Hi everyone and welcome to the second Google search news. I hope life is treating you well wherever you are I'm your host today John Mueller here from Google Zurich in Switzerland With this show we want to give you a regular summary of what's been happening around Google search specifically for webmasters publishers and SEOs if you'd like to stay up to date make sure to subscribe to the channel Today we'll be covering some of the things that have happened since the previous episode We'll take a look at a cool new WordPress plugin webmaster conferences updates in search console and some other news Recently we launched site kit a WordPress plugin that effortlessly connects your WordPress site or blog to a collection of Google services Site kit makes it a breeze to get your site verified in search console and hooks up other services like Google analytics AdSense and PageSpeed Insights With a quick look at the dashboard in your site's admin panel You'll have an overview of how your website is doing overall and within Google search Curious to see what folks are searching for just want to see the overall traffic Site kit has something for almost everyone to help you easily grow your online presence I'll add a link to the description if you're curious the team working on Google search console has dropped some hot updates recently They're always working on making it easier for folks like you to make great websites that work well in Google search The updates include a report for speed as you might have heard in a previous video speed is important But understanding how it affects a website is really hard We hope this report makes it a bit easier to find bottlenecks and to resolve them another neat change Is that now the performance report has much fresher data in some cases the data? We show is just six hours old fresher data is or was One of the most common wishes our users had so we're happy that this is now live for you And last but not least we're now showing much more data about videos from your site when they're shown in search If you're keen on finding out more check out our blog We touched upon the webmaster conference series in the last episode But I wanted to give you a brief update on what's been happening there We recently had additions in Singapore Bangkok and Jakarta as well as a unique one at the home of Google in Mountain View, California in all of these locations We had presentations from Googlers some engineers some product managers about features. They're working on in Google search We have two more events lined up this year in Zurich, Switzerland and in Tel Aviv, Israel So see you there perhaps and if you couldn't make it don't fret we're planning on publishing talks from the Mountain View event soon and Looking into my crystal ball It looks like we'll have more of these events next year We have a few more short updates for you here on this YouTube channel We recently launched a series for beginners all about Google search If you're just getting started or if you're in touch with folks who are then make sure to check them out These videos will be rolling out over the course of the next months with the goal of making it easier to understand How you can grow with Google search Then the search results preview settings meta tags We talked about last time are now live if you'd like to give us information on How much information a preview can show then check out our documentation for how to get them set up if you've added other meta tags before then these new ones won't be that different and Finally, we recently announced that we won't be supporting flash in indexing for Google search anymore Flash has brought us lots of cool things from those early jump-and-run games to videos hosted on the web and of course Those fancy interactive websites for a long time now all of that is available directly in HTML pages with a bit of JavaScript Given that most browsers don't support flash content anymore. It's time to say goodbye to flash Thanks for helping to make the web into a fantastic interactive world that it is now Well, that's all for now folks. Thank you for joining us and now on to the weather Well, to be honest, I don't know what to say depending on where you are I see a bit of wonderful sunshine Mixed in with some rain snow and windy weather in short. There's a bit of everything for everyone


take one man who never learned to lie place him in the steaming jungles of South America and let him discover a secret he knew no one would believe that's the story of the unsuspected taken from the files of John Steele adventurer hello friends this is John Steele with another story of action and suspense designed to please those of us who can only dream of adventure the other day I happened to run across an article about the fabulous country of the Amazon basin well it brought back pleasant memories and the name of an old acquaintance Charles Maloney I've never been able to think of one without thinking of the other and of what happened that summer but here's Charles to tell you as only he can Charles I guess everybody has some kind of code they live by that's well if you don't get blinded by it you got to learn that there are times when the things you believe in have to be forgotten if you don't want to hurt someone it ain't easy not for me I guess it really started today I signed on to work as a surveyor on the Great Diagonal that's a projected direct air route across the Amazon jungles from Caracas to Rio de Janeiro my outfit was laying out an emergency airfield in the Madagascar country one night we were all gathered in the fetched heart that served as a bar Tony and Hans Jose and Alicia as usual Tony was rousing my buddy hunts about making more money than anyone and Jose was pestering me there you shall leave you will go no no why I told you why they but it is so little but a thousand time no why not you're not going with me huh why should I go on a wild goose chase in the jungles especially with you it is not the case besides I got work to do you can get off I'll get someone else those no because they won't do it is no same here you the only one of those days about time you accepted the truth about Bill Harris you know I've always told the truth to everyone no matter who they were I'm telling it to you now Bill Harris is dead no lay off me will you I don't believe until I see with my own eyes okay you see but I'm not looking for any dead man please don't hang on to me Alicia she would talk to you I've already told her the same thing you wait the table now you come over well we know you good guy Charlie yeah yeah yeah yeah