This Past Weekend with Theo Von - E510 Investigative Journalist Nate Halverson

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00:00:30.000 Today's guest is an independent writer, journalist, and reporter.

00:00:34.400 He contributed to the documentary, The Grab,

00:00:37.120 which is all about the money and power controlling the food industry in America and beyond.

00:00:43.120 Outside of that, he writes for the Center for Investigative Reporting.

00:00:47.060 I'm really fascinated to spend time with today's guest, Nate Halverson.

00:00:51.920 Shine that light on me

00:00:55.480 I'll sit and tell you my stories

00:01:01.540 Shine on me

00:01:06.260 And I will find a song I'll be singing

00:01:11.660 I love this.

00:01:12.360 Nate Halverson, thanks for coming, man.

00:01:21.360 Dude, are you kidding me? Thank you so much for having me.

00:01:23.360 Yeah, I appreciate it, man.

00:01:24.400 I watched The Grab, which is the documentary that you guys are putting out.

00:01:29.400 And just so I'm clear, what was the goal of the documentary?

00:01:34.300 Because to me, it seemed like you're trying to show that a lot of land or arable land,

00:01:43.200 is that land that can grow crops?

00:01:44.540 Yeah.

00:01:44.680 A lot of land that can sustain crops is being bought up by different countries,

00:01:52.300 that it's kind of like a land grab for that land right now because they're not making more of it.

00:01:59.220 That's it, man.

00:02:00.200 I mean, it is in the 21st century, it's looking more like oil was the commodity of the 20th century,

00:02:06.940 gold, diamonds, these things.

00:02:08.260 But in the 21st century, it looks like the rich and powerful are increasingly turning to control

00:02:13.980 food and water as, you know, like the basic necessities.

00:02:18.000 And we're just seeing a ton, whether it's foreign governments, you know, wealthy Wall Street

00:02:22.820 corporations are all beginning to turn to it.

00:02:25.960 You know, I think now Bill Gates, his family, they're the largest farmers in the U.S., right?

00:02:31.920 Like they have, they're now the largest farmland owners in the U.S.

00:02:34.980 Right.

00:02:35.380 And that's interesting because he's obviously a guy with a lot of foresight, a guy who's

00:02:39.280 able to kind of envision the next step, obviously, from his past, from his history of being able

00:02:45.020 to like acquire companies that are doing that in different realms.

00:02:51.340 You kind of broke this story that this was happening years ago.

00:02:55.180 Yeah, because before this, I mean, before I started working on this, dude, I do nothing

00:02:58.480 about any of this, right?

00:02:59.740 Like I came into a cold turkey and I was asked to look at China's largest meat company buying

00:03:07.820 the world's largest pork company, which was based in Virginia.

00:03:12.100 And at the time, Congress was kind of freaking out, you know, like is China buying, you know,

00:03:16.940 our meat supply?

00:03:18.040 Um, and so I started, I was asked to look into it cause I had this background and dig

00:03:23.660 it into Hong Kong financials where this meat company was publicly traded and I went to China.

00:03:30.500 I talked to folks in the U S I talked to people in the U S intelligence and it turns out, yeah,

00:03:35.180 like the Chinese government was behind, uh, this purchase that's effectively one in four

00:03:40.340 American pigs.

00:03:41.180 And the reason is because the Chinese government kind of clued into something before other folks,

00:03:47.080 which is that in the 21st century, food is power, right?

00:03:50.700 Like you need to control food to control your political future.

00:03:54.620 And so the Chinese government began putting into these five year plans that they put out,

00:03:59.060 um, uh, an effort to go overseas and begin buying up food and water resources, um, so that

00:04:06.940 they could control it.

00:04:08.300 So it's a strategy that was happening.

00:04:09.860 Definitely.

00:04:10.460 Right.

00:04:10.800 Yep.

00:04:11.180 And so they want to get the pigs because that's a source of food.

00:04:14.580 Yeah.

00:04:15.200 It's a source of food.

00:04:15.960 And that's a source of, you know, for China political stability, right?

00:04:20.100 If you have food, then the people will eventually follow you.

00:04:22.320 It's like, yeah, you'll do anything to eat.

00:04:25.080 Yes, that's exactly it.

00:04:26.560 And, and, you know, like I've now traveled the world.

00:04:29.120 That was like the first one that the first food story that I looked at, you know, and

00:04:33.420 I thought like, okay, it's a story about food.

00:04:35.480 It's a story about farming, you know?

00:04:37.140 So I was surprised when I'll, you know, then I'm talking to us intelligence people.

00:04:40.540 Right.

00:04:40.920 And then I'm talking to like people in the defense department, right?

00:04:43.860 Like all of a sudden food is this like big national security.

00:04:46.820 And so as I began traveling the world, I mean, I began going to other countries where those

00:04:51.560 governments were using the food supply to control the population.

00:04:55.780 Right.

00:04:56.220 And I think that's what people are worried about going forward into the 21st century is

00:05:01.440 that by controlling the food, you can control the people.

00:05:04.940 Right.

00:05:05.100 They're just thinking, okay, how do we need to control the people next?

00:05:08.200 How do we still have control over people?

00:05:10.780 And they start to look at what can become a scarcity.

00:05:14.280 Yep.

00:05:14.820 Yeah.

00:05:14.940 And they believe it's food.

00:05:16.220 Yeah, exactly.

00:05:17.260 And so like the country I had gone to was, was Venezuela.

00:05:20.520 And Venezuela at the time was having all of these food riots, right?

00:05:23.240 Like people, people, you'd go and you'd work your nine to five job and then you'd come

00:05:27.960 home and there'd literally be a one mile line, long line to get into the grocery store.

00:05:32.900 And there's no way you're going to work like a 10 hour day and then stand in line all night.

00:05:37.380 Right.

00:05:37.640 And then go back.

00:05:38.280 And so, you know, I was talking to these guys that were working class that had jobs and they

00:05:42.980 were literally eating out of dumpsters.

00:05:44.680 I saw these dudes eating raw meat.

00:05:46.120 Right.

00:05:46.440 And he's like, I've got a job.

00:05:47.700 He's like, I just can't afford food.

00:05:50.680 And so then I went to this, you know, like secret location, this, this, this warehouse full

00:05:57.740 of food after watching people like starving people, people scraping by trying to survive

00:06:02.240 without food in Venezuela.

00:06:03.900 I went to this government warehouse full of food on a Sunday when it was supposed to

00:06:08.160 be closed and who was there.

00:06:10.460 It was a bunch of Venezuelan military and police.

00:06:14.880 They were open.

00:06:15.920 The government has opening it up.

00:06:17.380 And these guys, these big buff dudes were wheeling out cartfuls of food that like I hadn't

00:06:22.780 seen in like my one week there.

00:06:24.240 And they were giving the authority, like the authorities were giving the police and the military, the

00:06:29.400 guys that were knocking down the population food so that they would, of course, continue

00:06:34.000 to control the population.

00:06:35.420 Wow.

00:06:36.040 But how do you start to see that it becomes a bigger story though?

00:06:40.280 I mean, I just, it was crazy, man, because I just started seeing these dots, like these

00:06:45.280 stories that you would see around the world, you know, like, oh, this country is running

00:06:48.900 low on food and its people are migrating out.

00:06:51.060 Or like this, this country just bought up, you know, like half the farmland in like Madagascar,

00:06:56.680 right?

00:06:57.180 You know, like when I think Dai Wu out of South Korea bought up, like made like a secret deal

00:07:01.720 for like half the farmland in Madagascar.

00:07:03.760 And then the people rise up and overthrow in the countries in civil war.

00:07:06.420 And you, you begin seeing these stories and then you begin being like, oh my God, like

00:07:10.000 all of these seemingly separate stories are all connected as part of this like bigger trend.

00:07:16.240 Right.

00:07:17.040 And that's when I began tapping into people who were beginning to follow it, like in the

00:07:22.480 shadows, right?

00:07:23.400 Like the government, the intelligence community, others were beginning to sort of piece this

00:07:27.500 together.

00:07:28.560 But it, for my reporting anyway, it appears that like it really was the Chinese government

00:07:34.280 was probably the first to wake up to this, to really tap into it.

00:07:37.900 And there's a reason for that.

00:07:38.880 I mean, the leadership of China went through the great famine, right?

00:07:43.760 Like Xi Jinping has told stories about living through the great famine, which was the late

00:07:50.080 fifties when estimates are that like, man, 37 million people died as a result of starvation

00:07:57.240 in China, in China.

00:07:58.840 Wow.

00:07:59.340 Yeah.

00:07:59.640 And so when you go through a period where you're looking around and dude, I've heard, I mean,

00:08:04.920 like stories I don't even like to tell because they're so awful about what it's like, you

00:08:09.780 know, if you have 37 million people that actually died as a result of starvation, that means

00:08:13.660 you got like a hundred million people that are close, right?

00:08:16.380 And people are just like doing desperate, crazy things.

00:08:19.920 And so when the leadership of China can remember that, like they are more keyed in when that

00:08:25.160 trend starts, you know, poking up its head, um, when there are these, you know, when there

00:08:30.300 are these forecasts that things are going to get more and more dire in the future, they

00:08:33.740 moved quickly to begin to sort of control food and water supplies for their population.

00:08:39.600 Right.

00:08:39.760 So they're kind of like, obviously they're a little more sensitive to it, but, um, but

00:08:43.660 you noticed that they were kind of at the head of the trend.

00:08:45.660 Yeah.

00:08:46.280 Um, yeah, my father grew up in Nicaragua and he grew up there like in the 1910s.

00:08:51.720 Okay.

00:08:52.100 And so he would tell me stories about people starving and, um, kids in his village and

00:08:57.720 stuff, eating dirt and like their stomachs becoming distended.

00:09:00.340 And, um, literally making dirt, like people say mud pies and stuff that kids make like,

00:09:06.400 but literally making mud pies and eating them, you know, just to like be able to put something

00:09:11.340 like, feel like you're putting something in.

00:09:12.860 Yeah.

00:09:13.480 Where, where in Nicaragua was your dad?

00:09:15.460 He's from Bluefields, Nicaragua.

00:09:17.320 Oh, sure.

00:09:17.680 Out in the coast.

00:09:18.480 Yeah.

00:09:18.940 So I'm not, I know his, some of his family was down there, um, being missionaries and

00:09:24.180 that's how his parents met each other.

00:09:25.460 But, um, yeah, he would just tell me stories like that when I was a kid and it was just,

00:09:29.640 it was unbelievable.

00:09:31.220 I mean, I've even thought I've been on a fast for a couple of days and seen, um, and this

00:09:36.800 is a little off topic, I guess, but I seen a guy at Best Buy.

00:09:40.640 I had been on a fast for four days.

00:09:42.300 I seen a guy at Best Buy and I was like, I will, I could, I could eat that guy.

00:09:50.820 Yeah.

00:09:51.180 It wasn't, it was like, I'd never had a thought like that before.

00:09:53.700 I've been to Best Buy probably 70 times and I'd never thought, you know what?

00:09:57.140 I could eat one of these sales attendants or whatever, but it was just in my head.

00:10:01.460 It was like a little bit of that hunger was like, what are we going to do here?

00:10:04.040 If this guy looks the other way.

00:10:05.360 Yeah, dude.

00:10:05.960 Yeah.

00:10:06.480 I know, man.

00:10:07.200 It's weird.

00:10:07.800 Like, and, and that's what it comes down to.

00:10:09.720 And that's the thing that like, and then people are surprised.

00:10:11.920 They're like, why are all these Venezuelans coming to our border?

00:10:15.080 And you're like, because they're hungry.

00:10:17.420 They've been staring at other people thinking about eating them.

00:10:19.580 So they're like, maybe it's time to leave.

00:10:21.820 Yeah.

00:10:22.180 You don't even think that that's one of the reasons why people were coming up.

00:10:25.680 What are some of the other dots you start to connect?

00:10:27.480 Cause I see in the documentary, there's like land that's bought in Arizona.

00:10:31.420 There's a huge focus on land that's bought in Africa.

00:10:35.180 Like what are some of the other dots that you start to connect that really make this in

00:10:39.860 your mind, like bring it to a boil kind of besides just paranoid Chinese, like, and

00:10:45.040 with, with a forethought.

00:10:46.860 Yeah.

00:10:47.080 Right.

00:10:48.260 I mean, dude, you're right.

00:10:49.380 It was, it was all over the place.

00:10:50.900 It was like, you know, I began thinking, okay, so if China's focused on this, like what other,

00:10:56.560 you know, wealthy countries are focused on this.

00:11:00.080 And, and, you know, lo and behold, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia was one, right?

00:11:05.320 Because believe it or not, even though it's a desert country, it had these huge underground

00:11:11.460 water reserves, aquifers underneath the desert.

00:11:14.440 And that's why, like, you know, there are springs, you know, flowing to the surface of the desert

00:11:19.980 that are mentioned in the Bible, 2000, whatever years ago.

00:11:23.560 And starting in like the nineties, they began using their oil derricks to tap into that water

00:11:29.680 and actually use that water to grow wheat in the desert.

00:11:34.360 So this like wheat country by the nineties was the world's sixth largest exporter of wheat.

00:11:39.800 Wow.

00:11:40.140 Saudi Arabia.

00:11:40.820 Saudi Arabia.

00:11:41.680 But dude, that water doesn't last, right?

00:11:44.440 And, and so that it, they drained it.

00:11:46.640 And so like those springs that are mentioned from 2000 years ago, they wouldn't dry.

00:11:50.480 Gosh.

00:11:50.980 And so then it's like, where are they going to go?

00:11:53.880 And that was the question I had in my head.

00:11:56.000 Okay.

00:11:56.180 So like, if they drained their water with this program, like, where are they?

00:12:00.760 Yeah, man.

00:12:01.140 That's when I found them in like the Arizona desert.

00:12:04.200 I'm talking like saguaro cactuses, Wile E coyote, like desert, desert.

00:12:08.820 Yeah.

00:12:09.000 And they were doing the same thing, pumping up this ancient water that doesn't get replenished

00:12:13.560 from rain.

00:12:14.080 Cause it's there from like the last ice age or something.

00:12:16.480 And then they use that water right there to grow alfalfa.

00:12:20.540 And then they ship the alfalfa from Arizona, basically to Los Angeles, put it on a ship

00:12:25.220 and then ship that alfalfa, which is hay all the way back to Saudi Arabia, because that's

00:12:30.080 how you move water.

00:12:30.980 Like you couldn't fill enough oil tankers full of water to effectively move water.

00:12:35.860 What you do is if your water short, you use the water wherever it is to grow the crops.

00:12:40.920 And then you ship the crops.

00:12:42.140 Cause we use 70 to 80% of our, the water, fresh water around the world.

00:12:45.700 We use it for food.

00:12:47.320 That's what we need fresh water for.

00:12:48.780 Okay.

00:12:49.100 So if one entity shows up in another space and you, and grows a crop, really what they're

00:12:54.700 using is water.

00:12:55.560 That's the real resource because they could grow it at home.

00:12:58.380 If they had the water, a hundred percent, China doesn't have the water to grow enough

00:13:02.180 food to feed its population.

00:13:03.940 Wow.

00:13:04.420 And even with the pigs, does that come back to water too?

00:13:06.720 Or no, even more so because right.

00:13:09.160 Like you can, you can grow alfalfa in the Arizona desert, and then you can ship all that alfalfa

00:13:14.960 back to Saudi Arabia.

00:13:16.680 Or like when the case of pigs, you can grow all of the grain, right.

00:13:21.340 That the pigs are going to eat here in the U S and then you feed that grain to the pigs and

00:13:26.080 then you ship the pigs back.

00:13:27.520 And so like a pig is an even more concentrated form of water.

00:13:31.620 If they call it like virtual water is what an economist would call it.

00:13:34.800 Wow.

00:13:36.740 So wait, explain that part to me more time about the pig.

00:13:39.760 Yeah.

00:13:40.160 Yeah.

00:13:40.360 So like, yeah.

00:13:42.020 So you would grow the grain here.

00:13:43.660 Yep.

00:13:44.260 With the water here.

00:13:45.300 Yep.

00:13:45.880 And then you would feed the pig here.

00:13:48.320 Yep.

00:13:48.600 And then you, then you slaughter the pig here and then you send the meat back.

00:13:54.560 Right.

00:13:54.980 And so now you've used the water to grow the grain here and animals require a lot of livestock

00:14:00.160 feed.

00:14:00.700 So it takes even more grain than if like you were just eating like a, a meat free diet.

00:14:04.800 It takes just more water to eat a meat filled diet.

00:14:07.400 Right.

00:14:07.700 Okay.

00:14:07.940 And so then you, you grow the grains here, you feed it to the pig, the pig, the pig craps

00:14:13.800 all over the place.

00:14:14.580 You end up with these like giant manure lagoons, which are toxic.

00:14:17.600 Those are here and you slaughter the pig and then you ship the meat back.

00:14:20.980 So you get stuck with the shit and they get the meat.

00:14:24.120 Wow.

00:14:24.560 And so how does like, for the example in, in Arizona, how does that affect like Americans?

00:14:30.880 Like, how does that affect us?

00:14:32.560 Totally.

00:14:32.960 So like when I, when I broke that story about the Saudis in the Arizona desert in 2015, the

00:14:38.280 locals didn't know, right?

00:14:39.760 Like they didn't, they knew that their, their, their groundwater, the well that the, the water

00:14:44.300 that they relied on for their homes, like it was getting lower every single year.

00:14:48.260 Right.

00:14:49.080 What they didn't know was that some other country had run out of water and had come here to

00:14:52.340 grab that water.

00:14:53.020 Right.

00:14:53.300 And, uh, and so when I broke that story, people are like, yeah, it's like our water's been

00:14:58.160 going down and it's just been getting worse.

00:14:59.860 And so what ends up happening to the people here is like, I talked to people and they were

00:15:03.520 like one woman, she was a nurse from California, worked her whole life, wanted to retire somewhere

00:15:08.420 more affordable.

00:15:09.080 The desert's beautiful, man.

00:15:11.080 It's beautiful out there.

00:15:12.200 Right.

00:15:12.960 And so she and her husband get this like little like ranch, you know, small piece of property,

00:15:17.880 super modest, like double wide trailer.

00:15:20.080 They drill a well and now they got water and they got their lives.

00:15:22.520 They're going to retire there.

00:15:23.540 They're going to, you know, the grandkids can come visit.

00:15:25.300 Well, what happens is these big international farmings move in.

00:15:29.080 They keep drilling deeper and deeper and pumping more and more water up.

00:15:32.940 And pretty soon these families are going like, dude, I can't pay half a million dollars to

00:15:37.220 drill a well deep enough to find the water that's still there.

00:15:40.160 And so they're at risk of losing like everything, like all their life savings that they put into

00:15:45.720 their homes.

00:15:46.440 Right.

00:15:46.920 Because now their land has been sold out kind of from under them really, or their water's

00:15:51.340 been sold out from under them.

00:15:52.740 But isn't there an agency that would protect the homeowners there?

00:15:56.380 Isn't there some sort of?

00:15:57.440 No, I mean, the law is, is that if you, it's different in every region, but in this part

00:16:04.400 of Arizona, if you buy a piece of land, you can pump out as much water as you want.

00:16:08.880 Doesn't matter how it impacts your neighbor.

00:16:10.820 Wow.

00:16:11.300 Yeah.

00:16:11.500 So like if you're, you know, a multi-billion dollar corporation, you can go in there and

00:16:16.500 buy up land, put in the deepest well, and just suck out as much water as you want.

00:16:22.520 And, you know, the, the, the, the, the folks that live in modestly around you, their water

00:16:27.440 goes away and that's just tough.

00:16:29.660 You know, that's how the law is written.

00:16:31.440 Right.

00:16:32.040 Yeah.

00:16:32.340 It says right here, according to the United Nations World Water Development Report, 2024,

00:16:36.460 2.2 billion people will still lack access to safe drinking water and 3.5 billion will

00:16:41.920 not have access to safe sanitation by 2024.

00:16:45.380 But that's about, um, drinking water, I think.

00:16:49.420 Um, cause drinking water, is that the same as water for that you're talking about?

00:16:54.640 Well, like if you're pumping water to grow crops, you're eventually going to, you could

00:16:58.320 have the potential of taking away somebody's drinking water.

00:17:00.460 And that's what I see.

00:17:01.260 Right.

00:17:01.740 But like when it turns to like quantity, like what we're actually using water for, like,

00:17:06.020 you know, cause people will say this and be like, Oh, Nestle bought up this aquifer.

00:17:09.180 They're going to bottle it.

00:17:10.040 They're going to use it up.

00:17:10.840 And I'm like, okay.

00:17:11.400 But like put it in perspective, one 10th of 1%, one 10th of 1% of the fresh water we

00:17:17.460 use is for drinking 70 to 80% is for growing crops.

00:17:22.500 Wow.

00:17:23.080 Right.

00:17:23.460 And so when you're talking about somebody tapping an aquifer to bottle water, like one

00:17:28.420 10th of 1% is how much we as humans drink.

00:17:31.500 Right.

00:17:31.900 That's nothing.

00:17:32.420 It's nothing.

00:17:32.960 What we're pumping water out of aquifers for at like huge, huge rates, huge amounts

00:17:38.940 is to grow food.

00:17:40.880 Yeah.

00:17:41.180 And so these are, and then like, and if, if, you know, like if it were just drinking water

00:17:45.940 that was an issue, there are ways to move around enough water to get everyone drinking

00:17:51.540 water in theory.

00:17:52.280 Right.

00:17:53.540 But when you start talking about food, that's when you're talking about like what people

00:17:58.100 really need to move water and they really need water for is for food.

00:18:01.680 Yeah.

