

23:42

know, who does a great job of having, like, a

23:44

Social Security might say, like, you know, look at

23:46

Norway. But when it comes to something like AI,

23:48

when it comes to something like dealing with the novel

23:50

technology, I think it's really, really

23:52

hard to know what to do just by

23:54

looking at other countries because we are

23:56

the bleeding edge. We are the bleeding edge.

23:58

China, of course, is doing its best to try

24:00

to claim that bleeding edge, but you

24:02

know, historically, I think someone who was

24:05

it, the economist, Vasquez, now put it this way,

24:07

which I thought was interesting. So the Soviet

24:09

Union is greater than venting stuff,

24:11

bad at implementing it. That's why they have all these smart scientists who,

24:13

you know, had this exodus at the Soviet Union

24:15

collapse. But if you look at the consumer

24:17

economy in Russia, they're actually, like, quite poor

24:19

for a big country. China is not

24:21

very good at inventing stuff, but they're really good

24:23

at implementing stuff. So not a lot of Nobel

24:25

Prize winners necessarily living in

24:28

China, when it comes to building that, which has already been invented, like

24:30

houses and dams, China is quite good at

24:32

that. I don't know that anyone

24:34

quite has fully mastered the

24:36

the perfect blending of invention and implementation. That

24:39

is that is a a stage

24:41

that the US can

24:44

can occupy if we if we want

24:46

to. But we need to solve this

24:48

problem for ourselves. We are writing

24:50

history as it's happening. And

24:52

This seems to be one question where we can't just look

24:54

at Singapore and

24:55

say, Ah, that's what we need to do. Howard Bauchner:

24:57

Derek Thompson is a staff writer

25:00

the Atlantic where he writes the work in progress

25:02

newsletter. He is also the host of the

25:04

plane English podcast, which is

25:06

a ringer podcast, which is nice,

25:09

populous. Smart. Getting out to

25:11

the people. Derek, thanks so much.

25:13

Thank you.

25:24

AND NOW THE

25:26

SPEEL LAST WEEK A BLOON ENTERED

25:28

U. S. Aerospace. THIS WAS

25:30

A SLOW FLOWING A FRONT TO NATIONAL

25:33

Prestige according to Republican critics

25:35

of president Biden. Because of

25:37

the untrained eye, it was a balloon,

25:39

but to those in the know, it was

25:41

a lighter than air insult

25:44

to presidential resolve. On ABC's

25:46

this week this week, Marco Rubio,

25:48

Republican senator from Florida, said

25:50

the Chinese knew it would be

25:52

spotted. That was the whole point. This is deliberate. They

25:54

did this on purpose. They understood that it

25:56

was gonna

25:56

be spotted. They knew the US government would have

25:58

to reveal what the people were gonna see it over

26:01

the sky. And the message they were trying to

26:03

send is what they believe

26:05

internally. And that is that the United States is a once

26:07

great superpower that's hollowed out, that's

26:09

in decline, But I meet the

26:11

press, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican

26:13

congressman Mike Turner of Ohio,

26:16

totally agreed with Rubio It

26:18

was a lighter than airy humiliation. But to

26:20

get to the obvious conclusion that

26:23

Biden is weak and the US is a laughing

26:25

stock, rep Turner used

26:28

Precisely the opposite reasoning is Rubio,

26:30

who

26:30

remember, argued that the Chinese were planning

26:32

on being caught, but Turner said this,

26:35

the president allowed this

26:37

to go across our most sensitive

26:39

sites and wasn't even gonna tell the American

26:40

public. If you hadn't broken this story,

26:43

the American public would not have even known. Look.

26:45

Look. We can all agree at least that the

26:47

president was weak. Weak.

26:50

We have the ability to do

26:51

this, and America can't do anything about it. If

26:53

they're not gonna be able to stop a balloon from

26:55

flying over US airspace, How's

26:57

America gonna come to your aid if we invade Taiwan

26:59

or take land from India or take islands

27:01

from the Philippines and Japan? The

27:04

overall point about Biden weakness is

27:06

a bit weakened by the fact

27:08

that we didn't do nothing about

27:10

it. We did something. A major or

27:12

something. We attacked it with a military

27:14

jet. Shot it down.

27:16

Sure. We didn't do it over land, so it wouldn't

27:18

hurt anyone. I guess, being not weak

27:20

means potentially hurting the citizen rate.

27:23

But, you know, what patriotic American wouldn't willingly take one

27:25

for the team? One, meaning

27:27

balloon remnants crashing through their roof.