and come here in a minute hey you got a yellow for some help from us are you see you you stick for my Alicia first thing you're yeah yeah all right then we're going to come over there please please please you already look I won't take about just the one of me knows the whole thing but what please I want to prove it before what points only we say that Hansa he's the same he's the money to go back to the United States and to make a marriage yeah yeah yeah I thought he's right so it's always to see Charlie who is why ask me well you're the only one who's going to town with Hansa when he sends that money makes it you know how she is it's never even been in the city really sends his money to his father in German what's the matter with him you don't know well they told him what they asked it would have been better to say they were right or it wasn't so it would have made them all happy if you say what they want oh why should I lie for anyone does not matter they asked for the truth I told them they will be having fun I'll walk out on it not me there was a plague or something let it sit down just don't get it something to matter with me Alicia no this isn't the first time they've acted like understand you you that is why I most want you to go with Papa you're honest no matter what happens but that trips ridiculous not to Papa you know as well as I do if there was any chance that Bill Harris's plane came down safely the search bodies would have found him but Papa was so great a friend of Bill also why can't you see how he was the way these two months yeah even if Papa do not find Bill at least he will be happier knowing he tried to well I'm not going on any jungle hunt with Jose yeah if you go with Papa it will bring your friends back to you yeah why they all have great respect for Jose you would like to you if you make him happy yeah and in the week you're gone they will forget tonight I think so and I'd be happy too maybe it wouldn't be a waste of trip far as I can say okay yeah I went back to my hut and the guys said anything they all just hit the bunks but I didn't go to sleep right away I wish I told Alicia what made me feel that he hadn't gone off when Tony and them had she was different by morning the news had gotten around everyone was wishing Jose luck while I loaded the boat and thought a lot of the old Spaniard because the devotion to Bill Harris shoved off at nine o'clock John steal our foreman handling the outboard midstream John looked at Jose we jerked his thumb toward the south upstream I knew he was crazy billard had his plane north toward my nose still followed orders late that afternoon we pulled into the bank and started to unload go hot you could actually see this we got a lot of stuff we're gonna bury part of it here no we can't carry it all I'll be crazy in this I didn't say anything about no two weeks maybe no beat the week never know I'll carry that that's all we see you maybe in a week what's your rush we must make start while still they lie and I have to get back to camp I know the row old matter I have to make another trip down river for four on Hans has made him the sanitary a British freighter I didn't know he was going there after last night I didn't know too late now see in a week was I right here he is not then one week more like two weeks later come on jelly yes sure we've got his way to me okay don't matter which way he goes you ask me here's the good spot to start in jungle animal trailer fifty miles out of the way to start where you think so bill was headed north no reports I saw him when he took off yeah he turned over jungle and had a breather you saw him head this way body so why didn't you tell him when they were searching I tried to put a nobile he was supposed to go north that's what everyone thinks today no different maybe you've got something oh they see a little not closer to think it was headed for a report me why don't know why didn't we just fight our opponent you not make it there not yet well then it didn't he went down in this territory we see man that'd be the same finding pills he set me up me to have not the same way he's fast running either we call him creature I come from we can wait and all that's not always he's filled with the run high and it will be maybe we find three fell over yeah yeah here's one Jose we know you got to sit down and senior course this won't unpack me to the bank of a quick and be slowly come on I'm rude yeah a lot break lost call that way to start then your black is gone fell off watch the way before I could grab the point 92 yeah hey you can't do it I'll better have to get back and come on you're gonna catch you before it gets away this is what Jose he's gone yeah yeah people quite a way down the river but still wasn't in sight I wanted to camp right there and wait for John's return the week make a raft and float downstream they wouldn't hear of it we couldn't go on these journals without quite a no arguing with Jose before days we hacked our way through the steaming jungle rain never stopped neither did the chatter of monkeys like we were caught in the nest of a thousand snakes hacking hacking at vine finally we worked our way under a bunch of broad leaf plants like umbrellas you're you want to eat nothing you are I don't care where I don't okay we eat now what this bird I shut before at least it's not hard to feel a couple of hours till night come so we eat then go not me I'm worn out me all the man and you but so what we stay sure rain rain rain too much yeah go up down sleep twice all I like when I was a kid ain't on the roof in your car then you're you would speak why don't we go back back there's a chance to find anything in this job no no go back only today so still comes back we just make it with luck no go back must land it'll you know you're not going to must you know I've been thinking those days if you tell Alicia what you're mean about bills turning his plane soft why I I just not do you really want to find Bill where you think I do these I've been wondering about that never knew you were such a close friend a day before this time we're much close yeah yeah should there isn't something else what do you mean surely it seems funny the only one who doesn't think Bill's dead maybe you think so much they are no one's going all this trouble unless it's more than friendship you want my brother I'll show you the way to get that I I shoot man who say I'll forget it forget you get on your high horse I didn't mean anything by no no don't get back he's got to stick together today if we both want to get back I can't think Bill Bill a little Alicia