00:18:02.200 So drinking water, we can, we have enough water for that.

00:18:05.840 Pretty much, man.

00:18:06.680 I mean like the vast amount of water like you use as an individual is the food you put into

00:18:11.900 your body and not the water that you drink.

00:18:14.160 Got it.

00:18:14.580 Like vast.

00:18:15.640 Understood.

00:18:16.060 Yeah.

00:18:16.420 So, okay.

00:18:16.900 So you start to connect some of these dots.

00:18:18.620 You see the, um, the issue in Arizona from Saudi Arabia.

00:18:23.240 Are there other things like that happening around America?

00:18:25.620 Or is that just kind of a one-off?

00:18:27.120 No, no.

00:18:27.420 It's happening around America, right?

00:18:29.740 Like it's going through this pretty big transitionary period where like, I think like, and maybe,

00:18:34.260 you know, you and I are roughly the same age.

00:18:35.620 I think like a lot of people still kind of have this view of like farmers as like, you

00:18:40.740 know, Willie Nelson's farm aid, right?

00:18:43.320 Like small, medium-sized farmers, like, you know, both of them, you know, my, my family were all

00:18:48.360 farmers in, in Minnesota and Iowa.

00:18:50.220 My dad grew up barefoot on a farm, right?

00:18:51.860 Like we kind of envision it as like these, these smaller farms.

00:18:55.700 Um, but increasingly what they are, these really large farms, um, increasingly owned by like

00:19:01.100 wall street pension funds or foreign governments or foreign corporations, right?

00:19:06.360 Like that's been the trend line is that these smaller farmers, these medium, medium-sized

00:19:11.640 farmers are getting bought out by bigger and bigger conglomerates.

00:19:15.740 Um, and so like we're in this transitionary period in the U S is to like how food is getting

00:19:21.640 made.

00:19:22.520 I see.

00:19:23.240 And so not getting made by smaller farmers, but getting made in by larger corporations.

00:19:28.460 Yeah.

00:19:28.940 That could have other interests in that farm is just a, uh, passive or just a, um, placeholder.

00:19:34.820 That's it.

00:19:35.420 It's a, it's a, you know, it's another profit mechanism because, you know, like if you're

00:19:39.040 a country and you're like, we need to buy up food and water resources to make sure our

00:19:42.840 people get fed and that they don't overthrow us.

00:19:45.640 Right.

00:19:46.060 And if you're, if you're wall street and you're looking at that, you're like, oh, if there

00:19:49.000 is a crunch on food in the future, food prices are going to go up.

00:19:52.880 And if food prices go up, that's a profit margin.

00:19:55.660 Right.

00:19:56.060 And so like, I've read these, these reports put out by some of the biggest, you know, investment

00:20:00.800 banks and they're, you know, they're just saying, you know, water is the new oil,

00:20:04.440 food's the new gold of the 21st century.

00:20:07.160 Like this is where things are going to happen.

00:20:09.660 He says right here, as of December 31st, 2022, foreign entities owned about 43.4 million acres

00:20:15.240 of U S agricultural land and forest, which is about 3.4% of all agricultural land and

00:20:20.240 almost 2% of all U S farmland.

00:20:22.220 I wonder if it's grown since then.

00:20:24.180 Well, there's two things about that is, um, cause that doesn't seem like that much.

00:20:28.200 No, it's a, it's a trend line.

00:20:30.180 Um, but the other thing was, is I pulled all of that data and the, when, when there's an

00:20:36.220 old law in the books, it says, if you're a foreign company, you need to register.

00:20:40.880 If you're going to buy U S farmland, some States just ban it outright.

00:20:45.040 But, um, the, the, I looked and I was like, I know that this farm is owned by a foreign

00:20:51.320 corporation and it wasn't in the database.

00:20:53.280 Uh, yeah.

00:20:54.480 And so like the government wasn't really following up and making sure.

00:20:58.700 And so like, I have great, you know, those numbers to me come with a huge asterisk, which

00:21:03.700 is like, it requires them to report it.

00:21:06.400 Not everyone's reporting it.

00:21:07.400 And the government doesn't seem to be following up to make sure.

00:21:10.300 Right.

00:21:10.900 Understood.

00:21:11.460 Yeah.

00:21:11.600 And then the other thing is, is like, you have huge amounts of foreign wealth that are

00:21:16.420 then put into intermediaries like BlackRock or something, right?

00:21:20.120 Like these huge asset management.

00:21:22.300 And I mean, what does BlackRock got $9 trillion that they manage.

00:21:25.160 And so you'll have a sovereign wealth fund from another country that'll put money there.

00:21:28.640 And then, so then BlackRock or some subsidiary of BlackRock or a subsidiary of a subsidiary

00:21:33.280 of BlackRock might own the land, but the financial backing is a foreign government.

00:21:38.940 I see.

00:21:39.260 So there's just like a lot of loopholes and, um, like hidden LLCs, that sort of thing.

00:21:43.920 Yeah.

00:21:44.620 Yeah.

00:21:45.200 Well, how much of the land in America can be used?

00:21:49.640 And even on the planet, if you know, it can be used to grow crops.

00:21:54.180 Oh, that's interesting, man.

00:21:55.120 I don't know how much of the land, I mean, like what you see in the Arizona desert, it's

00:21:59.620 like, it's desert, but if you pump up the water, then you can grow alfalfa.

00:22:02.980 Right.

00:22:03.240 And so it kind of comes down to like, do you have the water there to do it?

00:22:07.000 Like what we know is what they'll say is that like, uh, some huge percent, 40 or 70%, I can't

00:22:12.920 remember off the top of my head, some huge percent of the world's, you know, remaining

00:22:16.360 available farmland is in Africa.

00:22:19.580 Right.

00:22:19.980 And so that's why there's this huge push now for corporations to go down and to try to grab

00:22:26.140 up land in Africa, because now the, you know, they'll say, oh, Africa is going to feed the

00:22:30.880 world.

00:22:32.940 Africa is going to feed the world, but I'm not saying no, but I'm just, I remember 20

00:22:37.440 years ago when we were having to do, they had the, wasn't there the annual music every

00:22:41.800 year to feed Africa?

00:22:43.000 Yeah.

00:22:43.360 Yeah.

00:22:43.640 Yeah.

00:22:44.040 And, uh, um, and, and, and, and, and again, man, the problem with that, that, that thing

00:22:50.440 is, is like, so then I went to Africa, I was like, okay, so where's all of this

00:22:54.160 vacant land and it wasn't vacant, man.

00:22:56.740 People had ancestrally been living on that land and they'd been farming for their needs,

00:23:01.000 you know, for their families.

00:23:02.640 Right.

00:23:03.180 And what had happened was, is these huge international corporations had come in and

00:23:07.040 just moved people off.

00:23:08.600 Wow.

00:23:09.100 And so I was visiting these places where people were literally dying, um, having had

00:23:13.800 their land taken from them by one of these international corporations that then could ship

00:23:18.820 the food to a wealthier country.

00:23:20.460 You know, whether that was Europe, China, or Saudi Arabia, um, you know, they were literally

00:23:26.960 had their land taken from that, everything taken from them.

00:23:29.820 Right.

00:23:30.500 And you saw it firsthand.

00:23:31.800 I saw it firsthand.

00:23:32.560 Yeah.

00:23:32.700 There's a really tough part in the documentary where there's a woman crying, really breaking

00:23:36.480 down, um, because of the fear of losing, uh, their land.

00:23:41.560 She was really having a tough time with it.

00:23:43.300 You know, that was pretty hard to watch.

00:23:45.860 Yeah.

00:23:46.260 I mean, that stuff's a downer and, and, and what's, you know, and, and when I, when I

00:23:51.260 showed the film to, to people there that are fighting back against this, what they didn't

00:23:55.300 see is that it's part of this like giant international trend.

00:23:59.500 Right.

00:23:59.840 Like it, it, it, it really is where you've got like, again, like intelligence communities,

00:24:05.460 governments, like all like kind of behind this big push in this big movement.

00:24:10.080 Right.

00:24:11.100 Um, and, and like you said, it's like when you're, when you don't have access to water

00:24:16.280 because somebody upstream, let's say has damned the river to grow food and now you don't even

00:24:20.540 have drinking water.

00:24:21.900 Um, oftentimes the thing that's going to get you as your body begins to just slowly get

00:24:26.260 sicker and sicker from not having food or good water, you just, you pick up a parasite,

00:24:30.580 you pick up a disease, your body just becomes way more vulnerable, you know?

00:24:34.020 Yeah.

00:24:34.220 Oh, you even, yeah, you pet a strong shrimp and you could be done, you know?

00:24:39.580 I mean, a lot of things could happen.

00:24:40.820 You eat one bad oyster or whatever, and it could be lights out.

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00:27:14.200 So in Africa, it's even more prevalent, you're saying?

00:27:19.140 Yeah.

00:27:19.780 And I think what I think, you know, it does seem to be I talked to a bunch of African investigative

00:27:25.180 journalists at this thing in D.C. and they saw the documentary and they came up after

00:27:29.540 and they're like, dude, I've been seeing this in my country.

00:27:31.940 I didn't realize it was part of this like giant international trend, right?

00:27:36.700 Like it's all sort of tied in.

00:27:38.580 And that's how that was like the same revelation that I had as I started digging in deeper and

00:27:43.460 deeper was just how interconnected these things are.

00:27:46.440 Right.

00:27:46.700 Because like, you know, when you say that, like, yeah, what do you mean when you say that?

00:27:50.820 I just mean, like, I think the dude was from Sierra Leone and he was talking about a big

00:27:54.420 rice farm that had come in and plowed down the forest and moved people off their land.

00:27:58.660 And then they were exporting the rice to wherever, you know, a wealthier country.

00:28:02.680 And he's like, you know, how do I contextualize that?

00:28:05.140 Like, it's obviously an injustice, right?

00:28:07.480 Like people have been there.

00:28:09.580 Their ancestral land's been taken from them.

00:28:11.340 But like, where does that fit in?

00:28:12.660 And then you see, oh, it fits in that like people in Arizona are basically dealing with

00:28:17.340 the same thing, maybe not to the same degree, but all of a sudden they're finding what like

00:28:20.580 was once theirs being taken by somebody else.

00:28:23.200 I see.

00:28:23.560 You know, and I think like, I think the, and so that's what I mean.

00:28:27.180 It's just like, there is this big little push.

00:28:29.140 And yes, I do think it's probably happening.

00:28:30.940 And these kinds of numbers are super hard to get.

00:28:33.000 And this is the only reason I hesitate.

00:28:34.880 Anecdotally, I would say, yeah, it appears to be happening most prevalently in Africa.

00:28:39.480 But like getting any good numbers on that, like nobody, the UN, you know, like they're

00:28:43.720 not going out and nobody's going out and like documenting every single instance.

00:28:48.000 So as a journalist, I always hesitate, right?

00:28:50.680 So like in the documentary, you've seen it.

00:28:52.080 And we, to like, just to give you a sense of what we go through, I took every single

00:28:57.660 fact that's mentioned in that documentary and I put it into a spreadsheet.

00:29:02.240 And then me and a woman who's now a fact checker at the New Yorker, we went through every single

00:29:06.200 fact that's in there.

00:29:07.420 And then we put three sources making sure it was true.

00:29:10.200 And then we hired an outside fact checker to fact check our fact check, you know, like,

00:29:15.420 like, and so like I always, and that's like, that's the value to me of good investigative

00:29:19.500 journalism is like, we're going to, we're going to put in that extra effort so that

00:29:23.620 like everything is documented.

00:29:25.360 And so, you know, I love this format because this is how, like, when I'm hanging out with

00:29:29.340 friends, this is how we talk.

00:29:30.460 Right.

00:29:30.760 And you're like sharing knowledge and like, as humans, we sit around the campfire.

00:29:34.740 This is how we've been telling stories.

00:29:36.040 And I love stories, you know?

00:29:37.900 Um, but I'm always like a little hesitant because I'm like, I don't got a fact checker

00:29:41.480 behind me to whisper in my ear.

00:29:42.560 They're like, Oh, Nate, you screwed that fact up.

00:29:43.960 And she doesn't have a fact checker behind her to be like, Oh no, you screwed up the

00:29:46.740 fact check.

00:29:47.180 I need to fact check, you know?

00:29:48.360 Right.

00:29:48.760 So we, yeah, you're just having a, yeah, you're just doing your best, you know, but you obviously

00:29:53.080 spent a lot of time investigating it.

00:29:54.600 Yeah.

00:29:54.840 Yeah.

00:29:55.020 And what, at what point do you start to go down a trail with investigative journalism where you're

00:30:00.240 like, I've already gone too far.

00:30:01.960 Or I have to fluff this thing up to at least make it hold the value of the weight that

00:30:08.780 I've already put into it with my time.

00:30:10.420 Is that a weird question?

00:30:11.840 Well, I think.

00:30:12.900 Or does that ever happen?

00:30:14.060 You know?

00:30:14.500 Well, you made me laugh when you said fluff.

00:30:17.900 Um, uh, like, no, ever get going on a story.

00:30:24.000 Yes.

00:30:24.160 And you abandon it.

00:30:25.180 Yes.

00:30:25.460 Yes.

00:30:25.780 You just, you're like, there's not enough here.

00:30:27.320 Even if you spent a long time.

00:30:28.660 Yeah.

00:30:28.800 What often happens, man, is, is you'll be like, huh, I'm, this is what happens to me.

00:30:33.160 I'm like, huh, I'm curious about that.

00:30:35.600 Right.

00:30:35.940 And then I'll start like digging into that.

00:30:37.640 And that thing that I started digging into, I'll be like, oh no, actually that makes sense.

00:30:41.540 And I want, you know, like, I don't, I don't think the world needs to know more about that.

00:30:44.480 I don't think it's going to make anyone's lives better.

00:30:46.080 I don't think it's going to change anyone's perception on how they interact with the world.

00:30:49.120 But as I was doing that, like I started seeing this other thing.

00:30:52.780 Right.

00:30:53.160 And then, so then I start looking into that other thing and I'm like, well, that is pretty interesting.

00:30:56.580 But in the process of looking into that, then I'm like, holy shit, look at that thing over there.

00:31:01.520 And then I'm moving in and these things can't, are, are, are sometimes, you know, they could be totally unrelated.

00:31:06.100 Oftentimes they're somewhat related.

00:31:07.940 And then it's that thing that I end up really going after.

00:31:11.020 Right.

00:31:11.320 And so I would never, I don't want to waste my time.

00:31:14.160 I don't want to waste your time.

00:31:15.160 And I don't want to do an injustice to a story by being like, well, I spent time on looking into a, and now I have to do something on a, right?

00:31:21.100 Because oftentimes it's just a slowly shifts into B.

00:31:24.040 And the next thing I know, I'm like, dude, I think people need to, would want to know about C, right?

00:31:28.680 Like, I think people should take a little break from their lives and lives are tough.

00:31:31.780 Lives are complicated.

00:31:32.540 We've all got so much going on.

00:31:33.940 I want to like, you know, I want to honor people's time, but I'm like, but I think C is probably worth their time.

00:31:38.320 Right.

00:31:38.800 Yeah.

00:31:39.280 What parts of this, as you went through this, did, did it start to like, um, be like, okay, this is something that makes me realize I have to keep going here.

00:31:49.120 Oh, I, you know, with this one, I think it was, it was kind of early on because again, man, you know, it's like when, when, you know, before this, I'd been doing organized crime and now I'm doing food and I was asked to do it.

00:32:00.260 And I'm like, okay, it's a food story.

00:32:02.380 You know, like, it's not going to blow my mind.

00:32:04.440 It's like Papa John almost.

00:32:05.920 Yeah, dude.

00:32:06.680 And I was just like, but then all of a sudden I'm like, wait a minute, this, you're an intelligence officer for the CIA or you were, and you're like telling me X, Y, and Z, like, that's pretty interesting.

00:32:18.100 Well, let me go talk to somebody else to try to corroborate that or get like another hot take on it, you know?

00:32:23.260 And it just kept building.

00:32:24.560 And I'm like, and then I started seeing the stakes, right?

00:32:29.160 Like, but the number of people that it was going to impact, and we're talking about like billions, you know, like we're talking about, you know,

00:32:36.560 when you have Wall Street saying this is going to be the biggest trajectory, when you have the World Economic Forum saying this is one of the top fives existential threats to our species, you start going like food and water, you know?

00:32:48.860 And you're like, this is probably worth my time and a lot of sleepless nights.

00:32:53.660 At some point you just realized.

00:32:55.240 I just think this is this story.

00:32:56.920 I, this is what, so can I tell you, like, when I, when we, so we made a film, right?

00:33:01.920 And I'm super lucky because I worked with this amazing director, Gabriella Copperthwaite, you know, and she knows how to tell an amazing story.

00:33:08.580 The grab, the documentary.

00:33:09.520 Yeah, it's just like, she made this thing like an international ripper, right?

00:33:13.340 And, and, but when we're going out and we're, we're pitching it to the studios, they're all like, well, what do you want to come of this?

00:33:18.300 And I wanted, I wanted, what I wanted to happen when people see this documentary is the same thing that happened to me.

00:33:24.280 When I started working on this stuff, it shifted my perception of how I see the world.

00:33:29.380 Like I fundamentally see the world differently now having worked on this story.

00:33:32.920 And so I wanted people to have access to that same information because I think when you begin to, when you, when you see this, and I don't know if this was your experience or not, but when you see it, you're like, oh shit, like food isn't just food.

00:33:44.280 Food has become like a weapon.

00:33:45.700 Food has become like a power tool for, for governments to control people in other countries.

00:33:51.100 Like it becomes way bigger.

00:33:52.920 Like how, yeah.

00:33:53.820 How would we see that start to show up in our daily lives?

00:33:57.880 Oh man, food prices.

00:33:59.520 Right.

00:33:59.940 Go to the grocery store.

00:34:01.560 Right.

00:34:02.200 I mean, do you remember during COVID when, when they were like, oh, everybody can stay at home except people that work in slaughterhouses.

00:34:10.180 We got to get everybody that works in slaughterhouses back.

00:34:12.620 Cause we're really worried that there's not going to be meat on the shelves.

00:34:15.880 Well, dude, as I recall during that time, pork exports to China increased.

00:34:24.060 So the executives of these big meat companies are like, oh, we got to get everybody back.

00:34:28.220 We're worried about getting meat.

00:34:29.420 And then they were shipping more meat to China.

00:34:31.760 Well, it might've even been their, um, their farms.

00:34:36.480 Well, yeah, they own, they own, you know, this company that's in China.

00:34:40.180 Um, that was, you know, this deal that was backed by the Chinese government.

00:34:42.740 Yeah.

00:34:43.140 They, they control one in four American pigs.

00:34:45.180 Wow.

00:34:45.760 Yeah.

00:34:46.020 Can you bring up that article that we're talking about?

00:34:47.980 If you can.

00:34:48.360 On April 28th, 2020, president Donald Trump issued an executive order invoking the defense

00:34:54.380 production act to keep meat packing plants open.

00:34:57.380 The executive order exempted plants from state and local orders to close non-essential businesses,

00:35:02.420 but did not solve plants problems with sick workers.

00:35:04.760 Wow.

00:35:05.620 It's interesting.

00:35:06.700 Yeah.

00:35:07.340 I mean, it's just interesting because if people are going to need to eat, people are going

00:35:12.980 to need meat.

00:35:14.420 You're going to need people to be able to continue to eat or they're going to freak out.

00:35:18.660 So even if they're stuck at home, as long as they can get a burger, then they're going

00:35:24.040 to, they're going to keep going until their next burger.

00:35:28.720 You're right though.

00:35:29.360 I mean, you're kind of like put your finger on it, man.

00:35:31.020 It's like, it is like food is that one thing, uh, that people want to keep going, right?

00:35:36.980 Like the Chinese government, everybody.

00:35:39.000 Um, and you know, and that's kind of, that's what takes you to the Arab spring, right?

00:35:43.080 Like when you saw all of these Middle Eastern governments getting toppled, right?

00:35:47.720 Like the Arab spring, it was like, what do you mean the Arab spring?

00:35:51.000 Arab spring was like a little over 10 years ago now.

00:35:54.640 And it was that period where you just saw civil wars breaking out across like North Africa

00:35:59.640 and the Middle East.

00:36:01.480 And those things never happen.

00:36:03.760 It's just like one single issue.

00:36:05.120 They're like super complex.

00:36:06.620 People don't like their leaders.

00:36:08.040 They don't feel like they have hope.

00:36:09.680 But increasingly the thing that the intelligence community is saying is driving those issues

00:36:16.260 is food prices.

00:36:18.240 You know, like you were talking about food prices here in the, where we were talking about

00:36:22.280 food prices here in the grocery store.

00:36:23.720 But like Americans, man, we only spend about 7% of, uh, our income on food, on groceries,

00:36:32.100 right?

00:36:32.700 Other countries, do they spend like 50%.

00:36:35.400 So whatever they're making, like half their paycheck is going to food.

00:36:39.740 And so when food prices go up for us, it's only going up on like 7% of what we're spending

00:36:45.360 on.

00:36:45.700 Right.

00:36:46.000 Right.

00:36:46.260 So it's not hitting us overall as much.

00:36:48.160 Exactly.

00:36:48.560 Why did they spend so much on food?

00:36:51.240 Because in, in, I mean, we're just a wealthy nation, you know, and so we have bigger income.

00:36:56.040 Oh, I see.

00:36:56.300 So we have larger income.

00:36:57.340 Yeah.

00:36:57.740 So obviously, yeah, if you have, if you're making a hundred dollars a day, then that's

00:37:01.420 just seven bucks a day where if you're making a hundred dollars, uh, um, if you're making

00:37:05.140 $10 a day, that's it.