27:30

IN FACT, I WOULD ACTUALLY CAUTION TAIWAN NOT

27:32

TO LOOK AT OUR AGGRESSIVE MILITARY

27:35

RESPONSE AGAINST THE BLUE AS

27:37

any indication that they'll get the

27:39

same response to, say, a

27:42

Chinese Mig, which because Chinese wouldn't

27:44

be a Mig, but a Shenyang, but you get

27:46

the point. It's a hundred eighty

27:48

degrees opposite what Rubio was

27:50

arguing. Rubio says our

27:52

lack of strong counterballoon operations

27:54

is a troubling indication to Taiwan and

27:56

other allies that we won't aggressively

27:59

fight off Chinese fighters. But

28:01

in truth, our bellicosity against

28:03

an unnamed balloon is a

28:05

misleading indication that

28:07

we might be similarly bellicose

28:10

against actual manned aircraft.

28:13

Another point that Rubio made was

28:15

this assertion. Listen, if we

28:17

were to fly anything over

28:17

China, they're gonna shoot it down. They're

28:20

gonna shoot it down and and they're gonna hold up and they're gonna

28:22

take pictures of it and they're gonna go

28:25

bonkers about

28:25

it. Earlier in the interview, in fact,

28:28

on Both of the interviews that he did on the Sunday shows

28:30

stayed at the union end this week.

28:33

Rubio made the point that

28:35

the Chinese were clever because they launched the balloon,

28:37

but also clever because the

28:39

balloon was destroyed and that allowed them

28:41

to act outraged. He

28:43

was putting forward the notion that by simply

28:46

conceiving of this gambit

28:48

of the surveillance balloon, they

28:50

had won this round. But then when

28:52

you hear the counter factual about the

28:54

US trying the same thing, well, of course, that

28:56

would be an embarrassing disaster for

28:59

the United States. So

29:01

if they do it, they're smart.

29:03

If we do it or if weak Joe

29:05

Biden does it, it's doomed.

29:08

Okay. Whatever Gambit's the Chinese attempt to

29:10

automatically humiliate us, if we attempt

29:12

the exact same thing, will be

29:14

automatically humiliated. I

29:16

consider Marco Rubio to be a more thoughtful

29:18

Republican, but I think the

29:20

realities of domestic politics make it

29:22

too tempting to a sale of

29:24

rival party's president no

29:26

matter his difficult decision.

29:28

When it comes to senators and the

29:30

ability to criticize a

29:32

president, to quote a they're going to go bonkers

29:34

about it or feral

29:36

becoming something of a balloon

29:39

animal And that's

29:45

it for today's show. The gist is

29:47

produced by Corey Warren, Joel Patterson is the

29:49

senior producer. I just want to

29:51

take a moment that I don't normally do

29:53

this to talk about something personal. Really

29:55

not personal to me. Personal

29:57

to a family that

29:59

my wife and I, our whole our whole family,

30:01

is hosting for the next

30:04

month. We have Svetlana

30:06

Sergai, their children, Dino, who's

30:09

twelve, Yasha, who's

30:11

a two year old with lots of energy they're staying

30:13

with us. They fled Ukraine

30:16

and hosting a family of

30:18

Ukrainian refugees is not just,

30:20

hey, here's a house, here we have

30:22

some extra room in a basement apartment,

30:26

it's working with them to get

30:28

services, to navigate bureaucracy,

30:30

to do everything from orient

30:32

them about mass transit,

30:34

to get them in touch with the school

30:37

system. And they do. They

30:39

used up half their rent and a very

30:41

unfortunate situation staying in a

30:43

really substandard apartment when they first got here,

30:45

they'll be with us for another month and a half.

30:47

So like I said, I don't normally do this.

30:50

But if you go to Pescamy,

30:53

PECA MI, on Twitter,

30:55

or my Facebook page, or and

30:57

I think I'll have this on the MyPasco

31:00

website. We have a go fund me for

31:02

this family, this lovely family that

31:04

we're hosting, that absolutely needs

31:06

help. And if you can, if you would

31:08

care to, if you could donate.

31:11

I thank you. And so does Michelle Peska,

31:13

COO of Peach Fish Productions.

31:15

The gist is presented in collaboration with

31:18

Lipson's advertised cast for advertising inquiries.

31:20

Go to advertise cast dot com slash the

31:22

gist. Boom. Pru. Gee poo. Doo

31:24

poo, and thanks for listening.