no one does fun tell me that's much Bill's life find your bill is it fine you're there is that fine you're there when you hey Jose wake up Bill I know you hate right wake up Jose and it's a challenge come on wake up you dream the meaning up what's the matter Jose you've got a fever nothing hilarious no nothing about going back after we lost the client I've got a fine bit of nothing wrong with Jose we're starting back no we are we're going now well I'm not okay you go back Jose going you can't do that see I do you're out of your head having a chance fighting malaria when we're wearing your son's out hacking through the jungle I find me look at it all cut up scratches getting ulcers already we're going back see you go all of us there was a trouble later I'm sorry I came as they started to you know go no no good for jungle and I don't want to be only reason I came was because of Alicia see when it's done otherwise make her happy I've got to stick by you take care of you for her so you go where I go yeah far as I'm concerned you could stay here in a lot you always say what he is on your mind yeah no no along what I thought of you maybe her days be the same way to well good the record straight get your back on are we going to eat good if I'm dry with first I had a cup of coffee right now I am down out there thinking milk for a few minutes once it is a lady with my dry with an open spot yeah I don't think she's a wrong thing you're on the tree in my head flat no kind of see would like it my gun on one you're going to be staying still your eyes are playing okay I'm all right I told you to stand still no departure didn't get my gun out of the seat sicker and I thought no burning up go away soon get up to that clearing and rest see come on I'll try to wrestle us up something to eat maybe a pamphlet steak I'm not hungry now you gotta eat keep your strength and try what then your colleague yeah yeah come and come in there just seems up my eyes they don't fool me no what look in valley over there yeah look for what wing tip of airplane there there were three types of record wait a minute yeah I think it is a way to find me if maybe we have a day we have to go you can't go now get to be sure you know be the dragon probably is Come on, I know. I hope so. Bill! Bill! Pulsing up yet. Sorry, okay. Bill! They're not there yet. Come on, put an umber out my shoulder. Leg hurt. Go on it. You'll lie if the bed shall leave. Lie? I don't lie about anything.  Then you're making sense for once. Huh? Out of your mind for hours. What'd I say? Nothing, nothing. I think I see the plane now. Where are you now? Yeah, yeah, that's it. Now see Bill? Doesn't look like there was any fire, maybe. Maybe. He got out. Bill! Bill! He ran somewhere. Bill! No answer. Say it. No. Probably in the plane. Look for food. The message. We wait, yeah. Look in plane first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there Jose? He. He. What's left of you? I know you're here, Bill. I'm not Bill. Jose, he is smart. Hey, snap out of it, Jose. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Jose was in a bad way.  I ripped a piece of metal off the plane and dug a grave for Bill Harris. And I got some things to prove we'd found him and started back with Jose. I had a half-drag, half-carry him, but at least the trail was easier. There's only three days left to meet Steele, the good five days' journey, the rate I was making. There wasn't any time to stop and look for food. Three days. I had to get back, get back to John Steele. On the next to the last day, Jose perked up a little. He was still delirious, but he could walk some. Maybe a little quiner in the plane was taking effect. Stuff that had broke to wash our faces. Didn't dare to drink no matter what. You better, Jose? See, Bill. Charles, see. I know what happened to Charlie. Oh, come on. We gotta get back. Jose, get back. Sure. Not you, Bill. Cut out the crazy. You're not for me, Bill. I'm not, Bill. You killed Charlie. What? Jose, no. I come right here. You think Jose asleep, but me see you buried, Charlie. You saw me. Charles burying Bill. Stay away. What are you doing? Get down. Oh. You, Jose. He didn't even like putting the gun down. Here you are.  I'm... Charles, not Bill. You want to go back now. Yeah, yeah. Don't you say that on me. There's nothing to tell. You want to go back and tell the police. Police? Well, what? I brought the Indian that died in camp. Lola? He died of... You only one who know I killed him, Bill. Everyone else thinks he died like natural. But you know not so. No one guessed.  No, you don't. You! Yes! Yeah, that's good. I got it. You're nice. Better when closed. I'm a child! Yes, someone gets you now. That's not tricky. That's not tricky. No! What was it? Huh? Have you heard? Yeah. How'd I get here? When you didn't show up the second week, I came after you. Jose, I buried him. He... I tried to... No one heard at all. You saw? I tried to stop him, but couldn't cut into the jungle in time. I couldn't help it. Yeah, I know. I had to... I'd never believed it if I hadn't heard. No. No one would. Makes it tough. What do you mean? Explaining what happened. No one will believe the truth. Well, they'll believe you? Not where Jose is concerned. They think too much of him. Yeah. I can fix it up with the rest of the camp. What are we worrying about then? Alicia. Alicia? Only you can handle that. Yeah, but I... It'll wreck her life. Why? You always tell the truth. When she finds her father was a murderer... I know what you mean. Well, that's your problem. Yeah, yeah. Almost there. What are you gonna do? I don't know. Yes. Oh, and he's better to the rescue party come. Not exactly. No? Alicia, your... your father, Jose... Si, si. He died on the way back. Sorry, Alicia, me. We all feel the same way about Jose. Yeah. Well, how did it happen? Your father died of malaria. I'll tell the rest of the camp. See you later. Malaria? Yeah. Oh. How could he? Well... He took quinine alone. We lost it. Lost? How? I was carrying it. You? Yeah, I fell under the stream and lost it. You lost it? I couldn't be helped. When? First day. And you didn't come back? No. You forced my papa to go on like that? No, he was... You should have come back then. I guess so.  Oh, listen to me. No. I don't never want to hear you again. Never. Never. He unsuspected the story of a man who told a lie and lost the only person he really cared for. But one piece of mind. If you like Charlie's story, friends, why not come back next week? I'll have a man who looked for sanctuary in a murky swamp and found the answer to his escape in a buried treasure chest. I like to call it quagmire. So until next week then, this is John Steele saying a life of adventure is yours for the asking wherever you find it. Only don't look for it. It may find you. Well, goodbye and good hunting. John Steele Adventurer is produced by Robert Monroe, directed by Elliot Drake and written by Roy L. Deeds. Ross Martin was heard as Charles. Also in the cast were Jim Bowles and Bryna Rayburn. John Steele is played by Don Douglas. Musical effects were created by Doc Whipple. Your answer is Ted Malley. Remember next week, mutual presents Quagmire. Another story of suspense and action from the files of John Steele. Adventurer.