00:37:06.900 Then $7 is 70% of your income.

00:37:09.160 Yep.

00:37:09.600 And a lot of people, you know, like we're buying, we're buying food.

00:37:13.360 That's like finished.

00:37:14.360 We're buying processed food.

00:37:15.600 We're buying things you can like open a package and eat.

00:37:17.720 But a lot of people in these other countries, they're just buying like commodities like

00:37:21.680 grain and they're baking their own bread.

00:37:23.360 And so when those prices, like, you know, basically double, um, all of a sudden those

00:37:29.020 people are seeing, you know, 50% of their income almost eat up their entire income and

00:37:33.220 they can't feed themselves.

00:37:34.440 They can't feed their kids.

00:37:35.760 Right.

00:37:36.060 And I think that's what it comes down to.

00:37:37.540 Right.

00:37:37.780 Like, so in the Arab spring, there was a ton of that.

00:37:39.700 It was a ton of that food prices shot up.

00:37:42.260 You know, they went to historic highs, um, and that sustained.

00:37:46.360 And people started taking to the streets, right?

00:37:49.720 A whole grievance of issues, but this was a big one.

00:37:52.580 Um, and you saw it move just across these countries.

00:37:56.020 Yeah.

00:37:56.500 And how was it alleviated?

00:37:57.660 How did they, like, what kind of catharsis did they get into?

00:38:01.360 Is catharsis the right word or no?

00:38:02.760 A lot of, a lot of them just took out their leaders.

00:38:05.560 Oh yeah.

00:38:06.900 Like Egypt overthrew their leader, didn't they?

00:38:08.980 Yeah, that's right.

00:38:09.780 Yeah.

00:38:10.320 And so you just saw, yeah.

00:38:12.760 So you saw like, man, you saw this.

00:38:16.420 And this is the thing about the 21st century is like, that was probably the first blip that

00:38:22.060 we saw like that.

00:38:23.500 And the forecast is for an increasing number of those.

00:38:26.860 And when countries fall apart because of civil wars, oftentimes their people then migrate

00:38:31.860 out.

00:38:32.660 Right.

00:38:33.120 And then they put pressure on the countries around them because now they've got to feed

00:38:36.480 more people because now you've got a failed nation next to you.

00:38:39.260 And it became almost like a domino effect.

00:38:41.880 Wow.

00:38:42.240 Yeah.

00:38:42.520 And are the forecasts saying that there is going to be like less water, that there's

00:38:48.320 going to be less food?

00:38:49.300 Like where are we getting those forecasts from?

00:38:51.780 Yeah.

00:38:52.120 So we could pull something up, but it's like 70% of the world's population or some number

00:38:59.320 is going to be living in some form of water scarcity by like 2050.

00:39:04.300 It's like a huge number, right?

00:39:06.780 Of people that are dealing with water shortages.

00:39:08.900 And again, like usually you can eke out enough water for your drinking water.

00:39:14.640 But can you, do you have enough water to grow the foods you need to eat or for somebody else

00:39:20.540 to grow the foods you need to eat?

00:39:22.900 And so, and then the other thing we're looking at, it's like some places are going to have,

00:39:27.780 you know, people are going to have droughts, of course, but then some places are going to

00:39:31.040 have flood floods and too much water can have the same impact as not enough water, right?

00:39:36.300 Like we just saw this in Pakistan where like their crop was wiped out by this, these massive

00:39:41.180 floods that just kill off the crops.

00:39:43.680 Yeah.

00:39:43.700 I used to work on a soybean and corn and cotton farm for a couple of years.

00:39:46.760 And it was amazing how like water was just, I mean, you would stand around and talk about

00:39:53.780 it.

00:39:54.000 You would go look at a radar.

00:39:55.900 You'd ask somebody if they'd seen any water.

00:39:57.980 Like it was just crazy.

00:39:59.600 It was unbelievable how that was the biggest thing.

00:40:02.940 Yeah.

00:40:03.160 That was the biggest thing.

00:40:04.720 It was like, is it going to rain?

00:40:05.860 Is it not?

00:40:06.500 How are you going to manage your crops if it doesn't?

00:40:08.620 And then how are you going to get subsidized by the government if it doesn't happen at all?

00:40:13.720 Yeah, that's right.

00:40:14.480 And what happens is in those, those countries that, that are dealing with all these economic

00:40:19.180 hardships, these dictatorial leaders weren't subsidizing the farmers.

00:40:23.220 Right.

00:40:24.040 And, and what's worse is they were given like their buddies access to whatever, better, better.

00:40:29.080 And so this is what you see in Syria.

00:40:30.200 That's what you're saying in Venezuela when you, you open the, and you see that the people

00:40:33.660 who are going to maintain the, the status quo of keeping starving people at bay are getting

00:40:41.080 full groceries.

00:40:42.240 Yes.

00:40:42.680 That's crazy how quick you will become the Gestapo in that moment, you know?

00:40:47.640 Yeah.

00:40:47.820 Yeah.

00:40:48.040 Food becomes the ultimate currency.

00:40:49.880 Yeah.

00:40:50.580 What else were you going to say?

00:40:51.460 I interrupted you.

00:40:52.080 Well, I was going to say something similar in Syria where, you know, a drought hits Syria

00:40:56.120 and, you know, all of these farmers are losing their crops.

00:41:00.160 People are having to move into the cities.

00:41:02.040 Food prices are going up.

00:41:04.080 And, you know, rather than being like, okay, the government being like, okay, we need to

00:41:07.340 make sure everyone's taken care of.

00:41:08.900 From what I've read, I wasn't in Syria at the time, but it was like Bashir was just giving

00:41:13.740 subsidies to like his buddies, you know?

00:41:15.860 And then you just, you're building up this, this, this, this, you're just building up a lot

00:41:20.480 of anger.

00:41:21.000 Yeah.

00:41:21.220 And you can't feed your kids.

00:41:22.740 It's like, and this is what the, when I, when I talk to people that are in the intelligence

00:41:26.580 community, this is the thing they say.

00:41:27.640 It's, it's not when this, and this sounds shitty, but this is what they say.

00:41:32.100 It's not when the lowest income, the people that are the poorest can't eat that you see

00:41:37.020 a country topple because unfortunately those people have already adjusted their mental mindset

00:41:41.920 to just being shit on.

00:41:44.900 Yeah.

00:41:45.080 It's when the middle class can eat people that are used to being comfortable.

00:41:50.420 Right.

00:41:50.600 People with Honda Accords.

00:41:52.040 Yes.

00:41:52.600 And then when they can't afford to eat and when they're, they're having to tell their

00:41:55.500 kids, sorry, we can't eat today.

00:41:57.080 We got to wait till tomorrow.

00:41:58.620 Right.

00:41:59.100 Those people take to the streets.

00:42:00.800 Fuck yeah.

00:42:01.300 Yeah.

00:42:01.640 And then they overthrow governments, you know, and sometimes the government turns out better

00:42:05.620 and sometimes the government turns out worse and people live in violence and bloodshed

00:42:10.600 for years, you know?

00:42:12.840 So it's, yeah.

00:42:14.200 And this is kind of the, the trend line that, that we're seeing.

00:42:17.640 And you believe it's an overall trend after all your research and all your digging, you

00:42:20.720 believe that it's an overall trend that's going to continue.

00:42:23.320 It's totally, it's, I think personally, I think it's solvable.

00:42:26.600 Okay.

00:42:26.980 Right.

00:42:27.260 I think it's solvable, but it is, it is the trend line that we are on it, that it, that

00:42:33.140 like, if we don't get into another lane of traffic, this is the direction that this road

00:42:37.680 is heading.

00:42:38.180 Got it.

00:42:38.440 And this is straight up from like the, the, the, the U S government had, you know, I keep

00:42:43.900 saying intelligence community, right?

00:42:45.540 But there is the ODNI, the office of director of national intelligence that oversees the

00:42:50.700 CIA, the DIA, the NIC, all of these intelligence agencies.

00:42:54.540 And the highest level work product they do is something called a national intelligence

00:42:58.640 estimate.

00:42:59.280 And they did a national intelligence estimate on, on water in the year 2012.

00:43:04.300 So basically they came out and the guy who was spearheading, and this is like the highest

00:43:09.800 level work product, the intelligence, U S intelligence community does said business as

00:43:14.040 usual, you know, is going to be a catastrophe.

00:43:16.880 Right.

00:43:17.360 Like, and, and that was their prediction.

00:43:19.300 Basically.

00:43:19.800 Yeah.

00:43:20.220 And, and then they lay out solutions.

00:43:21.680 Like we can move things.

00:43:22.980 Right.

00:43:23.680 But it, you know, it has, that's going to have to happen on an international level.

00:43:27.960 And like, we look at our domestic politics and we're like, there's a mess.

00:43:31.780 And you look at international politics and you're like, there's a real mess.

00:43:35.200 So, you know, we all are going to keep doing what we can and we gotta, you know, keep living.

00:43:40.860 But like, but still, this is, I mean, having foresight is, is super important, especially

00:43:45.980 in a time where it's like, we don't even, there's so much artificial site that you don't

00:43:52.520 know what is foresight anymore.

00:43:53.860 You know, there's so much manipulation.

00:43:56.960 You just, it's so hard to know what's real on March 22nd, 2012, the national intelligence

00:44:01.260 council, which you're saying is a conglomerate of all of those.

00:44:05.000 The, the Nick exists underneath the ODNI.

00:44:08.120 Okay.

00:44:08.680 Yeah.

00:44:09.040 The ODNI, but yeah.

00:44:10.740 Released the unclassified report, the intelligence community assessment on global water security.

00:44:14.700 The report concludes that several regions of the world, such as North Africa, the Middle

00:44:17.900 East and South Asia will face major challenges, coping with water problems.

00:44:21.540 And that during the next 10 years, many countries important to the United States will experience

00:44:25.720 water problems that will increase the risk of instability and state failure, exacerbate

00:44:30.100 regional tensions and distract them from working with the United States on important policy

00:44:35.020 objectives.

00:44:36.280 Yeah.

00:44:36.740 I guess if the, how you barter and trade and deal with things is going to become a lot

00:44:40.660 different.

00:44:41.040 Yeah.

00:44:43.160 Wow.

00:44:44.440 You mentioned Africa and you guys go into a lot in the doc.

00:44:47.520 Um, why, why, why is Africa always get screwed?

00:44:52.780 I mean, since the beginning of time, whether it's the British coming in or a foreign entity

00:44:58.400 coming in and enslaving or claiming, whether it's them enslaving each other, whether it's

00:45:03.740 the tribe that just can't get along, whether it's a government that starts up and then, um,

00:45:09.780 sells out, like, why do they have so much trauma there?

00:45:14.560 Yeah, man, it's a good question.

00:45:15.920 And, you know, I always try to operate from like a, uh, a place of historically informed

00:45:20.780 journalism, right?

00:45:21.680 Because some of these trend lines are massive.

00:45:23.900 And, you know, what we saw was that Western Europe for some centuries just had this intense

00:45:29.700 power as they sort of globalized the world.

00:45:32.400 And Africa had a lot of resources that they wanted.

00:45:36.060 Um, and they went in there and they grabbed them and they created artificial boundaries and

00:45:40.400 borders around, um, you know, that, that, that suited Western Europe.

00:45:45.180 Like Africa got carved up into territories that suited Western Europe and their treaties

00:45:50.280 so that they wouldn't fight with each other in Europe.

00:45:52.640 Right.

00:45:53.140 And, and that wasn't always the, the boundaries that of like the, of the governments in the

00:45:58.040 nations that had lived there.

00:45:59.800 Um, and you know, that, and you go back even farther than when Western Europe was sort of

00:46:04.420 the, the, the, the international dominant player, right?

00:46:07.560 Like you look at Genghis Khan, right?

00:46:10.040 Genghis Khan born in the central steeps of Asia.

00:46:13.800 The dude became a slave, then went from being a slave to controlling like the entire Mongolian

00:46:20.360 empire.

00:46:20.900 Then they went into China and they took over China.

00:46:23.340 Then he pushes East and starts taking over Eastern Europe.

00:46:26.180 And then he drives down into Southern Asia, you know, the middle East dude controlled

00:46:30.840 the largest empire of any human in history.

00:46:34.180 Right.

00:46:34.660 And when he, this is the thing, and I'm getting a lot of this.

00:46:37.180 Yeah, totally.

00:46:38.180 It's like the Denver nuggets.

00:46:39.240 It's like the kind of in one person, but go on.

00:46:43.000 Sorry.

00:46:43.280 Yeah.

00:46:43.480 Yeah.

00:46:43.700 And he gets to Europe at that time.

00:46:46.440 And, and I'm getting this from this, this guy, Jack Weatherford's book, Genghis Khan and

00:46:50.000 the making of the modern world.

00:46:51.740 He's a historian in Minnesota, somewhere, one of those, one of those colleges.

00:46:55.120 And when Genghis Khan gets to, to, to Europe, he's looking around, he's like, these people

00:47:01.340 are too dumb and too poor for me to bother conquering.

00:47:05.240 He, you know, like they didn't even have pants at that point.

00:47:07.440 Like pants, like pants are an Asian invention, right?

00:47:11.560 Like pants came from Asia at that time in Europe, people are just wearing cloaks.

00:47:15.820 Like they didn't even have pants yet.

00:47:17.080 They didn't, you know, that gunpowder came from China, movable type from China.

00:47:20.460 And so Genghis Khan gets to Europe and he's like, these people are too dumb, too poor,

00:47:23.840 and too ignorant.

00:47:24.340 And he just drove South into the middle East where people were doing like algebra and

00:47:28.300 advanced math and like had all of this technology.

00:47:30.500 Right.

00:47:31.420 And then that set up these trading routes and those trading routes connected some of these

00:47:36.440 great advanced technologies from the middle East and from Asia.

00:47:40.040 And they started working their way into Europe.

00:47:42.440 And then boom, Europe has the Renaissance and boom, the Renaissance blows up into the

00:47:47.100 industrial revolution.

00:47:48.340 And then that industrial revolution, now you have like the Pope carving up the entire world

00:47:53.360 between Spain and Portugal.

00:47:54.860 Like Portugal gets one half, Spain gets the other half, and then they're going down and

00:47:59.340 they're carving up Africa.

00:48:00.880 Right.

00:48:01.420 And, and then you just, you, you, you get to where we are today, which is that, you know,

00:48:06.480 Africa never had a strong say in how they were and what went on.

00:48:11.160 Yeah.

00:48:11.440 And in the, in the, in the last few, you know, centuries, what things did you notice when

00:48:15.240 you started to explore some of this stuff happening in Africa?

00:48:19.320 Well, issues in what sense?

00:48:20.940 Like, I guess like the ownership, like who was doing the, like you say, land getting bought

00:48:26.480 up that had ancestral value.

00:48:27.960 Of course.

00:48:28.580 Yeah.

00:48:28.900 Who was doing that?

00:48:29.920 Like who was, is it hard to know who was doing it?

00:48:33.200 Well, oftentimes it's really hard to trace back who's doing it because you can be like

00:48:38.000 this rush.

00:48:38.940 It can just be these layers of LLCs and who ultimately is behind this LLC can be really

00:48:44.500 tough.

00:48:44.820 Like I can go there and be like, okay, so this is the white South African dude or white

00:48:49.200 Zimbabwean dude who now is in like Zambia and he's, you know, moved people off the historic

00:48:55.300 ancestral land.

00:48:56.080 And he's doing this like super modern farming.

00:48:59.740 Right.

00:48:59.960 And, and these other people that had been there for the families have been there for

00:49:03.180 centuries are now like dying.

00:49:04.640 Right.

00:49:05.000 Cause they don't have access to even enough drinking water, much less enough water to

00:49:08.420 grow food.

00:49:08.900 Right.

00:49:10.320 And I can, I can be, I can see that, but like, then I look at the property ownership

00:49:14.320 and it's just a jumble of LLCs and that can be pretty tough.

00:49:18.160 But, you know, in the film, one of the things we were able, we got this like trove of information

00:49:22.520 documents.

00:49:23.180 I mean, we see that in some cases it's the leaders of foreign governments that are paying

00:49:30.060 essentially mercenaries to go in and gobble up these resources.

00:49:35.120 Right.

00:49:35.560 And, and one of the ways they do it, you know, and these, these emails that we get, we see

00:49:40.720 they just talk about giving gifts to the chief.

00:49:43.720 Right.

00:49:44.660 And, and, and, you know, essentially bribes.

00:49:46.900 Right.

00:49:47.300 Right.

00:49:47.500 And it's how I'd interpret that.

00:49:48.680 And what is a mercenary just so everybody knows?

00:49:50.520 Well, a mercenary is effectively somebody who can provide military logistics on behalf

00:49:56.720 of another government.

00:49:59.440 Okay.

00:50:00.900 So like, how would I use a mercenary?

00:50:03.720 Well, you could use a mercenary to go into.

00:50:06.960 Are they good guys or bad guys?

00:50:08.220 Oh, they can be.

00:50:09.020 This is interesting.

00:50:09.740 You brought up Rwanda just a minute ago, and I'm trying to remember the name of the actress

00:50:13.680 that was going to hire a mercenary outfit to go in.

00:50:18.160 Like when no one on the international level was stopping the Rwandan genocide, this, this

00:50:23.320 Hollywood actress wanted to hire a mercenary group to try to go in and stop it.

00:50:27.180 Right.

00:50:27.480 Like, so like she was using it potentially, like she thought of using it as this force

00:50:31.600 of good.

00:50:33.080 But so there, there, there are these examples of people wanting to use these types of groups

00:50:37.080 to like quell violence, to bring stability, right.

00:50:40.040 To, to move food into, into areas that are being controlled by warlords.

00:50:46.100 Right.

00:50:46.460 Like, so you can, you know, sometimes people make an argument that you need to meet force

00:50:50.300 with force to do good.

00:50:51.820 Right.

00:50:52.320 And then you also see them being used by corporations to make deals with warlords, you know, to extract

00:50:59.380 resources.

00:50:59.960 And those tend to have a more deleterious or, you know, fucking create, make life shittier

00:51:04.880 for the people who live there.

00:51:05.900 Did you see some of that?

00:51:07.180 Like, what were some of the things that you saw, like people struggling with?

00:51:10.220 Oh, dude, just feeding themselves, having shelter, you know, like super basic stuff,

00:51:15.260 super basic stuff.

00:51:16.940 And it sucks.

00:51:17.520 It sucks to see that stuff.

00:51:18.840 I don't want to see that stuff, you know?

00:51:20.600 And then I got to carry it home, you know?

00:51:22.500 And then, and, and, you know, it's like, it's that thing they always say, like, you,

00:51:26.120 you see these people who have done nothing wrong or just like struggling to survive, you know?

00:51:31.940 And I go in there as essentially like a storyteller and I'm like, you know,

00:51:35.900 and they're like, dude, like we need food, we need water.

00:51:38.920 And you're like, oh, you know, like, what can I, what can I do?

00:51:41.740 That's not my role.

00:51:42.540 My role is to tell people about what's happening to you.

00:51:45.240 And then I fly back to San Francisco and I turn on the faucet and I can drink fresh water,

00:51:49.820 you know?

00:51:50.080 And you're like, you know, so these are the, these, this is, these are some of the challenges

00:51:54.900 of going in.

00:51:57.180 And anyways, I went off a little bit, but like, yeah, I've seen this shit, you know?

00:52:01.760 And like, there's, you know, there are stories I've heard and there are things that I've seen

00:52:05.020 that, you know, like I, I wish, you know, which didn't happen to people.

00:52:09.320 And then I wish that I didn't have to experience firsthand, you know?

00:52:12.020 Do you feel like we're doing the same thing in other countries though?

00:52:14.760 The U S government or like U S corporations?

00:52:16.840 Yeah.

00:52:17.100 Like, are we doing the same thing that's happening here and other places?

00:52:19.940 For sure.

00:52:21.360 For sure.

00:52:22.780 Yeah.

00:52:23.100 So is it all just even out?

00:52:25.560 Well, no, I mean, I, I would say that if you're like, if, if, if you're looking at

00:52:30.920 it, like, Oh, China's a bad guy or the Saudis are the bad guys, but you know, the U S is,

00:52:35.240 is, is okay.

00:52:36.320 It evens out in that sense, right?

00:52:38.080 Like we have massive corporations that are going in and are contributing, I think, to

00:52:42.980 this pattern of people who are living on land, losing their land or people whose water

00:52:47.720 supplies are being taken from them.

00:52:49.180 Right.

00:52:49.460 And, and it's destabilizing the world is like the short of it.

00:52:52.560 And then you end up with a destabilized world and you end up with like mass migration and

00:52:56.900 you end up with countries being like, we don't want any more immigrants, you know?

00:53:00.120 And you're like, yeah, but they left because they were hungry.

00:53:03.040 I'm like, why were they hungry?

00:53:04.500 Like what was happening to them?

00:53:05.980 Right.

00:53:06.260 Right.

00:53:06.840 And so you, you, you're not getting just immigrants.

00:53:08.780 You're getting starving in some cases, increasingly that is the case.

00:53:12.360 Like I, there, at one point the state department said the reason, you know, the, the number

00:53:16.100 one reason people were leaving Guatemala was because they were hungry and think about

00:53:19.940 Guatemala, man.

00:53:20.940 Like, think about that region of the world.

00:53:22.680 What have they given us?

00:53:24.420 Avocados, chocolate.

00:53:26.060 I think tomatoes come from that region.

00:53:28.180 Right.

00:53:28.680 Yeah.

00:53:28.880 Like it, it, it, it, um, like I think all, when you go under the stick or whatever, under

00:53:33.680 the limbata or whatever, I don't know that the limbo limbo.

00:53:38.560 Yeah.