Welcome back to The FeeCast. I'm Richard Lawrence and I'm happy to be hosting this next episode for you today. We are talking about current events through the economic lens, yet again with our fabulous panel from Foundation for Economic Education. We have Brittany Hunter, Dan Sanchez, Mary Ann March, and our special guest who is appearing in front of the camera this time, usually behind the camera, Sean Malone, Fee's Director of Media. It's great to be here guys. How are you doing? And incidentally, because this actually matters for the rest of our discussion, you are also the producer of Fee's latest hit video from the Out of Frame series, and we talked about it a little bit last week, and it's entitled What's Wrong with Wakanda. Great video. And of course it has everything to do with the 18th film in the whole Marvel universe that keeps churning out awesome hit films that cost arm and a leg and are all, at this point, I think, filmed here in Atlanta. And that was all about Black Panther. And we'll get into that a little bit today as well as the 19th film, which of course just came out about a week ago called Avengers Infinity War. And I know we'll probably have some opportunity to talk about that as well. And so I wonder why these Marvel movies, they keep coming out this latest one, Infinity War. How big is it? Why is it so big? We'll talk about that. But there's some box office numbers that you've got, Mary Ann. Yeah, April in particular has been a record breaking month. So Infinity War, although it hasn't been out for very long, has already broken the $1 billion mark in record time. And this is the first month where movies are breaking billion dollars. Anyways, Black Panther worldwide has grossed $1.3 billion, and Infinity War, which is newer, has grossed worldwide $1.2 billion. And like Sean's video makes the point that Black Panther didn't have pre-established characters. Like it was in the same universe, but it was all new characters. So that's what makes it even more extraordinary. And we were introduced to this version of the Black Panther at the end of the previous Avengers movie. Is that right? Well, Captain America's Civil War, not technically an Avengers movie, but basically. And that was King T'Challa, who was a prince at that point. Yes, he's a prince. And it's also the name of your hedgehog that you have at home. Also true. Yeah. So this is a long standing interest on your part. It is. And my hedgehog's name predates me knowing that the movie was going to come out. So there's there's that. I'll give myself some. You got the Black Panther cred a little bit. And he also rules your household, doesn't he? Kind of a little bit. He's spiny. He's spiny. He's from Africa. So, you know, kind of made sense. And of course, the dog is subservient to the spine. He has to be. It must be that way. For his own self-interest. For his own self-preservation. Yeah. So I'm curious. So we this is a huge movie franchise that keep coming out. They're going to keep coming out. Why is this so big, Sean, in your view? Well, look, I think there's a lot of reasons why this is. I mean, first of all, we're talking about, you know, decades of pre-established cultural history and all that kind of stuff. So that helps a great deal. Although it's worth sometimes noting that Marvel, when they started started with their worst characters, they started with because they at the time, this is just behind the scene studio junk. Like they did not have the rights to most of their primary, the X-Men, Spider-Man fantastic for all those, all those characters. Because they had sold it for a song. Yeah. They sold it for nothing because they were bankrupt. I mean, literally bankrupt. And what they've been able to do with characters that I think nobody thought was were really nobody, nobody cared about really at the time at all has been really impressive. But I think a lot of it comes back to this need to tell stories and to communicate values to people through allegory, right? And I think that, you know, we've all talked about this through the hero's journey and through, you know, Joseph Campbell kind of stuff, you know, I know Britney's a fan, Carl Jung, like these kinds of stories really impact the way that we think about the world. So that I think is part of why people are really still gravitating to this, even though it's been around for a decade now. On that point, Sean, I think one of the reasons that I'm a big fan of these types of fantasy stories, comic book stories is because they do follow that tried and true formula of the hero's journey, which like you mentioned, Britney has written a lot about actually sort of showing how stories from mythology, religion, all kind of and going into the Marvel series follow this same general pattern of the hero's journey. Yeah, it's the same with even like the Bible, like even someone who doesn't believe in religion or even subscribe to that can still look at the Bible and say like here are lessons about heroes, overcoming obstacles. There's some moral at the end of the story. They become a better person in, you know, Native American culture sometimes are thrown into the wilderness, see if you get out alive. And after that, you know, the individual aspires to greatness. So yeah, these stories are.  You fight them or succumb to them. Exactly. And then if you fight them and succeed, then you become a hero in your own self and return home and impart these lessons back to the community from once you came originally in it. It all kind of generally follows that pattern. Star Wars follows that pattern. Again, the Bible, the Bible's that pattern. Yeah, a lot of other religious traditions have stories that follow this pattern. A lot of this stuff, I mean, does come from it's the interesting thing to me, I think a lot of the time is that I think a lot of this is really emergent. It's the way that people have always told stories. And it's also sort of the way that we experience life in in our own heads, at least we we experience these moments of of what you call, you know, synthesis, antithesis or it, you know, thesis, antithesis and synthesis, right, which is the sort of narrative term of we have the world is as it is now. And we're not very happy with it. Here is the challenge to this world that we need to to deal with. And it and it affects us on some deep level. And then now we've merged the two. We've we've learned something. We've become changed by that experience. That's how we all sort of experience life. And so I think that's sort of emerged into dramatic story structure, into playwriting, into three act structure in in, you know, stage plays, musicals, film and television, all that kind of stuff. We should have braced ourselves for all of this special terminology. Yeah, I think you're introducing here.  That's what you're going to say. That'll be what you and I do afterwards. Give that a shot at some point. Like you said, it goes way back to the dawn of history and went into prehistory because you had heroes in tribal cultures. The hero was someone who went out and brave the wilderness and confronted the danger that was menacing the whole tribe, confronted chaos and, you know, slayed the dragon, so to speak, but was actual animals. It was often like a lion or a snake in the ancient myths. And and then came back reintegrated into a society as a hero. And basically, that's the format that we have in in Black Panther and and in Avengers, too. And I think people can relate because, although Dan, you and I aren't running around slaying dragons, maybe we're slaying our own internal dragons and art imitates life. Exactly. And what's so powerful about these stories is that they are so symbolic. Like you could tell someone with abstract verbal terms, you know, you should confront your challenges that you're afraid of and you will get stronger, but it doesn't resonate as much as seeing a character, seeing a hero or hearing about it in an oral tradition, hearing about a hero going through an adventure. That reaches people on a deeper level. Yeah, I think one of the things that people will say, and I, you know, I don't need to read all of them, but there were some some of the comments on the video that we put out. This is what's wrong with what kind of this is what's wrong, which, of course, we have below so you can click on it immediately and watch everything that we're talking about. Go ahead.  It's comic book movie, you know, why bother to talk about this stuff? But we talk about this because allegories affect the way that we think and the way that we view the world, you know, and it's not because we think that we're going to just walk down the street and uber us up a flying car, although that is a new thing that is happening right now. So maybe we will very soon, but it's because we can look at that society and say, oh, what about that society is working? What's not working? What about it? You know, is it's the reflection in the mirror, right? What what is it that we like and see in ourselves? So it's valuable to critique these things. Of course. And I think actually the only mainstream fantasy science fiction story writer of the 20th century who's actually denied his stories being allegory, our course is, of course, J. R. Tolkien, who insists that Middle Earth and the Shire and Hobbiton and all these plays Mordor, they're totally not allegorical, which a lot of people disagree with him entirely. And what he's saying is that there aren't clean, clear cut, you know, the Sauron represented Hitler or anything like that. But he does, you know, there are broad societal lessons. So in addition to individual lessons in the movie Civil War, Captain America Civil War, basically it was personifications of liberty versus order playing out on the big screen. Yeah, well, authoritarianism. Yeah. And we'll get right back to that and a lot of other stuff when we get back from these messages. One year ago, over 700 students, scholars, philanthropists and business leaders from five continents gathered in Atlanta for a brand new one of a kind event, FICON. But get ready, this year is going to be even bigger. At FICON, we celebrate inspiring entrepreneurs, innovators and wealth creators while helping you set your own path to personal and professional success. And it was awesome. All around it's been like a vacation. It will become a must attend event next year as well. I'm not going to waste my invitation. I'm going to invite myself, I guess so. With FICON 2018, FI is taking the conference experience to a whole new level with eight incredible tracks, more than 50 jam packed sessions featuring over 100 electrifying speakers and vast networking opportunities. FICON 2018 is sure to offer an unforgettable experience for everyone. It's the must attend event this summer and it's all happening at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in beautiful downtown Atlanta from June 7th through 9th. Available tickets are going fast, so register now at FICON.org and find out how you can set your path and change the world. We are back to the FICAST and before we left we were talking about what's wrong with Wakanda and this has been a big video for us since last week when we released it. How big has it been for us? Maybe not $1.3 billion worth. Not $1.3 billion worth. It doesn't really work for us anyway. But no, in less than a week now we've had over 360,000 views on this video, 130,000 on YouTube alone, which is sort of a rarity for us. We don't put a lot of specific attention into YouTube so the fact that it's getting a lot of organic reach on that platform is really, really exciting and I guess we just sort of touched a nerve with this. And is that the pop culture reference? The fact that people are searching for Black Panther? I don't know, maybe. I think some of it's definitely gonna be that. I mean, obviously like between Black Panther doing as well and being as well received as it was plus Infinity War being out. We're definitely helped from that stuff. But also, I mean, there's another video right now. I'll give a shout out to some, calling friends of ours, I guess, at the Film Theorist channel who did another sort of similar video where they actually talk about the paradox of plenty and they talk about how Wakandan society is a little weird. So I've gotten some comments on there which reference that and maybe we're getting a little bit of cross traffic from over there. But I'm just thrilled, it's been really good to see. Well, let's dive into it because there's a lot in that video which of course people should watch and see what you're talking about. One of the topics that you talk about is centralization, central planning, which I think we've talked about a couple of times on the FECAST up to this point, but Brittany, there's a particular individual that we love talking about who has a lot to say about the challenges of central planning. I was gonna make a joke and say Karl Marx and I couldn't even do it with a straight face. So that would be F.A. Hayek. And what he kind of teaches us is that central planning is almost useless because it doesn't work. And what we're doing is we're inhibiting the market. So when regulators put these regulations on the market, you're not even creating value as much as you could because now you're stifled. So that kind of plays into this, I guess when we talk about isolationism and the free market, adding value to different cultures and different peoples. So I think it definitely has a tie in with Wakanda.  