00:53:38.800 Yeah.

00:53:39.160 Yeah.

00:53:39.580 Yeah.

00:53:39.860 Like those countries have given us so much food.

00:53:41.940 Like, how is it possible that a country that is the source of so many, like you think

00:53:46.880 of tomatoes, you're like, Oh, Italians must've invented it.

00:53:49.000 Right.

00:53:49.080 You're like, no man, that came from the Americas potatoes came from the Americas.

00:53:52.400 Chocolate came from the Americas.

00:53:54.200 Avocados came from the Americas.

00:53:56.040 Right.

00:53:56.600 And how do you have now a region like that where half of the children are stunted because

00:54:02.620 they're not getting enough calories and nutrition.

00:54:04.740 Right.

00:54:05.220 And so like people are leaving Guatemala because there's not enough food.

00:54:09.440 And that's crazy because this place is growing plenty of food.

00:54:12.500 So what's happening to the food is just being exported to, to, to wealthier countries.

00:54:16.960 So do you think that we're like some of the reason for China's low water supply is because

00:54:21.600 of us?

00:54:22.420 No, I don't think that's the case with China.

00:54:24.540 I think China is a really interesting example, right?

00:54:27.780 Like we manufacture a ton over there.

00:54:29.540 Yeah.

00:54:29.660 Yeah.

00:54:29.860 Totally.

00:54:30.400 No.

00:54:31.280 Um, China is an interesting case, right, man?

00:54:34.300 Because this is like, I don't think this is well enough known, but one of the greatest

00:54:38.580 achievements in my opinion of the 20th century was what China accomplished.

00:54:43.500 And that was pulling 400 million people out of poverty in like three decades, right?

00:54:51.100 Like you, you, you'll hear people talking about all of the great achievements of our

00:54:55.220 species, you know, over the last, you know, whatever, 50 years.

00:54:59.040 And they'll be like, you know, we've reduced, uh, we reduce poverty and hunger by this much

00:55:04.420 80% of poverty reduction, as I understand it, 70 or 80% of poverty reduction in the world

00:55:10.520 is what China accomplished.

00:55:12.060 One country, 400 million people they pulled out of, out of poverty in like two or three

00:55:17.000 decades.

00:55:17.800 Gosh, they now have the world's largest middle-class, right?

00:55:20.800 I think their middle-class might be bigger than the entire population of the U S the challenge

00:55:25.200 there, man, is that they want to eat diets more like our diet, right?

00:55:28.800 Like in the 1980s, you basically had a country full of vegetarians because they couldn't afford

00:55:33.820 meat.

00:55:34.200 Now you have the world's largest middle-class and they want to eat more meat, right?

00:55:37.580 They want sausage patties.

00:55:38.740 Exactly, man.

00:55:39.500 And, and, and, and to have meat, you have to grow more grains, more feeds for the animals.

00:55:45.000 It's kind of an ineffect, inefficient way to, to develop a calorie and they don't have

00:55:50.260 enough water to grow enough grains to be able to feed all of the animals that the people

00:55:56.020 want to eat.

00:55:56.940 Right.

00:55:57.100 So they're doing it over here.

00:55:58.140 They're doing it over here.

00:55:59.160 They're doing it in Brazil.

00:56:00.240 They're doing it across the world.

00:56:01.520 Oh, so they're doing it in a lot of places.

00:56:02.600 Yeah.

00:56:02.760 Yeah.

00:56:03.340 Yeah.

00:56:03.940 Probably this might even be one of the fewer places.

00:56:06.520 It's just that the U S is an agricultural superpower, right?

00:56:09.880 Like we are one of the largest exporters of food in the world.

00:56:13.360 And this, you know, then takes you to like, so who are the other ones?

00:56:16.440 And you're like, well, it turns out now Russia is, and that's not by accident.

00:56:21.220 Putin has built the country up over the last 15 years to be a food superpower.

00:56:25.660 Right.

00:56:26.500 And then you're like, well, huh.

00:56:28.440 So if, if, if, if Russia is becoming a food superpower, what does that tell me about,

00:56:33.840 you know, the Ukraine war?

00:56:35.840 Because you know what Ukraine has been known for, man?

00:56:37.780 Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe.

00:56:40.540 Yeah.

00:56:40.900 It, it, it has for, you know, for, for centuries been considered the breadbasket of Europe.

00:56:46.040 And, and when, when, when the Nazis, they invaded Poland, but what do they do right after

00:56:50.380 that?

00:56:50.580 The first place they invade when they go into the USSR.

00:56:52.220 Stop over to Ukraine for a little bit of bread.

00:56:53.840 Exactly.

00:56:54.200 And Hitler said it, we need to control food to keep our soldiers fed.

00:56:59.160 And people don't realize this, but the Nazis had what they called the hunger plan.

00:57:03.840 And by controlling Ukraine, they intended, according to these little known documents that

00:57:09.240 historians have on earth, you know, from the Nazis, they intended to starve 30 million people

00:57:15.580 to death by controlling Ukraine.

00:57:18.140 And if you're the leader of like Russia, right.

00:57:21.400 And you're trying to build a food superpower, right.

00:57:24.140 And just below you is the most fertile soil.

00:57:27.220 Right.

00:57:27.660 And that, that country was deeply aligned to your country until like 2010.

00:57:33.240 Right.

00:57:33.660 And now all of a sudden it's moving its way to the West.

00:57:36.660 Right.

00:57:37.040 It was thinking about going into NATO, right?

00:57:38.500 Yes.

00:57:39.140 Ukraine was.

00:57:39.740 Yeah.

00:57:40.020 And then moving in closer to Europe and that food supply, you know, and so that historically

00:57:44.680 that food supply has been used as a weapon against Russia, right.

00:57:48.040 It's been used as a good weapon against others, right?

00:57:50.380 It's a huge strategic asset.

00:57:52.600 It's Ukraine's biggest strategic asset.

00:57:55.020 And so you think that that basically for water is one of the reasons why we're, why that war

00:58:00.400 is going on.

00:58:01.000 I think all of these things have many facets and are super complicated, but I, when you're

00:58:05.940 saying what is Ukraine's strategic importance and it's food production of food and you see

00:58:12.340 Putin saying, you know, like in the film, I, you know, cause I went to Russia in the film,

00:58:17.080 I go to Russia and we sit down with the largest, the, the CEO of, of Russia's biggest beef company.

00:58:22.380 He says, yeah, Putin came to me.

00:58:23.940 He said, whatever you guys need, because food and water are going to give us more strategic

00:58:29.700 power in the future than all of our weapons and oil does.

00:58:33.000 Right.

00:58:33.660 Like, yeah.

00:58:34.260 I mean, some of my fattest friends have the most guns too, to be honest with you.

00:58:39.180 Cause they want to keep eating.

00:58:40.440 I think they just, you know, if you're fat and happy, you'll start shooting.

00:58:43.620 I feel like, and if you're not happy, you'll start shooting.

00:58:46.240 So it's really kind of a, yeah.

00:58:48.240 Right.

00:58:48.720 The circles meet in the back.

00:58:50.200 Yeah.

00:58:50.520 It's like on this end, it's kind of fireworks, like, but on this end, it's like,

00:58:53.920 and it's like, I need to survive.

00:58:56.200 Yeah.

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01:02:12.500 so early on.

01:02:14.420 And so I just think you start seeing like a bigger picture, you know, like you start seeing

01:02:18.080 how these things interplay with each other.

01:02:19.760 Yeah, no, I look, that's what, I mean, yeah, that's cause I was watching the documentary.

01:02:23.940 I was like, well, is this just kind of fear?

01:02:25.520 Is this creating fear?

01:02:26.880 And then that's why I wanted to get to talk to you.

01:02:28.900 I was like, I was just, I was like, is Nate like just creating fear here is the director

01:02:33.240 or are they, is this just a trend that they're seeing?

01:02:36.580 And is this like something that they really believe in and notice?

01:02:41.520 Yeah, dude, that's a great question.

01:02:42.880 Thanks.

01:02:43.260 Thanks for that.

01:02:43.700 Cause it is like, it doesn't do anybody any good to just be afraid.

01:02:47.500 Right.

01:02:47.840 Just to like stress people out, bum people out and, and, and, um, but no, I mean, I think

01:02:53.040 like fundamentally when, when the landscape is shifting in front of us and like the most

01:02:59.160 powerful people are shifting with that landscape, like I'm a big advocate of the everyday guy.

01:03:03.900 Yeah.

01:03:04.340 And I'm like, dude, we got to empower ourselves with that same information.

01:03:07.620 You know, we have to know how this thing is shifting.

01:03:11.100 Right.

01:03:11.540 Because otherwise those people in Arizona, they just see this big farm come in and they're

01:03:14.760 like, well, okay.

01:03:15.960 What they don't know is that it gets part of this big international trend and they're

01:03:19.620 coming for the water.

01:03:20.620 Right.

01:03:20.840 They don't know that their own government is, is allowing that, which in some ways are nice

01:03:26.220 things that America does allows, you know, and that we've also, we've done a ton of like

01:03:31.460 of open handedness, you know, but there does become a point where, yeah, if it gets back

01:03:35.960 to survival that, um, you're going to change your tune.

01:03:42.220 Yeah.

01:03:42.800 And America is, I don't know if you'll do it as a country, but you, as

01:03:45.900 an individual, you won't have a choice, but to do it.

01:03:48.100 Right.

01:03:48.760 I think for, for some people, yeah.

01:03:50.940 I mean, food prices will probably continue to climb.

01:03:53.740 Right.

01:03:54.140 And people are going to have to make like real, you know, lifestyle decisions based on

01:03:57.780 that.

01:03:58.560 Um, you know, we'll probably see food potentially becoming a bigger and bigger percentage of

01:04:03.340 our like take home incomes.

01:04:05.300 Um, but you know, potentially, you know, like that's the trend line.

01:04:08.000 Um, especially, yeah.

01:04:09.920 So I think, you know, I think, I just think it, it, information is power.

01:04:13.660 Yeah.

01:04:13.800 And what I'll tell you is that the most powerful have access to better information today.

01:04:18.420 I think that the disparity of information between the powerful and the everyday person

01:04:23.800 has just grown.

01:04:24.880 Like we always talk about income disparity and it's a real thing.

01:04:27.160 Totally.

01:04:27.560 I get it.

01:04:28.160 But information disparity, man, it, it might even be worse.

01:04:31.960 A hundred percent.

01:04:32.400 And even just to go to accredited news sources online, not to get information, you have to

01:04:37.060 pay for it.

01:04:37.720 Yeah.

01:04:38.100 Right.

01:04:38.340 Yeah.

01:04:38.760 Even to get what used to be just a newspaper, right?

01:04:42.140 Yeah.

01:04:42.480 You have to pay for that information.

01:04:43.980 So whether you even believe that it's going to be true or not to have information that's

01:04:48.180 even kind of sourced, you know, that's put together, that's formatted, that's not done

01:04:53.500 by AI.

01:04:54.620 Yeah.

01:04:55.480 You're having to pay for that.

01:04:56.720 Yeah.

01:04:56.860 And I hope that we get back to more of that, man, because that's how it used to be when

01:04:59.420 we were kids, right?

01:05:00.140 Like you'd, you'd pay of a newspaper subscription.

01:05:03.200 Um, right.

01:05:04.000 I think people decided they couldn't trust the news anymore.

01:05:06.980 I think a lot of that has occurred in the past 10 years for sure.

01:05:10.840 I think I feel like the news, every time I turn it on, I feel like it is, there's some

01:05:17.080 lobbyists behind it.

01:05:18.060 There's some, um, you know, I mean, people say big farm all the time, but we have so many

01:05:23.080 drug ads on our television.

01:05:24.320 It's like, you know, it just feel, I wouldn't be surprised if it's compromised.

01:05:30.140 That's what it feels like.

01:05:31.260 I, the news industry is in a tailspin and I'll give you my two cents for what it's worth.

01:05:35.040 Cause I've been a journalist now for like 25 years, some insane amount of time.

01:05:38.680 I can't believe that.

01:05:39.940 Um, but when I started, um, as a daily newspaper reporter, like we had a nice big staff, man,

01:05:46.460 like we had, we had librarians on staff.

01:05:48.600 We had researchers on staff, you know, we had photographers, a sports desk, a business

01:05:52.940 desk, you know?

01:05:54.240 And, um, and I, I think, I don't know, man, it was like, there's like a third as many

01:05:58.460 journalists as there used to be, right?

01:06:00.980 Like if there's fewer people doing anything, it's going to be a shittier job.

01:06:04.840 You're going to get a crappier product.

01:06:06.320 Right.

01:06:06.980 And so, and, and, and, and the trend line that, that gutted journalism wasn't initially

01:06:12.440 that, cause I totally agree.

01:06:13.940 All the stats say what you're saying.

01:06:15.220 People don't trust the news like they used to, but it wasn't in the trend line.

01:06:18.680 Wasn't that people stopped subscribing.

01:06:20.220 What happened was, is that newspapers used to make huge profits from things like classified

01:06:24.780 ads, right?

01:06:25.420 Like, you know, we used to read the classified ads in the back, right?

01:06:28.360 Like you could meet a woman or even get a adopt a pet, get a new BMX bike or like a dirt

01:06:32.760 bike, like a new car, like it was all back there.

01:06:35.320 Right.

01:06:35.700 And that stuff, man, that subsidized the journalists.

01:06:38.940 And so of course that went away and that was like a lion's share of the profits.

01:06:42.900 Right.

01:06:43.160 Craigslist kind of killed that.

01:06:44.280 Totally.

01:06:44.780 And it's fine.

01:06:45.440 It technology is going to do.

01:06:46.520 And like the newspapers didn't, they didn't react in time.

01:06:50.220 You know, they lost this big thing.

01:06:52.000 And so like, you just started seeing the industry shrinking and shrinking.

01:06:55.220 And now the layoffs in the last two years have just been like brutal.

01:06:58.380 But the, the, the problem there is, man, it's like I could quit journalism.

01:07:02.400 And I could go become a private researcher doing the exact same thing I'm doing now as

01:07:07.300 an investigative journalist.

01:07:08.200 But instead of giving it to the public, I would be giving it to hedge funds.

01:07:11.800 I'd be giving it to super wealthy people that would literally, I'm not shitting you, would

01:07:15.420 pay me four to five times what I'm getting paid now.

01:07:18.320 Right.

01:07:18.800 And, and, and that's actually what's happening.

01:07:20.780 Right.

01:07:21.140 And so like you, you, you have the public who is increasingly just getting not as good

01:07:26.940 as much information, especially if you're in like a local news market, right?

01:07:30.260 Like you're not getting information.

01:07:31.560 People aren't paying for it.

01:07:33.240 There are fewer journalists and then the wealthiest are paying for it still.

01:07:37.400 And they're getting incredibly in-depth information.

01:07:40.760 Right.

01:07:40.880 And now you're starting to see privatized spaces have the journalists almost on their

01:07:46.620 side, working for them to give them information that better helps them to market to the everyday

01:07:54.480 person.

01:07:55.460 Yeah.

01:07:55.580 And I wouldn't say call that person a journalist, but that, that same like deep research or

01:07:59.960 investigative project, especially in tech, man.

01:08:03.500 Well, I think it's like, you know, they had, even if you look at the case of the opioid

01:08:08.060 epidemic, right.

01:08:09.460 And that there was a documentary, there was a television show.

01:08:12.600 I can't remember the name of it.

01:08:14.640 All the beauty in the bloodshed was a doc that came out that looked super deep at the

01:08:18.120 opioid or I can't remember.

01:08:19.960 Alex Gibney, maybe on HBO looked at the opioid epidemic too.

01:08:22.780 This one had Michael Keaton.

01:08:24.860 Okay.

01:08:25.460 You know, is that a real person?

01:08:26.480 Yeah.

01:08:26.580 Yeah.

01:08:26.760 Yeah.

01:08:27.020 Yeah.

01:08:27.340 I mean, I don't know Hollywood, so I don't know actors and I don't know the space as well,

01:08:30.160 but yeah.

01:08:30.800 Yeah.

01:08:31.000 They had this, there you go.

01:08:32.160 Dope Sick.

01:08:32.800 They had this, this series came out.

01:08:34.620 It's unbelievable.

01:08:35.280 It's how, it's how the opioid companies pay, like basically hired people that had been

01:08:44.580 working on the food and drug administration to come and work for them so they could work the

01:08:49.300 loopholes.

01:08:50.640 Totally.

01:08:51.220 And I'll, I mean, I'll just tell you my two cents.

01:08:53.300 The reason that we often know stories like this, like how FDA former employees were then

01:08:58.540 going is because a journalist went in and dug it out and published it.

01:09:02.940 Right.

01:09:03.140 Like these types of fictionalized versions get written off of like hard work of investigative

01:09:07.500 journalists.

01:09:08.200 And there are fewer and fewer people pulling out stories like this.

01:09:11.360 And I'll tell you, man, as a journalist, like my problem 20 years ago was that I was always

01:09:17.000 worried that some other journalist was going to scoop the story and get it out.

01:09:19.900 Before me today, my problem is that people are coming to me with important stories and I don't

01:09:26.560 have the time to work on them because I'm already working on something and I don't even have another

01:09:30.620 journalist.

01:09:31.020 I can tell them to go to, right?

01:09:33.320 Like we're just not getting out as many important stories like that as we used to, because there's

01:09:36.980 just fewer of us.

01:09:37.940 Like, and, and, and, and there are more people working for the lobbyists.

01:09:41.680 There are more people working for the PR firms that are spinning stuff.

01:09:44.540 And so this is, we're getting into this really imbalanced place of information and a dark time.

01:09:50.160 And that's why conspiracy theories rise.

01:09:51.560 I totally agree.

01:09:52.440 Because it's like, well, people are going by their gut.

01:09:55.600 People are looking to fill a void and people want some truth.

01:09:59.420 I think if you don't have truth, you can feel it.

01:10:02.680 Yeah, I think so.

01:10:03.560 And, and I always say, and this is the other thing, man, is for me, journalism, it's okay.

01:10:07.540 So like take a football, right?

01:10:09.220 Like the, the surface of a football is imperfect, right?

01:10:13.780 It's why a quarterback spirals the ball.

01:10:16.120 Because if you, if you throw the football without spiraling it, because the surface of

01:10:20.060 the football is fancy, yeah.

01:10:21.780 Yeah.

01:10:22.040 It's like imperfect.

01:10:22.900 It just flops around.

01:10:23.880 Yeah.

01:10:24.300 And, and, and, and, but you spiral it and all of those imperfections get smoothed out.

01:10:28.760 And journalism is the same way.

01:10:30.360 Like no journalist is the voice of God.

01:10:32.480 But when you've got 10 journalists covering the same thing, you're going to get as close

01:10:36.800 to the, to the obtainable version of the truth as possible because you have 10 different

01:10:41.360 people that are competing to get it out.

01:10:43.060 They're going to, they're, they're going to check each other.

01:10:45.120 They're going to, they're going to point out if somebody else, you know, misses something

01:10:47.680 or screw something up and you get at the closest possible obtainable version of the

01:10:51.960 truth.

01:10:52.480 Now, when you just have one person, it's like a football that's not spiraling anymore.

01:10:56.460 It just gets totally off kilter.

01:10:58.200 And I think we're getting closer to that.

01:11:00.500 And, and I think that's like in a democracy when we're supposed to be an informed group of

01:11:05.300 people that are going to go to the ballot box and vote, you know, it's a problem.

01:11:08.620 If we were in China, it wouldn't matter because the government's going to tell us what to

01:11:11.140 do anyway.

01:11:11.680 But in a country where we're like, no, no, we need to be informed so we can go to vote.

01:11:15.780 That becomes a problem.

01:11:17.280 How does that end for us?

01:11:18.500 Was that football analogy?

01:11:19.520 The dumbest analogy you've ever heard?

01:11:21.020 It just kind of came to me.

01:11:22.180 No, I thought it was pretty good.

01:11:23.160 Okay, cool.

01:11:23.860 Yeah.

01:11:24.160 But I'm also dumb a lot of times.

01:11:27.160 So it's like, I wouldn't have asked me, but I thought it worked for me.

01:11:31.480 All right, cool.

01:11:32.200 I'm easily, I'm easily susceptible to just whatever.

01:11:35.400 But, but yeah, I wonder what does that look like for us?

01:11:39.660 If we, when you get to a place where you don't trust, I wonder if it's that we don't trust

01:11:45.320 authority now.

01:11:46.420 But I never trusted authority.

01:11:47.880 Right.

01:11:48.040 I never trusted authority either.

01:11:49.740 Yeah.

01:11:49.880 But I always thought there was this level of integrity maybe in the distance that I, maybe

01:11:56.520 I thought I'm, it's so hard for me to figure out what I feel like is missing these days.

01:12:01.040 I feel like as individuals, a lot of us are missing purpose and our purpose is being farmed

01:12:07.580 out to technology and to big corporations instead of things that are meaningful.

01:12:14.380 I think we're losing community.

01:12:15.700 Yes.

01:12:16.040 And then that's going to happen too.

01:12:17.200 You have no purpose.

01:12:17.900 You don't have a local newspaper.

01:12:19.300 You don't have like a local place where everybody can even go meet up.

01:12:22.620 People aren't going to church.

01:12:24.240 So there's, at that point, you're just a lot of strangers living near each other.

01:12:28.220 I think that's it, man.

01:12:28.920 I think that's a huge problem in this country.

01:12:30.280 And how does that change?

01:12:32.140 I wonder, you know, like what does the future of that look like?

01:12:35.880 Do we just turn into like these lemmings just waiting for the next cheeseburger?