And the whole issue that you bring up in the video is this inconceivably advanced society cannot necessarily come out of such a central plan. Yeah, this has been a little bit of, I guess I'll call it a little bit of humbug for myself for a long time, which has been that like we see this in fiction a lot where there's this society or even characters and things like this which are established one way, but then the outcomes or the decisions that they make or the results of those decisions don't make any sense at all. And this is, you know, it's more obvious a lot of times with characters, you know, if a character is presented as being really smart, like we see this in the alien movies a lot. All the characters are scientists and they're really smart in some of these movies. In my favorite series as well, Star Trek, they're all like PhDs who know how to fire phasers. And then they, you know, walk into the first trap that's available to them. They look over the alien spore, they take their helmet off on the planet that they don't know anything about, right? But so it's easier to see in characters. I think it's a lot of times less easy to see on a social societal level, but the reality is if you present a society as they do with Wakanda, that is essentially a dictatorship. I mean, right now it's a benign, benevolent dictatorship, but it could be not so much.  It becomes less benevolent over the course of that movie. It's already got a dictatorship. It's isolationist. It doesn't communicate with the rest of the world particularly. Most of the rest of the world doesn't even know what exists particularly. They have all this wealth that supposedly comes from a mineral, essentially. Just flew out of the sky, just dropped right into their laps. But if you look at the real world, any time you see that combination of features, the results are not a fantastically, technologically advanced, peaceful, wonderful society. They are kind of the opposite of that. Well, if your entire economy is based on one mineral deposit that can be commandeered by the central authority and they have all economic power, that's conducive to central planning, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. It's a very weak kind of situation, a very delicate, fragile situation to have. And in fact, Marion, you and I and the FECAST team were talking a little bit earlier about the fact that Sean mentions North Korea and Venezuela in this article, in this video. And I know that you have some background in sort of their notion of Juche, which is all about sort of self-reliance. And it's kind of similar to what the Wakandans do. Yeah, as we talked about on previous FECAST, immediately following the Korean War, North Korea was rebuilding faster. They were coming back from the war more quickly than South Korea was. But because they did take this policy of isolationism, it didn't last. And we've seen what that's turned into. Disasterous results under one family. Can you describe Juche a little bit? Because I know a little bit about that. But I think it'd be beneficial for people to know. Because I do think there is some parallels to Black Panther. In a nutshell, it is the policy of self-reliance that we don't want to look outside of our borders. We don't want to look outside of the people who live in our country. And I think one thing that's interesting about the notion of relying on one mineral or even one industry, we don't even have to look across any kind of body of water to see that. Look at Detroit. They didn't diversify their economy at all. They put everything into their auto manufacturing plants. And when things took a turn, they haven't been able to weather the storm. That's elsewhere, too. It's places like in Pennsylvania, where only steel was a local industry that most folks worked for. And then further afield, obviously, in places like Russia, you've only got natural gas, natural minerals that need to be extracted from the ground. Where's the diversity in the market there? What happens if, for instance, we become independent of fossil fuels? Russia needs to have some diversification there. And that gets into some of the stuff. One thing I want to say about the Jewish thing is, and as I see it relating to Black Panther, is it's also got a nationalistic quality to it. It's got a very culturally unifying nature to it. But it's a belief in the Korean-ness of those people. And Wakanda has that same thing. It's us versus basically the rest of the world in that case. And largely, they're responding to what they think of as cultural imperialism. But they're also responding, in some sense, to real colonialism, too, that the rejection of the outsider is also wrapped in the fact that there are colonial powers that are trying to themselves take over the natural resources. On colonialism, I was actually fairly impressed that that was referenced so directly in Black Panther. I thought it was a bold choice. I thought it was maybe an uncomfortable choice for people who would be watching the movie. But pretty directly mentioned there a few times. They actually called one of the villains a colonialist. And that was like the big insult. Well, the villain calls basically everybody else colonialists, right? That's Killmongers, Michael B. Jordan's character's main motivation in the film is to basically take over Wakanda and then distribute this technology out to all of the rest of the colonized parts of the world or the parts of the world that he sees as having been oppressed by. Well, and to use it for military aggression. Yes, and to use it for military purposes. But one of the things that we talk about a lot in this episode of Out of Frame is that this kind of isolationism actually produces poverty. And it doesn't produce fancy military technology. It doesn't produce any of these. I mean, geez, we look at North, I mean, I'm talking about North Korea.  