01:12:41.220 Like, you know, I, I, I, you know, I, I've done some investigative reporting on big tech

01:12:46.820 and that's a space, you know, like that I, I, you know, like, man, my reporting has shown

01:12:52.780 me like things that just like as a human, as a person concern me, you know, like it's

01:12:58.580 like really cool because they're, they become these beautiful creative spaces.

01:13:02.060 Right.

01:13:02.500 And, and, and like as people that are artistic and like to share their stories, people get

01:13:07.460 on there and they can connect with communities and there's all these great things that happen.

01:13:11.160 But I increasingly see those spaces as a hunting ground for big tech companies to target specific

01:13:18.220 people and take them down.

01:13:19.340 And I'll give you one of the examples I'm talking about is that I did this investigative

01:13:23.980 product where I got this investigation, um, where I got internal emails from inside of

01:13:29.760 Facebook and I got, you know, documents from inside of this company that was like a social

01:13:34.940 casino company.

01:13:35.840 It was essentially like you could play games on your phone that looked like a slot machine

01:13:41.340 and you would never win any money.

01:13:43.680 Like you just got to understand it.

01:13:44.740 You would never win any money back.

01:13:47.640 And if you used up all your coins that they get in the day for free, you would then have

01:13:53.140 to buy more coins.

01:13:55.160 Something like 99% of people never pay for coins.

01:13:58.960 It's like 1%.

01:14:00.200 And then it's something like one 10th of 1% drive like 97% of the revenue at that company.

01:14:06.840 And those companies that again, you can never win your money back.

01:14:10.580 We're now generating more revenue than the Las Vegas strip billions and billions of dollars.

01:14:16.220 So who were the people that were spending money?

01:14:18.480 Well, I found one of those women.

01:14:19.860 She was living outside of Dallas.

01:14:21.660 She was living modest middle income.

01:14:24.180 She spent $400,000 buying virtual coins that she could never win back.

01:14:33.320 So who does that?

01:14:34.740 Right?

01:14:35.360 Well, it turns out that a certain slice of people, very small slight have a,

01:14:40.560 type of brain that can get super fixated on this.

01:14:44.400 Like they, they compulsively can't stop.

01:14:47.400 Wow.

01:14:47.800 And the technology companies devised algorithms.

01:14:51.620 They use artificial intelligence where the CEO of one of these companies said the first

01:14:56.080 time somebody opens that app and starts playing, they can identify them from all of the little

01:15:01.160 habits and immediately mark them as what they would call a VIP or a whale.

01:15:06.720 Right?

01:15:07.120 And they would put them down this path where they would actually get a special representative,

01:15:11.860 like an actual human who would call them.

01:15:14.060 This woman outside of Texas who lost $400,000 when her mom died, they sent flowers to her mom's

01:15:18.400 funeral.

01:15:18.940 Right?

01:15:19.360 Like they immediately identify that you have this type of brain that's going to keep spending

01:15:24.220 money that you can't, A, you can't afford and B, you'll never get back.

01:15:28.480 And they just target you and they push you and they pull as much money out of you as they

01:15:33.180 can.

01:15:34.040 That's, that's what I see, man.

01:15:35.320 And I see this, like, I see now, like people are spending their time on there, but people

01:15:40.500 are watching you spend your time and they're building your behavior and they're looking

01:15:44.380 for your weakness.

01:15:45.300 And as soon as they can exploit your weakness, man, they are going to grab everything they

01:15:49.160 can.

01:15:49.900 Wow.

01:15:50.740 It's really the, it's the devil.

01:15:52.780 It's what you would think of as the devil using yourself against you even.

01:15:56.580 I mean, look, what if your own shadow could fucking pick your pocket?

01:16:00.500 What would your life be like?

01:16:01.860 You know what I'm saying?

01:16:02.760 Like, Hey, I mean, maybe that's a crazy thing.

01:16:05.000 That's almost as bad as your football thing, but, uh, but no, bro, it's the, it's the dark

01:16:12.400 arts.

01:16:12.740 It's like the algorithm learning you and learning you and learning you massaging you and all

01:16:18.880 that matters.

01:16:19.660 But is it, is it for profit or is it for control?

01:16:22.820 I don't understand.

01:16:24.420 I'm guessing it's probably both.

01:16:26.060 I just don't understand how that behooves anybody.

01:16:29.800 Like who closes their eyes at night and was like, yeah, dude, those companies that I just

01:16:36.360 talked about went from nothing in like 2009 to 2010 to being billion dollar companies.

01:16:42.000 And they were owned by a few dudes who started them up.

01:16:44.780 Like it behooved those dudes.

01:16:46.880 Those dudes are killing it.

01:16:49.020 I found one of the women who worked at one of these companies who was pushing this woman

01:16:54.140 outside of Dallas to spend all of this money.

01:16:56.080 Right.

01:16:56.360 And I got on her Instagram, that girl was just flying around the world, living it up

01:17:01.280 Egypt.

01:17:02.220 Oh, look how cool I am now.

01:17:03.940 Oh, look at me.

01:17:04.680 And I'm photos in front of the Sphinx.

01:17:06.680 Now I'm in Italy eating in Tuscany.

01:17:09.460 Right.

01:17:09.680 Right.

01:17:09.980 Living this life.

01:17:10.780 And in the meantime, she's just encouraging people to lose their money.

01:17:14.420 Wow.

01:17:14.860 And can we name these people or is it kind of private information?

01:17:18.380 Well, I can, you know, I mean, I wrote my story.

01:17:21.420 Susie Kelly is the woman outside of Dallas.

01:17:24.340 Let's see.

01:17:25.380 Product Madness.

01:17:26.680 Is that the name of the company that was targeting?

01:17:29.520 I want to pull up the story to make sure I was getting this right, because this is the

01:17:33.100 challenge I have as an investigative journalist.

01:17:35.360 I misspeak just a little bit.

01:17:38.040 I can get sued.

01:17:38.880 Get sued.

01:17:39.100 Yeah, for sure.

01:17:39.660 We can get sued as well.

01:17:40.640 And so I always want to be accurate.

01:17:42.100 Right.

01:17:42.320 And so, you know, we can pull up the story and because I did this story now, what was

01:17:46.100 that?

01:17:47.700 Six, seven years ago.

01:17:49.840 These are companies where you can't win, really.

01:17:52.340 No, you can't win your money back.

01:17:53.660 But you people have like figured out that there's a type of person with a behavior that

01:18:01.920 can that it's basically a definitive victim.

01:18:05.720 Right here.

01:18:06.300 It says social casinos now use behavioral analysis software to quickly identify people

01:18:09.940 who are likely to become big spenders, behaviors like increasing your bet or playing frequently

01:18:14.080 are signals to the companies.

01:18:15.540 And they target these players with heavy marketing and label them proto whales as Brotons explained

01:18:21.960 to a room full of game developers back in 2015.

01:18:23.960 And if I remember correctly, that guy, Jose Brotons, was like a Stanford graduate, you know, in

01:18:29.400 like computer science or something, took that knowledge.

01:18:32.280 You know, they pair it up with like essentially like behavioral scientists, psychologists, and

01:18:38.380 then they just start getting better and better at focusing on these people who they can extract

01:18:43.400 from.

01:18:43.960 Yeah, man.

01:18:45.340 It's like you're up against it.

01:18:46.700 And sometimes though, there's a part of people that go to gamble like that.

01:18:50.000 There's a part of them that wants to some, sometimes I think that there's a part of us

01:18:57.580 when I'm amazed that we don't stand up sometimes as a population, right?

01:19:02.900 I don't think we always know.

01:19:03.940 That's the problem, man.

01:19:05.000 I don't think we have the information to know this story.

01:19:07.680 Like how many, like that to me, that story is mind blowing that that's going on.

01:19:11.760 Right.

01:19:12.080 Yeah.

01:19:12.500 How many people are gambling on their phone or looking at playing solitaire and then it turns

01:19:15.520 into a finite, yeah.

01:19:16.540 Right.

01:19:17.400 Or how many of us are just aware in which like the patterns of ads that we see are like,

01:19:23.520 oh, because they have your behavioral profile, right?

01:19:26.540 Like you're getting a pattern this way or your newsfeed looks this way or you're getting

01:19:30.700 content this way.

01:19:32.460 And how is that affecting you, right?

01:19:34.720 Like how is that affecting your everyday decisions?

01:19:37.140 And in Susie's case, it was affecting her everyday decision to the point where she was lying

01:19:41.100 to her husband.

01:19:41.800 She was taking out, if I recall correctly, second mortgages on her homes.

01:19:45.040 And spending $400,000 that she did not have.

01:19:47.780 I had the emails, the messages back and forth with her and the rep from that company.

01:19:52.600 And she was begging them to cut her off.

01:19:55.160 I've spent $4,000 last night.

01:19:57.000 Please don't let me cut me off.

01:19:58.300 Oh, Susie.

01:19:59.000 No, Susie.

01:19:59.480 We love you.

01:19:59.940 We'd hate to see you leave.

01:20:01.060 Here's a billion free coins.

01:20:03.060 You know, if you still want to quit when you're done with that.

01:20:05.540 It's a drug dealer.

01:20:05.980 Well, that's what's interesting to me too.

01:20:08.520 It's like, when would we stop allowing certain things?

01:20:13.060 You would think like even pornography, right?

01:20:16.360 Like I've fallen victim to it, obviously.

01:20:19.960 And a lot of people use it, right?

01:20:23.080 But it's like at a certain point, I recognize, oh, I'm not using this safely, right?

01:20:28.040 Like I go use it when I'm feeling down or when I'm agitated or something.

01:20:33.200 It's like, and then just like it's bad.

01:20:37.780 We know it's probably bad for us, right?

01:20:40.140 I'm not disparaging any of the people that use it or that perform it.

01:20:44.460 I have friends that are in the industry.

01:20:46.100 It's not anything against any person.

01:20:48.940 But I wonder if overall, sometimes we know that it hurts us or like they just had that

01:20:53.640 documentary on Ashley Madison, right?

01:20:55.520 Yeah.

01:20:56.460 And it was so strange.

01:20:57.760 You had this couple pushing the company and they're married and the husband was the owner

01:21:05.500 and they're saying, well, we don't cheat, but you might need to, right?

01:21:09.520 Life short, have an affair.

01:21:11.800 Just like, it's just evil.

01:21:13.340 It feels like, I mean, like, why would we allow that?

01:21:17.080 Like, it seemed like if you took a vote amongst people, would we, do we want this in our lives?

01:21:22.780 Right.

01:21:23.360 That most of them would probably say no.

01:21:25.340 But if you are tempted with it, if it comes in, like if a cat comes on your, if you tell

01:21:29.420 me, hey man, do you want a free cat?

01:21:31.300 I'll tell you, dude, honestly, you can fuck off, right?

01:21:34.280 Yeah.

01:21:34.440 I'll tell you straight up.

01:21:35.620 But if a cat keeps coming on my porch, dude, I'm gonna go out there and touch it.

01:21:40.720 You know what I'm saying?

01:21:41.600 Yeah.

01:21:41.940 Like at some point, even if I might be like, man, fuck this thing, I might be out there petting

01:21:45.860 it at the same time.

01:21:46.780 So it's like, you know, and is that our responsibility or is that-

01:21:51.980 Now the cat's in your pocket.

01:21:52.860 Yeah.

01:21:53.500 Carry the cat around in your pocket with you all the time.

01:21:55.960 I guess you can get a baby cat.

01:21:59.460 But yeah, it's like, I guess I often wonder like, is that just our responsibility and,

01:22:06.240 or is there, should there be a, yeah, I guess you can't depend on the government, but you

01:22:11.300 would think as a society, we wouldn't want these things.

01:22:14.200 Does that make sense to you?

01:22:15.000 No, dude, totally makes sense.

01:22:15.940 And I think part of it is like, these things are being developed in, in San Francisco,

01:22:21.120 Silicon Valley, wherever, faster than like, we can learn about them and adjust to them.

01:22:25.700 Yeah.

01:22:25.900 The government's always a few years behind.

01:22:27.460 Yeah.

01:22:28.220 Yeah.

01:22:28.420 Yeah.

01:22:28.580 And, and, and, and, and again, like, I mean, I don't, I mean, obviously I'm biased because

01:22:33.000 I'm an investigative journalist, but like, this is the role that I think we're losing

01:22:36.220 in our society by, as journalism keeps going away is because like in that story that we

01:22:41.940 were just talking about with Susie and the social casinos, those dudes would suit me if

01:22:46.340 I got it wrong.

01:22:47.180 Right.

01:22:47.420 Like if, if, if, if, like they are going to ask for a correction, if I got something

01:22:51.380 wrong.

01:22:51.740 Right.

01:22:52.380 And they did it.

01:22:53.680 Right.

01:22:54.000 In the end, Susie and a bunch of other people got 155 million bucks back from them.

01:22:59.140 Really?

01:22:59.600 Yeah.

01:23:00.340 Fuck.

01:23:00.700 Yeah.

01:23:01.040 Right.

01:23:01.960 So, you know, and, and, and like, I don't have it out against anybody, man.

01:23:05.920 I just want good information out there in the public.

01:23:08.760 Yeah.

01:23:09.100 You know, like it empowers all of us, even if like, dude, it could be the same piece of

01:23:13.980 information.

01:23:14.420 And from that same accurate, good piece of information, you might decide that A is the

01:23:19.100 best course.

01:23:19.620 And I might decide that B is the best course.

01:23:21.860 But to me, that's a democracy because now you and I are passionate out whether A is better

01:23:26.100 or B is better, but we're operating off the same good information.

01:23:28.940 Right.

01:23:29.080 But yeah, and if you're saying that other, but that, that information is also becoming

01:23:33.580 like what's valuable and what isn't, and that there's better information out there that

01:23:37.720 obviously corporations can afford, that they can afford the researchers now to privatize

01:23:42.660 them and put them to work for themselves.

01:23:45.000 Yeah.

01:23:45.580 Then yeah, for the regular person, it just gets, it gets a little interesting.

01:23:50.540 Dude, I'm never going to have good enough information to tell you who are the people

01:23:54.180 most likely to compulsively spend on something, right?

01:23:56.760 Those companies do.

01:23:57.700 Yeah.

01:23:58.020 But if I, if I'm given enough time, I can probably find out what the companies are that

01:24:02.860 have that information that are targeting people like Susie, and I can at least make us aware

01:24:07.020 of it.

01:24:07.280 So we probably, as a society will never have access to that information.

01:24:10.680 We probably don't want all of us to know who the compulsive gamblers are.

01:24:13.060 Right.

01:24:13.620 But at least we want to know who the companies are that are targeting people who have that

01:24:17.520 behavior.

01:24:17.960 Yeah.

01:24:18.280 Right.

01:24:18.520 Or targeting people for whatever their weaknesses.

01:24:20.880 Right.

01:24:21.300 Because we all have them, man.

01:24:22.420 We all have our weaknesses.

01:24:23.800 Right.

01:24:24.000 Yeah.

01:24:24.360 And they can all just be, it can, they can almost be mathematically equated now.

01:24:29.480 Or mathematically equated now.

01:24:31.100 And they're attacking, and then that's used to attack us.

01:24:33.720 I mean, that's the scary part.

01:24:35.320 It's like, it's like, I want to say it's like our reflection is using the fact that

01:24:46.100 it's our reflection against us.

01:24:47.600 I don't know.

01:24:48.080 I can't know what I'm trying to say.

01:24:49.840 No, you know what it is, dude?

01:24:50.800 I think you're right, man.

01:24:51.540 And it's like, they're creating like a data profile, like a virtual one of us, like evil

01:24:57.800 Kirk from Star Trek.

01:24:59.040 Right.

01:24:59.540 And then like that person's telling them our weaknesses.

01:25:02.340 Right.

01:25:02.800 It's like, you're looking in, you're like, God, that's like a version of me they've created.

01:25:06.860 And that person is ratting me out and they're coming at me with that dude's info.

01:25:10.320 Yeah.

01:25:10.780 Right.

01:25:11.020 I mean, and it's getting stronger and better that technology.

01:25:14.820 Yeah.

01:25:15.120 And then it also makes you a little bit upset at yourself because you're the one feeding

01:25:20.120 into the same thing that's, you know, beckoning you with things that'll end up being painful

01:25:27.060 to you.

01:25:27.700 Yeah.

01:25:28.140 And look, I have a stoic philosophy on these things.

01:25:30.080 Like I, I, I believe that we can't control, you know, what happens outside of us, but we

01:25:35.700 can control how we react to it.

01:25:37.240 Right.

01:25:37.500 And I think this is something like you and I were talking about cold plunges or like, you

01:25:41.240 know, just like how you can reset, like, and it's super uncomfortable, but like,

01:25:44.460 you can control your body and your body's like, dude, I do not want to go in that cold

01:25:47.940 water.

01:25:48.580 And you're like, no, no, I control you.

01:25:50.540 I'm going to dip you in there for two minutes.

01:25:52.140 Cause I know that when I get out, I'm going to feel better.

01:25:54.420 Right.

01:25:54.920 And, and part of it is personal responsibility.

01:25:57.220 Part of it is being like, I control me.

01:25:59.260 I'm going to set the phone down.

01:26:00.620 Right.

01:26:01.160 I'm going to delete that app.

01:26:02.620 Right.

01:26:03.060 Like we do have personal, but we also shouldn't be targeted in that way.

01:26:07.920 Right.

01:26:08.300 It's crazy to let somebody continue to be targeted.

01:26:11.280 Yeah.

01:26:11.420 It's like at a certain point, you would stop a pedophile from coming near a child, you

01:26:15.460 know?

01:26:15.840 Yes.

01:26:16.160 At a certain point, if somebody had a hatchet and somebody was just trying to sit there

01:26:19.620 and eat a sandwich, you would stop the hatchet guy from bothering the sandwich eater.

01:26:24.440 Yes.

01:26:24.800 You know, it's like.

01:26:26.240 Yeah.

01:26:26.460 Could the sandwich eater get up and leave the restaurant, but maybe the solution is just

01:26:30.420 getting the hatchet guy out of the restaurant.

01:26:31.740 Right.

01:26:32.260 Yeah.

01:26:32.720 Right.

01:26:33.040 Yeah.

01:26:33.240 Instead of making this huge hullabaloo, like now every sandwich eater can only eat sandwiches

01:26:37.660 in this area.

01:26:38.460 Or yeah, it's just.

01:26:39.460 Cause some sandwiches are good, man.

01:26:40.660 You don't, you just want to sit there and finish your sandwich.

01:26:42.380 Yeah.

01:26:43.400 Yeah, dude.

01:26:44.240 Yeah.

01:26:45.020 In the end, it comes down to our own personal responsibility for now.

01:26:48.420 That's it.

01:26:49.220 I think that's a piece of it.

01:26:50.460 And I also think we should be demanding better environments for ourselves and our children.

01:26:56.260 I don't have kids, but you know, I always bring in kids cause people seem to be more

01:26:59.620 responsive, you know, but I think kids are living in.

01:27:02.300 Yeah.

01:27:02.400 People have them.

01:27:02.800 Yeah.

01:27:03.040 And they're living in that environment.

01:27:04.340 Right.

01:27:04.740 And I don't know that though, it's, you know, I think we just need to be more proactive

01:27:08.680 about what are the environments we want as a society.

01:27:12.140 Right.

01:27:12.600 You know, but how do we get there?

01:27:13.820 Cause it feels like everybody has kind of the same things in mind, but we never seem

01:27:18.000 to get them.

01:27:18.540 And, and it feels even more like the voting is coming from the other side, like that it's

01:27:24.880 big business.

01:27:25.600 Like, you know, like tech is the new fossil fuel.

01:27:28.060 I've said that for a long time where it's like, that's the thing that's power.

01:27:31.680 It's like, you know, they control everything.

01:27:35.440 It feels like they have a lot of information, man.

01:27:37.940 They do.

01:27:38.480 They do.

01:27:39.680 Um, yeah.

01:27:40.660 Trump's information then I wonder.

01:27:42.180 Well, I think like people, like the, like if all of us have better information, right?

01:27:50.180 Like again, like we can, we can push like the part, like the documentary, man, like you

01:27:54.800 were talking about it earlier.

01:27:55.760 Like, you know, like, I do think there's stuff in the documentary.

01:27:59.100 It's going to freak people out, freak me out when I learned about it.

01:28:01.480 Right.

01:28:02.400 So at the end of the day, it's the point of it just to freak people out.

01:28:04.680 No, it's to be like, you know, we have no national water policy in the United States.

01:28:08.480 You know that we have no national water policy.

01:28:10.600 So that means that, uh, people from anywhere or any country, whatever can move here and

01:28:16.580 use our water to grow their crops.

01:28:19.000 Is that true or no?

01:28:20.600 It's true in some places, like different States, different counties have different laws.

01:28:25.480 Right.

01:28:25.980 Okay.

01:28:26.280 But we have no, we have no national water policy that just says like, wait a minute, wait

01:28:30.000 a minute.

01:28:30.260 Water's a big deal.

01:28:31.260 Let's make sure that we're not using it for just like any old thing.

01:28:34.440 Let's make sure that just like as a general rule of thumb, we're using it for like the best

01:28:37.780 purpose.

01:28:38.280 Right.

01:28:38.580 Right.

01:28:38.880 And let's help States and counties in these places come to the decision.

01:28:42.680 What's the best purpose?

01:28:43.300 We just don't.

01:28:43.860 Other countries do right.

01:28:45.200 Other countries have put that in place.

01:28:46.940 But if water is such a solid, like a, if it's so important for the future, wouldn't that

01:28:51.460 be one of the first things we would do probably.

01:28:53.660 But this goes back.

01:28:54.780 It's like, I don't know that people know.

01:28:57.080 I don't know if just like when I have to go to, when I, you know, when I go to family

01:29:00.560 reunions, I don't know that all my family knows.

01:29:02.340 And a lot of my families, they're like farmers.

01:29:04.240 Right.

01:29:04.480 But I don't know that they know that this is the trend line that's happening.

01:29:08.480 Right.

01:29:08.780 And so you put this documentary out there, not to freak people out, but so that we all

01:29:12.700 just have this like baseline of information.

01:29:14.640 Right.

01:29:15.020 And then we can push our elected officials who, and, and, and man, you all, you, you hear

01:29:20.360 about all the different lobbies and all, you know, that push the government around the

01:29:24.620 agricultural lobby is one of the most, if not the most powerful lobby in the country.

01:29:28.420 And, and, and part for really good reasons, man, you screw up farmers, like you can really

01:29:33.580 jack up a country.

01:29:34.960 Like we need to support farmers growing foods.

01:29:37.860 Great.

01:29:38.140 Right.

01:29:38.560 And they should have a voice, you know, but at the same time, like communities that are

01:29:43.580 around the farms and others and who's coming in and who's controlling it, that needs to

01:29:47.620 make sense too.

01:29:48.680 Right.

01:29:48.920 And so it needs to be a conversation.

01:29:50.200 And until people have good information, it's tough to have a good conversation.

01:29:53.280 So whether or not we're talking about tech and like people targeting you because they're

01:29:57.360 a big technology company and they know that you're going to be compulsive about this one

01:30:00.740 thing and they can extract something from you, whether it's like how you choose to behave

01:30:05.260 or how you choose to spend, or whether it's like, you know, foreign company, foreign, you

01:30:10.040 know, countries coming in or wall street coming in and pumping out water in places that really

01:30:14.560 need that water right there.

01:30:15.700 You know, like we just need good information.

01:30:18.480 Yeah.

01:30:19.460 Yeah.

01:30:19.860 Because it's, the days are over where people have anybody else's best interest a lot of

01:30:24.100 over, like it's where companies certainly don't cause they're not an individual.

01:30:27.600 Yeah.

01:30:28.060 It's a spreadsheet.

01:30:28.820 They're thinking with a different, yes, they are.

01:30:31.120 They're thinking it's a spreadsheet trying to have a brain.

01:30:34.060 Yes.

01:30:34.780 And so like how, if you're China, right.

01:30:36.700 And you now have like some of the biggest sovereign wealth funds, you know, which is

01:30:40.380 what does that mean?

01:30:41.020 Oh man, it's, it's crazy.

01:30:42.500 Cause you know, I have friends I grew up with.

01:30:44.620 Some of them got advanced degrees from college and some of them barely graduated high school.

01:30:48.580 I mean, I was somebody that barely graduated high school, but you know, they didn't go to

01:30:51.740 college.

01:30:52.020 Right.

01:30:52.300 And, and so like, I have a huge spectrum of, of people I love and someone will tell me

01:30:57.080 about like the Illuminati, the Illuminati are controlling things.

01:30:59.540 I'm like, dude, no, but go look at sovereign wealth funds, right?

01:31:03.740 Sovereign wealth funds are countries like China that are pooling together these huge

01:31:08.700 pools of cash, trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars.

01:31:13.180 And then they can use that strategically to buy things, you know, to drive the markets

01:31:18.360 how they want.

01:31:19.360 Now here in the United States, we just believe that the profit is how everything.

01:31:23.260 So like, oh, if you can make more money doing A than B, then you should go do A.

01:31:28.180 Cause that's how our system operates.

01:31:29.980 But China goes, no, no, we want to create the most jobs we can for the country.

01:31:34.640 And therefore we're going to take all of our assets.

01:31:36.680 We're going to try to create the most jobs, not the most profit, but the most jobs.

01:31:39.600 Right.

01:31:40.120 And so then what happens is you have Smithfield foods, one in four American pigs, and you

01:31:45.940 have a Chinese company and they go like, we don't care necessarily about per se driving

01:31:51.840 the maximum profit.

01:31:53.060 Right.

01:31:53.520 Like our government is saying to us that we need to go overseas and buy up food and

01:31:56.900 water.

01:31:57.280 So we'll pay you a 30% premium over the share price.

01:32:00.460 Well, for the American company, that's like 30% premium over the share price.

01:32:03.940 Like I have a fiduciary responsibility to my shareholders.

01:32:07.200 Like I have to sell the company.

01:32:08.440 Like I have to give you guys the company.

01:32:10.100 Otherwise I can actually legally get in jeopardy here for saying no to that offer.

01:32:14.140 Right.

01:32:14.560 Because I'm, I am, I'm legally obligated to return profits to the shareholder.

01:32:18.040 Well, the Chinese company is operating under a completely different system.

01:32:21.980 Right.

01:32:22.460 And so that's where you begin to see, gosh, this is probably super in the weeds, but that's

01:32:25.820 where you begin to see like this international power play.

01:32:29.000 And like you're talking about, like where the U S is so focused on profits.

01:32:33.640 China's like, cool.

01:32:34.380 You're super focused on profits.

01:32:35.820 We're focused on the future.

01:32:37.040 And we can manipulate you because you're super focused on profits.

01:32:40.700 Oh, because if they own a fourth of the, of the industry.

01:32:44.120 Yeah.

01:32:44.520 Or, or they, they just know, like the American company is always going to do whatever is

01:32:48.380 most profitable.

01:32:49.940 And, and, and we don't like, so we can buy that, you know, like they, they, they know

01:32:54.860 how our system works and they're getting better at manipulating that system is like right

01:32:59.400 out of the gate.

01:32:59.820 When I started looking at this.

01:33:00.560 Oh, I see what you're saying.

01:33:01.040 So instead of this, of this American company saying, Hey, this is an American company, let's

01:33:04.560 keep it here.

01:33:05.520 Let's keep it American.

01:33:06.580 It's a part of like, you know, it affects our GDP, all these sorts of things.

01:33:11.760 Um, they just think, Oh, for profit.

01:33:14.900 And China knows that.

01:33:16.040 So it's like, let's just pay more and we'll definitely get it.

01:33:18.120 That's exactly a wrap.

01:33:19.280 That's it.

01:33:19.660 Because the way that the American companies built their shareholders would get upset if

01:33:23.220 they didn't, if they took a vote, the shareholders were like, why didn't you do it?

01:33:26.480 We would have made dividends or whatever.

01:33:27.780 Not only why we didn't you, but we could sue you and probably win if you didn't return

01:33:32.120 us the max profits.

01:33:33.640 And so China has, China has sovereign wealth funds, which are literally trillions and trillions

01:33:39.400 of dollars of pools of cash.

01:33:41.400 Whose money is it?

01:33:42.080 Theirs?

01:33:42.560 It's their money.

01:33:43.180 Yeah.

01:33:43.660 Individuals or the government?

01:33:44.680 The government's.

01:33:45.300 Okay.

01:33:45.520 Yep.

01:33:45.880 And the government can decide how to allocate that.

01:33:48.980 Right.

01:33:49.500 And so the, you know, if, if the U S had that, you'd always be allocating it for whatever's

01:33:54.520 going to make you the most profits.

01:33:56.080 China's going to be allocating it potentially for whatever gives them the most political strength,

01:34:00.780 whatever makes them the most powerful country.

01:34:02.860 It's very different.

01:34:03.960 And that's what sovereign wealth funds are.

01:34:05.500 And they've become huge.

01:34:07.000 As I understand it, I wouldn't talk to this professor, this academic at Stanford, who's

01:34:11.180 one of the foremost experts in the country on these things.

01:34:13.780 As I understand it, it's a fairly, they're fairly new.

01:34:16.300 The, the middle Eastern countries, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, they also have really big sovereign

01:34:22.740 wealth funds.

01:34:23.320 China's got really big sovereign wealth funds.

01:34:25.980 Surprisingly, Norway has a really big sovereign wealth fund, but they can use these things

01:34:31.160 strategically, especially against like a profit driven country like the U S.

01:34:35.960 Wow.

01:34:37.220 So it's crazy to think that being profitable could be your weakness.

01:34:41.420 That's interesting, right?

01:34:43.700 Yeah.

01:34:45.240 Wow.

01:34:46.220 The world's largest sovereign wealth fund as of December, 2022 was China investment corporation

01:34:50.800 managing assets, reaching around a 1.35 trillion U S dollars.

01:34:54.840 Where do we rank in that?

01:34:56.280 Pull up like the top 10 list of sovereign wealth funds.

01:34:59.500 Norway, Qatar.

01:35:01.000 GIC, the one we just talked about national welfare, I know China, China investment corporation

01:35:07.200 and Tamasek that's Singapore public investment fund could be us, but who knows?

01:35:14.400 Oh, it's Saudi Arabia.

01:35:16.160 Huh?

01:35:17.160 So those are the big 10 biggest sovereign wealth funds.

01:35:19.780 So those can really, somebody's got to have a list for how much assets each of them have

01:35:23.480 at 1.7 trillion seems small to me, but we're not even on the top 10 list.

01:35:27.180 We don't, we don't operate a sovereign.

01:35:28.720 As far as I know, we, the U S doesn't operate a sovereign wealth fund like this because it's

01:35:33.380 not how we think.

01:35:34.660 Got it.

01:35:35.400 Yeah.

01:35:36.060 Hmm.

01:35:37.200 Yeah.

01:35:37.600 You start to, yeah, you don't, uh, you don't think about how perspective and mindset, um,

01:35:44.160 affects how an entire country operates.

01:35:46.120 Really?

01:35:46.800 No, the United States does not have a federal sovereign wealth fund, but several States

01:35:50.560 do.

01:35:50.780 These funds are usually smaller than international SF, SWFs and can serve different purposes.

01:35:55.960 For example, the Alaska permanent fund corporation established in the early 1980s has roughly 67

01:36:01.540 billion in assets and was created to ensure that Alaskan citizens benefited from oil extracted

01:36:07.020 from state lands.

01:36:07.740 Wow.

01:36:08.020 So that's some forward.

01:36:08.680 And that's like Norway too.

01:36:09.840 Norway's is very similar to Alaska where it's like, they, they, they are an oil wealthy

01:36:13.460 nation.

01:36:13.820 And so they created a sovereign wealth fund, um, to bet, to benefit the citizens.

01:36:18.240 Oh, that's smart.

01:36:19.180 Texas also, it says has two sovereign wealth funds, including the Texas permanent school

01:36:23.260 fund, which was founded in 1854 and manages 46.5 billion in assets to benefit public schools.

01:36:29.280 Wow.

01:36:30.280 That's pretty incredible.

01:36:31.560 Yeah.

01:36:31.980 Just to think that they had that forethought.

01:36:33.580 Yeah.

01:36:33.800 Yeah.

01:36:33.980 Totally.

01:36:34.400 And they're going to think maybe I'm going to own the land, the schools on just different things

01:36:36.760 like that.

01:36:37.180 Yeah.

01:36:37.540 And then, so these foreign countries have these massive pools of cash that they can

01:36:41.780 use strategically.

01:36:43.300 Yeah.

01:36:43.720 It started, it gets interesting, man.

01:36:45.240 You start like seeing the, the, the, the, the chess players on the board, like moving

01:36:48.880 in different ways.

01:36:50.960 What states are, um, are looking out for their land?

01:36:56.740 What states are kind of at the head of the forefront?

01:36:58.240 Were you able to notice any of that?

01:36:59.400 Uh, off the top of my head, you know, well, so like, I think Iowa has a law that, that

01:37:05.680 foreign companies, uh, can't own farmland in Iowa.

01:37:10.400 It's off the top of my head.

01:37:12.260 And, um, but like, is it, you know, like the question is, is like, does it really matter

01:37:19.100 if it's a foreign company or a domestic company if they're doing good by the local people?

01:37:24.740 Right.

01:37:25.380 Right.

01:37:25.640 Like ultimately in that, like, who cares?

01:37:28.000 Like, are you doing well by the local people?

01:37:30.360 Is there enough water there?

01:37:32.120 Are you creating jobs?

01:37:33.360 Like, you know, is it like people, local people prospering?

01:37:36.700 Like, that's like, I don't know, at the end of the day, like what people are going to

01:37:39.200 care about.

01:37:40.040 Right.

01:37:40.300 Right.

01:37:40.540 Like, I think what becomes dangerous is when you see these things that are just like highly

01:37:45.280 extractive to the, to the detriment, you know, of the local folks who are seeing

01:37:50.440 their water disappear, um, who aren't seeing like a lot of job creation, you know, like

01:37:56.180 right.

01:37:56.500 There's no return on it for them.

01:37:58.020 Yeah.

01:37:58.380 Right.

01:37:58.680 And especially if it's their space, you know, I even pulled up on that Saudi farm.

01:38:02.200 I remember, I think I pulled up visas and they were bringing in, uh, workers, if I'm

01:38:06.980 recalling correctly from the Philippines, you know, so they'd be like, well, we're creating

01:38:10.140 jobs.

01:38:10.480 And I'm like, man, you guys are pulling visas.

01:38:11.780 So you're bringing in workers from the Philippines to work on your farm.

01:38:14.500 Yeah.

01:38:14.960 You know, like, yeah, you probably have, yeah, you probably have farmers right in the area that

01:38:19.260 would do it.

01:38:19.740 Yeah.

01:38:20.400 So, um, yeah.

01:38:21.960 So these things are so many loopholes and stuff.

01:38:24.700 There's so many tricky ways out there.

01:38:28.300 Yeah.

01:38:29.140 So when you look at like places not having enough water, right.

01:38:32.480 Yeah.

01:38:32.680 America has a lot of water.

01:38:34.140 Totally.

01:38:34.800 Right.

01:38:35.060 And a lot of land in a small population.

01:38:36.880 Okay.

01:38:37.240 So we're probably in a really good space.

01:38:39.360 We're in a good space.

01:38:40.140 Right.

01:38:40.520 Yep.

01:38:40.840 What places aren't in good spaces?

01:38:42.380 And we're in a good space, except for like these like regional examples, right?

01:38:45.380 Like places in the West and the Southwest places that are going to get potentially a lot

01:38:49.520 hotter, you know?

01:38:51.240 Um, so I, I got these classified cables answering your question.

01:38:55.220 Like what places aren't in a good space?

01:38:57.380 I got these classified cables and I'm from, uh, the U S embassy that had gone.

01:39:01.960 What does that mean?

01:39:02.440 Like, uh, diplomatic cables that the state department was sending back from its embassy in Switzerland

01:39:07.020 back to, uh, the U S government here.

01:39:09.400 Sometimes that stuff goes to like CIA, the state department, other, other cables.

01:39:13.080 What's the term?

01:39:13.520 It's paperwork or.

01:39:14.620 Yeah.

01:39:14.880 It's like a report they'll send back.

01:39:16.520 Yeah.

01:39:16.840 Got it.

01:39:17.160 Um, and, uh, and so there, the, some folks from the U S embassy in Switzerland had gone

01:39:23.040 to the headquarters of Nestle and Nestle is like the world's largest food company.

01:39:28.440 And the chief economist at Nestle sort of gave them a tour and like a perspective from

01:39:33.400 the world's largest food company about how screwed up everything was.

01:39:37.320 And they talked about the regions that were going to get hit hardest by not having enough

01:39:42.200 water.

01:39:42.520 And so that's like China.

01:39:44.720 Um, it was like India, the middle East, but it was also the Western United States, you

01:39:50.400 know, like the Western United States is in a pretty tough spot when it comes to having

01:39:54.340 enough water to keep doing all the things they're currently doing.

01:39:57.720 Um, and so, um, yeah.

01:40:00.120 And that was like the hot take from Nestle was like, you know, forget about it.

01:40:04.820 At that time it was like the, the, the, it was 2009.

01:40:06.900 It was the great recession and Nestle is just like, forget about it.

01:40:10.580 That's going to resolve itself.

01:40:12.060 The world is running out of enough water to feed everybody.

01:40:14.880 Right.

01:40:15.280 Yeah.

01:40:15.760 And so do States start to plan ahead?

01:40:17.800 You think some of them would, I think some of them do these things like water.

01:40:21.220 People will always tell you water is super local.

01:40:23.860 Right.

01:40:24.380 And so some counties, some regions within States and some States themselves are doing better

01:40:29.620 than others.

01:40:30.440 And some countries are definitely doing better than others just in terms of like planning

01:40:34.620 ahead, you know?

01:40:36.280 Um, and, and it is solvable, man.

01:40:38.280 That's like the thing with, with a lot of the issues that we face, you know, like we

01:40:42.180 can do, we're a super smart species, you know, like we've, we've done a lot of stuff.

01:40:46.460 We could still do a lot of stuff.

01:40:47.840 We just have to move off of the trend lines that we're currently headed on, you know?

01:40:51.360 And those trend lines are more like me, me, me instead of us.

01:40:55.440 Is that it?

01:40:56.000 Or is it like, cause is there enough water for everybody?

01:40:58.460 Uh, there is enough water to grow enough food that everyone in the world could eat.

01:41:02.720 Not even like today, man, which we, what are we?

01:41:04.620 7 billion people or so, like there's enough water to grow enough food to feed 10 billion

01:41:08.900 people, you know?

01:41:10.140 Like it's not just a population.

01:41:11.680 It's you.

01:41:12.300 It kind of goes back to what I was saying about China where it's like, they just, now they're

01:41:15.820 just wealthier, man.

01:41:16.680 And they're eating more meat.

01:41:17.740 And, and Nestle in that, in that classified cable said like, if everyone in the world ate

01:41:23.000 as much meat per capita as Americans do, we would have run out of fresh water in the

01:41:27.980 year 2000.

01:41:29.040 Wow.

01:41:29.680 Right.

01:41:29.880 And, and I'm not a vegetarian, I'm not a vegan, right?

01:41:32.420 I'm just like, this is what the world's largest food company is saying, you know?

01:41:36.240 And, um, I know people love beef and I know people love steak, you know?

01:41:39.960 And like it's there, but like, but that's all of it.

01:41:42.860 But when it comes to like, how can we shift, how can we take some personal responsibility

01:41:48.120 to putting us in a place we want to be?

01:41:50.480 That's one area we can look at.

01:41:52.100 And it's not even saying like, you need to become vegetarian or vegan.

01:41:55.660 It's just like, how much meat do you need to be a healthy human?

01:41:58.940 Right.

01:41:59.140 Right.

01:41:59.400 And you got people with obesity and heart attacks, you know, and all these issues.

01:42:03.120 Oh, you got people damn snorting meat out there.

01:42:05.340 Dude.

01:42:05.560 You know, you got some real, um, mammal pervs out there.

01:42:10.620 You know, people who will just cook anything that's wandered up on their porch even and

01:42:14.500 eat it.

01:42:15.020 And won't even share with their spouse either.

01:42:17.000 I had a buddy that had a t-shirt and this is in San Francisco.

01:42:20.940 So he definitely, he definitely pissed people off.

01:42:23.060 But his shirt said, uh, meat is murder.

01:42:25.680 Delicious, delicious murder.

01:42:28.200 Just trolling people.

01:42:29.600 Yeah.

01:42:30.160 Yeah.

01:42:30.360 That's definitely, definitely.

01:42:32.660 People love it.

01:42:34.940 Um, well, you do have businesses like, um, Bill Gates is starting like a beyond meat.

01:42:41.980 Is that his company or no?

01:42:43.120 I can't remember if he invested in that one.

01:42:44.900 There's like, yeah, beyond meat, impossible burgers.

01:42:47.560 Yeah.

01:42:47.700 I think it's impossible burgers.

01:42:48.740 Maybe.

01:42:49.340 Yeah.

01:42:49.460 A lot of those guys got really, they got funding.

01:42:51.460 And again, those were like, that's a way to replace meat with a less water intensive meat

01:42:57.440 substitute, you know, something that tastes like meat.

01:42:59.460 Right.

01:43:00.000 Yeah.

01:43:00.300 Right.

01:43:00.540 So that's one way that people could preserve water.

01:43:03.520 Probably we still have to grow the.

01:43:05.760 Yeah.

01:43:06.180 It just requires a lot, lot, lot less water to eat a grain than it does to feed enough

01:43:12.100 grains to eat an animal.

01:43:13.620 Got it.

01:43:14.160 Yeah.

01:43:14.580 And what about other methods that people, you hear about like a desalinization, you hear

01:43:19.080 about cloud seeding.

01:43:20.420 Yeah.

01:43:20.940 I'm not sure what other methods they are.

01:43:22.580 I believe cloud seeding is very expensive.

01:43:25.240 Yeah.

01:43:25.460 And I don't know as much about cloud seeding.

01:43:27.120 And I remember like one of my buddies, he learned I was doing this and I'd moved off

01:43:30.200 organized crime.

01:43:30.820 And I was looking at this, you got to look at cloud seeding.

01:43:32.480 And I was like, dude, that's some conspiracy shit you read online.

01:43:35.180 And I looked at it and I was like, oh no, people do really do cloud seeding.

01:43:38.620 Like I think the ski resorts were doing cloud seeding.

01:43:40.580 I think the Israeli government was doing cloud seeding.

01:43:43.200 But yeah, I think it's expensive.

01:43:44.980 It hasn't really found a practical application.

01:43:47.200 As far as I know, this isn't my area of expertise.

01:43:49.860 Like desal, desal I'm more familiar with.

01:43:53.480 Cloud seeding is a weather modification technique that improves a cloud's ability to produce rain

01:43:57.340 or snow by introducing tiny ice nuclei into certain types of sub freezing clouds.

01:44:03.440 So you have a cloud that's already there.

01:44:05.740 And I guess you then, it looks like just fire ice particles into it.

01:44:11.500 And precipitates the rain out or something.

01:44:14.360 Four hour operation.

01:44:15.640 A four hour operation that seeds 24 clouds can cost around $5,000.