The mountain collapsed. Mountain collapsed on them. They're not isolating themselves and producing, you know. They're known as the hermit country. And so we have a lot of that in history, too. So one of the things we talk about in the Out of Frame episode is Matt Ridley's book, The Rational Optimist. Which is a fantastic book. How, oh, it's a wonderful book, and how isolationism actually reduces the quality and the amount of technology that people have over time. Because that skill set diminishes. And the regression occurs just like in Tasmania. We've talked about on previous feed casts. One of the things that I wanted to mention before we go to a break is that this notion of isolation leading to prosperity is not unique to Black Panther, duh. There are places in storytelling all over. Like in Lord of the Rings, there's Lothorian, which is the elvish kingdom in the trees. Where Galadriel, exactly. Galadriel and all of her kin are there, and they're living in this beautiful, peaceful place. You've mentioned, which of course has a special resonance to me, the Klingons in Star Trek where they just seem to be aggressive warrior types that don't have any investment in science and technology at all. And Warp Drive is something that they have available to them. So this notion of the pure society, which is reflected in Wakanda, is not unique. Britney's written tons about Game of Thrones. What are they called? People who, the Wildlings, right? They're not allowed in. There's a wall built specifically so the Wildlings can't get in. So it is that same cutting off culture. And no spoilers, but eventually the Wildlings are necessary for certain things. I can't confirm or deny. Well, we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be back for the FeeCast. Hi, I'm Sean Malone, director of media for the Foundation for Economic Education. And I want to talk to you today about Fee's podcasts. You're currently listening to our wonderful FeeCast. But did you know we also have two other amazing podcasts for you to listen to each and every week. There's Words and Numbers featuring Antony Davies and James Harrigan, where they talk about economics, political theory, and current events every Wednesday. We also have a brand new offering called the Fee Audio Experience, where we bring you content from our seminars and events held all across the country. You'll get to hear fascinating talks from speakers and panelists, which we'll make available to you right after each event. So be sure to check out the FeeCast, Words and Numbers, and the Fee Audio Experience right here on our homepage at fee.org slash shows, and also subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Play. Thanks for listening. We are back for the FeeCast, and we've talked a lot about Wakanda. Now we're gonna switch gears a little bit. Same universe, different movie. The latest movie is Avengers Infinity War. And this has brought up some interesting conversations online in regard to sort of the ultimate scheme of the villain, who my understanding is he's like the main villain in all the Marvel universe, and that's Thanos. He's the sort of long running villain that they've been building up to for years and years and years. He's actually a pretty interesting villain in the comics too, but we won't really get into that too much. But yeah, his main motivation in this case is sort of crass Malthusianism. He wants to murder half the population of the universe because we have too many people and they're consuming too many resources. And if he gets his hands into the Infinity Gauntlet with all of the magic powers that he needs, sorry comic fans, I'm trying to make this a little easier. We know you're an expert. Keep going with it. We have, he'll get his hands into this gauntlet. It's got all the power in the universe. With a snap of the finger, he can wipe out everyone. Well, and isn't that every totalitarian's dream? Of course. To just with a snap of your fingers get exactly what you want, even coercively over half of the population. Would you push the button? That's the question. I think everyone would push the button. That's another topic. But the interesting things, much like, I feel like, and this is Marvel's two films in a row now where they have villains with what I feel like are believable motivations. They're not smart motivations, they're believable motivations. Thanos is operating off of something, off of a set of ideas that we've seen play out in the real world many, many times. And Sean, you mentioned crass Malthusianism. Yes. What is Malthusianism? Well, I think you guys talked about this last week a little bit too, right? But it's based on Thomas Malthus' idea of carrying capacity sort of applied to the whole world, saying the earth has, and Thanos says this very clearly in the films. The resources are finite, the universe is finite, everything that we need to survive is finite in the ultimate sense, right? And as a result, his point is we will, if we keep consuming, we will consume everything and then everyone will be dead.  And he says, if we only eliminated half of the population that the remaining half will live in abundance and prosperity. Yes, he calls it one planet that he does this to, he literally calls a paradise. He says after he murdered half the population, all the children experiences full bellies and blue skies, I think he says. And not only in historical, with historical economists like Thomas Malthus, but today in response to this movie, there was an article called tons of Avengers Infinity War fans think Thanos might be right. And it's actually sympathetic to Thanos' scheme. One of the quotes is, Thanos earnestly believes in a proactive solution, one that is technically genocide, but also one that you might argue is viable. Viable? Viable. Oh, that's, that's scary. Especially when I feel like the people saying these don't realize that they might be some of the people who are on the, you know.  I always find that, I mean, I don't know how, there's nothing wrong with commenting on the internet. This is maybe an obscure thing. I don't know how frequently you guys interact with like sort of the harder core utilitarians, but it's a feature that I find whenever I talk to them that they always like, well, we'll get rid of this population or we'll sort of experiment with soft eugenics and all of this kind of stuff. Soft eugenics? Well, cause they don't, cause they don't get into it, right? Yeah, sterilization I guess. Yeah, they'll do sterilization or they'll do birth control.   