01:44:21.500 Wow.

01:44:22.260 So rich people could have rain or something if they wanted to have like a Noah's art party

01:44:25.880 or like the perfect storm, if they wanted to do a perfect storm reenactment of that movie.

01:44:33.940 Per acre, cloud seeding operations can cost around $0.40 per planted acre or $10 to $15

01:44:39.840 per acre foot for additional water.

01:44:42.740 That's in Utah.

01:44:43.500 Well, that's actually not, you know, this is not my area of expertise, but $10 to $15 for

01:44:48.020 an acre foot of water.

01:44:49.000 That's a lot of water.

01:44:49.860 And that's a, that's a really low price.

01:44:53.100 So if that, you know, and that's in Utah specifically, right?

01:44:56.160 So they've got to have their own like climatology, their own hydrology, like so it can be super

01:45:01.460 specific, but $10 to $15 for an acre foot is really cheap for water.

01:45:06.520 Yeah.

01:45:07.080 Because you start talking about desalination plant and now you're talking about $2,000 per

01:45:12.000 acre foot.

01:45:12.660 Really?

01:45:13.200 Yeah.

01:45:13.580 So that's very expensive.

01:45:14.640 Yeah.

01:45:14.860 And like we're growing tomatoes typically with like $50 per acre foot water and an acre

01:45:19.920 foot just, it's a, it's, it's actually super simple.

01:45:23.560 It's how, if an acre foot is the equivalent of flooding an acre of land with one foot of

01:45:28.880 water.

01:45:29.380 Okay.

01:45:30.040 Yeah.

01:45:31.180 The global cloud seeding market is estimated to have a valuation of $131.4 million in 2023

01:45:37.400 over the forecast period from 2023 to 2030, it is projected to experience substantial growth

01:45:43.000 with an estimated compound annual growth of 5.8%.

01:45:46.860 By 2030, the market is expected to reach a value of $194.4 million.

01:45:51.960 So it's getting more popular.

01:45:54.260 They're saying this is a market insights website.

01:45:59.060 So if, I don't know if that's legit or not, but what else does it say?

01:46:02.620 Anything else on there?

01:46:04.120 Here's an article right here.

01:46:05.240 Not since, not since Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800 AD has the American

01:46:10.900 West been so dry, a recent study in nature climate change found the period 2000 to 2021

01:46:16.640 was the driest in 22 years in more than a millennium, attributing a fifth of that anomaly to human

01:46:22.580 cause climate change.

01:46:24.780 Hmm.

01:46:25.900 Lake Mead and Lake Powell have reached their lowest levels ever, triggering unprecedented

01:46:30.280 cuts in water allocations.

01:46:31.740 Cloud seeding operations have also expanded in water stress regions outside.

01:46:38.520 Let me see.

01:46:39.300 Within the past two years, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and California have expanded cloud

01:46:43.740 seeding operations.

01:46:47.100 Hmm.

01:46:47.900 So they're trying it.

01:46:49.760 Yeah.

01:46:50.140 And it, I mean, I know, I remember the ski resorts doing it and people are doing it.

01:46:54.360 I wonder how much water ultimately you're going to be able to squeeze out of the atmosphere

01:46:58.800 by shooting these minerals up into it.

01:47:01.400 But yeah.

01:47:02.340 Ian, how effective is it?

01:47:03.940 Like if you, if you spend the money to shoot the water, to put the particles out there,

01:47:08.300 but cloud seeding should not be thought of as a response to drought.

01:47:10.880 Experts agree for one, in a drought, there are likely to be fewer seedable storms.

01:47:15.060 That's a good point.

01:47:16.120 And when there are storms, even the estimates from cloud seeding companies themselves show

01:47:20.320 the practice increases precipitation by only around 10% in a given area.

01:47:24.760 That might be worth the effort when every acre foot counts, but it's not going to end

01:47:28.700 a drought across an entire region.

01:47:30.620 So you have to have a storm already there.

01:47:32.660 I see.

01:47:33.380 Yeah.

01:47:34.060 So that's kind of interesting.

01:47:35.400 Oh, super interesting.

01:47:36.380 You can't just completely create a storm.

01:47:38.660 Not yet anyway.

01:47:39.460 Right.

01:47:39.760 Right.

01:47:40.060 It's like terraforming the earth at that point.

01:47:41.900 Yeah.

01:47:42.340 Yeah.

01:47:42.680 That gets right.

01:47:44.300 That gets, yeah.

01:47:45.120 When it becomes like air sims or whatever, it's going to get weird.

01:47:47.700 And what about desalinization?

01:47:49.460 It's super expensive.

01:47:50.660 Okay.

01:47:50.880 Because like basically it takes a ton of energy, like electricity, to basically push

01:47:56.660 water through what's just like a giant filter and pull out the salt or whatever it is that's

01:48:02.520 contaminated the water.

01:48:04.040 And so it ends up, the water ends up costing, you know, a hundred times what, you know, farmers

01:48:10.040 can, are paying for it now.

01:48:11.700 And oftentimes it makes crops unaffordable.

01:48:13.520 So it's good for like drinking water.

01:48:15.860 Dude, people use desal all the time for drinking water.

01:48:18.460 And, and for some industrial use, but at the price it becomes very difficult to create

01:48:24.140 food with that expensive of water.

01:48:27.060 Are some countries saying you can't buy land here?

01:48:28.900 Some countries are like that, right?

01:48:30.100 For sure.

01:48:30.580 Right.

01:48:30.980 Yeah.

01:48:31.160 Yeah.

01:48:31.500 They, you know, and, and, and, and they're saying you can't grow that type of crop here

01:48:34.720 because it requires too much water.

01:48:36.320 Yeah.

01:48:36.680 Right.

01:48:37.440 There, there are people are other countries getting really selective as to how their water

01:48:42.520 is going to be used and what, what it can be used for.

01:48:45.120 It's so tough for us to think because we've manipulated so many other markets and has

01:48:49.200 done things ourselves, you know, you would go upstream from your neighbor and split that

01:48:53.880 river that split that Creek that's headed your way if you had to.

01:48:57.260 And that's what, that's what you're seeing.

01:48:58.680 And that's, you know, people are just seeing like the river, their village relies on all

01:49:02.340 of a sudden now is diverted.

01:49:04.020 And it's a, it's for a palm oil plantation.

01:49:06.140 Right.

01:49:06.540 Um, and that's more and more of what you're seeing in Africa and places like that.

01:49:10.740 You mean?

01:49:11.140 Yeah.

01:49:11.520 All Central America, like Guatemala, I think has one of the largest expanding, um, palm

01:49:16.280 oil plantation in the world.

01:49:18.760 We have, what do you think there's a way, a solution?

01:49:22.400 Like, yeah.

01:49:22.620 What do you look at is.

01:49:24.120 Well, first off, I think people just need to know what's happening.

01:49:26.540 Right.

01:49:26.860 Just like bottom line.

01:49:27.640 Like you're saying.

01:49:27.960 Yeah.

01:49:28.180 Bottom line.

01:49:28.940 And then, and then dude, we just need to empower and push our government to putting forward

01:49:33.240 like the best minds.

01:49:34.200 Because, you know, I think like right now, basically the laws that we have on the books

01:49:38.600 for water around this country were, are from like the 1800s.

01:49:43.100 Yeah.

01:49:43.480 Right.

01:49:43.800 Like when water, when there were few people, there was water was plentiful.

01:49:47.800 Yeah.

01:49:47.980 No gargling water in church and stuff.

01:49:50.120 You're like, that's, that shouldn't be in the, uh, in the, um, state doctrine, you know?

01:49:56.180 Yeah.

01:49:56.940 And, and, and now, and now water's tight and there's a lot more people.

01:50:00.340 And so we, you know, they need to go back onto the books and revise the laws to be like,

01:50:04.500 okay, so what do we want our water laws to look like in this place, given the realities

01:50:08.860 we have now in the 21st century and not the 19th century.

01:50:11.760 Right.

01:50:12.100 Like it's kind of, it's like all this stuff, man, it's kind of common sense, but we're just

01:50:15.740 not getting it done.

01:50:17.020 Yeah.

01:50:17.380 And it's like, how is it tough to get it done when, um, a lot of the great minds,

01:50:23.740 it feels like are working on the other side of, uh, popular sentiment, like a fair statement.

01:50:31.620 Yeah.

01:50:31.800 How do you mean?

01:50:32.300 Like, which like that, the best researchers and a lot of great, um, journalists and lobbyists

01:50:38.560 even are working for bigger companies, um, are in the private sector more to garner information

01:50:48.320 and learn information to give that to the private sector to better do their doings that

01:50:53.040 they're doing.

01:50:53.660 Does that make sense?

01:50:54.300 It does.

01:50:54.600 I think, you know, journalists are always going to try to give the information to the public.

01:50:57.840 There's just fewer of them.

01:50:59.020 Right.

01:50:59.160 And yeah, I think the private sector has a lot more resources to manipulate, you know,

01:51:04.980 the markets to what they want.

01:51:06.620 Right.

01:51:07.040 Which oftentimes can be quarterly profits or annual profits.

01:51:10.760 Um, and we need our government to be like, okay, okay, okay.

01:51:13.740 But what's in our long-term best interest, right?

01:51:16.600 Like, what do we want for, for your, for your kids and your grandkids?

01:51:20.540 Um, and I think that's where, where we really need to be pushing folks.

01:51:24.180 Yeah.

01:51:24.540 And some of the, some of the companies are doing it not because they're beholding to their

01:51:28.140 stockholders who are the very people who are wishing they wouldn't, that companies

01:51:32.200 wouldn't do this sort of thing.

01:51:33.200 That's really crazy, isn't it?

01:51:35.440 I mean, dude, you, you, you seen the duck and it's like in the duck, man.

01:51:38.500 It's like, so Holly Irwin is, is the County supervisor in Arizona that we follow.

01:51:42.700 So, and what County is that in?

01:51:44.400 It's in La Paz County.

01:51:45.560 Okay.

01:51:45.780 Right.

01:51:46.120 And that's like a deeply red County.

01:51:48.080 You know, Holly is, is a Republican, like a conservative Republican.

01:51:52.120 And now she's, she's fighting for what people might be like, that's an environmental issue.

01:51:55.620 No, she's fighting for the water of the country, of the County.

01:51:58.820 Right.

01:51:59.720 And she's working with Democrats, which is great.

01:52:01.840 Like you got Republicans and Democrats coming together finally to like work on something

01:52:06.040 and come up with solutions.

01:52:07.940 Um, but what I showed to Holly was, and she didn't know this, you know, she's like,

01:52:12.680 Oh, the Saudis have come, they're taking our water, you know?

01:52:15.620 And I said, but Holly, look here, this is your pension fund from the state of Arizona.

01:52:20.440 Look what it's invested in that farm right over there.

01:52:23.480 That's shipping hay to China and the UAE that was bought with your pension fund money.

01:52:28.680 Like it's your own pension fund.

01:52:30.440 Your retirement fund is, is helping export the water that you need to stay, to be here

01:52:36.060 and for people to retire here.

01:52:37.980 But how I'm not following that.

01:52:39.400 Yeah.

01:52:39.680 Right.

01:52:40.000 So like how they use the money.

01:52:41.620 So they had a pension fund, but the Saudis came in and bought the land.

01:52:45.280 So that's a separate one, right?

01:52:46.520 So you got the Saudis are there, um, but there's another big farm, um, owned by, uh, uh, a company

01:52:53.780 out of North Carolina and the Arizona state pension fund gave a bunch of money to that, to

01:53:00.080 IFC, this company out of North Carolina.

01:53:01.980 And then IFC rented it to, uh, uh, a company from the United Arab Emirates that's controlled

01:53:09.240 by like the, the brother of the ruler of the country that the, the, the, that's controlled

01:53:13.600 by a guy whose like job it is to control national security in the country.

01:53:17.000 And so they're shipping it overseas.

01:53:18.540 And so like at the end of the day, Holly's pension fund, you know, she's like fighting

01:53:22.760 so hard to keep the water there in her County.

01:53:25.260 So people can stay there.

01:53:26.440 And then our own pension fund is financing a deal that shipping water overseas, right?

01:53:30.560 Cause it's more short-term profit than it is a long-term vision.

01:53:33.440 Yeah.

01:53:33.880 And so how do you try to align those things?

01:53:35.220 How do you, how do you align with Holly wants money to retire on Holly wants water for her

01:53:40.600 County to live on for the next hundred plus years.

01:53:42.860 Right.

01:53:43.320 Wow.

01:53:45.380 Interesting, man.

01:53:46.460 Um, what were some other, there was some other stories that I was investigating that you

01:53:50.180 had, uh, or that I was researching that you had looked at.

01:53:53.020 Um, one that I found was interesting was this Somali pirate scenario.

01:53:57.220 Yeah.

01:53:57.460 Isn't that interesting?

01:53:58.000 So this was a guy from the intelligence community who told me this, you know, and, and, um, wasn't

01:54:01.880 the only person that told me this, but he just said, look, like Somali pirates, like we

01:54:07.280 think of them as like pirates, like they took to the high seas, you know, like, but what

01:54:11.140 they were, they were fishermen.

01:54:12.400 They were just fishermen along the coast and foreign trawlers from other country, the

01:54:18.080 countries, I think his example was primarily China were coming in and just depleting the

01:54:23.400 fishing stocks.

01:54:24.040 Right.

01:54:24.340 So these guys that are on the Somali coast, they got pretty basic systems for fishing.

01:54:29.860 Yeah.

01:54:30.040 And then these big bad-ass boats come in with these super deep nets and they just scoop

01:54:35.180 up all the fish.

01:54:36.620 So what do the dudes do?

01:54:37.860 The same thing you and I would do if somebody was doing that to us, we come together, we

01:54:41.780 sit around, we have a drink.

01:54:43.220 We're like, dude, how do we stop that?

01:54:44.780 And we're like, dude, next time one of those things come through, we're going to go out

01:54:47.800 there in our shitty little boat with some guns and take it over and tell them to stop

01:54:51.560 doing it.

01:54:52.000 And we create like a little small coast guard.

01:54:54.080 Well, that sounds like what they kind of did.

01:54:55.960 Right.

01:54:56.360 And so then they have a little coast guard and they're trying to fight back against these

01:54:59.320 trawlers.

01:54:59.960 And then they take one hostage and they're like, dude, you guys have been taking all our

01:55:02.900 fish.

01:55:03.180 Give us money and we'll give you your boat back because you've been taking all our fish.

01:55:06.140 And they do.

01:55:07.140 Right.

01:55:07.460 And then they're like, well, that kind of escalates because maybe we should get a bigger, we should

01:55:11.220 hijack a bigger boat next time because now we don't have any fish.

01:55:14.460 Like we're not selling anything.

01:55:15.960 We can't buy our kids books.

01:55:17.280 Now they're in the boat abduction business.

01:55:18.600 Yes.

01:55:18.980 Yeah.

01:55:19.240 Right.

01:55:19.560 And so that's how these things evolved.

01:55:21.500 It started as some dudes just being like, we just wanted to protect our fishing stock.

01:55:25.860 Wow.

01:55:26.160 Right.

01:55:26.440 To being like, now we're taking over huge oil tankers and demanding.

01:55:29.980 And then, and then when that happened, and then the oil tankers hire mercenaries or private

01:55:33.720 security corporations to come in, oftentimes former like special forces guys.

01:55:37.460 You know, guys that have, that have a background working for, for a national military service

01:55:42.900 and they come in with guns and they're blowing everyone up.

01:55:45.200 And you're like, these dudes at the beginning of this story, these dudes just wanted their

01:55:49.180 fish.

01:55:49.880 Right.

01:55:50.500 They just wanted their food supply.

01:55:52.160 Yes.

01:55:53.120 Which is so ironic because it's really the same other, same thing we're talking about.

01:55:57.060 It is, man.

01:55:57.700 It's like, they just wanted to eat.

01:55:59.400 Yep.

01:55:59.720 It's super basic.

01:56:00.520 And when they did, when you're not eating two months later, you are a pirate.

01:56:06.400 Yeah.

01:56:06.680 It turns out, man, if we solve like something super basic, like just making sure everyone

01:56:10.880 around the world has enough food, we're going to see, because this is the other thing is

01:56:14.260 like Boko Haram.

01:56:16.300 Again, I mean, I could go on to these stories forever, man.

01:56:18.360 And what is Boko Haram?

01:56:19.300 It's a terrorist organization in Nigeria and in that, in that region of the world.

01:56:24.100 Well, that was where Lake Chad was.

01:56:25.420 And if you look back on maps, satellite maps of Lake Chad, like 30 years ago, it was the

01:56:29.620 giant lake.

01:56:30.240 And now it's just like a pond.

01:56:31.860 It's shrunk way down because people have been diverting the rivers that flow into it for

01:56:36.200 farming fields.

01:56:36.940 And the people that lived there that were fishing out of that, it was a huge lake.

01:56:40.780 Like they lost their livelihoods and then people start getting pissed.

01:56:44.320 They start getting radicalized.

01:56:45.660 People are hungry.

01:56:46.780 Then like some, some people with crazy ideas start being like, well, you join my group,

01:56:51.140 I'll feed you.

01:56:52.220 People are taken from us all of a sudden, you know, just like, and it just spirals, man.

01:56:56.160 And then you just end up with these crazy groups that are abducting children that are

01:56:59.820 blowing things up.

01:57:00.800 And like the beginning, like the, the origin of that story was like, people got thrown

01:57:06.160 into shit by not having their basic necessities met like food and then things spiral out of

01:57:11.720 control.

01:57:12.120 Right.

01:57:12.520 A little like Mad Max kind of style, you know?

01:57:14.680 I mean, it could get really weird everywhere.

01:57:16.740 Yeah.

01:57:17.280 So that's what like, that's what we're hoping doesn't happen.

01:57:20.060 Right.

01:57:21.600 But then, you know, it's life.

01:57:24.580 It's always gone on.

01:57:25.740 Society has always gone on in some form or other, whether we end up in tribes or

01:57:30.780 whatever, you know, it's like, that's humanity.

01:57:34.360 You know, you start to get this idea of what humanity is based on your own childhood and

01:57:38.300 things you've heard or, and also the safety that we feel in America.

01:57:41.820 Don't you feel like we've lost our tribes, our community though?

01:57:44.140 Like everyone's got their little, like a hundred percent suburb.

01:57:47.340 They don't have to interact with anybody anymore.

01:57:49.600 And like a hundred percent, everybody's just like, like, yeah.

01:57:53.180 And it's, um, I feel like a country of loneliness, man.

01:57:56.260 I feel like half the problems we see is just cause people feel isolated and lonely and

01:58:00.360 depressed and they're not like, they're not like in a community anymore.

01:58:03.440 They're not seeing the same people every Sunday or they're not going out.

01:58:06.540 Like, dude, I play ice hockey, right?

01:58:08.100 I play ice hockey and those dudes are awesome.

01:58:10.780 And I am so lucky to be able to go and see that same group of cool dudes and just play

01:58:14.840 hockey and have that community.

01:58:16.720 And like, I think a lot of us in so much of our communities around what going out to

01:58:20.260 the bar and getting drunk.

01:58:21.300 And like, I used to drink a lot and now I think alcohol is a shitty drug, right?

01:58:25.780 Like, I think it's bad medicine.

01:58:27.080 Like, you know, I think I, I view like, you know, a lot of this stuff, I think they should

01:58:31.240 be viewed medicinally and yeah.

01:58:33.120 It's just like sports piss almost really, you know, I mean, yeah, I don't drink.

01:58:37.880 I mean, I prefer cocaine probably, but that's not even that good for you.

01:58:41.560 And it's like, I think, um, yeah, I definitely feel you though.

01:58:45.880 It's like, where do you meet up with people?

01:58:47.540 I mean, I go to a recovery meeting, so I've seen people there all the time.

01:58:50.380 So you have like some semblance of groupness, but yeah, it's like everybody gets their food

01:58:54.240 delivered a lot of times, the family.

01:58:57.440 It's just, you're staring at a phone, your food's getting delivered.

01:59:00.360 You're not going outside.

01:59:01.880 And it's like, how do we reinstill like a stronger community in the U S right?

01:59:07.300 Because like, I, okay, dude, I have a little cabin in a teeny town, like a hundred people.

01:59:11.520 And those people are across the board politically on the spectrum.

01:59:15.220 And it doesn't matter if somebody's voting one way and somebody else is voting the other

01:59:19.280 way.

01:59:19.520 If somebody's like house floods, people are going to show up, right?

01:59:23.300 People are going to help each other out.

01:59:24.600 Like that's, that's what it is to be a good person.

01:59:26.540 It's not who you vote for or what you necessarily like your political ethos.

01:59:30.420 It's like, dude, did something bad happen to you?

01:59:32.920 Does your community come out and support you?

01:59:34.520 Like that's community.

01:59:35.280 And that's what I feel like we're losing, right?

01:59:37.000 We're so distracted about, I feel like petty crap right now that we're forgetting it's time.

01:59:41.860 We just need to show up for each other.

01:59:43.680 Yeah.

01:59:44.040 I wonder if you're going to see more of an influx towards like religious services, even

01:59:49.900 not even entirely for religion, but for community.

01:59:53.220 It's like some of the first places you go back to for community.

01:59:56.180 Like one thing that I always loved about church was just seeing like the kids play together.

02:00:00.960 You're all sitting there in peace.

02:00:02.540 Even it's like, if you, if you're just in your own thoughts, like thinking of something

02:00:06.620 bigger than yourself, no matter what your denomination was or whatever, or yeah.

02:00:11.260 Yeah.

02:00:11.620 Yeah.

02:00:11.820 So I grew up, my dad was a Lutheran pastor and, uh, and, and I, you know, I don't, I

02:00:16.220 don't go to, I don't go to church anymore.

02:00:17.660 I don't follow those beliefs anymore, but I miss that Sunday get together, man, because

02:00:22.180 you would show up and you know, there would be like a tax preparer there and you knew you

02:00:26.820 would see them every Sunday and you could rely on them.

02:00:28.860 There was a mechanic that was there and you knew that they'd show up every Sunday and

02:00:31.960 you would rely and they weren't going to screw you.

02:00:33.580 And there was a sense of community, like in that community where people that had vocational

02:00:37.760 trades across the board and you could trust each other and you could know each other and

02:00:41.040 you could ask them questions, you could get knowledge, you could share experience, you

02:00:44.380 could carry each other, right?

02:00:45.540 Like showing up to that one place every week and having that community.

02:00:49.560 That's what I feel like so much is what that's been lost.

02:00:53.200 I feel like it'll be a few generations and I feel like there will be a rebellious generation

02:00:58.240 that will throw off the VR headsets and masturbate naturally.

02:01:03.660 If there's a way to do that into the ocean or whatever and reclaim what it feels like,

02:01:09.920 or at least go in search of what it feels like to be human.

02:01:12.400 Yeah, man.

02:01:13.080 That's what I, I think would probably happen.

02:01:16.740 And are you talking about this with other buddies too?

02:01:18.620 Cause I feel like I'm having this conversation more and more with buddies like, dude, how do

02:01:22.500 we create community again?

02:01:24.040 Like, like I said, it can be as simple as like finding a good hockey team.

02:01:27.480 Right.

02:01:27.880 And just like, cause after every game, man, it doesn't matter if that game starts at 10

02:01:31.580 30 PM at night and we're not in the parking lot until midnight or like 1 AM dudes are going

02:01:35.860 to stand around and drink a beer and just catch up, have a blast, have a nice time.

02:01:40.420 It's the same after any real get together, people always kind of mill around, see what's

02:01:43.680 going on.

02:01:44.500 You and one buddy or two guys might stay late if one of them's having a problem and they'll

02:01:48.040 talk about it.

02:01:48.960 If everything's cool that you're out of there, kind of like one of the first couple of guys

02:01:53.100 out, but you're joking around.

02:01:54.500 And yeah, I think that thing is, um, I feel like we would find ways you in the end, I feel

02:02:01.840 like you just believe enough in some thing that we can't create outside of us.

02:02:08.660 That's inside of us that would lead us to victory in some sense, like some human spirit

02:02:17.180 or something that will prevail.

02:02:18.240 It always kind of feels like that.

02:02:19.720 I think it just feels like we're down maybe two rounds to one right now.

02:02:23.760 Yeah.

02:02:24.320 You know, I feel like it's tough for that human spirit to connect through a phone.

02:02:27.820 Yeah.

02:02:28.260 I think it's hard, man.

02:02:29.500 And I think there's a lot of like, I have to be doing something all the time.

02:02:33.600 There's a lot of factors in it.

02:02:34.980 It's interesting to think about, um, before you leave, I know you worked in organized

02:02:39.080 crime.

02:02:39.460 You mentioned that a little while ago.

02:02:40.640 Yeah.

02:02:41.120 And was you, uh, what'd you do in it?

02:02:43.560 Bookies or what was it?

02:02:45.240 Pretty close, man.

02:02:46.180 It was a lot of casino work.

02:02:47.840 It was a lot of Asian organized crime.

02:02:49.400 I went over to Macau, uh, which became like, that's by Hong Kong, huh?

02:02:53.460 Yeah.

02:02:53.640 I went there once Hong Kong or Macau.

02:02:55.500 I went across the ferry there.

02:02:56.600 I went to both of them.

02:02:57.340 That's a fun ferry ride.

02:02:58.480 Yeah.

02:02:58.540 It was nice, dude.

02:02:59.660 Some lady I think was either flirting with me or trying to tell me I had some on my shirt

02:03:03.500 or something.

02:03:05.120 Yeah.

02:03:05.540 It's a wild place, man.

02:03:06.720 It's, it's, uh, they do more revenue than Vegas does.

02:03:09.140 Now it became massive.

02:03:10.380 When I was there, it'd become just like in a very short period, it'd become massive.

02:03:14.220 Um, and I was over there because we were looking into how, what the U S government largely

02:03:20.080 considered was organized crime, people connection to triads, et cetera, were working inside of

02:03:25.700 the casinos to bring money from mainland China that could be gambled in Macau.

02:03:29.960 Cause that time there was like, I think it was a $5,000 cap, right?

02:03:33.200 Like this was the law.

02:03:34.620 Like you could only bring 5,000 from mainland China into Macau, but then you'd go and you'd

02:03:38.520 go into the casino and people are betting like 500,000 us per hand.

02:03:42.920 You're like, well, how is that money?

02:03:44.920 And it was basically this informal credit network, which is like, we know you're good for it

02:03:49.200 in China.

02:03:49.720 So we'll spot it for you in Macau.

02:03:52.000 Right.

02:03:52.420 But if you don't pay your debts, you're probably going to be found burned up and shot in your

02:03:57.080 car.

02:03:57.440 Wow.

02:03:57.920 You know?

02:03:58.340 And so like that was the ecosystem.

02:04:00.860 And then these big U S casinos were operating in that ecosystem.

02:04:03.860 And so how does all of that?

02:04:05.480 Yeah.

02:04:05.600 So I went over there and like my job was to try to get these guys to go on camera, to open

02:04:10.040 up to me and to tell me about this operation.

02:04:12.660 And as one of the U S you know, casino bosses, a white guy from America said to me, he was

02:04:17.460 like, he's like, man, that dude who's casino you're staying in for the six weeks you're

02:04:22.220 here is known.

02:04:22.920 If people say stuff, he doesn't like for hanging them out their window, you know?

02:04:26.400 And like, that's where I was staying.

02:04:28.140 And, um, yeah, and it was, it was, that's a rough start.

02:04:31.380 Yeah.

02:04:31.660 Yeah.

02:04:31.880 And so it was, um, you're just down there looking and we say triads, what does that

02:04:36.140 mean?

02:04:37.340 Triads are like a British word for what they would describe as Asian organized crime networks.

02:04:42.620 Um, and, and the triads actually have this super interesting history that go back to martial

02:04:46.520 arts, um, to the Shaolin temple and to like all the way back to like the overthrow of the

02:04:52.760 emperor, man.

02:04:53.220 It's like, it gets like, that's why the, the triad guys are known for being such badasses

02:04:57.200 with regards to martial arts.

02:04:58.560 It's like, I still get calls from federal prison pretty frequently from a guy named Raymond

02:05:03.760 shrimp boy, chow and shrimp boy, shrimp boy.

02:05:06.720 Amen.

02:05:07.240 Yeah.

02:05:07.820 And, uh, dude, just crazy, bad-ass martial arts guy.

02:05:12.240 Um, but, uh, yeah, he'll call, you know, he, he, I, and I, I went to him because I knew

02:05:16.980 I was going to Macau and he hadn't been arrested.

02:05:18.760 Now he's, now he's in prison doing, I think multiple life sentences.

02:05:23.620 Um, yeah, but, uh, but that's just a, that's a different world, man.

02:05:27.980 Cause you're operating, um, in a world of violence.

02:05:31.320 Right.

02:05:31.860 Yeah.

02:05:32.140 That's how they solve it there.

02:05:33.560 If you, yeah, that it, you know,

02:05:36.400 Things are punishable by real violence.

02:05:38.000 Yes, exactly.

02:05:39.420 Yeah.

02:05:39.640 And it's kind of organized.

02:05:41.060 So it's difficult to go in as an investigative journalist into that, you know?

02:05:45.100 And so the first thing I'd always do is just tell people right away, like, I am an

02:05:48.620 investigative journalist.

02:05:49.640 I'm looking into this, you know, that's my role.

02:05:52.380 And I don't necessarily need to push people for answers right away, but like, I don't

02:05:55.800 want anybody thinking that like I'm sneaking around behind their back or like trying to

02:05:59.380 be transparent about it, super transparent.

02:06:01.200 So there's a different level of respect if you come in like that over there.

02:06:03.940 Yeah.

02:06:04.300 And I do that with everybody.

02:06:05.460 Like as a journalist, if I'm working on a story, I always identify myself as a journalist

02:06:10.280 right away.

02:06:11.120 You know, like this is what I'm working on.

02:06:12.680 This is my interest, you know?

02:06:14.400 And then over there, it's like, we don't got to deal with that right away.

02:06:17.520 You can just identify me as a person, you know, in, in parts of China that I've traveled

02:06:21.940 to, one of the things people want to do when they're going to get into business with you

02:06:25.920 is they just want to get hammered with you.

02:06:27.820 Yeah.

02:06:28.260 They just want to get hammered because they want to see what kind of drunk you are.

02:06:30.540 Are you going to be a total dick when you're drunk or are you going to still just be like

02:06:34.540 kind of funny and happy and upbeat and like honest or what kind of drunk are you?

02:06:38.900 And so like, there are just different ways.

02:06:40.900 And so sometimes you identify who you are and then you just kind of a human for a little

02:06:44.520 bit, just like, just hang out.

02:06:47.520 Yeah, I never wanted to be Chinese that much, really.

02:06:50.720 I mean, I haven't, I haven't not wanted to be it, but I haven't, I'll be honest.

02:06:54.540 Yeah, I haven't really wanted to be it.

02:06:55.680 I guess I would be willing to be it, but I don't, I would probably think about it a lot

02:06:59.740 more than I have recently.

02:07:04.080 Why do Chinese businessmen insist on getting you drunk?

02:07:06.760 That's interesting.

02:07:09.000 In a culture where relationships can make or break you in business, getting drunk with a

02:07:12.840 potential business partner is often viewed as a crucial way of solidifying that relationship

02:07:16.340 and showing that you are, in fact, friends.

02:07:19.880 Huh.

02:07:27.700 Let me think, is there anything about the liquor?

02:07:31.000 Anything more about booze?

02:07:32.580 Alcohol is a very long tradition in Confucian society.

02:07:35.460 Confucius, who advocated only eating at mealtimes and not in between, made an exception for wine.

02:07:41.160 And he said, only wine drinking is not limited.

02:07:44.720 So Confucian really liked to have that.

02:07:47.600 He liked to have a little sip in the daytime.

02:07:49.960 No, no shade, no shade.

02:07:53.320 Before you go, have, is there, have there been stories that you wanted to go to and you just didn't have the time?

02:07:57.500 Oh, dude, that's all the time.

02:07:58.460 That's like the thing that haunts me most right now.

02:08:00.120 Um, just like really important stories that people come to me and they want me to look into.

02:08:05.380 Um, and I, it's just like, it's super tough to find the time, you know, there's just too many things that I would love to be able.

02:08:12.660 I wish, you know, yeah.

02:08:14.500 So it happens.

02:08:16.360 Yeah.

02:08:16.760 And who funds like investigative reporting, who funds like guys like you?

02:08:21.320 So I work at a nonprofit called the center for investigative reporting.

02:08:24.340 Okay.

02:08:24.580 It's like a super old nonprofit.

02:08:26.060 It's been around since the seventies.

02:08:27.320 It was a bunch of Rolling Stones reporters.

02:08:29.660 When Rolling Stones used to be based in San Francisco, um, they ended up moving it to New York and a bunch of the reporters didn't want to move to the East coast.

02:08:36.820 They liked San Francisco.

02:08:38.060 And one of those guys was one of my mentors, Lowell Bergman, who, I don't know if you ever saw the movie Insider without Pacino, but Al Pacino was playing Lowell.

02:08:45.880 Lowell was the one that got the documents from, you know, inside the tobacco companies that showed that like the, they knew that it was a carcinogen.

02:08:53.480 They knew it was addictive and they were, they were hiding and, and not being straight up with Congress.

02:08:58.060 So I work at a nonprofit, which is a super fortunate place to be because we're not profit.

02:09:02.520 Like, you know, I worked on this documentary, that documentary could make a gazillion dollars and I'm not going to make a dime more.

02:09:08.600 Right.

02:09:08.980 It's just not like what the drive is.

02:09:11.180 Right.

02:09:11.540 Right.

02:09:11.840 You know, like, and so, um, and it's also because investigative journalism.

02:09:15.880 Isn't profitable.

02:09:17.300 Um, letting me, yeah, no dude, letting me spend a year and a half diving into like, is Facebook and the social media company targeting your weakness?

02:09:26.240 It is not profitable.

02:09:27.960 Um, and so we have to get foundations and others to give us money, to give us the time and people, people donate to us to give us the time to look into this stuff.

02:09:37.120 So I can just share it with the public.

02:09:38.620 Like it would be hugely profitable if I wanted to take that, my same skills and go work for a hedge fund.

02:09:43.520 Right.

02:09:43.700 I can make four or five times what I make.

02:09:45.500 Right.

02:09:46.240 Um, and, but, but people are willing to, to, to, to pay me to do it, you know, like a modest salary.

02:09:52.820 Like I'll, I'll do it, man.

02:09:54.340 Like, cause I love stories, dude.

02:09:55.880 I love stories.

02:09:56.800 I love, like I used to sit in, and I was a little kid and I used to tell my, my grandma, my mom's mom, just tell me a story from your mind, you know, and she would just wax.

02:10:05.560 And, and, and now meeting people, you know, like, I just like to hear their stories.

02:10:08.920 Like what's their background, where'd they come from?

02:10:11.340 You know, it doesn't have to be like totally revelatory.

02:10:13.580 It's just like, we're all so complex.

02:10:15.640 We're all so interesting, you know, but when I can spend time diving into something like Susie Kelly story, where like this crazy technology company identified that her brain had this weakness and targeted her.

02:10:27.140 Then I want to spend a bunch of time and share it with people.

02:10:29.940 Right.

02:10:30.340 Because we know it's not just happening to Susie.

02:10:32.660 Yeah.

02:10:32.940 I mean, and it's so sick that that would happen.

02:10:34.680 It was almost if you saw someone who was disabled and somebody, someone had a broken leg and someone kept kicking a minute, you know?

02:10:41.560 Yeah.

02:10:41.920 I, and, and, and that's, and I, dude, I think that's a really good analogy.

02:10:45.240 And then like, they were kicking them because it was making them money.

02:10:47.720 Right.

02:10:48.400 Yeah.

02:10:48.640 And you're like, what are you doing?

02:10:50.720 How are you?

02:10:51.520 And I don't, I don't get it.

02:10:52.820 I'll just tell you that like fundamentally on a personal level, I don't get it.

02:10:56.200 Cause I couldn't do that.

02:10:57.520 You know, like, yeah, that's the thing that's tough.

02:10:59.960 It's like, and then sometimes I feel like, am I normal or am I the weirdo that gives a fuck about stuff?

02:11:06.480 You know what I'm saying?

02:11:07.160 Is that ever crossing your mind?

02:11:08.380 Yeah, dude, it does.

02:11:09.460 It does.

02:11:10.660 And I don't know.

02:11:11.280 I think, I think whatever, I think we're all broken in our own way and whatever my little

02:11:15.020 broken way has made me an investigative journalist.

02:11:18.360 But whatever.

02:11:19.640 It feels fun though.

02:11:20.920 Could be Paul Revere or whatever, even though somebody said he was trying to meet men.

02:11:24.080 That's the only reason he was going through town or whatever.

02:11:26.760 That's what I've heard.

02:11:27.420 But, um, but to be that kind of guy who's like, you know, trying to, you know, like, yeah, we've always loved the underdog dude.

02:11:35.480 We are, you know, underdog.

02:11:37.600 That's who you, you want the underdog.

02:11:39.300 Yeah.

02:11:39.560 You know, like everybody's like, everybody wants a nude picture of like, um, Pam Anderson or something.

02:11:46.680 You know, I wanted a new picture of Aaron Brockovich on my wall, you know?

02:11:49.840 No kidding.

02:11:50.460 Yeah.

02:11:51.420 Yeah.

02:11:51.740 That was a bad asset.

02:11:52.720 Uncovered a lot of stuff and got a lot of good out there in the world.

02:11:55.360 And pretty dimey too in her time.

02:11:58.420 I'll say that.

02:11:59.200 And I think it's a compliment, Aaron, but, um, what else do we have?

02:12:03.940 Anything else that we wanted to talk about?

02:12:05.700 I don't, I feel like we covered a really good bit, Nate.

02:12:08.140 So we can, people can donate to the center for investigative research reporting.

02:12:12.120 Yeah.

02:12:12.540 So the center for investigative reporting, that's a legitimate company.

02:12:15.460 Yeah, man.

02:12:15.900 It's a legitimate nonprofit.

02:12:17.680 And, uh, you know, people can even just check it out.

02:12:19.420 We got a, we got a, uh, a radio show we do.

02:12:22.340 That's just all investigated journalism.

02:12:24.060 Really?

02:12:24.640 Yeah.

02:12:24.920 We print, you know, we work with other folks and we have the documentary out.

02:12:28.300 I mean, at the end of the day, dude, just trying to get good information into people's

02:12:31.240 hands and like call to account, like people that are targeting other people, you know?

02:12:35.160 Yeah.

02:12:35.680 If you don't have food, you'll get so caught in the moment.

02:12:38.960 You don't even have a chance to look ahead at that point.

02:12:41.460 It's going to be moment to moment.

02:12:43.400 I mean, that's all right, dude.

02:12:44.100 That's totally right.

02:12:45.200 So then it's a wrap.

02:12:46.560 Then, then you're just trying to get food for you and your family and you start doing

02:12:50.040 weirder and weirder stuff.

02:12:51.080 And even people that, you know, do you ever read Cormac McCarthy?

02:12:55.400 He wrote like the road.

02:12:57.120 Yeah, dude.

02:12:57.560 He wrote some real.

02:12:59.240 No country for old men.

02:13:00.200 Yeah.

02:13:00.820 Strange stuff.

02:13:01.440 Super.

02:13:01.940 And I love it.

02:13:02.740 But like, um, the road, he basically breaks it down to like, oh, are you willing to kill

02:13:07.940 if like, if it comes down to it, would you kill somebody else to eat them?

02:13:12.600 Right.

02:13:12.840 And like, you're a good person.

02:13:14.180 If you're willing to just like, be like, damn, I'm just going to have to starve to death

02:13:17.640 because I'm not going to murder somebody else to eat them.

02:13:19.540 Or are you going to murder somebody else to eat them?

02:13:21.420 Like kind of bifurcates humanity along that, along that track.

02:13:24.980 Yeah.

02:13:25.420 And people get weird, man.

02:13:26.640 People get weird when the basic necessities aren't there.

02:13:29.300 Yeah.

02:13:29.620 You'll say that you wouldn't.

02:13:30.960 Right.

02:13:31.220 But you would also say you would know I wouldn't eat out of a dumpster.

02:13:33.800 There's a dumpster outside right now.

02:13:35.140 I would not go eat out of it.

02:13:36.500 But give me three days without food.

02:13:38.780 Right.

02:13:39.000 If you're about to eat a dude in Best Buy, right, like, yeah, you're going to eat out

02:13:42.360 of that dumpster.

02:13:43.960 Oh, yeah.

02:13:45.800 Yeah.

02:13:46.680 That's what's crazy.

02:13:47.440 You would eat that Ali sashimi, baby.

02:13:49.180 You'd eat whatever out of there.

02:13:50.320 Yeah, for sure.

02:13:51.480 And he'd be, you'd be stoked.

02:13:52.760 And dude, you know, like, yeah.

02:13:54.720 Those are crepes.

02:13:55.420 That's what I keep yelling.

02:13:56.340 Those are crepes.

02:13:58.740 I'm going to go forage in with you.

02:14:00.240 Yeah.

02:14:00.480 I'm going to be eating just garbage.

02:14:01.520 You'd be like, dude, that's a crepe.

02:14:02.300 And I'd be like, really?

02:14:03.220 Oh, I'm in.

02:14:04.560 I think you got to trick yourself, dude.

02:14:06.420 It's all crepes, bro.

02:14:07.560 Yeah.

02:14:07.660 Yeah, we're both just going to, like, mentally just redesign whatever garbage we're eating.

02:14:12.080 That's a wet napkin, homie.

02:14:14.080 What are you talking about, brother?

02:14:15.600 Don't tell me that.

02:14:16.780 Yeah.

02:14:17.080 It's got to be nutritional value.

02:14:18.540 That's a damn crepe.

02:14:21.260 Nate Halverson, thanks so much.

02:14:22.740 The Grab, it's coming out on Netflix.

02:14:25.620 No, it's coming out on June 14th in theaters.

02:14:28.480 Yeah.

02:14:28.660 And then people can rent it online, and then it'll be on one of the streaming platforms in the fall.

02:14:34.340 Okay.

02:14:34.780 So, The Grab, it's coming out on June 14th in theaters.

02:14:39.260 Yeah.

02:14:39.580 It's really interesting, man.

02:14:41.000 Just thought-provoking to get me to start thinking, like, yeah, what are – because you just think, oh, that's just a farm in my neighborhood.

02:14:46.860 Or you just think, like, oh, that's just the way things are.

02:14:51.520 That's just the way things go.

02:14:52.960 You don't sometimes see, like, maybe the chess board that's being put together or that's already been, you know, the plays that have already been played.

02:15:02.220 Nate Halverson, thanks so much for being an investigator and for spending time with us.

02:15:06.120 Hey, Tio, thanks so much for having me on, man.

02:15:07.680 Yeah, you bet, man.

02:15:08.180 Now I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.

02:15:13.820 I must be cornerstone.

02:15:18.920 Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.

02:15:24.540 I can feel it in my bones.

02:15:28.840 But it's gonna take...

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - June 13, 2024

E510 Investigative Journalist Nate Halverson

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