Well, and the problem is that, but they always assume that it's never gonna be them, right? And the problem is that it's a really bad utilitarianism too. Because it's totally wrong that the remaining half will thrive afterwards because of the same reasons that we talked about why Wakanda being small and isolated won't thrive. Because we need like the more people, the greater the division of labor and the more efficiency we have in production because not everybody again is a mouth that we're also a pair of hands and a mind. So the more people, the more innovation there is and the more cross-pollination of these productive ideas. So I have two questions. One is, how can Thanos be sure he's killing the right half? He's doing it randomly. Okay, so he's leaving it up to chance entirely. He did it up to chance. All right. The second question is- Which he says is fair, in fact. Okay. It's a point of fairness. All right, interesting. My second question is for the treatment of the movie. I haven't seen the movie yet, but in the movie itself, is it presented as an evil idea? That's an interesting question. Thanos is one of the most, probably the most fleshed out villain that Marvel's ever had. I think that the Russo Brothers should direct the film. I was watching an interview with them and they made this claim. And I think it's probably supportable is that Thanos has the most screen time of any character, which is really rare for a villain in any movie, let alone one of this scale with as many other characters as it has. He's really the central, I mean, you could argue that it's actually his story, which is interesting for another reason too, because if you treat it as Thanos' story, it's not a tragedy or like a story about a villain. It's his own hero's journey, which is kind of fascinating to do. Like hero, like into the dark side? Like, okay. Kind of, yeah, right? Just internally to do something. So in a way they don't present it as a bad thing. Well, even to the extent that they rebut it, it's a really weak rebuttal because their only answer to it is that, well, you're committing genocide and you're killing half of the people. That's self-evidently bad. Or you don't know that, like you don't know it's gonna be bad. And that's what bothered me, it also bothered me about Black Panther as well, which is that Killmonger gets a rebuttal, but his rebuttal is your means are bad because you wanna kill people.  But your ideas are actually also wrong. And that's true of Thanos as well. Like Thanos is bad, he's evil because he wants to murder half the population of the universe. That sort of goes without saying. He's also fundamentally incorrect about his ideas. And nobody in the film really has a rebuttal in that sense. In the intellectual world. Do they even think that? I mean, or maybe they agree and it's kind of like. I don't think so. And I think some of that goes back into Hollywood writers and the way that a lot of people do think about this stuff. And that's worth critiquing because in the same way that morals of stories about individual success and failure are important because if they're true to life, then they're a useful story that is useful for our individual lives. In the same way that if the moral of the story is false or muddled for society, then it's gonna have like a bad impact. Yeah. Well the question is, do you say that the heroes have this very weak rebuttal where they say it's axiomatic? You know, it's self-evident that the killing of half of the universe's population is bad. But we keep sort of in our own minds in generation after generation, returning to this notion that there is a finite carrying capacity of the world. And new people articulate this old argument repeatedly. And Marianne, you and I were talking a little bit earlier about some of the information historically about sort of how the world has actually progressed. Human life has actually progressed as population has increased, as we've continued to understand how to use raw materials into resources. That's right. We're at 7.6 billion people for the global population. That's as of May 2018. And we've also seen standards of living increase. We're sitting right now in an air conditioning building with electric lights and running water and iPhones in our pockets. And I think that perhaps some of these Hollywood producers just need a little bit of Hans Rossling in their lives. Because I think that he would say that one of the best ways to deal with a growing population is to raise people out of poverty through economic freedom. That the slowing population growth rates through getting people out of poverty is the best way. Right, poverty is the problem. Freedom and prosperity are the antidote to that. And obviously the way forward is to find out how to do more of that than how to keep people or subsidize poverty. And you mentioned in your video this notion of the collective brain. Yeah, that was a Matt Ridley concept, which I really like. And it's about the way that trading networks in particular allow people to interact with each other in a way where they transmit ideas to each other. But it's not just transmission of ideas, right? Like we all experience this every day where you see something or if you're an entrepreneur, especially you see something done one particular way. But if you're smart, you add to that with your own ideas. And so you can take an idea that somebody else has had and then build on that and make it even better. And that's only really possible if you have a lot of people and a lot of ideas and Dan said it best. I think people are not just mouths, they're also hands and brains, right? And with that in mind, you could imagine a truly heroic Thanos as someone who actually connects the different worlds that he's going from place to place trying to reduce everyone by half, actually connecting them.  And it sounds like we're probably not going to have any shortage of Marvel movies. So maybe we will have the anti-Thanos, Thanos come soon and show us exactly how he might do things. But we're gonna take a break for now. We're gonna come back next week and hopefully talk more about these ideas in the context of what people are talking about online and Reddit threads that we all kind of patronize. And we'd love to tap into your collective brain. If you have any comments or suggestions about what we might cover on the FeeCast, please let us know in the comments and we look forward to seeing you next week.